Instagram - page 12

This article first appeared in the Cult of Mac Newsstand magazine

Thanks to Apple’s tireless vetting of App Store apps, it’s tricky for an app to flat-out snoop on you. Then again, the behavior of some apps could be thought of as snooping if you squint and look at them the wrong way.

Foursquare is all about location, but that’s because it knows exactly where you are. And Facebook is… Well, Facebook likes to know things about you.

But you can keep earning Mayorships and tweeting your pictures without telling everyone where you live, or letting them post your location to Facebook. Just follow our handy guide to the privacy settings of various famous apps.

We knew this day has been coming for quite sometime now, but alas, the days of an ad-free Instagram are long gone.

The first official brand-sponsored ad was published to Instagram this morning courtesy of fashion brand Michael Kors. The ad features a Michael Kors gold watch surrounded by cakes and other trinkets with the title “Pampered in Paris,” making the fashion company the first to paid advertiser on the platform

Instagram already gave us the heads up that it’s introducing ads in the coming months, and now the Facebook-owned app is giving us a preview of what “Sponsored” posts will look like.

You’ll start seeing the above image in your feed in the “coming week.” It’s a “one-time ad from the Instagram team that’s meant to give you a sense for the look and feel of the ads you will see.” Tapping the Sponsored label will teach you how ads will work.

Instagram recently received a minor update with bug fixes, and you may not have noticed that a small setting is no longer present in the iPhone app. You used to be able to disable autoplay for videos, but now the only video options are for sound and preloading over Wi-Fi-only.

The change may not seem that significant at first, but when you consider that Instagram is about to introduce video ads, it makes more sense.

Instagram told Engadget that “it disabled the option due to “confusion” from users regarding what clips will play with sound,” but it just so happens that the decision is also a nice bonus for potential advertisers. Who wants to sell video ads to people when they could just disable them with a quick toggle?

Source: Engadget

Instagram announced new versions of its app on Android and iOS are now available. The Android 4.2 update adds the intelligent photo straightening tool that iOS users have been enjoying for a few months now.

The iOS 4.2.1 update doesn’t contain any major new features, although Instragam did add new settings that let you mute the playback of video with your ringer switch, or leave it always on. You can also choose to preload videos over Wi-Fi only or leave it always on as well. Unfortunately, there’s still no slo-mo support.

The free updates are available for free in the App Store and Google Play.

Microsoft is trying to persuade HTC to make new smartphones that run both Android and Windows Phone, and it’s willing to cut or eliminate its own license fee to make it happen. The software giant is hoping the move will encourage consumers to try out the Windows Phone platform and eventually make the switch to it — but could the scheme backfire?

What you’ve always dreaded is about to come true. Get ready for ads in your Instagram feed.

Facebook’s photo sharing giant confirmed today that photo and video ads are indeed on the near horizon. Expect them to “occasionally” start appearing within the next couple months.

Facebook announced this afternoon that Android and web users will now be able to edit status updates after they have been posted, meaning you can finally cleanse your status update masterpieces of careless typos without losing your cherished likes, comments and shares.

The new feature should be live on the web and Android versions of Facebook later this afternoon, but iOS users will have to wait a short while before it hits iPhones.

There’s a funny fact in the world of iOS apps: Whereas one-man shop can manage to have a radically new version of its app available day and date with a big iOS update, giant software companies seem to take years to get things done. Spotify took (literally) years to come up with a ho-hum iPad app, and Instagram still isn’t on the iPad. One can only assume it will never be designed for the tablet.

And speaking of Instagram, this new iOS “update” is a sham.

Instagram for iOS 7 is finally here. Today the app received its first big update for Apple’s new OS, and the interface has been given a fresh coat of paint to match the iOS 7 aesthetic.

iOS 7’s Photos and Camera apps have been completely redesigned. Or rather, the Photos app has, with the Camera app getting some great updates, but changing very little functionally (A good thing, too – it was always easy to use).

So what’s changed? Pull up a beanbag, put on your favorite Barry White playlist and pour yourself a glass of delicious wine, while we take a look at everything new.

Touch ID is getting a lot of the attention among the iPhone 5s’ new features, but Burberry’s creative director Christopher Bailey has been obsessing over one Jony Ive’s other new additions to the iPhone 5s: Slow-mo.

Apple and Burberry teamed up for fashion week in London and shot Burberry’s entire Spring/Summer 2014 fashion show using nothing but the iPhone 5s for video and photos, the results of which are pretty damn impressive. Slow-mo makes a number of appearances in the full video posted below as the camera switches from 120FPS and then back to 30FPS with relative ease while recording. Pretty spectacular for a mere smartphone.

Instagram is going to be flooded with millions of half-assed slow-mo videos in just a few short days, but Burberry posted a couple of short slow-mo clips to Instagram as well that you can check out below :

It’s hard to argue with the awesomeness of Grove’s Wood Print case, a maple shell for your iPhone 5 with one of your own Instagrams printed on the back. Who wouldn’t want that?

Get ready for a whole new way for Facebook to make navigating through your feed on your iPhone hell! Facebook is preparing to launch auto-playing videos in your News Feed… and, yup, they’ll eventually be available to advertisers.

When Apple introduced Photo Stream to iCloud back in 2011, the Cupertino company made it incredibly quick and easy for its users to share their favorite photos with their friends and family without syncing them to their computer first. But Photo Stream has a downside, and that is that it’s only available on iOS.

Fortunately, there are plenty of awesome alternatives with cross-platform support, and one of those is Kicksend. Not only does Kicksend let you share photos with friends — regardless of the smartphone platform they choose — but it also lets you print and send real photos to those who don’t have a smartphone at all.

Quick, tell me what you thought when Facebook bought Instagram last year. Your first thought — more of a feeling, really — was probably an impending sense of doom, as if a planet with the face of a demon had just been announced to be hurtling towards Earth. But after that passed and you realized Facebook buying Instagram wasn’t going to be the end of the world, my guess is you mostly just shrugged and said, “I wonder how long it will take them to mess it all up with ads.”

Well, Facebook is taking it slow. In fact, seventeen months after they first purchased Instagram, they’re only now starting to talk about how they’re going to mess it all up with ads! Thanks for the restraint, Facebook.

There’s a nifty image editing feature inside Instagram for iPhone that helps you quickly straighten out wonky images before you upload them. It’s fast, and it seems to do a great job of straightening out your photo without any manual tweaking.

That’s thanks to Instagram’s intelligent correction technology, which uses data captured by your iPhone’s internal sensors to establish the orientation of your device when your image was taken.

Twitter’s video sharing app, Vine, has been overshadowed by the addition of video to Instagram, but that hasn’t stopped millions of people from signing up for Vine. Vine announced this afternoon that it just hit 40 million registered users today — a huge jump from the 13 million users it announced in June.

The launch of Vine’s Android app in June is likely one of the main contributors to the recent boost, but Twitter hasn’t said how many of its users are on Android, or how are even active., but with amazing videos like this, it looks like Vine might be hard to kill.

Source: Twitter

If you use Luxogram, or Webstagram, or any other Instagram compatible app, prepare yourself for the possibility of some change. Instagram has started approaching app developers and services, telling them that if they have “Insta-” or “-gram” in their names that they can expect to have their access to the Instagram stream cut off.

There’s been a lot written about Steve Jobs here and elsewhere – but if you want to get even deeper insights into the man and his legacy, then Cult of Mac Deals has assembled a video bundle that will help you do just that.

YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen have today unveiled MixBit, the new video sharing service that they’ve been teasing us with for several months. It hopes to rival Instagram and Vine with a focus on mixing and editing video. Users can record 16-second clips at a time, and then stitch up to 256 of them together to create an hourlong video. 

Instagram just pushed out a big update for its iOS and Android apps which gives users the ability to import video from their smartphone libraries into Instagram.

Now you can film video at any time and then splice it together later into a 15-second video to import into Instagram. The update also brings video support to Android 4.0 devices and has a new trim and crop feature so your vids can be molded into perfect squares.

iOS users also pick up a new Automatic Straightening feature that set your photos level with the tap of a button. The new Instagram 4.1 update is available now in the App Store and Google Play.

Source: Instagram

If you’ve been hunting for a truly unique way to customize your iPhone 5 then look no further. With this exclusive promotion you’ll be able to fully customize a case with all of your special photos thanks to Casetagram.

Casetagram is a revolutionary design service that lets you create custom cases for your mobile devices from your Instagram and/or Facebook photos. And Cult of Mac Deals has a Casetagram iPhone 5 case available for $39 during this limited time offer – and that includes free global shipping and a screen protector ($20 value) for your mobile device!

Instagram has quickly become one of the most popular photo sharing services for mobile devices, but you’re about to start seeing more of it in your web browser.

This morning Instagram introduced new web embedding for Instagram content that will allow you to post photos and video right on your blog or website:

“Now, when you visit an Instagram photo or video page on your desktop web browser, you’ll see a new share button on the right side of your photo (just under the comments button). Click the button to see the embed code. Copy the block of text it gives you and paste it into your blog, website or article. When you hit publish, the photo or video will appear.”

Here’s an example of how embedded Instagrams appear on the web:

This time on a very patriotic CultCast: Apple starts trademarking “iWatch”; the back to school sale is back; Mac upgrades that are worth the money; Vine Vs. Instagram; PRISM takes Alex; we wish you a happy 4th; and sooo much more!

Have a few laughs and get caught up on this week’s best Apple stories. Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the audio adventure begin.

Show notes up next.