Did you read last week’s Cult of Mac post about copying your Instagram photos over to Flickr? Did you think to yourself “Well, ain’t that something? I’ll surely have to do something about that,” and then just do nothing? Well, I have good news – your laziness has at last prevailed, for there is another service that does the exact same thing, only better.
After last week’s Instagram furore, many people threw a hissy fit and quit the free photo-sharing service for which they have never paid a penny. And a lot of those quitters went over to Flickr and its outstanding new iOS app.
Over the weekend, Flickr gave its regular free members a three-month Pro subscription. This is super smart, and not only as a way to entice yet more users away from Facebook’s newest toy – a Flickr Pro account ups your limit on photo uploads, which lets you bring in all your pictures from, say, Instagram.
And the best way I have found to do this is with the new Free The Photos service.
The latest version of Wunderlist for iPhone kicks off this week’s must-have apps roundup, with a brand new look and a whole host of new features. It’s accompanied by an awesome new app from Readdle, a great way to monitor your social statistics, and a brand new app from Facebook.
Instagram’s iOS app has been updated to v3.4.0. It fixes a few ridiculous omissions from the last version, and adds a new filter, no doubt as a way to get users to shut up about the Terms of Service debacle.
Instagram has had quite a week since legions of disgruntled users voiced complaints over the app’s shady Terms of Service (TOS) update. One clause in particular caused many users to jump to the conclusion that Instagram planned to outright sell its users’ pics without explicit permission. Instagram quickly responded to the outcry by reassuring that it has no plans to sell photos. An update to the TOS was also promised.
Today Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom published a new blog post detailing the service’s updated stance on content ownership and privacy:
Dropbox — our favorite cloud-based storage solution next to the iCloud — has been hinting that it wants to be a major presence in the online photo gallery business, and now they’ve taken another step towards that goal, purchasing photo sharing and organizing tool Snapjoy for an undisclosed amount.
James Bond gets all the cool stuff. Fancy gadgets. Fast cars. Beautiful ladies. And a bottomless bucket of martinis. But he doesn’t have an iPhone controlled dragonfly that can spy on all the bad guys without making a sound.
You’re not James Bond, but you can get your very own dragonfly robot to conduct your own espionage missions, or just take pretty ariel pictures to post on Instagram. The best part is that your flying robot will be controlled with your iPhone and it’ll only cost you 120 bucks.
Instagram recently updated its Terms of Service (TOS), and everyone freaked out at a clause that said a “business may pay Instagram to display your photos in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions without any compensation to you.” INSTAGRAM CAN SELL MY PHOTOS WITHOUT MY PERMISSION?!? Quick, everyone move to Flickr!!!
As with most news involving social network privacy, it has all been blown way out of proportion. No, Instagram does not want to sell your precious pics you take on your iPhone.
Keeping up with your popularity in the digital age is exhausting. You have to switch to Instagram to see if people think you’re artsy. Then open to Twitter to see if anyone’s retweeted your joke from an hour ago. And then you gotta make sure people are reading your blog so you open up Google Analytics.
Once you’ve finally made the loop through all the apps you’re ready to start over again, but a new app called Static for iOS is ready to make all that stat checking a whole lot easier for you by giving you all your social networking stats on one easy to read screen.
As soon as Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion earlier this year, we knew it was only a matter of time before Instagram became more like Facebook. Eventually the two service have to converge in some ways.
Instagram has updated their Privacy Policy and Terms of Service to let users know that starting on January 13th, 2013, all your data is going to be shared with their owner, Facebook. If you don’t want Instagram to share that information with Facebook, well there’s no opt-out so you’re tough out of luck.
Late last week, Instagram — now owned by Facebook — confirmed it had disabled Twitter integration, and the ability for users to see Instagram “cards” or previews in their timelines. While it’s not a massive issue for Twitter users, who will still gets links to Instagram photos, it marks the first major breakdown between the two social services since the Facebook acquisition.
But things could have been very different. Weeks before Facebook bought Instagram, Twitter was close to acquiring the photo sharing service for just $525 million.
So, it’s finally here — Google released an official Google Maps app for the iPhone, and we love it. Not only is it back with a brand new look, it also has new features, and of course, the accurate data we’ve all been missing since Apple released iOS 6. Also in our roundup is a brand new 1Password app from AgileBits, a new Flickr app from Yahoo!, and more.
Ok, so we may not be rockstars (yet), but we just hit 1,000,000 downloads of The CultCast, our fun, quirky, totally off-base podcast covering everything in the wonderful world of Apple. That’s like earning a platinum record! Now we know what Led Zeppelin felt like… But we couldn’t have done it without our smart, good-looking, worldwide audience supporting us all the way. If you’ve ever listened to an episode of The CultCast, thank you, we love you, and we would like to hold your hand.
But enough self sycophancy! On our newest episode, we talk Google Maps reborn on iOS. We’ll tell you what we love, what we don’t, and if it scratches the itch we’ve all had since the demise of the last Google Maps.
Plus: why Twitter wants to be your next Instagram, and a new Flickr app rises from the ashes—but is it too little too late?
Join us on our newest CultCast! Subscribe now on iTunes, or easily stream new and previous episodes via Apple’s free Podcasts App.
After rolling out a redesigned Yahoo! Mail on Tuesday, Yahoo! has launched a brand new Flickr app for iPhone this morning that appears to be going head to head with Instagram. It’s a completely redesign of the previous version, and it promises to be easier to use and more beautiful. It also offers new features, including 16 filters for your photographs.
All new Instagram! Sorry, no: Twitter! Yeah. Twitter.
Twitter might have been a bit previous announcing it ahead of its actual appearance in the App Store, but it’s here now: Twitter for iOS 5.2 is out, and comes with Twitter’s very own Instagrammish photo filters. Are they any good?
Coming on the heels of the new Instagram update, Twitter announced yesterday that their iPhone app was coming soon and that it would have all kinds of photo filters. The updated Twitter app just hit the App Store and is ready to be downloaded.
The free Twitter 5.2 update comes with photo filters powered by Aviary. The eight different filters will make your Twitter pictures more like Instagram photos, which is kind of nice seems how Instagram decided to stop displaying their pictures inside of a Twitter, but does the world really need more filters?
Here are the full release notes on Twitter for iOS version 5.2:
Twitter has unveiled Instagram-like photo filters for its official mobile apps on Android and iOS. It’s been rumored that Twitter would roll out this feature by the end of the year, and the time has come.
You can choose from 8 basic filters and crop/enhance your pics before sharing them in the Twitter app. This addition comes after Instagram recently shut off photo previews for links shared in Twitter.
A big Instagram update is now available for Android and iOS devices. The camera interface of the app has been improved with a quick preview of the last picture you took on your device. Now there’s an optional grid guide for taking pictures and a permanent grid to help you with aligning when you’re scaling and cropping. For iPhone 5 users, Instagram has included an “improved Camera Roll image selector for quick access to your last photograph.”
Today’s update also includes a number of speed enhancements, Foursquare buttons, several design tweaks, and a new filter called “Willow.”
Use Instagram much? If you do, you’ll know that the best part about it is the community of users that’s over there. It’s as vibrant and rocking a community as Twitter or Facebook, all wrapped around photos you take, filter, and share. It’s what Flickr wishes it had become. Poor Flickr.
Anyway, you can have followers on Instagram, just like Twitter. And, also just like Twitter, people can unfollow you when you post something obnoxious, post too much, or just post something they don’t agree with. It’s all very democratic.
If you’ve ever wondered who was following you or who was un-following you, Followers+ might be the app for you.
Believe it or not, Black Friday has already come and gone. Pretty soon the Christmas season will begin, and we’ll mark this midwinter festival by getting together with friends and family and continuing to drink and eat far too much.
Meanwhile, we also buy gifts for those same friends and family members, whether they want them or not. Luckily, we’re here to help, and if you follow our festive advice, your gifts just might make it into the “wanted” category.
From now until Christmas, Cult of Mac will be putting together holiday gift guys full of ideas for the special ones in your life, no matter what their interests or your budget. Today, we’re looking at gifts for the lovely laydee in your life.
After Instagram was acquired by Facebook earlier this year, Instagrammers have worried that some changes are coming to the popular photo sharing app. On Wednesday, a big change was made to Instagram that disabled the ability for Twitter to properly display photos on the Twitter website.
Instagram images viewed through Twitter this morning now appear cropped and off-center. The change comes from Instagram disabling its integration with Twitter cards, which is used to display images and content within Twitter messages.
I’m an avid Instragammer. And yes, I even take picturesoffood, and cloudsandall that stupid stuff. It’s horrible. It’s a bad habit. I need to stop. But I can’t. Maybe if the most loathed band in the world would just make a song about how awesome Instagram is then I’d be motivated to kick the habit.
Nickelback still hasn’t worked Instagram into the lyrics of their next mega-album, but CollegeHumor just created the perfect Nickelback video that destroys Instagram and its users with such perfection it’s unbelievable.
Will it keep me from snapping a pic of the French Toast I’m going to eat for breakfast tomorrow? Nope. But I’ll get rid of all my beautiful fingernail pictures now.
The bad news? Instagram has a vulnerability that could allow a hacker to take over your account. The good news? That hacker would have to be close enough that he could just walk over and punch you to do so.
Like many of you, I love Instagram. It’s one of my top 5 most used iPhone apps. Lately I’ve started to get tried of Instagram’s user interface. While the app’s design has certainly evolved over the years, the overall aesthetic has stayed the same since 2010. I really like the minimalist, Metro-ish design taste, and apparently so does a concept designer named Stephen M. Levinson.
Stephen has uploaded a short video of how he has re-imagined Instagram, and it looks awesome. “I redesigned parts to be a bit more intuitive to gestures, removed the top menu bar that felt unnecessary, and I wanted to make the shots look like actual polaroids,” he told TechCrunch.
I’m not sure about all of Stephen’s design choices, but I love the idea of Instagram having a more gesture-driven interface. What do you think?
Will.i.am, of Black Eyed Peas fame, has decided that your iPhone is cool but he could make it even more amazing. He’s got a new accessory called the V.4 that attaches to the iPhone and converts it into a “fashionable camera” by adding a vintage looking camera frame to the back with interchangeable lenses and a pop-out keyboard.
Not only does the accessory add a vintage camera and keyboard, but it also comes with its own vintage photo filters, a built-in flash, and photo editing. Plus, you don’t have to use Instagram anymore because now you’ll be able to upload your photos to Will.i.am’s own photo network called i.am.