This is Socialcam, from the people that brought you justin.tv.
The name is well chosen. Socialcam is a cam for being social. It’s not just a cam. You need to know that before you download it, otherwise you might be put off by just how social it is.
Thanksgiving is just two days away, and if you’re smart, you’re already prepared for it: you’ve got a turkey in the fridge, the ingredients in the cupboard, and the invitations all sent out. Or maybe you’re like me instead, and have found yourself up against the wire to throw a last minute Turkey Day feast. Either way, your iPhone and iPad can make putting on a holiday dinner much easier than the Pilgrims used to do it.
Everyone wants to be an amazing photographer now days. That’s the reason why Apple updated the iPhone’s camera right? Unfortunately, taking breathtaking photos isn’t as easy as buying the new iPhone 4S and taking random pictures of the sun behind trees changing colors with the season. Don’t worry though, Cult of Mac is here to help you take your photography skills to the next level.
Whether you’re wanting to make a serious dent in the photography universe, or just trying to impress your friends on Instagram and Facebook, we got three amazing apps that will pour life into your photos. Best of all, the Mac Photo Effects FamilyPack Bundle gives you five licenses of FX Photo Studio Pro and five copies of ColorSplash Studio so you can spread the joy and give a couple copies to your friends so their pictures can look great too.
So what all is in this bundle worth $215 that you can get for $35?
Today’s chunk of Best Thing Ever are these tasty looking Instagrahams – cookies inspired by photo app Instagram.
Thing is, the basic recipe could take you anywhere you want to go in this strange new world of edible application icons.
If you’ve got the colored fondant icing and the skill to apply it, you could make yourself an entire home screen’s worth of iconified cookies. Which we would totally love to see, by the way, so if you do that, let us know.
In the meantime, you’ll find me browsing the archives at Bakerella, which has just become my new favorite baked goods blog.
AOL Music just launched its new music app for the iPhone called Play, which it describes as “Instagram for music.” It’s completely free and focuses on music sharing and discovery, allowing you to listen to and share music with your friends on Twitter and Facebook, stream selected albums, and access over 47,000 SHOUTcast radio stations.
This week saw the launch of a brand new MTV app for the iPhone called MTV PUSH — our first must-have app of the week — which aims to introduce music lovers to the hottest new and up-and-coming artists; featuring videos, photos, news, and plenty of additional content that will help you discover the best new music.
We’ve also chosen a great new photography app that will help you discover Instagram photos from the people around you; the quickest and easiest way of recording video on your iPhone; and a highly-polished finance app for monitoring your budget.
Facebook might be looking to challenge Instagram’s crown as the reigning king of iOS photo sharing apps.
Apple didn’t announce a new iPhone with a beefed up camera on Monday, but they did inform us that they are making some big improvements to their camera app. With the ability to take pictures from the lockscreen, volume shutter buttons, basic photo editing and much more, Apple’s done a great job of making sure the iPhone will continue to be one of the most popular cameras on the web. Here is our run down of the new features in iOS 5’s camera app.
Jack Dorsey, the head of Square and co-founder of Twitter, dropped a hint on Saturday via a cryptic Tweet about a possible deal with Apple. The Tweet simply said, “Apple @Square” along with a link to an Instagram photo of a plate of sliced Apples shaped like the Square logo.
Love Instagram? Love seeing your friends’ instaphotos? You might love Screenstagram then.
Instagram has become an iPhone photography phenomenon (although not everyone likes it), but like any online community with that many participants, it can be hard to find the really good stuff.
So English developer Elliott Kember has put together Instagre.at, a site that slurps up popular photos from Instagram HQ and spits them out in a very desktop browser friendly way that lets you navigate with your arrow keys.
You can flit left and right through the popular images, but try hitting the down arrow too: it lets you drill into further lists of images using a particular Instagram filter, or by a particular user. Use the up arrow, or the Escape key, to go back to the popular list. Neat stuff.
You probably know of Instagram, the hipster app du jour which allows you to easily apply a number of attractive, quasi-Polaroid-esque filters that spruce up your iPhone or iPod Touch pictures to give them a more artistic and sometimes twee look.
But you probably know more than of Instagram. You probably use it. After all, they just racked up one million users.
According to Instragram co-founder Kevin Systrom, Instagram started with just 80 users, and their ultimate “audacious goal” was just to let people share media in open community. The growth they’ve seen is phenomal, though: since mid-October, they’ve lured in over a million souls.
“We’ve just been amazed at the growth of the service,” Mr. Systrom said in a phone interview. “My partner and I had a bet the first day about how many downloads we would get and I was off by an order magnitude.”
How big is Instagram? Users are now collectively uploading three photos per second, to contribute to a library of almost ten million photos.
I may sound dismissive, but I’m not: Instagram undeniably allows users to take more interesting looking photos than the iPhone’s built-in sensor can natively produce. I guess I just wish that the iPhone and iPod Touch’s camera hardware was capable of taking interesting images without needing a filter app. It can’t, but that’s not Apple’s failure: it’s a limitation on the technology of digital sensors. Here’s hoping that changes.
Featured in our favorite iOS applications this week is the free content sharing app from Posterous that lets you post any mix of text, photos, and videos instantly to the web, directly from your iPhone.
Phoster is also featured in our must-have application list this week: it’s a universal app for both iPhone and iPad that lets your create stunning posters and invitations. With loads of templates to get you started and various effects and decorations, you’ll be able to produce stylish results in no time at all on your iOS device.
We also have the new T3 magazine app that delivers the world’s greatest gadget magazine to your iPad. Buy and download the T3: iPad Edition every month and access content exclusive to the touchscreen device.
