Tag: Instagram »

This week at 148Apps.com, Carter Dotson asked the question that so many iPad owners have thought to themselves: "Why can't I work from just my iPad?"

"I’m sick of desktops, laptops, and netbooks. The iPad is lightweight, has great battery life, and I don’t have to take it out of my bag when I’m flying. Most of the work that I do is writing, covering iOS and Android, so it seems appropriate to primarily do this work from mobile devices, right? That’s what I want, but there’s still just so many shortcomings that keep it from being a regular reality.

"What I find is that for basic tasks, the iPad is great. I like the focus that the iPad’s limitation of running a single app on screen at a time provides, especially for writing. I use a portable Bluetooth keyboard, and while it’s not full-size, the benefits I get from being forced to focus on what I’m writing is a huge benefit. As well, with the customer support job I work with that uses Zendesk, I discovered that it’s actually quite easy to do it efficiently through Safari and the Zendesk mobile app. I didn’t feel like I was any less productive in working from the iPad than I do when I work from my Mac in this case. But it’s the exception to the rule."

Read more of Carter's home-to-work manifesto at 148Apps.

Meanwhile, Amy Solomon at GiggleApps.com took a trip to the zoo via ABC ZooBorns: "My son, a fan of these other apps, was excited to hear about ABC ZooBorns, asking me about a list of his favorite animals, all of which are included – much to my son’s excitement. I too enjoy the list of animals included – be it more traditional zoo animals, such as tigers or zebras, but also including some unique choices such as Ural owl, wombat or quokka. We do love to look at these animals as babies, especially those are simply precious to look at such as baby Gorillas or Elephants."

Read Amy's complete review at GiggleApps.com.

Finally, AndroidRundown.com featured a story about a fascinating new KickStarter project named InstaCube. Joseph Bertolini writes, "It streams photos directly from any user’s Instagram account and displays them on a large 6.5″ LCD touchscreen. Display those photos from the park yesterday or randomly check in on some friends, because what good are those photos if they are stuck on a tiny phone screen all the time. Probably the greatest element of InstaCube is its ability to stay away from being one dimensional by including full access to Instagram. Doing this allows for photo browsing, ‘liking’ of photos, and InstaCube will even display live photos of sunrises and sunsets from around the world."

Sound intriguing? Read more about it at AndroidRundown.com.

Summer's heading to a close, but we still have so much more to offer across the 148Apps network. Keep track of all the latest happenings, as well as reviews and contests, by following us on Twitter or liking us on Facebook. You'll be glad you did.

Cooliris is an app for sharing and discovering photos on social networks, and it just got more social with Facebook and Instagram support. The interface displays photos in an angled grid that can be scrolled through horizontally to view more photos. Photos from the Camera Roll can be shared to Facebook, or shared through private Conversations with other Cooliris users, with the ability to send invites through Facebook and email.

With Instagram, it’s possible to view one’s own photos and popular photos. Support for viewing Instagram feeds is in the app, but wasn’t working when I tested it. Facebook integration brings the latest photos from the News Feed into the app, along with photo’s from one’s own albums. Cooliris even provides a unique way to search for images from Google in its interface. Photos discovered through the app in any of these methods can be saved to the Camera Roll for preservation or sharing in Conversations.

Sneaking candid shots of yourself and sharing them with the world has become a staple of the iOS ownership experience. There was always the issue of security when it came to apps like instagram.  Under most circumstances your photos were essentially being broadcast into the ether, for everyone with an internet connection to consume.  Who would you expect to come to the aid of users who wanted to share their images in a more discrete manner?  If you guessed Warner Bros. you may want to consider getting your head checked, but oddly enough that is actually the correct answer.

Despite coming from a completely unlikely source, outmywindow is a hybrid of social networking and photo storage that allows you full control of who can see your photos.  Users can even import images from their iOS libraries and create albums to once again share with only those that are worthy of permission.  The app is free and looks to be a solid alternative to other providers on the market. Plus, when they are offering 5GB of free storage, there is always an added incentive.

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Instagram has done wonders for the photo sharing app world. That doesn't mean there isn't time to try out a new photo sharing app, one with some very useful features when it comes to contextualizing the content.

That app is WeHeartPics. The free to use app holds the lofty ambition of helping its users to make sense of their life's fragmented moments by organizing them into forms of stories. Put a selection of photos together and it tells so much more than just one detached image.

The app offers a few different ideas for what kind of photo stories to create such as everything about the user, their family & friends, their home, place of work, hometown and regular places they visit.

Like other photo sharing apps, it's easy to add friends or strangers in order to check out what's going on around the world. Users can also share their WeHeartPics content on Pinterest or their Facebook timeline, thus consolidating their life.

It's all quite a charming idea amongst a wave of photo sharing apps that don't seem very personal. WeHeartPics is out now so why not give it a shot?

While not a replacement for Instagram, Facebook Camera is a good first step in this month+ old union of the two companies. Released today, Facebook camera looks to streamline the viewing of photos and the uploading of them.

The app allows you to apply simple filters to images, tag people, upload multiple images at once, and post a note about the group of photos you are uploading to your timeline.

In quickly testing Facebook camera, it's a very well made app. Much better and more reliable than the main Facebook app for uploading images. Perhaps that is their plan? The only feature I was left missing was the ability to specify an album to upload images into.

Worth checking out if you upload images to Facebook regularly.

Twitpic has provided many regular Twitter users the means by which they can share images alongside their text-based tweets. Now there's a whole app devoted to the wonders of Twitpic.

The app, cleverly called Twitpic, is very similar to Instagram but more tightly integrated with Twitter. Users can easily share their photos and videos with other followers, while also applying filters if they so wish. Other editing options such as cropping, orientation and adjusting brightness are also included. Other sharing comes in the form of being able to view photo timelines from people the user follows, as well as checking out the most popular Twitpic users.

It is all very much like Instagram but with the huge amount of Twitter users out there, it should form a great new place to check out the latest images of the world.

Twitpic is out now and it's free to download.