Flickr has been a daily part of my life since it's inception as a live, real-time photo sharing community. They sort of missed the mobile boat, however, letting services like Instagram and Facebook take over mobile sharing from iPhones and the like. Today, that's all fixed, as Flickr announced its iPhone app, ready for you to take exploring with you.
iPhone App - Designed for iPhone, compatible with iPad
There's a new photo sharing app on the App Store and this one doesn't even require the user's friends to have the app in order to view photos!
DabKick is its name and it comes from gaming company GREE's CEO, Naoki Aoyagi.
Working much like other apps, it's easy to add photos from the camera roll album, but the really neat feature is being able to send them to friends instantly, instead of rely on them checking the app. All that's needed is to have their phone number or email in the iOS device's address book.
Users and their friends can swipe back and forth through shots that have been taken, without any need for viewers to download photos to their phone. It's also possible to chat while looking at the photos, and even talk over the phone about them at the same time.
It's an intriguing way of doing things and could really save some time, rather than having to jump between different apps.
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?
iPhone App - Designed for iPhone, compatible with iPad
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.
Recently Facebook-acquired, Instagram, is one of the most popular photo-sharing services available. It has a beautiful and popular iOS app and has recently released an Android app as well. And, despite the new iPad’s upgraded camera, Instagram still does not have an official iPad app. Instavue is an Instagram viewer for the iPad.
While users may not be able to upload pictures from Instavue to the photo-sharing service, the viewer displays Instagram photos from friends larger than they would be displayed on the iPhone (or as the app description says, “view photos as big as your face”). Instavue didn’t leave out photo uploading voluntarily. As of now, Instagram still doesn’t have an API for uploading photos.
It’s possible that Instagram will released a dedicated iPad app for its service in the future. But for now, apps like Instavue are the only options for using Instagram on the iPad (short of stretching the iPhone app to 2x).
Apparently good photo-sharing services are potentially worth billions of dollars (see: Instagram). Former Vice President of Business Operations at Twitter (and ex-team manager for Search Quality Operations at Google), Santosh Jayaram, has just released a photo-sharing service of his own called Dabble. It’s not to be confused with the word game, Dabble, or Dabble, the iPad sketching app. This Dabble is a “social postcard” service.
In THIS app, users create location-based postcards of the places they’ve been. For example, if I go get a burger at a local place near me and take a picture of said burger, I may share a Dabble postcard of the burger and write a short comment like “best burger in town.” That Dabble postcard is now linked to that particular location and anyone who comes to or views that location later can see the postcard. It’s the ultimate “I was here” app.
Other Dabblers (that has a great ring to it) can comment on those postcards and those comments are also linked to that location. It’s an interesting service by an interesting guy. We look forward to see how it works out.
We live in an age where there are countless ways to share photographs with friends and family, and yet, there is always an expanding need for more tools that allow us to do this more efficiently. Enter iPict it.
The idea behind iPict it is to provide users with a dedicated platform for sharing their photos from their iOS device. Admittedly, while users can accomplish similar feats with the use of websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, iPict it does offer the advantage of being devoted specifically to one thing and one thing only. And, as a result of this truth, it works quite well.
Users are required to create an account with the service, which they can do from within the app. Then, they are able to create shared albums within the app, which they can share with their iPict it contact list. The app is very intuitive, and it’s incredibly easy to choose who can view which albums and photos – something that’s bound to be a reassuring for users with privacy concerns.
In addition to sharing their own photos with their friends, users can view and comment on each other’s photos. The app also notifies users when their friends have updated their albums.
While there are already a countless number of tools available for users who want to share photos, it never hurts to have another option. If nothing else, iPict it seems to be a solid choice for iOS users who want a very clean, refined experience without unnecessary extras unrelated to photo sharing.
These days, it appears as though everyone has a home computer. It also seems like most people have iPhones. And I always see a surprising amount of people carrying around iPads, too. So it's not out of the question to imagine that at least some of these folks own two or even all three of these devices. The problem is, in this age of shutter-happy digital photography, it gets a little hard to store all those pictures in one location. Putting them on the phone is a good idea because then they can be shown off at a moment's notice. Keeping them on the pad makes for easy editing. But then, the computer has a lot more storage space. What to do...
Well, Adobe's gone and made a reasonable solution to the issue: Adobe Carousel.
For all intents and purposes, it's basically cloud photo storage. All images will be kept in one spot and will be available on any iOS device with an internet connection. Tweaking a photo from one (i.e. adjusting hues and the like) no longer requires syncing or transferring between systems; the updated image will be viewable by all instantly. Oh, and said editing can be done from inside Adobe Carousel, similar to Photoshop Lightroom. It certainly seems like something the photo-happy iOS user could get a lot of use out of.
Granted, all this convenience and freedom from restrictive storage capacities does have a price. A very literal price. Adobe Carousel will require a subscription which can be either monthly ($5.99) or yearly ($59.99), depending on the user's preference. Granted this isn't all that substantial when compared to various other subscription fees, and it has no restrictions so users can import, edit and browse as much as they want.
There doesn't appear to be a specific release date yet, but according to Adobe's website it should be out "soon." Likewise there's no official word on cost, free or otherwise, aside from the subscription fee. Still, this is an app shutterbugs should keep an eye out for.
Google owned company, Slide, is currently in public beta testing for a new photo sharing app, Photovine. The app released yesterday, and is available on the App Store, though users will need a beta invite to actually use it. Interestingly enough, the app is not available for Google's own Android operating system.
Photovine distinguishes itself from similar photo sharing apps like Instagram with themed sharing albums, called vines. In the video below, one user takes a photo of a pomeranian puppy, titles it "warm and fuzzy," and passes it on to a friend. Other friends pick up on the theme and send along various photos to enrich it, including a big, friendly guy with a hairy chest in a speedo swimsuit. Check it out:
Heading to the app home page, users currently see a basic splash page with a button to request an invite, the teaser video, and a privacy policy page that shows the company's Google connection. The tagline, "plant a photo, watch it grow," is also clearly visible. Support is currently only an email address.
iPhone App - Designed for iPhone, compatible with iPad
The newest photo sharing service has hit iOS, Photogram. This app isn't meant to just share single photos with some filter added to them that gets blasted out to social media services; Photogram tries to do something a bit more personal. Users pick from 1-4 photos either taken with the camera inside the app or from their Camera Roll, add an optional message to send along with the photos, add a theme, and send it out to their friends, family, or whoever they want to receive the photos. The limit of 4 photos is in order to keep Photogram emails from being obnoxious, as the Photogram FAQ states: "Nobody wants to plow through dozens and dozens of photos."
Photogram allows for users to share photos with their friends via email, Facebook, and even Twitter. It is also possible to create specific user groups so photos can be regularly sent to common recipients. So, it's easy to create a group for family so they can share their newest photos to them, or for a certain circle of friends to get photos relevant to just them. Users can add designs to their photos with a variety of available themes, created by independent artists. These include basic themes for just simple colors to sports-related themes to even one entitled "Robot Friend." These themes are available via in-app purchase, with part of the revenue going directly to the artists. For the first week of release, users will get 30 themes for free. Artists interested in submitting their own themes for use in Photogram can get in touch with them through the email address at the bottom of the Photogram FAQ.
Photogram currently only shares to email, Twitter and Facebook; other services may be added in the future if users request them. As well, the app is currently exclusive to iOS; other operating systems may get Photogram later on. Photogram is available from the App Store right now as a free download.
