Animated GIFs have exploded in popularity recently which is likely thanks to a combination of Tumblr, our shorter attention spans, and the simple fact they’re a lot of fun.
Here are four apps that make the process so much simpler from your iPhone or iPad.
A little over a year ago, everything changed. My daughter, Peregrine (Pip, for short), was born, and along with the myriad recalibrations, adjustments, and joyous changes that birth brought with it, I also finally came to terms with the true value of the iPhone camera: baby pictures! Hundreds and hundreds of them (no exaggeration) were taken by me, by friends, and by family, and then scattered over hard drives, social networks, and of course iPhones. The problem then became figuring out how to organize and store them privately and securely. As a devoted Mac user it’s easy enough to keep photos stored on iPhoto, but that’s a local option only, with limited cloud storage and sharing (those 1,000 photos on iCloud? Please!), and god forbid my hard drive crashes without proper backup.
I thought all of my problems with cloud storage for photos were solved when Everpix came along. Here was a fantastic, well-designed app that also had great web-based software and a Mac-based uploader. Best of all, it could load in all of my photos from various social streams, eliminate or hide duplicates, and handle a potentially unlimited number of photos for a reasonable monthly or yearly price.
There was just one big problem though; Everpix went out of business.
Before I get to the heart of this article, there are a few lessons to learn from my Everpix experience.
One: Always keep all of your photos on a local hard drive.
Two: Backup said hard drive as often as humanly possible (something I still don’t do, so do as I say, not as I do).
Three: Never, ever assume that a site, app, or service will exist forever. It won’t; it just won’t. They will all go away at some point. Some will last five years. Some will last a year or two. Some of the very best won’t even make it that long.
So I found myself back at square one, trying to find another good (read, as close to the effortless Everpix as I could get) cloud-based storage solution for my photos. Read on for my look at nine different cloud storage services that work with iOS.
:: FLAWED MINIMALISM
Version 3.0 comes with all manners of new features, most notably a completely revamped and sleeker dashboard. Increasing compatibility with the iOS format, tap based functionality is improved and swiping through the composing interface has been introduced. It should all make for a much simpler app, ensuring users can blog content even faster than usual.
High resolution photo support is now included, proving particularly beneficial to those of us with the new iPad and iPhone 4S, although the app isn't Universal just yet.
For those without a consistent internet connection or those currently abroad, offline support will be a great hit with users able to post new blogs, reblog content and comment on others' work all while offline.
Spotify support and the ability to search tags is also supplied.
The Tumblr update is available now.
:: STUNNING TUMBLRS
Biggest and most exciting of the huge list of features is support for more blogging platforms, Tumblr and Vimeo, as well as many support features for making WordPress (likely the most popular platform) work much better with Blogsy. The Tumblr support includes all types of Tumblr posts including quotes, text, audio, video, and more. Vimeo videos can be dragged and dropped into posts now instead of copy and pasting embed codes. In WordPress, Blogsy now supports featured images, custom fields, direct access to the WordPress Media Library, post format, “sticky support,” and drag and drop for PDF, documents, and audio.
Most bloggers will be happy enough with the major support updates for WordPress, but there are even more features that were added. Blogsy now has Retina graphics for the new iPad. Other updates include various Flickr-related updates, local drafts changes, and an edit button.
I've been waiting for more WordPress support to give Blogsy a try...this update added all of the functionality I've been waiting for.
