Instagram today announced that it has over 100 million monthly active users, an increase of 10 million since they announced in early January that they had passed 90 million monthly active users. In a lengthy blog post, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom shares a story from the early days of Instagram and highlights a few Instagram users that have inspired him and highlight the power of Instagram.

Images have the ability to connect people from all backgrounds, languages and cultures. They connect us to aid workers halfway across the world in Sudan, to entrepreneurs in San Francisco and even to events in our own backyards. Instagram, as a tool to inspire and connect, is only as powerful as the community it is made of. For this reason, we feel extremely lucky to have the chance to build this with all of you. So from our team to the hundred million people who call Instagram home, we say thank you. Thank you for sharing your world and inspiring us all to do the same.

Given the news I thought I would go back and create an updated version of our Instagram users graph which you can see above: it plots all of Instagram’s publically released user statistics since its release in October 2010 (click it to view a larger version). Note that the last two data points are ‘Monthly Active Users’ rather than total number of signed up Instagram users. Nonetheless, it hasn’t taken too long for the Monthly Active Users catch up and hit the 100 million users mark.

Tired of stock images of plants and animals when your Apple TV screen saver comes on? Why not make it a little more personal with some ingredients from Dribbble and Instagram? With a little IFTTT magic you can have your Apple TV showing your Dribbble and Instagram feeds with just a little fun hacking.

The interactive team over at BlingBlog.tv created a way to make this happen by using Dropbox and IFTTT then sprinkled some recipe magic to make this happen. I tried it last night and it worked perfectly; it only took me about 15 minutes to set up from start to finish. Here are the ingredients and the recipe:

Step 1: Dropbox
You’ll need a Dropbox account if you don’t already have one, but who doesn’t these days? If you don’t, you can sign up for free here.

Step 2: IFTTT
Okay, not everyone has an IFTTT account but you will need one to continue with this tutorial. IFTTT is a great service that lets you build recipes from many different web services. It’s free, so do yourself a favor and sign up if you already haven’t. When you do have an IFTTT account, you can continue.

Step 3: Get your ingredients together
To make the recipes that BlingBlog.tv created, some IFTTT channels will need to be activated. Go here to activate the RSS Feed Channel, the Dropbox Channel, and if you want Instagram, activate its channel as well.

Step 4: Recipes
Anytime a new item is added to Dribbble’s popular feed, or your own follow feed if you have an account, it is downloaded to Dropbox. If you have the Instagram channel activated, you can pick a few different users as well to really mix up your screen saver. IFTTT will save an Instagram picture every time that user account posts a new picture. Here are the links here and here that BlingBlog.tv posted if you want to modify or use their recipes. Note that you will need to make sure every recipe points to the same Dropbox folder. Every one of my recipes for this tutorial point to my Dropbox/IFTTT/Instagram folder, even my Dribbble feed.

Step 5: Screen Saver Info
Did I mention this also works on your Mac? Just point to your Dropbox folder via the screen saver system prefs and you’re done with this tutorial. For your Apple TV, you will need to turn on iTunes’ Home Sharing on the Mac that has the Dropbox folder. After that is done, select the ‘Advanced’ menu item in iTunes then click on ‘Choose Photos to Share’ and navigate to the same Dropbox folder (see image below).

Then, go to your Apple TV > Computers menu and add your Apple ID to link to your Mac’s photo library if you haven’t already done so. Now, go to Screen saver and choose your user Photo library as the source. Here is a resulting picture from my own Apple TV using this recipe. As you can see, it’s showing images saved from the IFTTT recipe — I like the origami effect the best. So, if you get tired of looking at your photos or the boring stock ones that Apple ships, try this recipe for some inspiration!

Here are some FAQs that BlingBlog posted:

• At the beginning of the week, delete all of the stuff from last week. Sometimes, it’s hard to let go, but this screensaver isn’t for nostalgia; it’s for inspiration. Bring on some new stuff!
• IFTTT/Instagram recipes only let you choose one user per recipe. We have 3 or 4 different ones going.
• You aren’t limited to just dribbble or Instagram, IFTTT can also hook up to Flickr or any other photo streaming service that has an rss feed.
• Apple TV doesn’t automatically update as new images come in, so you have to stop the screensaver and repeat Step 5 from above. And make sure your iTunes is open when it is refreshing the feed.

Instagram’s updates aren’t just about iterating on capturing — adding filters and giving you more ways to take photos is one thing, but the service has bigger aspirations than just sharing and socializing with friends in the moment. For the Instagramers (that’s okay to say right?) who are documenting their lives everyday through the iPhone or Android app, Instagram becomes a sort of timeline or memoir, i.e. a daily journal that can be dated back to when Instagram was first downloaded from the App Store. As new photos are added to the top of your profile, and as new photos bubble up through activity feeds, older photos may simply fade away. They’re forgotten. But old “polaroid” photos don’t simply have to disappear into the nether — every previous photo taken is likely to be just as special or just as important as the one taken moments ago.

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Formerly known as PicLens, I used to rely on Cooliris years ago to browse images and slideshows on the Internet in a more visual interface. Resembling a virtual wall with great focus on large, neatly arranged thumbnails for web content, Cooliris has always been one of the most interesting experiments in terms of browser integration and overall presentation. For the past few days I have been using Cooliris’ latest iteration, a universal app for iOS, and I am quite impressed with the results.

Cooliris also developed Discover, a Wikipedia app for iPad that turned articles into magazine-like layouts. The standalone (and free) Cooliris application is a new take on the old browser plugin, but it shares the same attention to detail and care for interface design of Discover.

Cooliris has always been about browsing photos, and this new iOS version is no exception, only it’s a more modern app that takes into account the changes that have happened to social photo sharing on the Internet in the past years. (more…)

Previous versions of Instagram improved performance, added filters, and made taking pictures and sharing photos with your phone’s camera faster than ever. Instagram is still the cool place to hang out if you want to snap pictures quickly and add a little flair, and today’s update shows it’s not always about just the things you take photos of.

Using Instagram and interacting with people is just as important as being able to take and edit a photograph. Instagram’s 2.5 update isn’t about adding filters to your images — it’s about the people you want to interact and share moments with. Thanks in part to a revamped profile tab, improved search, improved commenting, auto complete, and integration with Facebook. Instagram’s latest update brings to the forefront some aesthetic, usability, and performance changes that should make the overall experience smoother.

The update makes Instagram feel much more interactive, and brings about features I enjoy using in my Twitter apps (a la autocomplete). Instagram is a free download from the App Store.