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Instagram Adds Boomerang Mode, Mentions, and ‘See More’ Links to Stories→

Instagram Stories continue to evolve with three new features introduced today. The first is called Boomerang. Swiping below the shutter button in the Stories UI switches between ‘Normal’ and ‘Boomerang’ mode. Tapping the shutter button in Boomerang mode takes a burst of photos that is turned into a short video that is played continuously forward and backward.

Instagram also added Mentions to Stories that work just like they already do in captions and comments. Add ‘@‘ followed by a username to an Instagram Story and the username becomes a link that will take you to the person’s profile. The person mentioned also receives a notification that they were mentioned in a Story.

Finally, verified Instagram users can add a ‘See More’ link to Stories that opens an external web page inside the Story. ‘See More’ links are described by Instagram as a test feature. To try them, Instagram suggest checking out the accounts of Duane Johnson (@therock), Chance the Rapper (@chancetherapper), and Bustle (@bustle).

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Amazon Prime Reading Comes to the US Kindle App→

Last month, Amazon announced a new perk for Prime members in the US called Prime Reading, a collection of approximately one thousand books and magazines that Prime members can read for free. Today, Amazon added Prime Reading to its Kindle app for iOS.

From the Kindle app’s Library view tapping the Prime Reading link opens a searchable list of 1,016 books that are available as part of the program. The selection of books and magazines is a small fraction of what is available to purchase from Amazon or download with its Kindle Unlimited program, but it includes several classics like The Hobbit and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, as well as newer selections like What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions and the first volume of the Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life graphic novel series. Also, unlike paid Kindle books, which you can only purchase from Amazon’s website, Prime Reading books can be downloaded directly within the Kindle app, a reminder of how I wished the app worked for all books.

Adding a Prime Reading book.

Adding a Prime Reading book.

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Connected, Episode 116: Undead Zombie Echo Fish→

Myke is back to talk about dongles. Stephen has opinions about the Mac Pro. Federico is trying a new notes app.

More than you ever wanted to know about dongles and terrifying Alexa experiments on this week’s Connected. Also, we talk about Bear and the business of indie apps towards the end of the show. You can listen here.

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GIPHY Updates with Saving and Syncing of GIF Favorites→

GIPHY’s iPhone app was updated today with the ability to save favorite GIFs. What’s more, you can sign up for, and into, a GIPHY.com account from the iOS app so those favorites sync across GIPHY’s website, the iPhone app, and its companion Messages app. It’s a relatively simple change, but one that makes a big difference in the utility of the app. If you have a go-to reaction GIF, now you only need to save it as a favorite once to access it from the web, the iPhone app, or the Messages app.

In my limited testing, syncing was seamless and immediate. The update does not include GIPHY Keys, GIPHY’s custom iOS keyboard. Favorites saved in the keyboard app do not sync to your GIPHY account. In addition, the lack of an iPad app is curious; I find myself wanting a GIF at least as often on my iPad as on my iPhone. That said, this is a welcome update that should make GIPHY much more useful to diehard GIF fans.

GIPHY is a free download on the App Store.

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Apple News Quietly Takes Off→

Apple News got a major overhaul with iOS 10. Part of that was a change in its design, but there were other significant changes like human curation of news stories that have greatly improved the app. According to an article published by The Nieman Journalism Lab, those changes have had a big effect for some news organizations:

CNN… says its Apple News content got 36.5 million unique readers in September, a major increase from August’s 5 million. Its pageviews also increased significantly to 274 million, up from 43 million a month before.

“It’s really quite a remarkable story,” said Alex Wellen, CNN’s chief product officer. While CNN had seen “steady traffic growth” for most of the year,” said Wellen, Apple’s tweaks to its news app have changed the traffic picture significantly.

Bloomberg has seen a similarly significant spike in readership via Apple News. The difference appears to be at least in part a consequence of large news organizations’ regular inclusion in the Top Stories and human-curated Featured Stories sections. Other sites, like Slate, told The Nieman Journalism Lab that their pageviews have been flat.

Notwithstanding the eye-opening increases in traffic for some sites, the jury is still out on whether Apple News can generate significant revenue for news organizations:

Monetization is “still a work in progress,” noted [Bloomberg’s] Havens. Slate, in a similar position, is “not monetizing Apple News very well at the moment,” said Schieffer. Wellen said CNN “has monetized its stories,” though he wouldn’t give specific details. Ads still feel like a rare occurrence for its Apple News content; publishers are still eager for integration with comScore, a major hurdle to getting advertisers interested in the platform.

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How Slack Is Using Emoji→

After introducing emoji reactions last year, our own Slack team saw a dip in the total number of messages sent. With hundreds of members communicating across a couple thousand channels, it was a welcome change. Before emoji reactions, messages begot more messages: replies, questions, acknowledgment. In a word, noise.

Fascinating look at how Slack is using emoji inside the company. It’s sort of amazing how versatile emoji can be when used in work communications with a bit of creativity. I’m also going to implement this idea for our own Slack:

Speaking of 18F, check out their blog post about using emoji reactions for knowledge management. They tag all “evergreen” content found in channels with :evergreen_tree:, and use a search query like the one mentioned above to find new messages worth codifying in their handbooks. At Slack, we do something similar, where anyone can tag a message with :notebook: to indicate it might be worth adding to the company’s internal documentation.

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How Apple’s Apps Will Use the Touch Bar→

Good overview by Benjamin Mayo of all the Apple apps that will have Touch Bar integration on the new MacBook Pros. Apple certainly had the time to build extensive support for the new API while waiting for the new Pros to ship.

That’s a total of 23 Apple apps that live in the /Applications root folder with Touch Bar support as of the current macOS 10.12.1 build. The following apps have no Touch Bar integration as far as I could tell; App Store, Automator, Chess, Dashboard, Dictionary, DVD Player, Font Book, Image Capture, Photo Booth and Stickies. I expect all of Apple’s apps to flesh out their Touch Bar integrations in future macOS update.

See also: Steve Troughton-Smith’s utility to grab a screenshot of the currently active app in the Touch Bar.

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