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Posts tagged with "instagram"

Use Dribbble and Instagram as an Apple TV Screen Saver

 

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, navigate to File > Home Sharing > ‘Choose Photos to Share with Apple TV…’ in iTunes 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 3.0: Maps. New User Profiles. Infinite Scrolling.

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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Browsing Instagram and Facebook Photos with Cooliris

Cooliris iPad

Cooliris iPad

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. Read more

Instagram 2.5 is All About the Users

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.

Facebook Releases Standalone Camera App→

Facebook Releases Standalone Camera App

Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram raised eyebrows and foreshadowed the launch of a Facebook branded camera app, separate from the official Facebook application just as Facebook Messenger and Facebook Pages Manager are. Combined with the dream team of developers from Sofa, Facebook’s previous talent pull seems to have paid off with Facebook Camera, a central app dedicated to taking pictures, lightly editing photos, and uploading pictures to your Facebook profile. With cropping and straightening tools, the ability apply stylish filters, batch upload multiple photographs at a time, and view your friend’s photos in fluid streams a la the camera roll, we’re left astonishingly impressed with Facebook’s latest mobile application.

Facebook’s app makes it easy to take photographs, batch upload your images (up to 2048 x 2048 pixels), tag them, and apply up to fifteen different filters not dissimilar from Instagram. A vertical feed of large photos, expansive album views, and an engaging progression of composing photos to uploading your favorite shots makes Facebook Camera feel like a solid camera application. Many unexpected elements can be pulled and pushed onscreen to reveal or hide information, and the app is simple enough to be intuitive without feeling crowded like you would expect a management app to be. Facebook has a well balanced, thoughtful, and overall enjoyable app on their hands. Facebook users should love it.

From Ellis Hamburger at The Verge:

Facebook Camera just became instantly the best way to upload photos to the social network, just ahead of Batch and other competitors. It’s simple to take photos, tag them, and upload them en masse, which is something we’ve been asking for for a long time.

Animations throughout Facebook Camera are fluid, the app is fast, and there’s a lot of clever interaction to take advantage of throughout the interface — clearly Facebook’s acquired talents have been hard at work in making the app to not just feel like a boring extension of Facebook, but rather a necessary addition that belongs, no, deserves to be on a Facebook user’s smartphone. Facebook has made an incredibly bold statement with Facebook Camera — they’ve stepped up to the plate to deliver a solid application that doesn’t feel tacked on or only done for the sake of their platform. It’s a serious release. Just look at their landing page.

All Things D and The New York Times both have introductory pieces on Facebook’s latest app release alongside Facebook’s official announcement on their blog. We recommend trying the app for yourself by downloading Facebook Camera from the App Store. A lot of care went into this app, and we’ll have more coverage after we spend some time using what’s already given us a great impression.

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Iris: A Beautiful and Simple Instagram App for iPad

Instagram may have been acquired by Facebook, but this isn’t stopping third-party developers from coming up with clever solutions to use the Instagram API. If anything, if Facebook will live up to its promise of keeping Instagram alive while growing and improving its network, everyone’s favorite photo sharing service may see even bigger numbers and user adoption. And there’s no better way to use official APIs than building software the developers of the original app are ignoring, at least for now.

For the past few weeks, I have been trying a new Instagram app for the iPad called Iris. It’s available now on the App Store and it’s optimized for the Retina display. While Instagram has started experimenting with a new API to allow other developers to upload pictures to the service, Iris doesn’t let you upload photos using the iPad’s camera and the app’s custom interface. Instead, Iris is another app focused on providing a beautiful experience for browsing and liking Instagram photos, and, in my opinion, it is the most attractive solution that’s been brought to the market to date.

Iris puts great focus on large thumbnails for photos, a light background to make Instagram’s filters really pop, and a dark sidebar to switch between your feed, popular items, profile, and search. Iris allows you to browse either via large thumbnail previews or smaller ones; the layout change can be activated with a switch in the lower left corner. In the lower right corner, the developers have implemented a “pull to refresh” command, which literally requires you to pull a slider to refresh the main view. You can also hit the associated refresh button if you feel uncomfortable with pulling, but I found the gesture quite clever and fun. Unlike other apps, Iris doesn’t have standard pull to refresh at the top of the view.

To navigate, Iris uses a mix of tabs, “load more” buttons, and panels. For instance, the main feed gives you a vertical list of photos from people you follow, and once you reach the end of the list you can hit a “load more” button to fetch more items. I found the refresh times acceptable, and I like the custom popup dialog that shows up when you load sections or refresh pages. You can tap on a photo to bring it up at its original size; you can like with a double tap (like the original Instagram), or by hitting the heart icon below a photo. In the same area, you can find buttons to comment, and view a photo’s location. Comments are displayed in a panel that loads at the side of the screen and is reminiscent of Loren Brichter’s Twitter for iPad. If you tap on a user’s avatar while viewing a photo, the user’s profile will slide up from the bottom of the screen, and, if I had to point out a minor UI annoyance I noticed, you’ll have to hit a “back” button to make the profile view slide down again. I find the action confusing as back buttons are typically associated with the content area moving to the right.

The Popular section is pretty self-explanatory; I did find some nice touches in the profile view. You can view the people you follow and your followers in dedicated panels; you can follow/unfollow in-app, and of course check out another user’s complete set of photos. In your Profile, you can also hit a globe icon to have a history of your Instagram shots displayed as Iris pins on a Google map – it’s a neat summarization of the places you “visited” with Instagram.

The search function of the app is very basic as well: you can search for people and “tags”. While people results will open in the aforementioned side panel, tags will simply return associated photo results in a regular grid view.

If Instagram were to release an official iPad app, I think it’d be extremely similar to Iris’ approach. A minimal, beautiful interface for the Instagram community that takes advantage of the iPad’s display to lay out large thumbnails and photos. Instagram would obviously want to implement a camera in a (possible) official app – right now, Iris doesn’t let you upload anything, and has to display photos at low resolution on the iPad’s Retina display. The effect, however, is nice (especially thanks to filters, which help hiding some pixellation here and there), and I bet it gets a lot better on older iPad models.

Iris offers a simple, good-looking and enjoyable Instagram experience on the iPad, so if you’ve been looking for a great iPad app to browse your favorite photos, $1.99 should be a no-brainer.

“Facebook Gets More Data”→

“Facebook Gets More Data”

Matthew Panzarino has a great take on today’s Instagram + Facebook news:

Facebook doesn’t need Instagram to make money. Instagram will probably never get ads.

I think it’s a win for everyone. Now Instagram doesn’t have to shoehorn a monetization model it would hate —and you would hate — into its service in order to survive. The users get a better experience. Facebook gets more data. Users that are quitting Instagram because the service may be ‘ruined’ are barking up the wrong tree. Facebook sees the value in the network as it is, a photo creation machine with a lot of user love.

While mobile ads could be a huge deal long-term speaking, it is true Facebook doesn’t “need” Instagram to make money right now. For a company as large as Facebook, this kind of acquisitions can be put on hold from a business perspective, to see how things evolve once users figure out they are effectively using a Facebook product. But you can’t put off the mobile explosion – it’s only going to get bigger – and can Facebook afford to miss out on “mobile advertisements done right”? What if someone else figures out a way to monetize millions – soon billions? – of users sharing photos from their smartphones?

It’s a good problem to have. And I agree that access to more data (patterns such as likes matched with photo captions, for instance, or location) is what matters for now. Let’s check back on ads and mobile monetization in six months.

More Instagram + Facebook coverage here.

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Facebook, Instagram, and Ads→

Facebook, Instagram, and Ads

Oli Watts thinks Facebook’s recent statement on revenue from mobile users offers a clear indication of things to come soon in newly Facebook-owned Instagram: ads.

I think the real reason for the Instagram purchase, and the incredible price tag, is access to a potentially lucrative mobile advertising product.

Mobile advertisements are potentially more lucrative than standard “desktop” web advertisements, yet most companies have been doing them wrong for years. The majority of mobile advertisements have tried to replicate the web’s model with simple images users can click to be directed to a website. Others, including Apple with iAd, have tried to do things a little differently, yet the numbers are smaller, and incredibly so, than, say, Google’s revenue with ads on search and desktop websites. Mobile advertisements could keep users more “engaged” with promoted products by leveraging aspects like location, cameras, touch, apps – yet only a handful of companies seem to be betting on the future of ads as richer experiences built for mobile, not extrapolated from computers.

Facebook is a company that along the way found a business model and a culture that allows them to believe they are doing good things. That’s in their IPO filing. With the Instagram acquisition, one can only assume Facebook will want to start making some money with it eventually, and because Instagram is mobile, and photos are huge on mobile, Facebook will find a way to monetize both Instagram and Facebook’s mobile products.

Like Instagram’s photo sharing model applied to a company like Facebook, the potential for different mobile ads is largely untapped.

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Why Facebook Bought Instagram→

Why Facebook Bought Instagram

Om Malik, writing at GigaOM:

Facebook and Instagram are two distinct companies with two distinct personalities. Instagram has what Facebook craves – passionate community. People like Facebook. People use Facebook. People love Instagram. It is my single most-used app. I spend an hour a day on Instagram. I have made friends based on photos they share. I know how they feel, and how they see the world. Facebook lacks soul. Instagram is all soul and emotion.

I am indeed interested to see how, on an emotional level, Instagram users will react to the Facebook acquisition. Will the “love” Om and others mention survive the migration to Facebook’s infrastructure? Or maybe Facebook will really keep Instagram as a truly separate product, perhaps only slightly more integrated with the social network – even if that doesn’t make much sense for a $1 billion acquisition? We’ll see.

In the meantime, it does appear the “social paradigm” Instagram reinvented (here’s my take from 2010) intrigued Facebook enough to give away 1% of its market cap.

Also worth keeping in mind: the photo sharing app Facebook was building, and the popular content on Instagram.

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