Tadaa may be the upmarket Instagram we’ve been looking for

By Oliver Haslam on May 10, 2013

Instagram may be the top dog when it comes to fancy photo sharing, and it may have Facebook behind it to make sure it stays there, but it’s not all been plain sailing. Instagram’s had more than its fair share of privacy issues, and its own terms of service have been less than clear on who owns the photos posted to it.

Such goings on have led many to at least consider dumping Instagram, but where do you go instead? We’ve wondered that too, and Tadaa may be a good alternative especially when its latest update is taken into account.

If you’ve ever wanted an up market Instagram, then we might just have something right up your street… Read More

 

Instagram rolls out Photos of You

By Christian Zibreg on May 2, 2013

Good news, iPhone photography lovers! Facebook-owned Instagram has issued an update to its iOS and Android client today, introducing a new Photos of You feature – another way to share and discover stories on Instagram, basically a dedicated profile section which collects photos you’ve been tagged in.

As part of the roll-out, Instagram said users can now tag people as easily as you add hashtags. What’s more, you can even tag any account on Instagram, “whether it’s your best friend, favorite coffee shop or even that adorable dog you follow”. They also created a nice promo video to promote the feature, jump past the fold to watch it… Read More

 

‘Instahancer’ brings a bunch of new options to Instagram

By Jeff Benjamin on Mar 14, 2013

Instahancer is a new jailbreak tweak that enhances the usability of the iPhone’s Instagram app. It does so in a vein similar to another recently released jailbreak tweak called InstaSave, a tweak primarily focused on saving photos from the service.

While this tweak, too, focuses on saving Instagram photos, it attempts to justify the price premium with the addition of extra features like zooming, caption drafts, and the ability to copy direct URLs. Does Instahancer succeed in its endeavors? Take a look inside for the full scoop… Read More

 

Instagram surpasses a hundred million active users

By Christian Zibreg on Feb 26, 2013

Facebook-owned Instagram, despite negative publicity surrounding the controversial terms of service brouhaha, continues to grow its installed base. Today, the company announced a major milestone: Instagram now has over a hundred million active users across mobile platforms. That’s ten million more active monthly users since it announced the 90 million milestone on January 17. By comparison, Twitter over a six-year time span hit 200 million active users, as of end of 2012.

Commenting on the development, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom shared an anecdote in a blog post about how he realized Instagram was going to be different when fans at the Giants Stadium starting posting their Instagrams after another co-founder “with a few quick commands at his terminal” filled the service with images of the game… Read More

 

How to save Instagram photos to the Camera roll

By Jeff Benjamin on Feb 18, 2013

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could save your favorite Instagram photos directly to your Camera roll? Well, that’s the exact premise behind a new jailbreak tweak called InstaSave. InstaSave is an extremely simple tweak, in fact there are no settings to configure after installation.

Once installed, you’ll notice a new Save option appear after tapping the ellipsis button when viewing your favorite photos. Take a look inside for more details as to how InstaSave works. Read More

 

Instagram launches photo stream on the web with comments and likes

By Christian Zibreg on Feb 5, 2013

Good news for iPhone photography buffs who love to show off their snaps on Instagram. The Facebook-owned photo sharing service announced Tuesday that people can now view their entire feed of photos in any web browser, including Instagrams shared by the folks they follow on the service.

Commenting and liking is supported and the web app is optimized for both desktop and mobile browsers.

With these new capabilities, users can bypass the mobile app and instead interact with their followers using any device that runs a standards-compliant web browser. That’s a new territory for Instagram as it was dependent on the free iOS/Android app. There’s one thing missing from the new web app, however… Read More

 

Don’t want crowdsourced reviews? Scoopt lets your closest friends share their recommendations

By Mike Schnier on Jan 31, 2013

Want to find restaurants and bars you’ll like but are tired of getting reviews that the stores likely posted themselves? The problem with traditional crowdsourcing is the service tends to be anonymous, and you will get reviews from people who don’t necessarily share your tastes.

Scoopt has a different crowdsourcing philosophy. It’s an app that is designed to help you connect “with your favorite people’s favorite places”. Instead of comprehensive reviews from strangers, Scoopt gives you quick recommendations from friends you trust… Read More

 

Instagram says it has 90M monthly active users, releases other stats

By Christian Zibreg on Jan 17, 2013

Facebook-owned photo sharing service Instagram today for the first time revealed some hard numbers on its performance and user base. Instagram has passed 90 million monthly active users, which is a huge number for any casual photo sharing service, no matter how you look at it. The company also confirmed that it is serving 40 million photographs each day, averaging to a little more than two photos per user shared each day. Wondering about how many likes and comments people post each day? Read More

 

Instagram reminds us that new terms of service go into effect on Saturday

By Christian Zibreg on Jan 15, 2013

Photo sharing service Instagram in an email notice issued to its users today warned that the new terms of service pertaining to images are about to go into effect later this week. The official email communication acknowledges that the updated Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, that now “take into account the feedback we received from the Instagram Community”, will be in effect this coming Saturday, January 19, 2013.

When it first announced new terms of service that mentioned “advertising” and “your photos”, many users feared the service would be able to sell their Instagrams to advertisers and use them elsewhere. After the fallout ensued, Instagram returned to the original terms of service and clarified in a blog post that “Instagram users own their content and Instagram does not claim any ownership rights over your photos”… Read More

 

‘TorchNC’ and ‘InstaSnap’ spice up Notification Center on jailbroken iPhones

By Jeff Benjamin on Jan 12, 2013

Two new jailbreak tweaks have recently appeared in Cydia by the same developer, and they both happen to focus on Notification Center. Specifically, these tweaks aim to add handy shortcuts to the Notification Center pull-down pane.

The first tweak on the docket, TorchNC, adds a shortcut to activate the iPhone’s LED flash. There are other tweaks and apps that perform flashlight functions, but I always find it useful to have it within Notification Center, or directly on the Lock screen.

The second tweak, like the first, is a shortcut for Notification Center. Instead of interacting with the iPhone’s LED flash, InstaSnap is a tweak that allows you to quickly access the camera from within Instagram. Seeing as though this tweak doesn’t require the iPhone only LED flash, it works with both the iPhone and iPod touch perfectly fine.

Take a look as we profile both InstaSnap and TorchNC in our walkthrough videos inside… Read More

 

How to copy all your Instagrams to Flickr

By Christian Zibreg on Dec 29, 2012

Instagram’s exploding popularity is having long-time iPhoneography buffs pay notice and watch in horror as mainstream users cannot get enough of its crappy filters and the obscenely low 612×612 pixel resolution. And with Facebook and Android now in the picture, no wonder some early adopters go to the extremes of closing their account while others, like Apple’s marketing honcho, stopped using Instagram for it “jumped the shark”.

To the most ardent fans, the last straw was Instagram’s confusing handling of the recent terms of service changes - even if it was much ado about nothing.

If you’ve been seriously contemplating importing your Instagrams over to Flickr but were put off by the tedious manual uploads – worry not, turns out there are a few ways to get that job done without too much fuss. iDB has you covered with this quick guide to bringing in all your Instagram photos to Flickr with just a few clicks… Read More

 

Instagram lists its most popular locations of 2012

By Cody Lee on Dec 27, 2012

Christmas is over and 2012 is winding down, meaning it’s about that time where folks start reflecting back on the year. As such, Instagram has posted a list of its most popular picture-taking locations for the past 12 months.

Out of anywhere else in the world, Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport was the most popular, with over 100,000 photos taken there in 2012. Interested in the rest of the list? We’ve got the whole thing for you after the break… Read More

 

Instagram returns to original ad terms after fallout

By Cody Lee on Dec 21, 2012

Things have been pretty rough for Instagram here lately. Earlier this week, the photo sharing network announced an update for its TOS (or terms of service) that included talk of “advertising” and “your photos.” Obviously, this didn’t sit well with many of its users, and mayhem ensued.

To stop the wildfire, co-founder Kevin Systrom published a blog post assuring the community it was all a misunderstanding, and that Instagram would be changing the language in its TOS to clear things up. Now its reverted to the original terms to try and get everything back to normal… Read More

 

Instagram app updated with new Mayfair filter and the usual bug fixes

By Sebastien Page on Dec 20, 2012

Instagram has been taking a lot of heat this past week and while everything seems to almost be back to normal, what better way to remind everybody that Instagram is the best way to share underexposed waffle pictures than releasing a new filter?

Just about 10 days after launching the new Willow filter, the Instagram app has been updated with one new filter labeled Mayfair, as well as the usual bug fixes… Read More

 

Instagram responds: ‘your photos are your photos’

By Christian Zibreg on Dec 18, 2012

There has been a whole lot of hoopla surrounding Instagram’s newly updated terms of services, with commenters warning the new rules might give the popular Facebook-owned photography service the right to share your data with third-parties and – worse – sell your Instagram photos without compensating you. Does Facebook really intend to turn Instagram into a stock photo service that doesn’t pay a dime to photographers?

Cowed by privacy outrage, hours after releasing the new terms the company’s co-founder responded by shedding more light on the matter. In a blog post, he makes it clear that Instagram does not intend to sell its users photos while sharing interesting tidbits concerning Instagram’s advertising strategy… Read More

 

Instagram wants to sell your photos to faceless corporations. Great, now what?

By Christian Zibreg on Dec 18, 2012

As we told you yesterday, realizing it needs to start making money the Facebook-owned photo sharing service has added an interesting clause to its Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

The updated rules give Instagram the right to sell access to your photos to advertisers and share your profile data with third-parties. The change enraged some to the point of closing their Instagram account.

The vast majority of users don’t appeaer to oppose the decision with such drastic measures, but there’s no doubt that the company is playing with fire. The move already has backfired. A major backlash ensued and the misstep is now threatening to snowball into a PR catastrophe… Read More

 

Instagram-Facebook data sharing goes into effect January 16

By Christian Zibreg on Dec 17, 2012

Instagram, which was acquired by Facebook in September, just posted an interesting update on its blog confirming plans to share data on users with Facebook, the #1 social network that claims nearly one billion users worldwide. Instagram’s updated Terms of Service and Privacy Policy will go into effect starting January 16 to enable deeper integration between the two service, making it easier to “fight spam more effectively, detect system and reliability problems more quickly and build better features” for everyone by understanding how Instagram is used.

Under the new terms, Instagram can also share User Content and your information with businesses that are “legally part of the same group of companies that Instagram is part of”. In other words, Facebook now has access to Instagram user data. The social networking behemoth is allowed to use this information to “help provide, understand and improve” both its own and Instagram’s service… Read More

 

Smule’s Strum app adds music and Instagram-like effects to your videos

By Cody Lee on Dec 16, 2012

Even if you don’t recognize the name Smule, chances are you’ve still heard of one of their apps. The Palo Alto-based mobile developer has delivered some pretty big iOS hits in its day such as Ocarina, which turns your phone into a flute-like instrument, Magic Piano, and I Am T-Pain.

This past week, Smule introduced its latest creation: an iPhone app called Strum. Unlike the aforementioned titles, Strum doesn’t help you create music, but rather it allows you to create and edit short movie clips with Instagram-like video filters, digital audio filters, and more… Read More

 

Facebook confirms Instagram will have ads

By Cody Lee on Dec 12, 2012

Brace yourselves, it looks like advertisements are coming to Instagram. Since its release in late 2010, the popular photo sharing service has managed to remain ad-free. But once Facebook took over the reigns earlier this year in its legendary $1 billion buyout, speculation has been rampant that this would change, and Facebook just confirmed it… Read More

 

Instagram gains enhanced camera, new Willow filter, nice little tweaks

By Christian Zibreg on Dec 10, 2012

iPhone photography fans, rejoice. Instagram today pushed an incremental update to its mobile app for iOS and Android, bringing a few improvements in the camera department, a brand new filter and more. The camera interface has been revamped with a nice Instagram-themed shutter button. The camera now displays a preview of the most recent photo on your camera roll and you can turn on an optional grid separately for the camera and the scale & crop screen.

You may also appreciate the enhanced Camera Roll picker as it now lets you quickly access the last photo taken, though that capability is inexplicably available only on the iPhone 5. More on other changes and the new Willow filter right after the break… Read More

 
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