Social

Twitter teases upcoming Vine features ahead of Instagram Video launch

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 9, 2018

Coincidentally or not, Twitter has just teased the upcoming Vine features just as the blogosphere lit up with a confirmation that Facebook will be releasing an Instagram video product on Thursday.

According to Twitter, they will be introducing "some exciting new parts of Vine” over the next few weeks. The rather cryptic and unusual announcement was accompanied by a rather clever Twitter-made video posted to - you guessed right - Vine...

Digg’s Google Reader replacement launching June 26 on iPhone first

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 17, 2013

In spite of die-hard users screaming and crying foul, Google quite unapologetically remains on track to shut down its popular news aggregation service dubbed Reader come July 1. But don't worry, there are plenty of alternatives to Google Reader such as the popular Mac/iOS app Reeder, the unavoidable Flipboard and many other apps.

The social news aggregator Digg is among the companies looking to exploit the opportunity. In March, Digg announced that work had begun on its own Reader replacement. Today, the firm said the app will be rolling to everyone by June 26, giving Google Reader refugees almost a full week of head start before the July 1 cut-off deadline...

Google+ notifications will soon sync across devices

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 28, 2019

One of the annoyances about notifications in today's multi-platform world is the alert conundrum. We've all been there: an alert comes in, you act on it on one device and yet it doesn't clear on the other. And with apps constantly producing all sorts of notifications, managing these things across our gadgets is tricky, to put it mildly.

Matter of fact, you'd be right to argue that notifications tend to get a little out of hand, up to the point where they turn your daily computing into a nightmare.

Apple feels your pain: that's why it gave iOS 7 a new Notification Sync feature where reading a notification on your iPad automatically marks it as read on your iPhone, and vice versa, courtesy of iCloud. Google isn't standing still either: today, the search monster started rolling Google+ notification sync across the web, Android and iOS...

OS X Mavericks has native LinkedIn sharing, but what about iOS 7?

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 26, 2016

Apple has shared a bunch of software-focused updates during today's WWDC keynote, but only briefly touched on a few topics dear to my heart, due to time constraints. Among them: native LinkedIn sharing. As you know, OS X Mountain Lion already incorporates single sign-on for Facebook and Twitter. Truth be told, the company did make a passing mention of LinkedIn integration during the keynote's Safari segment and it would only seem natural that it will be bringing that capability to iOS 7 in the betas preceding a Fall release...

Facebook friends disappearing from iOS Contacts? It’s a new feature!

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 6, 2013

If you've ever used Facebook integration in iOS 6, you may have noticed iOS lets you grant the Contact app access your Facebook account in Settings > Facebook. Enabling this feature creates a new 'Facebook' group in Contacts which contains entries for all of the people you're friends with on Facebook. According to a thread over at Apple's support forums, a number of people are experiencing an issue where some of the entries are dissapearing from the Facebook group in iOS Contacts.

If you have noticed similar symptoms, don't panic - it's a feature rather than a bug...

Twitter’s Vine reaches 13 million users on iPhone, lands on Android

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 9, 2018

Twitter's Vine debuted in late-January exclusively on Apple's iPhone so you could easily spam the web with a few seconds worth of "viral" clips. While we knew it would eventually land on Android, its somewhat slow adoption had prompted Twitter to go back to the drawing board and add more features.

Less then five months later, Vine for Android is a reality. And reminding us that Vine still exists, Twitter has proudly announced that the iPhone edition now has thirteen million users - hardly what you'd call a successful iPhone app.

Perhaps a bit unsurprisingly, many features from the iOS app are currently missing in the initial Android release. On the other hand, the Android version happens to include a feature Twitter says isn't possible on the iPhone...

Tweetbot for Mac refreshed with Media timeline, profile cover image support

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 22, 2018

TapBots' Tweetbot to this date is my go-to Twitter client, both on iOS and Mac. The iOS app was updated a month ago with a handy new Media timeline, revamped image viewer and a few under-the-hood tweaks. Today, Tapbots gave the Mac edition some love.

On top of fixing a few nagging issues, the new Tweetbot 1.3 brings the Media timeline to your desktop. As part of Twitter's new guidelines, tweet details now have favorite and retweet counts, which comes in handy when checking how viral a tweet is. Another nice-to-have: the Mac edition now supports Twitter's profile cover images...