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Is iPhone 5 ‘most hated’ or have rivals hijacked Apple’s message?

Judging from last week's online chatter over whether people hate the iPhone 5 or love Samsung's Galaxy S4, you'd have thought the tech press had returned to high school, where the halls are filled with BFFs and everyone dots their 'i' with hearts.

However, there is some actual news coming from that torrent of tweets and Facebook posts.

Apple, long admired for its tight control of information, is great at talking up its brand, but does little to guide the conversation once a product is launched. Hence, the iPhone 5 'most hated' drivel...

Twitter updates iOS and Mac app with DM syncing

The most annoying thing about Twitter's iOS and Mac client has finally been fixed: your DMs now sync properly across devices and platforms. This means reading a DM on iPhone will mark it as read on desktop, and vice versa. In fact, Twitter will now properly sync your read/unread DMs in all official Twitter apps, including the web interface at twitter.com, the mobile UI at mobile.twitter.com, Twitter for Mac, Twitter for Android and TweetDeck, another Twitter-owned property...

Vine adds protected posts, revamped camera, channels, revining and more

If you care about sending quick clips up to six seconds long via Twitter-owned Vine for iPhone, you should pause for a second and take a look at today's Vine update which brings a few major enhancements. Most notably, Vine 1.3 enhances your privacy by introducing protected posts.

Protecting a post will make it unavailable to the web at large so only the people you approve to follow you can see them (you can also protect your entire account.

This release also brings out a redesigned camera, new channels and trending posts, the ability to re-share someone's vine (finally!) and other perks. Go past the fold for the full breakdown...

MuscleNerd: no A5+ bootrom exploit

For those of you holding out hope that a bootrom exploit has been discovered for newer iOS devices, you're going to have to keep hoping. That's because famed iOS hacker, MuscleNerd, has confirmed that no A5+ bootrom exploit exists. A bootrom exploit is extremely desirable, because it means that the device could be permanently susceptible to a tethered jailbreak, much in the same vein as limera1n for pre A5 devices.

Tweetbot updated with support for Instagram video

Facebook caused quite a commotion last week when they unveiled a new Instagram feature that allows you to capture and post 15-second videos. It was an instant hit, prompting users to upload more than 5 million clips in just 24 hours.

My Twitter stream has since been flooded with Instagram videos, posted by everyone from celebrities to tech pundits. And unfortunately, because I use Tweetbot, I haven't been able to watch them in-app. But that changed this afternoon...

Twitter updates #music app with new discovery charts and options

Twitter has been relatively quiet about its #music app since it launched back in April. But now that Apple is getting into the music discovery business, and companies like Rdio are following suit, it felt it had to step up its game.

And it starts today, with an update to its iOS #music app that adds new dimensions to its popular discovery engine. You can now browse for new music via genre, like hip hop or country, and there are new 'top charts' to explore...

P0sixninja hints at upcoming release: ‘think bigger than jailbreak’

This is kind of interesting. Joshua Hill, better known as the iOS hacker p0sixninja, sent out a bit of a cryptic message from his Twitter account last night saying that he has a lot of amazing things coming to 'us all' soon.

Hill, who has helped build a number of jailbreaks including Greenpois0n and Absinthe, has been fairly quiet lately. But he did say back in March that he had independently discovered enough exploits to build a new hack...

Interactive maps illustrate iOS, Android and BlackBerry usage around the world

This is kind of interesting. The folks over at Gnip and MapBox have teamed up with ex-Google data guru Eric Fischer to create a series of interactive heat maps that show the usage of iOS, Android and BlackBerry devices around the world.

The data consists of some three billion global, geotagged tweets that have been collected since September of 2011. And the team has converted all of this data into navigable maps in an attempt to illustrate patterns in language and device use...

Over 5 million videos uploaded to Instagram in first 24 hours

As anyone within 5 miles of a computer can tell you, popular photo sharing service Instagram unveiled a new video capture and upload feature yesterday. The Facebook-owned app can now shoot and post 15-second, Vine-like videos.

And apparently people love it. Today, Facebook flexed its muscles in the direction of Twitter's Vine team, announcing that Instagram users uploaded a staggering 5 million video clips in the first 24 hours of the feature's existence...

Twitter teases upcoming Vine features ahead of Instagram Video launch

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...

Vine updated with new share button and other UI improvements

I haven't quite figured out what to do with Vine yet, Twitter's video social network, but others don't seem to be having that problem. The app is consistently listed among the top 5 iPhone apps in the App Store, and I see shared Vine videos on Facebook daily.

And if you happen to be a Vine user, you'll be happy to hear that the app received a nice little update today. The new version, marked as version 1.1.3, includes a new share button to make reposting videos to other networks easier, and other UI improvements...

Facebook rumored to step on Vine’s turf with Instagram Video

Facebook last week sent out invitations for its June 20 press event snail mail style, down to clean white envelopes. The graphics alludes the social networking giant has been working on "big ideas" and today TechCrunch chimes in to claim knowledge of the event's agenda.

What Facebook apparently has in store is a video sharing feature for the Instagram generation. Rather boldly proclaiming that "Instagram will get video on June 20", the story cites sketchy sources as asserting that the Instagram video service is much like Twitter's Vine, which focuses on short six-second videos...