The battle of the clips
Instagram to get video, become a Vine competitor on June 20th
June 20th will forever be known as the day that the “War on Mobile Video Sharing” began.
That’s if reports that Instagram, the popular image sharing based social network, will be gaining video recording capabilities on June 20th have merit – which, at the moment, we believe they do. Sources from within Facebook have been confirming that Instagram will indeed be gaining video recording capabilities, borrowing much of its concept from competitor Vine, which has recently exploded in popularity. Vine has also just launched an Android client in an effort to win over users at the other end of the smartphone conversation, a space that Instagram began to explore just last year.
Vine is owned by Twitter, while Instagram was last year purchased by Instagram in a startling $1 billion deal. Considering Instagram and Facebook aren’t exactly best buddies lends merit to the fact that Facebook is all the more eager to compete with Twitter’s success under the tremendously successful Instagram name.
It’s not yet clear if Instagram video clips will be able to be edited with the filters that have made Instagram, well, Instagram, but we’d assume so considering how integral filters are to the Instagram DNA. Filter effects are one feature that Vine has been lacking (for good reason, some say), and Facebook might hope to exploit that feature as leverage in the upcoming war against Vine.
This wouldn’t be the first time there was a major disruption in the mobile video sharing space. For the longest time secondary services such as TwitVid were the seemingly most popular way to share videos. Cinemagram also saw its day in the limelight before quickly being overshadowed by the marketshare and mindshare monster that is Vine, which seems to be the newest, hottest new social network around.
Whatever Facebook and Instagram are announcing on June 20th, we’ll be sure the bring you an update as soon as we know more. But for now, we believe that it’s safe to call it – Instagram will soon be shooting (many) movies near you.
Source: TechCrunch
Film your next six second film on a Droid
Vine comes to Android
Vine has seen homerun success on iOS, and it looks like our Android brotheren just got an invite to the party; Twitter announced via a blog post this morning that they’ve brought Vine to Android, launching today on Google Play for all handsets running Android 4.0 and newer. Vine for the two platforms are said to be nearly identical with the exception of one feature that’ll remain an Android exclusive for now – zoom support. Twitter says this feature would be impossible to implement on iOS, saying that it “can only exist on the Android platform”.
If you’re an Android owner eagerly awaiting to get your hands on this holy grail of social networking, head on over to the Google Play store and give it a search – it’s taking a while to propagate to all Android owners, but you should be able to see it sometime today.
Source: Twitter
World's first native cocoa Gecko browser
Goodbye, Camino; development ends after ten long years
It was a long time coming, but the day has finally come – Mozilla hadn’t been officially supporting the Camino browser project for some time now, dedicating all their OS X efforts to their more mainstream browser, Firefox. Camino hadn’t been updated for over a year now, and the technologies used in the browser has remained so old that the last update has virtually no HTML5 support or support for absolutely any modern web technologies.
Still, back in “the day”, Camino used to be one of the best and most popular browsers on OS X. Though it’s fallen out of favor for the likes of Safari, Chrome, and Firefox, there’s still something sad to be said about this. Thanks for all the good times, Camino.
Via: MacRumors
Tabs on tabs on tabs
Google updates Gmail for desktop and mobile with new tabbed UI
Gmail has never been the prettiest piece of software Google has ever produced, but it’s always been one of the most functional. That trend continues today as Google has just announced a new redesigned Gmail experience centered around a new tabbed user interface that allows for easier organization and categorization of your precious emails.
Gmail allows you to chose which categories will appear as tabs and how to differentiate between the different types of emails. The new UI also allows you to manually move as many as five emails at a time between the different categories. These tabs will also appear on Google’s newly updated Gmail applications for both Android (Android 4.0+, unfortunately, meaning a huge chunk of the Android population is out) and iOS.
Google also allows you to disable the new tabbed UI if you prefer the unified older view. This new Gmail experience is now rolling out slowly to all Gmail users.
Source: Official Gmail Blog
New update brings the excellent mail client to iPad
Mailbox for iPad coming out today
We were big, big fans of Mailbox back when we reviewed the new email client a couple of months ago; as a matter of fact, I still use Mailbox as my primary email client on my iPhone to this day. But in our review we noted that for all the good Mailbox does you, for all the handy ways Mailbox has improved the way I consume email, it has always been just one small piece of the puzzle. My iPhone is not the only way I read and write emails – it’s not even my most primary one. In my review, I wrote: “When I am on another platform and another email client, or even GMail’s native web interface, I feel as though I am using email “wrongly”. They encourage what I now consider bad behavior – when I’m on Mail.app on OS X I never think to archive messages after I’m done needing them like I do on Mailbox, and there’s no way to get the same ‘reminder’ system that I’ve grown to rely on in Mailbox. It has revolutionized the way that I use email, thus making other systems seem almost unusably archaic.” And though I’ve gotten better about simply swiping and hitting “Archive” on a message after I’m done reading it on my iPad, it hasn’t felt the same.
Thankfully, Mailbox is changing all that today with the release of their brand new Mailbox for iPad update. The Verge got a hands on with the iPad version of the app and seemed to have walked away fairly impressed. Screenshots of the new app reveal a very familiar take on email for tablets, but with Mailbox’s signature style and use – exactly the sort of combination I was looking for.
The Mailbox team also revealed that they’re considering developing a native Mailbox client for OS X and Windows, however nothing is set in stone yet. There’s even better news for Android users however – Mailbox has confirmed that an Android version of Mailbox is in active development. Praise all that is good!
Mailbox for iPad will be released as a free update to the current Mailbox application today, so keep an eye out on those iPads friends. You won’t want to miss this.
Complete with cross platform support
Google turns “Hangouts” into an iMessage/BBM/WhatsApp messaging competitor
Google has just announced that their popular “Hangouts” feature will be transformed into a seamless mobile text messaging replacement protocol, similar in vein to Apple’s iMessage, BlackBerry Messenger, and WhatsApp. The new service will allow users to seamlessly message other Google users running either Android, iOS, and Google Chrome (browser or OS) with a new suite of native and web applications.
Google Hangouts replaces both the old school video Google Hangouts feature on Google+ as well as the ill fated Google Talk service, which never really managed to garner that much popularity in an era dominated by AOL Instant Messenger and MSN Messenger. Google certainly has an uphill battle however – iMessage is integrated into every iOS device on the planet by default, and WhatsApp has got its own massive dedicated userbase. And let’s not forget Facebook who, with Facebook Messenger, is trying to do virtually the same thing as Google here – only it has the established user base to really back it up.
The Hangout app will be available soon for all platforms, however Google has yet to outline any availability date.
Source: Google I/O Developer Conference 2013
iMessage is the new BBM, BBM is the new iMessage
BlackBerry Messenger coming to Android and iPhone this summer
BlackBerry’s CEO Thorsten Heins just announced this morning that BlackBerry’s golden jewel of exclusivity, BlackBerry Messenger, will be coming to both the iPhone via an iOS app and Android devices sometime this summer. Once upon a time, BlackBerry Messenger was the premiere mobile messaging service before it was replaced by the likes of iPhone and Android users running WhatsApp and iMessage. BlackBerry is obviously hoping that the move will revitalize the aging service, bringing a much needed boost of users and potential contacts for current users.
Heins noted that only simple messaging and group capabilities will be available at launch, but the application will quickly expand to include the usual array of BBM voice, BBM channels, screen sharing and video capabilities that current BBM users are used to.
Clearly, BlackBerry is hoping that yesteryear is the new tomorrow – but what say you? Have you permanently jumped ship in favor of iMessage, or are you willing to give BlackBerry another chance?
Some decent changes
Mozilla updates Firefox to version 21 on desktop and mobile
Mozilla has just updated their long standing Firefox browser to version 21, meaning that this version of Firefox can now legally consume alcohol in the United States. All joking aside, Firefox 21 includes several actually notable improvements for once, making this one of the larger releases of Firefox since the company announced that they would be redefining the very meaning of a “major” release and going on an accelerated development pace.
Some major improvements to Firefox 21 include:
- Improved Social API support that now includes Cliqz, Mixi, and MSN Now.
- Cliqz Sidebar allows users to keep up on the latest stories collected based on your interest and browsing habits from anywhere, appearing no matter what page you’re on as a fairly non intrusive sidebar.
- Mixi Sidebar allows users to keep up with their friends on the Japanese based social network “Mixi” from anywhere via a similar sidebar.
- MSN Now collects the most relevant pieces of information from across the web (including social sites Facebook and Twitter) and displays the most prominent stories on, you guessed it, a sidebar.
- A new “Health Center” dubbed Firefox Health Report which offers up tips and suggestions as to how to better improve the “health” of your Firefox browser.
- Improved HTML5 support.
Firefox 21 for Android also includes several improvements to the application’s UI, font support, performance improvements, and improved HTML5 support.
Via: TheNextWeb
Source: Mozilla
Praise be all that's good
Windows Phone 8 finally gets an official YouTube app
If you’re the proud owner of a Windows Phone device, you’re probably painfully aware of how lacking watching YouTube on the platform has been. The default YouTube “application” preinstalled on the device has been no more than a glorified bookmark, and if you were looking for a native application experience you had to wander to the sketchy nether regions of unofficial applications. But no more – Microsoft today has, at long last, finally released an official YouTube application for Windows Phone 8 devices.
Though the application was developed by Microsoft and not YouTube, the app is a clear step up from the options that Windows Phone users had prior to this if they wanted to get their YouTube fix on the go. The new application is now available on the Windows Marketplace for free; have at it.
Via: TheNextWeb
Source: Microsoft
Coming for Mac and PC in 2014
EA and Maxis announce The Sims 4
EA and developer Maxis have just announced a new entry in the longrunning The Sims series, The Sims 4. The new game will be the first “next-generation” The Sims game in the primary series (not counting the offshoot SimCity, which recently saw a rocky launch), with The Sims 3 having been released in 2009 for the PC and Mac. Since then, EA and Maxis have been pushing out DLC and content packages like no tomorrow, publishing minor entries such as The Sims 3 University.
Details are sparse at the moment, however EA notes that more information will be revealed later today at The Beat.
Source: EA
A beautiful new script
Instagram reveals redesigned logo
When we reported on Instagram’s latest and greatest update last week, we missed one tiny little detail – alongside the new tagging and privacy features, the company also launched a redesigned logo. Harkening back to the old Instagram logo we all know and love, as well as such classics as Coca-Cola and Kellogs.
Designed by Mackey Saturday, personal friend of Instagram founder Kevin Systrom, the new logo isn’t so much as a massive change as it is a beautiful update – it takes the fundamentals and established brand and gives it a cleaner, fresher, more unique look that it was missing before.
Via: The Verge
Source: Mackey Saturday
Certainly Facebook's influence here
Instagram rolls out new new update, brings tagging to photos
A new update to everyone’s favorite social photography application, Instagram, has just begun rolling out over the App Store and Google Play. The new version, which is dubbed Version 3.5, brings several new features to the longstanding application, most notably a new system for tagging people in photos, a la Facebook.
The Instagram team described the new feature in a blog post announcing the update:
Today, we’re excited to introduce Photos of You and bring you a new way to share and discover stories on Instagram. When you upload a photo to Instagram, you’re now able to add people as easily as you add hashtags. Only you can add people to your photos, so you have control over the images you share. And it doesn’t stop at people—you can add any account on Instagram, whether it’s your best friend, favorite coffee shop or even that adorable dog you follow.
The new update also brings a new “Report a Problem” feature as well as better privacy settings.
Source: Instagram
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