Category Archives: Gadgets & Apps

All posts that don’t obviously fit in one of the sub-categories go here.

Instagram

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I started playing with Instagram about 6 months ago but never got around to writing about it here because I couldn’t think of how to describe it (“Fast beautiful photo sharing for your iPhone”).

From the website: “Snap a photo with your iPhone, choose a filter to transform the look and feel, send to Facebook, Twitter or Flickr – it’s all as easy as pie. It’s photo sharing, reinvented.”

I have about 3,000 photos on my MacBook and a couple of thousand on flickr. I post photos here at smays.com and a few on Twitter so, there’s no shortage of places to share photos. And it’s really no more trouble to post a photo to flickr or Twitter than Instagram.

So how to explain the popularity of this little app (4.5 million users)? I can’t.

Today I came across a website called Inkstagram that brings Instagram pics to your web browser.  So I can introduce you to the gritty images of tonydetroit; and komeda whose photos almost feature one or two people against a beautiful but lonely backdrop; and today I discovered travisjensen who sends instagrams from San Francisco.

I don’t know these people and will probably never interact with them, short of liking or briefly commenting on one of their photos. But I like to think the images they share tell me something about them. Something, perhaps, they don’t know about themselves.

Ah. Just came across this interview with the founder of Instagram.

DAR: Tivo for radio

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This begs the question, “Does my local radio station have programs so compelling I want to record them and listen later?” Let’s hope so. If you have –or plan to– tried DAR, let me know what you think. (via Roger Gardner)

TwitVid

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TwitVid is one of the countless apps that spring up around Twitter. I’d used it a time or two and started seeing it show up in tweets immediately after (during?) the tornado that hammered Joplin, MO. People were shooting amazing video with their phones and post directly to Twitter and Facebook via TwitVid.

So I’ve started using it again, mostly for short, update videos. Just a quick “check this out” clip. A bunch of our employees were posting photos and videos to our internal network during a tornado warning.

I’ve added a widget to the sidebar where you can browse my twitvids.

Shareaholic

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For me the web has always been about discovering and sharing interesting stuff. That was a big part of why I started this little blog. The web is now much more than pages like this and sharing has gotten a lot easier, thanks to tools like browser extensions (sometimes called plug-ins). Little bits of code that allow you to do something from within your web browser.

My menu bar might have have a dozen of these little widgets. But I’ve found one that combines some of my favorites and I had to –that’s right– share it with you. Shareaholic.

Let’s say I come across an article and want to share a passage. I can email it; post it here; create a tweet; save it to Instapaper to read later; add to my Google shared items; or just create a short url for that page.

Shareaholic makes my browser (Chrome) just that much more valuable.