Tag Archives: Instagram

The obvious Path forward

Technology, , , , , ,

Middling social network Path has come up with a nifty new feature that should have been included in all social media platforms for years — the ability to search through your past:

Mobile social network Path broke down social network walls in the summer of 2012 by giving new users the option to import their Facebook, Foursquare and Instagram data.

Now, Path is playing up that feature as the best way to cull all your social updates (minus those from Twitter) into one big archive. Starting Thursday, that archive is searchable, making for a very unique and handy way to recall your memories. “We want people to basically use us as their social search engine,” says Path marketing director Nate Johnson. “Our goal is simple, to help people be close to each other.”

…

With Nearby and search, you can find anything you’ve shared to Path and Facebook, Instagram and Foursquare (assuming you’ve imported that data). That gives Path a huge leg up, because you can’t search for any past activity on those social networks.

Why this isn’t already the case on Facebook is a question I’ve wondered for a long, long time. Kudos to someone else for actually making it happen.

Instagram for the snob class

Miscellaneous, Technology, , , , , , , , ,
Courtesy of TheVerge.com.
Courtesy of TheVerge.com.

Snapseed, an iOS Instagram-like app for users who like to think of themselves as more sophisticated than simply slapping a filter on photos of household vegetables, is now being released on both iOS and Android for free:

This is not a head-to-head battle with Instagram. Google’s strategy here is to go after the photo geeks, the prosumers, the folks who resent how 90 percent of images now have the same retro filter. “It’s not like Instagram with one click filters,” says Josh Haftel, a 12-year-veteran of Nik Software now working out of Google’s Mountain View HQ as a product manager on Snapseed. “You’re not in and out in 5 seconds. You do more customization, from color saturation to light leaks.”

Having Google’s resources at its disposal allowed Snapseed to do way more than it originally thought was possible on Android. “We had assumed we would be limited to tablets with the Nvidia chipset for Android,” said Haftel. “But we were able to pull this off for all chipsets and for tablets and smartphones, which is pretty amazing considering this is a high end photo editing tool which does not compromise.”

There are unconfirmed reports that I have already downloaded it.

Reimagining history via the selfie

Humor, Media, , , , , , , ,

kissingsailor

South Africa’s Cape Times launched a new advertising campaign with famous photos from the past, altered to look like those ubiquitous MySpace and Instagram self-portraits:

Taking a self-picture, or in the regrettable parlance of our times, selfie, removes all distance between the subject and the person capturing it. It might not be the most obvious premise for a brand promise, but that’s where we are. In the same way that cameras couldn’t possibly get any closer to the sailor kissing his best girl on V-J Day unless he was snapping the picture himself, The Cape Times couldn’t be any closer to the news unless they were making it. (Actual physical proximity may vary.)