There’s a new Instagram out today—and because the Instagram team is smart, they’re keeping the app simple. But there’s one major change: you can see where all your friends have taken their pictures, all across the world. Awesome. More »
Canon DSLRs are popular for video shooting, and you can pull beautiful footage from the low end Rebel series to the high end 1D series. But what is the difference in image quality in a price range from $1000-$7000? We’ve had a Rebel T4i, 5D Mark III, and 1DX all in ou possession, so we decided to take a closer look. More »
Instagram just launched a huge update for all its apps today. Version 3.0 can plot all your images on a map based on the location in which you snapped each one. The result? A totally different way to browse through photos. More »
Wondering if that Facebook acquisition would slow down the pace of innovation at Instagram? Perhaps v3.0 will answer that. The famed photo sharing network — now some 80 million users deep — is detailing its latest user interface overhaul today, and geolocation is at the heart of it. Lining up with our own feelings on the benefits of geotagging and the usefulness of tagged photos from an archive / diary perspective, the newest edition of the app introduces a Photo Maps view. As the name implies, it overlays photos with a map underneath, giving people a far more visual look at what they were seeing at a given point on Earth (or Mars, assuming Curiosity hasn’t reached its data limit this month).
Beyond that, the app includes “multi-line caption editing, more streamlined photo uploading, speed improvements and infinite scroll,” according to our pals at TechCrunch. Interestingly, the Twitter “Find Friends” feature has been yanked in the latest build due to Twitter shutting off its API to the company last month. If you’re wondering about a master plan for Photo Maps, it’s pretty simple; just as you’d tune into #nbcfail on Twitter to read the latest musings about the Summer Olympics, hovering over London in Instagram could give you a highly filtered look at what kind of photos are emerging from an event in real time. And really, who wouldn’t want to see 807 sepia-infused 1:1 shots of Usain Bolt? Per usual, you’ll find the demo vid after the break.
Gallery: Instagram 3.0 on Android
Gallery: Instagram 3.0 on iOS
Continue reading Instagram 3.0 adds Photo Maps, infinite scrolling and speed improvements (video)
Filed under: Cellphones, Software
Instagram 3.0 adds Photo Maps, infinite scrolling and speed improvements (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Aug 2012 12:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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If you’ve been dutifully checking your mobile app updates (you do check, right?), you may have noticed a Google+ upgrade slip through largely unannounced. That revision might be bigger than you think — although its exact value depends entirely on the platform you’re running. If you’re an iOS user, you now have the choice to open web links in Chrome for iOS instead of Safari; it’s not the same as changing the default browser, but it will keep Google fans firmly ensconced in their preferred ecosystem while they’re using Apple devices. On the Android side, it’s now possible to watch live Hangouts On Air sessions if friends aren’t ready and waiting for a chat. Both versions now let teens join any kind of Hangout, and there’s a raft of tweaks on either side of the fence. If you’ve been waiting for either of the two major features to jump in, the app downloads are waiting at the source links.
Filed under: Cellphones, Tablet PCs, Software
Google+ update lets iOS open links in Chrome, Android join Hangouts on Air originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Aug 2012 12:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Newly released evidence from Japanese utility company TEPCO shows that the Japanese government ordered it not to tell anyone that Fukushima reactor 3 was about to explode until right before it happened. Could better procedure have made this disaster less catastrophic? More »
It’s time to get realistic about all the Apple TV rumors – with an Apple TV device that’s essentially a box and a controller that hook up to any TV you like, there’s no reason for Apple to take any other steps. Today’s inside tip comes from the Wall Street Journal where they say Apple is speaking with cable providers to get an in on wired content not provided by iTunes. While it does make sense that they’d head out and make sure they’ve got all the right connections in the industry before releasing a product, this simply does not fit with Apple’s way of doing business.
If you’ve got a product that’s selling moderately well, you don’t go out and make a much more risky product that does essentially the same thing as the first. The Apple TV as it exists today is a conduit through which iTunes can function and users can bring the Apple entertainment experience to any display they like. Apple also sells displays .
Apple does not needlessly combine products when they’ve already got them on the market selling at least moderately well. An Apple Television – that is to say a full television set, not just a box that connects to any large display – would be a product made to be limited.
With iTunes, Apple has been keeping everything in the family for many years – media, operating system, hardware, and even support. Apple even sells products from their own store, which they run. It does not follow that they would meet up with networks in the television industry to grab their service 3rd hand.
Therefor hear this: Apple will not make a television set any time soon. Unless they make the current Apple TV into a magical hot item and top seller – it currently is not – they will not move forward in the television industry. It just doesn’t make sense for them to do so.
Apple doesn’t want a full television set is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
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With products like the Pebble and the MetaWatch Strata easily blowing past their funding goals on Kickstarter, it seems like we’re knee-deep in a smartwatch renaissance. The space is already seeing some strong competitors emerge, and now another player is looking to carve out its own niche in the hype-filled smartwatch market.
Irvine, California-based Martian Watches has just launched a Kickstarter campaign to bring its eponymous wrist devices to the market. The kicker? These are watches you can actually talk to.
Once the Martian watch is connected to an iPhone or Android handset via Bluetooth, users can use the watch’s integrated noise-cancelling microphone to issue voice commands to the tethered smartphone. And, yes, you can live out your Dick Tracy fantasies by listening and speaking to callers directly from the watch, thanks to the inclusion of a directional speaker. It’s a very nifty feature, and one that hasn’t really been touched on by some of the bigger players, but my first question was one of compatibility.
“If the [Android] phone came with an integrated Voice Command app and it works with a Bluetooth headset, it will work with Martian,” said Martian Watches president Stan Kinsey. “If the phone doesn’t have integrated Voice Command, most Androids will work with Martian via the “Vlingo InCar” app.” Meanwhile, the Martian watches already seem to play nice with Siri, and the stock voice commands in the iPhone 4 and 3GS.
At first glance, the Martian watches don’t look much like the other smartwatches that have garned so much attention in recent months. They still have mechanical, analog faces for one, which means call information, text messages and emails are instead displayed on a one-line OLED display nestled in the bottom half of the watch’s face.
Meanwhile, a vibration motor and a notification LED help to provide all-important context when different events happen — green flashes mean that someone’s calling you, while blue flashes signal the arrival of a text message. Android users can actually squeeze more functionality out of the watch through an as-yet unreleased app that lets them set up notifications from other services. That approach makes for a smartwatch that isn’t quite as technologically striking as say, a Pebble, but Martian Watches president Stan Kinsey tells me that’s not really the point.
“We didn’t want to just miniaturize and replicate the phone’s screen and features on your wrist,” Kinsey said. “We wanted to complement the phone and make it easier to do a lot of phone-centric tasks.”
The Martian Watches team is shooting to score $200,000 in Kickstarter funds, and plans to make the watches in three distinct styles: the Passport, G2G, and Victory (seen in order above). Right now, prices for the different trim levels range from $95 to $125, and with any luck these things should be out the door and on your wrists by this January.
While we won’t get our hands on official blackberry 10 phones before 2013, RIM has confirmed that its upcoming phones will have a display resolution of 1280×720 for the full-on touch screen ones, and 720×720 for the QWERTY handsets. This is not “out of this world”, but at least, the display is pretty decent relative to other high-end smartphones.
RIM is “very excited” about those new Blackberry phones, but for the public and observers, the optimism is hardly contagious. On one hand, most folks are disappointed to wait for so long until the next update. On the other hand, this is a do or die moment for RIM, so the company doesn’t want to take the jump too early and crash on some early glitches. Blackberry is a brand new OS, built with a new codebase, so this is like walking on eggs for RIM. Let’s wait and see.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: BlackBerry 10 gets a fancy photo editor, Images of Facebook app for BlackBerry 10 leaked,
A neuroscientist from New York named Dr. Sheila Nirenberg apparently has made a medical breakthrough that allowed her to restore sight to blind mice. Now these mice can see how they run thanks to the nonsurgical procedure. The procedure involves something akin to Geordi La Forge’s visor. The process that restored vision to the blinded mice has the potential of being effective in humans as well.
The technique the neuroscientist came up with uses glasses that are embedded with a tiny video camera and a computer chip. Nirenberg envisions a day when blind humans will be able to wear Star Trek style visors and see the world around them. She believes that the system could be ready to test on humans within two years.
According to the scientist, blindness is often caused by diseases that damage certain parts of the retina that detect light and the neural circuitry that attaches the retina to the brain. The technique bypasses the damaged cells and sends encoded information directly to the brain. The breakthrough came when she was able to decipher the code of neural pulses that a mouse’s brain is able to turn into an image. The treatment for blindness in the mice included the prosthetic glasses and an injected gene therapy to activate ganglion cells that were still alive inside the mouse’s eye. The scientist says she has already figured out how to use the same process with a monkey retina, which is very similar to the human retina.
[via NY Daily News]
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