Hasta La Gadget!

While Instagram might have started off as a photo-sharing service, it turned its eye to video and even managed to steal some market share from Vine who was doing it before them. While Instagram’s video feature is pretty good, we expect that the company will look to improve it in the future and thanks to a recent acquisition, it looks like Instagram is well on its way to do just that. The company has recently acquired video-sharing app, Luma, which is basically a video version of Instagram where users can capture video and add a variety of filters to their clips before sharing it.

In a statement made by Luma, the company will be shutting down its service as they make the move to Instagram and has since removed the app from the iTunes App Store. For existing Luma users, Instagram will continue supporting the app until the 31^st of December and will allow users to download their uploaded videos if they wish to back them up. We’re not sure what Instagram has planned with their Luma acquisition, perhaps to acquire some patents, or perhaps to take out some of the competition, either way we guess we will have to wait and see what the future has in store for us.

Instagram Acquires Video Sharing App Luma original content from Ubergizmo.

I’m a mediocre runner at best, and I’ve taken to blaming that on the dearth of idyllic running spots in my particular corner of New Jersey. For schlubs like me, the key to true fitness may lay in something like FitTrip, a Kickstarter project that vows to liven up the experience of working out indoors.

The concept is a simple one: FitTrip is an app for your iPad that attempts to simulate the experience of running down a trail in Utah or zipping along on a bike in the Rocky Mountains from the safety of a treadmill or stationary bike. Once you lash your tablet to the workout contraption of your choice and fire up the app, you’re given the option to choose from a slew of locales to immerse yourself in. From there, you’re treated to a video of your chosen course to take your mind off the intense physical discomfort you’re feeling — throw in a few electric fans to simulate the wind whipping your hair around and it’s almost like you’re enjoying the great outdoors indoors.

Sadly, FitTrip can’t actually control your workout equipment, so there’s no way to automatically ramp up the resistance to match the intensity of the setting you’ve chosen. The team has cooked up a pretty savvy solution though — the app is capable of connecting with a handful of popular heart rate monitors, so the harder you work out, the faster your heart beats, and the quicker the video plays. The end result (they hope) is an experience that manages to approximate the sensation of exercising in a gorgeous foreign locale, or at least distracts you from the drudgery of your surroundings.

The FitTrip app is still in beta so it’s hard to get a feel for just how immersive these videos can actually be, but at the very least they’ll be better than watching Judge Judy reruns on a 6-inch television screen mounted on an elliptical at your local gym. Access to all these trips comes at a price, though: after the Kickstarter campaign wraps up, curious consumers will have to pay $5.99/month to access FitTrip’s library of scenic videos. Naturally, early backers can lock up longer-term subscriptions at lower rates — $25 will nab you a six-month package, with deals getting sweeter the higher you climb up the backer spectrum. Fortunately, the FitTrip campaign has already blown past its $7,500 funding goal in under a week, which means backers should receive their doses of digital escapism in a few short months.

It’s been a long week, you deserve to take it easy for the next few days. Which is why we’ve rounded up the iPad apps that will do all the dirty work (e.g. "thinking") for you, leaving you free to kick back and let your mind wander.

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Pandora’s adding a sleep timer to its Android and iOS app update. The new feature (found in the options drawer) lets you shut off your stream after 15, 30 or 60 minutes, so your data plan and sweet tunes aren’t wasted on deaf ears. [Pandora]

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Look at the text message conversation between any two people in the 12 to late 20s age range and there’s a pretty decent chance you’ll get a deluge of brightly colored cartoon icons that, just a few years ago, would have seemed entirely nonsensical. Now they can tell entire tales. Yes, Emojis have taken over, and rather than fight it, Emojify offers you just one more way to incorporate the language replacement into your life—gilding your very own photos in emoji gold.

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