Instagram Designer Tim Van Damme moving to Dropbox in early August

Instagram Designer Tim Van Damme moving to Dropbox

Ready to tackle new challenges and experiences, Tim Van Damme, the Lead Designer for Instagram, will be leaving the Facebook-acquired company to join up with Dropbox. Van Damme has a healthy track record, having designed for Instagram since January of 2012, as well as Gowalla and TenForce prior to that time. He’ll join former Facebook designers Rasmus Andersson and Soleio Cuervo in his new position starting in early August; in the meantime, he’ll be taking a few weeks off, though we wonder if he’ll be sharing any pictures of his vacation or the amazing food on you-know-what.

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Source: AllThingsD

HTC One ‘glamour red’ hands-on

HTC One in red handson

A lot of the smartphone color options we see announced are no big deal, but there was a certain something about HTC’s metallic red One that demanded closer attention. We’ve just handled the burgundy bombshell, which has the same hardware credentials seen on the silver and black options (4.7-inch 1080p display, UltraPixel camera, Snapdragon 600 processor), but coated in a metallic “glamour red” finish just in time for summer. The color extends across the rear of the smartphone, the two speaker panels on the front and the chamfered edge that connects the two. The effect is slightly textured to the touch (more than the initial monochrome models, at least), making it a bit easier to grip, while bouncing around any ambient light that manages to hit it. That’s pretty much all there is to say, but you can scrutinize the new choice of color in our gallery below — and check our full review, because the phone’s fortunately otherwise unchanged.

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Instagram CEO Believes That They Could Outgrow Facebook

Back in 2012, Facebook acquired photo sharing service Instagram for a cool $1 billion, essentially putting Instagram under Facebook’s wing. However it seems that even though Instagram is part of Facebook, its CEO Kevin Systrom is apparently pretty ambitious to […]

Like It , +1 , Tweet It , Pin It Original content from Ubergizmo.

    

How to Use Social Media to Juice Your Story’s Popularity

How to Use Social Media to Juice Your Story’s Popularity

Do you love this story? You should. Everyone loves it. Look at all my Facebook likes. Or check out the Twitter hashtag #lovemystory. As you’ll see, lots of people love it. And the traffic stats? Awesome. Because it’s a great …

    

The Depression-Era TV of Tomorrow Had Home Shopping–And a Like Button

The Depression-Era TV of Tomorrow Had Home Shopping--And a Like Button

TV advertisers imagine that one day soon you might see a product on screen — say Don Draper’s whiskey glass or Daenerys Targaryen’s dress—and pause the program, click on the product and then instantly purchase it. Relatively primitive versions of this technology already exist, but the idea is far from new. Long before most people had even seen a TV set, this type of instant-purchase tech for television was already being imagined in the "radio" of the future. A radio set that also included TV with a swivel head, instant newspapers printed right at home, and a telephone that could reach the family car.

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Refresh Roundup: week of July 8th, 2013

Refresh Roundup week of July 8th, 2013

Your smartphone and / or tablet is just begging for an update. From time to time, these mobile devices are blessed with maintenance refreshes, bug fixes, custom ROMs and anything in between, and so many of them are floating around that it’s easy for a sizable chunk to get lost in the mix. To make sure they don’t escape without notice, we’ve gathered every possible update, hack, and other miscellaneous tomfoolery we could find during the last week and crammed them into one convenient roundup. If you find something available for your device, please give us a shout at tips at engadget dawt com and let us know. Enjoy!

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Physical Fliike Counter Shows off How Many ‘Likes’ You Have on Facebook

Let people in the real world know how popular you are in real life with Fliike. It’s a physical counter that shows off how many “Likes” your page has received on Facebook in real time.

The Fliike was created by Smiirl, which is a design studio start-up based in France.

fliike facebook like counter 1

The Fliike basically connects to your Facebook page via Wi-Fi and transmits every “like” that you’ve received onto the flipboard-like counter. Personal pages won’t have much use for it, but pages for commercial purposes might, just so that establishment can show people that they’ve got a strong virtual presence.

A limited number of Fliikes are available for pre-order for $390(USD) (yes, $390!) If you’re more popular than 99,999 likes, Smiirl can add an extra numerical column to your Fliike to accommodate your massive popularity. The first batch ships out this November.

[via C|NET]

Chair Hugs You Every Time Someone Writes Birthday Wishes on Your Facebook Wall

This isn’t the first time someone hooked something up to Facebook, so that it performed a specific action every time a ‘Like’ or post is recorded on the linked social network account. For example, there’s the Like-a-Hug jacket that gave its wearer a hug every time someone ‘Liked’ his or her post on Facebook.

The B-Day Chair, which is the product of a collaboration between Outback Steakhouse and Brazilian ad agency Lew’Lara\TBWA, functions in a similar manner.

hug chair

Instead of giving away hugs for every ‘like’ received, the chair hugs (or fondles?) the person seated in it every time someone scrawls a birthday greeting on his or her wall. The birthday celebrant is supposed to sit on the chair and sign in to his or her Facebook account with the attached tablet.

From that point on, you can expect the hugs to come as the birthday greetings roll in.

The tablet takes a picture of the celebrant every time he or she receives a hug, which can be posted on their Facebook timeline to bring about more greetings and hence, more hugs.

[via Walyou via Incredible Things via Geekologie]

The Daily Roundup for 07.12.2013

DNP The Daily RoundUp

You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.

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Distro Issue 98: How Facebook turned your identity into a commodity

http://www.engadget.com/2013/07/12/distro-issue-98-just-ask-facebook/

And we’re back! After a week off to consume as many summer cookout foods as possible here in the US, our tablet mag is returning to action. This time around, we take a look at how Facebook has taken your identity and turned it into a profit-making online entity. We also put the Razer Blade 14 and Samsung Galaxy Mega through their respective paces to see how they stack up against the competition. Eyes-On peeks at Wacom’s Cintiq 13HD, Switched On examines the plight of the Nook and Visualized takes a look at printed pastures. Hopefully the week off gave you time to rest up, because our return is jam-packed with slate-reading goodness.

Distro Issue 98 PDF
Distro in the iTunes App Store
Distro in the Google Play Store

Distro in the Windows Store
Distro APK (for sideloading)
Like Distro on Facebook
Follow Distro on Twitter

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Source: iTunes, Google Play, Windows Store