Write and Share Five-Sentence Stories with Spine

You might not be able to write for a living for one reason or another, even if you wanted to, but that doesn’t mean you should stop writing. Let off some steam, talk about your dreams, share funny anecdotes – there are so many things you can do with words.

They don’t have to be extremely long. In fact, there’s an app that lets you write short blurbs and share them with friends and random people when you’re done with them. That app is called Spine.

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It’s a neat little app that lets aspiring writers publish five-sentence stories. You can basically consider Spine as a social network for micro-stories where authors and readers can connect and share stories with one another.

Users can post and browse stories in nine different categories, which includes literary staples like action, horror, sci-fi, and mystery.

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Users can rate stories and share the ones they love to others on their networks. In short, it’s a community of writers and readers doing something they love: reading and writing.

Spine is available free for iOS devices and can be downloaded here.

[via Laughing Squid]

Snapchat’s new Stories feature provides an evaporating recap of your day

Snapchat Stories on iOS and Android promise an evaporating recap of your day

Already wildly popular amongst younger users, picture sharing app Snapchat is launching the next phase of its app today, and for the first time it’s bringing a feature to its iOS and Android apps at the same time. Snapchat’s claim to fame has always been that it shares images or short videos from one person to another, that disappear after viewing instead of living on in infamy (our early Tweets are a constant source of embarrassment). Now, the new Stories feature gives each user a feed similar to those on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr that all of their friends (instead of just one) can check out, but with a familiar hook — the Snaps disappear after 24 hours. Another interesting element is that, like Path, it also displays a list of who viewed each Snap.

In a blog post, the company touts the ephemeral nature of the feature, noting that “The end of your Story today is the beginning of your Story tomorrow.” To some, the service’s reputation is only for how it helps the Anthony Weiners of the world, but the introduction of Stories may change that — and introduce more competition for other social networks where users are wary of how long even casual posts could live to haunt them. The feature hasn’t popped up on either app store yet, for now you can check after the break for a few videos showing the stories users might tell — if they were in one of those bands the young folks are listening to.

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Source: Snapchat Blog

Smart Pajamas Use Dots To Read Bedtime Stories On Your iOS, Android Devices

Reading your child a bedtime story is an experience most parents probably enjoy more than their children do as it allows them to be creative in how they deliver the story to their child. Changing your voice to simulate what they believe the character would sound like is one way to be creative, but another, more tech-friendly method would be to put these Smart PJs on your child.

The Smart PJs have dots all over them, which are placed in a way where they’re scannable to pull up a bedtime story when you scan them. Parents would have to download Smart PJs’ respective application either on their iOS or Android device, and they can let their child choose which dot pattern they like the best to have its corresponding story read to them. The Smart PJs application also puts the words to all of the stories and information on animals on the screen, which can help their child learn to read the stories themselves.

Smart PJs are available in four different sizes for both boys and girls and only cost $25. We’re not sure how many stories the Smart PJs can make available, but we do know that it’s probably enough to keep your child entertained while being drifted off to sleep for a couple of years.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: TomTom Runner and TomTom Multi-Sport GPS Watches, Apple Grabs 20 % Of All US Technology Sales For 2012,