InstagramFree Instagram
is strictly a mobile app for Apple iOS devices that have built-in
cameras, but such selectivity hasn't stopped the app from generating
mountains of buzz. At the time of this writing the number of registered
Instagram users had just topped 10 million, and the rate of growth was
steadily increasing.
Instagram's premise is a fairly simple
combination of photography and social media. First, you take a photo on
an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad 2 using the app. Instagram offers a number
of different filters that you can apply to the picture, each providing a
kind of retro, lo-fi style to the shot; it even provides a filter that
simulates the selective focus and blur provided by tilt-shift camera
lenses. What's especially cool about version 2.1 -- released as we were
writing this review -- is that you can cycle through those filters
before you take the photo, previewing each.
To share the
results, Instagram has direct connectivity to either e-mail or six
different social media platforms -- Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr,
Foursquare and Posterous. If desired, you can add a caption and/or
geotag the image with your location, then just sign in to the platforms
to which you'd like to post.
As Instagram's popularity
skyrockets, the number of its potential uses at events grows
accordingly. Attendees can find each other based on keywords in their
captions, which can be added just before uploading the images, or their
respective locations as noted by the geotags; then, similar to Twitter,
they can follow each other. They can see what other attendees are
photographing and learn about what's happening elsewhere at the event.
Of
course, there's also the basic fact that Instagram is fun and useful,
and it's another easy way for attendees to upload photos directly to
Twitter. Additionally, the folks behind Instagram make it easy for
third-party developers to create companion programs. A variety of
Instagram browsers are available, for instance, that could display all
photos tagged with a given keyword, in real time. This could be
displayed on a large monitor on a trade show floor, for instance, or at a
cocktail reception, if enough attendees are shooting photos with said
tag.
Or, for a hip event idea, check out
Instaprint,
a location-based photo booth for Instagram. Each Instaprint unit is a
Poloroid-like box, programmed with a given location or hashtag. Every
time someone uploads an Instagram photo that meets said parameters, out
pops a printed version from the Instaprint, old-school Poloroid style.
Qik VideoFree; Qik Premium, $4.99/monthIt's
pronounced "quick," despite the absence of a couple of letters, but the
hurried spelling does nothing to detract from this zippy little mobile
app for shooting and sharing video. Qik is a mobile app, but it isn't
relegated to just the iPhone or Android devices -- it runs on more than
200 different mobile phones, taking full advantage of the
shoot-video-anywhere-anytime philosophy favored by modern cell phone
owners.
Qik's approach to sharing video is unique: When you're
shooting through the Qik app, you're simultaneously streaming that video
to the Qik website. This is no shoot-first, share-
later approach.
Because of that, Qik also might be used to stream video live to friends
or an audience while you're shooting. (We noted about a two-second delay
in our testing.)
Now, we're not talking professional broadcast
quality, but we were impressed by just how good the quality was, and
it's good enough to serve professional purposes. To get the word out
about the video -- let's say it's a casual Q&A with someone at a
conference -- Qik connects directly to Facebook and Twitter, where a
link to the live stream is posted. After the live broadcast, the video
remains posted and ready to view, so the link stays good. Videos can be
posted just as easily to YouTube or shared through e-mail with a link to
the Qik site. While less automated, the videos also can be streamed or
shared through blogs and other video sites. The Premium version allows
you to send a video-mail message.
The Premium version (for which a
30-day free trial is available) offers some other perks as well.
Notably, video storage on Qik is unlimited, as opposed to the 25 video
clips stored with a free account. A Premium account also gets you a
cross-platform companion desktop application, so you can sync all of
your videos between the cloud and your computer.
Qik is just as
much an instant-communication tool, and it supports two-way video chats.
Its unique approach to video communication caught the attention of
Skype, which acquired the company early this year.