Instacube is the 21st century home accessory

We live in a world where there are plenty of social network options out there, not to mention plenty of people snapping photos and uploading them online almost immediately through a variety of channels, and Instagram happens to be one of them. Show the rest of the world just how tech savvy you are with the 149.99 Instacube, which will be able to provide your Instagram feed with the kind of publicity that it deserves - or so you think, anyway.

Basically the Instacube is a unique device that will streams your favourite feeds, as it shows off feeds in real time at three times the size of the average smartphone. In this true blue digital era, the Instacube happens to sport wireless capability, not to mention it has a touchscreen, to boot. You will be able to welcome guests into your home and surprise them with the Instacube alongside your hashtag hall of fame. No longer do you need to squint as you check out your Instagram feed, since all photos shown are triple their original size, and it also packs a rechargeable battery to keep it going, in addition to 4GB of internal memory.
[ Instacube is the 21st century home accessory copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Google+ Brings Embedded Posts to Publishers (Just Like Twitter and Facebook)

In an effort to expand the reach of its social network, Google on Monday announced that third-party publishers can now embed Google+ posts into their websites.

Simply put: A site like AllThingsD could grab a publicly-made Google+ status update and, with the addition of a snippet of code, display it in a story.

At this point among the major players in social, it's a table stakes move. Twitter has long had embeds available, pitching the feature heavily to news sites and consumer outlets. And now both Facebook - which has made strides to surface more public-facing activity as of late - and Instagram have done the same. Google+ is a natural addition.

It's certainly a sensible move for all three companies, each of which aims for broad consumer recognition and appeal. It's also a trojan horse for potential new user signups if readers click through to the original social site.

Still, part of me wonders if there's a "peak embed" point. That is to say, if users will grow confused at the multiple types of embedded posts, and thereby not be inspired to click through. Or perhaps the different types of embedded posts will run together, and no one network will stand out.

Embeds should be available to publishers beginning today, with instructions on how to make it work found here.

Facebook Opens Registration For F8 Conference Featuring Oculus, WhatsApp, Instagram

How to Launch a New Photo App: Wait for iOS 7 Launch, Try to Get Featured. Then Hope.

Another new photo-sharing app? In 2013? Really?

Yup, really. But say this for the team behind Memoir, which is launching today: While sharing photos is a component of what their app does, it's not solely a photo-sharing app. It's more of a photo-storage and filing service, with ambitions to move someday beyond photos into other personal data.

Which is good, because it sure seems like the photo-sharing app space is full up, though people are still trying to prove otherwise.

Memoir was co-founded by Lee Hoffman and Angela Kim, and is a pivot out of Veri, a TechStars education startup they launched in 2011. They raised $1.2 million for that project from backers including BetaWorks and SV Angel, and used much of that to move into Memoir; they're also finishing a new funding round.

You can get a sense of what they're trying to do with Memoir in the video below, but if you want a very short sentence, it would be: TimeHop mashed up with Photo Stream.

More sentences: Memoir checks the metadata for pictures you have on your phone, plus those you upload to Facebook and other services (if you let it), and organizes them by date and location; it will also try to figure out who you were with when you took the photo. Then it stores all the images on its servers, and lets you access them whenever you want; it assumes your photos are private, and will only share them with friends if you ask.

The service is free now, and the company hopes to introduce a freemium model that will give you access to goodies like higher-resolution images, etc. One day, Hoffman and Kim can see Memoir storing and filing things that aren't photos.

For now, they're just hoping to pick up some momentum from today's Apple's iOS 7 launch.

They've held the launch of their app until this afternoon, with Apple's encouragement, in the hope that they get featured in Apple's App Store. There's no guarantee that they'll get that attention, and even if they do, a feature slot at the App Store is no guarantee of success.

But it sure would be nice to show up today, when lots of you are going to be spending lots of time there.

Introducing Memoir from Memoir on Vimeo.

Facebook Starts Auto-Enhancing Photos Because Algorithms Are Better At Filters Than You

Tip of the Day How to Produce Great Outdoor Photos With Your iPhone

Your iPhone is a great tool to catalog your outdoor explorations. For an example, check out the image of Longs Peak that I took with my iPhone in Rocky Mountain National Park. Until I acquired a Nikon camera a few weeks ago, I relied solely on my iPhone for outdoor photography. I purchased the 32GB model of the 5s for the extra photo storage. I am no professional photographer, but I travel for work or play about once a month so you can imagine how many photos I have amassed.

Here is some insight into the best apps and tools to use for your adventures:

The native Camera app is great. Some choose Camera+ ($1.99) for the advanced zoom and continuous flash features; but some features, including touch exposure, are also available on the native Camera app. You can change to panoramic mode almost instantly, as well as add filters right in the app. 

To work with exposure right in your native Camera app, just tap on different places on the screen-light and dark-before you take the picture. You can also turn on HDR (high dynamic range) which takes three separate pictures with different exposures and stitches them together.

Another great app for taking photos is ProCam ($0.99). The best feature of this possible camera replacement is the time feature, which is perfect for propping up your phone on a rock to take a photo of your whole group.

After you are done snapping away at beautiful mountain tops or spring flowers, you can use InstaSize (free) to crop, edit and resize photos to showcase and post in Instagram (free).

To end your great outdoor adventure, use Flickr (free) to upload photos straight from your iPhone to create a visually appealing photo collection. You can share albums, create sets, and send links to all your friends and family.

All in all, the iPhone 5s camera is a great way to record your adventures. So next time you take a trip, think about using these tools and apps to create a memorable experience with your iPhone.

Topics:

• Camera+
• Flickr
• Instagram
• InstaSize
• ProCam
• Top Story
• Travel
• How-To
• iPhone
• iPhoneography

Ads Appear on Instagram, Just Like Instagram Said They Would

Instagram said it was going to deliver ads to your Feed, and then it said it again.

And now, here they are.

Designer Michael Kors started running this ad this morning. This is a version that ran in a brand's own Feed, but people who aren't following the company may see the same image anyway, with a "sponsored" tag where the timeline is in this image:

So there you go. An ad on Instagram looks exactly the way Instagram said it would look.

Bigger picture: An ad on Instagram is one of the reasons Facebook said it isn't going to jam up its own Feed with more ads - because it doesn't have to in order to make more money. Another way it can do that will be video ads, but we're not going to see those until next year.

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