Tag: iPhone apps

Sharing from Kindle Reader app for iPhone to Facebook

share this

I don’t have an actual Kindle. I buy books from Amazon and read them on my iPhone with the Kindle app. I love it. I love the size, the line-length (makes for very speedy reading) and the fact that I don’t have to carry more than one device when I go awandering.

Theoretically, I should be able to highlight something in my Kindle Reader app, and send it to Facebook or Twitter. I’ve been reading Deanna Zandt’s book “Share This!” lately and have really wanted to share some of the great quotes from the book. The app goes through the motions, tells me it’s sharing, but nothing shows up on Facebook.

Have you made this work? Got any tips?

Instagram: Is it for you?

Instagram is a photography app for iPhone. Mashable recently wrote Is Instagram the Next Distribution Opportunity for News Media?, which included an interview with Andy Carvin, a senior strategist at National Public Radio (NPR).

Carvin talked about how NPR is using Instagram to connect with photographers. There’s an NPR Tumblr blog where photos from people around the world are displayed, some of them coming in via Instagram.

After the Mashable article appeared, @rafatali claimed on Twitter that creating a distribution scheme based on Instragram was lame. Carvin countered that NPR was looking to connect with great photos and photographers, and kicking the tires of Instagram was a way to get there.

@rafatali: What’s so lame about it? We’re just kicking the tires and seeing if we can gin up anything interesting there. cc @mathewiMon Jan 03 19:07:31 via TweetDeckAndy Carvin
acarvin

Mashable likes Instagram. When they first reviewed it, Jennifer Van Grove called it a genius idea. She said it turned photos into social works of art.

I like Instagram, too. I was so struck by it that I included it in this post: New Tech Toys for your Blog or Browser and iPhone. I’m not convinced that an iPhone app is ready to create a new media distribution channel, but I’m open to conversion, particularly if the app gets ported to Android and BlackBerry soon.

What is Instagram?

Instagram is a free iPhone app that uses filters to make your photos more artistic. Use it to take a photo, run it through any of the eleven current filters, and send it to any or all of Twitter, Facebook, Posterous, Tumblr, Foursquare and Flickr with one click. In The words “free” and “amazing” are together way too rarely for my tastes, Metalia praised Instagram’s “easy-ass interface and gorgeous filters.”

Here’s a fern that sits behind my desk. I used the Toaster filter on the photo. Seconds after I took it, you could see it on Twitter, Flickr and Instagram on the web. Anyone who saw it on Instagram’s web page could tweet it or share it on Facebook.

But Instagram is a phone app, so the real action takes place there, not on a web page. In the app, you can see popular photos, as in this screen shot.

While in the app, you can view all your photos, find friends and look at their photos, or follow people. Users can comment on photos within Instagram. It sounds a little like Flickr, doesn’t it? But this is all done through your phone, where Flickr often exhibits high quality camera-based photos.

Should you be using it?

For bloggers with Posterous or Tumblr blogs, Instagram is be a no-brainer method of getting photos posted. Right now that only applies to iPhone users. Blurbed is using it on a Tumblr blog. It isn’t restricted to Posterous and Tumblr. Notes from the Trenches is using it on her blog. And My Little Life is using it on a Blogger blog.

There are two missing bits in this app, which I think will be coming eventually with the app’s increasing popularity. The first missing piece is making the app available on Adroid and BlackBerry.

The other missing piece is to let users of WordPress, Blogger, and other blogging tools post the images directly to those blogs, too. It’s a two step process for those blog platforms now. For example, the screen shot of popular Instagram photos is one I took and sent to Flickr with Instagram so I could use it here. Once it was on Flickr, I grabbed the HTML to post it here. Two steps aren’t horribly taxing, but one easy step will mean wider adoption for the app.

For those of you who’ve already tried it, tell us what you think of the app. For those who have not, do you plan to try it?

Cross-posted on BlogHer.

Useful links: Dissected tweets, photo apps, Google places

This is what a tweet looks like from ReadWriteWeb is the sort of thing that would make a great poster to put in your office. Endlessly fascinating. (When I saw the headline in my RSS reader, I got all excited, because I thought the post would be about Twitterscapes.)

Demo Girl has been quiet lately, but she’s back with 3 Fun Photo Editing iPhone Apps.

Google Local Business Center Becomes “Google Places” at Search Engine Land says you can add tags, photos, QR codes, favorite places, coupons, and real time updates to your business listing with Google. More at Google Places.

Ask your phone for answers

[picappgallerysingle id=”7152165″]Have you started talking to the hand yet? The hand with the phone in it, but no one on the other end? I have and I confess I was enamored after one use and will never look back.

I have an iPhone and I just discovered the Google Mobile and Bing apps for my phone. These wonderous apps will listen to your voice and tell you what you want to know almost immediately. For an iPhone user, this is welcome news because typing in a search string, or anything else for that matter, on an iPhone touchpad is tricky.

You open the app, touch the microphone icon, and it politely tells you it’s listening. So you say something to it like “manager Yankees 1966” or “Applebees Austin, Texas” or “director of Gone with the Wind.” In seconds you get your results, no typing required. I LOVE THAT! If you say a street address and zip code, it shows you a map and tells you how to get there from where you are.

The only limitation I’ve found is that it doesn’t recognize words that are not part of normal discourse. For example, it can understand “Virginia” but not “DeBolt.” (Right. I searched on my own name. It’s all about me.) Even when it only gets part of what you said, it still cuts down on the amount of typing you have to do to make it right.

I know everyone is excited about the tech prospects for 2010. I am too. For instance, there’s that rumored Apple tablet. That alone may be as disruptive a new gadget as the iPod. There are advances in green tech. Cars are getting greener, a very welcome technology change.

At this time of year, everyone wants to make their predictions for the most useful technology of 2010. Technobabble mentions cloud computing, the Apple tablet, and more wireless availability. Tech Crunch thinks it will be the Apple tablet, Chrome OS, HTML5, and realtime search. ReadWriteWeb talks about bluetooth and widgets—also known as apps like Google Mobile and Bing. Kristen Swanson says it’s time to toss those old fashioned flash drives and move to the cloud.

Here’s my prediction. I think it’s all about mobile. It’s about making mobile faster, easier, smaller, more powerful. It’s about carrying the Internet in your pocket. where it can be voice activated.

Useful Links: eBook readability, iPhone app class, HTML5 summarized

Useful links: a good idea for ebook readability, learn to make iPhone apps, find out what’s new in HTML5.

Do It Myself Blog has a great suggestion for the creators of ebooks. Improve readability with one easy change.

Learn to make iPhone apps. One good app, sold for a buck or two to a few million folks. Well, you do the math. Now you can learn to make iPhone apps from the professors at Stanford at iTunesU.

What’s New in HTML5 is a simply organized and simply written summary of what may be coming in HTML5. Nice roundup.