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Obama 2012 campaign joins Instagram on eve of Iowa caucuses
posted by Technology @ 10:14 AM
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
As Republicans focused on the Iowa caucuses and President Barack Obama made a pitch to Iowans of his own over streaming video on Tuesday, the Obama 2012 reelection campaign took its message to Instagram.
The president's campaign staff, which is also looking to reach voters on Tumblr and Google+ (along with a few Republican rivals), has posted two photos thus far, both of the president speaking with Iowa's caucus voters via video chat, making his case for another term in the White House.
Although Instagram — a photo-sharing app known for retro filters that allows people to share photos with one another from their iPhones, iPod Touches and iPads — is new territory for Obama, the move by his 2012 campaign shouldn't come as a surprise.
In the 2008 election, Obama's team was so well known for its use of Twitter, Facebook and blogging to help build up an overwhelming amount of support that the Technology blog described Obama as "the first social media President." And over the last four years, the White House has made great use of the photo-sharing site Flickr.
Instagram, which has seen its more than 5-million users share more than 150-million photos, said in a company blog post that it is "excited to welcome President Barack Obama to Instagram" and that it looks "forward to seeing how President Obama uses Instagram to give folks a visual sense of what happens in the everyday life of the President of the United States."
The Obama 2012 campaign is also looking for supporters to share their photos with the @BarackObama Instagram account by tagging their photos with "#obama2012," Instagram said.
The company also made sure to point out that political coverage on Instagram has been on the rise over the last year as the 2012 presidential election gets closer.
"News organizations such as NBC News, ABC World News and the Washington Post have been sharing behind-the-scenes photos at debates and town hall meetings across the country, offering a unique look into the 2012 elections," Instagram said.
Among the most interesting photos shared so far by news organizations covering the election on Instagram would have to be Washington Post reporter Philip Rucker's shot of Republican hopeful Mitt Romney typing on his Apple iPad in an airport.
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— Nathan Olivarez-Giles
Nathan Olivarez-Giles on Google+
Image: A screen shot of President Barack Obama's first Instagram photo. Credit: Obama 2012 / Instagram
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MySpace’s Tom Anderson weighs in on censored pics on Google+
posted by Technology @ 3:36 PM
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Call it the tempest in Google+.
Former TechCrunch writer and current blogger/venture capitalist MG Siegler stirred things up this week by complaining that Google's politically correct overlords had censored his profile picture because in it — not sure how to put this delicately — he was giving the world the finger.
SearchEngineLand's Danny Sullivan explained Google's rationale (in a post on Google+): "Why's Google care so much if +MG Siegler wants a middle finger in his Google+ profile picture? Because in turn, that has him giving the finger in Google's search results. And that mess is kind of Google's own doing on how it has linked author pictures so much to Google+ profiles."
Now in a blast from the past, Tom Anderson has taken to Google+ to pounce on the debate. As the co-founder of Myspace, the guy who was everyone's automatic friend on the service, he has a lot to say including this: MySpace became a "cesspool" because people put up all kinds of potentially offensive content.
"All Google+ has done here is execute on its stated plan: removing offensive photos. This is Facebook’s plan, Twitter's plan and Myspace's before it. When you’re processing hundreds of thousands of photos a day (and in Facebook’s case, millions a day), it’s not easy to spot such material (even with algorithms). It’s not that Google+ has decided to do things differently, it’s just that they’re ahead of the game and doing things better," Anderson wrote.
Further, Anderson says users of Google+ (and presumably Google) "don't need to see you flipping us off, nor do we need to see you naked, or displaying something else generally considered offensive. When a social network lets that stuff slide, it turns into a cesspool that no one wants to visit … sorta like Myspace was."
In a Twitter post, Siegler responds: "As much as I enjoy #fingergate I do have this other job I'm attempting to do…"
The real beneficiary may be Google+ itself which, if you believe predictions from the armchair statisticians out there, is starting to get some real traction.
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– Jessica Guynn
Photo: Surfboards decorate the main lobby at one of Google's offices in Santa Monica in 2007. Credit: Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times
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Five ways to get started with your new iPhone
posted by Technology @ 12:46 PM
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Got an Apple iPhone this Christmas? Well, you're doing pretty well for yourself. It may or may not be Santa Claus' smartphone of choice and you successfully avoided waiting in long lines as many Apple fanatics do once a year when a new iPhone launches.
But marketing and hype aside, the iPhone is one of the best smartphone lines on the market and each of the devices currently available — the 3GS, the 4 and the 4S — run iOS 5, the latest version of Apple's mobile operating system. With that in mind, here are five places to get started if you're a first time iPhone owner.
1. Photography apps: Apple's App Store (the only place you can get iPhone apps), with more than 140,000 apps available, is a major bragging right for the iPhone versus its competitors, but not all apps are created equal. However, no other smartphone platform can currently match the iPhone for slick apps that produce fun and artistic photos. The best place to start is likely Instagram, which combines a solid selection of filters to make photos look like they were shot on vintage film cameras and a social network of other users so you can see the world through other lenses. Hipstamatic is another popular choice, which takes the vintage filter approach to another level with the ability to mix and match digital lenses, flashes and film choices to create a more customized look than in Instagram. Another app, called SwankoLab, allows you to alter photos already taken using a simulated dark room.
2. Games: The iPhone is also arguably the best gaming smartphone out there and the choices here are plentiful. Angry Birds is one of the most popular games available on smartphones and is a good place to start. But other choices such as Robo Surf, Cut the Rope, Tiny Wings, Bumpy Road and Kosmo Spin are worth checking out too — each combining unique art styles, enchanting soundtracks and simple touch screen controls. For those looking for a bit more of a gaming challenge, the third-person shooter Minigore and puzzle game Scribblenauts impress. The sword fighting games Infiniti Blade and Infiniti Blade II show what the iPhone is capable of with detailed 3-D graphics and fast-paced action.
3. Music: Apple's iTunes allows for easy music buying, but there are plenty of other music related apps worth checking out as well. Shazam can listen to and then identify thousands of songs. Band of the Day is a great way to discover new music. Soundtracking is a unique social networking app that allows you to share what you're listening to with others, as well as check out what tunes they like. And if you're a Spotify Premium subscriber, the Spotify app is a must.
4. Built-in Twitter: If you're a big Twitter user, as I am, or even if you're new to Twitter, you're likely going to appreciate that the social network is baked into iOS 5. Checking out a website you care to share in the iPhone's Safari web browser? You can tweet that directly from Safari without having to go and open up a Twitter app. Same goes for photos, videos and locations in the maps app.
5. Ask a friend: As always, talking to a buddy can generate suggestions that may line up with your interests on just about anything — same goes here. Ask a friend who uses an iPhone what they like about the phone or available apps and you're bound to find something you may enjoy too.
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– Nathan Olivarez-Giles
Nathan Olivarez-Giles on Google+
Photo: A newly purchased iPhone 4S smartphone outside an Apple Store in New York. Credit: Michael Nagle / Getty Images
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You can make View-Master-style photo reels with Image3D
posted by Technology @ 7:48 PM
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Big news, lovers of all things retro: Those 3-D View-Masters from your childhood are back, only this time you can see your own photos when you look through the eyepiece.
Click. There's your dog. Click. There's your kid. Click. There are your party pictures.
This personalized nostalgic experience is brought to you by Image3D, a company founded by Rich Dubnow, the lead photographer for View-Master for 20 years. Image3D has been around since 1997, and it started allowing users to create their own individual images a few months ago. It will begin advertising its new service on the wedding website TheKnot.com and in the Sky Mall catalog next year.
A viewfinder and one reel of seven personalized photos costs $24.95. If you were throwing a wedding and wanted to have a viewfinder on each table loaded with the same pictures of the bride and groom, each additional viewfinder and reel would set you back $8 to $15, depending on how many you order.
You create your own reel by loading digital photos onto the company's website, which also provides the option of adding a funky background or text. The text will appear to be floating in front of the image in 3-D.
Unfortunately, your two-dimensional images will still read as two dimensional through the eyepiece, but we still think this is worth it for that satisfying click.
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– Deborah Netburn
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Sales of basic digital cameras fall as smartphones fill the niche
posted by Technology @ 5:40 PM
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Film is already passe for snapshots. Are inexpensive point-and-shoot cameras next to go?
According to a survey by NPD Group, 27% of photos and videos taken this year were shot with smartphones — up from 17% last year.
Not surprisingly, sales of the basic digital point-and-shoot cameras suffered. According to NPD, unit sales of those cameras were down 17% in the first 11 months of this year.
But not all types of single-purpose cameras were losing popularity.
For the upper-level point-and-shoots — with optical zooms of 10x or greater and an average price of $247 — unit sales grew 16%, according to NPD’s Retail Tracking Service.
And digital single-lens-reflex cameras — with an average retail price of $863 — were popular enough that some camera shops were out of them the week before Christmas. Unit sales were up 12%, NPD said.
“The smartphone is becoming good enough much of the time,” said Liz Cutting, executive director and senior imaging analyst at NPD. “Consumers who use their mobile phones to take pictures and video were more likely to do so instead of their camera when capturing spontaneous moments.
“But for important events, single-purpose cameras and camcorders are still largely the device of choice.”
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– Deborah Netburn
Photo: A man uses his cellphone to photograph fireworks during celebrations at Saha Kish Square in Benghazi, Libya, in October. Credit: Francois Mori / Associated Press
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Facebook fixes security glitch after leak of Mark Zuckerberg photos
posted by Technology @ 1:58 PM
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Facebook says it has fixed a security glitch after founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg's private photographs were published online.
The incident stemmed from a Nov. 27 post on the Bodybuilding.com Web forum. An anonymous tipster spelled out step-by-step instructions to access photos uploaded by Facebook users, even if the photos were marked as private. Among the photos hackers published: Zuckerberg preparing food and handing out candy on Halloween.
Facebook says the security glitch "was live for a limited period of time." It did not say how many of the site's more than 800 million users were affected. "The precise number of people impacted is unknown at the moment but we continue to investigate," a spokeswoman said in an e-mail.
Facebook blamed the problem on a recent "code push" in which it revised some of its software.
"Not all content was accessible, rather a small number of one's photos. Upon discovering the bug, we immediately disabled the system, and will only return functionality once we can confirm the bug has been fixed," a company spokesman said in an email.
The privacy breach struck at Facebook's Achille's heel. Last week Facebook agreed to settle federal government charges that it exposed too much user information without consent.
Security and privacy concerns have not dampened enthusiasm for Facebook, which has soared in popularity. It's preparing for an initial public offering next year that could peg the company's worth at $100 billion.
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– Jessica Guynn
Photo credit: Dan Kitwood / Getty Images
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