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Instagram for Android

I’ve been a fan of Instagram (for iOS) for a long time. So I am pleased to see (finally) a version of Instagram for Android.

A beautiful way to share your world. It’s fast, free and fun!
Pick from one of several gorgeous filtered effects to breathe a new life into your mobile photos. Transform everyday moments into works of art you’ll want to share with friends and family.



Share your photos in a simple photo stream with friends to see – and follow your friends’ photos with the click of a single button. Every day you open up Instagram, you’ll see new photos from your closest friends, and creative people from around the world.



The app is not that easy to find in the Google Market Place so use this link which will take you direct to the app on your Android device.

The app as you might expect works in a similar vein to the iOS device. There are some subtle differences, but you’ll only notice them if you use both versions on a regular basis.

Instagram for Android #366photos

There are the same effects you find in the iOS app, and as my Google Nexus One has a pretty decent camera you get some good quality images.

If you have an Android device, well worth a look.

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iPad 2 for £329, but not for long…

As well as releasing the new iPad, Apple also reduced the price of the 16GB iPad 2 to just £329 ($399). However according to information I have from Apple, that this is only availabel for this reduced price, for a very limited time.

This information was in a marketing e-mail about the new iPad.

The reduction in price is temporary and will be for a short time. So if you are thinking about buying the cheaper iPad 2, then you may not want to wait for very long and buy it now.

The other thing to consider is, because of this it doesn’t matter that the old iPad is called the iPad 2 and the new one is just the iPad, because before long we’ll only have the iPad and as the only iPad available it won’t matter what it’s called. Apple will just sell the iPad.

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So it’s not a Jelly Donut…

Well my prediction that the next version of Android, after Ice Cream Sandwich was to be called Jelly Donut was a little wide of the mark. It’s going to be called Jelly Bean.

Unlike earlier names, that were puddings, this name is a type of candy!

Makes it more difficult to guess the next name, the obvious choice is Key Lime Pie. However if Google are using candy names, then it could be anything…

Won’t be Krispy Kreme to Kit Kat though, as they are trademarks.

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Photoshop Touch for iPad

It has been talked about for some time, but Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPad 2 is finally released today.

Adobe have worked hard to create a stunning looking application that is both powerful and easy to use through the touch interface. I’ve only had a small amount of time to use the app, but what I can say is that it is very easy to use, pick up and is very powerful. Photo professionals will really like the power that this app gives the iPad and enthusiasts will find the app very accessible and easy to use. The app gives you the toolbox to manipulate, edit and create stunning images.

I can image photographers taking this tool on the road with their cameras enabling them to both edit the images in the field, but then send those photographs on via 3G.

The app has been designed for both new users to Photoshop and those use to the existing application on the desktop platform. It comes with a series of useful tutorials and these explain how to achieve certain effects and the way in which different tools work.

Continue reading “Photoshop Touch for iPad”

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Thundering Clouds

Athlone

HDR images often seem to have a real emphasis on the clouds, raising the contrast to really emphasise the colour and shadows that you see in real clouds.

Simply HDR is an iPhone app for applying filters to photographs and adjusting those filters to create different effects.

Though this app is called SimplyHDR, it doesn’t do HDR (high dynamic range) images. True HDR uses multiple pictures at different exposure levels, to compensate for overly dark and light areas that are then stitched together to create a single image. What the Simply HDR app does is create an HDR effect. I see this app much more of a way of applying filters than creating HDR images.

At the end of the day if you like the HDR effect and want to create images that reflect how HDR images could look like, then this app isn’t half bad. Some of the effects are quite interesting and the app can be used to edit images and apply these effects. Personally I much prefer Snapseed for editing my photographs on the iPhone, but then that’s me.

The app is very simple to use, either take a photograph or select one from your camera roll and decide on an effect, or choose one randomly.

Within the filter choices there are various presets.

You can adjust the filter settings to suit your needs.

After editing you can post to Facebook or save to your camera roll.

Overall this is quite a nice app for creating images with a range of filters that can give a photograph an HDR style. It doesn’t create true HDR images, but if you like the effect that the filters give then you may find this app useful.

Get Simply HDR in the iTunes App Store.

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Grand Theft Auto 3 for iOS going cheap…

It’s some kind of holiday over the pond and as a result there are a few games that are going cheap in the App Store and one caught my eye, Grand Theft Auto 3, which is going until Monday 20th February for just 69p.

Rockstar Games celebrates the 10th anniversary of one of the most influential games of all time. The critically acclaimed blockbuster Grand Theft Auto III comes to mobile devices, bringing to life the dark and seedy underworld of Liberty City. With a massive and diverse open world, a wild cast of characters from every walk of life and the freedom to explore at will, Grand Theft Auto III puts the dark, intriguing and ruthless world of crime at your fingertips.

With stellar voice acting, a darkly comic storyline, a stunning soundtrack and revolutionary open-world gameplay, Grand Theft Auto III is the game that defined the open world genre for a generation.

Usually £2.99 this is quite a price reduction. It is an universal app so will work on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

This is a much better looking version than the Chinatown game that came out a couple of years back. The touch interface does take some getting use to, especially if you are use to playing these style of games on the PSP or the PS3.

However be prepared for a big download as the game is 462MB big!

Get Grand Theft Auto 3 in the iTunes App Store.

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Osfoora for Mac

I have been a fan of Osfoora for iPhone and iPad and it is my default client for iOS.

On the Mac however I have either been constrained to the web interface or more usually the free official Twitter app.

There is now a new Osfoora app for the Mac.

Osfoora is a powerful Twitter client with a clean and intuitive user interface. You’ll enjoy a wide set of powerful features such as Muting users, Read Later, Message Conversations, Multiple Accounts, and more.

This is not a free app and is £2.99 which considering what it does compared to the free Twitter app is in my mind a little expensive. However for the price of a venti coffee from a certain chain, I didn’t worry about it too much.

One feature that you may like (and probably worth £2.99) is the functionality to mute a contact.

This isn’t blocking, this merely means that the person’s tweets “disappear” from your timeline. In the preferences you can unmute them and once more you will be able to read their tweets. This can be useful if someone is at a conference and is “flooding” your stream.

I quite like the interface and the way it looks. I don’t think it handles multiple accounts very well, certainly I prefer how the official Twitter app does that.

In the end I bought this app as I like the iOS versions, I think it looks good, it lacks some of the functionality of the other apps, but I suspect that will come in future versions.

Get Osfoora for Mac in the Mac App Store.

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My thoughts – Apple announce OS X Mountain Lion 10.8

It was only in July last year that OS X Lion was released, today Apple announced a sneak peek at OS X Mountain Lion, 10.8 the next release of OS X.

The first thing that strikes you is the iOSification of OS X. In Mountain Lion you will find Messages, Reminders, Notes, Notifications, Share Sheets, Twitter integration, Game Centre and AirPlay Mirroring. Looking at the new features you may have mistaken that you were looking at iOS rather than OS X. The Sneak Peek page does say “Inspired by iPad. Re-imagined for Mac.

I do think some of the features in OS X Mountain Lion are much needed if you have and reply on an iOS infrastructure. If your friends and colleagues have iPads and iPhones and you have a Mac, you will have wanted some iOS features on your Mac. With Mountain Lion it looks like we’ll be getting them.

Mountain Lion is all about communication and sharing, it’s about connecting with friends and colleagues and sharing images and content. It’s about making the Mac more like the iPad and the iPhone and merging the experience. The back end means you can still run regular apps you do now, but the essence of the operating system will be familar to those people currently using the iPad.

If you think about it, that does make sense for Apple. Most people using the iPhone are Windows users, the same can be said for most iPad users. In order for them to move to the Mac, they are going to want to have a similar experience and feel moving from iOS to OS X. I know many people who are very happy with the iPhone and the iPad, but either don’t feel comfortable with OS X or are wary of moving to what they view as an alien and very different operating system. You can imagine how these iPhone and iPad users would feel if the Mac they saw in the Apple Store looked and worked like the iOS device in their hand.

This is emphasised in the sneak peek video which emphasises how similar OS X Mountain Lion experiences are to the experiences on the iPhone and the iPad.

From a marketing perspective if you want to convert iPad and iPhone users to Mac then making OS X to be similar to iOS is the way to do it.

So what about these new features for Mountain Lion?

Even though there are other messaging tools out there, such as Skype, the fact that Messages will allow communication with iOS devices has to be a plus, as it is built into the mobile operating system. The problem with Skype is that it requires you to open the Skype app and as that can “drain battery” I guess most people don’t have Skype on as a default and I suspect that the same can be said for other messaging apps. Messages on iOS integrates well with SMS so if you are use to SMS you will feel right at home with Messages. I also like the idea of sending images and video straight from my Mac, I can see it replacing e-mail for a lot of communication.

One of the reasons I’ve not used Reminders on the iPad or the iPhone was the lack of integration with OS X, so I am pleased to see that there may be a simple, yet useful, to do list app that works across all my devices.
For similar reasons I don’t use Notes on the iPad or iPhone either. Somehow I don’t think I will swap, as Evernote has much more flexibility than the Notes app, I like how I can add audio and image notes. For many people though the Notes app will be just what they needed.

I do like the idea of Share Sheets, it is one feature of using iOS that I repeatedly miss in OS X and falling back on copy and paste isn’t that bad I know, but once you get use to that “share” button in iOS you do miss it in OS X. In case you don’t know what Share Sheets means, it’s a simple button that allows you to quickly share links, content, images and stuff to places like Twitter, e-mail or Messages.

What the sneak peek does show is how Apple are betting on Twitter over Facebook. You see Twitter integration mentioned all over the place, but not a mention of Facebook. That issue with Ping and Facebook must still be a real issue!

I use AirPlay a fair bit from my iPad, earlier I wrote about how useful I found it with my Apple TV.

Adding this feature to OS X Mountain Lion will certainly be useful to me, especially with web based video that isn’t available on the iPad. Of course there is an assumption that Flash will be available for OS X Mountain Lion and that isn’t a given. I can quite easily imagine Adobe deciding not to make a version of Flash for Mountain Lion.

My over riding impression of Mountain Lion, combined with my experiences of using Lion on a MacBook is that we are seeing the end of the mouse more than anything. The use of the laptop trackpad and the Magic Trackpad in the Mountain Lion video demonstrates that Apple see the future of the human interaction with a Mac through gestures and a trackpad and not a mouse.

We of course haven’t seen any sign in the sneak peek of Siri for Mountain Lion, and I guess that either may arrive later or this is something that isn’t going to happen and I can’t see that happening; much more likely it will appear in the final release in the summer.

So will you be upgrading? My iMac is still running Snow Leopard due to legacy apps, somehow I don’t see me changing my OS just yet… on the laptop, more than likely as it already has Lion.

Overall what we are going to get with Mountain Lion is an iOSification of the Mac operating system, the upgrade is much more about new apps and a few subtle changes, rather than fundamental changes to the operating system.