Instagram Vs Vine, What’s going on?

Posted on June 21, 2013 by writinglikeastoner

Facebook recently released out a new video function for Instagram app users with the ability to record 15 seconds video. The recent news has currently taken the social media by storm. News channels and blogs almost everywhere are blogging about it, Forbes, Yahoo, TheGuardian covering what’s in store for the new Instagram Video. Even my blogger friend, Mitsueki is blogging about it.

So in order to help out, I’ll try my best to give out the links, to make you understand what’s going on in the not so complicating way possible.

What’s the huss and fuss about Instagram new Video feature?

Capability with Platforms.

The first release was out from Apple’s Store, with the new Instagram 4.0 version. The plus point for the new update is that, would be the inclusive 13 filters that goes along with the video, followed by the Google App Store that was available a few hours later.

This is naturally fine, however the current version for Android apps supports only from Jellybean 4.1 onwards. Which means that those using Android phones only compatible up to 4.0 JellyBean, won’t benefit much from this app. Unless they choose to make it compatible. So fellas, if you’re using an Samsung S2 like me, so sorry to say that it’s not available yet, unless they plan to make it compatible

The new Cinema is a stabilisation feature technology available is IOS4 and IOS5, allows a more stable video recording feature to minimize ‘shaky’ video in return producing better looking videos. Again, only available for iOS users. Android users won’t benefit much from this new technology unless they choose to implement it later on.

Vine uses to have its app available to iOS but recently allowed users Android 4.0 Jellybean onwards to use the app, which is a plus point.

Comparing between Instagram VS Vine, Tech Crunch have kindly showed the comparison between both, which might cover all of your need-to know’s and speculations.

via techcruch http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/20/instagram-video-vs-vine-whats-the-difference/

via techcrunch
http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/20/instagram-video-vs-vine-whats-the-difference/

For more information and more details on its comparison, here’s the link.

On the social media platform side, From what i know, the battle of words have been going on around about saying how Instagram will take over Vine.

One of the benefits Instagram video will have over Vine is that it already has a dedicated audience. Instagram has 130m active users, Systrom said at the unveiling, with 1bn likes a day. Vine, which Twitter bought for $30m, launched as a new app in January, with users having to build followers from scratch. – via Guardian

“Vine is like fast food, while Instagram video is more like eating in a nicer restaurant,” said Ovum analyst Jan Dawson.

But, Vine users on the other hand has a different feeling about its new rival, saying

People are comparing the Vine’s and Instagram’s feature set, which makes sense. But Vine has developed a culture that’s weird, young, and funny. The Atlantic

A few responses from users came up with #TeamVine to express out their opinions.

It’s kinda true when you see it. Vine has been mostly used about over so many times in conjunction with Twitter, and have been used to create those funny 6 second videos, , and sometimes shared on Facebook. The community that surrounds these Vine users, reminded me of 9GAG or 4Chan’s era. Funny viral videos. It makes it even better that’s in on loop, because that’s what makes Vine videos, Vine.

I have a feeling that Facebook’ implementation to the new Instagram Video feature, will change a lot on people’s perspective now, but still only time will tell.

So the question really is, are you joining the Facebook’s Instagram that harnessing its new anti-shake technology or the Twitter’s Vine, the colonial rich history known for its 6 secs video community?

I’m going Kobo

Posted on May 9, 2013 by writinglikeastoner

Recently a few days ago, I’ve talked about choosing an e-book store to prevent my books from turning yellow. I’ve went through all the different things they had to offer, downloaded, the kobo app and after awhile out on a sunny day to work, I’ve decided to purchase my very first book. Here’s is what i went through.

Kobo Website- Click for link to website 😀

Out of curiosity, during the part when I downloaded the kobo app on my android phone, everything seemed a little new. At first it looks pretty empty and being the new guy, I was at first lost but things eventually came to place after a bit.

The home screen welcomed me with a simple view of recent activity on the top which actually featured what I had read recently, and the bottom section was divided into library, which is the library books that I’ve downloaded/purchased goes in there.

The reading life section was a cool feature keep track of your reading stats and just beside to it, is the kobo store.

The design didn’t really bother to me, and it wasn’t really my main concern especially for the home screen. I only like that there isn’t a need to scroll.

The store has quite a selection of books, and most of the bestsellers out there are in, at least for my taste. It does have a book that costs at low as $0.99 cents, and a few couple of nice free- ebooks to download, and categorised into different sections, with more subsections in it, and i didn’t have time to explore all the categories because there was just too many genres, some that I’ve never even heard of like ‘steampunk’.

I was more curious about how reading a book would be like on my small screen, so i downloaded a free-ebook to try it out, and the first book i bought was Icefire, by Patty Jensen. It was a short story, and it looked pretty nice. Clicking the next page was as easy as a tap on the side.

I like the fact that there was a highlight button, a place to take notes, and simple things like search and share.I can even highlight a word i don’t know, for example and kobo app automatically searches the web for its meaning. In the right picture, the settings allow me to also scroll through pages, change the text size and font, adjust the apperance, other settings and comment on the pages that will eventually be shared with other readers. (all this did take a bit of exploration to really know what it was.)

Ahah! Share with other readers, adjust the appereance? This is when things get even more interesting.

The appearance section allows me to change settings, between classic white background, to night (for reading at night) and also the sepia, which i prefer to use the most. I was at first using the classic method to read, but eventually my eyes went ~~crooked~~ started to strain even more, so sepia really helped me loosen up.

I’ve tried the night function once while reading my book on my bed lying face up, and it does help read at ease too. The screen simply turns the background black and the words white. This i felt, was a great feature.

Some other features that i felt interesting was that there was notifications to inform you of the activities going on in your reading life.There is also award badged that can be earned like reading at night, or reading a new book, or taking a note in a book. It really got me motivated to want to collect badges, and share them with my friends, and show them how badass i am with books 😀

I can say some of the badges are really cute. The picture on the left showed that I’ve already earned 3 badges, one for joining Kobo(Welcome to reading Life), another for putting a book at my own library(i ❤ my library) and also for reading a new book(Once upon a time)

I’ve now collected 9 badges, see told you i was badass.

After all the days worth of thinking whether or not i should have bought a book, I’ve decided to finally call it a deal (with my other self) and went on to purchase my first book bundle, The Game of Thrones bundle pack from 1-4 , simply because I’ve been told that the book gave more details compared to the show, which is really true. It cost me about $22 dollars plus all the currency change and that to me was a pretty good deal. Instead of having 4 books in my room now, I’ve my books, complete with a search feature, a share feature, and also at the same time see other people comments on the book, likes, dislikes and who’s reading.

No more reading in the dark with a small lamp that i try so hard to read with, and also more space for my room. Just to let you know that I’m doing all this in my mobile phone, and the app is free.

F8 Launch from Kobo on Vimeo.

This is really cool video if you’re more into seeing that reading. I find that it’s really such a helpful software that have helped me to read my books online i think it will also do for you.

So if you’re into reading and finding a method to solve your books stacking up, then i can say one of the solutions would be to go for Kobo.

www.kobobooks.com

Mobile suffice for now, but Maybe i shall get a kobo Glo e reader soon. 🙂

Thanks for reading!

You should know what is LTE

Posted on April 19, 2013 by writinglikeastoner

In this modern world, we are bound to come across this, and for those of you who is still not sure like how i was just a few hours back, it is time to really know what it is about because more or less, you will be likely to come across this.

I came across an email, promoting the new Samsung Galaxy S4 with LTE, and i don’t know why for so many times i kept looking at it, trying to figure out what it means, but i didn’t bother to find out what it was.

this came as part of my email, so i screened shot it, and along with the email came,

and in my mind i was like , it must be a new screen or something, or it could be some new pen scribble ‘thing’.

After awhile, i decided “Okay, that’s enough, I’m a man, and every man should be updated with its surroundings about gadget (i guess unless you plan to live under a rock) , to keep up to date with what’s going on, in this world.” and at least when someone comes to you and say, “Hey sir, would you like to come and buy our phone that comes with LTE? and i would say like what is LTE? with that blur newbie-noobsy face that looks so lost , and then he/she would think in the back of his/her head, here we go again i have to explain this all over again and again for the 9999999.99 times with this.

AND SOOOOOOO… What is LTE?

Here’s to summarise what i managed to get out from a few websites from google searches (im sure you can google it out more)

Long Term Evolution(LTE) aka Super 3G aka 4G – remember that
It is part of the the 3GPP Family Technology Evolution
It is like 3G (if you have used a mobile phone, and surf the net, most likely you’ve been using 3G or applied of a mobile data plan that uses 3G) except its even way faster, like super fast, that why its called super 3G
It offers high speed downloads of surfing, downloading at a faster rate on your mobile.
Must be used at a place with a 4G network area, or else you will likely be using 3G. in which other case, you can see it as, if you’re in a middle of a desert with a phone but no company building a telephone network there, you’re most likely unable to call anyone.
It is a mobile network, not a LCD screen, or a pen scribbly thing. (HAHA! yes.. its not)

Yes and with that, i hope you can also learn what I’ve learnt and hopefully when someone comes up to you and say LTE, you’ll be like