Items tagged with instagram
We've known since the Google Pixel 2 smartphone launched that it had a dedicated imaging chip lurking inside that allows the camera to take HDR+ quality pictures when using the main photo app. Since the smartphone launched, that image processor has been just out of reach for third-party apps, but Google has finally activated the Pixel Visual Core. This means that Pixel 2 users can soon take images with HDR+ quality using apps like Instagram and Snapchat. If you aren’t familiar with the Pixel Visual Core, the imaging chip uses computational photography and machine learning to improve image quality. Pixel Visual Core can now make images taken in those third-party apps brighter, more detailed,...
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Instagram users have something to worry about after hackers breached the database of the social network and photo sharing websites. The hackers were able to gain access to the phone numbers and email addresses of six million Instagram account using a bug that Instagram CTO Mike Krieger has now confirmed exists. Krieger wrote, "We care deeply about the safety and security of the Instagram community, so we want to let you know that we recently discovered a bug on Instagram that could be used to access some people’s email address and phone number even if they were not public. No passwords or other Instagram activity was revealed." While Krieger says that no passwords or activity was lost in the...
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Posting so-called stories to social media is one of the hottest trends right now, though it also means there exists some overlap. That's especially true with Instagram stories and Snapchat stories, two very similar things, though the former is introducing some nifty new tricks that will help it stand apart from the latter. One of those tricks is the use of links.Instagram is testing the ability to add links at the bottom of stories. Verified account holders can access the feature and add clickable URLs to their stories, which appear viewers can access by clicking on "See More" at the bottom or by swiping up. It's a clever and cleaner looking alternative to posting the actual link, some of which...
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Facebook’s Instagram app has been available for Windows 10 Mobile smartphones since April, but the app was still a no-show on the vastly more popular Windows 10 platform for PCs and tablets. Facebook is correcting that perceived slight today with the arrival of an Instagram app that has been specially optimized for Windows 10. The Instagram app, which is available as a free download from the Windows Store, takes advantage of all that Windows 10 has to offer including showing photos and notifications on your home screen using Live Tiles. You’ll also find requisite features like the ability to both post and edit photos, view Stories, take advantage of native notifications, and participate in Instagram...
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Have you ever wished that Instagram was more like Snapchat? Instagram heard your deepest, darkest desire and has introduced “Stories”. This feature, “let’s you share all the moments of your day, not just the ones you want to keep on your profile.”Instagram remarked, “Instagram has always been a place to share the moments you want to remember. Now you can share your highlights and everything in between, too.” How does Stories work? Instagram will form essentially a slideshow of the photos and videos a user shares throughout the day. Users will be able to add text and drawings,but the Story will disappear after twenty-four hours and will not appear on an user’s profile grid or feed. Sound familiar?...
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Starting soon Instagram users will be able to silence obnoxious trolls by turning off comments on their own posts. It's not the best solution in the world to dealing with Internet butt-hats who get their jollies by being jerks to others behind the relative anonymity that the Internet provides, but for those who are fed up with nasty comments, it will be an option. Social networking platforms like Instagram, which Facebook acquired in 2012 for $1 billion, have the unenviable task of finding a balance between letting a community organically grow and striking down users who cross a not always clearly visible line with their comments. Through a set of rules dictating what can and can't be posted,...
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Facebook definitely recognized the growth opportunities in Instagram when it bought the company for $1 billion in stock and cash back in 2012. First launched as an iPhone app in 2010, the service had 50 million monthly active users by September 2011. By December 2014, that number had ballooned to 300 million. And today, Instagram has announced that it has over 500 million users worldwide. Of those 500 million monthly active users, over 300 million are active on a daily basis and 80 percent of its user base comes from outside the United States (this metric stood at 75 percent in September). Instagram says that over 95 million photos and video are shared on the app daily, garnering over 4.2 billion...
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Watch out, bug hunters, the scope of your competition is expanding to include younger hackers. Take Jani, a 10-year-old living in Finland who discovered a vulnerability in Instagram that allowed him to delete anyone's comments. He proved the flaw to Facebook and was awarded a cool $10,000 for his efforts.Jani isn't even old enough to use Instagram, but he didn't let that stop him from participating in Facebook's Bug Bounty program. Melanie Ensigtn, a security representative at Facebook, told The Washington Post that Jani's methods were completely ethical and void of any ulterior motives. He didn't even violate Instagram's terms of service, as the hack didn't require that he have an account. Had...
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It's difficult enough trying to decipher simple text messages—it's tough to account for tone and sarcasm—but when you throw emoji into the mix, it takes things to a whole new level. Nevertheless, it's the online language of the day, and one middle school student could end up paying a hefty price for posting the wrong combination of emojis to Instagram. The 12-year-old student from Fairfax, Virginia, is being charged with threatening her school after local law officials said she posted a message on Instagram containing emojis of a gun, bomb, and knife. Part of her message also used the world "killing" and "meet me in the library," which ultimately prompted an investigation once the school found...
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Facebook threw Wall Street for a loop when it acquired Instagram for $1 billion in 2012. The move came just ahead of Facebook’s IPO, but ultimately had little negative impact on Facebook’s efforts to go public. The service briefly drew some unwanted attention later in the year for a change to its terms of service that was meant to attract advertisers, but its popularity has nonetheless soared over the past few years. This week, Instagram announced that it has grown to a “community” of more than 400 million users. What some feared was a rash decision on the part of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has turned out to be massive success. Many of the more recent Instagram sign-ups are coming from outside...
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With as much hype as there has been surrounding high resolutions - from "Retina" laptops to 4K TVs -- it's almost embarrassing that a large number of online services still severely throttle the overall resolution of a user's uploaded photos. Imgur is a great example of a service that doesn't suffer too much in this regard, but unlike services like Instagram, Facebook, or even Google+, there isn't too much of a social element. On the topic of Instagram, many of its users have been appalled for some time that their images have been capped at 640x640, and it's easy to understand why. Even modest smartphones today tend to have much higher resolution displays, and a 640x640 image looks quite...
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It's a good thing Facebook was only out of commission for an hour, otherwise can you imagine the uproar that would have erupted from the hundreds of millions of daily active users who would have to find some place else to post their pictures of dinner or political rants? Instagram wasn't an option, because that was also down -- both self inflicted wounds, Facebook says. "Earlier today many people had trouble accessing Facebook and Instagram. This was not the result of a third party attack but instead occurred after we introduced a change that affected our configuration systems. We moved quickly to fix the problem, and both services are back to 100 percent for everyone," Facebook told USA Today....
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Imagine of the horror of being Justin Bieber and waking up to find that your Instagram fan base has diminished by 3.5 million followers overnight, or 15 percent. Talk about a feeling of loneliness in your sprawling mansion! Except of course for the multiple housekeepers and entourage, but otherwise, how horrific, right? It wasn't just the pop singer who lost scores of followers, either. In an effort to purge spammers, Instagram wiped out millions of fake accounts, causing celebrities to lose a significant amount of their fan base.According to Business Insider, rapper Mase went from 1.6 million followers to 100,000 within minutes. Apparently the sight of a tumbling Instagram fan base was so hard...
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Instagram started off as a simple idea, and though it's grown in capabilities over time, it still at heart a photo (and video) sharing app. There's a certain charm in its simplicity, which is why it's not hard to believe that there are now more than 300 million people using Instagram who collectively share tens of millions of photos and videos each and every day. "Over the past four years, what began as two friends with a dream has grown into a global community that shares more than 70 million photos and videos each day. Instagram is home to creativity in all of its forms, a place where you can find everything from images of the Nile River to the newest look from Herschel Supply or a peek...
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