Articles about Instagram

Photo-sharing site Instagram has updated its community guidelines to make it clear what sort of images are acceptable. If you were hoping to use your account to supply your followers with a stream of pornography pics, you're out of luck, sadly. Nudity is -- for the most part -- out (we don’t allow nudity on Instagram), including "close-ups of fully nude buttocks"; distant shot of butts are, seemingly OK, as are close-ups of partially clothed cheeks.

Whether we're talking about Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or any of the other countless social networks out there, users frequently fall foul of acceptable content guidelines. Images of nudity and violence are frequently complained about and Instagram's latest guidelines now make it abundantly clear what’s OK and what's not.

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Despite many reports to the contrary, there is nothing to suggest that downtime experienced by Facebook, Instagram and Tinder was anything to do with Lizard Squad. Earlier today, the three services were inaccessible for a short while and Lizard Squad took to Twitter to announce the outages.

The tweet, which read "Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, AIM, Hipchat #offline #LizardSquad" was taken as an admission of guilt and reported as such by many, many websites. Even when Facebook announced that the downtime came as a result of a system change by Facebook, site after site continued to report that Lizard Squad was to blame.

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Sharing photos and videos online has never been easier. Internet access is available practically anywhere and everywhere, and interconnected wearable and portable devices with photo and video recording options are omnipresent.

In such a world, getting the wrong material posted online can become a huge problem, especially for teenagers unaware of the consequences.

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The latest research indicates that Facebook is maintaining strong membership figures despite the rise of rival social networks such as Twitter and LinkedIn.

A study of 1,597 adult Internet users by the Pew Research Centre found that 71 percent were using Facebook, the same amount as in 2013.

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A little over a year ago, fashion photographer Viktorija Pashuta released images from a photo shoot entitled What If Girls Were Internet Browsers. It was a simple, fun idea in which Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Chrome and Safari were given female personas and represented by models. Now Viktorija has a new project -- What if Guys Were Social Networks.

The idea's very similar to last year's project. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Google+, tumblr, Pinterest, flickr and LinkedIn are all anthropomorphized into eight men, each with their own unique look and personality. In the line-up of social networks, all of the major players are represented, but the new kid on the block, Ello, is notable by its absence.

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With the arrival of Windows Phone 8.1, the tiled smartphone operating system has gained a significant number of great new features, turning into a much more powerful and able rival to the more-popular Android and iOS. But, no matter how good it may be, top developers still treat Windows Phone as a second-tier platform, that seemingly warrants little to no attention.

Windows Phone head Joe Belfiore has spoken of the so-called app-gap going away. Well, sorry, Joe, that is not going to happen. Tough luck. Deal with it. Why? Because top tier developers still release the latest features on Android and iOS first, leaving Windows Phone users waiting, and waiting, and then waiting some more for the "cutting-edge" to arrive -- that is, if that ever happens and the app is not abandoned in the meantime.

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When it comes to the internet, there is one absolute...a love of cats. Regardless of your allegiance -- Windows, Mac, Android, iPhone -- felines bring us all together. Sure, there are some macho men that will pretend they do not like cats, but I guarantee their hearts will melt at the sight of a basket of kittens.

One of the most famous internet cats is the lovable Grumpy Cat. She became one of the most popular memes of all-time, generating a huge amount of social media shares. If you aren't familiar, she is a cat with a grumpy face. Believe it or not, Grumpy Cat is turning 2 years old on April 4th. Since she has brought us so much joy, it is time we returned the favor by celebrating with her. Today, cat-food company Friskies announces a contest to win a trip to NYC, where the winner will meet Grumpy Cat.

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Yesterday marked a rather unique holiday. No, not simply that it was both Thanksgiving and also the first day of Hanukkah, but it was also the first time that these two occasions have shared a day since way back in 1888. Given that, it probably shouldn't come as a major surprise that this would lead to extra traffic on social media websites.

That was exactly the case for photo-sharing service Instagram, which announced record traffic for the second straight Thanksgiving. This time the Facebook subsidiary failed to reveal actual numbers, as it did last year, when it announced more than 10 million photos shared and a staggering 200 images per second.

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Like my colleague Brian Fagioli said yesterday in his story announcing the arrival of Instagram on Windows Phone, the lack of apps is frequently among the criticisms that pundits have for the tiled smartphone operating system. It is very much a real problem, but one which is slowly getting remedied through new releases such as Instagram, Vine and Waze. More halo apps are coming, there is no question about it, but are those -- or will they be -- good enough?

When pundits say that Windows Phone has an app problem, the consensus is they are referring to the number of apps available in Store. I believe that it will slowly shift towards the quality of apps available in Store. Again, this would be -- and is -- another real issue. The examples that best emphasize this are Vine and, most recently, Instagram.

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Alongside the new Lumia 1520 and Lumia 1320 Windows Phone 8 phablets and the Lumia 2520 Windows RT 8.1 slate, Nokia also announces a number of popular apps and games that are set to launch on Microsoft's tiled smartphone operating system.

Undoubtedly, the most popular new title to grace Windows Phone Store is Instagram. The photo-sharing social network will finally launch its offering "in the coming weeks", roughly a year after Microsoft introduced its latest smartphone operating system.

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Finnish mobile maker Nokia has taken the wraps off its latest, and largest, Windows Phone 8 devices, called the Lumia 1520 and Lumia 1320. The smartphones represent the company's entry in the phablet market, which so far has been dominated by Android handsets from Samsung's Galaxy Note series.

Nokia has built the Lumia 1520 and Lumia 1320 around Windows Phone 8 Update 3, that ships with support for 1080p displays and quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processors. Both hardware features have been available on Android smartphones but were missing from devices running Microsoft's tiled OS which only supported up to 720p displays and older Snapdragon S4 processors.

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Developer Rudy Huyn has steadily improved his popular 6tag Windows Phone 8 app up to the point where an official Instagram client would struggle to compete with the former's feature set. The app has received frequent updates since its release, the latest of which just arrived sporting a couple of major new features.

Using geolocation, 6tag, which reached version 1.5, can now display a list of posts created in nearby locations. Users can select the covered distance (presumably the radius) through a slider -- the default value is two kilometers -- and see a map with the places where fellow Instagrammers have created the nearby posts.

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Instagram just introduced a major change to the video-posting feature in its Android and iOS mobile apps, with the popular social network now allowing users to upload pre-recorded clips from the smartphone's gallery.

The revamped video-posting feature is part of the new Instagram apps for Android and iOS, version 4.1. "Starting today you can upload videos from your phone's media library and share those moments to Instagram regardless of when they were captured", says Instagram. "Once you select the video clip you'd like to import, you can trim it down to the exact part you like best. We've also made it so that you can choose how you square-crop your clip so you can keep the action front and center".

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A common complaint addressed to Windows Phone 8, which is coming from users of the tiled smartphone operating system, the tech media or those who like other platforms, is the lack of an official Instagram app. Even though third-party clients like Instance -- which now has over 330,000 users -- prove that the popular photo and video-sharing network has its fair share of fans on Windows Phone 8, Instagram has yet to be persuaded to build a homebrew app. Let's not even approach the rumors, none of which have yet to bear fruit.

In my opinion, the lack of an official Instagram app for Windows Phone 8 is an issue blown out of proportion. Instance is a competent third-party client and, by the looks of it, the upcoming 6tagram is shaping up to be an ever better offering than any other non-official app available for the tiled smartphone OS. I have been using 6tagram for the past couple of days -- it is still in beta at the moment -- to tell you what you can expect after the public launch.

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With privacy higher than ever on the news agenda, it is not surprising people are starting to wake up to the fact they have happily allowed all kinds of personal information about themselves to appear online. It might be too late to stem the tide, but if you are thinking about reviewing your personal privacy, one place to start might be with the apps added to various social networks.

If this idea appeals, then desktop users should install one of MyPermissions Cleaner for Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari, while iPhone and Android users can go with Online Privacy Shield -- once done, you are ready to start taking action to tighten privacy settings.

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