geekosystem

Food porn on Instagram is ridiculously ubiquitous. That is to say, pretty much everywhere you look someone's posted a meal for one reason or another. It's the perfect tool to show off how lovely your burger looks before devouring it. If, however, you're an identify thief trying to avoid getting caught by the law, perhaps it's a good idea to not take photos of food at your clandestine meetings.

Brands are everywhere on social media these days. They're creeping in from all sides, and you're just as likely to see an advertisement from, say, Taco Bell as you are your buddy's status update. It's the nature of the beast. That being said, there are a few instances where we'd like to see even more from these kind of pages. Take GE's Instagram page, for example. It's basically gadget and tech porn -- especially if you're a fan of engines -- at its finest. We've collected our 11 favorite images and included them below, so you don't have to take our word for it.

Instagram rolled out an update today that finally allows users to tag one another in photos. The update is available now for both iOS and Android platforms. Before everyone gets all crazy about privacy concerns, don't worry, there's a grace period where you can opt out of being tagged. There's also a twee pizza party video outlining the new feature.

Instagram isn't really my cup of tea, or really photography as a whole, but there are scads of people out there snapping selfies and whatever else to fill the Facebook-owned company's profiles. In addition to posting tons of photos, folks are also maybe doing more than that by adding hashtags. At least, that's what Mike Rugnetta and PBS Idea Channel argue in their latest video. I'm not sure I agree, but it's certainly an interesting idea.

There are some things we've always just assumed about the Internet that we never bothered to look into too thoroughly. We know the Internet likes cats, we know people on Instagram think their food is super-interesting, and we know that the things people say on Twitter don't accurately reflect the popular opinion of society. Don't worry, though. Pew Research went ahead and double-checked that last one with a year-long study.

If you have pictures of the Space Shuttle Enterprise, The Intrepid, Sea, Space & Air Museum would like to talk to you. Well, not so much talk to you as just have you tweet at them, but still -- the Intrepid Museum wants to you to communicate with them, because they want to use your pictures of the shuttle in a new exhibit.

I don't think there is a rule in society that is both so universally agreed upon, but still ignored as not using a cell phone in a theater. Everyone hates it, but everyone does it at some point. At the WiredArts Fest, though, not only is cell phone use allowed -- it's downright encouraged. They want you tweeting about the shows, snapping pictures with Instagram, and even streaming the events from the comfort of your home. It's a new approach to the relationship between social media and theater, and it's one I'm kind of into.

There are a lot of apps like Instagram to make the pictures you snap with your smartphone look like old 35mm film prints, but as far as we know there aren't any that take your actual 35mm film and digitizes it. Lomography wants to change that. They're launching an app and the Lomography Smartphone Film Scanner to give photographers the ability to take archival quality scans of their film. Looks like it's time to bust out that old box of film, or to explain what film was to your kids.

Foursquare is continuing to grow despite the very subjective metric that I haven't seen one of those "Check in Here" stickers at a business in a while. I sort of forgot about Foursquare. Still, they've had a great year that saw millions of new users and their three-mbillionth check-in. They've branched out their services to be a stronger competitor to Yelp, whose stickers I have seen a lot of around New York. Now Foursquare is telling its users that it's going to be updating its terms of service, making more user information public. I don't see this going well for you, Foursquare.

When Instagram announced they would be changing their Terms of Service Agreement, a lot of users got upset and threatened to delete their accounts. One report by a company called AppData says that Instagram's users fell by 25% on Christmas day. According the AppData, it was like millions of voices suddenly cried out in disagreement, and were suddenly silenced. Instagram and Facebook, which owns the service, have obviously denied those numbers, but they might not just be saving face. The way AppData tracks their numbers makes the whole thing a little suspect.

When Instagram announced some policy changes that made it look like they would be selling user photos to advertisers, a lot of people got upset. Some even jumped ship and deactivated their accounts. Flickr is hoping to swoop in and pick up those shutterbugs left behind by offering three free months of their Pro level account. The Pro account lets users upload an unlimited number of photos to Flickr. Why not sign up and see how many pictures you can upload in three months?

Yesterday we wrote about the Internet's strong negative reaction to Instagram's new terms of service. If you missed it, Instagram's new policy basically said they could sell user photographs to advertisers without having to pay those users. Then the Internet went bonkers. Instagram has already called the whole thing a big misunderstanding, and announced that they're revising the language of the new policy before it goes into effect next month -- Just like we said they would.

Sometimes riots happen. Sometimes Swedish teenagers send sexy pictures to each other. Sometimes riots happen because Swedish teenagers send sexy pictures to each other. That's what happened when a group teenagers swarmed the school of a girl accused of posting sexy pictures on Instagram. The riot also spilled over to a local mall, scaring unwitting holiday shoppers. Rioting teenagers in a mall is exactly what old people at malls are afraid of.

Remember that user agreement we all clicked through without reading when we signed up for Instagram? Yesterday they announced they were changing it, and someone actually read those changes, and then the Internet lost its hivemind over the new policy. Why so upset, Internet? It's largely due to the fact that Instagram's new policy, which goes into effect January 16th, allows them to sell any user photos they want without having to pay the owner of the picture. Is that really a big deal?

Facebook is rumored to be launching an app to compete with Snapchat. If you're not familiar with Snapchat, it's a photo messaging service that sets itself apart from other ways of sending your friends photos by having pictures "self-destruct" Inspector Gadget-style after a preset length of time -- usually just a few seconds. Why would anyone need to send a photo that self-destructs? The only answer I can think of is for sending naked pictures to people, and I'm not alone in that assumption, as Snapchat has developed a reputation as the "sexting app."