Aviary photo editor comes to Windows Phone

May 28, 2012 by

Windows phones displaying Aviary screensThis is a guest post by William Judd

Popular photo-editing tool Aviary is now available for Windows Phone developers to use in their applications. Aviary is currently used for online image editing on a wide number of online applications including Flickr and imgur, as well as iOS apps like Halftone. It’s a big boon for the platform, as the Metro-styled SDK has been released for free and could be useful for a wide range of apps, allowing developers to focus on the essential parts of their application instead of implementing their own image editing features.

Aviary has launched in four current Windows Phone apps: Twitter client Rowi, Foursquare app 4th & Mayor and photo apps Postcard on the Run and Rekap. I couldn’t find the latter two in the UK marketplace and the place to use Aviary in 4th & Mayor (so I’m not sure if it’s been added yet), but it was easily accessible in Rowi just by adding a picture to your tweet. Aviary loads up pretty quickly (at least that’s the case for the Lumia 900) and allows for basic photo editing tasks. There were also filters and effects a la Instagram, but these weren’t populated with any options for some reason.

So it looks like Aviary isn’t making a massive splash at the moment, but it’s certainly great news for Windows Phone developers and hopefully we’ll see photo editing integration care of Aviary arrive soon into more apps that need it. For more information, check out the Windows Phone SDK on Aviary’s site.

Filed Under: Art and Design, Tech Tagged With: , , ,

Instagram finally released for Android, nerd hipsters everywhere rejoice

April 9, 2012 by

Instagram logoInstagram is one of those rare apps that you hear about even if you don’t have it installed – its heavy post-processing and retro vignettes have made it easy to spot from a mile off, and its easy social sharing has made it immensely popular with the iOS crowd, to which it is – or rather was – confined. For today, Instagram for Android has finally been released.

While your iPhone-wearing pals may brag that they “were using it before it was cool”, the Android version of the app is as well mannered and fully featured as the iOS original, including all manner of retro stylings to be easily applied to your photos. While we’re hearing that the soft-focus tool hasn’t yet made the leap to Android, pretty much everything else seems to be present and correct.

After Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom made the announcement at the SXSW festival in Austin that Instragram was coming to Android and would be “one of the most amazing Android apps you’ll ever see” and “in some ways… better than our iPhone app”, over 430,000 Android users signed up to the waiting list.

Having said that, there’s little here to warrant those two phrases – it’s a good app for sure, but not “one of the most amazing” and it’s hard to see in which ways it’s “better than our iPhone app” as it has no features that the iOS app does not.

Furthermore, why go to the trouble of having a waiting list in the first place if you’re not going to actually have a proper beta?

It’s an odd release for those reasons, but whatever: Instagram for Android is here. Go download it from the Google Play (aka Android Marketplace) here.

This article was written by William Judd. William writes for Mobile Fun, the UK’s leading online retailer of iPad 3 accessories including iPad 3 cover and iPad 3 screen protectors.

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