With the introduction of Instagram’s Real-Time API developers have been coding like mad to integrate the best functions on the Instagram iphone app into fully functional Web apps. We’ve listed the Top 5 Instagram Web Apps currently available. These Web UI’s make viewing, liking, commenting, and following faster and more convenient from the comfort of your desk.

1. Webstagram – provides the most feature rich Instagram web experience. Aside from viewing your Feed, Timeline, Popular, and Search features all with easy Liking and Commenting, there is a heavy integration with Hashtags. What’s Trending or Hot throughout the network. There’s also different display and viewing options as well as the option to use in different Languages.

2. Extragram – is one of the newest and slickest instagram apps I’ve come across so far. Once you connect to your Instagram account it’s super easy to switch between browsing the Popular, Feed, your Photos, and even Search. It has a nice roll-over display for each photo to easily Like and Commenting though a lightbox pop-out instead of loading a new page. This makes it faster and more fun to be interactive as you don’t have to wait on new pages to load and constantly hit the back button to continue browsing for other photos. You can also view your followers and who’s following you and it includes a couple options on how to display the feeds through a Grid, a side scrolling Filmstrip, and even by Map. If you try out any of these services, try this one.

3. Inkstagram – has the same functions to access your Feed, Popular, Search, and Followers. I like how you can change the display Grid to be small, medium, or full size thumbnails. It also has an easy Liking system with rollover to view comments but opens the photo in a new page to access the commenting system.

4. Gramfeed - is another great fully functional instagram web app. You can easily access your Feed, Popular, and Search from a convenient top menu. I like the way it overlays each users avatar as small thumbnail on the photo and you can also view the feeds as a Grid or vertical Scroll. It has great Liking and Commenting functionality but I really don’t like that it opens up a new tab or browser window everytime you click something new. I ended up with a dozen open tabs from just a couple minutes of use.

5. Insta-great! – isn’t quite as feature rich but offers a nice side scrolling timeline of your Feed and your own Photos. You can easily Like, see the date/time it was uploaded, and it even display which Instagram filter was used on the photo which you can click on to sort photos only using that filter. Currently I don’t see any option for Commenting and the navigation starts getting confusing after a little use.

I think Extragram gets my vote as a front running favorite with Webstagram coming in at a close second. However, they all offer something unique in their implementation. Everyone has different browsing and functionality preferences so give these services a spin and let us know your thoughts in the comments. Also, if there’s another similar service you prefer that wasn’t covered here, let us know about it.

The Adventurous 500, started on Nov. 15th, 2010 and led by Ryan Park, aims to expose community hot spots, Colorado businesses, venues, and creates exciting local encounters with Colorado’s most unique people.

As Ryan explores Colorado, he captures the best of his adventures on camera and shares them with you. To make this adventure possible, a local company or charity sponsors each day of the adventure. If you are interested in sponsoring a day go here to snag a day before they’re all gone!

I secured Day 67 in Ryan’s Adventure back in December. He dropped by the studio last week to get footage of my process for today’s video promo. We had a blast. I’m a photographer and definitely feel more comfortable behind the camera but took one for the team to give you guys some insight into my production process. I won’t be applying for any TV Personality positions anytime soon that’s for sure.

Check out the video below and get a bit of a behind-the-scenes look into the process of creating the Boo Box bamboo shadow box frames. Thanks for all the support and interest everyone’s given me so far. I challenge you to find a more unique gift option so Go upload your most cherished photos for framing already and support handmade Art!

If you’ve seen other IG’ers including emoticons in with their comments or used with MMS text messaging and wondered how they did it, read on; it’s a free, fast, and simple process to add this functionality.

 

 

 

 

 

1. First, launch the App Store from your phone. Search for Emoji Free. Download and Install the App.	2. Launch the App, you will see the Emoji Welcome screen. Tap “ok, let’s do this!“.
3. It only takes a few seconds to Install.	4. It’s installed, just a couple more steps.
5. Now, exit the App. Launch your Settings and then Tap “General” -> “Keyboard” -> “International Keyboards” -> “Add New Keyboard…“. Tap on “Emoji“.	6. You will now see that your Emoji keyboard is added to the list.
7. That’s it. All done. You will now see a Globe to the left of your Spacebar when you bring up your keyboard to type a message anywhere. Works in Notes, MMS, Comments, and just about anywhere.

Tips: If your emoji keyboard options aren’t showing up. Try restarting your phone. The Emoji keyboard lists themed categories and you can flip through multiple pages for each category until you find a fitting Emoticon to use.

If you found this helpful, check out our Shop. We make Bamboo Frames for your Instagram photos.

 

 

 

 

There are essentially 3 ways to obtain your Instagram share URL.

First you’ll want to Launch the App and click on the Profile button. You will then click on the “Your photos” section. Scroll through your photo Feed to find the picture you would like to obtain the Share URL for.

Click the … button in the bottom right corner below the photo. A share options screen will appear. These are your 3 choices on how to obtain your share URL.





1. If you click “Share post” you are faced with a screen of external networks that you’ve configured to share to. For this example we’ve chosen to configure Twitter. Simply click the Share button beside Twitter and it pulls up a text box. Your Instagram share URL is listed.

2. If you click “Copy share URL” it will copy the URL to your iPhone clipboard. To see what it is, you must now open Notes or Safari and paste the URL into the the app or browser to see it.

3. If you click “Email photo” it brings up your email. Email it to yourself. You will receive an email with a thumbnail of the image and a link that says (see full image). Click this link and it will open the URL up in your browser.

That’s it! No matter which choice you go with, just make a note of the URL it provides.

Instagram, a Free App released only months ago for the iPhone, has seemingly broken records by gaining hundreds of thousands (and now millions) of users within a very short amount of time. Why is this? And what does it do?

Instagram is a simple App that allows its users to snap a photo (or choose an existing one from their Albums), apply one of 11 different filters or none at all, and quickly share it across the major social networks including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, Posterous, and Foursquare. The part that makes everyone coming back for more, however, is its own convenient built in social network which provides a real time feed of photos from all the friends and people you follow. You can Like and Comment on anyone’s photos and Follow your friends and others that interest you. If Flickr and Twitter had a love child, it’d be Instagram.

They’ve tapped into the internal desire of human creativity, ego, and the accompanying fervor to share. It’s the “Kilroy was here” expression only exponentially evolved. A quick launch of the app and you’re perusing fantastically interesting and amazing photos from peoples everyday lives and experiences while communicating your own for others witness. It’s not the photo taking ability, it’s not the filters (although these are some of the best I’ve seen), it’s the integrated community that makes it revolutionary and so damn addictive. Props to founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger for figuring out the missing link in this niche that no one else could seem to pull off.

While there are features inherently missing, like a web presence for user profiles to name one, its very early in the development stages and it seems like they’re concentrating on building the community base, nailing down one thing at a time, before pushing out every feature request possible and then moving to the next phase.

With that said. Now the break down of the basic features and navigation of the Instagram app. After going through a very quick sign up process, your faced with a screen and 5 buttons at the bottom.

Feed: The feed is the real time chronological display of photos from the friends and people you Follow. You’ll see the newest photos pop up and each one displays the username, location, and length of time passed since the photo was posted at the top and a Like button and Commenting system below each photo. You can quickly scroll down through the Feed, Liking or Commenting on any you feel worthy.

Popular: This is a thumbnail view of the photos that are currently trending with a higher number of Likes or Comments. You can click on any of the photos to bring up that users feed, see the larger version of the photo, and scroll down to peruse that users other photo posts. This is a great way to find and follow people that take photos with an eye and style that you like. Click Back to the Popular page, refresh from the button in the top right and you’re presented with a mostly different set of currently trending photos.

Share: Click this and it opens up your Camera capabilities. You have the option to snap a photo right then or click a button to pull in a photo from your Photo Albums. If you have an iPhone 4 you have the option to choose the back or front facing camera and also to have the flash auto, on, or off. Once you’ve either taken a photo or pulled in an existing one, your presented with the screen to Move and Scale. Since Instagram outputs only square photos, you must crop your photo by moving it (one finger sliding) and scaling it (two finger outward pinch) within the provided bounding box.

The next screen allows you to choose from 11 different Filters or leave the photo natural and choose no filter at all. These filters were custom created by the Instagram team and provide some of the coolest looking effects from any I’ve seen from other Apps. The next screen allows you to Title the photograph, add a GPS enabled location, and choose to share it through a huge list of other social sites. Click Done and your photo is automatically posted to you Instagram feed for your Followers to view and saved to your Camera Roll.

News: This section alerts you of recent Comments, Likes, and new Followers and has Push Notification capabilities that pop up on your screen even when you’re not currently using the App.

Settings: The last button controls some basic options. You’ll have the ability to search for and invite friends by tapping into the friends you have on other networks like Facebook and Twitter as well as searching for someone by real name/username. Here you can also view your Account, which is basically your personal feed and shows your photos in chronological order with some stats of how many photos you’ve posted, how many followers you have, and how many people you’re following. You can drill down even further in most of these to see more detailed information. Other options include a section to edit your profile information, edit sharing settings (configure connections to other networks), set/change your profile picture, and choose to make your photos private or shareable.

Conclusion:Well that’s the skinny of it. Pretty simple and straight forward without any overwhelming, complicated, or cluttered features. Just the way I like it. It’s hard to guess just exactly where Instagram and this recent explosion of interest in mobile photography is headed. With the camera technology increasing with each iteration of new phone version and the flood of Apps which allow each of us to creatively alter our photos with the mere push of a button, I’m venturing to say this is just the beginning of something big if nothing else but for the sheer fact that its becoming so convenient now. The beauty and real value of Instagram is the built-in social networking aspect. This allows you to use any of your favorite photography Apps to create your picture and then fire up Instagram to easily share it with everyone.