Rest of the Day: Instagram Stories Get Stickers and Speakerphone Mode
Instagram is banking heavily on its Snapchat-inspired Stories, an ephemeral way of sharing photos and videos with friends. Today they are adding stickers and some other advanced features. About this and much more in today’s news.
- You can now add stickers to your Instagram Stories, including choosing the holidays on time, and there is no longer any limit on the amount of text you can add. Plus, you can save your entire history to your camera roll as one video, and you no longer need to press and hold the record button, which was an arbitrary restriction inspired by similar apps. I love Instagram stories; it gives me a place to post silly stuff. [Instagram]
- According to a Bloomberg report, Apple intended to use a larger battery in the latest MacBook Pros, but the battery failed key tests, so they shipped older designs instead. This perhaps explains why many users are complaining about poor battery life, which does not meet their original requirements. The Mac division, which is now a lower priority in the iPhone era, appears to be somewhat adrift and rife with internal divisions. [Bloomberg]
- Facebook is adding live audio as a new way for publishers to connect with subscribers. They will start with several partners, such as the BBC, to provide live streaming and podcast-style conversations, and will open the feature to more users next year. [TechCrunch]
- Prisma, the app best known for its scenic photo filters, now has its own image feed. Instead of just showing a timeline of people you know, it displays publicly available images that are near your location, and the more popular they are, the wider the images are. They also increase the resolution of images and get rid of the 1: 1 squared image limitation. [The Next Web]