1. Straight from the Vine
Goodbye, Poke, Snapchat and Cinemagram. Vine is here.
Developed by Twitter, Vine operates nearly the same as the aforementioned apps: tap the screen to shoot video, share with your followers.
Each video can only be six seconds long, but you can break that six seconds up into three two-second clips, two three-second clips, six one-second clips or whatever you want, depending on how quickly you can tap the screen.
Unlike Snapchat or Poke, the videos aren’t deleted — ever. It’s just like Instagram and Cinemagram: anyone can see any of your posts, especially if they’re tagged.
Additionally, Twitter doesn’t moderate anything on Vine, meaning explicit content will make its way onto the new social network.
Speaking of that…
2. No more 500px?
Apple recently pulled 500px, a popular photo-sharing app, off the app store for making explicit material “easily accessible.”
This is despite a “safe search” filter being turned on by default, hiding all nude pictures.
In fact, the only way to turn off safe mode is to visit the desktop site, login, and turn it off manually.
I’d understand Apple’s reasoning if these pictures were pornographic in some way. Now, ignoring a debate on what is and isn’t “porn,” the photos on 500px could hardly be considered such — they’re mostly artistic portraits.
Unlike the #porn tag on Vine, which is exactly what it sounds like.
Why isn’t Vine being pulled? I’m not saying it should be, but there’s a big difference between nude portraits only visible to users who manually turn off a “safe” filter and, you know, the actual porn on Vine.
3. Unlocking is now illegal
Sick of AT&T and Verizon locking you into a 2-year contract?
The easy solution used to be simply unlocking your phone, allowing it to be used on any network.
That’s no longer an option.
The U.S. Copyright Office and Library of Congress have made unlocking devices without carrier permission illegal, as an exemption under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Why? Because it cheats the carriers out of your money.
That $200 iPhone 5 actually costs around $600 to the carrier. You just get it for cheap because of that two-year contract deal. (The carriers figure in the cost of the contract to the discount on the phone, subsidizing the device.)
Disagree with the ruling? You’re not alone. A White House Petition opposing the decision currently has 24,205 of 75,795 signatures required for a response from the White House.
While I’ve never had the need to unlock my phones, I don’t like this “deal” carriers have worked out with the U.S. government. It’s my phone, I should be able to do with it what I want.
Unlocked phones didn’t really hurt AT&T’s $32 billion in revenue earned last quarter.
