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Shareworthy articles and content syndicated from other sites. These aren’t things I’ve written or necessarily endorse, for the record.
DishPal uses hashtags and group sharing brilliantly to put tasty food on display
While there’s no shortage of apps that let you take pictures and share them with a bunch of people, the ones that focus on food seem to be creating a niche for themselves. Recently, we wrote about how Foodspotting decided to relaunch as a discovery app to take on Yelp reviews.
It’s a smart move for them, but the pictures you take of food that you make at home still needs a home. That home could very well be a beautifully designed app for iOS and Android called DishPal.
What makes DishPal different is that it lets you elegantly share the dishes around you in groups or by using hashtags in addition to the typical stream of photos you’d find on Instagram.
Nom Nom Nom
DishPal lets you sign up using your Facebook account and once you get started you’ll notice that the app’s design is clean and as you tap through photos it uses really nice transition effects that feel really smooth. The power of the app isn’t just taking pictures of food, it’s really all about sharing groups of things like you would on sites like Pinterest.
One of the really cool features of DishPal is called “Party” where anyone can set up a themed group that invites others to share pictures of similar food. For example, you can set up a “Chocolate” party and everyone on the service who has taken a picture of amazing dishes with chocolate can add them to the party. It’s a great way to find new dishes and meet people:
In addition to these groupings which require you to participate, the DishPal app smartly uses hashtags as a way to automatically group photos together. Doing this for a photo sharing app for food makes absolute sense and makes discovery of great dishes even easier:
While some of the users on the platform are sharing their recipes upon request, it doesn’t seem like the community has taken to the idea of doing this with every photo they post. Of course you can still take photos of food from restaurants but I think that the more powerful play for DishPal would be to make itself the “homemade version” of Foodspotting.
If inviting people to add photos isn’t your thing, you can set up your own groups of food by using the app’s “Magazine” feature which you can set up for any theme you like. For example, if you wanted to make a Magazine for the top 10 dishes in San Francisco, you could do that in just a few taps. It’s yet another way that DishPal is utilizing curation to power discovery.
If you just want to share pictures and stories about food, checking out DishPal might be for you. I like taking pictures of food, but I don’t really want to provide a review for a restaurant like Yelp, Foursquare, and Foodspotting wants me to do. This app is for hardcore foodies.
➤ DishPal for iOS and Android
Hey Microsoft, This Isn’t Really The Best Way To Get People To Use Bing (MSFT)
Users of Microsoft’s security software got a rude surprise yesterday. They were blocked from using Google.
A security patch issued as part of Microsoft’s routine monthly updates started freaking out about google.com. The patch was for Microsoft popular freebie security tool, Microsoft Security Essentials, but also for users of Microsoft’s enterprise security product, Forefront.
It warned users that Google.com was a malicious web site infected with a piece of malware known as calledExploit:JS.Blacole.BW, otherwise known as the Blackhole Exploit Kit, Softpedia reports.
Customers flocked to Microsoft support forums to complain. Many said they were blocked from Google with every browser they used.
To its credit, Microsoft listened to complaints, admitted the problem and corrected it today.
In the ultimate irony, Microsoft was crowing yesterday about its 10-year anniversary of its security program. One of its senior security program managers, Dustin Childs, even went so far as to explain why Microsoft's Patch Tuesday, which is the second Tuesday of each month “is what we live for.”
Very funny, Microsoft. We all feel much safer knowing you are protecting us from malicious sites like Google.
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6 Charts That Reveal The Truth About Pinterest’s Crazy Growth
Pinterest, the social media phenomenon, has been cagey about revealing any internal data.
RJMetrics, a business intelligence software company, got tired of waiting.
It wrote a script and analyzed random Pinterest user data. All in, about 1 million pins were examined.
RJMetrics found a few things worth highlighting:
Pinterest users post items from an extremely large number of sites. Etsy items are “pinned” or shared the most, but Etsy still only counts for 3% of total pins.
Pinterest engages users twice as much as Twitter did at its age
80% of pins are repins, or things other user have already shared.
User interaction is declining, but it's probably because Pinterest has been written about so much lately. New users are flocking to check it out who aren't part of the core demographic. Thus they lose interest quickly and leave. Before, Pinterest spread quickly among loyal users — like moms.
Etsy gets the most pins and repins of any other site on the web. It still only accounts for 3% of all pins.
Naturally, most of Pinterest’s pins aren’t unique. 80% are repinned, or shared on Pinterest, from someone else’s Pinterest page rather than the original source.
40-60% of users still actively pin or share items on Pinterest 8 weeks after they’ve joined.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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Netra turns smartphones into a $2 portable eye exam
Having got my first pair of bifocals recently, this two dollar smartphone add-on that tests vision just caught my eye. Pocketables recently picked up on the Netra, which was shown off in a TEDxBoston event by Ramesh Raskar, Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT’s Media Lab. The Netra clips to a phone and users tap buttons on the touchscreen display until images seen in the Netra are aligned. The device can measure for nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism.
In developed nations, eye care is readily available, but Raskar notes that of the 2 billion in the world with corrective vision needs, not all of those have access to eye exam equipment; particularly in developing areas. Uncorrected vision leads to a higher illiteracy rate, higher unemployment rates and other related challenges. For these areas, a low-cost device such as the Netra can help solve this problem. Here’s a closer look at how this device works — it creates an inverse Shack-Hartmann sensor for measurement — and what it could mean to hundreds of millions that may have smartphones closer than a eye doctor.
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