vine

It was a slow week in rumorland, but a couple stories managed to make their way onto the scene.

HTC's long-rumored HTC One Mini is back, now with leaked pictures and specs. The miniature version of HTC's flagship would be thinner, shorter, but still sporting that unibody aluminum design. And now it'll fit into your pocket!

Samsung could also be hopping aboard the mini train, possibly announcing a Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini at an event in London on Thursday. This version of the Galaxy will have a 4.3-inch screen, and will fit nicely into smaller hands.

Also on Thursday, Facebook is hosting a supersecret event, where it might unveil its answer to Twitter's Vine: Instagram videos. What do you think? Is Facebook just being a copycat, or is it really onto something here? Leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts.

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Facebook and Instagram might have a new feature up their sleeves.

At its special press event on June 20, Facebook will unveil video support for Instagram, TechCrunch is reporting, citing a person who claims to have knowledge of its plans. Similar to Twitter's Vine, which allows users to post 6-second videos, Instagram's videos would be limited to 5 to 10 seconds.

Vine has been growing rapidly, as users have found it to be a worthwhile alternative to tweeting or sharing pictures. Users are able to record several seconds of video, and then share it with friends. Vine videos … Read more

The Vine is pretty clever. It shows, in six rapid seconds, how to quickly and easily put up a simple bookshelf.

Done in the stop-motion technique that has been the hallmark of most of the best Vines to surface so far, the video is an ad for Lowe's home improvement stores, and is part of a series called, appropriately, #lowesfixinsix.

Published more than three weeks ago, the video got a fresh life today when Twitter featured it as the inaugural poster child for its new #CreativeFavorites program, an initiative that aims to celebrate the best work being done on … Read more

On Monday Twitter announced the release of Vine for Android. The short-video service, originally only available to iOS users has amassed over 13 million users since its launch.

One of the features touted in the announcement and release notes for the Android version of the app was the ability to zoom when recording a video.

With that in mind -- as most Android users testing Vine out presumably did -- I launched Vine, created a new video, and attempted to zoom with the familiar pinch-to-zoom method; it didn't work. I tried double-tapping; it didn't work. At this point … Read more

Twitter is bringing Vine, the popular 6-second looping video application, to Google's Android operating system, months after debuting it for Apple's iOS.

Vine launched on January 24 for people with iPhones and iPads and has climbed to 13 million users, but none for Android. That vacuum, on world's No. 1 mobile operating system platform, forced Android smartphone users into circumventions to view the snippets.

The Android version gets many of the same capabilities: easy video creation with automatic playback and sound; the Explore feature, for discovering popular posts and seeing what's trending; and Find Friends, to … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO -- Instagram is not a photography company.

That message, which might shock some of the 100 million-plus people who have uploaded more than 5 billion photos to Instagram, is what co-founder Kevin Systrom made clear during a discussion tonight among him and co-founder Mike Krieger and Digg founder and Google Ventures partner Kevin Rose.

The discussion, part of the Commonwealth Club's Inforum series, was an opportunity for hundreds of Instagram fans to hear first-hand a bit of the history -- and perhaps some of the future -- of the popular photo-sharing app. Even if that's not … Read more

UCLA Health isn't the first hospital to live-tweet a brain surgery, but it may be the first to employ 6-second video medium Vine as part of the proceedings. Surgeons on Thursday implanted a brain pacemaker to counteract the effects of Parkinson's disease in a patient and sent out Twitter updates using both Instagram and Vine.

The procedure has generated such memorable tweets as "Removing the skin and drilling through the skull for electrode placement." and "Electrode is prepared for implantation. Patient is being woken up at this time."

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Vine is a sensation--one driven by celebrities, startups, and bloggers around the world, and the pedigree of being created by Twitter. As one of dozens of different video recording and sharing apps on the App Store, however, what makes Vine unique and worthy of a download?

Vine's premise is very basic. Record three, short segments of video and the software will string them together in a loop. While on its face value it might seem very elementary, there are actually some incredibly creative, unique applications of the platform, and because Vine is also a social platform, allowing you to … Read more