Instagram Widget for Panic’s Status Board

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I love the new iPad app Status Board from Panic. It’s actually something I was looking into building myself (displaying data feeds on an HDTV). And I’m a huge fan of anything that uses AirPlay in new ways. I think iPad+AppleTV+AirPlay is a underused combination.

So since I’m already familiar with the Instagram API (from my app InstaBrowser), I hacked together a simple little Instagram widget for Status Board.

It will prompt you to login to Instagram so it can read your feed. Then it will download your most recent 20 photos in your feed, cycle through them every 15 seconds. Every 15 minutes it will refresh the 20 photos with the most recent.

I put this together pretty quick, so I’m sure there are some errors. And there’s plenty more features I’d like to add. Let me know what you think @steven_stefanik.

Install Widget on Status Board!

 

Photo Apr 13, 7 30 06 PM

 

Nostalgia. It’s delicate, but potent.

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Has technology made things too easy?

Today, you can take some photos on your iPhone, and immediately post them to Facebook and Instagram for everyone to see. Or you’re having lunch with a friend who pulls out his iPhone and effortlessly swipes through some photos to show you.

What happened to the slide show?

Showing photos used to be an event.

You dig out the slide projector from the bottom of the closet. Set up the DA-LITE™ screen, or maybe just a bedsheet tacked to the wall. Carefully load the slides, one by one into a tray, snap it in. Turn off the lights and turn on the projector.

The screen lights up, the fan hums.

Your photos are on the big screen. Family and friends gather in the living room to watch. You tell a story about the first photo. Clunk-clunk, the tray rotates, the next photo appears on screen, another story is told.

Unfortunately the days of film, slides, and projectors are gone. Digital cameras and HDTVs are here to stay. But you can still have that emotional and nostalgic photo viewing experience.

Introducing The Carousel, for iPad.

The Carousel recreates the sights and sounds of a traditional slide projector. You’re presented with a bookshelf of your slides, the photos on your iPad and Instagram.

Select a box and the tray is loaded into the projector.

And your photos display on the projector screen.

For the ultimate experience, if you have an AppleTV, you can use AirPlay to display the projector screen on your HDTV, while you control the projector from your iPad.

 

The Carousel is available in the App Store for free.

 

Let it take you back in time, to a place where you ache to go again.

Mad Men ´The Carousel´ from Emilio on Vimeo.

QueueView: Find Out When Netflix Streaming Movies Expire

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Did a bunch of movies disappear from your streaming queue March 1st when the Starz deal expired?

Netflix to lose share of top movies
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118050662

Netflix to Lose Starz Content on Feb. 29
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/306219/20120228/netflix-starz-10-best-titles-expiration-slideshow.htm

All These Movies Will Vanish From Netflix Tomorrow
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2400893,00.asp

Did you wish you would’ve known beforehand that they were going to disappear?

With QueueView for iPhone, you’ll know! QueueView reveals the expiration date of any Netflix streaming movie. It will even sort your Netflix streaming queue by expiration date, so you can quickly see which movies you should watch next before they’re gone.

Purchase the in-app upgrade and gain the ability to search the Netflix streaming catalog, add and remove movies, and post a link to movies to your Facebook news feed. The Facebook feature is great for when you want to let your friends know about a good movie before it expires.

Another useful feature: move to the top. If your queue has a lot of items, it’s frustrating to scroll through the list on your TV trying to find something. Just pull out your iPhone or iPad, search your queue, and move the movie to the top and you’ll find it right away.

QueueView is available now in the App Store!
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/queueview/id482965016?mt=8

QueueView was created by Stefanik Software. QueueView icon designed by Brian Stefanik. Stefanik Software has one other app in the App Store, InstaBrowser, an Instagram viewer for iPad. Steven Stefanik is the owner and sole developer at Stefanik Software, located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.

QueueView + Facebook

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QueueView version 1.3 is now available. Now you can post movies to your Facebook news feed to let your friends know about a good movie you watched, and to remind them when it expires.

Another update: the ability to move a movie to the top of your queue. If you have over 100 movies in your queue, they can be hard to find on your Roku, AppleTV, or Xbox. Instead, search your queue in QueueView, move the movie you want to watch to the top of your queue, and then you can easily select it on your TV to watch.

Get QueueView 1.3 here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/queueview/id482965016?mt=8

If you enjoy QueueView, please rate and review in the App Store. Every little bit helps!

I still have lots more ideas I want to build into QueueView, and I intend to continue to release regular updates.

Apps Are Media

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http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/26/apps-are-media/

Not only are they a form of media in the way that consumer software and games have always been considered media (they compete with TV, books, and music for consumers’ time and attention). But increasingly, they are also subsuming other forms of media.

So when will traditional media get it? Do any of the TV networks want to have anything to do with Facebook right now? I mean something innovative, not the token fan page that no ones care about. Do they want to let you watch their shows on your phone?

They don’t care about doing anything new on the social/mobile platforms, they only want you to be able to get their product on a TV on the prescribed time. For now they’re still winning at that game. But it won’t last. Like the magazine publishers and newspapers found out, the advertisers are the key, and they moved their dollars to better targeted and measurable ads on AdWords and Facebook. The TV advertisers are on their way out too.

But what about Netflix? They’ve been held back because of this stupid Video Privacy Protection Act, but that’s now been revised. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings says Netflix is coming to Facebook. Watching, reviewing, rating, debating, and discussing movies are all social things that people want to do on Facebook. They enhance the experience.

Netflix is in the position to build the movie “app”, to build the platform that movies will be consumed and interacted with. This used to be the humble, disconnected DVD. I don’t think the studios have understood that yet, or they’re just afraid. Not only is the distribution channel completely changed, but so has what a movie/tv-series can actually be.

I’m expecting big things from Netflix in 2012.

Parse.com

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This looks really cool

https://parse.com

I haven’t used any of the iCloud API yet, but I’m guessing it is not this simple for data retrieval. I may have to try out this service for some of my future apps.

There is still a lot of work to be done building tools for iOS programming. All the free stuff in GitHub is great, but the projects can disappear. Backend services that you pay for, like parse, will be a growing market.