I hope your weekend has been a good one – on this end I got to record the 100th episode of my Observed Tech PODCAST so I hope you take a chance to listen to it. There is $100 available to be won as part of that show!
6tagram Windows Phone Client to be Officially Supported by Instagram – OK so maybe not exactly officially supported, designated or anything else. After writing this story on Friday morning based on tweets we saw from 6tagram’s developer Rudy Huyn some clarity has surfaced. First the app will not be an official app – which is what we said as well. Rudy indicated that it would be officially supported by Instagram and Facebook but it now appears that the app is being checked by Instagram, who contacted Rudy initially, for legal reasons and to make sure it is not doing anything that it should not with the API. I expect if there are any issues Rudy will sort them out in short order. 6tagram is in closed beta right now and Rudy expects to expand that later. It is a very well done app but that is not a surprise based on his Vine app for posting Twitter videos because the two apps share base code. However, I suspect that this may mean an official app from Instagram and Facebook is no where on the horizon since they are apparently OK in checking out 6tagram as a third party app.
Microsoft cuts the price of Surface Pro by $100 – Although it is not as deep of a price cut that the Surface RT saw a couple of weeks ago this $100 does a lot to make the Surface Pro, especially the 64GB device, a very attractive option since it is a full blown Windows device. The 64GB Surface Pro will sell for $799 and the 128GB unit for $899. This deal is not permanent though like the Surface RT price drop is as the Surface Pro cut will expire at the end of August.
Instance has over 330,000 Windows Phone users – We kicked this catchup post talking about 6tagram, which has just entered a closed beta and gotten a lot of attention this weekend, but the app that led the way with Instagram access for Windows Phone users was Daniel Gary’s Instance. It was revealed this weekend that the app has over 330,000 users, which is tremendous, but if you take a look at the app in the Windows Phone Store it has over 8,000 ratings for an average of 4.5 stars. We are lucky to have two great choices on the Windows Phone platform for such a popular service and at some point these companies have to see the demand is growing on the platform and then do something about it by either developing an official app or hire one of these guys to build it for them!
Have a great week everyone!
