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If you've ever sighed in frustration at not being able to leap straight from discovering a song to playing it ad-nauseum on Spotify or Rdio, here's a heads-up. Shazam's iPad-focused iOS update integrates both streaming services with its discovery software in addition to a new look home screen and an auto-tagging mode that'll passively observe any music in the background. The mapping service has also been tweaked, letting you search and see what songs are being tagged in your neighborhood (or anyone else's, for that matter) and if you'd like to see it in action, head on past the break.
Update: Shazam's been in touch to clarify that Rdio is available for all users, but if you want Spotify integration, you'll have to upgrade to the paid version.
Filed under: Portable Audio/Video, HD, Mobile, Apple
It was just a matter of time, really. We're well acquainted with Facebook letting us tag friends in our photos, so it's no shock that a similar feature has just spread to the social network's mobile darling, Instagram. The Android and iOS apps will both hit version 3.5 today, letting users tag others in a shot (whether or not they're human). A new Photos of You section has also been added to members' profiles, where you can see any photo linked to that account. As you might imagine, Instagram is already trying to head off potential privacy issues -- account holders have until May 16th before their Photos of You sections become public, and settings will let them turn down connections to any revealing (or simply inaccurate) images. The update is already available through the iTunes App Store and should be landing soon in Google Play. Hit up the source links if you've ever wanted to see how other Instagrammers see you.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Facebook
Via: Instagram
Source: App Store, Google Play
Shazam doesn't want to let GetGlue control all our couch potato time -- it just rolled out an upgrade to its TV component that lets the mobile app provide social sharing, soundtrack and trivia details for nearly any TV show in the US, not just those deemed worthy of special attention. The app mirrors the program it's looking at -- we'll see stats instead of IMDb if we're watching hockey, for example. Whether or not attention is locked on the bigger screen in the living room, Shazam's little screen is making Facebook more a centerpiece of the experience. Media mavens can comment on friends' tagging habits and post their own tags to their Facebook timelines for all to see. The wider universe of TV shows should be available today, although we'll have to wait for an update in the "coming weeks" to broadcast our tastes in media with the rest of the world.
Continue reading Shazam now rides shotgun with any TV show in the US, gets cozier with Facebook
Filed under: Cellphones, Home Entertainment, Software, HD
Shazam now rides shotgun with any TV show in the US, gets cozier with Facebook originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Sep 2012 12:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Google has already been working on patents that could pick out faces and song melodies in our YouTube clips. Now, it might just have the ultimate tool: the technique in a just-granted patent could pick out objects in a video, whether they're living or not. Instead of asking the creator to label objects every time, Google proposes using a database of "feature vectors" such as color, movement, shape and texture to automatically identify subjects in the frame through their common traits -- a cat's ears and fast movement would separate it from the ball of yarn it's attacking, for example. Movie makers themselves could provide a lot of the underlying material just by naming and tagging enough of their clips, with the more accurate labels helping to separate the wheat from the chaff if an automated visual ranking system falls short. The one mystery is what Google plans to do with its newfound observational skills, if anything, although the most logical step would be to fill in YouTube keywords without any user intervention -- a potential time-saver when we're uploading that twelfth consecutive pet video.
Filed under: Internet
Google lands patent for automatic object recognition in videos, leaves no stone untagged originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Aug 2012 17:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Facebook has given developers that link to the social network with Open Graph a new way let let users play tag with their friends -- while also increasing exposure to their app. It's called mention tagging, and allows a user to link a friend in the text body of a message, and is not to be confused with action tagging, an existing feature which references friends only in story text. The option requires a deliberate action by the user, so the developer must implement a way to clearly show how to do that with an icon (as shown above for Foursquare) or drop-down menu, for instance. Apps must also distinguish between action and mention tags, and are not allowed to pre-fill them in the message -- that can only be done by the user. Though no privacy changes are needed, Facebook requires apps using the feature to request user approval before any action can be taken. All that would increase tagging and app visibility significantly -- so developers will likely be all over it.
Filed under: Internet
Facebook adds mention tagging to Open Graph for more efficient name-dropping originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Aug 2012 03:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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