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Geeked: Fake Instagram got Bounced -- a little too late
Feb 12, 2012 (Beaver County Times - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
I GOT A NICE SURPRISE -- initially, anyway -- on Saturday morning, when I noticed that an Android version of Instagram had finally been released.
If you're not familiar with Instagram, you should be, especially if you're an iThing user. It's a photo filter app as well as a social platform, and it does some pretty cool stuff. The current version of the app has 17 filters, so your camera phone snapshots suddenly take on the look of something other than a camera phone snapshot -- a Polaroid, an artsy black-and-white frame, a contact sheet or a weathered old pic from your grandma's photo album.
You register, of course, when you sign up for the app, and when you add friends, you can like or comment on their submissions. And your instant artwork is easily shared on Facebook, Twitter, your Tumbler or other social sites. Instagram is whimsical and engaging, and it's one of the defining apps for iPhone.
Understandably, Android users have been waiting impatiently for their own version of Instagram; they have, in fact, endured nearly constant rumors that an Android version was just around the corner. So, yeah, when Instagram popped up in the Android Market on Saturday, a whole lot of people, myself included, were pretty excited.
Downloaded. Opened. Although the logo looked the same, the interface looked different. And there was no option to sign in to my already-established account.
I was dubious.
I snapped a pic of my wife in our living room. And as I tried to save it, I was met with a dialogue box: "You must rate this 5 stars or Instagram filters will not work."
And that, boys and girls, is the very definition of a scam. User ratings help determine where an app is played in the Android store; they also help other users find reliable and trustworthy apps for their devices. Forcing a five-star rating before you ever have a chance to use the app should raise red flag after red flag after red flag.
I forged ahead, simply because I recognized this as column fodder. On my first try, I turned down the opportunity to rate the app; it simply shut down. On the second try, I agreed to rate it, but gave it just one star and griped about the forced rating; true to its word, it didn't return me to the app. And I noticed one other thing -- when I downloaded "Instagram," it also loaded two spam apps. I was not pleased; that's not only annoying, it's potentially dangerous.
You won't have the opportunity to make the specific mistake I did, because the app, after going through a name change to something like "Instagram Viewer," has since been removed from the market. You could, however, accidentally come across something similar, unless Google's malware scanning system, called Google Bouncer, starts working like it should.
The timing here is especially irritating, because just three days before the fake Instagram appeared in the Market, Google released a statement saying that Bouncer had been working on scanning Android apps for malicious software "for a while now;" the same statement said Google had seen a 40-percent drop in the number of potentially malicious apps in the market.
And yet on Saturday, the Bouncer missed a pretty big one.
Apple gets a bum rap about the control it exerts over the apps it approves for distribution in its App Store. But as I saw last weekend, sometimes control isn't a bad thing at all.
SUPER (AND NOT SO SUPER) TECH
I was generally underwhelmed by Super Bowl XVLXXIVILIXI -- the game, the halftime show, the commercials, everything. But in between shouting curses at Bill Belichick and rolling my eyes at yet another dumb Bud Light spot, I noticed a couple of tech-related commercials worth mentioning.
(Note: If you're reading Geeked in The Times, be sure to head over to timesonline.com when you're done to check out both spots.)
The bad one? We've seen Samsung poke at Apple users before. You know the spots -- the ones with bored hipsters waiting in line for the newest iThing who immediately re-think their lives after spotting someone using the cool new Samsung device. Samsung's Super Bowl spot follows the same formula, until Bored Hipster No. 1 shouts at the guy holding a Samsung Galaxy Note: "It's got a pen? This is awesome!"
Yes. A pen. Otherwise known as a stylus. Otherwise known as a smartphone "technology" that hasn't been seen in the wild for more than a decade. I immediately had flashbacks to my last Palm Treo -- it was an awesome phone, for 2002, and the stylus was a big part of the experience. But in 2012? A stylus? This is what you want us to be excited about?
The good one? Best Buy stayed away from dogs and celebrities -- at least the kind we'd see on TMZ -- in favor of highlighting some rock stars of the tech world. The spot featured people who developed our camera phones, voice recognition, and apps such as Words With Friends, Shazam and, yes, Instagram.
In a playing field that's crowded with bombast, beer and boobs, Best Buy's understated spot was refreshing. And seeing a nod to some of the geekiest superheroes we have was one of the best parts of the whole Super Bowl extravaganza.
___ (c)2012 the Beaver County Times (Beaver, Pa.) Visit the Beaver County Times
(Beaver, Pa.) at www.timesonline.com Distributed by MCT Information Services
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