Acme Ideas

I'd never been much of a photo-taker until about a year ago when I discovered the wonderful noticings, which did what it said on the URL and encouraged me to observe the world around me a little more and record things in the form of pictures as well as 140 character observations. At the time I was using an HTC Tattoo for mobile uploads and as I got more into photography I realised I would need a more serious camera and at Christmas begged for, and received, a Canon S90 which I absolutely adore.

But recently my new employers gave me an iPhone4 which does have, as everybody says, an awesome camera. My noticings uploads are increasingly rare (sorry, Toms) - the points system/game mechanic was never as interesting to me as the effect it had on my behaviour - and in instagram think that I might have found for me the ultimate social photography app.

Of course you can take pics from Instagram, but nicely it comes with a bunch of sweet, retro-themed presets which you can apply to these pics or any others from your iphone albums.

There are 12 nicely differentiated presets to choose from but what makes me warm to Instagram is that as well as letting me upload pics onto their own service (where I can view a feed of my friends pictures or a gallery of popular shots) I can also upload Instagram shots to flickr, twitter, tumblr or facebook. I don't particular need another bucket for my photos, so the fact that I'm easily able to upload to the services I'm already posting photos to is a good, positive move on Instagram's part.

I like this app and can see myself using it plenty in the future. Right now, the iPhone is the camera that's always in my pocket and Instagram is how I'm sharing my photos. Oh, and did I mention, it's free!