Pinstagram

"Callida Junctura"?that what Horace said was at the root of all inventions?"beautiful joinings." What could be more beautiful than the joining of two of tech's hottest commodities?Pinterest and Instagram? That's exactly the idea behind Pinstagram (free). More than just a Web portal for your Instagram account (wait, wouldn't that be something Facebook might want to try?), Pinstagram is surprisingly slick, considering it started as a gag by the co-founders of Tapisto.com. iPad and Mac apps are coming, according to the site's makers.

Signup, Setup, Interface
To get started with Pinstagram, you simply sign in with your Instagram (Free, 3 stars) credentials and allow the site access to your info and actions in the photo social network. A mini-wizard then hand-holds you through the simple interface's seven buttons at top right, for feed and Facebook and Twitter sharing settings. A search bar lets you search for any photos from Instagram. Aside from Twitter and Facebook share buttons at the bottom, there's nothing more to the interface to distract from the meat of your Instagram feed.

On first view my subscribed photo entries filled five columns, but if I resized the browser window smaller or larger this number would decrease or increase from one to as many as my display width would allow. Infinite scrolling behavior means you don?t have to click a Next Page link to proceed down through the photo feed. Clicking on a photo (which on the computer is already about the same size as it would be on your iPhone or other mobile) opens it into a large square view that's more enjoyable than the cramped iPhone view.

The meat of Pinstagram is your Instagram feed, beautifully displayed in the Pinterest-style waterfall view. I much prefer this to competitor Webstagram's single column of photos with their large comment boxes to the right. Pinstagram's larger individual photo view is also better, though Webstagram does offer a large lightbox view and an original size view that open separate Web pages; Pinstagram's large view is a more convenient pop-over window. The last nail in the coffin for Webstagram, though, is its obtrusive ads.

Just as in the Instagram iPhone app, you can click on user handles and hash tags to see more photos from a particular user or on a topic. Once you're on a user's page, buttons let you follow them and see how many followers they have. But you can't browse the list of these follows as you can in the app (actually a useful way to discover users you'd want to follow). Also as in the app, Pinstagram's Popular button, a star, shows the service's top liked photos, also with infinite scrolling. A final great way to discover photos on a topic of interest is Pinstagram's search bar.

Interface isn't the only thing Pinstagram takes the lead from Pinterest on: You can also "pin" photo entries to Pinterest (Free, 3.5 stars) itself. To pin, you choose a category in the popup?Books Worth Reading, Favorite Places, My Style, and so on?and enter any comments you have below the pre-inserted photo title. ?If you choose to in Settings, you can have any of your likes in the site shared on Facebook or Twitter.

Pinstagram can use your browser's location information to show you nearby Instagram photos, thus adding a capability that you'll find in neither Instagram nor Pinterest. Each time I clicked this option, my browser's location-sharing permission box kicked in, and after okaying this, I saw local Instagram photos?though not in infinite scrolling view.

The chief downside of Pinstagram: It's only one way?there's no way to add photos to your Instagram stream, though it's understandable that Instagram itself would want to keep control over this. And because Pinstagram is so new, you may encounter the occasional instance of flakey behavior: I occasional couldn't get the Local view to reload, and sometimes experienced an unduly long timer-spinner.

Instagram in Web's Clothing
Pinstagram lifts the biggest restriction from Instagram?the requirement of a mobile phone to view it. True, you can't post new pictures through the new site, but you get all of Instagram's viewing options and more. Seeing the photos in larger Web size is often more gratifying than on the small mobile screen, and now the Pinterest fans can pin their photos. Instagram and Pinterest fans alike need to take Pinstagram out for a spin: despite a few glitches, it does a fine job of uniting the concepts and content of both.

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