Four ways to remove your pictures from Photo Stream in case of emergency

Having a picture of your genitals displayed on your living room's TV wasn't probably what the team of Apple engineers considered when working on Photo Stream. One of the potentially most useful features in iCloud just happens to be the most annoying. The brilliant service that backs up your pictures automatically to the cloud can turn into a nasty surprise if you don't control the snaps taken with your iOS devices... And users are learning the lesson the hard way.

Let's rewind to last June when Apple introduced iCloud. Advertised as "automatic, effortless and free", it isn't exactly foolproof. The back up service for all your pictures taken with your iOS devices automatically pushes a copy to all the other Apple products linked to that iCloud account, including your Apple TV, home iMac or your kid's iPod Touch. The service does not only manage to keep a safe record of your shots, but also fix one of the most annoying bits for every iPhone user: importing your pictures to your desktop. 

If you're using the service, there's a reason why you're reading this post. Like many of us keeping every IIII picture taken with your iPhone cannot be a good idea. Unlike that camera roll where you can delete those blurry, embarrassing or simply compromising pictures in a couple of taps, Photo Stream doesn't have the option. Why? Many of us are still asking the same question and I don't want to be misleading: there's no easy way to do it.  

I have, however, scoured the support forums and got some ways to get around this issue. I also noticed that this seems to be a very popular request from users who would like, or desperately need, to delete individual pictures from Photo Stream. I'm hopeful someone will look into this issue and introduce a reasonable way to do this in a future iOS update. In the meantime, we can try these solutions: 

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Instagram photo frames and wireless speakers

Once again I'm writing about Kickstarter, the awesome site that allows individuals to invest in the ideas of very talented people. I previously talked about the iPad and Kindle stand PadPivot, the letterpress app LetterMpress and most recently about the stylish iPhone bumper i+Case, which recently completed its funding. 

Today I'm bringing two fantastic ideas that have a strong relation with our iDevices and that still need a small push to reach the minimum investment goal.

An idea like Thumbtiles by Steven Johnson would be impossible without the explosion of the iPhoneography phenomenon powered by apps like Instagram, Hipstamatic and the likes. The project consists of a number of minimalist square picture frames where you can display your creations. It's like taking your photography hobby out of the Internet to display it at home or office.

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Trover - Instagram goes treasure hunting

Two months after my initial ramblings about the boom of social networking apps and I'm seeing some of them moving forward. The location-based trend hunting app Trover has received an update that addresses one of its surprising omissions at launch: the lack of Twitter integration. While you could still view everyone's discoveries, you needed to use a Facebook account to share yours, something that I thought was limiting the app's potential. 

Trover [iTunes Link] is a location-based take on photo-sharing services for mobile devices that allows you to find and share interesting things in your vicinity. The app finds your location and automatically loads the pictures others have taken in your area of all stuff worth highlighting. A quick search in the App Store is enough to see that the app is not exactly a pioneer, but I love the way it allows users to express themselves without the limitations other photo apps have. 

First of all, you're invited to look without being forced to collaborate. When you find yourself in a new place you have never been, visiting a new city or just going for a walk, you can always launch Trover to see what others are liking in that area.

You can always tailor the main stream to your interests — urban art, independent shops or restaurants — it's completely up to you. This is why I think Trover is better than other alternatives in my opinion, as I prefer to see a big pool of pictures to choose from rather than just some about an specific topic. 

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Hipstamatic introduces Family Albums and attempts to restore peace in UI chaos

The popular Hipstamatic app has received a new update including the brand new Family Album feature—a solution to share and organise your photos. iPhoneography fans missing social features in the app should be happy now that the new update adds Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr support. Perhaps not the most ground-breaking or original addition but a serious need for those used to the more social Instagram. 

I just installed the new 220 update to see what the new albums are all about, since the release notes are not very descriptive. There are three types of albums for specific needs, all very similar but with small differences that just add more complexity to the app's UI. The simplest of them, simply called "photo album" is a folder to curate your favorite pics. It turns out that family albums are Hipstamatic own way to deal with your photo collections, in a similar way events work in iPhoto. The process of adding HipstaPrints to the folder is somewhat cumbersome, since there's no bulk method to add several prints at once—you'll need to do this individually. 

Magic Albums smart way to filter prints shared by others, selecting a location, date, tags and people. I can see the feature being very useful to find pictures of particular events or taken close to landmarks that interest you. Between you and me, I'm calling these smart folders. When you first select the Family Albums option, the app will automatically create one of these according to your GPS location.

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