• It’s NOT an app that’s meant to replace Instagram or your iPhone’s in-built camera app. It’s meant to compliment it.
• It’s NOT just for hipsters. It’s for everyone. Put any images you take together in series of two, three, five, etc. Fancy filters need not be present in your images to do so.
• It’s NOT another social media picture sharing app. Again, it’s just meant to help you sequence your images to help tell a little story with them.

Here’s a sequence I put together a couple of months ago to showcase a spring outfit of mine:

Anyway, they have a contest running right now that is definitely worth telling you about. Here’s the official word from Diptic:

We’re running our first official Diptic contest! The theme is “Tell the Story,” so we’re looking for entries that use Diptic to tell a story. Whether it’s your child learning how to ride a bike, the seasons changing or something funny that happened last night, we want to see how you use Diptic to tell a story with your photos.

To enter, post your submissions to Twitter with the hashtag #DipticTellTheStory. Or, you can email them to us at contest@dipticapp.com.

We’ll post submissions here so everyone can see them. After the contest closes, the Diptic Team will review all entries and announce the winner on June 11, 2012.

Time frame:
Contest Begins: May 10, 2012 at 7 a.m. PST
Contest Ends: June 4, 2012 at 12 a.m. PST

Our judging will be based on:
Creativity, aesthetics, and best interpretation of the theme “Tell the Story.”

Prize:
The prize for this contest will be an OlloClip, the fisheye, wide-angle and macro lens for the iPhone that fits in your pocket!

Additional details:

• Diptics submitted should have at least 2 frames
• Maximum of 5 entries per person, per contest
• App stacking is okay, but it needs to be clear and obvious that Diptic was used in each entry
• By entering, you agree that you agree to the contest Terms & Conditions.

If you have any questions, ask @dipticapp on Twitter or email contest@dipticapp.com. Good luck!

A quick time lapse of a Seattle street.

Will people take to dynamic hipster images vs. static ones? Time will tell.

For those not up to speed on this story, here’s a quick run down:

1. Sarah worked for Arrington at TechCrunch
2. When Arrington sold TechCrunch to AOL for $25 mil, Sarah was pissed
3. Nevertheless, Sarah stayed on at TechCrunch after the acquisition until November, 2011
4. Sarah launched PandoDaily in January, 2012 and Arrington, her friend, assumed a role as a board member and investor
5. Sarah ousted him as a board member last Monday because he still wanted to be involved at Disrupt, a TechCrunch sponsored annual event

So passionate is she that she had to give Mike the boot? Why? What’s the big deal? Why the drama? Because Disrupt and TechCrunch and Arrington all wanted to play together – you got bummed out? Cry me a river lady.

Reality television network Bravo hopes to connect you though with LOL Cat creator Ben Huh, his wife and the entire LOL Cat team with a new show appropriately titled “Huh?” We don’t know much more than that at this time as Huh has been uncharacteristically quiet about this rumor since Mashable broke the story.

Story developing…

That's me (left), Ben Huh (center) and @digitalkvan (right)

“A type of imagery that sits between a still image and a video and they allow you to capture a moment in time as opposed to an instant in time and tell a little bit more of a narrative.”

While designers might be quick to point out that this feature has been available for some time already as an animated gif, the Cliplet program actually does much of the work for you. Drag, drop, loop and export! Voila. Your Cliplet (or animated gif) is finished! No photoshop or design skills needed!

Truthfully, I’m not sure how much use this program will see despite how easy it is. I’m of the mindset that we’ve already moved beyond the Flash/Animated GIF/MySpace era and onto one where ‘less is more’ on the internet. To this day, Facebook still doesn’t allow the use of animated gifs. What does that tell you?

Microsoft Research Cliplets is provided free of charge and without official support. However, if you have questions or issues, you may find help at the Cliplets Forum, which is monitored by the developers and provides community-based support. You may also want to view our Tutorials.

Image credit: Long Zheng on Flickr

Last month Microsoft released the much anticipated Consumer Preview version of Windows 8 for those wanting to test drive it. Still far from RTM (Release to Manufacturer), the new Windows OS is already causing quite the controversy with its minimalist UI. The controversy? Baby boomers can’t figure out how to navigate back to the Metro-themed Start screen once they’re on their desktop.

Seen below is the dad of Lockergnome‘s Chris Pirillo. He’s trying out Windows 8 for the first time and to demonstrate how counter-intuitive it is, Pirillo films his dad’s frustration for all in his audience to see.

Pirillo’s video has already inspired other tech geeks around the world to film their dads using Windows 8 for the first time. Here’s another baby boomer dad trying to figure out how to get back to the Start screen. While Pirillo’s video didn’t reveal the Microsoft shortcut to the Start screen, this user’s video does.

Local Brew is funny. And, it’s funny not just to Seattleites. Their video “vignettes” as I’ll call them, play to all stereotypes- i.e. hipsters, cougars, tipping your barista and so forth. The best thing about the show is that the features are really short making the show perfect for today’s A.D.D. fueled internet culture.

Hey, whether you’re in Seattle or you’ve just stumbled across Socialrazzi because it’s the next best thing to Mashable, give Local Brew a look. #funny

*Data pulled from 2/21/2011 – 2/21/2012.

Top 3 social tools right now?

1. Ifttt.com
2. Buffer
3. Hootsuite

Top 3 reasons to be an expat in London?

1. It’s so easy to get to the rest of Europe
2. Amazing museums
3. Castles!

Top 3 Euro startups to keep an eye on?

1. http://Spotify.com
2. http://Soundcloud.com
3. http://www.peerindex.com/

Top 3 reasons you like working at Waggener Edstrom?

1. Being at a larger independent agency gives us the size to do really cool stuff without a lot of the pressure of the big public agencies.
2. We have great clients.
3. We have great people.

Top 3 funny English sayings?

1. A shed load (meaning a lot)
2. When they say diary instead of calendar. The first time you hear an exec say, “Let’s get that in the diary,” try not to laugh.
3. Pretty much anything said with an English accent is funny.

Top 3 things that drew you to a career in social media?

1. I’ve always been interested in how communications technology affects our culture.
2. I’m ADHD and that works to my advantage in this space.
3. Being a geek is cool and I get to work with other geeks.

Top 3 favorite RSS feeds?

1. GigaOm is my favorite tech blog right now, I even subscribe to their Pro version, they have some great reports.
2. I really like Pando Daily and their Pando Ticker feed.
3. HBR has the best business blogs IMO.

Top 3 social media pet peeves?

1. Whining
2. Complaining
3. Spam

Top 3 things you love about blogging?

1. Comments
2. I like writing. It helps me think
3. Geeking out over tweaking WordPress

Top 3 reasons why today’s social media agency could kill yesterday’s PR agency?

1. More efficient
2. Good results for a little amount money
3. Lack of legacy

Top 3 reasons why yesterday’s PR agency will kill today’s social media agency?

1. Better processes
2. Big media results with big impact
3. Strong relationships with clients

Top 3 benefits to crowdsourcing?

1. Audience participation
2. Tapping into latency in the workforce
3. It forces companies to be more collaborative and transparent

Top 3 reasons everyone should be using Path?

1. Path is where social media people go to not talk about social media.
2. You can choose to post to Facebook and Twitter if you want. It’s efficient.
3. All the cool kids are doing it.

Top 3 social media predictions for 2012?

1. Crowdsourcing and Gamification are going to be better together.
2. There will be a backlash to social media analytics. The cost of measuring and analyzing isn’t always worth the benefit.
3. As much as people complain about losing their privacy, they will give up even more of it because that transparency enables huge benefits in collaboration.

(He loves doing annual predictions and you can see all his predictions here.)

Top 3 social media hotspots in EMEA?

1. London
2. Berlin
3. Turkey

Top 3 kooky titles for a social media professional?

1. Director of New Media*
2. Web 2.0 Strategic Lead*
3. VP of Social Media*

*These are all the titles he’s held over the last 6 years.

Top 3 reasons why you miss Seattle?

1. The people
2. The mountain and trees
3. The music scene

Top 3 things you’d tell your 2006 self about the internet today?

1. Blog more, earlier and use more video.
2. Facebook is going to be bigger anyone thinks.
3. Learn how to code.

(You can see his video on that topic here.)