What's the situation with the Snapchat hack?

The Snapchat security vulnerability is a story that has quietly grumbled on over the Christmas and New Year period, but is hopefully reaching some kind of resolution, at least for the bugs highlighted on Christmas Eve. To recapitulate, Gibson Security discovered potential exploits in Snapchat's Find Friends feature and informed the app's developers of them in August 2013. One of these bugs allowed someone to upload a list of random telephone numbers and match them to Snapchat users' names. The other allowed the creation of multitudes of dummy accounts. Bring on the spammers and maybe even stalkers, then. Although Snapchat made some moves to address the faults, it didn't close the loopholes entirely. Gibson Security, therefore, took it upon itself to document Snapchat's API on Christmas Eve, making the vulnerability obvious for anyone who wanted to abuse it. The hole was exploited on New Year's Eve, when 4.6 million of Snapchat users' partially redacted names and telephone numbers were published online, albeit for a limited period of time.

With the ante having been upped, Snapchat has been forced to issue an update to its app that patches the vulnerability. It hasn't been released yet, but when it is, it will allow users to opt out of the Find Friends feature after they have verified their telephone number. Snapchat has also stressed that no other information, including images, was accessed during the attack.

Bugs happen and so do security breaches; what matters is how companies and developers respond to them. Perhaps the most disturbing element of this situation isn't that Snapchat users' details could potentially have been exploited, but Snapchat's ostrich approach to security. Rather than addressing the situation thoroughly and immediately when first informed of it, it made a half-baked attempt to implement a patch that could still be exploited. When it was called out, it reacted slowly with a fix that is opt-in rather than opt-out, and it hasn't apologised to its users. Food for thought.

You can read what Snapchat had to say for itself on its blog.

Happy 2014!

Haje Jan and I would like to wish you a happy and healthy, peaceful and prosperous 2014. For us, 2013 has seen new books, new projects, and new travels and encompassed a gamut of emotions, spanning thrilling, stressful, exciting, and rewarding. Re-establishing Photocritic has certainly been a part of that experience. Thank you for joining us on its evolution. We're looking forward to making it bigger, better, and stronger in 2014, and to having you along for the ride! And to send you off in style, here are a few of our favourite photos from 2013:

What is zoom?

Z is for zoom. We couldn't finish off our alphabetical meander through photography's fundamentals anywhere else, could we? I've had a few people ask me, over the years, what's the difference between zoom and telephoto, and indeed is there one. Yes, yes there is a difference.

The simple explanation

Simply put, a zoom lens is one that benefits from variable focal lengths. For example, the 18-55mm kit lens that comes with an entry level dSLR is a zoom lens. At its widest point it has an 18mm focal length; at its narrowest, it has a 55mm focal length, and you can shift it to any focal length between the two. This means it spans from wide-angle to 'normal' focal lengths, giving it a fair degree of flexibility and making it useful as a first lens.

Telephoto lenses can be zoom lenses, too, for example a 70-200mm lens. Or you can have wide-angle zoom lens, for example a 17-35mm lens. Then there are zoom lenses with focal length ranges that stretch from wide-angle to telephoto, for example 24-105mm.

Whether the focal length range is wide-angle, telephoto, or spans the two is irrelevant; it's the fact that the lens covers a range of focal lengths that makes it a zoom. If you want to put it another way: a zoom lens is the opposite of a prime lens, which has a fixed focal length.

Advantages and disadvantages

The obvious advantage of a zoom lens is that it offers you flexibility. Being able to zip from 70mm right in to 200mm with the twist of the wrist is very handy, so is having wide-angle and telephoto capability in one place. And of course they let you mess around with zoom-bursting, which is always good fun.

However, that flexibility comes at a cost. The moving parts required to give zoom lenses their zoom can compromise their sharpness, give them more noticable aberrations, and limit their apertures. Whereas you'll readily find prime lenses with fast apertures, zoom lenses tend to be a bit slower and they often have variable maximum apertures.

The 18-55mm kit lens that we spoke earlier won't have a fixed maximum aperture across its focal range. Instead, it will have a maximum aperture of ƒ/3.5 at 18mm and at 55mm its maximum aperture will be ƒ/5.6. That's a bit of a difference to a 50mm prime lens that has a maximum aperture of ƒ1.4, isn't it? (There are zoom lenses with constant maximum apertures, a 70-200mm ƒ/2.8, for example, but they're much more costly than variable aperture zooms.)

Finally, the more moving parts that you have, the higher the chances of something breaking. That's not limited to photographic lenses, but just about anything that you can build. In this case, however, zoom lenses are more susceptible to damage or failure than prime lenses are.

And what about digital zoom?

So far, we've talked about optical zoom, or a change in focal length that is achieved by moving parts and adjustments to lens elements within the lens body. Some cameras, however, don't have optical zoom capability and instead rely on digital zoom to bring you closer to your subject. Digital zoom is standard in smartphone cameras, but you'll often find it in compact cameras as an augmentation to their optical zoom capabilities.

Digital zoom isn't really anything other than cropping: the centre of the frame is enlarged and the edges are trimmed away. As a consequence, images that are digitally zoomed are of lower quality than full resolution photos. If at all possible, avoid using digital zoom; it won't do your photos many favours.

TL;DR

• A zoom lens is a lens with a variable focal length
• Zoom lenses can be wide-angle, telephoto, or span the range
• The advantage of a zoom lens is its flexibility, but disadvantages can include lower image quality and slower apertures
• Digital zoom isn't really zoom at all, but a form of cropping. It's best avoided.

White balance << Photography Fundamentals >> Aperture

If you want to read a much more detailed explanation of lenses, do have a look at Haje's extensive Everything about camera lenses article.

Want to learn how to use your shiny new camera? Try the Photocritic Photography School!

You have a shiny new camera with interchangeable lenses, more knobs and dials than the TARDIS, and enough buttons to keep a three year old happy for hours. It's thrilling and exciting, and you cannot wait to get started. But where exactly do you start? How can you get off of the automatic mode and take control of all the picture-making marvel that your camera has to offer? You could always sign up for the Photocritic Photography School.

It's a year-long course, with a lesson and an assignment delivered to your email inbox every three weeks. Once you complete your assignment and share it in your class' pool, you'll receive some feedback on your endeavours. (We also encourage our students to comment on their classmates' work: the more thoughts the better!) It starts with some simple techniques to see an immediate improvement in your photos and moves through technical, creative, and practical exercises to see you taking better photos week on week. No pressure, and lots of fun!

Even better: if you sign up for the class that starts on 3 January, it's free! What are you waiting for? The sign-up form's here!

Easy-to-make photo videos with Flipagram

Seeing as half the world and their spouses appear to be producing some variation on 2013 In Review articles, videos, and compilations, I thought I'd go for a variation on the variation of 2013 In Review. I've made a sneak peek Flipagram of some of the photos that will be appearing in my Social Photography book, which is due to be released in spring 2014. It's a prospective retrospective, I suppose.

As for Flipagram, it's a rather nifty app that I discovered when a photographer whom I follow on Instagram compiled her best bits of 2013 into a slick looking video. (Thanks, Natalie Norton!) It allows you to hook up to Instagram to make a digital flipbook of your favourite photos, or if you're not of the Instagram persuasion, to do it from your smartphone's camera roll.

Once you've selected your images you can arrange them in your preferred order, crop them to fit Flipagram's square format, duplicate them for added impact, decide between a 15 second or 30 second video playtime, and choose a soundtrack if you fancy. After that, you hit the button and Flipagram compiles your video for you. Then you can share to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or YouTube, or you can email it away. There's no option to embed your videos from the Flipagram site, but if you upload them to YouTube, you can embed from there.

I was impressed by how easy it was to compile a little video and finish it the way that I wanted it finished. At the moment you can't return to edit a saved video, but Flipagram has developments in the pipeline, so that might be one of them. And useful it would be, too.

Flipagram is free, nothing to do with Flipboard, available for Android and iOS, and worth a download for a bit of fun.

The winner of the Well Done U short film competition

In early October, we featured a short film competition called Well Done U: the quest for a well made two minute film, suitable for all. That is, it needed to conform to the British Board of Film Classification's U certificate criteria. The competition was being run by the Kermode and Mayo Film Review Show, hosted on BBC Radio 5 Live. Last week, after receiving hundreds of entries, they announced the winner. The honour of a formal BBFC certification for the film and a trophy went to Philip Chidell for his short, Pong.

The winner is great, but the runners' up films are super, too, and worth a look.

The Photocritic 10 book gift guide for last minute shopping

It's the night before the night before Christmas. Super-organised types will have all of their gifts wrapped and sitting beneath the tree; the presents will look resplendent and the givers will be looking relaxed. The less-organised types will be wondering what on earth they can possibly buy in the next 24 hours to make people ot think that they left it to very last minute. Or last day. A book is the obvious solution. It shows thought and you can run into Waterstones and buy one tomorrow. Depending on the type of photographer for whom you're buying, here are ten of the best photography books out there right now. We're shameless, we've included some of our own books in this list. But they're not all ours. Promise.

For the new camera-owner

This one is first on the list, because if someone is getting a new camera for the holidays, this is where they'll want to start. The Ilex Introduction to Photography, by Haje Jan Kamps

For the dreamer

Or, how to recreate what's in your head, in a photograph. Surreal Photography: Creating the Impossible, by Daniela Bowker

For the fashionista

If anyone loves fashion and wants to get a foot on the fashion photography ladder, Lara Jade's book is the stepping-off point. Fashion Photography 101, by Lara Jade

For the lightning rod

Photography is all about light; whether it's natural or artificial you need to be able to read it and manipulate it. Photo School: Light & Lighting, by Catherine Quinn

For the maverick

Rules are meant to be broken. The Rules of Photography and When to Break Them, by Haje Jan Kamps

For the selfie-fanatic

We could have put Haje's Shooting Yourself here, but we reckoned that you'd have it already! Creative Portrait Photography, by Natalie Dybisz

For the street photographer

Street photography. Anyone can do it... but there's an art to getting it right. The New Street Photographer’s Manifesto, by Tanya Nagar

For the tinkerer

From making your own clamps to having a go at free-lensing Creative Photography: 52 More Weekend Projects, by Chris Gatcum

For the vista-lover

Landscapes, they're harder than they look 101 Top Tips for Digital Landscape Photography, by Carl Heilman II

For the wanderer

Travel photography should leave you recalling the sights, sounds, and scents of your trips with every look, or letting your viewers feel as if they were right there with you. Here's your guide Focus on Travel Photography, by Haje Jan Kamps

These are just a few ideas. Get yourself down to a bookshop for even more ideas!

Catch 'Moments in Time' on BBC 2 tonight

Pictures, pictures everywhere. Our media consumption, both news and social, is dominated by images. It's almost impossible to send a news story to web publication without one. Increasingly, these images are contributed by the man on the Clapham omnibus who happens to have a smartphone in his hands. The BBC is taking a look back at this year's major stories, and the images that were used to illustrate them, in a documentary this evening. The programme covers photographers, news editors, and members of the public who happened to be in the right place at the right time to get the picture that made the news. It's called 2013: Moments in Time and it's showing on BBC 2 at 21:00 GMT.

If you don't manage to catch it this evening or forget to set it to record, you can always catch up on iPlayer.

Improvements are coming to the Sony QX10 and QX100 lens units

Sony is set to release a firmware upgrade for its QX10 and QX100 smartphone lens attachments in January. If you need a quick reminder the QX10 and QX100 are lens units that you operate from your smartphone via Sony's PlayMemories app, bringing higher quality images and more control to your smartphone shooting. The upgrade is intended to improve their low-light functionality and bring more control to the QX100. The cheaper, less well specced QX10 will have a new maximum sensitivity of ISO 3,200; the QX100 will be able to hit ISO 12,800. The QX100 will be getting a shutter priority mode in addition to its aperture priority, programme mode, and auto modes.

At £399 for the QX100 or £179 (although I've seen them on special offer for £150) for the QX10, I'm still not convinced that they're worth it, but Sony seems to want to make them work.

(Headsup to Engadget)

Flickr has a new embed feature. Expect uproar.

In another update that aims to make Flickr a more fully web-integrated photo-sharing experience, it has rolled out a revised photo embed function. This one should make it easier to add full-bleed Flickr photos and videos to external sites. Any embedded photo will automatically be displayed with its full title and its owner's Flickr name. Flickr's stats feature will also track the number of views your photos embedded into external sites are generating, to give you an idea of their popularity and reach.

Before anyone and everyone starts to yell that Flickr is being irresponsible, is encouraging copyright infringement and image theft, and doesn't have the best interests of its users and their images at heart: you can disable embedding. You do this in Settings, under privacy and sharing. It will also prevent other users from tweeting or pinning your photos at the same time. This doesn't stop you from being able to tweet, pin, and Facebook-share your own images, though. But if you're using the new photo experience beta (which I'm not), it doesn't look as if you can embed your own images into external sites when sharing is restricted. Self-embedding is still possible with share-restricted photos in the old layout though.

Here: I've embedded my own image straight from Flickr, but every Tom, Dick, Harry, Annie, Melanie, and Madge doesn't have the ability to do this because I've disabled the feature for them.

Whether this is by accident or deign on Flickr's part I'm not sure, but I have mentioned it to them. It's a useful feature for me, but I prefer to retain as much control over the use of my images as I can.

If you share a photo privately, either with your Flickr friends and family or through a guest pass, it can't be embedded by those people who are privileged to see it. It remains a privilege.

As a reminder, you can also restrict who is able to download your images from Flickr, too. Of course, if someone really wants to use your image, they will, because any image that can be seen on a screen can suffer from copyright infringement. There are tools available to help you protect them, however.

Enabling better image embedding isn't just about spreading the beauty of Flickr users' gorgeous photos; it's also about spreading the Flickr brand, too. Easy embedding will encourage people to use the feature and encourage people who're seeing embedded Flickr images on external sites to visit Flickr itself and to see more of a user's Flickr photostream. Flickr doesn't wish to remain an isolated realm of internalised image sharing, it has a world to take on.

An order of smartphone camera units suggests Amazon might be venturing into phones

Rumours of an Amazon mobile phone aren't exactly new. Speculation started when the Kindle was released; it heightened when the Kindle Fire came out; it has rumbled on since then with suggestions first that Foxconn might be manufacturing the handsets, and then HTC. Now it's being reported that Amazon has placed orders for smartphone compatible compact camera modules with Taiwanese manufacturer Primax Electronics, ready to launch a new device in the first half of 2014. I've not been able to dig up any more information on the camera unit specs, but even with a world-beating camera, any Amazon smartphone is going need to strong hold in the app market. Apart from an interface that not everyone gets along with, the Kindle Fire's primary shortfall is its lack of apps. If Amazon wants to compete in the mobile market, whatever the price of the device, this is something that will need to be addressed.

(Headsup to TechRadar)

Advertisements now part of Facebook's auto-playing video repertoire

When Facebook rolled out auto-playing videos into its users' mobile and desktop news feeds last week, along with a collective groan came the question, 'How long until those videos include adverts?' Five days is the answer. Auto-playing advertisements aren't coming to all Facebook users immediately; it's a test group that is currently receiving them, and the adverts are for Divergent, a film due to be released next year. Given it's a trial run, if the users find it abhorrent enough and say so loudly enough, it's possible that the plans could be shelved. However, Facebook does have to fund itself somehow and this is likely an appealing pitch to marketers.

Much the same as with the auto-playing shared content videos, they'll be soundless until you click on them and you can ignore them by just scolling on by. When you're using a mobile device adverts will still play automatically if you're on a cellular connection but they would have been downloaded the last time that you were connected to wi-fi, which should help to prevent data-gobbling. If you watch a video avert through to the end, two further adverts will appear. This, says Facebook, is to make it 'easy to continue to discover content from the same marketers.' It's the price we pay for something that's 'free'.

(Hedsup to Techcrunch)

What happened to the Lightstrap Kickstarter project?

Just over a week ago we featured a Kickstarter project called Lightstrap: a temperature- and brightness-adjustable ringlight set into an iPhone case, which aimed to bring better lit iPhone photos to everyone and rid us of the curse of evil red-eye. The project needed to raise a fairly sizeable $245,000, but only six days into its campaign it appeared to be well on course to achieve that with $67,197 pledged to the cause by 540 people and quite a lot of press coverage to boot. So why did Brick and Pixel, Lightstrap's developers, pull the plug on the Kickstarter campaign? In a message to its Kickstarter backers, Brick and Pixel stated that while the project appeared to be on course to hit its goal, it wasn't a slam-dunk. When it was offered the opportunity to put the Lightstrap into production through traditional channels, Brick and Pixel didn't feel that it could refuse. The campaign has been cancelled and anyone who pledged money to it won't have it debited from their accounts. Instead, they're going to have to wait for the Lightstrap to go on sale in stores and online.

As you might expect, there are quite a few disgruntled punters out there. Several of them are deeming the Kickstarter campaign a disingenuous attempt to raise the Lightstrap's profile and prove its viability as a product, lure in an external investor, and then dump the backers when a better offer came along. Quite a few would like to have been acknowledged for their support and perhaps offered a discount on the Lightstrap if and when it does make into full production. Even with those backers who remain hopeful for a positive outcome for the Lightstrap, there remains a sense of unease and there's certainly been an erosion of goodwill towards Brick and Pixel.

When I contacted Cassidy Crawson, one of Lightstrap's developers, he told me that he feels the backers' frustrations, but that it's a complicated business and they're doing their best to bring Lightstrap to fruition: 'We are deeply invested in this product (personally and financially) and we are making hard decisions with the goal of bringing Lightstrap to market successfully.' Brick and Pixel really do want the Lightstrap to make its way onto people's phones, but in one way or another they've managed to make a mistake.

Reading between the lines, it would seem that Brick and Pixel somehow underestimated what it takes to bring a product to reality, and how hard it can be to accomplish that through Kickstarter. Even when you have backers on your side, there are a great many other factors that need to be considered and you really do have to be prepared for anything. Furthermore, they also seem to have misjudged the depth of feeling that backers have for campaigns that they support. When we pledge money to projects, we're putting faith in the people behind them to deliver what they say they will. If a project doesn't reach its funding goal, that's all well and good and thems the breaks of Kickstarter. But if the project lead hasn't got it right, it's more than a sense of disappointment, there is, perhaps, an erosion of trust, too. For Lightstrap, I hope the it doesn't have a negative impact on its potential availability. For prospective Kickstarter project leads: check, check, and check again. And be prepared for anything.

In whichever way that the Lightstrap makers didn't get it right, it's a shame. I hope that they can somehow redeem themselves and finish what they've started.

Video in and around the sea for around £100 with the Braun Vidi Proof

'Cheap' and 'underwater safe' aren't words that often go together when it comes to cameras. 'Cheap' is of course a relative term, and to what depth you can take a camera under the surface is also variable, but most of the time you're looking at a good few hundred pounds to get your hands on anything that you can drop in the surf. Braun is hoping that its new Vidi Proof Camcorder will allow snorkellers, surfers, and kayakers a reasonably priced option to record their exploits in motion and stills pictures. Primarily it's designed for making video, upto 60 minutes in length, and to a depth of three metres. However, it's capable of capturing stills, too, with a five megapixel CMOS sensor and 4× digital zoom. It runs off of two AA batteries and uses a Micro SD card up to 16GB in capacity.

If you're thinking that Braun is more readily associated with electric razors, depilators, and toothbrushes, that's a different Braun, which is owned by Proctor and Gamble. This Braun is the Braun Photo Technik GmbH, which used to be known as Carl Braun Camera-Werk. This company specialises in digital imaging equipment, from binoculars and graphics tablets to filters and video cameras.

The Vidi Proof will cost in the region of £100 and it should be available soon.

The British Library has released a million images into the public domain - and it needs your help

The British Library is home to over 150 million published items; a copy of every publication—whether a book, newspaper, magazine or periodical—made each year in the UK and Ireland is archived there. In partnership with Microsoft the BL digitised tens of thousands of out-of-copyright publications from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. As part of this process they acquired millions of images from these pages and they've now released them into the public domain on the Flickr Commons. The collection includes illustrations, satirical comics, geological diagrams, maps, illuminated letters, and maybe a few photos. Now that they have been released into the public domain they are free for anyone to use, remix, and repurpose as they wish. But the BL is also asking for help to find innovative ways to allow people to navigate and search these images; while the library knows the book, volume, and page from which each image was drawn, it knows nothing about them indivdually. It wants to crowdsource descriptions of what each image portrays to make the collection a lot more useful, as well as develop an efficient tagging and metadata system.

You can take a look at the images over on the British Library's Flickr stream and if you have any bright ideas to help them with the project, they'd be interested to hear from you, too.

(Headsup to Ars Technica)

Christmas is coming: zoom bursting!

The twinkling lights and glittering decorations of our Christmas tree are always far too good a photographic opportunity to pass up. Last year they were my testing ground for a Pentax X-5 that I had to review. This year, I decided to play around with zoom bursting, to make it appear as if the lights are bursting out of the image. While the abstract motion effect of a zoom burst might look as if it's a pain to achieve, it actually isn't that hard. You definitely need a zoom lens on your camera and preferably a tripod; then you just need a bit of patience to get it right.

Compose your frame and focus on your subject. It's actually one occasion when centre-focusing really does work and doesn't leave your composition feeling flat and dull. But of course, it's whatever works for your photo. You'll probably find it easiest to zoom in as close as you can and then lock your focus or set it manually.

In order to achieve the motion effect you'll need a slow shutter speed, so that you have sufficient time to turn the zoom ring on your lens. If you're not confident using full manual control, do flick your camera into Shutter Priority (S or Tv) mode. For this series of photos I experimented with exposure times ranging from one-and-half seconds to ten seconds. The optimal speed seemed to be five seconds, but of course it is going to to vary depending on your subject.

I kept the aperture fairly small and the ISO relatively low. Being a long exposure shot, there was a strong possibility that it would come out over-exposed if I adhered precisely to the camera's meter, so I under-exposed by a stop-and-half. If I'd been shooting in Shutter Priority mode, I would have achieved the same effect by applying exposure compensation.

When you're ready, depress your shutter button, or use a remote release to help avoid camera shake, and then steadily zoom out throughout the course of the exposure. If you'd like to ensure a little more definition for your subject, don't begin to move the zoom ring immediately, but let it rest for about a quarter of the exposure time and then start to move it.

In most cases, you will probably want to zoom out to give the impression of the subject bursting forth from the image. I also played around with zooming in and rather liked the effect. It's all going to depend on what works for your photo.

Once you have the basics down, it'll be a case of playing around to see what looks best. Have fun!

Samsung merges its digital imaging and mobile communications divisions

Almost all mobile phones now have cameras, barring the very lowest on the scale; some cameras run apps, making them more like smartphones or baby-computers; and plenty of cameras come with wi-fi and NFC capability now. Digital imaging and mobile communications technology are on a steady path of convergence. Samsung has brought this amalgam a step closer by merging its Digital Imaging and Wireless Business divisions. What will this closer working relationship between the two areas mean for consumers? Better cameras in mobile phones? Almost certainly. More development of devices such as the Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom? Highly likely. Improved wireless communications in mirrorless cameras? Watch this space!

(Headsup to The Verge)

Video comes to photo storage app Loom

I've been a fan of Loom since since I tried out its public beta version earlier this year. It's a photo storage service that allows you to access your images across all of your devices as well as auto-upload them to take some of the strain off of keeping your back-ups secure. It's easy to use and looks good, too. Today they've released their biggest update to date, which will allow users to play and stream videos on their iPhones, iPads, and from the website. The process that their developers have implemented lets users watch their videos almost automatically without any of that pesky buffering. As soon as you press 'play' it starts to stream the lowest quality version of the recording while simultaneously buffering the higher quality one and switching to that as soon as your Internet cnnection and screen resolution lets you. Yes, it's similar to the system that Netflix uses.

They've made a pretty video to show it off, too:

Loom already gives you 5GB of storage for free; 50GB costs $39.99 for a year, or $99.99 buys 250GB of storage for a year. However, if you refer your family and friends to Loom you can pick up an extra 5GB for free.

Yes, Loom is only iOS-only at the moment, but Android expansion is planned. Let's hope that's Loom's next major update and it comes along quickly!

It's all about communication: Instagram unveils Instagram Direct

When Instagram sent out paper invitations to its press event held in New York today, there was, naturally, speculation regarding what the square-picture-sharing-service might announce. Might it be print options? Or perhaps a messaging service? Now, everything has been revealed by Instagram's Kevin Systrom. It's called Instagram Direct: instant messaging via image, allowing you to share pictures and videos and communicate with just one or up to 15 of your Instagram contacts. If you'd like to send a direct message to someone you don't follow you can, but it will be held in their inbox as a 'pending' message and the recipient won't be able to see the image until they accept your request. Or they can ignore you.

When you send an image to a contact or group of contacts, you can see when they've opened it and you can communicate privately around it. It allows for real-time communication and the opportunity to share experiences with people whom you love or you think will be specifically interested in an image, rather than your entire feed. And seeing as Instagram has said that it doesn't proactively monitor these communications, someone would have to lodge a complaint if you sent a naughty photo. So perhaps boobies and bottoms between boyfriends and girlfriends might be permitted at last! But no, they're not venturing into Snapchat territory with Mission Impossible-style self-destructing images.

With images now being permitted in Twitter direct messages, this might be seen as direct competition. And of course there's lots of chatter about Snapchat. But I'm more intrigued to see the imapct that it'll have on messaging apps, like WhatsApp, Line, and Viber. Images, push notifications, read receipts, and group messaging is eating into these guys' territory. The message from Systrom today was very much about communication; not only is that bread-and-butter to WhatsApp and Viber, but it's an area where Facebook, and by extension Instagram is keen to capitalise. Let battle commence!

The update will be available today in the App Store and on Google Play.

Auto-playing videos come to Facebook

Oh joy! Facebook has embarked on a steady roll-out programme to bring auto-playing videos to all of its users. It started with Android devices, progressed to iPhones, and now the team at TechCrunch has noted that it has made it to desktop. Let us, however, be thankful for small mercies: these self-playing videos will remain silent until you click on them to enable the volume. At least you won't suffer the indignity of perfect strangers knowing that you're checking Facebook in a public loo, or being shown up at work as not concentrating on that deeply thrilling spreadsheet as much as your colleagues believed you were. It's only videos that have been uploaded directly Facebook or shared from Instagram that will play automatically; anything else sits in suspended animation. Do then, be kind to your Facebook friends and link video from YouTube, Vimeo, or elsewhere. Of course, this move fits in with Facebook's need to make make money. Next stop: auto-playing video advertisements.

There's no way that you can disable video auto-play entirely. However, if you need to watch your data download limits on your mobile network, you can ensure that videos will only auto-play when you're connected via wi-fi. For iPhone users it's Settings > Facebook > Settings > Auto-play videos on WiFi only. Not that this is much consolation for people living where wi-fi bundles aren't cheap and data limits are tight.