With the popularity of smartphones like the iPhone and myriad of Android-powered handsets, one of the things users love to do is take and share photos with friends and family. One of the best apps for doing this when using the iPhone is Instagram.

This app allows you to take a photo, manipulate it if you choose and then upload it to your photo stream for all to see. People can then subscribe to your photo stream and view your photos on their devices. Or, you can upload them to Twitter, Facebook or Flickr.

It’s extremely popular on the iPhone (many of us here use it, in fact) but so far, it’s only been available for iOS devices. Apparently, that’s not going to be the case much longer.

Speaking during the LeWeb conference in Paris this week, Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom confirmed that an Android version of the company’s popular iOS application is coming soon. ”We have two people working on Android now,” Systrom said.

I know what you’re thinking. Two people doesn’t sound like very many. However, keep in mind that the whole company probably isn’t that much bigger and has been exclusively an iOS app since launch.

No launch date was forthcoming from Systrom but we expect to see the Android version of Instagram sometime early next year.

Let’s face it, there’s a lot of apps out there for the iPad and iPhone. Many of them are even useful and, on occasion, fun to use. You can add Flipboard to that list.

In case you haven’t tried it yet, Flipboard is a very popular magazine-style news application which, up until today, was available only for the iPad. Now, those of you who want the same experience on your iPhone or, for some reason, don’t have an iPad yet, can now enjoy Flipboard on your iPhone because it’s now available.

The app allows users to flip through a single feed of articles and photos that have been shared across various social networks. It can also display stories from a variety of news categories including technology, design, “Flipboard picks,” photography, business, sports, style, travel, food and more.

It’s a great app that really helps you digest a lot of information quickly and easily and does it inside a very user-friendly interface. It’s definitely worth checking out.

Flipboard for iPhone is free and available in the App Store now.

JC and WallE are back with the 7th epic edition of the Bitcast. In the News of the Week, the two discuss the announcement of the PlayStation 3 Smash Brothers inspired brawler Title Fight and the characters that may be coming to it. They also talk about a recent study that links violent video games to slower brain activity. Finally, they look at how Angry Birds developer Rovio passed on a $2.25 billion dollar offer from social media games developer Zynga who incidentally lost almost a million players in their game Mafia Wars 2 in just one month.

In the second edition of The Long Grind featuring The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, JC discusses the story (spoiler free) and the open world adventuring aspects of the game.

In this week’s Topic of the Week, social media in gaming such as Facebook integration and community sites like Raptr are brought up. Finally, in Now Playing, JC gives some more insight into his longer than expected play sessions on Saints Row: The Third and WallE discusses his review of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3.

Make sure to subscribe to The Flickcast iTunes feed to get each weekly episode of the Bitcast downloaded right to your iOS device.

With Google rolling out its Google + service recently in an attempt to take some of Facebook’s social media dominance away, what’s Facebook to do to stay on top? Well, fear not, they’ve got something up their virtual sleeves. What is it? Read on.

Today, the social media giant unveiled a major addition to its service : video chat. Through a partnership with Skype, Facebook users will now be able to video chat with each other through the company’s new service.

The best part, it’s all free. The service works just like Skype’s normal video calling with video calls initiated from right in your Facebook profile with a simple click.

“A few months ago, we started working with Skype to bring video calling to Facebook,” said the company on its blog. “We built it right into chat, so all your conversations start from the same place. To call your friend, just click the video call button at the top of your chat window.”

Facebook will bring video chat to its users over the next few weeks. Or, if you can’t wait, click here to get it now.

How the once mighty have fallen. Remember when MySpace was the place to go for everything “social”? Well, those days are long over and now the site has been sold for quite a bargain price.

According to AllThingsD, Specific Media has acquired Myspace from News Corp. for $35 million. Which, as I said, is a real bargain considering NewsCorp paid $580 Million for it in 2005. I would call that a pretty big loss for NewsCorp. Myspace’s CEO, Mike Jones, will remain for “an interim period,” and the social network will lay off about 50% of its staff, which is around 200 people. Sorry to hear that.

MySpace’s decline in recent years is not really all that surprising considering how horrible the site is to navigate and, of course, due to the popularity of Facebook and Twitter. By comparison, Facebook looks like the most clean and easy to use UI ever invented, which we know isn’t really the case as it still has its share of problems as well.

Who knows, maybe MySpace will rebound and climb back out of the pit it finds itself in? Anything is possible and people do love an underdog. However, first order of business: a complete re-design. Then, we can talk.

If you’re one of the people who like to make sure you’re friends know where you are and what you’re doing as much as possible, you’re probably already using Foursquare. If you’re also n iOS user, then today is your lucky day. Well, actually yesterday. Why?

Foursquare released a new version of its iOS client on Tuesday with a number of changes and enhancements. Among the changes are a new Check In button that will allow users to check into locations faster, a new Explore tab that will help users find local specials easier, and a faster check-in process.

Of course, being the early adopters we are around here, we installed the new app immediately. It definitely seemed improved and only took a few minutes to get used to the new layout and features. The user interface also feels noticeably quicker.

Also, in related news, Foursquare announced it has surpassed 10,000,000 users. That’s “M” as in Million. Nice work Foursquare team.

To get Foursquare 3.2, hit up the iTunes App Store.

The competition between location-based social networking applications just heated up even more with the announcement by Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley, via his blog, that an updated version of his company’s software is now available to iOS and Android users. As frequent users of this application, we couldn’t be happier here at The Flickcast offices.

Focusing on discovery, encouragement, and loyalty, Foursquare 3.0 rolls out several new features. For example, through the new “Explore” tab, users can input what it is they are looking for, getting recommendations from the app based on what’s around and where friends have visited.

In addition, the app features a revamped leader board which the company hopes will further encourage users to explore their world. According to Crowley: “You’ll see that we’ve replaced our old leader board (and its simple points system and Sunday night reset) with a sliding 7-day barometer of you and your friends.” “Check-ins now trigger points for dozens of different types of actions.”

Loyalty comes in the form of merchants additional ways to reward “swarms, groups of friends, regulars, newbies, or everyone.” Merchants will get their hands on these features later this week.

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For those who may not be in the know, the great city of Detroit is currently lobbying to have a statue of one of their greatest film heroes erected in the middle of town as a symbol to rebuild the once great city. So who better to stand behind their plan than the man who played the half-cop, half-machine himself, Peter Weller.

Thanks to Funny or Die, Weller has sent out a message to those who are fighting for this statue to become a real thing, and had some words of wisdom on exactly what how he feels about being immortalized as a statue.

A bit disheartening to see Weller return to his Alex Murphy role after he’s made a name for himself as a great TV baddie in such films like 24, Dexter, and Psych, but he’s back, and he’s wearing a cardboard box on his head.

For those who want to help out the cause, be sure to like the official Facebook page at the Detroit Deserves RoboCop fan page. Check out Weller’s message after the jump.

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With all the comic book movies coming out the last few years and with so many more to come, fans probably have questions about them. Fortunately, Fox has decided to do something about that and let fans ask questions directly to the cast and fillmakers of the upcoming X-Men: First Class.

How does it work? Well, read and and we’ll tell you. This new program, called “X-Perts”, starts March 1st and allows fans to submit their questions via Twitter and Facebook. Each week a new cast member or filmmaker will answer them on the “X-Perts” page.

Following the above guidelines, fans can submit questions two ways: Via a Tweet @XMenMovies or by posting on the wall at the film’s official Facebook Page. Now before you go and get too excited you can be sure they won’t be ansering any spoiler questions or anything like that. For those kinds of answers you’ll just have to wait for the movie itself to be released.

Speaking of that, X-Men: First Class comes to theaters on June 3rd.

Were you as upset as the rest of us when we sat through all of the commercials on Super Bowl Sunday and didn’t get a single glimpse at Fox’s upcoming X-Men: First Class? Well good news! If you have Facebook, then Fox is making it up to you!

Starting later today, 20th Century Fox is rewarding anyone who like their X-Men Movies fan page over at Facebook.com/XMenMovies by giving them the first exclusive look at X-Men: First Class. That’s right, all you have to do is like them. Sounds simple, right?

For those of you who aren’t caught up to speed on the film itself, here’s a tidbit.

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS charts the epic beginning of the X-Men saga, and reveals a secret history of famous global events.  Before mutants had revealed themselves to the world, and before Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr took the names Professor X and Magneto, they were two young men discovering their powers for the first time.

Not archenemies, they were instead at first the closest of friends, working together with other Mutants (some familiar, some new), to prevent nuclear Armageddon.  In the process, a grave rift between them opened, which began the eternal war between Magneto’s Brotherhood and Professor X’s X-Men.

X-Men: First Class is set to hit theaters on June 3rd.

New browsers don’t come around very often. So us users are pretty settled-in, mostly sticking to tried-and-true browsers like IE, Mozilla’s Firefox, Apple’s Safari or perhaps for the adventurous types, Google’s Chrome or Opera. And while all of these browsers work well enough, and given the recent trend in browsers to slim down the features and focus on performance, it’s especially unusual to see a new browser that seems to be heading the opposite direction.

Meet ‘RockMelt,’ the social-enhanced browser backed by the likes of Mark Andreeson, the man who created the Netscape browser back when HTML was is its infancy. RockMelt, which is based on Chromium, the open source project behind Google’s Chrome browser, aims to distrupt the market by tightly integrating social networking and baking it right into their new browser software.

You may expect it to play nicely with properties like Twitter and Facebook, and it does, but it goes far beyond that by taking your Facebook account and integrating it right into the browser. No need to open a new tab, visit Facebook, potentially log-in, and so on. It’s all right there. Frequent and somewhat routine tasks like sharing and search take on a whole new meaning within the RockMelt browser too.

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For those who made the switch over to Facebook years ago, you more than likely abandoned your Myspace account either immediately or shortly thereafter. After that, the social networking site has gone through tons of facelifts and revamps in order to retain what little followers the site has. Those were all thanks to the site’s owner, News Corp, who purchased the Facebook competitor back in 2005.

Now, it seems that the media corporation may be pulling the plug on the site by the end of next years, says president Chase Carey. From THR.

Discussing online social network MySpace, Carey said he is happy with a just-launched redesign, but said that “current losses are not accceptable or sustainable.” He said the redesigned MySpace has the “potential to be an exciting business, but needs to show real progress in the coming quarters, not years, mainly by growing traffic and revenue and “a clear path to profitability.” \

Observers took this as a signal that News Corp. could look for a buyer if MySpace shows no real progress. The networking site’s revenue declined by $70 million in the latest quarter compared to the same period a year earlier.

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