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.

It was only a matter of time I guess as Google has followed in the footsteps of Facebook and announced that it will be adding games to its Google+ social network. According to the search (and social) giant’s company blog:

“We want to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to the web. “That means giving you control over when you see games, how you play them and with whom you share your experiences.”

Don’t worry, though, the addition of games to Google+ won’t mean constant invitations from your friends to play FarmVille or join their family in Mob Wars. “Games in Google+ are there when you want them and gone when you don’t,” the company said at the blog post. Wel, thank the gods for that.

In the near future you’ll see a new ‘Games’ button added to the top of your Google+ stream. This will allow you to go to the gaming page and add some fun games that you can play. Or, if you’re not interested in games, you never, ever have to click the button. It’s that simple. Seems like a much betteer way to go than the way Facebook is doing it.

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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.

Even though they’ve been updating the Twitter app for iPhone and iPad pretty frequently, that doesn’t mean the one for Android has been totally left behind. In fact, the Twitter team announced today they have updated their Android client to version 2.0. The new version sports a modified interface along with a some feature improvements and additions. These include:

• Use the app without having to sign-in so you can keep track of trending topics and more

• Single window layout much like Twitter on your computer

• @mentions and Retweets are now included in the replies tab

• Auto-complete of User Names

• Universal search with terms you specify

• Scan your address book to discover new friends

Twitter 2.0 for Android is available in the Android Market as of today. If you end up downloading it, let us know what you think.

A few months ago, Google’s $6 Billion offer was roundly rejected by the object of the Internet giant’s overture: Groupon.com, a web-based local deals service who instead is preparing its own $15 Billion IPO. Fast-forward to today and Mashable has an exclusive report on Google’s attempts to compete in this important local niche.

According to the documents being leaked today, Google is preparing to beta their competing service, dubbed ‘Google Offers’ which in a similar manner to sites like LivingSocial.com, Groupon.com and an array of similar services, will offer local pre-paid offers to subscribers of the service. As of a few hours ago, it appears Google has officially validated the rumors with a prepared statement.

“Google is communicating with small businesses to enlist their support and participation in a test of a pre-paid offers/vouchers program. This initiative is part of an ongoing effort at Google to make new products, such as the recent Offer Ads beta, that connect businesses with customers in new ways. We do not have more details to share at this time, but will keep you posted.”

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Have you heard about the new Twitter.com? The revised site offers embedded media, infinite scroll, and a host of new user experience enhancements. World-wide roll-out begins today, but depending on where exactly you are, it could take several weeks for the new features to reach you.

One of the biggest changes facing Twitter.com users is the different layout, which in my opinion, resembles the new iPad native Twitter app. Your @mentions, retweets, searches, and lists sits directly above your timeline now, creating an easy way to switch your view depending on what you’re interested in seeing. On the right, the default starting panel will show you recent followers, who you’re following, along with recent trending topics and suggestions on who to follow.

Clicking a specific tweet causes a panel to slide out to the right, showing you that user’s recent tweets and if they’ve embedded some media with their tweet, you can see a larger version of that as well. If the tweet was geo-tagged, the right-hand panel will display the location on a map. Twitter is offering an easy way to embed both photos and video directly in your tweets, which will be visible within other user’s timelines or visible upon clicking a tweet containing embedded media.

With partnerships with the likes of Vimeo, YouTube, twitpic, Flickr and others, embedding will be easy and seamless. One of the coolest examples of this new feature is sharing a link to an entire Flickr set of pictures. When you do, those who follow will be able to see a bunch of little thumbnails in their right pane. And near the bottom of this pane, a slideshow for the pictures is also automatically created. Very slick indeed.

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As an Android powered smartphone user, I’m aware that the best and/or most polished version of most applications usually exist for Apple’s iPhone first. Even though Android is gaining market share among smartphones (and may even eclipse the iPhone), developers concentrate a great deal of time and effort on making apps for Apple’s devices.

However, that doesn’t mean Android apps are completely forgotten. They do get made, made well and many are frequently updated. Case in point is the Facebook app for Android. Last night the app was updated to bring it more inline with its iPhone counterpart.

The update offers quite a few minor fixes as well as several major ones to the app’s homescreen. Some of the changes and improvements include:

• Post a status update or search for friends with just one click.

• New photo reel that enables easy viewing of photos and videos from friends in your News Feed.

• Draggable Notifications drawer where you can easily see if a friend posted a note on your wall, commented or liked a post or tagged you in a photo.

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Way back in October of 2009 I wrote an article entitled “Is Twitter the New Film Critic?“  I now know the answer to that question is “yes.” My theory was that with so many people talking about movies on Twitter it may be possible to assess the success or failure of a film based on film-goers opinions. Twitter commentary could feasibly act as a barometer for new releases and be the best movie critic to date.

I’m kicking myself for not acting on that idea because now someone beat me to the punch. TechCrunch brings word of a new site called fflick; a movie “review” site that taps into Twitter and determines how well films are trending on the social site by analyzing how often the film is mentioned:

“…you’ll find the Positive and Negative tweets, which display a list of tweets that the site has automatically categorized using its sentiment engine. After looking through a handful of movies, I found that the system was pretty good at identifying both negative and positive tweets, though there were occasionally some tweets that were only mentioning a film in passing or were mis-categorized.”

Having gone through some of the current film ratings myself on fflick I have to say the site reflected what I would consider to be the true sentiment regarding a particular film.  The way in which this process works is not unlike movie review site Rotten Tomatoes.

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SVGNGR is a new mobile application that allows you to complete challenges at different places you check into. Think of it as FourSquare, with a kick. From an official press release:

Playing SCVNGR is simple. It’s a game all about going places, doing challenges and earning points. Challenges are quick, casual, fun things to do at places. Building on SCVNGR is just as simple. Everyone who plays SCVNGR can also build SCVNGR by adding challenges to their favorite locations.

Eat, Pray, Love follows the journeys of Liz Gilbert (played by Julia Roberts), who travels to Italy, India and Bali on a journey of self discovery. Columbia Pictures has announced that they are teaming up with SVGNGR to bring you the feel of these exotic locales right from your phone.

Twenty six cities across the US have been selected and identified with Eat, Pray, Love locations. Players can compete in movie based challenges and earn badges.  To learn more, visit  the official website for this Eat, Pray, Love partnership, letyourselfgo.com/svgngr

SCVNGR is available for the iPhone and for the Android.  Eat, Pray, Love will be released in theaters on August 13.