timeline16cantstopgif
Latest
GIF whatever is on your Android screen with 'Mirror'
Recording your Android screen isn't easy, and unless you have a Chromecast device, mirroring it is also a pain. Koushik Dutta, formerly of Cyanogen and now with ClockworkMod, has updated his Mirror app to make screencasting easier and let you record your screen as a GIF. It works on any device running Android 5 or higher and can mirror out to Fire TV, Apple TV and AllCast receivers on Chrome and Android. Though the app is from ROM-maker ClockworkMod, your phone doesn't need to be rooted.
Google's new iOS app turns Live Photos into GIFs
Cinemagraphs -- those artsy hybrids of animated gifs and film stills -- used to require a good deal of work to set up and create. That changes today with Google's latest iOS app Motion Stills, which uses Apple's Live Photos feature along with Google's own video stabilization to freeze the background of your photos and create dramatic looping gifs or video snippets.
Tumblr rolls out 'GIF posts' for iOS users
Do you use Tumblr? Do you love GIFs? Do you also have an iPhone? Beginning today, you can start creating GIF posts via the official Tumblr app on iOS.
Google puts search, GIFs and more inside its new iOS keyboard
Although Google has plenty of iOS apps, switching between them to share directions or perform a web search can be time-consuming. The company knows that the iPhone keyboard is where you spend a lot of your time, so it's decided to launch fresh take on Apple's default option. It's called Gboard and it can search the web, embed GIFs, locate the perfect emoji and grab weather reports. It will also help send restaurant information, flight times and news articles to friends and family. "Anything you'd search on Google, you can search with Gboard," says Rajan Patel, Principal Engineer at Google.
'2001: A Space Odyssey' as 569 GIFs tests fair use limits
If there was a grand prize for "Most Work Done to Prove a Point" (and "Fanciest Name Ever") Jean-Baptiste Henri Franck Cyrille Marie Le Divelec would be a contender. For 2001: A Gif Odyssey, the ad agency creator painstakingly chopped Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey into 569 tiny GIFs to find the breaking point of the so-called fair use doctrine. Fair use, as a reminder, is a legal principal that allows people to use copyrighted material for commentary, criticism, news reporting, scholarship or research. At the same time, it also serves as an "affirmative defense" to protect artists.
Giphy wants to be the Netflix of GIFs
GIFs are portable human expressions. Looped images of grumpy cats, falling babies and weird Drake moves convey a barrage of information and emotions in a way that words and emojis cannot. While the format has been around since 1987, the ability to copy and paste it into a conversation is much more recent. It was the creation of Giphy, an animated GIF search engine, that made pop culture references searchable and shareable in an instant.
Twitter needs searchable GIFs for fun and profit
This week, a group of Android users noticed a new feature in the Twitter app: a GIF button that can be used to search through trending GIFs to drop into status updates. As you'd expect, the internet lost its collective mind. Twitter is the unofficial home of GIFs. Whether you're sharing a quick moment in time or trying to make a point without words, bite-size animated images are a perfect match for the social network's dynamic timeline.
Twitter's Scratch Reel lets you scrub GIFs like digital LPs
Twitter debuted a new Scratch Reel feature on Thursday which allows users to hover a mouse or finger over GIFs and rewind or advance the image as they please. The functionality appears to only apply to GIFs created by third-party @SnappyTV publishers, so don't expect to be go all Pam the Funktress on your GIF feeds just yet.
The makers of VSCO Cam unveil an Instagram-like app for GIF making
Let's face it: GIFs continue to be a popular way of expressing yourself, no matter how you'd argue the word is pronounced. There are a number of apps that'll help you make your own animations, and now the folks behind VSCO Cam are joining the fray, too. The company built DSCO: an iOS app that lets you easily capture a few seconds worth of footage to create the moving image. If you're familiar with VSCO, you know that its mobile photography app allows you to apply a number of presets to achieve the look you're after before beaming them to a social network, posting them to the company's own portal or just saving them to view later. The same is true with DSCO. Once you have the video, you can employ a number of filters, including a collection of presets developed alongside MTV and others, to put the finishing touches on that all-important GIF. You can then send it to the aforementioned spots for sharing or safe keeping. The app is a free download, but like we've already mentioned, it's only available on iOS.
Cat Shake gives you an endless stream of OMG KITTIES
Few things in life are better than videos and GIFs about cats -- they bring joy to people. If you feel that way, then you'll probably want to download this new iOS app called Cat Shake. As its name suggests, the application requires you to, well, shake your device to fulfill its purpose. Once you do so, your reward will be too-cute-to-handle cat videos, "classic" cat GIFs and, because why not, adorable cat sounds. For those of you who don't have an iPhone or iPad, don't worry -- you can always go to Tumblr TV, type in what cat you're in the mood for (we'd recommend "funny cat") and problem solved. Or, you know, there's YouTube too.
