Twitter on Monday quietly added user galleries for its photo options. Recent images uploaded to a service that Twitter already recognizes directly, such as Instagram, TwitPic, yFrog, and Twitter itself, are now curated into multiple views. It can either show a limited amount in details or expanded into a dedicated grid view.
Twitter on Tuesday quietly started giving some users, including ourselves, access to its promised direct image uploading. Those using the pure web app can now upload images when composing a new update or reply. The service uses Photobucket to host the images and will keep most readily accessible, although Twitter has warned that photos will eventually go away.
Unknown software house Kootol on Friday sent notice to many companies claiming that they allegedly violate a messaging patent. It targets a wide swath of the industry that includes Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Foursquare, Microsoft, Nokia, RIM, Twitter, and others all allegedly violate a patent for "Method and System for Communication, Advertising, Searching, Sharing and Dynamically Providing a Journal Feed." Unusually, Kootol doesn't actually have the patent and is instead acting on a Notice of Allowance that lets it act on the patent but still requires that it pay for the patent later.
A last-minute rumor has Twitter near launching its own image service. More than one tip hinted that an equivalent to Lockerz, TwitPic, Yfrog and other services was about to arrive as soon as tomorrow. The TechCrunch tip didn't say what if any differencesit would have over other services.
Twitter tonight held a special event to give an early look at the new Twitter. The new page draws directly from the design of the iPad app and makes content show automatically in a second pane rather than popping out a new window. Photo hosts like Flickr, TwitPic and Yfrog, as well as video hosts like Ustream and YouTube, will have their content embedded in a format that's more helpful both to computers and to tablets like the iPad.
