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TIN IT OR BIN IT is your weekly social media need-to-know.

Hot off the press we deliver the week’s most ground breaking social media news,
oh-no-you-didn’t stories, tips you can’t afford to miss or simply our opinion on trends in the digital landscape.

Lastly, we’ll tell you whether it’s tin material or bin material!

View them all here on our Facebook page.

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Tin It Or Bin It – Friday 8 July 2011 – Facebook expands to video chat

This week, Facebook announced a partnership with Skype to add video chat to the social networking site used by 750 million users.

Now, whenever you browse to a friend’s profile, you’ll see a new button between the ‘Message’ and ‘Poke’ buttons that says ‘Call’. Click that, the other user will see a popup asking if they want to accept a call, and you’ll be connected straight away. The first time you use the feature you will need to install a small plug in, but once this is done you are good to go.

We at Hot Tin Roof love to keep in touch with our friends so think this will be great new way to connect with them, whether they are in the same city or on the other side of the world. It seems like it will easily fit into our current social media habits as well.

The new feature is great as there is minimal amount of set up (just a few seconds to install the plug in) and you don’t need to create a new Skype account to use it.

One drawback however is that at launch, Facebook’s video chat service will only be able to connect two users, whereas the new Google+ system (which was announced a week before) allows group video calls. To stay ahead of the competition, Facebook will probably have to offer similar features.

We are very excited about this. TIN IT for sure.

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TIN IT OR BIN IT is your weekly social media need-to-know.

Hot off the press we deliver the week’s most ground breaking social media news,
oh-no-you-didn’t stories, tips you can’t afford to miss or simply our opinion on trends in the digital landscape.

Lastly, we’ll tell you whether it’s tin material or bin material!

View them all here on our Facebook page.

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Tin It Or Bin It – Friday 10 June 2011 – Music to our ears

The team here at Hot Tin Roof love our live music, but it is sometimes pretty difficult to keep on top of what bands are playing nearby.

A new free social platform for live music called SongKick sounds like the solution to the problem. It lets you know when your favourite bands are playing and makes it super easy to track and plan upcoming gigs. Fantastic.

It sends email alerts when your favourite artists are playing in your area, lets you buy tickets for shows and create concert calendars. It scans your iTunes, looks at your locations and sends you a list of gigs that you might be interested in.

SongKick is not yet available on Android so it misses out on a very large market…however Android users can download a free similar app called ‘onTour’ to help plan their concerts.

So TIN IT OR BIN IT?

We say TIN IT. What’s not to like? It’s free, fun and useful and if it helps us to hear more live music this can only be a good thing.

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TIN IT OR BIN IT is your weekly social media need-to-know.

Hot off the press we deliver the week’s most ground breaking social media news,
oh-no-you-didn’t stories, tips you can’t afford to miss or simply our opinion on trends in the digital landscape.

Lastly, we’ll tell you whether it’s tin material or bin material!

View them all here on our Facebook page.

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Tin It Or Bin It – Friday 3 June 2011 – Shnap Happy

It’s officially the start of the summer and so this week Hot Tin Roof have been looking at a fun new app to help you jazz up all your holiday photos and let you rate other user’s images or ‘Shnaps’.

Shnap is a free iPhone app that has been described by Mashable as ‘Instagram meets Hot or Not’. You upload your own photos (which have been stylized with effects and filtering) and rate other users’ photos using the rating system: ‘Lol, Meh, WTF, Cool or Wow.’ As a heads up it can become very addictive!

The bottom line is that if you love taking pictures and you like social media you’re really going to love this app. It takes away the passivity of browsing photos and encourages you to rate them in a competitive fashion.

TIN IT OR BIN IT? This app keeps us ‘shnapping’ all day long so it’s a Tin IT.

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TIN IT OR BIN IT is your weekly social media need-to-know.

Hot off the press we deliver the week’s most ground breaking social media news,
oh-no-you-didn’t stories, tips you can’t afford to miss or simply our opinion on trends in the digital landscape.

Lastly, we’ll tell you whether it’s tin material or bin material!

View them all here on our Facebook page.

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Tin It Or Bin It – Friday 13 May 2011 – Name that theorem

Hot Tin Roof has been looking into the brilliant and unique TheoryMine this week, which lets you name a personalised, newly discovered and totally unique mathematical theorem after a loved one, teacher, friend or even yourself (for the egotistical people out there). For only £15 a pop you can be rubbing shoulders (metaphorically of course) with Pythagoras and Fermat. Amazing.

The newly discovered theorem is generated by one of the world’s most advanced computerised theorem provers. TheoryMine is a spin-out company from the University of Edinburgh and was created by Italian mathematician, Flaminia Cavallo, one of the country’s leading young scientists.

It’s the perfect present for the maths geek in the family or anyone who is struggling to find something a bit different for their loved ones. There is certainly nothing else like it and it is a very interesting concept, so we say TIN IT. We even think a Hot Tin Roof mathematical theorem might be on the cards…watch this space.

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TIN IT OR BIN IT is your weekly social media need-to-know.

Hot off the press we deliver the week’s most ground breaking social media news,
oh-no-you-didn’t stories, tips you can’t afford to miss or simply our opinion on trends in the digital landscape.

Lastly, we’ll tell you whether it’s tin material or bin material!

View them all here on our Facebook page.

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Tin It Or Bin It – Friday 6 May 2011 – Video killed the radio star

This week we are looking at the video sharing app Socialcam, who have just launched a brand spanking new feature.

Socialcam has been described as ‘Instagram for video’ and was created by Justin.tv. It is a video-sharing app that makes uploading videos to social networks easy as pie.

As of this week it is now available on the web, where users can view profiles featuring all user’s Socialcam videos, tag friends and see a list of which users they’re following on Socialcam. This feature has been previously available on Android and iPhone apps but this is new for the web and viewable to everyone, even non users.

Socialcam is focused on the social aspect of mobile video. Much like the photo application Instagram, Socialcam users can upload videos automatically, tag people in the video and share the video with friends across all social networks.

This video sharing app sounds great (easy upload, social network compatible and now available online) however like anything there is usually a drawback. With Socialcam it seems to be that they don’t seem to have any privacy features, so every video you upload is made public. The creators describe it as ‘the easiest way to share videos with friends’ but you could very well be sharing your videos with random strangers! Ahh!

So TIN IT OR BIN IT? We think this is a fun, easy to use application which will be loved by many, especially with the launch of the new feature this week. We say TIN IT.

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TIN IT OR BIN IT is your weekly social media need-to-know.

Hot off the press we deliver the week’s most ground breaking social media news,
oh-no-you-didn’t stories, tips you can’t afford to miss or simply our opinion on trends in the digital landscape.

Lastly, we’ll tell you whether it’s tin material or bin material!

View them all here on our Facebook page.

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Tin It Or Bin It – Friday 29 April 2011 – Techie Goodies

This week we have been looking into the brand new launch of Living Techie, the ‘you-know-what-on’ for techies (their tag line, not ours). It is basically a Groupon for techies and hipsters, similar to AppSumo and Startups.com and was created by TechCrunch writer Roi Carthy.

The daily deal email list goes out to people who have companies listed in Crunchbase, the free technology company database run by TechCrunch. People who receive Living Techie emails can then share them with other people via a special link.

Roi Carthy has said that they ‘purposefully built a club house for employees of the tech/start up industry but that once a deal is received it can be shared with anyone’. All this sounds great so far, however there are thousands of techies and early adopters that don’t work for a CrunchBase company and it seems a bit like another AppSumo. Roi Carthy as said that although similar, Living Techie is focused on actual retail products and not just on premium software and web services like AppSumo. Okay that clears that up, there is a difference…

Many of our clients are on Crunch Base so it will be interesting to see how this goes. If it becomes as successful as AppSumo then that would certainly be something.

So TIN IT OR BIN IT? As Living Techie has just launched and is in its early stages we can’t be too sure if this will stand apart from its competitors, however it will certainly be interesting to watch, and we all love a good deal don’t we? So we are going to TIN IT…for now at least.

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TIN IT OR BIN IT is your weekly social media need-to-know.

Hot off the press we deliver the week’s most ground breaking social media news,
oh-no-you-didn’t stories, tips you can’t afford to miss or simply our opinion on trends in the digital landscape.

Lastly, we’ll tell you whether it’s tin material or bin material!

View them all here on our Facebook page.

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Tin It Or Bin It – Friday 22 April 2011 – Secret Obsessions

Ever wanted to know what music your friends are really listening to? Well now there is a brand new app called Songasauraus which will let you do just that. We at Hot Tin Roof are an inquisitive bunch so when we heard about this app we thought it held some appeal.

It was launched by .net/SharePoint developer Kaveh Azari last week and it lets you check out other user’s music collections. Don’t worry though…all those people who secretly listen to Britney Spears or the Spice Girls do have the option to share their embarrassing listening info. Phew.

Once you are connected you can see what songs people in your network have listened to recently, what songs you have in common with friends and how many times they have listened to that song. You also have the option of buying any of the songs listed via ITunes, so it helps you to expand your music collection, which can only be a good thing, right? Songasaurus has managed to make something that’s sometimes very solitary, the act of listening to music on your iPhone, completely social.

Like any app however, it does have its downsides. Just now it is only available on the i-Phone which ignores a large market of Android users. Fingers crossed that this will soon be sorted.

All in all however Songasauraus sounds great but it poses the question…how much do we really want to know about the actual listening habits of our friends?

So TIN IT OR BIN IT?

We say TIN IT. Its a very simple, fun concept and will satisfy people’s curiosity (perhaps a little too much though if you discover your best friend or boyfriend is actually a closet Westlife fan. Yikes!)

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TIN IT OR BIN IT is your weekly social media need-to-know.

Hot off the press we deliver the week’s most ground breaking social media news,
oh-no-you-didn’t stories, tips you can’t afford to miss or simply our opinion on trends in the digital landscape.

Lastly, we’ll tell you whether it’s tin material or bin material!

View them all here on our Facebook page.

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Tin It Or Bin It – Friday 15 April 2011 – Throne up

The Royal Wedding 2011, there is no escape – even at Hot Tin Roof!

To save you the trouble, we’ve been looking at all those lovely Royal Wedding apps.

Hello Magazine have a free Royal Wedding app with photos and commentary leading up to the big day, and The Mirror have announced a paid for app called ‘Wills & Kate a Royal Love Story’. Cringe.

There is even a Royal Invite app where you can pretend to your friends that you have been invited to the big day by showing an onscreen invitation. Who are they fooling? Apparently the onscreen invitation isn’t even close to the real thing, so it really begs the question…what is the point?

Of course it’s all just a bit of fun. However we can think of lots more fun apps than this.

We really don’t see the appeal personally but we know there will be people that will love the novelty of these apps. The question is however…are they so interested that they will actually spend money on them?

Royal Wedding apps, TIN IT OR BIN IT? We are making an executive decision to BIN IT!

However there was something else that caught our eye this week, which was a lot more fun…a Royal Wedding Sick Bag. Now that’s more like it.

This unusual souvenir is created by graphic artist Lydia Leith and is hand screen printed. It has been designed as an antidote to the vast amounts of kitsch memorabilia currently being produced in the lead up to the big day.

This Royal souvenir is a definite TIN IT.

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TIN IT OR BIN IT is your weekly social media need-to-know.

Hot off the press we deliver the week’s most ground breaking social media news,
oh-no-you-didn’t stories, tips you can’t afford to miss or simply our opinion on trends in the digital landscape.

Lastly, we’ll tell you whether it’s tin material or bin material!

View them all here on our Facebook page.

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Tin It Or Bin It – Thursday 7 April 2011 – Commuter’s dream come true?

We are very excited this week about the launch of a new app called TravAlert.

Ever worried about missing your stop on a bus, train or plane and as a consequence missed out on some precious shut-eye?

Well there is now an app that allows you to catch up on some beloved zzz’s or listen to music while you travel without having to worry about missing your stop. Genius.

TravAlert works by sending out a GPS signal on a regular basis to work out your location in relation to your stop. You set an alert for either minutes or miles away and hey presto, you are free to read a book, chat with friends or have a cheeky nap.

We think they are definitely on to something…simple idea but very useful. TIN IT!

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TIN IT OR BIN IT is your weekly social media need-to-know.

Hot off the press we deliver the week’s most ground breaking social media news,
oh-no-you-didn’t stories, tips you can’t afford to miss or simply our opinion on trends in the digital landscape.

Lastly, we’ll tell you whether it’s tin material or bin material!

View them all here on our Facebook page.

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Tin It Or Bin It – Thursday 24 March 2011 – Lack of color?

We’ve been utterly dazzled by the launch of new photo sharing app color this week. Not because of the technical wizadry or because it is such an exciting step for social media.

But $41m investment behind it? Please.

We love the idea of shared experiences. We love the idea of technology bringing people together.

But compared with beautiful simplicity of Instagram it feels a bit ‘difficult’.

So…TIN IT or BIN IT then?
Despite their non-existing business plan and poorly executed launch this has potential! Especially if integrating it with other social media platforms. We don’t want to bin it too quickly so let’s say the jury is still out on colors.

But Instagram? Real time, simple format, all kinds of fun phone-ography – we love you.

TIN IT– every time!