Molome : The Qt Instagram for Symbian arrives

Without much fanfare or any publicity, this Instagram ( the cool iOS app that adds effects and filters to a photo on the fly and shares it on social networks ) look-alike for Symbian devices has been launched in the Ovi Store. It’s a free application and it’s called Molome.

Like stop motion videos ? I surely do, take a look at this N8 stop motion video that takes you on a tour of this app :

If you aren’t familiar with Instagram, let me explain this app for you. You take a snap, add some effects , share it with your friends on facebook or twitter ( Only these both are currently supported on Molome ). Simple, right ? Also added features are the timeline ( a la twitter ) which allows us to view the pictures taken by our friends , also allows us to love it and comment on it. Apart from the timeline, there is also a “popular” section which has the most loved pics arranged in descending order of hearts. Let’s have a look at the app shall we ?

Timeline

This timeline shows the pictures of people you follow and obviously arranged with respect to time 😛 As you can see above , each of the thumbnails have the heart symbol ( For loves ) and the blue bubble symbolizing comments. If you click a thumbnail it will allow you fav it or comment on it, while displaying a larger pic of the same. And it looks like :

Now, a glimpse of the “Popular” section :

The share button in the middle takes you to the camera which has options to turn flash on/off, also switch from Auto mode to macro mode. You can either use the cam button or the onscreen button to take pictures . Immediately after taking your picture, the App takes us here :

This is where all the magic happens, each thumbnail below represents an effect that you can add to your pic. There are enough effects that will entertain you and spice up your pic. There are selective coloring options too , for example :

My other favorite options include old film, old paper, vignette and tilt shift, they make your dull pic look awesome . So, the next step is sharing !

First timers need to login to twitter or FB. I had login to twitter so i got the switch tab. When you hit the share button, it adds the pic to your molome feed as well as share it on twitter. The molome feed is always in sync with the molo.me website or vice versa . So, the photo is stored in your local storage, uploaded to the molo.me website and shared on twitter/fb . Neat ?

The notifications are just a placeholder, for now.

For a new app, pretty decent i would say. And finally here’s the profiles tab.

Pretty decent for a new app,right ?

However, there are a few limitations, or we can call it ” the first version incompleteness ” they include :

• Resolution of the photos capped at 600X600 ( Good enough ? for instant sharing, yes, but we need more quality right ? )
• Images currently getting saved in C:/Images/Molome ( Hopefully this should be fixed soon, since the resolution is so puny, the size occupied in C: is very negligible )
• Cannot edit or share pictures from your phone photo gallery ( an important feature : option to downscale and edit pictures from your gallery )
• No option to follow twitter friends automatically ( Desperately need this, facebook included ) However we can manually follow people , no problem in that.

So, these are some of the gripes i found with Molome. Some of my friends reported that twitter login may fail, but don’t worry, just restart the app and you are logged in ! Hope it is fixed in the next version.

My first experience with this app was amazing, how was yours ? If you have not downloaded this yet : DOWNLOAD FROM OVI STORE It’s free !

Fun facts : This is developed in Qt and supports S60v5 devices too ! The developer is none other than Sittiphol Phanvilai who had done crazy stuff using the N95 like for ex, making a multi touch screen using the camera ( Kinect in 2007 anyone ? )

So, all you impressed folks, what are you waiting for ? start sharing !

Tip : Follow them on twitter ( @molo_me ) for support.

Tags: Effects, Instagram, molo.me, Molome, Nokia, Photo sharing, QT

Category: 5th Edition, Nokia, Qt, Symbian, Symbian^3, Video