NEW YORK (CNNMoney)
After
hinting this day would come for the past two years, Instagram finally added video to its arsenal on
Thursday.
Video on Instagram works almost
exactly as CEO Kevin Systrom said it would -- quick and simple. The new
feature, developed by the Facebook-owned (FB) Instagram, bears much resemblance to
Twitter's Vine app. But Video on Instagram packs a couple of features Vine does
not, such as video filters and stabilization.
As technically sound as Instagram's
new features are, they feel less like a magical new way of using Instagram and
more like a quick way to snuff Vine out.
Why bother with keeping accounts
with two services when you can get everything in one package? Why limit
yourself to six seconds of Vine video uploads when you can have up to 15 with
Instagram? Why look at the world as it is, when you can see it through a faded
lens?
But that's just about where the
benefits of Video on Instagram end.
The initial magic of Instagram was
not that it allowed you to stumble into beautiful, nostalgia-laced photography
through the use of filters (Hipstamatic did that first). It's that it made the
process of capturing and sharing those types of photos fast and easy.
Instagram's video product won't have
quite the same effect.
As easy as Vine and Instagram have
made video sharing, it's still not as simple as it could be. Compared to the
video stitching feature on the HTC One smarphone, which will auto-edit a video
together from multiple clips (generally to good effect), the Instagram and Vine
solutions take comparatively more work, often yielding a cruder finished
product.
The additional time and effort
needed for creating and consuming video could diminish some of the magic that
Instagram has been so good at providing.
Video on Instagram does not feel as
essential as its photo counterpart. Still, it has enough positive features to
vault it to the top of the list of best video-sharing apps. 
First Published: June 20, 2013: 4:15
PM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney)
Just
two weeks after announcing that the Xbox One would require an Internet connection and prevent the
free exchange of used games, Microsoft abruptly changed its stance and abandoned both
policies.
The original plan was to have the
Xbox One console check in with its central servers at least once a day (and
more frequently if users were accessing their account from a different system).
If the console were not able to do so, users would not be able to continue
using the Xbox One.
Likewise, the proposed digital
rights management system would only let gamers play games -- disc or digtal --
from their accounts while logged in, and would not allow them to transfer those
games to another friend, or freely sell them. There were to be a handful of
approved used game retailers gamers could sell to, but that is now irrelevant.
In a blog post on the Xbox blog,
Microsoft's (MSFT, Fortune 500) President of Interactive
Entertainment Business Don Mattick thanked users for their feedback and
explained that the Xbox will not require an internet connection after the
initial setup, and digital rights management will not be a part of games,
allowing gamers to use any disc on any Xbox One system.
See Microsoft's new Xbox in 90
seconds
"We appreciate your passion,
support and willingness to challenge the assumptions of digital licensing and
connectivity," Mattick wrote. "While we believe that the majority of
people will play games online ... we will give consumers the choice of both
physical and digital content. We ... have heard loud and clear from your feedback
that you want the best of both worlds."
At this year's Electronic
Entertainment Expo, a major industry conference, consumers and
competitors alike endlessly skewered Microsoft for its policies, and pushed
Sony (SNE)'s Playstation 4 forward as the console with
more momentum going into the holiday season.
The quick response seems to indicate
that Microsoft left E3 feeling a bit rattled. And with the hasty change in
plans, Mattrick says that some of the Xbox One's functionality will change, and
gamers will not be able to resell digital titles.
Overall, this is Microsoft's mea
culpa to its base of core gamers who have felt neglected by the company over
the last month. But it's also a decision that should have been in place from
day one. Now it must wait for scorned users to accept its apology.
