Just a few reasons why I love Flipboard and Instagram

For the last few months I find myself increasingly fascinated by Flipboard and can easily spend a couple of hours creating my ‘personalised’ magazines, then enjoying reading them whenever I have time to spare.

Pic- Courtesy Google

While the world's first social magazine app has been turning heads for a few years now, what is new is that this popular e-zine reader for iPad is now available on the iPhone as well. The same great look and feel of Flipboard isn't sacrificed at all on the smaller screen.

With the mission statement clearly defining what they are about, ‘Our mission is to let people discover and share content in beautiful, simple, and meaningful ways.”Headed by Mike McCue, former CEO of Tellme, and Evan Doll, former senior iPhone engineer at Apple, they have succeeded in providing hours of interactive and most importantly, ‘free’ reading pleasure for millions worldwide.

What I really like about Flipboard is that one can flip content into it from any web site--which is a must-have feature--on a computer. That makes it easy to author blog entries, web pages then flip then into an e-zine of your own creation, such as one for work. Thereafter, you really don't have to worry much about creating a visually appealing layout since it's done for you.You can also choose to tweet content as you "flip" into an existing e-zine, so that's a neat feature.

Flipboard is truly on a quest to transform how people discover, view and share content by combining the beauty and ease of print with the power of social media. It was on Flipboard that I recently discovered that Steven Meisel did not shoot Vogue’s latest fashion spread. There were no backlights, no beauty dish.

Instead, the austere fashion publication took to Instagram for a special Fashion Week photo shoot. With that Vogue has created a very interesting and fun act for all others to follow and if they try hard enough, better them in the act.

“I thought this time around during Fashion Week in New York we could try doing a shoot that shows clothes you can buy in stores right now,” explained Sally Singer, creative digital director at Vogue. Vogue then posted the shoot, calling it 'VogueInstaFashion' on its website.

The spread features top model Hillary Rhoda in scenes all over New York City - Times Square, Central Park - all shot with just an iPhone by photographer Michael O'Neal.

According to Singer, Andrew Gold from Vogue’s photography department had been following O’Neal’s work on Instagram and thought he would be great for this project.

As far as I'm concerned, it is clear, more than ever before, the power of social media is growing every hour of every day and since I’m a strong believer in Instagram, this just proved it how influential really Instagram is.

(NB This piece is a part of my column 'My Take' originally featured in Muscat Daily.)

Insta8Oman-Taking 'Instagramming' to a whole new level in Oman

It was fun, it was informative and it was truly a 'one of a kind' Instagramming experience in Oman.What I also loved was that it was completely 'paperless' as all the communications, including the Invitations, the follow ups and anything else that was required was done via Direct Messaging on Instagram itself.

'Encapsulated-' Moments that I really loved

 Think all these were 'firsts'? Then you can think some more.

Held at  the Opera Galleria adjoining the Royal Opera House ,Muscat 
(ROHM) it was definitely the largest gathering of 'Instagrammers' in Oman till date and provided a wonderful platform to meet and mingle with others who have similar interests.   Whether it was the delicious sweet and savoury canapes provided by The Dried Lemon or  the fabulous scented towels as we headed towards the venue to take our seats, it was the culmination of a lot of careful thinking and planning that made it an extremely successful event. Like me, there are many others hoping for something like this to happen on a regular basis and are willing to do our bit to help the organisers in making that a possibility.

All eyes and ears-Listening to one of the speakers 

The results of the Insta8Star where I was one of the six finalists had been declared earlier and The Art Whisper, Manahil Al Kindy won in that category. Accordingly, she was one of the 8 speakers who talked about her experience of using Instagram and how it actually helped her in her day to day work as an emerging Omani artist.

Among others, we heard HH Tariq Shihab, Sahar from Saharz Beauty parlour, Ashelaqtta and Nada from Omani Paws all of whom gave us a personal insight in to how Instagram really does work for them. I must also make a special  mention of Fami Wami, the key organizer of the event.It would have been impossible to have an event of this scale and size without his driving force- so thank you Fami Wami! 


Personally, I learnt a lot and when I came back, bought and immediately applied one of the apps a speaker told us about. Here it is then- my version of the Opera Galleria among a few others.

What I learnt and applied- A new Photo App used to create 'my version' of the Opera Galleria

Looking forward to more such informative and fun events in Oman and once again, Happy Instagramming!

Insta8Oman and how I came to be one of the 6 Finalists for Oman's First ever Insta8 Star

It was just a couple of days ago that I wrote my first post on Insta8 Oman, a unique Instagram event being organised at the Opera Gallera in Muscat on the 14th of April. The highlights of the event are all related to the number 8.

8 moments in 8 minutes by 8 motivators is what it will be about and the excitement around it is building up by the hour.

But excitement of another kind was waiting for me later that evening, when I learnt that I had been nominated as one of the 6 Finalists for the Insta8 Star! What will follow next will be an Instagram voting process by following @ Operagalleria and putting down one's preferred candidate.For all those on Instagram and interested in voting for me, my number is 3. From what I gather, the person with the maximum votes will emerge as Oman's very first Insta8 Star.  

With just two days to go, it is something that the rapidly growing Oman's Instagramming community is clearly looking forward to. As far as I'm concerned, I was always interested in being a part of the event, and am now even more positively inclined. 

The nomination itself was an unexpected pleasure and meeting and interacting with other Instagrammers  will  be a great way of networking and increasing  awareness of how social media has come to play  a very important role in  today's world. Instagram has clearly come to  be recognised  as a  social media website and online marketing tool that should definitely be an important part of a company's or a small business's marketing toolkit. What makes this tool unique is that it centers on the use of photographs and photograph captions only. Users can instantly post pictures with captions directly from their mobile devices to share with followers. By integrating Instagram into one's social media marketing campaign, one can give the online following an insight into the company in newer and more interesting  ways. 

Watch out for more on Insta8Oman after the event on the 14th of April.

Till then, here's wishing all of you Happy Instagramming!

Insta8Oman all set to make new inroads into Oman's Instagramming community

I've been on Instagram for about a year and a half now with my account  http://instagram.com/sunaina_serna_ahluwalia and during that time have grown to love it for the fun, excitement and ability to easily express my thoughts as well as share photographs with the community.

To put it in a nutshell, Instagram is an online photo, video sharing and social networking service that enables its users to take pics, apply a range of digital filters to them and then share them on a variety of social networking services such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr. A distinctive feature and one that not even many Instagram users may know about is that it confines photos to a square shape, similar to Kodak Instamatic and Polaroid images , in contrast to the 16:9 aspect ratio now typically used by mobile device cameras

Oman too has seen an exponential growth of Instagram users, particularly over the last year and while I don’t have updated statistics, I can confidently say that the number of Instagram users is growing by the hour!

In the last week, the Instagram community in Oman has been buzzing about something that promises to be really exciting and if it actually succeeds in drawing out the best of the Instagram users here, it would have been a highly successful, one of a kind experiment that is then guaranteed to grow by leaps and bounds.

Called Insta8 Oman and to be held at the Opera Galleria adjoining the Royal Opera House, Muscat,this event will have 8 talented speakers from Oman who have been successful in using this medium to tell a real and meaningful story by using 8 images from their Instagram account.While the selections continue and the date draws closer, I'm one of the lucky people who will be present and cheering as we learn more, participate more and come away from that evening with some new friendships and a whole lot of new insights into the Instagram as well as the real lives of the people who will be attending.

So for all of you who are on Instagram, do watch this space for more as I update  you about my perceptions and experiences of Insta8Oman.

Till then, Happy Instagramming...