Boxers: The Why Can’t We Be Friends Edition

It’s The Holiday Season, and here at the Boxers that means our thoughts turn to the worst holiday song of all time, pulling out our Charlie Brown Christmas DVD…. and to watching cat fights between internet companies.

Instagram and Twitter Fight and Fight Good

You may have noticed your Instagram pictures behaving weirdly on Twitter recently, and then turning into links rather than pictures. Well, that’s because the two Internet All-stars are fighting. Instagram says its an effort to drive traffic to its new web interfaces. Others speculate its got more to do with Twitter and Instagram sniping at each other after the photo app spurned a potential acquisition by Twitter for an acquisition by Facebook. Either way, it now means your Instagram photos show up as links, not images on Twitter. The two apparently missed the peace on earth and goodwill memo.

The Beat Drives Street View to New Places

Not all is dour and mean in Instagram-land though. Mashups have been in the public consciousness so long now that it takes a truly interesting one to make a dent. Well, here’s one that just might. The Atlantic reports on a new project from the Rutgers Social Media Information Lab that mashes Instagram and Google Street View together. Called “The Beat” it “mashes up geolocated, hashtagged Instagram photos with the Google Street View locations from which they were posed.”

The results are pretty darn cool, notes Alexis Madrigal. “People focus on the most interesting things, on food, on each other, on the sky. Google Street View does not. The other thing we get with Instagram is time: events, sunsets, Thanksgiving dinners, parades,” he writes.” Right now the Beat is focusing on holiday hashtags. Definitely worth a look.

If you need me, I’ll be spending the next several hours reliving my youth

Sure this isn’t strictly something you can use on your job, but the folks at Android Central had a gem in its Apps of the Week recently: A Calvin and Hobbes Search engine. I suddenly feel the urge to build grotesque snowman and go sledding down an impossibly steep incline. Happy Holidays to all.