Some say a picture is worth a thousand words. How about a thousand tweets?

Looks that way.

A new report released Friday shows that Instagram has taken the lead in mobile engagement, topping Twitter for the first time.

According to ComScore, “Instagram had an average of 7.3 million U.S. smartphone users accessing the application every day” in August compared to “Twitter’s 6.87 million U.S. smartphone users accessing the app every day.”

One reason for this could be because some of the most active users on Twitter access the site on desktop, whereas Instagram users are only on mobile devices.

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There truly is an app for everything, including a navigation system for your soul.

Or there will be. It’s still in development at this point.

Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington spoke about the new app her staff is building at the Digital Economy Forum in Italy Wednesday. She said “there’s a price we pay” by being so connected all of the time. Disconnection from technology is needed sometimes in order to create, she said.

The app, titled GPS For The Soul, is supposed to measure your stress level and put you in touch with things that might help you relax. Huffington said her staff is currently working out the bugs but hopes it will help reduce stress throughout the day.

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In June, I wrote about how The Oklahoma Daily was planning to scale back its print edition and continue as a digital-only publication for the summer. The benefit of scaling back would allow the staff to tinker with work flows and kickoff the university’s year-long study to generate reader feedback.

OU officials reversed their decision about going online-only for the summer, but they moved forward with a reader study. The first discussion is scheduled for 3 p.m. Tuesday in the Governors Room in Oklahoma Memorial Union.

According to the study’s wordpress blog,  the goal of the first session is to learn how readers stay informed about what’s happening on campus. Is it through mobile? Blogs? Web? Print? All options need to be explored.

As someone interested in media and news consumption, I urge students to attend the discussion and help these journalists figure out the best platform to present their work and provide information.

Also, I’m interested to hear your thoughts on the study. Comment below and let me know if you think it’s a step in the right direction for OU student media.

The Atlantic Media Company launched a digital-only business publication Monday that is dedicated to covering “core topics and knotty questions of seismic importance to business professionals, from the rise of digital payment systems to life in a world of extremely low interest rates to the growth and habits of the consumer class,” according to Editor Kevin Delaney.

The design of Quartz makes news consumption easy with one click of a headline or a quick scroll down the page. Delaney wrote in his welcome letter that the page is also designed to work just as well on mobile devices.

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The New Jersey American Civil Liberties Union has released a smartphone app that allows users to secretly record police stops, according to CBS.

The app is named “Police Tape” and lets users record audio and video in a mode that hides the recording. Users can save the recording on their phones or send a copy to the ACLU.

“This app provides an essential tool for police accountability,” said ACLU-NJ Executive Director Deborah Jacobs. “Too often incidents of serious misconduct go unreported because citizens don’t feel that they will be believed. Here, the technology empowers citizens to place a check on police power directly.”

Watch the video above to see how it works.

BE PREPARED! GET INVOLVED ONLINE!

That’s the message that now Washington Post producer Greg Linch shared with graduating college journalists in 2008 through a YouTube video entitled “Mad Journalism.” The video was uploaded four years ago, but it has a message that still resonates with many journalists today.

Knowing how to tell a story through various platforms will only help journalists broaden their experience and look beyond a written story form.

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Apple’s new version of its MacBook Pro laptop has a sleek design and Retina display, but the price and lack or portability might deter some customers from snatching the product off the shelves.

Read Write Web recently reviewed the new laptop and described it as a “powerful notebook computer with simply the very best display ever attached to a keyboard.”

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The first thing users usually see when Twitter crashes is the famous “Fail Whale,” but an infrastructure bug Thursday took down more than just the network’s mammal mascot. The entire site crashed and remained down for a few hours.

According to the company’s blog, engineers discovered the site was inaccessible about 9 a.m. and began to investigate the issue. A cascading bug, a bug with an effect that isn’t confined to a particular software element, was then found in an infrastructure component.

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Last week The Oklahoma Daily published a story about scaling back its print edition during the summer to save money and revamp its website, OUDaily.com.

The article gave me an idea for a weekend story about how college newspapers are evolving and trying to find a model that will save money and possibly even turn a profit.

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The first thing I reach for when I wake up in the morning is my smart phone. Mostly, it’s because I’m trying to turn off my obnoxious alarm, but I also check my emails and read news, tweets and Facebook posts before I even get out of bed.

My routine never changes. It’s always about getting my mobile fix before I even touch a computer.

According to a new Mobile Mindset Study, I’m not alone. The study found that 54 percent of smartphone users check their phone while lying in bed and 58 percent of smart phone users don’t go an hour without checking their phone.

Guilty.

The study seems to support the growing theory that mobile is taking over when it comes to news consumption and social interaction. The panic over phone loss even has it’s own name–Nomophobia.

My mother recently had her own episode of this phobia when she lost her cell phone a few days ago. Actually, it was carried off by a small dog, but that’s a different story.

The study shows that 94 percent of people are concerned about losing their phone, 73 percent say they felt panicked when they lost their phone, and 38 percent are most concerned about the cost and hassle of replacing it.

And when it comes to gender, Mobile Mindset found that men feel more desperate and sick when they misplace their phone. However, female participants in the study said they feel more panicked when they misplace their phone.

Read the full Mobile Mindset study here from Lookout Mobile Security.