It has been an interesting week, and perhaps the most notable that took place this week has been Facebook and Instagram finally getting on board the video bandwagon. We've anticipated Instagram delivering on such a service for some time, and perhaps Twitter's Vine finally pushed the company to get its act together and deliver on it. We think it’s a great thing, though some pundits have complained that video killed the Instagram star. Not so! Please let us know what you Instagram users think on this front.

Instagram now enters the fray with Skype, Vine and Snapchat. How will each of these players do in what is quickly becoming a new video competition? Who will define the rules of the road and best set the pace?

Twitter's Vine has accumulated over 13 million users since it was launched, and Twitter isn't stopping there. Just recently the company has added new capabilities, this time through the acquisition of Spindle, a start-up focused on location, check-in and local discovery. The implications for the technology are pretty clear. So far, 2013 has been a significant year for Twitter in terms of services expansion as the company introduced its Vine short-video sharing app in January that has taken off to finally fill the role of the Instagram of video.

Many of us are long time children of Adobe - does Photoshop ring a bell? Dreamweaver? Indesign? These are not only classic tools for professional content and Web developers but they are also long time tools for the consumer markets. And many of us have been willing to pay fairly hefty price tags for them because they are the best of the best in many respects. But did you know that some time ago Adobe began to offer pure, cloud-based versions of all of these apps? Along with a number of very interesting pricing models? Now, the company has upped the ante significantly with 15 new Adobe Creative Cloud apps, which can be stored in the cloud and opened on multiple types of devices and platforms. The Creative Cloud suite can be accessed through a subscription, with rates around $50 per month. Check it out!

Many of our readers are no doubt familiar with the Tesla electric car. It offers a number of innovations and also has a tablet-like interface - heck, we'll call it a tablet interface. Recently the company got into a scuffle with a New York Times (NYT) review that wasn't as complimentary as Tesla might have hoped for relative to the car's ability to deliver on extended range driving. In any case, we've now had some firsthand driving experience (not ourselves, but a colleague of ours) with the Tesla. It is indeed very cool technology. There is a lot to be impressed with, but alas, as sweet as the electric technology is, the Tesla is still not quite all there - especially relative to the extended driving issues NYT complained about.

On a completely different subject, just as Tesla is setting interesting electric car standards, Cisco's Visual Networking Index (VNI) has long provided the standard for looking at current and future wireless traffic traffic trends. It is the key reason why the new white paper, Internet of Everything (IoE) Value Index, is a must read in our humble opinion. The study of 7,500 global business and IT leaders across 12 countries reports that the United States, China and Germany are expected to realize the greatest value in 2013. It also found that a lot of market opportunity is being left on the table. The report strongly suggests that corporations could nearly double their profits through greater adoption of business practices, customer approaches and technologies that leverage IoE. We've noted this in other articles however Cisco's report provides clear confirmation this will be the case.

Finally, it is worth noting that a wearable technology company we are very keen on, Oculus Rift, which got its start through Kickstarter, has now scored some serious new funding. The company just landed $16 million dollars to help it get its awesome Rift augmented reality headset out the door and into the market. The Rift delivers the equivalent of a 110-inch viewing screen and its latest high definition version will likely prove to be a major game changer across many different types of scenarios - gaming, TV, enterprise work environments and more. It is very cool.

Have a great weekend!