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Tweet videos directly from your iPad 2 thanks to updated Twitter app

Twitter has updated its official iPad app with a feature supporting the iPad 2's camera, so expect your stream to be polluted with wobbly sub-megapixel cat pics from tonight.

Stuart Dredge
2 min read

If a picture tells a thousand words, what kind of story is told by a tweeted link to a video of you rambling into your iPad 2's front camera, setting the world to rights? Actually, don't answer that.

We're about to find out, though. Twitter has updated its official iPad app, 9 to 5 Mac has noted, with a feature supporting the camera on the iPad 2, which goes on sale tonight. The company isn't shouting about it, merely noting as a bullet point in the 'What's New' text that 'Photo/Video capture support for iPad 2' is included.

The ability to tweet photos of your cat taken by wobbling a 9.7-inch tablet in its direction is what Twitter has been waiting for, we're sure you'll agree. We expect a number of other social iPad apps to add camera support in the coming weeks, while the new device could also spur iPhone photo apps such as Instagram to launch tabletised versions.

Instagram on an iPad 2? Okay, the taking-photos part might be more of a novelty with the device's sub-megapixel cameras, but we reckon a tablet will be just the thing for browsing the filtered pics taken by your friends, with a slinky swipeable interface.

One concern about using the iPad 2 as a camera is the fear of dropping it, however. Initial teardowns have suggested that the new tablet's glass is 27 per cent thinner than the original iPad, to help Apple slim down the device as a whole.

Does that mean the glass will be more prone to cracking or shattering if the iPad 2 slips through your buttery fingers? Note, butter and touchscreens aren't a great mix in any case.

Happily, it seems we can rest at ease. iPhone repair firm iFixyouri has been stress-testing the iPad 2, and claims its glass is just as strong as its predecessor's -- and may even be more drop-prone, thanks to having more "bending tolerance", 9 to 5 Mac reports. And this isn't based on theories: the company has been dropping a variety of objects on to the iPad 2 from a height to see what happens.

Here's a video outlining their findings. If only they'd waited a few days, they could have tweeted iPad's-eye-view videos of the experiments...