4SquareAnd7YearsAgo, a service built at a Foursquare Hackathon that emailed you your Foursquare checkins from exactly a year ago, has branched out beyond Foursquare. Now the service, newly re-monikered Timehop, includes your Facebook status updates, photos you updated, photos you were tagged in, as well as Twitter and Instagram posts from 365 days past.
The tech industry is starting to see a resurgence of products that play into social media nostalgia; Facebook Timeline, Memento and Memolane for example. “Everybody is starting to realize that there’s value in the past,” Timehop co-founder Jonathan Wegener tells me. He hopes that the startup will one day be the “ultimate” way people experience their content history online, despite the tight constraint of only showing anniversary content — which Wegener likens to Timehop’s 140 characters. → Read More
After years in the making, the One Laptop Per Child program’s XO-3 tablet will be shown in more or less final form next week at CES, according to the project’s founder, Nicholas Negroponte. The latest image of the tablet is shown here, though it is from some time back and may no longer be representative.
The price of the tablet will in fact be under $100, he said, though various options will put it over that. It has an 8-inch screen — traditional LCD, though it may be upgraded to a Pixel Qi display for power savings and e-paper-like capability. If they stuck to their original specifications, it will also be waterproof, durable, and about a quarter of an inch thick. The version they’re showing will run Android, though what version was not specified. → Read More
TechCrunch reader Nikos Kakavoulis sent us the following amazing story earlier this week … The Daily Secret founder used Find My iPhone to catch an naive iPhone “thief” — turning on the Play Sound feature in Starbucks in order to locate his lost phone inside the person who had found (and kept) his phone’s pockets.
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Short version: A powerful little device, significantly brighter than others of its size, with decent battery life and a good picture. Too bad it’s so damn loud, and not the most user-friendly thing of all time either. → Read More
Everyone who has been using streaming music service Spotify for free in the US from when it launched last July is now going to have to start paying, as Business Insider notes today.
The reason is the company’s policy of limiting free usage to ten hours and/or five plays per track every month, after the first six months of free usage. Full access will now cost you $9.99 per month, with partial access (no mobile, no offline, etc. but also no ads and no streaming limits) at $4.99.
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TechCrunch has received a response from Facebook to the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s letter urging the US Federal Trade Commission to investigate Timeline for possible privacy violations. Facebook says it has not violated user privacy or its November settlement with the FTC. That’s because Timeline simply makes historic content more accessible, not visible to anyone who couldn’t already see it. Also, Timeline provides Activity Log for managing the visibility of this content. I agree. Facebook may be bending the rules of privacy, but it hasn’t broken them.
In response to EPIC’s call for an FTC investigation, as reported by Identity Matters, Facebook’s Director of Public Policy Andrew Noyes tells TechCrunch: → Read More
Some 24 hours after we broke the news that Facebook had engaged Moo to be the sole creator of its new ‘social’ business cards service we have some exclusive numbers on what that deal is translating into.
The promotion of 200,000 free packs of 50 cards is on a first come, first served basis. However the offer is capped at 5,000 orders per day (that’s 250,000 cards per day) in order, Moo says, to ensure a “strong ethos of customer service and to make it fair.”
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Some 24 hours after we broke the news that Facebook had engaged Moo to be the sole creator of its new ‘social’ business cards service we have some exclusive numbers on what that deal is translating into.
The promotion of 200,000 free packs of 50 cards is on a first come, first served basis. However the offer is capped at 5,000 orders per day (that’s 250,000 cards per day) in order, Moo says, to ensure a “strong ethos of customer service and to make it fair.” → Read More
Back in July of last year, ArtistData Founder and serial entrepreneur Brenden Mulligan brought his newest project, Onesheet, into beta. At the time, Alexia described Onesheet as the “About.me for bands”, which is an apt description considering Mulligan’s professed goal for his startup was to create a simple way for bands to build a real presence on the Web without having to religiously maintain that presence. That means that bands can use Onesheet to create aggregated, customizable profiles, verifying their identities through Facebook or Twitter to connect with third party services like Soundcloud, Bandcamp and ReverbNation. (And social media services like Posterous, Tumblr and YouTube.) → Read More
YCombinator-backed hacker recruiter platform Hackruiter has raised a modest seed round from investors SV Angel and Founder Collective. The company raised $200K but could have raised much more, because it is already profitable co-founder David Albert tells me.
Hackruiter is already profitable because startups like Tumblr, Weebly, Loopt, Artsy and Bit.ly currently pay Hackruiter $20K per programmer referral on averafe (Amazing, right?). And Hackruiter finds people to refer through its Hacker School, which is now entering its third batch. Unlike beginner code-learning programs like Codecademy, the in-person Hacker School is exclusively focused on making already good coders better.
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As we’ve reported in the past, PayPal announced an in-store payments technology both via mobile and point of sale systems that is currently being tested on a ‘friends and family’ basis in a national retailer. That retailer is Home Depot, we’ve learned from PayPal.
PayPal said of the Home Depot announcement: We frequently run trials with our retail partners. In this case, PayPal and The Home Depot are engaged in a limited pilot program for new POS technologies. The pilot is currently being run in five stores and involves a small number of PayPal employees.
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Watch first, then read. Or just watch, that’s cool too. → Read More
We don’t design and hardware quite as much as we used to, but I’m making an exception for these. A good while back, I wrote about a pair of headphones I thought was the most understated and attractive I’d ever seen. They were the TMA-1s from Danish design house AIAIAI, and while I never got to get my hands on them, I’m going to make it my business to try their new pair out. → Read More
Dijit teased us with a preview of their iPad-optimized remote control app back in December, but home theater convergence aficionados will be glad to know that the app is finally available in the App Store. → Read More
As you well know, next week is CES 2012 and TechCrunch will be there – with bells on. We’re focusing on start-ups, small companies, and interesting people and we’ll be doing a lot of live streaming, video interviews, and live giveaways. You’re going to want to watch. But, you’re saying, how can I interact with the CES team while they’re on the floor? With Twitter, of course!
First, follow @techcrunch for up to the minute news. We will be posting giveaways to this feed when they happen live and we’ll be asking for feedback as we go along. We’ll be using the hashtag #CEScrunch for all the CES stuff, but expect a little bit more noise. → Read More
The rights to Casa.com (Spanish for ‘house’) have been transferred to Amazon, indicating the ecommerce giant’s next dedicated vertical shop may be a home decor site. Amazon’s Quidsi network of sites already runs diapers.com for baby goods, wag.com for pets, beautybar.com for — well, you get it. If you visit Casa.com now you’ll find more evidence, with a blank screen explaining “You have reached an invalid location. Maybe you are looking for http://www.diapers.com, http://www.soap.com…” Casa.com could offer a more affordable, traditional home decor shopping alternative to luxury and flash sales sites like One Kings Lane and Gilt’s Decorati. → Read More
Big news from Sony today: according to a report just published by Japanese business daily The Nikkei, Kazuo “Kaz” Hirai, currently the company’s Executive Deputy President, will become president as early as April this year. Hirai doubles as the Chairman of Sony Computer Entertainment.
The move doesn’t really come as a big surprise: in March last year, current president Howard Stringer called Hirai the “leading candidate” in the race for the next CEO. If the Nikkei report is to be believed, Stringer will stay on board as Sony’s Chairman and CEO. → Read More
Who’s excited for the Crunchies Awards? All of the finalists have been announced and the voting has begun. There are some interesting match-ups this year. We have Google+ going up against Facebook Timeline, Instagram, Path 2.0 and the New New Twitter for Best Social Application of 2011. Foursquare is going up against Airbnb, RunKeeper, Grindr and Uber for Best Location Application. And which startup do you think will take the award for Best Overall Startup of 2011? Heavy hitters like Dropbox, Instagram, Square, Gilt Groupe, Spotify and Tumblr are all finalists.
The Crunchies Awards are going to be really big this year, and we will have nothing short of the best in the technology industry joining us. We have started to release tickets in batches and will continue to do so as we get closer to the event. They sell out really fast, so we will continue to give our readers chances to win tickets for free to the Crunchies as well.
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I’ve been looking for something like this for years: a central, easy-to-use site for stock photos. Called PhotoPin, the site features a search engine that trolls Flickr for pictures. Some of them are also available to buy, but the vast majority are CC licensed.
Obviously the site (it’s more a widget, really) reminds you to link back to the original image, but if you’ve ever tried to find an acceptable image for “ninja stormtrooper” then you’ll understand the value of the site. → Read More
This Kickstarter project aims to rend the very fabric of space and time. The product is a camping pot for boiling water and doing a little cooking in a pinch but get this: the pot is made of paper.
The pot is completely biodegradable and folds flat in your backpack. It’s mostly designed for a single use although you can feasibly boil a few bottle-fulls of water in it over time. The foods you cook must contain water but they are not limited to highly liquid consumables: → Read More
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