A Cute Waste of Paper? Little Printer Is Like AOL's Editions without the Screen

Hello Little Printer, available 2012 from BERG on Vimeo.

 

Little Printer by BERG Cloud condenses and curates content from foursquare, Google, The Guardian, Nike and Arup to print content twice a day like headlines, weather reports, puzzles, to-do lists and more.

Editions by AOL is a personalized magazine, similar to Zite and Flipboard, that virtually delivers content to your iPad daily. Little Printer, on the other hand, delivers personalized content via good old-fashioned paper.

"The act of printing--committing to paper--makes a statement, so you want to be sure that what you print is important," BERG CEO Matt Webb told Fast Code Design. "What we concentrate on now is density of information or delight. Great publications are...
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Flashback to Facebook's Privacy Issues in 2009: Is Facebook Unethical, Clueless or Unlucky?


Now that Facebook has settled with the Federal Trade Commission over its failure to keep its privacy promises -- and Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that Facebook "made a bunch of mistakes," we thought it would be worth looking back at an editorial LAUNCH founder Jason Calacanis wrote two years ago about Facebook's fishy approach to privacy. The original is here.


By Jason Calacanis

UPDATED/RELATED (9:30AM December 14th): 1. Excellent post from Dan Gillmor on why he deleted his Facebook page, which supports my thesis below.  2. The EFF’s comments on Facebook’s horrific behavior is great supporting evidence. These two articles appeared DAYS before my rambling piece below. 3. Facebook reached out and asked me to do a call with them. This call will occur this afternoon. Please post updates below (or link to this story so I can link back).

==============================================

Title: Is Facebook unethical, clueless or unlucky?
Location: CalaCompound, Brentwood, CA
Date/Time: December, 13th 2009 11:20AM
Subscribers: 18,463
Republishing: Looking for someone to donate to charity for web rights to newsletter: http://bit.ly/8Vql8G

===============================


Facebook proved again this week that they are either the most unethical or clueless internet company in the world. An amazing accomplishment since Facebook is also one of the most promising, and certainly fastest growing, internet companies of all time.  Perhaps I’m being hyperbolic (who me?), or maybe they are a little of both, but the fact remains they screw up on important issues almost as if it’s a “best practice” to do so.

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Google Maps Takes a Stab at Bing with Indoor Maps Feature for Airports and Malls

Starting today, Android users with Google Maps 6.0 can navigate through 60+ airports, shopping malls and other retail stores throughout the US and Japan.

While search competitor Bing has offered floor plans for select malls since 2010 for desktop users, it does not let users track where they currently are in stores. Despite now offering 400+ mall floor plans on mobile devices, it does not work with the native apps for iOS and Android, but rather only on Bing's mobile site.

"When you’re inside an airport, shopping mall or retail store, a common way to figure out where you are is to look for a freestanding map directory or ask an employee for help," the Google blog states. "Starting today, with the release of Google Maps 6.0 for Android, that directory is brought to the palm of your hands, helping you determine where you are, what floor you're on, and where to go indoors."

Detailed floor plans now automatically appear when you're viewing the map and zoomed in on a building or store that has indoor map data available. And if you use Latitude, you can...
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Three Reasons a Facebook Phone Can Work


News of a Facebook phone code-named Buffy broke last week, and since then many have expressed doubt that such a phone can compete with Apple and Google. Ryan Spoon, a principal at Polaris Venture Partners, thinks it's too soon to write off Facebook's effort. Read the original here [ syndicated with permission ].

By Ryan Spoon

This week we learned of Facebook’s internal project (code-named Buffy) to build a Facebook Phone. Much of the tech press laughed: it’s too late! It’s too crowded! Facebook isn’t a hardware company! And so on.

Let’s not assume failure for three reasons.

1. As I have written before, Facebook has a better understanding of
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Did Google+ Copy Diaspora* or Vice Versa?

Diaspora* and Google+.

With the recent launch of Diaspora*, it appears that either Google or Diaspora* were inspired by the other when creating privacy features that let users decide which groups of people to share content with, as Diaspora*'s Aspects are quite similar in functionality to Google+'s Circles.

Earlier this week, Diaspora* posted to its Google+ page, "Why Diaspora looks like Google+? Ask to Google," which is accompanied by an image since Diaspora* has Aspects while Google+ has Circles. [ See image after the jump. ]

"There’s been big news in the social networking world recently, and we can’t help but be pleased with the impact our work has had on two of the biggest developments," the Diaspora* blog stated in September. "We’re proud that Google+ imitated...
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Google Catalogs Android App Arrives on Cyber Monday


Just in time for Cyber Monday, which had sales exceeding $1B last year, Google has released its Google Catalogs app for Android, though it has offered the app for iPad since August.

"With rich product images, videos, and the ability to curate your own personal collages to share with friends, Google Catalogs makes browsing your favorite mail order catalogs easy, fun and interactive," Google Business Product Manager Abigail Holtz writes on the Google blog.

The app features 400+ digital catalogs from 125+ brands including Nordstrom, Williams-Sonoma, Nike, Urban Outfitters, Bloomingdales, Patagonia, Ugg and Sephora. Shoppers can...
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Diaspora* Finally Unveiled, Feels Like Google+



Diaspora*, the open-source decentralized social network that aims to be a Facebook replacement, recently launched out of private beta, despite aiming to go public by October.
 
"Revamped, more secure, and more fun, DIASPORA* is ready to help you share and explore the web in a whole new way," an email to Diaspora* users states. "An international movement with a shared vision for a better web, DIASPORA*'s #1 feature is its community."

Diaspora* sports some Google+ elements, such as the black bar at the top and a stream on the left-hand side with "Aspects" rather than Circles. Unlike other social networks, Diaspora* encourages people to follow hashtags rather than users, though it is possible to search for people. Similar to Google+ and Facebook, you can post publicly or with a select group of people and add your own "Aspects."

[ UPDATE: There has been some speculation regarding which company came up with the idea of Circles (Google) and Aspects (Diaspora*) first. A Google spokesperson tells LAUNCH that when they launched the Google+ Field Trial in June 2011, they...
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The Evolution of Google Search, 6K+ Improvements Since 1996



Since starting as a research project in 1996, Google has evolved with roughly 500 improvements every year such as universal results, quick answers and Google Instant.

"Our goal is to get you to the answer you’re looking for faster and faster, creating a nearly seamless connection between your questions and the information you seek," Google Fellow Ben Gomes writes on the Google blog. "That means you don’t generally need to know about the latest search feature in order to take advantage of it— simply type into the box as usual and find the answers you’re looking for."

Google started based on the Page Rank algorithm but as more content surfaced on the web, it became increasingly hard to find the content you wanted, Ben says in the video.

"As Google got better and better, users expected more and more from it," Google VP Marissa Mayer says. "They didn't want just web pages. They wanted...
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Did You Know Spotify Uses Peer-to-Peer Networking?

[ Illustration of how Spotify streams songs from The Pansentient League. ]

Spotify just hit 2.5M paying subscribers and is poised to announce a "new direction" on Wednesday, four months after launching in the United States. But few people probably give much consideration to how the U.K.-based music streaming service that started in Sweden actually works.

That's why a post on the Spotify-tracking blog The Pansentient League -- based on a 2010 academic paper by Gunnar Kreitz and Fredrik Niemela of Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology and Spotify -- caught our attention.

Unlike Pandora and Spotify's competitors, Spotify's desktop app for Windows and Mac uses a peer-to-peer network combined with server-based streaming. Why use P2P? Quite simply, to make the service more scalable and lighten the load on Spotify's servers.

Spotify manages to do this without

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Is Google's Chromebook a Failure?



After we spotted an advertisement for the Chromebook on Google Chrome's new tab page, followed by the recent drop in price of some Chromebook laptops, we started to wonder, "Is Google's Chromebook a failure?"

Earlier this week, Google announced that the price of some Chromebook laptops -- the Acer, which is rumored to have only sold 5K devices, and Samsung Chromebooks -- will drop by as much as 30% down to $299.

Google also recently updated the user interface on the Chromebook to sport a new login screen and started offering Chromebooks for in-flight use on select domestic Virgin America flights.

Matt Rosoff from Business Insider recently wrote that even though Google cut the cost of Chromebooks, it probably...
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Websites and Apps to Be Thankful for


Thanksgiving means spending time with family you either love or hate, eating ridiculous amounts of food, watching parades and football...not celebrating tech companies and gadgets, right?

Well, we hope you'll indulge us as we take a moment to share the websites and apps we and LAUNCH readers are thankful for. They make our work lives easier and our personal lives richer. And of course we are grateful for the people who build, improve, tweak and debug them every day.
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Love an Ad on YouTube? Google Lets You +1 It


The ability to +1 ads on YouTube commercials just came on up our radar. With one click, users can recommend the ad's landing page to friends and other contacts from within YouTube.

"Incorporating personal recommendations into display ads has the potential to change the way people view advertising," Senior Software Engineer Eider Oliveira writes on the Google blog. "A display ad becomes much more powerful when people can see which of their friends and contacts have chosen to endorse it."

Companies that are utilizing the +1 button in YouTube video ads include Cars.com (146 +1s), Sony Music Entertainment for Tony Bennett's album Duets II on iTunes (five +1s) and Bing (121 +1s). Companies can also incorporate +1s into images, animated GIF files and flash.

A Google spokesperson tells LAUNCH that they don't disclose the number of advertisers using the +1 button in ads on YouTube.

Earlier this month, Google rolled out +1 capabilities for watching videos on YouTube and...
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Obama 2012 Campaign Now on Google+ -- When's the First Hangout?


President Barack Obama, the politician who mastered social media in 2008, is a little late to the Google+ party, as Republican candidate +Herman Cain launched his page Oct. 27 and has 23K+ followers. But the +Obama 2012 campaign quietly made its first post this morning -- a welcome message -- followed by two more, one on a new law and one with a behind-the-scenes video.

Obama's verified profile also includes nine photos but no videos (yet). Although the number of people following the profile is not disclosed [ we find that lame ], the page has over 1K +1s and counting.

The welcome post, which already has 59 shares, 176 +1s and 129 comments, notes, "We're still kicking the tires and figuring this out, so let us know what you'd like to see here and your ideas for how we can use this space to help you stay connected to the campaign."
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Spotify Gives Thanks for 2.5M Paying Subscribers in the U.S.


U.K.-based Spotify just hit 2.5M paying subscribers -- four months since its launch here and a nice teaser for its press conference next Wednesday in New York.

That's when the company says it will "unveil the latest major development from Spotify - and a new direction for the company." CEO and founder Daniel Ek will host the event, so it must be important as he didn't appear at the U.S. launch in July.

Pandora remains the streaming service to beat, with 24M active users according to its just-released Q3 results. The company said it was not seeing any impact from
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The 65 Stories TechCrunch Didn't Cover in November (But LAUNCH Did)

You already know LAUNCH is obsessed with great startups, accelerator demo days and new products from companies like Google, Twitter, Facebook and Amazon. We also find different angles on the big stories and highlight cool/fun projects we know you'll appreciate.

We think it's worth noting the articles you'll find on LAUNCH but not TechCrunch [ here's our previous list of 50+ startups TechCrunch didn't cover ]. If you only read TechCrunch, in fact, you would have missed these 65 stories published since Nov. 1 -- what a shame, eh?

If you know a great startup, a cool project, or a story that hasn't been reported, email tips@launch.is.
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Knol Didn't Kill Wikipedia


When Google first announced Knol in 2007, many technology analysts and bloggers believed that Knol would kill Wikipedia. Well, they were wrong because Google announced today that they're killing it. 

"I think Knol is probably our biggest threat since the creation of Wikipedia," former Wikimedia Foundation Chair Florence Devouard wrote to the Wikipedia community in 2007. "I really mean the biggest. Maybe not so much the project itself, but the competition it will create, the PR consequences, the financial tsunami, the confusion in people minds (free as in free speech or as in free of charge)."

Google first started testing Knol to "help improve web content by enabling experts to colllaborate on in-depth articles," the Google blog states. But the content wasn't that impressive. Harry McCracken of Technologizer writes that the homepage items were "mostly a bit odd, a bit spammy, or both." Google let Knol languish as Jason Kincaid of TechCrunch notes, and the site experienced downtime in July 2010.

While Knol will no longer continue to exist as an individual product, users can migrate their knols to Annotum, a hosted theme on Wordpress that lets users publish articles and journals, through Oct. 1, 2012.

Although Knol had a good run, it did not successfully replace Wikipedia like The Guardian tech reporter Jack Schofield thought.

"As well as being an attack on Wikipedia, Knol represents...
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Anybeat Launches as Facebook with Klout Built In



Anybeat, which just publicly launched to serve as a pseudonymous digital place for discussion, ranks users based on how active they are, in addition to how often users interact with them on the platform.

While Klout judges your activity across all social networks, Anybeat takes into consideration activity on this specific platform and gives users "Cred" to brag about their reputation on the network.

"Many people first fell in love with the Internet because of AOL's chat rooms," an email sent to Anybeat users states. "In these pseudonymous social environments they were able to meet people that they would have never met, have open conversations about all kinds of topics, and create long lasting digital relationships that often translated into the physical world."

Although a user's real name is hidden, his or her profile stays...

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Microsoft Confirms It Will Make Kinect Hardware for Windows



Since Microsoft released the Kinect for Xbox 360 a year ago, people have hacked the device to do things like make you appear invisible and create a tool to help the visually impaired navigate.

Microsoft is clearly paying attention to all these "unconventional" uses, and earlier this month announced it would launch a Kinect for Windows commercial SDK in early 2012 to do things like help doctors perform surgery and musicians perform and record music [ see the video ]. Now Microsoft confirms that it is making a PC-friendly version of the Kinect hardware although it has not said when it will become available.

"...we’ve been asked whether there will also be new Kinect hardware especially for Windows," writes Craig Eisler, general manager of Kinect for Windows, on the MSDN blog. "The answer is yes; building on the existing Kinect for Xbox 360 device, we have optimized certain hardware components and made firmware adjustments which better enable PC-centric scenarios."

Among the hardware changes Microsoft is promising are...
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Google Groups Hacked, Posts Appear in Porn Group with SEO Keywords



Many members of the Google App Engine group have noticed a weird phenomenon in Google Groups today: a duplicate, and sometimes original post, appears in groups like the "American porn USA" and "adult mermaid costume" with added SEO keywords.

"The goal of this attack is clearly some sort of attempt to game search engines by associating their links with otherwise "quality" content," Chief Simian at Similarity Jeff Schnitzer, who posted the problem earlier today on Hacker News, tells LAUNCH via email.

Hackers are adding words like "bignlife," "make money training" and "e-mail sending Job" to the posts, and then moving them to spam groups.

Jeff says that he has never seen anything like this before, though Google Groups is no stranger to spammers.

"When I look at my profile I see the spam posts show up as 'my' posts," Jeff says. "Others report...
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Watch Outbrain CEO Yaron Galai on TWiST Today at 1pm PT

Outbrain CEO and co-founder Yaron Galai will join Host Jason Calacanis and Co-host Tyler Crowley today on This Week in Startups #208.

Yaron co-founded content discovery and recommendation engine Outbrain in 2006. Roughly 3B websites use Outbrain, which results in 26B links per month to web content such as editorials, video and product reviews.  

Outbrain has received $29M in funding from investors including...
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