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Google Acquires reCAPTCHA

googlerecaptcha.jpgGoogle has acquired reCAPTCHA, a CAPTCHA service that is used on more than 100,000 websites. A CAPTCHA uses distorted letters and numbers that cannot be read by a computer but are still fairly easy to read for humans to prevent computer-automated spam, account creation or denial-of-service attacks.

The CAPTCHAs reCAPTCHA uses come from scanned newspapers and old books whose ink and paper have degraded to such an extent that a computer cannot read it reliably, but a human can still make out the text. Google will be harnessing this to help with its Google Books and Google News Archive Search projects. When you’re entering the CAPTCHA text into a reCAPTCHA box, you may be helping Google to transcribe computer-unreadable text into plain text.

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By Antoniu – September 16, 2009

tr.im Goes Open Source

In August, Nambu decided to shut down its URL shortening service tr.im, citing an inability to monetize traffic, a lack of interest from third parties to take over the service and the advantage that bit.ly, being the default URL shortener on Twitter, has over other services. Less than a week later, tr.im was brought back up due to the supportive response from users, with a new plan: to open source the project and continue operating the service at a loss with the help of donations. The self-imposed deadline to complete its goals was 15 September 2009.

In an update posted last night, tr.im announced that it has now open sourced two (the tr.im API and URL redirect system) out of three modules. The release of the third module, the tr.im website, has been delayed for one to three days because of the need to update the authentication and login system and to fix some bugs. tr.im is also in the process of being handed over from Nambu to Eric Woodward, the president of Nambu, personally. The plan is to then to give the service to the community.

When the full service will be open sourced, it will allow anyone with a domain name to run a URL shortener identical to tr.im. By doing this, users can better protect themselves against link-rot, as they will not be dependent on a third-party service to ensure that their shortened links continue to work.

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By Antoniu – September 16, 2009

Facebook Reaches 300 Million Users, Becomes Cash Flow Positive and Launches Prototypes

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Facebook has made a few important announcements at TechCrunch50. It announced that it had reached an important milestone: 300 million users. Facebook was already the largest social network and it continues to extend its lead over MySpace and other networks. Also, Facebook is now cash flow positive, something that was not expected until 2010, according to TechCrunch. This means that it either saw an unexpected increase in its revenue or that its cash outflow has decreased.

Also announced was the launch of Facebook Prototypes, Facebook’s equivalent of Google’s Google Labs, which allows users to experiment with new features that have yet to be officially integrated into Facebook. Prototypes will allow Facebook developers to release new features faster than before, even if these features are not completely bug-free and if they do not appeal to all Facebook users. By default, Prototype features are disabled for your account and you can manually enable the features you would like to use.

If “Prototypes” is not showing up for you on the Applications page, try going here and then clicking “Browse More Prototypes”. I had to do this before it showed up for me on the Applications page.

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By Antoniu – September 15, 2009

Google Releases New Version of Google Chrome

googlechrome.jpgGoogle has released a new version of its web browser, Chrome. The update includes speed improvements, a new “New Tab” page, improvements to the Omnibox, added HTML 5 capabilities and theme support.

According to Google this latest stable release includes:

  • A 25% increase in Javascript performance since the latest stable release and a 150% increase since the first version of Chrome.
  • The “New Tab” page now has additional customization options. You can drag around and rearrange the thumbnails, as well as save a page so that it does not disappear, even if you no longer visit that page as much.
  • Icons have been added to the Omnibox to help distinguish between a suggest site, search, bookmark or site from your history.
  • Support for the HTML 5 <video> tag has been added.
  • Support for themes in the stable release of the browser, allowing you to customize the look of your browser.

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By Antoniu – September 15, 2009

AIM Launches Social Network

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Today is the second and final day of TechCrunch50, where 50 startups will present their companies and what they are working on. There, AOL Instant Messenger has just announced the launch of its new social network: AIM Lifestream.

Like FriendFeed, Lifestream allows you to aggregate your various streams, including Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, and Digg, as well as having its own social network. When a friend posts an update, you allows you to comment on it, “like” the update and open an IM conversation with that person. Lifestream is also a Twitter and Facebook client, allowing you to post updates to both services.

Lifestream is built into the latest version of AIM, 7, the beta version of which was released today. The beta will last until 22 September, when the update will be rolled out to all users on Windows, Mac OS X, iPhone and Windows Mobile.

[Image from lifestream.aim.com]

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By Antoniu – September 15, 2009

Google Announces Fast Flip

fastflip.pngGoogle has announced a new product, Fast Flip, at TechCrunch50. Fast Flip gives you an image preview of articles, allowing you to quickly flip through them, similarly to how you would flip through a magazine when looking for an interesting article. Then when you find an article that you like, you can click through, which will direct you to the webpage where the article is located. You can also search for specific types of articles, such as “technology” so that only relevant articles will be shown. Using Fast Flip, you can quickly scan through many articles, preview them and the move on if you are not interested in reading them.

Fast Flip allows you to share articles that you like, either via e-mail or by selecting “Like” on an article, which makes the article appear for your friends when they are on Fast Flip.

[Image from fastflip.googlelabs.com]

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By Antoniu – September 14, 2009

Penn & Teller Announce iPhone App

Today is the first day of the two-day TechCrunch50 event, where 50 startups will present their companies and what they are working on. Magic duo Penn & Teller were the first to present and announced an iPhone app that allows you to fool your friends with a card trick.

While Teller was absent, Penn Jillette was there to explain the app in a presentation that really did not fit in well with the others. The other companies presenting are startups debuting their new technology in an attempt to raise venture capital and get some exposure. Jillette instead stated that Penn & Teller was not seeking venture capital nor was it attempting to make money with the app, instead saying that it was created to “get guys laid”. He also stated in an indirect fashion that there were no future plans for the app. The presentation was, however, more light-hearted than the more serious ones to come and overall it was a nice way to begin the event.

The app is quite fun and with a price of only $1.99, it’s not a bad buy. The way it works is that you present a friend with a deck of cards and ask him to choose one card. You then quickly open the app on your iPhone and enter which card he chose.

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The app then takes you to a page that looks identical to the Messages app for sending SMSs and lists conversations with Penn and Teller at the top.

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You tell your friend that you are a personal friend of one of them and that they will perform a magic trick. Your friend clicks one of their names and can then begin to chat with him. Penn or Teller “guesses” the card that you entered when you first opened the app.

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The app, named Penn & Teller Chat Magic Trick, is out right now at the App Store for $1.99 (iTunes link). The full presentation is available here and a post-presentation interview with Penn Jillette by TechCrunch is available here.

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By Antoniu – September 14, 2009

Some AT&T Customers Get iPhone MMS Early

iphonemms.jpgiPhone OS version 3.0 back in June finally enabled MMS, which enables the sending of pictures, video and other multimedia files, something that had been annoyingly absent from the iPhone for the first two years. However, unlike other mobile carriers around the world that sold the iPhone, AT&T in the United States chose not to enable MMS at the time of the update. AT&T did, however, announce that the feature would be out by the end of the summer, more recently specifying 25 September as the exact date that it will enable MMS.

Some lucky users are starting to get access to MMS early, according to Computerworld. AT&T seems to have started slowly rolling out the feature to select users, probably to test the service before enabling it for all accounts. Notably, the enabling of MMS did not require a specific software update, so whereas AT&T previously announced that users could expect a software update to enable the feature, it is likely that you will simply find that the feature has been enabled when you wake up.

To check if your account has had the feature enabled early: open Messages and check to see if you have a camera icon to the left of the text box. If you do, you can now send MMS, if not you will have to wait a bit longer.

[Image from flickr.com/photos/arabcrunch]

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By Antoniu – September 14, 2009

Make History Allows You to View and Share Images, Videos and Stories About 9/11

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Today marks the eighth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 and The National September 11 Memorial & Museum has created Make History, a website that allows you to view and share images, videos and stories about 9/11. The website uses Google Maps Street View to show how a particular area looks today, with a user-created image or video superimposed over it.

All events are plotted on a timeline, which begins at “before 9/11”, goes through the day itself (which is subdivided into categories such as “First tower hit”, “Second tower hit”, etc.) and then extends after 9/11, showing images taken days and even years after the attack. The images and videos are also plotted on a map, showing exactly where they were taken.

[Image from makehistory.national911memorial.org, submitted by Nicholas Pappas]

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By Antoniu – September 11, 2009

Twitter Updates Terms of Service

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Twitter has updated updated its terms of service now that they “know more about how Twitter is being used”. Biz Stone was quick to mention that you own your tweets, Twitter does not. Also, he mentioned some other parts of the ToS in his post:

“Advertising—In the Terms, we leave the door open for advertising. We’d like to keep our options open as we’ve said before.


Ownership—Twitter is allowed to “use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute” your tweets because that’s what we do. However, they are your tweets and they belong to you.

APIs—The apps that have grown around the Twitter platform are flourishing and adding value to the ecosystem. You authorize us to make content available via our APIs. We’re also working on guidelines for use of the API.

SPAM—Abusive behavior and spam is also outlined in these terms according to the rules we’ve been operating under for some time.”

Twitter is seeking feedback on the changes, which you can submit by clicking on a link at the bottom of their ToS’s page, and has stated that they are willing to change it in the future if they decide they have left something out or if the way in which people use the service changes.

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By Antoniu – September 11, 2009