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Facebook kills off its Poke and Camera apps

May09
by on May 9, 2014 at 10:06 pm
Posted In: Around the Web

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Facebook has pulled its Poke and Camera apps from the App Store, leaving them to die quietly, The Verge reports. While Poke was positioned as a Snapchat competitor, Facebook never really gave it the attention it needed to survive. The app was first released in late 2012 after just 12 days of development. Facebook Camera was also released in 2012. Remember when it used to be called “Camera•”? Oddly enough, the app was released just weeks after the Instagram acquisition. Facebook’s decision to shut down Poke and Camera simply makes official what had already happened in user’s hearts, but it…

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Stunning full-size poster of historical cameras is available free for download

May09
by on May 9, 2014 at 9:59 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Images, Shareables

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If you love photography, Visual.ly is featuring some historically valuable eye candy that you may want to post somewhere within your line of sight. A Short History of Photographic Camera, a poster from Retrofuturismo-Kitsch, depicts the progression of the camera from the earliest pre-digital Camera Obscura to the Sony Mavica in 1981. As designed, it is a compilation of the most popular photographic cameras of their respective eras, so the choice of which models to include naturally covers some little-known specimens of the genre, though other entries are more familiar. Historically accurate and beautifully drawn, this fascinating look back to analog is available free at high-resolution for…

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The Wayback Machine passes 400 billion indexed webpages, covering the Web from late 1996 to a few hours ago

May09
by on May 9, 2014 at 9:42 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider

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The Internet Archive today announced a massive milestone for its Wayback Machine: 400 billion indexed webpages. The data encompasses the Web as it looked anytime from late 1996 up until a few hours ago. To celebrate the milestone, the Internet Archive has provided a list of The Wayback Machine highlights over the years: 2001 – The Wayback Machine launches. 2006 – Archive-It launches, allowing libraries that subscribe to the service to create curated collections of Web content. March 25, 2009 – The Internet Archive and Sun Microsystems launch a new datacenter that stores the whole Web archive and serves the…

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Quora joins Y Combinator’s latest class as an experiment in late-stage investments

May09
by on May 9, 2014 at 9:32 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider

Y Combinator just announced that it is adding question and answer service Quora to its Summer class of startups. The move is bound to raise a few questions. It’s a first for Y Combinator, which has never invested in a company as late-stage as Quora. YC head Sam Altman said the decision is a “new experiment,” and he’s not sure if the accelerator will do something like it again. The firm also won’t count Quora in its portfolio stats, since it would skew the results. Just weeks ago, Quora raised an $80 million Series C round with the goal of staying independent…

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Kik introduces a virtual currency to encourage engagement and (potentially) make money

May09
by on May 9, 2014 at 8:13 pm
Posted In: Apps, Around the Web, Kik

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Messaging apps are the flavor of this year, as evidenced by Facebook’s $19 billion WhatsApp deal, but lately we’ve barely heard from Kik, the Canadian startup that beats WhatsApp, Snapchat and others in the US market. Until now, that is, after it launched its own virtual currency. ‘Kik Points’ quietly went live this week among selected users. It appears to be a cross between a virtual currency (to buy content) and a mechanism for incentivizing its young userbase to be more active inside the app. Kik users can earn Points for undertaking certain tasks — in my case, it was browsing Reddit from…

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