snapchat

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Everyone panic: a Web site that leaks and archives your "deleted" Snapchat photos.

- You'll never guess which song is the most lucrative ever recorded.

- The world's richest songs.

- Someone's trying to sell a stolen CitiBike on Craigslist.

- Hospitals install video cameras to ensure that employees wash their hands. In related news, DOCTORS AREN'T WASHING THEIR HANDS.… Read more

Much like the vanishing photos sent with Snapchat, a new Web app lets you send self-destructing messages from your work computer.

New York-based app maker Lamplighter Games last week launched OTR -- for "off the record" messaging -- a browser plug-in that lets you send messages that disappear within 5 seconds of being read.

"We both love using Snapchat, so we thought it would be fun to put Snapchat in the browser," according to Kris Minkstein, who co-founded the company with his brother Andy. "We figured since you're in front of your computer all day at work that you're going to end up sending a lot of these photos to probably the guys sitting next to you at your cubicle." … Read more

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Simpsons theme park "Springfield" will serve duff beer, Krusty Burgers.

- 12 obsolete technologies Americans are still using.

- The Weird Stuff Warehouse where old tech goes to retire.

- Amazon greenlights 5 new shows.

- Why Amish teens love using Facebook.… Read more

The attractions of Snapchat are essentially intellectual.

In creating the conditions for a spontaneous "now you see me, now you don't" aspect to your life, it allows for a greater and more nuanced level of excitement to permeate human relationships.

Recently, however, there have been concerns that the topless, bottomless, or merely hapless shots sent by Snapchat users might not truly disappear. … Read more

To understand where teens like to spend their virtual time nowadays, just watch them on their smartphones. Their world revolves around Instagram, the application adults mistook for an elevated photography service, and other apps decidedly less old-fashioned than Mark Zuckerberg's social network.

And therein lies one of Facebook's biggest challenges: With more than 1 billion users worldwide and an unstated mission to make more money, Facebook has become a social network that's often too complicated, too risky, and, above all, too overrun by parents to give teens the type of digital freedom or release they crave.

For … Read more

The long-awaited update for a Snapchat video-messaging app for Android was available briefly last night.

Snapchat announced last night that it would allow people to download its private beta Android application. However, the application was only made available for a few hours and can no longer be downloaded from the company's site. Those who were able to access the program needed to force their Android handsets to install non-market apps.

Snapchat currently offers an Android and iOS application. However, the program only allows for the sharing of photos. The Snapchat update for Android lets people send video clips to … Read more

Snapchat, the social-media app designed to let users send pictures and video that self-destruct after a set time -- and that seems to have prompted Facebook's competing Poke app -- has raised $13.5 million in venture funding.

The New York Times' Jenna Wortham mentions the cash infusion in an article about the app published Friday evening. Wortham reports that the funding was led by Benchmark Capital, which, she says, values Snapchat at $60 million to $70 million. She quotes Benchmark's Mitch Lasky, who learned of the app from his teenage daughter: "I started hearing Snapchat in … Read more

LAS VEGAS -- There is one class of people ill-represented at CES. Yes, the rampant, destructive force that is the teenager.

Here we are, witnessing the future, and the only teens here seem to be dressed in Lycra or shorts and trying to sell you a fascinatingly pointless accessory for your bicycle.

How convenient, then, that before CES opens its doors for a second day of joy, word reaches me of a teenage rebellion in social networking.

Yes, Facebook is passe. Dreary, dull, old. It's the Wrangler jeans of social networking.

This sprightly information is courtesy of a survey … Read more