It's a cool project, but I wouldn't necessarily call it a start-up. How will you monetize while depending on FB? Is this currently a pain-point for people, to the point that they would pay money for it?
I was pretty excited about SocialCam when they first launched, and sad when I saw "OMG SEE THIS" type videos spreading via their app on FB.
Why can't we have an instagram of video? It sucks to see my friends tricked into clicking on racy videos on FB and sharing them accidentally, a group of folks as awesome as the SocialCam team shouldn't have to resort to this type of trickery.
That's an interesting reaction, and someone else said "This would be great were I a stalker."
It comes as a surprise to me though -- all of these photos are already public. Do people not expect this degree of discoverability with Instagram? Do you think FB will consider this potentially sensitive angle post-acquisition?
"3) ... There are plenty of parts of the country where you can earn a combined six figure income while spending less than $100/sqft for a home in a good neighborhood."
Where are these magical lands? I've lived in Atlanta and the SF Bay Area, and the salary difference between the two for engineers is around 30%, although house prices aren't much cheaper in the former - unless you want to live in the suburbs, and then you make up the difference in gas.
Medical specialists are tied to hospitals, some of which may be more affordable areas, but technologists (who this site arguably caters to) tend to be bound to tech hotspots, where house prices near $1MM don't raise eyebrows.
From what I read, Instagram faced major challenges scaling their service to meet the demand of their growing iPhone user base. My guess is that iPhone growth just now plateaued enough to allow them to release their android client.
I last used instagram with a second-hand iPhone 3G, and stopped using it when I upgraded to a Galaxy Nexus S. I never thought I downgraded myself into being a second-class mobile citizen in the process.
That's only an option if you're shuttering the product of your own will. If you're part of a talent acquisition (which is the case with Posterous and Milk), the purchasing company would have to make that call, so you should really address the blog post to them.
It's unlikely any of them would: they just paid a bunch of money and acquired the team plus source, and even if they don't use the acquired source, open-sourcing it is extra work and/or a liability. The team, on the other hand, may still have faint hopes that the company will do something with their product.
In the cases where it's clear that the team's energies will be focused elsewhere the team could try to include it in the terms of the acquisition, but were I in those shoes I'd probably not want to risk souring the upside or acquisition as a whole.
Quick explanation: In orthodox judaism, one is not supposed to operate a light-switch on the Sabbath.
I'm not jewish, but some of my friends are observant (but progressive) and use the Sabbath as a day of reflection. This seems to completely go against the spirit of the rule (to spend a day living simply with friends and family, without technology for maximum reflection, introspection, and rest).
I don't see how this gadget would catch on -- unless someone is bound is follow the rule to the letter, but doesn't really want to (but then at that point, they should just stop adhering IMHO)
Again, hashing won't do much except make you feel fuzzy inside. Since the hashing mechanism is stored on the phone and the possibility space for US phone numbers is extremely limited, it'd be trivial to hash all possible numbers and then do a reverse lookup of the hashed values of your stolen address books.
You can usually assume that the non-country/area-code numbers have the same country/area code as your current user, if you know their phone number (good thing to get during registration).
It's mostly a question whether they store it or not -- although they have to store it in order to support notifying you when new users who are in your address book join the service.
If their servers are compromised, a cracker could still get MOST of the info. Since the hashing function (and salting mechanism) lives on the phone, she could generate a rainbow table of all possible phone numbers and a set of emails for common domains.
How do you expect the app to find other users that are in your address book without uploading your address book? It can hardly send all other users to your phone in an attempt to match them up.
I agree that the second notification is a little bit annoying, but in the case of Voxer you DID have a chance to cancel out -- it didn't secretly do it in the background, which Path apparently did.
I've noticed a pervasive attitude throughout the SF social app community that your app is at a disadvantage if it doesn't use all of the (potentially dirty) tricks that other apps use -- especially in a crowded space. If your app is the only one that doesn't do automatic friend discovery, or post to the Facebook news feed, your growth coefficient is going to suffer. Of course if you're the first to be found out doing these tricks, the backlash can hurt more than it helps. It's a gamble, and although the HN community is (rightly) in uproar, Joe average user likely won't care that his address book was uploaded unless he's explicitly told to be upset about it, or unless someone compromises Path's servers and he's personally hurt by it.
What amazes me the most is that recruiters today are largely as awkward and ineffective as they were ten years ago. Maybe it's just that the worst recruiters are also the noisiest, but I would think that enough recruiters would have learned that building relationships is far more valuable than mass-emailing.
As a developer, if you're in my rolodex as a recruiter / talent agent with a clue, I'll likely reach out when I'm considering career options -- even if it's several years down the road. As a recruiter, once you gather enough developers into that relationship, you should have your bonus-based salary covered... right?
Edit: I wrote a quick one-pager that I routinely send to recruiters who are particularly bad at their supposed job, http://notphil.com/recruiter_tips.html
It's a shame, because UDID-based user blocking has been quite effective for a lot of apps and communities. I suppose users could authenticate via iCloud, and Apple has an interest in users doing this, but it's a bummer for UX.
+ a rigorous STEM curriculum
+ limited conventional job prospects
+ a social/business environment in which exploit-selling is a respectable profession