The man behind the latest Twitter meme: Uberfacts

By Andrew Mager | January 10, 2012, 8:31am PST

Nietzsche once said, “There are no facts, only interpretations”. Kris Sanchez would say otherwise. He’s the 20-year-old guy running the immensely popular Twitter account @Uberfacts.

These facts aren’t lame or boring either. For instance, did you know that you spend 40 minutes a day blind? Or that there’s actually a word for fear of losing your [...]

Twitter's latest design: cleaner, richer, better

By Andrew Mager | December 9, 2011, 9:29am PST

I’m a huge fan of Doug Bowman’s design brain. Since he’s started working at Twitter over two and a half years ago, the site’s design, look, and feel has gotten better and better. Yesterday, they announced Fly, their latest design. Below are some screenshots from the new design, and why I love it.

At a glance, [...]

Five Gmail tips that will make you an inbox ninja

By Andrew Mager | November 4, 2011, 1:00pm PDT

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” ~George Bernard Shaw
I’m an inbox hawk. If an email sits in my inbox too long, I get anxious. I love prompt communication, and so do the people I’m sending emails to.
Here are five Gmail tips that will make you more productive, [...]

Service as a service: Zaarly leads the way

By Andrew Mager | July 22, 2011, 3:09pm PDT

A buddy of mine left a bag of stickers, tee shirts, and his laptop power cord on a sidewalk on 9th St. in New York City. He was in a rush, and jumped in the cab, forgetting that his valuables were just sitting on the street. He didn’t realize it until he arrived at the [...]

Housefed: a community marketplace for home-cooked meals

By Andrew Mager | July 11, 2011, 10:56am PDT

I love photo-sharing sites, especially when they involve food.
Housefed isn’t just about sharing pictures though; you can invite random people over and literally share your meal. Think AirBnb mixed with the home version of Foodspotting.
I got the opportunity to speak with Housefed’s creator, Emile Petrone, and he offered insight into what he’s building.

How did [...]

Invite your entire Facebook graph into Google Plus

By Andrew Mager | June 29, 2011, 5:33pm PDT

Here’s a trick to get everyone from your Facebook social graph into Google Plus:

Sign up for a Yahoo! Mail account, and import all of your Facebook contacts. Click “Contacts” at the top, and then “Import Contacts”. Authorize Facebook access to your Yahoo! address book.
Log in to Google Plus (http://plus.google.com) and navigate to your “Circles” (https://plus.google.com/circles).
Click [...]

Social DJing with Turntable.fm

By Andrew Mager | May 28, 2011, 1:31pm PDT

It’s really fun to build a tracklist of music to listen to while you work all day. Now imagine being able to play that music for an audience in a social setting.

You can create channels and anyone can listen or DJ. You go in order, and people can vote your songs up or down.

You can [...]

Live: Demos from TechCrunch Disrupt Hack Day 2011

By Andrew Mager | May 22, 2011, 8:52am PDT

TechCrunch kicked off its second Disrupt Hack Day this morning, and it was at least 5x bigger than last year’s event.
Each team gets 60 seconds to present their idea. Most of these hackers have been up all night, so this is definitely a climactic moment for them. One thing to note is that most people [...]

Cabana: Build iPhone apps without knowing a line of code

By Andrew Mager | May 12, 2011, 5:58pm PDT

The geniuses at Department of Behavior and Logic are working on one of the coolest projects I’ve seen in a while.
Cabana is basically an app maker, built for designers, not coders. At the Launch conference in SF, they built a clone of Instagram in 5 minutes:

They are in the process of adding tons of [...]

Predator: A camera that learns

By Andrew Mager | May 7, 2011, 10:13am PDT

Check out this video from Zdenek Kalal in Surrey, UK. He’s built an extremely smart camera that can track and recognize faces, among other things. Imagine the ideas that could come to fruition with this kind of technology.