Karen from Mean Girls could probably use this app. (Photo: AfterElton.com)

Don't you just hate it when you're at a party and start making out with a cute guy or girl, only to later discover at a family picnic that they're actually your cousin? As it turns out, accidentally hooking up with a relative happens so frequently in Iceland that there is an official database, called Íslendingabók or "The Book of Icelanders," that traces the family lineage of 720,000 Icelandic citizens.

Three engineers have taken it upon themselves to digitize the book, creating an app that helps prevent Icelanders from accidentally sleeping with their extended family. If you meet a hottie out at a party, you can simply bump your phones together to find out whether or not you're related. The tagline for this helpful app? "Bump the app before you bump in bed."

Users are pretty excited for the app, called ÍslendingaApp, to hit the Google Play store. "If I would have had this app last year I probably wouldn't have gone home with my cousin," wrote one.

Probably?

(Photo: Hashgram)

Leave it to the NYPD to make an Android phone useful for more than countless Snapchats. More than 400 smartphones have been distributed to officers since last summer as part of a pilot program to make it easier for them to access police data on-the-go, reports the New York Times.

Despite the fact the phones can’t make or receive calls, it can quickly access a trove of helpful information, like arrest records and surveillance video from nearby buildings. The phones are a better alternative for the officers who currently have to use their slow-loading in-car computers or communicate with dispatchers to find similar information.

The phones' instant access to detailed data provides a fuller picture of the suspect at hand thus making it harder for criminals to lie, said Officer Tom Donaldson to the Times:

“I tell them, ‘I’m going to see your picture,’ ” the officer said. “They don’t realize we have this technology. They can’t tell me a lie because I know everything.”

Imagine how cocky he is at trivia night.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Twitter now has a broadly worded patent on its own service, but the company pinkie swears it won't go patent trolling. [The Verge]

Yahoo's reportedly in negotiations to buy a big stake in the video site Dailymotion. Does someone have a little GOOG envy, hmm? [Wall Street Journal]

Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch, who was thought to be in the running for Adobe CEO, was named Apple's VP of technology. Given the animosity between the two companies, we're going to guess he won't be invited back for employee happy hours. [AllThingsD]

But is he any good? Or is he a "bozo"? [Daring Fireball]

Google is expanding Fiber to the suburb of Olathe, Kansas. And here we thought cities owned the 21st Century. [Kansas City Star]

"Android has outgrown Andy and honestly, I don't think he knows where to take it next." [The Verge]

(Photo: flickr.com/86979666@N00)

This week Pinterest introduced a web analytics platform, while Twitter stepped up its ad insights game with more details for marketers. Really looking forward to seeing even more wedding dress ads. [Ad Week]

Twitter has also reportedly acquired the music delivery service We Are Hunted and plans to build a standalone music app. Can we get some Vine soundtracks going, here? [CNET]

To face Ellen Pao's gender discrimination claims, Kleiner Perkins has hired the same guy who represented Facebook against the Winklevoss twins. [Wall Street Journal]

Blame Google+ for the fact that you are losing your Google Reader, effective July 1. [The Next Web]

A startup called DeveloperAuction has raised $2.7 million to build a site where talent can literally auction themselves off to the highest bidder. sign up and if they're picked as one of the site's top 150 job seekers in a particular month, be deluged with interview offers from companies. That'll do wonders for the Valley's skyrocketing salaries, sure. [VentureBeat]

Chrome honcho Sundar Pichai is now going to lead Google's Android team, as well. Former Android boss Andy Rubin is going to stay at Google and do something that maybe involves moonshots. [Google]

All trying to impress each other right now.

Once upon a time, status-seekers relied on signifiers like nice watches, swanky automobiles and handbags that cost as much as a car. But according to Quartz, times have changed: Now men and women worldwide think it's their cell phones everyone notices first.

BRB, running to the Apple store.

A company called Vuclip surveyed folks in more than a dozen countries, asking them to reveal “The first thing people notice about me.” 61 percent of men said it was their cell phone. 38 percent of women said the same thing, ranking cell phones first but by a narrower margin.

However, the most dedicated device owners were--surprise, surprise!--teenaged girls. A whopping 82 percent of female respondents under 18 put their cells first. Maybe that's why, as the Pew Institute reports today, more teens than ever own smartphones and use them as their primary means of accessing the Internet.

Clearly, times have changed since those dumb Burberry mini-purses were the ne plus ultra of high school queen bees.

The HTC One features new technology but unoriginal ideas.

Let's get one thing straight first; the new HTC One sounds like an awesome phone. Its got a 4.7 inch 1080p display, a high quality sleek design and is one of the first smartphones to include the quad-core Snapdragon 600 processor, which clocks in at 1.7 GHz. In non-tech-speak, the One is top of the line.

But what's drawing the most attention from today's announcement is the phone’s camera, which includes HTC’s newly created UltraPixel technology, and Zoe, a photo and video social media tool that sounds a lot like Vine.

Whenever you hear about the newest iPhone or Android, one of the big marketing points is always the number of megapixels, which is a basic number used to determine the resolution and clarity of a photo. HTC is arguing that megapixels aren't the only thing that counts. While the One carries a 4 megapixel camera (half the megapixels that the iPhone packs), the phone does come equipped with the above-mentioned UltraPixels, which absorb 300 percent more light than a megapixel, meaning that the One is the clear favorite in low light environments.

As HTC CEO Peter Chou argues though, difference in megapixels is not the defining mark of a camera.

"The megapixel myth is the wrong way to go, so what really matters is to give you much better image quality with great innovative, exciting experience. So that's where we're focusing on," Mr. Chou said to Engadget.

The other camera highlight at the HTC One’s reveal was Zoe, a photo creation and sharing app which lets users create photos using three-second videos. Sound familiar? The similarities to already released apps Vine and Echograph are just another sign that the GIF-video market is already mainstream.

What did we learn from today's news? That at this point, smartphone cameras have progressed to the point that rebranding efforts often do more good than the actual technology. So forgive us for thinking that Zoe sounds like a wannabe Siri, and UltraPixels just sounds made up. HTC, you may want to get some new PR guys, cause these aren't really working.

Not a happy face. (Photo: News.au)

This must be going over well in Cupertino: The BBC reports that the Institute of Industrial Property, Brazil's IP authority, have ruled that Apple does not have the exclusive rights to use the term "iPhone" in the country. That's because the Brazilian company Gradiente Eletronica registered the trademark seven years before Apple. This means the company can continue to sell its own version of the iPhone which, irony of ironies, runs on Android. 

We can practically hear the yowls of anger all the way from over here on the East Coast.

The BBC points out that Apple still has the exclusive rights to everthing except handsets, so if Tim Cook gets a hankering to launch an iPhone-branded fashion label, they're all set.

Cool no more?!

Could it be that after all these years as a must-have device, the iPhone is losing some of its luster? Reuters claims that consumers in Hong Kong and Singapore are beginning to ditch their bright, shiny Apples for smartphones made by Samsung and even (gasp!) HTC.

Dear oh dear.

Reuters bases this conclusion on information from StatCounter, which "measures traffic collected across a network of 3 million websites." So we're not exactly talking official sales numbers broken out by region. StatCounter says Apple's share of the mobile market in Singapore has dropped from 72 percent a year ago to 50 percent today. Android's up from 20 to 43 percent. In Hong Kong, it's dropped from 45 to 30 percent.

Oh, but there's anecdotal evidence, too. Says Reuters:

"IPhones are like Louis Vuitton handbags," said marketing manager Narisara Konglua in Bangkok, who uses a Galaxy SIII. "It's become so commonplace to see people with iPads and iPhones so you lose your cool edge having one."

Guess you might as well just pack it in now, Tim Cook.

(Screencap: Google Translate)

Google's text-to-speech engine is arguably one of the most powerful in the world. It almost always perfectly captures our speech, making it far easier to speak our text messages than risk an embarrassing autocorrect faux pas.

We rarely have complaints about Google's text-to-speech technology, but there is this one really weird bug within the engine: When you open Google Now, click on the microphone to activate text-to-speech and ask the question, "What is a giraffe?" the phone becomes kiiind of possessed. While reading back the definition of a giraffe to you, Google Now randomly inserts the phrase, "And now he praises the iPad." Pretty awkward given that Google's currently dueling in the tablet market with iPad's own creator.

The bug's been filed with Google, and appears to have been documented as far back as October 2012, though it has yet to be fixed. Several people have chimed in to offer their own explanations for why it might be occurring. Writes one user:

More research shows it has something to do with the letters "e" "n" and "d" directly preceding " with".

"colored with" does not cause this

"sanded with" does not cause this

"rendered with" does not cause this

"pretended with" does not cause this

"end with" DOES cause this

"ned with" does not cause this

"tend with" DOES cause this

"homened with" DOES cause this

Other commenters have noted that the bug appears to be a text-to-speech engine issue not only affecting Google Now, but also Google Translate. Furthermore, the quote may have been pulled from an interview with Hearst Magazine president David Carey, where he admits to praising the iPad.

Wondered one user, "Could this be leftover test data from Google Translate development still lingering in the system?"

Hacker News users have of course taken the opportunity to force Google Translate to say that Larry Page praises the iPad. If you type "Apple hypnotized the Google founder with a magic wand, end with..." into Google Translate, you won't be disappointed.

Mr. Ohanian (Photo: Twitter)

r/findmeaparkingspace ParkWhiz, the Chicago company that enables users to find and reserve guaranteed parking spaces before reaching their destination, today announced that it has closed a $2 million Series A round of funding led by Hyde Park Venture Partners. Reddit’s Alexis Ohanian also took place in the round along with Hyde Park Angels, Amicus Capital, and others. In a press release sent to Betabeat, the company said that since its launch in 2006, it has driven $10 million in parking revenue to parking operators and provided access to 3 million parking spaces nationwide.

Fab Goes To India Jason Goldberg, the founder and CEO of Fab, took to his personal blog yesterday to announce that his company had acquired new funding. Times Internet, the digital arm of The Times of India Group, India’s largest media company, has chosen to invest in the company. Mr. Goldberg notes in the post, "As part of this investment Fab will be working with Times Internet to explore and execute on our India market strategy in the coming years." Since launching in June 2011, Fab has raised over $150 million from investors.

Tumblr For Your Tablet Tumblr just updated its Android app to support use on tablets that run on Android. So if you've taken some cool black and white pictures of ladders next to lakes, you can now upload them straight to your Tumblr with ease. Thank the artsy lord.

Disruption Gets You On The Nice List Harold DeLucia, a 27-year-old New York City public school teacher from Astoria, Queens, and Josh Lanzera, 29, a construction foreman from the upper West Side, are the founders of NYC Trees Direct, an online Christmas tree ordering service. The two New Yorkers saw a open market and went for it, investing $6,000 of their own money into the seasonal business.

Go Back To School NYU’s Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) in Downtown Brooklyn announced this week that the New York State Education Department has approved its curriculum. Now that New York believes it's a real school, the University is now accepting applications for the fall semester of 2013. CUSP's website has the application up now. Please post videos of yourselves opening your acceptance letters to YouTube.

The September App Bloglovin', the blog reader for fashion and lifestyle blogs, just launched its first iOS app. The company says that it has 1.8 million members as of this December. The company raised $1 million back in July in seed round funding from investors such as Betaworks, Lerer Ventures, RRE Ventures, Bruce Jaffe, Hank Vigil, Fritz Lanman and others. In a press release sent to Betabeat, Bloglovin' cofounder and CEO Mattias Swenson said, "Our goal with our seed-round was to build an fantastic app that would bring people an optimized and highly visual reading experience. So it’s great to finally see it in the app store!”

Bosses Are Really Happy Charley Polachi, a partner from Polachi Access Executive Search recently polled tech CEOs and found out that they all think the futures is extremely bright. 85 percent of respondents had a neutral or positive outlook for hiring in 2013, 79 percent said they had a neutral or positive outlook for hiring from 2013-2017, 84 percent had a neutral or positive outlook for expansion in 2013, and 81 percent had a neutral or positive outlook for expansion from 2013-2017.

Learn About Your New Hood Spun is a news discovery app that shows you stories based on your location. It was recently launched by the same team that made Broadcastr and Electric Literature. It could definitely be useful to fresh New York transplants. AOL gave the new version of the app a nice tour and it looks pretty cool.

School Mascot Is The Rose H. Bloom, a subscription based flower delivery service, is expanding its efforts to educate its employees. Right now they have the SEED (Startup Education and Entrepreneurial Development) Program, that shows current employees to make a big local impact. But starting this week, the company is using a new program called H.Bloom University, a six-month program that educates current employees in leadership and business.

The Customer Is Always Right Gripevine, a site where you can complain about customer service and review companies, just launched an updated version of their site. It now includes ratings and reviews. The same team also launched Resolution 1, a tool for businesses that lets them manage feedback from multiple sources at once.