By Jessica Roy 8/16/12 2:04pm

Pivot Patrol

(Photo: Makr.io)

The Diaspora Team Branches Out to Build Photo Remixing Tool Makr.io

After the tragic loss of one of its core members, the team behind Diaspora–a Y-Combinator-backed open source “anti-social network”–went underground for a while, privately grieving while attempting to keep the well-funded and highly hyped company running. But the startup show must go on: AllThingsD reported today that the Diaspora team channeled their grief into a new site–launched today and called Makr–that allows you to easily remix and distribute photos. Read More

By Jessica Roy 3/21/12 2:08pm

ALL YOUR MEME BELONG TO US

Ms. Cajide, cofounder of Blurtt. (crunchbase.com)

New iPhone App Blurtt Helps You Communicate Entirely Through Memes

If a vision of post-apocalyptic America overrun with glassy-eyed teens communicating solely through image macros doesn’t sound appealing to you, you might not be a big fan of Blurtt, the new iPhone app that wants to help you “better express yourself” though memes.

The thinking behind Blurtt goes like this: sometimes words can’t express everything we want them to. In real life, we have gestures, facial expressions and vocal timbres to help convey meaning. But over digital communication, all of these physical cues become moot, and what remains threatens the very existence of semantic devices like sarcasm (see what we did there?). Read More