Shapeways held a contest to see what designers thought Siri might look like. This and more in today’s Daily Wrap.
Sometimes it’s difficult to catch everything that hits tech media in a day, so we wrap up some of the most talked about stories. We give you a daily recap of what you missed in the ReadWriteWeb Community, including a link to some of the most popular discussions in our offsite communities on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ as well.
What Siri Would Look Like If It Were a Person
A contest to imagine what Siri’s physical form might look like yielded some interesting results. The winner, Omniscent Siri, by SaGa Design, looks half alien, half human. To learn more about the contest and the winner, check out What Siri Would Look Like If It Were a Person.
More Must Read Stories:
Camera Awesome: An iPhone App That Instagram and Apple Could Learn From
The fact that smartphones have made a huge mark on photography is no breaking news. The company that was once most synonymous with taking photographs is now in bankruptcy, while the most frequently-used camera on Flickr isn’t one of Nikon or Canon’s DSLRs, but the iPhone 4. (more)
What Kind of Software Company Should You Work For?
I met Peter Griess last night and heard him talk about his career. Even though he still has plenty of years ahead of him, he has already worked for NetApp, Yahoo, and now Facebook. He was part of a nine-person startup that worked on some interesting social email apps that eventually got acquired by Yahoo. Along his career he has seen very different kinds of cultures in these various software engineering departments, and as I was listening to his talk, I thought about the many software companies that I have covered over the years.
I would break them down into three different kinds of cultures (the names are my own construct)… (more)
Exposé Details Facebook’s Growing Pains
Fortune magazine released an exposé of Facebook that portrays Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg as a leader who promoted friends over qualified Facebook employees and may have been too focused on “extracurricular” activities as the public face of the soon-to-be public social network. (more)
AT&T Clarifies Data Throttling Policy but Still Faces User Backlash
When it comes to data throttling, there is no way that U.S. mobile carriers can win the war of public opinion. That goes double for AT&T and its PR fiasco over the last couple of weeks over its throttling of unlimited data plans. A California man won an $850 settlement in the Simi Valley small claims court, opening the door for thousands of similar court cases to be brought about the country. Several petitions on Change.org have been started to challenge the throttling policy, including one from Yonker’s New York yoga instructor Jane Foody that has about 11,400 signatures since it was launched. (more)
8 Things to Think About Before You Make Your Next Product Pitch
St. Louis became the 22nd city to have a branch of the Founders Institute today. The operation helps entrepreneurs in a very structured four-month paid mentoring program. It involves intensive coaching and has resulted in more than 700 startups, with over 40% of them receiving funding. We have written about FI before here. (more)
News.me for iPhone Makes Friends the Editors of Twitter & Facebook
News.me launched its free iPhone app this morning, which introduces Facebook integration, a saved offline reading list that syncs with the iPad app and Instapaper, and new, simple social dynamics of its own. It digests the links shared by Twitter and Facebook contacts, checks Bit.ly for their popularity, and presents a list of the top news stories in a clean, readable environment. (more)
Pew: 53% of U.S. Cellphone Owners now Have Smartphones
Over half of U.S. cellphone owners now own smartphones, according to new data from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. 53% of U.S. cellphone owners are now of the smart variety and 46% of American’s overall own a smartphone. This is a significant inflection point in the mobile revolution, marking a significant trend in how the average interacts with information. (more)
Chinese Internet Users to Obama: “Hello Mr. President”
China’s Internet censorship regime, known as the Great Firewall, can appear monolithic. A few days ago, however, that wall was breached. Chinese citizens rode a glitch and jumped onto the momentarily unencumbered information super highway, according to reports from CNET. Where did Chinese Internet users head? Straight to President Obama’s Google+ page. (more)
Strata: Mixing the Social Data Cocktail
Everyone knows you can learn a lot by trawling data coming from social media services like Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. But sometimes the data will surprise you. For instance, you’d expect to be able to glean product feedback from Facebook’s public feed, but did you know that shoplifters tend to brag about it in social media? (more)
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