The Review Blog

Say you’re a misanthrope and you’re afraid of humans. What to do? Well, you could cower in the dark when people ring your doorbell or you could laugh derisively at their smug faces in the screen of your iPhone. I’m going for the derisive laughter.

This DIY Arduino project involves a simple circuit, a webcam, and a few API calls to PushingBox to enable a truly enjoyable derisive experience.

The system works by pushing images grabbed by the webcam through PushingBox to an app like Prowl or Pushme.to. When the doorbell is pressed, it sends a serial signal to the Arduino board which in turn notifies the various services. The webcam picture then gets sent over to you so you can decide whether to let whoever is outside in.

It’s probably a little more complex than it needs to be, but if you’re totally into watching the world pass you by it’s a great solution and a fun weekend project.

Project Page

The tale of Docracy’s year-long journey is a fun one. When Matt Hall and his partner John Watkinson first went into the Hackathon last year, the only goal was to get a prototype working for an idea they had, a GitHub for legal documents. Sure, a win would’ve been nice, but the main goal was to push out a prototype they could pitch to investors (instead of just an idea) with a firm deadline hanging over their shoulders.

But alas, Docracy took home the top prize despite the fact that they were the first of more than 100 presentations that day. And after last year’s Disrupt NYC (tickets to this year’s Disrupt here), the story only gets better.

The original plan was to push out a fully functional Docracy within a week or so of the Hackathon, but after a chat with a more legal-savvy friend the pair realized that a little extra scrutiny to any liabilities was in order. That week turned into a full seven months, with a hard launch in December of 2011. In November, just a month before, the company received a $650,000 seed round led by First Round Capital. Vaizra Investments, Rick Webb and Quotidian Ventures also participated.

Matt and John were able to quit their jobs and focus on Docracy full time. And today the service already has over 10,000 users.

There’s something to be said about the power of a successful Hackathon presentation. It’s not only true with Docracy, but Group.me (which was recently acquired by Skype) won the TechCrunch Hackathon as well and has since gone on to fall under the almighty Microsoft umbrella.

Disrupt NYC is set to be one of our biggest shows yet, with returns from Michael Arrington and MG Siegler, along with a variety of big names like Marissa Mayer, Sarah Tavel, Fred Wilson, and David Lee and more. It’s going to be huge.

If you’re interested in checking out Disrupt and/or the Hackathon yourself, tickets are still on sale here and info on the Hackathon can be found here. Companies who want to join the Battleground can apply for the last remaining spots in Startup Alley. You can find the full agenda here.

The President’s technology gurus, US CTO Todd Park and CIO Steven VanRoekel, will be looking for savvy innovators to work with at next week’s TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York (tickets here). Park and VanRoekel will be announcing some new technology initiatives at their Disrupt Panel. We understand that they’ll be looking for both startup partners and individuals to work with the White House, and are eager to meet participants at Disrupt, who may be the fit that they’re looking for.

Big government data is becoming big business. For instance, the White House has been instrumental in the recent “Blue Button” initiative, to give universal access to patient health records for a select group of Americans. Health data is an industry ripe for disruption, as patients need user-friendly tools to help them turn information into actionable intelligence. The success of Blue Button led to its energy cousin, “Green Button,” and we expect more industries will continue to get the open data treatment.

Even if Park and VanRoekel haven’t already made plans, perhaps you have a better idea. So, if you have a brilliant idea for the federal government, or have dreams of working on open data at the White House itself, come by Disrupt and meet our panelists.

Image Credit: Matt H. Wade/Wikimedia

Facebook, which has now listed on NASDAQ, is set to make $16 billion if its share holds at the $38 price that it set yesterday — more if it ends higher. Here’s a coincidence: that’s just north of the total amount in damages, $15 billion, that a new class-action case is seeking against the social network over privacy invasion.

Filed in U.S. Federal Court in San Jose, California, the case (embedded below) combines 21 separate cases that have been filed in different courts in the U.S. in 2011 and 2012 — as the plaintiffs look for strength in numbers. All of the cases are connected to “Internet tracking,” or how Facebook tracks users when they are browsing the wider web outside of Facebook’s own pages, even after they have logged out of Facebook.

Facebook has already responded to the case with a flat statement of denial of guilt. “We believe this complaint is without merit and we will fight it vigorously,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch.

A lawyer from one of the firms representing the plaintiffs, David Straite from Stewarts Law Partners, said in a statement (via Bloomberg) that they were looking at how to include people outside the U.S. in the suit, too.

Here’s an example of one of the plaintiffs’ complaints from the suit:

“Plaintiff Davis is a Facebook user and during the Class Period had an active Facebook account. Plaintiff Davis, using the same computer on which Facebook installed tracking and session cookies, visited websites with Facebook-integrated content after logging out of her Facebook account. Contrary to its policies, Facebook intercepted Plaintiff Davis’ electronic communications and tracked her internet use post-logout. Plaintiff did not consent to post-logout tracking.”

The suit also goes through a lengthy explanation of how it believes that Facebook uses cookies for tracking purposes. Perhaps more damningly, it also includes excerpts of how Facebook itself has admitted to some of this tracking activity, and its “inconsistent public statements” regarding this. (Facebook has called the tracking “inadvertent” and a “bug”, but has also said it tracks for safety reasons.)

How did the lawyers for the plaintiffs arrive at the $15 billion figure? It is based on U.S. Wiretapping law, which “provides statutory damages of the greater of $100 per violation per day, up to $10,000, per Facebook user,” the lawsuit says. It bases its calculation on 800 million members, although now that number stands at 901 billion, according to Facebook’s most recent S-1 filing. And it looks like there is also a second calculation in the complaint for even more money extending to over $1 trillion dollars. According to the suit:

“Plaintiffs are thus each entitled to the greater of $100 of statutory damages per day (corresponding to $15 billion for the Class), or $10,000 each for the ongoing violations during the class period (corresponding to $1.5 trillion for the Class).”

Facebook has been embroiled in other privacy issues and how it handles user data — ironically the company has proposed a new privacy policy that is currently open for comment until 5PM Pacific time today (Friday, May 18). If those privacy changes do not go through, it could represent a big setback for Facebook and how it wants to implement new services that will potentially generate revenue for it in the future, such as around advertising.

It may have hit a bump on this: as we wrote earlier today, a Facebook activist group in Austria has rallied opposition and over 7,000 people have commented on the proposal. Facebook has a provision that states if 7,000 or more people comment on a proposed change to it policy, then it takes the policy to its entire active user base — currently 901 million people — to get their opinion. If 30 percent vote for or against that proposal, that decision will be binding.

Facebook is currently working through a list of changes suggested by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner that would make the social network more transparent in how a users data is used, and gives individual users more control over that data.

Other run-ins over privacy have included a case in Germany over the use of facial recognition software in photos: that case is still ongoing and may result in fines against Facebook, Bloomberg writes.

~The Best Of TechCrunch’s Facebook IPO Coverage~

Video & Photos: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Rings In The NASDAQ Bell

No IPO Pop Here: Facebook Trades Slightly Higher At Around $40

Facebook’s Key Executives And Shareholders: What Is Everyone Worth?

Zuckerberg Receives Hoodie, Says “Our Mission Isn’t To Be A Public Company” In Pre-IPO Remarks

How Facebook Hacked The NASDAQ Button

Zynga Shares Go On Wild Ride During Facebook IPO — Big Fall, Then Recovery

Facebook Says Haters Gonna Hate, Likers Gonna Like

If only Facebook IPO day were a little less of a snoozefest than it is now. If only it had Zuckerberg impaling investors while riding a bull rampaging through a city. Or an elevator to space. Or Zuckerberg bouncing Ronald McDonald and the Hamburglar off a giant scale. But sadly, our surrealist dreams will never be realized.

We will just have to settle for the ho-hum performance of Facebook’s shares so far. In the meantime, you can watch this re-enactment from NMA TV or Next Media Animation, that Taiwanese animation subsidiary that riffs off current events with 3D animated videos that look like what the lovechild of Salvador Dali and Reddit would make. Oh, and did we mention that their parent company invests in tech startups too?

~The Best Of TechCrunch’s Facebook IPO Coverage~

Video & Photos: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Rings In The NASDAQ Bell

No IPO Pop Here: Facebook Trades Slightly Higher At Around $40

Facebook’s Key Executives And Shareholders: What Is Everyone Worth?

Zuckerberg Receives Hoodie, Says “Our Mission Isn’t To Be A Public Company” In Pre-IPO Remarks

How Facebook Hacked The NASDAQ Button

Zynga Shares Go On Wild Ride During Facebook IPO — Big Fall, Then Recovery

Facebook Says Haters Gonna Hate, Likers Gonna Like