The latest from TechCrunch
- Inevitable! Google Chrome Extension Exports Your Facebook Contacts
- Want An iPod Nano Watch? So Does Everyone. Idea Poised To Be New Kickstarter King
| Inevitable! Google Chrome Extension Exports Your Facebook Contacts | Top |
| Well look what we have here … Last time we checked in on the Facebook/Google slapfight , Facebook had removed the option to import your contacts from Gmail and was still holding strong on the whole “denying contact info access to Google” rigamarole that started the fight in the first place. Up until now many no other choice but to use Yahoo Mail if they wanted to mass export their Friends data from Facebook into Google. Well Happy Thanksgiving data reciprocity fans! A third party developer has decided to build “Facebook Doesn’t Own My Friends,” a Chrome extension that lets you easily export your Facebook Friends’ contact information. Whoever built this is pretty vehement about whose side they’re playing on. Take a look at the sarcastic tone of the “About” description. “Despite what Facebook says, if someone is your “friend” and you can see his/her email address on his/her Facebook info, they are probably OK with you emailing them. Facebook doesn’t let you export this data, so they expect you to click on each of your friends’ pages, copy their email address (or other contact information), and paste it into your email client. Kind of ridiculous? Yes.” I just tried it and it works, scraping and exporting your contacts into both Gmail and CSV files even though it might take awhile and multiple tries if you’ve got hundreds of friends. And while the extension is not officially affiliated with Google (or Facebook), it going to be exciting to see what happens to it after this post. Since this is a Chrome extension it might be harder for Facebook to block, as browser extensions can make scraping seem indistinguishable from actual users clicking in their browsers. It looks like the Berlin Wall of data portability has started to crumble so hurry up and export those Friends contacts while you still can. Update: No confirmation on whether this is an intentional block from Facebook’s side but users are reporting that the extension stopped scraping about 10 minutes after this post went up. I’ve contacted both Facebook and Google for more information and will update the post if I hear back. CrunchBase Information Google Facebook Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Want An iPod Nano Watch? So Does Everyone. Idea Poised To Be New Kickstarter King | Top |
| We’ve talked a lot about Diaspora , the open-source Facebook-alternative, in recent months. One of the reasons for that is the massive success they had raising money on the crowdsourced fund-raising site, Kickstarter . The project raised over $200,000 from nearly 6,500 backers in just 39 days. Now a new project has already blown that tally out of the water: an iPod nano-based multi-touch wristwatch . Scott Wilson, the founder of Chicago-based product and design studio, MINIMAL, set out with an idea: to create two watch enclosures for Apple’s latest iPod nano. He wanted the TikTok to be a low-end model ($35) and the LunaTik to be high-end ($70). So he put his project on Kickstarter with a goal of raising $15,000. So how is he doing? Well, he’s raised $341,895. And he still has 22 days to go . Wow. Wilson’s project has not only blown past the high-profile Diaspora one, it’s poised to demolish the all-time funding leader, the Save Blue Like Jazz movie. That project raised $345,992 when it closed on October 25. Wilson’s project should pass it tomorrow, if not tonight after I publish this post. And with good reason. While the idea is a simple one (Apple CEO Steve Jobs even joked about such an idea on stage to highlight how small the nano is), but it’s something a lot of people clearly want. The project has 4,636 backers so far. And the video Wilson made to accompany the project (below) looks quite a bit like an Apple-produced video. Wilson had a goal of shipping the TikTok by late December and the LunaTik by mid January. At first, money was the issue. Now it seems as if demand may be the bigger problem. (To be clear, given the prices he’s selling these for, the iPod nano is not included.) Again, the project still has 22 days to go on its funding run. I have to imagine it’s going to shoot well past $500,000, putting it far atop the Kickstarter Hall of Fame . Update 11/25 : And sure enough, it’s now that biggest Kickstarter project ever. It has now raised over $370,000 from over 5,000 backers so far. And there are still 21 days to go… [thanks David] CrunchBase Information Kickstarter Apple Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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