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With Docracy’s big data tool, searcher.io, companies can quickly and more easily uncover “prior art,” information that can help shoot holes in the often weak patents used to bring infringement lawsuits. Prior art—patent applications, rejected patents, previously published descriptions of a technology—can invalidate a patent and any lawsuit based on it.

—Startup helps firms fight frivolous lawsuits | Crain’s New York Business

Lover.ly’s redesign and rebranding was not just about incorporating commerce more prominently. Khalil tells me she took it as an opportunity to make the brand more sophisticated, less feminine, and more versatile. The move also paves the way for the launch of native mobile apps, which the CEO tells me is imminent. Previously the design was the product of the piecemeal efforts of multiple outside designers. For the latest version, the company added a full time designer to its staff, picking up a former member of Mixel at the time of its acquisition by Etsy.

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Lover.ly adds shopping to its wedding visual search engine

Kellee is so awesome. 

Everyone hears when Facebook and Instagram get greedy with your data, but dozens of others are chipping away at your privacy in ever-changing fine print you agree to without blinking. Docracy tracks ToS changes to show you just what you’re giving up.

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8 Sneaky Terms of Service Changes At Beloved Online Services: Skype, Geico, Stubhub, More | Fast Company

Haha this is pretty great. Docracy lets you keep an eye on Terms of Service changes for websites. Every reporter would love this. 

It works like so: Anyone familiar with Timehop knows that the service will send you a little notification each morning, letting you know that your trip back in time to view your old status updates and tweets is ready. With the new partnership, users will see a significant, newsy item from the past, and the contemporary story matched to that day. So, for example, you may see what the state of the Mars rover mission was six years ago, and a story about where the program is today.

—Timehop Hooks Up With USA Today to Deliver Stories From the Past - Mike Isaac - Social - AllThingsD

Technologically, building such filters would not be impossible, Mr. Wegener said, but he hasn’t done so yet. He said the notion reminded him of the film “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” a quirky romantic comedy in which the main characters wipe away any traces of their past relationship, and presumably, the trauma inflicted.

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New Apps Recall the Details of Your Online Past - NYTimes.com

Awesome Timehop article. Personally, I like even the painful memories. My Timehop reports go back seven years, and sometimes the pain is healed enough that Timehop nudges me to reach out again on a long lost friend. It’s been cathartic and rewarding. 

In talking to marketers, he explained, “The biggest problem they have is that they’re going from a production model where they create things like television commercials and billboard ads and they’re moving to a content model where instead of creating something every 3 to 6 months like a TV commercial is, they need to create something every 3 to 6 minutes. They don’t know what to put into that blank box.” The biggest publisher on Facebook, he pointed out, is Coca Cola with 52 million fans. “If you think about it, these brands are massive publishers in these channels and of course what we know is that the bigger the audience, the more content you need.

—With Its $9 M. Series A, Percolate Might Become the Next Buddy Media By Turning Brands Into Microbloggers | Betabeat

I don’t mind hiring people from there. We have a nice handful of ex-agency folks now and they’re very talented… One thing we noticed in our first six months to a year is that people’s appetite for risk is not that high. When we were an unfunded startup, there were a lot of people who were saying, “Oh yeah, I want to go work for a startup, but I want to get the same salary I was getting before.” We were an unfunded startup and we were profitable, but we can’t give you the salary you were making before.

—Percolate, ‘Son’ of Buddy Media, Helps Brands Build Interest Graphs