Stamped

Yahoo has acquired its first startup: Stamped, a recommendations engine built by former Google colleagues of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer -- a team Mayer wanted to bring into the fold at Yahoo.

Stamped, which launched as a smartphone app last November, lets users recommend books, movies, restaurants, and other things to friends by giving them a virtual stamp of approval. It uses a Twitter-like social graph that lets users follow recommendations from both friends and celebrities, like chef Mario Batali.

The company had raised about $3 million from a range of investors including Bain Capital Ventures, Google Ventures, and singer … Read more

Stamped, the micro-reviews service started by former Googlers, announced tonight a service revamp and a celebrity-heavy lineup of new investors.

Launched last November, Stamped lets users share reviews of things they like with their friends, including movies, music, and restaurants. Instead of ratings based on one to five stars, Stamped gives users 100 "stamps" of approval to dole out to their favorite venues or products. The company's co-founders believe the limit encourages users to make more careful decisions on what wins their stamp.

In the face of criticism that Stamped was too similar to too many other reviews services, … Read more

If you're a freelancer, attorney, or anyone else who works on a variety of different projects and needs to keep track of your billable hours, Time Stamp is a simple way to complete this task. But Time Stamp is more than just a way to keep track of the work you do; it also keeps track of the work you don't do, letting you track the amount of time you spend on breaks and distractions and showing how much that time is costing you. When you do this kind of work, your time literally is money, and Time … Read more

In graphics apps, the Clone Stamp Tool "clones" (copies) a small area of an image and "stamps" (pastes) it over another area, such as a blemish you want to hide. It's also called the Rubber Stamp Tool, but it's the Clone Stamp Tool in Photoshop. Photoshop is the Godzilla of graphics, so tools like LifeSniffer's Free Clone Stamp Tool follow the leader. And that should give you a good idea of what Free Clone Stamp Tool does: It provides a basic, serviceable clone stamp tool for touching up digital photos, especially photos of … Read more

"The problem we're trying to solve is noise," the Stamped blog says to announce its new mobile app that lets users create quick recommendations to the products and services they like.

The problem that Stamped is not solving, unfortunately, is the noise of all the reviews and check-in sites out there. Sure, they're all different. First we had Yelp and Foursquare and Facebook. Recently, Oink came along. It looks great, is run by a tech celebrity, and lets you review and compare menu items instead of restaurants. I believe it has seized the high ground in … Read more

One of the dangers of sharing your creative work online is that other people can easily steal it and claim it as their own. Watermarks are one easy way to make sure that your name is never disassociated from your digital images. WaterMark V2 is a versatile program that lets users add custom watermarks to their images without a lot of hassle.

The program's interface isn't the most intuitive thing we've ever seen, but we were able to figure it out fairly easily with a bit of poking around. The first step involves creating the watermark itself, … Read more

Doodle Buddy is a free, no-frills, ad-supported drawing and doodling app with playful stamps and backgrounds that will appeal to kids.

Doodle Buddy's "finger-painting" interface lets you draw with swipes and taps. A row of tappable icons on the bottom of the screen lets you undo your last action (multiple times), erase your current drawing (you can also shake your device to erase), and choose from several different tools: a drawing tool (brush, chalk, glitter, smudge, or eraser, all with adjustable sizes), a stamp (with dozens of built-in stamps, from animals to smileys to speech balloons, each … Read more

General Motors is investing more than $30 million of investment in its Pontiac Stamping plant to retool and enhance manufacturing equipment, and 290 hourly and salaried jobs at the 79-year-old plant.

The enhancements will include upgrading three conventional press lines already operating at the plant and the installation of two additional presses that are part of the company's stamping consolidation project, GM said today in a press release.

Pontiac Stamping provides parts to the new Chevrolet Sonic and the new Buick Verano, among other products.

"GM continues to invest in our manufacturing operations to ensure we have the … Read more

Scandinavian post offices are using mobile phones to lick the problem of buying stamps. Denmark and Sweden are introducing a system of paying the postman via text.

Danish service Post Danmark and Swedish postal service Posten AB are adopting the high-tech system to make it easier to post letters, packages, and cards.

The system will work by sending you a code to write on your letter. Danes simply stick the letter, card, or parcel--up to 4.4 pounds--in an envelope, as normal, then text-message the word "porto" to the number 1900. Then they receive a unique code to write where the stamp previously would have gone and pop their goods in a mailbox as usual.

Read more of "Text messages replacing stamps for Scandinavian posties" at Crave UK.… Read more