HelloFax is one step closer to realizing their dream of creating a paperless office by integrating their services with Google Drive.

HelloFax

HelloFax is one of those ideas that makes you wonder why it has taken this long for someone to come up with it. And often, as is the case with CEO Joseph Walla, it takes a young intrepid individual to look at the way something has been done for decades and time immemorial and say, “Wait, why are we still doing things this way?”

“Our objective as a company is to end faxing everywhere for everyone,” says Walla in conversation with Mashable. “It’s so wasteful. It’s environmentally unfriendly, and it’s a waste of time.” Although HelloFax began simply as a faxing service, Walla and co-founder Neal O’Mara realized they were onto something when they added the ability to edit and sign documents inside a browser. This of course eliminates the need to print documents, sign them, and re-scan them so that they can make yet another cyber journey.

“We see faxing the way Google probably sees Android,” continues Walla. “It’s this way of expanding and protecting its core business which is search. Our core business is documents and document signing, and faxing is just this transmission method that hasn’t gone away.”

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Remember the movie poster? We all used to have them: a poster from a movie that marked or changed our lives, a John Hughes film, a Star Wars print. Somewhere between our teen years and the 90s, movie posters lost some of their popular charm. But there are a handful of artists and graphic designers who are trying to bring back the movie poster, only better.

Justin Van Genderen

Justin Van Genderen was the first of these brilliant designers I stumbled across about a year ago as I was trying to settle a Star Wars bet. Based out of Chicago, Van Genderen’s reimagined Star Wars posters have become a bit of an Internet sensation.

These movie posters are minimalist prints you might expect to see in a travel agency on Alderaan. Reminiscent of 30s art deco posters, the series includes posters for many of the planets named in the Star Wars films: Tatooine, the Hoth System, Coruscant, Naboo, the Dagobah System, and Alderaan, to name a few.

Van Genderen’s work, however, covers more than just the Star Wars films. He has a stunning collection of prints that range from an anime series, cosmonaut prints, travel posters, and much more. For more information on the Star Wars series and Justin Van Genderen’s other work, head to his website, 2046 Design.

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Back in February, San Francisco–based Chomp was acquired by the Cupertino-based Apple Inc. This is not the only startup that Apple has acquired — but this purchase has a little extra something behind it.

Chomping Chomp

In just a few short years, Chomp has become one of the more popular app search engines. In the first two months of its launch, the search engine had amassed more than 300,000 users. One of Chomp’s most successful features, at least in terms of marketing, is Chomp Search Ads. Developers can bid on key words that will deliver their ads to users that search for these key words with the Chomp engine.

In February of 2011, Chomp brought its service to the Android platform, introducing an Android app to go along with it. This is where things start to get interesting. Shortly after Apple’s $50 million purchase of the search engine, speculations started to surface as to whether or not Apple would drop Android from Chomp’s database. Remember that at one point Chomp powered Verizon’s Android searches.

Now it appears that Apple has finally carried out the amputation. Is this really surprising? The smartphone market is so competitive at the moment that no one wants to give any undue advantages. With the soon to be released Windows Phone featuring Windows 8 and Metro, the competition will only get more savage. It should also be noted that the Chomp app is no longer available on Google Play.

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If you are not already familiar with the search engine SimilarSites.com, you will find its intuitive searching mechanism a delight.

Where have all the search engines gone?

These days, we take for granted that there was once a time when myriad search engines existed in our collective consciousness. Remember Alta Vista, Excite, Netscape, Infoseek? And although the Internet landscape is populated still by a plethora of search engines, today’s average user could likely not name more than a couple search engines that they use regularly.

There is a good reason for that. Google has risen to such prominence that it has eclipsed all other search engines, if not completely in use, then certainly in terms of what we think a browser is (and does). However, as users we should understand that what Google does is tailor its searches to you specifically and to who it thinks you are. The more you browse, the more the search engine loses its spontaneity, so to speak — and in a sense, you lose a little of that spontaneity, too.

But there are alternatives.

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SoFi is an online social-lending service that allows students to borrow money from generous alumni. Everything seems to be social these days. Why not money, too?

SoFi’s Answer to Financial Aid

The SoFi model seems to be a no-brainer. Alumni from a given school are able to provide financial support to future graduates and at the same time earn a little return on their investment. So how does it work?

Alumni provide a source of funding for students from their alma mater, and students apply for these loans as they would any other financial aid program. Loans are provided to students at 6.24 percent interest (5.99 percent if they sign up for auto-pay). There is a loan minimum of $5,000 and a loan maximum of $200,000. Alumni earn 5 percent back on money they have invested in the SoFi program. Finally, SoFi earns approximately 1 percent. Alumni can invest with cash, or they can invest funds directly through their IRA.

No one is truly getting rich off this model (perhaps not initially). But that is precisely the point. The SoFi model provides an alternative to the “cannibalistic” practices that have long been in place in the standard financial aid model that leaves many students paying off loans for decades (if they have not already gone bankrupt). The moment schools and lending programs became a for-profit model our educational system went into a tailspin. SoFi is trying to navigate students out of this spiralling mess.

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Another company that launched and made a name for itself at DEMO 2012 is VerifEyed.

What is VerifEyed?

VerifEyed is a cloud-based image verification engine that was designed at of one of the world’s leading image forensics labs. VerifEyed was developed to authenticate images and documents and determine if they have been digitally manipulated or altered. Editing tools like Photoshop have made it easy for individuals and companies alike to alter images in such a way that makes attribution to the original source very difficult at times.

The VerifEyed website explains the technology like this:

“Each device (cameras, cell phones, scanners, etc.) produces a unique mathematical fingerprint. Our database consists of almost all existing capture devices and is constantly being updated.

When verifying an image or searching for traces of image manipulation, we automatically extract hidden fingerprints from a photo and compare them with the mathematical model of its acquisition device. Based on this, we are able to accurately determine if the photo has been tampered with. Several methods are applied to detect traces of tampering on each image.”

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Made with Pencils is a website whose simple mandate is to help educate children around the world. As a tech writer who still carries a notebook everywhere, it is nice to see that a pencil still carries its weight in lead — or gold, depending on your donation.

Made with Pencils, Pencils of Promise

The Made with Pencils project and its parent site Pencils of Promise (PoP) began with a question. PoP founder Adam Braun was approached by little boy in India, who was begging on the streets. Braun asked him, “What do you want most in this world?” “A pencil,” the boy responded. And so began this PoP project that took Braun on a tour of 50 countries and six continents, where he passed out thousands of pens and pencils.

“These pencils, these small pieces of potential, led to powerful conversations with local parents and children across countless cultures and languages,” says Braun. “From years of listening to their words, it became clear that there was a need for an international nonprofit that was led on-the-ground by a staff of locals from within each country, required village participation in each school, and deeply supported, trained and tracked each student to ensure their success.”

The Made with Pencils website is divided into three sections: Auction Gallery, The Pencil Shop, and Made by You. The Auction Gallery contains collages and images sketched by celebrities and artists that were auctioned off to raise funds for the Made with Pencils and PoP projects. There is a tracing of Shaquille O’Neils’s hand that sold for $330, Joe Fenton’s stunning piece called “Faithful,” and a cityscape sketch by Hugh Jackman called “The View,” which sold for over $1,000.

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Just when you thought Facebook could not get any creepier, a new website, Girlfriend Hire will send a message from a virtual girlfriend to your Facebook account for a slender $5. We wish this were still April 1rst and this was all just a joke, but the service appears to be legitimate — mostly.

For only $5 via a PayPal account, Girlfriend Hire will hook you up with a ‘girlfriend’ of your choosing. The said girlfriend will then send you a text or post a message directly to your Facebook wall so, presumably, all your Facebook friends can see how ‘lucky’ you are. Facebook was the first to extrapolate the concept of what a ‘friend’ is. Now it seems that the concept of the girlfriend is also being rewritten.

The Girlfriend Hire service works like this: You sign up for a free account, link it to a PayPal account, and then you can start choosing from a list of virtual girlfriends. The setup is not much different than what you would see on a dating site. The only difference here is that there is never any intention of having a real girlfriend, someone you can go with to the movies or grab a soda, or maybe to head up to “Inspiration Point.” Remember that? Those were simpler times.

Speaking of Happy Days, if the classic American sitcom were set in modern times instead of the 50s, you can almost see Ralph Malph or Potsie signing up for a service like this. In that context, the whole thing would be amusing. You would just chuckle and say to yourself, “Potsie, you’re such a Potsie.” But this is not a sitcom.

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Tinychat, the Web-based video-chat application, has reached a staggering 20 million registered users. The site sees about 400,000 daily users plus 50,000 new signees per day.

Tinychat, No Small Talk

If you are not familiar with Tinychat, it is is basically a video-conferencing service (though conferencing may not be the best word here) not unlike Messenger or Skype. I know, if you are familiar with Tinychat, you would say that it is nothing like that. And you would be right. It’s all in the name.

Tinychat has a more informal, friendly feel to it than other Web-based video-chat services. Video chat is the more apt term here, as the service seems to be designed to be a casual meeting place for friends and strangers alike. Tinychat differs from other popular chat sites like Chatroulette in that the site has various themes to choose from, such as Comedy, Entertainment, Hanging Out, and Late Night.

You can create your own rooms and invite up to 11 of your friends for private chat sessions. The actual rooms give users the ability to share files and a whiteboard, not unlike Adobe Connect, for all you enterprise clients. However, the idea here is fun, not versatility.

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The Internet is a popularity contest, make no mistake ─ and according to ABC News/Washington Post poll, Google is the most popular tech brand of the Big Four: Google, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter.

Among 1,007 adults surveyed, Google enjoys an unbelievable 82 percent favorability rate, and of those, 53 percent classify their opinions of the Internet giant as being “strongly” favorable. Only 9 percent view Google unfavorably.

Apple sits comfortably in second position with 74 percent favorability, Facebook in third with 58 percent. Twitter is in fourth spot and is the only one with a lower favorability rate than the rate of those who hold the social-networking site in an unfavorable light (34 and 36 percent, respectively).

Now, these numbers may at first seem a bit shocking, but if you consider what they might actually be reflecting, they are not entirely surprising. Let’s take Apple, for example. Apple seems to be doing unprecedentedly well, reporting quarter after quarter of record earnings. It also enjoys one of the highest customer loyalties of all the big tech companies.

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