Veracode chief technology officer Chris Wysopal is the man behind this latest statement, and said the spoof is done by use of a unofficial third-party app on a jailbroken iPhone. Of course, the whole flaw is dependent on that — normal iPhones would not be susceptible to this as Apple would never let such an app in the App Store. Most iPhones aren’t jailbroken.

Wysopal told Forbes of the possible uses of such a hole, including get this–by paparazzi. Big bad Color is just playing loose with our privacy now, aren’t they? I really don’t understand how this is even news: at no time has Color ever promised any privacy at all.

The whole concept of the app itself is that there is no such thing as private photos: it is intended to facilitate the sharing of photos between strangers and friends alike. If you are posting pictures that you don’t want to be public on this app, well then that’s your own stupid fault.

I will repeat what I have said on Twitter around the time of all the hubbub: Color would have never gotten this kind of coverage if it wasn’t for that $41 million in funding. It just drove the tech blogosphere into a frenzy, and a good portion of the coverage has been vitriolic. I’m beginning to think that some people are hellbent on seeing this company fail,.

So, if you’re worried about your privacy, here’s a suggestion: either watch what you’re putting on Color, or don’t download the app at all. The fix for this “flaw” is as easy as that.

Yesterday, however, I wrote about Color, a new smartphone app that automatically shares photos and videos with people near you. I thought it was a nifty idea. It comes from a company cofounded by Bill Nguyen, whose previous startup Lala was definitely a nifty idea. And I did get to fool around a bit with the app during a demonstration in a real-word setting–a restaurant, which is the sort of place that Color is supposed to be fun and useful. That’s a major step beyond just having it explained via PowerPoint.

The meeting I had with Color included several staffers–Bill Nguyen wasn’t one of them, but Peter Pham, the startup’s president and another guy with an impressive background, was. They said that the company was going to be a big deal and that the product was a breakthrough, as startup founders doing demos are wont to do. They also mentioned that the company had raised $41 million in funding, which is a lot of dough for a phone app.

Besides briefing folks like me, the company issued a press release that wasn’t shy about raising expectations–actually, it used the word “miraculous” to describe the app, a term even Steve Jobs might think twice about throwing around.

When Color’s news broke yesterday, some of the coverage was giddy:

But not all of it–some said the app’s defining notion of looking at photos of strangers is creepy:

And the initial ratings on reviews on the App Store are largely cranky, for multiple reasons: They say the app is confusing, crashy, and unappealing:

At some point, as TechCrunch’s MG Siegler notes, Color coverage turned into Color backlash–against the app and especially against the fact that $41 million had been invested in it. Now the company is responding to the flack and saying a better version is in the works.

All of which left me pondering Color and the early coverage of it–especially my coverage. Should I have abstained from expressing any opinions whatsoever until I could use the app extensively? Did I err by not even mentioning the 41 million bucks? Did the fact that I didn’t find the concept icky reveal that I didn’t get it?

You can tell me what you think. But I’m relieved that I was smart enough to be a bit guarded: I said right away that I wasn’t reviewing the app, and hedged my bets by using if and could in my assessment:  ”if it lives up to its potential it could be a big hit.”

I didn’t mention the $41 million in my first post, for several reasons:

• Technologizer is really about stuff, not the business machinations behind the stuff;
• I’m not an expert on venture capital and therefore can’t write very intelligently about it;
• Even though I’m not an expert on venture capital, I do know that there’s no reliable link between the amount of money a company is able to raise and the quality of its idea and its chance at success. (Kozmo.com, a truly stupid idea for a company, raised $250 million before imploding.) The only way anyone will know for sure whether investing $41 million in Color is an act of genius or a massive blunder is when it changes the world, or fails to do so.

For the record, anyone who’s ever talked to Bill Nguyen knows that he’s very, very good at inducing infectious excitement. I met with him several times about Lala, and always came away jazzed about the company, whether we were discussing the several early incarnations of the service that turned out to be dead ends or the one which was pretty wonderful while it lasted. I’m sure Nguyen-induced infectious enthusiasm–which is not the same thing as irrational exuberance–played a part in Color’s bankroll and some of the breathless early stories. And it may have, um, colored my take, even though I spoke with his colleagues rather than the guy himself.

I didn’t dwell on the idea that Color might be creepy in my first post–I did briefly  bring up the notion of it being used for stalking–because…well, because it doesn’t strike me as creepy. It struck me as a neat idea, if it’s well done. And it still does. (I haven’t tried the app for an extended period yet, mostly because I’m on the road at the moment–in fact, I’m writing this on airplane.)

A few final thoughts on all this:

• I’m really glad I instinctively shy away from forming or expressing definitive opinions based on concepts and demos and will redouble my efforts to so;
• I called Color’s interface “slick and distinctive” and noted that it didn’t use many labels or words. I wish I’d followed up by saying something like “Of course, that might prove to be confusing…”‘;
• There’s something to be said for launching products with no hype whatsoever, especially ones which are dependent on users understanding and loving them–nobody found that Twitter and Facebook didn’t live up to the initial hoopla, because there was no initial hoopla;
• If people who have written about Color can be divided into those who think it’s a hollow gimmick and those who think there’s a big idea in there somewhere, I’m still in the latter camp.

And if you’ve got any opinions to share–about Color, about Color coverage, about the proper way to write about new products–I’d love to hear them.

Once flaws are detected, an automated process takes over to repair photographs using techniques including infilling and texture synthesis. A more detailed description of how the technology works is available at the HP Labs Web site.

This is a neat development, and HP is once again being an innovator in consumer technology. It is a leader in software development and testing, but its commercial products do not always stand out from the crowd.

I did a quick Web search and found another HP research project that it says will lead to better color accuracy in scanning.

When I was younger, only the biggest techies owned scanners, and it was a pretty big deal to own one. Scanners have since become a commodity technology, and it has been a long time since I have taken notice of them. It might be time to begin paying attention again.

To recap: In 2001 Polaroid went bankrupt. In 2002, the brand was acquired by a company called the Petters Group, which proceeded to slap it on DVD players, TVs, and other products that had nothing to do with the company’s proud heritage in instant photography (as well as a few that did, such as digital cameras). Petters later bought Polaroid outright for $426 million. In 2007, Polaroid stopped making instant cameras, and in 2008 it announced plans to stop making film for its old cameras in 2009. In 2008, it became known that Petters founder Tom Petters was the subject of a federal investigation for massive financial fraud. Then Polaroid went bankrupt again.

And yesterday, Polaroid was sold again, this time for a measly $88 million to a joint venture that owns other distressed brands such as the Sharper Image and Linens ‘n Things. One of the partners said this about Polaroid:

Polaroid is an iconic brand known globally for their technical innovation and high-quality products that deliver on its reputation of ease-of-use.

Very true. But another exec added:

The Polaroid brand has immense global appeal that translates into almost all categories,…This is a terrific opportunity to unlock Polaroid’s brand value and transform its multi-channel platform of diverse and unique consumer products using leading technologies and trend-setting innovations.

Which I fear is corporate doublespeak for “We’re going to continue to license the name out for use on all sorts of consumer electronics products, most of which are commodity items which have nothing to do with the qualities that made this a great company decades ago.”

You gotta think that the late Edwin Land, Polaroid’s founder, is deeply sad if he’s out there somewhere, watching what’s become of his brainchild. (He died in 1991, after Polaroid’s golden age but before it became absolutely clear that chemistry-based instant photography didn’t have a future, and neither did Polaroid as an independent, inventive entity.) Here’s a great story from a 1972 issue of TIME that makes clear that Land was one of the greatest tech CEOs ever–a sort of combination of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak who thrived for decades and was also a philanthropist of note.

There is one exception to the generally dismal fate of the Polaroid name: It’s being used on photo printers and digital cameras that incorporate the printing technology developed by Zink, a Boston-area startup that’s full of Polaroid veterans. At least it’s a genuinely innovative idea that brings the original idea behind Polaroid photography into the 21st century. But I wonder if there’s an alternate universe somewhere in which digital photography was invented at Polaroid, and the company is doing better than ever?

A home page for the LIFE collection lives at images.google.com/hosted/life, or you can just go to images.google.com,  type in whatever keywords you like, and append “source:life” to the end of the query.

The images look great and are in reasonably high resolution, and I can’t think of many more entertaining ways to delve through a sizable chunk of 20th century history than to browse your way through them. A few queriws I had fun with:

astronaut

american president

hippie

ice cream

baseball

fad

movie star

macy’s

All of this is, of course, free, but there is a commercial aspect: You can click through from any image to buy it as a print. Oddly enough, I don’t see any link through to information about what is and isn’t permissible to do with these photos. Search Engine Land has a good post that links to a FAQ, but says that this FAQ doesn’t spell out LIFE’s stance on reuse: They’re up for grabs for personal, noncommercial use but not for professional purposes. I’m hoping that I won’t go to copyright jail if I give you a peek at the searching interface:

Highly recommended–just make sure that you don’t begin browsing if you have any pressing, immediate deadlines…