Bits: New Apps Recall the Details of Your Online Past

I know all of this not because my memory is superhuman, or because I keep a detailed journal. My gift of meticulous recollection comes courtesy of several apps I’ve signed up for, including Timehop and Rewind.me. They tap into my social media history and send daily reminders of my past postings, from pictures uploaded to Instagram, the photo-sharing application, to messages on Facebook and Twitter.

At a basic level, these services serve as a cognitive crutch, excavating details about the past that I might not otherwise remember. They offer historical insight into a digital world that is in many ways ephemeral — full of constantly refreshing newsfeeds.

While social networks tell their users what is happening right now, these newer services document life of a year or more ago. They rely on a proliferation of personal data scattered around the Web and easily retrieved with the help of clever engineering and software algorithms. And they offer a rare backward glance, an anthropological perspective on our own online behavior. For example, I’ve noticed that last year, I was posting many photographs and disclosing personal details of my life on social networks, but that these days, I’ve shifted into a cooler, less intimate mode.

Danielle Morrill, founder and chief executive of Referly, a product-recommendation start-up in San Francisco, found that using Timehop, which pings her iPhone with information about how she spent her day exactly one, two, three or even five years ago, reminded her just how “powerful time can be.”

“Sometimes I’ll realize I was doing the exact same thing I was doing a year ago, and I’ll have to ask myself if I’m cool with that,” Ms. Morrill said. “I was grinding through work last year, and I’m still doing that now. Maybe I should think about taking a break. It makes you reflect.”

Timehop and its peers are byproducts of a time of information overload. Many of us can barely keep up with the nearly nonstop stream of news, updates and details about the world around us, let alone find time to put the past into the context of the present.

“Every social network is based in real time,” said Jonathan Wegener, one of the founders of Timehop, which was released to the public in October. “They tend to push down old information, but they don’t leave space to remember it.”

Mr. Wegener has joined a small cluster of entrepreneurs looking to capitalize on a kind of Internet-era archaeology, excavating the troves of data we’ve left on the Web and repackaging them for our enjoyment. It’s an economy betting that as much as people want to pipe details of their daily lives into the social Web as they happen, they will also want reminders on the anniversaries of those experiences — whether theirs or, in some cases, someone else’s. People who sign up for Timehop, for example, can see the social-media pasts of friends who are also using the service. And if Timehop users choose to do so, they can send their memories to other social networks where friends can comment about them.

EXHUMING the past, of course, is fun only until you stumble onto something unpleasant.

In my case, a recent perusal offered photographs of a pet cat that had died, as well as pictures of an exuberant evening with a friend I no longer spend time with. Such reminders can be almost unbearably painful, or they can provide the extra nudge to send a “hello, again” e-mail.

Mr. Wegener said users often requested features that would let them block a particular person or period from appearing in their digest.

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.

Such filters are “something we’re considering carefully,” he said.

It’s not clear whether these applications have long-term business potential. Timehop, for example, says it is focused on attracting people to its app, rather than worrying about how it will make money. The company has raised a little more than $1 million from a list of investors that includes Spark Capital and the founders of Foursquare.

Some researchers who study how people interact online say that these services are a logical evolution for social media and hold the potential for longer-term value.

For one thing, they can remind us exactly how long the “half-life of our digital footprints can be” said S. Shyam Sundar, a director of the Media Effects Research Lab at Pennsylvania State University. “People who never stopped to think that their digital postings would be archived could become more aware of their actions online.”

They could usher in a much-needed dose of reality about the permanence of the digital Web, a truth that is hard to grasp when so much of what we post online feels so ephemeral, visible for only a few seconds.

Behaving as if our digital data is fleeting can cause serious trouble, said Mr. Sundar, especially as our offline and online worlds merge. Our actions, documented through the content we share, can have very real effects on what colleges we get into, what jobs we qualify for and what people we meet.

“We have to start taking seriously the idea of social media as self-representation,” he said. “Social media is no longer just a mirror of the present, but also the past.”

App Smart: Apps That Recall a Time Before There Were Apps

Now, an app on your smartphone or tablet is that time machine.

Today we’re all playing casual phone games or epics like Skyrim. But if you’re of a certain age you’ll remember the era of home computer games fondly.

Commodore 64 fans will spot the $5 Commodore 64 app in the iTunes App Store with glee, because it even gives you a chance to type in Basic programs. It has a few reproductions of classic games, and more are available as an in-app purchase. The free Android app Frodo C64 is a little simpler, but it requires you to find the original source code for games elsewhere online.

If you were a fan of the ZX Spectrum computer, you’ll love the $9 iPad app 100 Greatest Hits. It has classic 1980s-era 8-bit games from Elite, with more available via an in-app purchase. Everything is emulated nicely, including some of the quirky sound and graphics of the Spectrum. Marvin on Android is a similar free app that goes even further because it emulates the Spectrum’s interface — though again you have to find your own game files.

Atari game fans can download the free Atari’s Greatest Hits app for iOS. This official app contains the classic arcade game Missile Command direct from Atari’s own files and 100 more games via in-app purchase.

Instagram’s retro photo filters are well known. But there are other apps that do the same trick for the higher-resolution photos stored in your phone. For a great app to add a dash of yesteryear’s sepia to photos, try Photo Editor by Aviary, free on iOS and Android. It’s a powerful app, but simple to use. If you spend $1 on its in-app nostalgia pack you can apply some classic effects (and defects) to your photos, even layering them on top of one another.

For a different type of retro effect, I love the $1 iOS app 1-Bit Camera. This generates black-and-white pixilated images like those from the early days of the Macintosh computer. For an even more geeky imaging effect, check out Image to ASCII Lite, free on iOS, or AsciiArt Booth, free on Android. Both are simple apps that turn photos into an array of letters that, from afar, look like the original image.

If you’re nostalgic for vintage films then 8mm Vintage Camera — a very successful $2 iOS app — will be right up your street, thanks to its easy-to-use interface and the great blurry clips it generates. I love its comedic effect when I record my children’s antics on video.

The free Android app Videocam Illusion may actually be a more powerful app because it lets you add different layers of effects, including the 8mm effect. But I found that it was a bit more complex to operate, and the maker warns that some effects will really challenge the processor in less-powerful Android devices.

The app VinylLove, $1 on iOS, tries to bring back some of the old magic of vinyl records. The app’s interface is designed to let you search through your MP3s as if they were stored in a record crate. It places an emphasis on playing and listening to albums in track order, which is a fast-disappearing habit. It’s fun, and if you’re a vinyl fan you may appreciate its visual aesthetic. The static noise effect of dusty records is also rather endearing.

For a different nostalgic sound try out Nostalgic Phone Ringtones, free on Android, which will let your 21st-century smartphone ring with some distinctly 20th-century sounds. (The ads are a bit irritating, but you won’t spend much time in this app.)

To capture the dulcet tones of the Stylophone, and bring back memories of Kraftwerk’s music, check out the $3 Synthophone iOS app. It recreates the look and sounds of that old electronic pocket instrument. For an even older electronic sound try the free Accelerophone app on Windows Phone. It’s not hands-free like a theremin, but it uses your phone’s accelerometer and gyroscope so waving it about is fun.

Enjoy your trip down memory lane!

Quick Calls

New on the iTunes App Store is the $2 app Eisenhower. It’s a “getting things done” app that uses a novel system for organizing your tasks — the Eisenhower matrix. This helps you by timing you during priority events. ... The social Q. and A. Web site Quora — always handy when looking for an informed answer to a question — is releasing its free Android app this week. It comes with neat features like voice search using Android’s built-in system, and it will let you pin some of its content to a widget on your home screen.

App Smart: Apps That Recall a Time Before There Were Apps

Now, an app on your smartphone or tablet is that time machine.

Today we’re all playing casual phone games or epics like Skyrim. But if you’re of a certain age you’ll remember the era of home computer games fondly.

Commodore 64 fans will spot the $5 Commodore 64 app in the iTunes App Store with glee, because it even gives you a chance to type in Basic programs. It has a few reproductions of classic games, and more are available as an in-app purchase. The free Android app Frodo C64 is a little simpler, but it requires you to find the original source code for games elsewhere online.

If you were a fan of the ZX Spectrum computer, you’ll love the $9 iPad app 100 Greatest Hits. It has classic 1980s-era 8-bit games from Elite, with more available via an in-app purchase. Everything is emulated nicely, including some of the quirky sound and graphics of the Spectrum. Marvin on Android is a similar free app that goes even further because it emulates the Spectrum’s interface — though again you have to find your own game files.

Atari game fans can download the free Atari’s Greatest Hits app for iOS. This official app contains the classic arcade game Missile Command direct from Atari’s own files and 100 more games via in-app purchase.

Instagram’s retro photo filters are well known. But there are other apps that do the same trick for the higher-resolution photos stored in your phone. For a great app to add a dash of yesteryear’s sepia to photos, try Photo Editor by Aviary, free on iOS and Android. It’s a powerful app, but simple to use. If you spend $1 on its in-app nostalgia pack you can apply some classic effects (and defects) to your photos, even layering them on top of one another.

For a different type of retro effect, I love the $1 iOS app 1-Bit Camera. This generates black-and-white pixilated images like those from the early days of the Macintosh computer. For an even more geeky imaging effect, check out Image to ASCII Lite, free on iOS, or AsciiArt Booth, free on Android. Both are simple apps that turn photos into an array of letters that, from afar, look like the original image.

If you’re nostalgic for vintage films then 8mm Vintage Camera — a very successful $2 iOS app — will be right up your street, thanks to its easy-to-use interface and the great blurry clips it generates. I love its comedic effect when I record my children’s antics on video.

The free Android app Videocam Illusion may actually be a more powerful app because it lets you add different layers of effects, including the 8mm effect. But I found that it was a bit more complex to operate, and the maker warns that some effects will really challenge the processor in less-powerful Android devices.

The app VinylLove, $1 on iOS, tries to bring back some of the old magic of vinyl records. The app’s interface is designed to let you search through your MP3s as if they were stored in a record crate. It places an emphasis on playing and listening to albums in track order, which is a fast-disappearing habit. It’s fun, and if you’re a vinyl fan you may appreciate its visual aesthetic. The static noise effect of dusty records is also rather endearing.

For a different nostalgic sound try out Nostalgic Phone Ringtones, free on Android, which will let your 21st-century smartphone ring with some distinctly 20th-century sounds. (The ads are a bit irritating, but you won’t spend much time in this app.)

To capture the dulcet tones of the Stylophone, and bring back memories of Kraftwerk’s music, check out the $3 Synthophone iOS app. It recreates the look and sounds of that old electronic pocket instrument. For an even older electronic sound try the free Accelerophone app on Windows Phone. It’s not hands-free like a theremin, but it uses your phone’s accelerometer and gyroscope so waving it about is fun.

Enjoy your trip down memory lane!

Quick Calls

New on the iTunes App Store is the $2 app Eisenhower. It’s a “getting things done” app that uses a novel system for organizing your tasks — the Eisenhower matrix. This helps you by timing you during priority events. ... The social Q. and A. Web site Quora — always handy when looking for an informed answer to a question — is releasing its free Android app this week. It comes with neat features like voice search using Android’s built-in system, and it will let you pin some of its content to a widget on your home screen.