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Color, the photo-sharing social app that took the tech industry by storm when it announced $41 million in prelaunch funding shortly after SXSW in March, is almost complete with its pivot. As announced at Facebook's developer conference in September, Color has attached itself to the social network and wants to fundamentally change the notion of the status update. Augmented are the notions of the "elastic" implicit social graph and many vestiges of what Color was when it originally launched.

Color has now launched in private beta around the concept of visual Facebook status updates, called "visits." We explore the new color and its evolution below.

Just three and a half months after the company launched to the public, proximity-based photo sharing mega-startup Color has lost a second of its three high-profile initial team members, Michael Arrington reported this morning. Arrington said DJ Patil, who was LinkedIn's chief scientist until this Spring, has resigned. Co-founder Peter Pham, previously a leader at very successful startups Photobucket and Billshrink, left Color last month. That leaves co-founder Bill Nguyen, who sold music service Lala to Apple, as the last of the three rock stars that launched the year's most ambitious startup with more than $40 million in high-profile venture capital.

The reasons why Color appears to be imploding can't be known for sure, but the whole thing looks like a lesson in the Lean Startup philosophy. Perhaps best articulated by consultant and author Eric Ries, the Lean Startup philosophy says the last thing you want to do is raise a whole lot of money, build a product in secret, then spring it on a world that may not want what you've built at all.

Yesterday we compared the recent launch of new photo and video sharing app Color to the arrival of Twitter five years ago. Like Twitter, Color is an innovative app that has intrigued early adopters and has the potential to catch on in a big way. It's also popularizing a new buzzword: proximity. Yesterday we looked at an early use case for Color: photo sharing at the premiere of a Hollywood movie. However, it wasn't clear what value Color users at that event got from the app. So we asked the company for more information about the user experience so far and to give us more examples of how Color is being used.

In this post we explore some of those other examples of Color usage, including a concert and a BBQ. Also we talk to Color's Chief Product Officer DJ Patil and ask him to explain more about the product vision.

Love it or loath it, the smartphone app Color is one of the most innovative Web products to have launched this year. It has a user experience that is as unique and different as Twitter was 5 years ago. This has led to confusion about how to use Color and questions about its value. In this post we look at the early uses of Color and analyze its chances of emulating the success of Twitter.

Color launched last month in a whirl of hype, mostly due to the eye-opening $41 million prelaunch funding. But since then, the user experience has been the center of focus. Many people have complained that the app is difficult to understand - mainly because the benefits of the app are only clear once you use it amongst a crowd of people and in real-time. The user interface of the app has also been accused of being confusing and inconsistent.

When location-based photo sharing app Color launched last month, it arrived to a chorus of complaints - all justified, mind you - about a confusing, puzzle-like design and a terrible user experience. Still, users seem to be confused about what the app is for, as you can often hear people ask "Why do I want to share photos with strangers?" whenever the topic of Color is brought up.

This weekend, Color will partner up with 20th Century Fox to show users one example of how Color, the power of the crowd and proximity can all come together to create a new and interesting experience.

Last night, an app called Color hit the app stores for both iOS and Android. It made a big splash for a number of reasons, not the least of which being its $41 million prelaunch funding. It has all-star founders who have a impressive track records. It launched days after, instead of before, uber tech conference SXSW. Unfortunately for the company, the app can offer a terrible experience for first-time users and appear absolutely useless to those outside of a densely packed, techie mecca like San Francisco or New York.

Let's put all that aside for a moment, however, and look at how Color works, what it does, and why it could redefine mobile, location, and online social interaction. We took some time to talk with Color CEO Bill Nguyen this afternoon and asked him about the tech behind the most talked about app this side of SXSW and here's what he had to say.

Do you need to pick out a new color scheme, but don't know where to begin? If you're designing a web site or blog theme, finding just the right color palette is nearly as important as writing good code, but it can be a challenge for those of us who don't have any innate design skills. When looking for inspiration today, it's easy to become overwhelmed with the number of choices available for generating color schemes, but here are five apps we find truly inspiring.