If you pride yourself on knowing the latest Internet memes and current trends, you’re likely someone who spends a fair amount of time on the web. But, what if the unthinkable happens and you’re forced to spend a few days offline? How will you ever catch up?
Enter Rrrewind.
A Montreal-based startup aims to prevent you from missing out on popular trends, memes and media through its online time machine Rrrewind.
Rrrewind’s web app contains a wealth of information dating back to 2009 and it enables users to browse through a series of channels like Digg, Reddit and Hacker News. Aside from news, Rrrewind also brings users channels for Hulu, YouTube, Yahoo Video, Dribbble, ffffound, iTunes, We are Hunted, Instagram, Picplz, Amazon, Google Trends and Yahoo Buzz.
The media channels can be best described as history channels which display the popular trends of each day, allowing users to easily navigate posts by day. As an example, if you selected the Flickr channel you’d be immediately presented with the most popular images on Flickr from yesterday. Rrrewind seamlessly flips through past days, transporting you to a history of trends by clicking a “back” arrow.
In case you’re only looking for a specific day, Rrrewind has also included an archives feature that enables users to easily jump to any date. It’s a nice option but we should note the dates vary by channel. While the Flickr channel went back as far as June 2009, the Dribble channel was limited to posts dating back to October of 2010.
New Channels Coming Soon
We had a chance to speak with the founder Roberto Martinez via email. He tells us he launched the site at the end of December and shared that he’d developed the site to scratch his own itch. He wanted a way to save stuff he’d missed from Hacker News and Dribbble.
Martinez said as of this weekend, Rrrewind will be getting a new set of channels. He additionally mentioned a few he wishes he could offer.
The new channels include Imgur, Twitter (popular tweets), Slideshare, WordPress and Pinboard. Tumblr, Posterous and Soundcloud are three Martinez said he’d love to implement but due to limitations of the various APIs, he says there’s no way to do it.
The Bottom Line:
The layout and design of Rrrewind coupled with the archives feature, provides users with an easy way to discover posts, trends and memes that were missed. It definitely has some addictive qualities and it may be one of the only (if not the only) service of its kind. If you happen to check it out please let us know your thoughts.
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