Ajax Girl

We don’t normally post webinars, but thought “what the hell it’s Friday”.

On November 30, the Eclipse foundation will be hosting a 1 hour webinar titled Using the Eclipse Ajax Toolkit Framework (ATF).

Eclipse ATF provides exemplary tools for creating and debugging Ajax applications. These tools include enhanced JavaScript editing features such as edit-time syntax checking, an embedded DOM browser, CSS Tools, JavaScript debugger, a JavaScript console, and an embedded Mozilla web browser. This webinar will demonstrate how to use ATF to create, debug, and deploy an Ajax application on both Apache and J2EE servers.

Register by emailing webinar-atf@eclipse.org

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/using-the-eclipse-ajax-toolkit-framework-atf-webinar

Boo.com, one of many poster-children for the dot-com boom of the nineties, has been threatening to re-launch for the last year or so. Mike Butcher at TechCrunch UK says that the site is now scheduled to debut in 2007, barring any further delays.

Mike also gives some background on version 1.0 of Boo.com, which lasted all of six months:

In 1999 Boo.com, a fashion retail site, burnt through $120 million in six months, in part because it’s call centre was situated in London’s fashionable Carnaby Street, as opposed to a cheaper location. The web site was also built by three different development teams spread across the globe, while it’s home page was notorious for its slow load time and use of - then less common - Flash.

Founded by Ernst Malmsten, Kajsa Leander and Patrik Hedelin, Boo.com’s largest backer was Omnia, a fund backed by members of Lebanon’s wealthy Hariri family, which put nearly $40 million into the company. Over 400 staff and contractors were made redundant when Boo went into receivership in May 2000.

For those who are really interested in finding out who’s behind Boo.com this time around, John Collins did some digging into the domain name and found that it is registered to a “woman living in the leafy dublin suburb of ranelagh [in Ireland].”

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/53739129/

Dean Edwards talked about his hack that got us the ability to subclass the Array object in JavaScript.

Hedger Wang has a new hack that uses window.createPopup instead of an iframe to for IE to fix some issues.

If you take a view source to see what is in there, you get the gem:

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/another-trick-to-allow-array-subclasses

Dropboks is a single page application build on Prototype and friends, that allows you to simply upload files for safe keeping.

The application is ad free, and survives on user donations. They do a good job at letting you use it pre-signup, and giving good info via tooltips.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/dropboks-file-storage-on-one-page

Spelling Cow allows you add a script tag, and spell check is enabled on your website. There are also some variables you can tweak too if advanced features are needed.

This means that you can add spell checking to your applications, but as the latest browsers have added inline spell check, is there use to it?

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/spelling-cow-js-spell-checker

Now we are getting niche. A tool that lets you design CSS tabs:

With the CSS Tab Designer, you can:

• Quickly design your list visually.
• Choose from a variety of styles/colors (60+ different designs/colors supported).
• Generate strict xhtml compliant code.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/css-tab-designer

Instant messaging has become a part of daily life on the web. I use several different services depending on what I want to do and who I want to talk to. AIM is great for keeping in touch with old friends, Meebo or eBuddy for signing on anywhere, and Skype for business interactions. I use these different services because of their strengths in certain key features. Companies like Meebo, Skype, Wablet, and AOL-acquired Userplane are pushing these features forward with the next generation of instant messaging on the web.

Real time communication is one of the most innovative sectors on the web today. Below are some of the big ideas emerging in web instant messaging as it stands today and the services that exemplify them.

1. Interoperability
After the initial success of AIM and ICQ, several other chat services popped up. Services like Trillian, Gaim, Adium and Miranda developed hacks to communicate across the different protocols. After a period of “cat and mouse” where AOL fought interoperability by making small changes to AIM, cross-platform interoperability has become a standard feature in most new chat programs. Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger announced interoperability this summer. AOL now has an open development API and Google Talk runs on the open Jabber protocol. Clearly, open standards are here to stay.

2. In-Browser Chat
AIM Express was an early version of chat programs that split away from a downloadable client and ran in your web browser instead. Services like Meebo and eBuddy have developed richer user interfaces by using AJAX and bridging chat protocols. Sequoia backed Meebo (rumored $3-4 million), and Lowland funded eBuddy (5 million Euro) continue to slug is out over this space. Meebo branched out even further by allowing embeddable chat on any website through their MeeboMe widget. Meebo has had steady growth since we covered their numbers last December. Daily logins and message volume have grown 5 times over, at 1.2 million logins and 70 million messages per day. Meebo claims 4.5 million monthly uniques and 700,000 Meebo user accounts. With the uptake in social sites, browser-based IM has brought chat to the places users are on the web.

3. Location Based Chat
Instant messaging programs connect people across the internet. Newer programs like RadiusIM and Meetro, connect people by their real-world location. RadiusIM is an AJAX application, while Meetro is a downloadable client. Both allow you to fill out your location and profile as a way to meet new people in your area, or even another country. Unlike the other developments in chat, location based IM hasn’t seen heavy adoption on other platforms, which continue to connect people based on a user generated buddy list.

4. Flexible Identities
As web personal profiles have grown on the web, so has the need to separate your private and professional faces. While users can handle this problem through managing various IM handles, Flash-based Wablet (our coverage) made profiling a central feature in it’s system. Wablet allows you to create multiple personas with different profiles. You can then embed these chat windows on the web and control which persona each visitor sees. In the near future, Wablet is incorporating OpenID. Chat service ScribbleHere currently works with OpenID.

5. Contextual Chat
Several new start-ups have popped up and changed the context of instant messaging from buddy lists to websites and interests. While similar to the old IRC chat rooms by basing conversations around topics, companies like Me.dium, Geesee, the newly launched InCircles, OthersOnline, and 3bubbles have incorporated your location on the web into chat in different degrees.

3Bubbles is an embed that adds a post specific chat window to every blog post. GeeSee goes a step further and connects users across sites based on tags so, for example, all technology blogs can share a common chat room. InCircles, which is embedded for testing here, operates similarly but is optimized for blog sidebars. OthersOnline and Me.dium incorporate surfing habits to connect users of similar interests. Both are browser plugins. OthersOnline focuses on connecting people who frequent the same websites and have similar profiles, listing similar users in drop-down menus. Me.dium is a bit more anonymous in their approach, connecting users by handle based solely on their presence at related websites. Your relationship to your friends and other surfers is displayed on a “radar” map, which shows you other users visiting the site your on or others like it.

6. Rich Media Chat
Web cams and microphones have been on the web for a while, but the growth broadband, VOIP standards, and mainstream incorporation through services like Skype, Google Talk, and Yahoo! Messenger have expanded their use in chat programs. Skype and Yahoo! support calling to land lines and mobile phones (Skype is free until the end of the year). PalTalk creates voice chat rooms that can host conversations between thousands of people together at once. While voice and video does not lend itself to simultaneous conversations many IM users carry on, rich media integration brings a subtleness and depth absent from text-based IM.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/53510714/