Ajax Girl

Zemble publicly launches Tuesday morning, after a week of letting the founders’ family and friends test it out.

Zemble is a social networking site that allows users to text message en masse from the browser. Competitors in this space include Dodgeball and Twitter. TechCrunch has been following multi-person SMS for a long time but Zemble believes they have something new. Users create groups of friends, or Zembles, and can then text a message to the entire group at once. Not only can users send texts to several people simultaneously, recipients can opt to reply to all. While this may be a new text messaging feature, I’m not convinced that it’s preferable.

First of all, recipients cannot see who else was on the distribution list so it is difficult to know who you are replying to if you reply to all. Ludlow said that users can familiarize themselves with group members so that they know who they are writing when they reply to a group. I think that might just be too much to keep straight.

Even if I do know all of the recipients of my book club email list, (which I do), do I really want a text message from each of them to know who is bringing what dish to the next meeting? Not everyone has unlimited text messaging as part of their mobile phone plan so is it really wise to facilitate text spam?

To Zemble’s credit, they do allow users to turn off text notifications within certain groups. The site is designed like MySpace where users can personalize their pages and link to friends. As of Monday night, they had approximately 300 users.

Zemble was founded in Los Angeles in March.

“Our funding has come so far from a friends and family round,” Ludlow said. “We’ve managed to raise approximately $90,000, which has been good enough to get our product to this point. We’re open to looking for venture capital now.”

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/54821876/

User-generated video sharing site ViTrue, Inc. has come into some money. The company announced a major Series “A” round of funding from Comcast Interactive Capital and Turner Broadcasting on Monday - although we can only say it’s in the single digit millions.

ViTrue hosts user-generated (UG) video a la YouTube with an advertising focus. This relatively new type of advertising is called Branded Video Community, meant to promote “brand engagement.” So if you love the San Francisco Giants, (and who doesn’t?), you can create a video promoting the team and post it through ViTrue.

For now, ViTrue only has homemade video for Moe’s Southwest Grill, Lance Foods, The Cincinnati Bengals, and something called The Nerd League. Not exactly brands I want to “engage” with but I’m not saying this kind of advertising won’t be effective. It’s too soon to tell, but Ted Turner is a believer.

Maybe this is how the online video world will finally figure out how to monetize UG video and avoid copyright lawsuits? Lord knows YouTube is worth a lot of money, but Google hasn’t been talking much about how they’re going to cash in on the acquisition. Plus they keep having to filter content for illegal uploads of copyright material. So if sponsoring UG content is the new plan, ViTrue just has to hope and pray that someone will come up with something hilarious for Moe’s Southwest Grill. (Note to contributors: competitive eating is always a winner!)

Turner Broadcasting will test this model later this year when it launches an online campaign called “Funny or Not?”

ViTrue is no stranger to UG video. The company owns Sharkle.com, the online video-sharing community. It was founded by CEO Reggie Bradford. Louis Toth, managing director at Comcast Interactive Capital, and Dennis Quinn, executive vice president of business development for Turner Broadcasting, will be observers on ViTrue’s board.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/54802092/

A new poll in the UK shows that people who watch online videos tend to watch less television. It looks like they didn’t take into account that people with broadband Internet connections in general watch less television, so the poll may be more of a simple testament to the fact that as people spend more time on the Internet, television time suffers.

Regardless, the writing is on the wall. Sure, YouTube and CBS partnered up to declare that CBS clips on Youtube actually increased overall tv ratings, but that is almost certainly hogwash. It’s a good diversionary tactic for YouTube as they continue to grow and the networks stand around with a funny, confused look on their face. But at the end of the day, people want to consume content without the friction of having to sit down in front of a television at an appointed time. That friction doesn’t disappear just because a show clip is up on YouTube. People want to see the whole show on YouTube. There is a fundamental shift in consumer behavior going on - and the question is no longer if, but rather when, more television consumption will occur via the Internet than traditional broadcast and cable television.

The key tipping point will be when a startup is able to distribute proper television content over the Internet legally. People will begin to abandon their cable tv subscriptions in favor of Internet distribution. MobiTV is in the best current position to do this - they have a ton of cash and are only a few deals away from being able to offer the equivalent of a cable television subscription over the Internet. And The Venice Project may also win. iTunes will continue to pursue their pay per show model, and that will also take market share. See links below.

For more on our coverage of Internet TV, see:

Download Your TV - The Current Options
TV from three major studios to go P2P
The Stars Align for The Venice Project
Thinking About MobiTV’s $100 million

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/54751627/

Look for the CNBC website to relaunch on December 4, 2006. The site has been offline for the last six months after a five year deal with Microsoft expired.

The landing page up currently suggests a heavy focus on video and personalized tools and analysis. I expect that they are aiming squarely at at Bloomberg, as well as the finance areas of Google and Yahoo. With lots of great video content to pull from their tv affiliate, I expect it will be a compelling offering.

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/~3/54729576/

TuitionCoach.com attempts to give parents a clear idea of just how much their kids’ college will cost them. When I got a demo that estimated what it could cost to pay for one offspring’s education out-of-pocket, I rethought my desire to ever have kids.

TuitionCoach launches tomorrow. It is geared towards parents of teenagers who might be putting kids in university within the next year or two. What it lacks is financial planning and savings help. It tells you how much college will cost, how much financial aid you can get, and how to negotiate for more. But it doesn’t tell you how to save. If your kids are in grade school, what is the best way to put away? Should you contribute to an IRA or a 401K? This is not the site to find that info, although the CEO Monisha Perkash hopes it eventually will be.

“Right now with our module, it’s more targeted for kids that are in high school already so you’re thinking one to four years out but what we do plan to do in our future modules is provide tools that help you in starting to plan when your kids are 8 or 9 or 10,” Perkash said in a phone conversation on Monday.

TuitionCoach allows you to create separate profiles for each child that you plan to put through school. The most helpful part is the interactive spreadsheet. The numbers can be manipulated easily in order to figure out how to qualify for the most amount of aid. For example, what if your child has a savings account in his/her name worth $10,000? That could reduce your family’s financial aid eligibility by 35 percent. Changing that number to zero, decreases your financial responsibility by $3,500 per year.

Perkash compares the TuitionCoach service to Intuit’s TurboTax in that it is a paid-service that makes it easier to do something that you could do yourself. The cost calculator is free but the financial aid help and worksheets come with an annual $59 subscription.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/54694468/

The founders of Barcelona-based eyeOS hope that they’ve found the right model to create a much anticipated new market - the web operating system. Like desktop.com, the failed high flyer from web 1.0, eyeOS is a browser based “desktop” that gives users access to a variety of applications (word processor, chat, calendar, etc.). The free, open source project is set to launch in early 2007. I spoke to one of the founders, Pau Garcia-Milà, earlier today via IM.

Like Zimbra, eyeOS is a server based application that users must download and install to access (one reason that this is a server app - to overcome data security concerns by business customers). The company launched a hosted demo version of the product in June and has just over 80,000 registrations to test the service.

Essentially, eyeOS is like Goowy, except it does not run on Flash. The applications run on almost any browser, based on Javascript. It ain’t bad but it’s not a fully-functional Windows-replaceable operating system just yet. It has a word processing program, chat, calendar, RSS, and a Web browser. It is missing a spreadsheet and presentation program, among other things that would make it a proper OS. But it’s a work in progress.

The point is that it is a community-building effort. Founder Pau Garcia-Milá said that the company takes 90 percent of their development ideas from public requests via the Wishlist, wiki, or open forums.

“We really think that a webOS MUST be Open Source, for the simple reason
that a Web operating system tries to allow users be ‘free’ from their computer,” Garcia-Milà said. “If it’s not open source, you’re closing all of your users into YOUR server.”

eyeOS hosts the OS on their free server, funded through public donations. There are three ways to install eyeOS: MiniServer, which is the complete OS for Windows, MicroServer a lighter weight server for Windows, and Source Code, which installs the system under an existing server.

eyeOS is based in Spain, where it was founded in 2005. So far they have only been funded through $1,300 or so in donations, partly because “living in Spain means difficulties on the investment front.” Once version 1.0 launches, Garcia-Milá says that the business model will change.

See Go2Web2’s preview of ORCA today as well, a similar service.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/54685508/

BibliOdyssey blog is a neat collection of eclectic, old school book illustrations.

If you only read one post there, check out Dr. Alesha Sivartha’s Brain Maps.

There’s also lots of other good random stuff at the site…

[tx RP]

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/126-vintage-illustrations

Aaron Newton has posted a Mootools Primer / Tutorial that includes “a how-to tutorial on the Mootools library. Most of the code examples will allow you execute them by clicking on the “execute this code” link above the example. Clicking this will echo out the code and the result in the Firebug debugging plugin for Firefox. You’ll need that plugin installed to see any results of most of the code examples.”

Currently the tabbed widget shows documentation for the core Moo.js, extensions of JavaScript objects and helpers, Addon libraries, and plugins.

It behaves a little weird for me with FF2 + Firebug 1.beta, but I can get to the meat of the matter.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/mootools-primer

Richard MacManus linked to a Gizbuzz interview of Jen Mazzon and Sam Schillace of the Google Docs and Spreadsheets team (both ex-Writely).

Nothing ground-breaking, but it is interesting to hear about their thoughts on Ajax:

Browser compatibility issues - like the early graphic Web

Next was a question about browser compatibility issues and how that affects D&S - and indeed the future of rich web applications. Sam responded that “it is definitely an issue […] these apps are all cutting edge - it kind of reminds me of the early days of the graphical web, when you couldn’t count on the browsers to render tables correctly […]”.

But he thinks it’s “just growing pains” and it’ll take about a year to sort those issues out.

Also on the question of whether Ajax is better than Flash and Laszlo etc, Sam thinks that Ajax is currently more web native.

It’s about being Web native, not cloning desktop apps

Later in the interview, Jen stresses that they’re “not trying to clone desktop apps”. They want to be familiar to people, “but we’re trying to do something that’s actually more native to the Internet, more usable on the Internet.”

Sam says they’ve had a lot of feedback that people like the fact they’re not trying to copy desktop apps. He said “copying the existing stuff just feels irrelevant to us - we’re not trying to copy, we’re trying to re-invent.”

Both Jen and Sam re-affirmed that collaboration and sharing is their main focus with D&S, as well as being web native - rather than trying to compete on features with desktop apps.

If you were asked “why is Ajax a better fit for some apps than Flash?” what would you say? Do you agree? Does the open web matter? What if Adobe fully opened up their format?

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/google-docs-and-spreadsheets-team-web-native-matters

"If you want to change big things, you pay attention to small things."
-Rudy Giuliani on C-span talking about the Broken Windows theory

The Broken Windows theory was the catalyst for solving NYC’s crime wave in the 80’s and 90’s. NYC’s administration had been focusing on major crimes, like murder, and overlooking smaller crimes along the way. But it wasn’t working. So the city started going after petty crime that it had been overlooking: turnstyle jumpers, squeegee men, public drunks, etc. The result: All crime rates fell suddenly and continued to drop for the next ten years.

Giuliani says, “The idea of it is that you had to pay attention to small things, otherwise they would get out of control and become much worse.”

In a lot of our approach to crime, quality of life, social programs, we were allowing small things to get worse rather than dealing with them at the earliest possible stage…So we started paying attention to the things that were being ignored. Aggressive panhandling, the squeegee operators that would come up to your car and wash the window of your car whether you wanted it or not — and sometimes smashed people’s cars or tires or windows — the street-level drug-dealing; the prostitution; the graffiti, all these things that were deteriorating the city. So we said, “We’re going to pay attention to that,” and it worked. It worked because we not only got a big reduction in that, and an improvement in the quality of life, but massive reductions in homicide, and New York City turned from the crime capital of America to the safest large city in the country for five, six years in a row.

Building momentum
One key component of Broken Windows is that it shows progress. It’s not about miracles or heroic solutions or solving massive problems overnight. It’s about building momentum. It’s showing your audience that you’re headed in the right direction. It’s making visible changes, even slight ones, that show you’re doing something. Someone is on the case. People know that you haven’t abandoned them. You’re giving them a reason to trust you. You’re building faith.Broken Windows and the web
This concept applies to all kinds of areas, not just fighting crime. In fact, others have already pointed out connections between Broken Windows and web development:

In Software Entropy, the Pragmatic Programmers talk about entropy, broken windows, and computing neighborhoods.

Don’t leave “broken windows” (bad designs, wrong decisions, or poor code) unrepaired. Fix each one as soon as it is discovered. If there is insufficient time to fix it properly, then board it up. Perhaps you can comment out the offending code, or display a “Not Implemented” message, or substitute dummy data instead. Take some action to prevent further damage and to show that you’re on top of the situation.

And Broken Windows Theory and Your Web Site says visiting a site with broken links, misleading navigation, or missing images is like visiting a neighborhood where “you get the feeling that no one cares.”

If you’re trying to create a community around your web site, I think you really have to consider this theory because it prompts you look at the value of the small and seemingly inconsequential problems on your site. By considering the ways that small problems can multiply a feeling of apathy, you may find that your time is better-spent fixing broken windows as opposed to building new houses.

Solving “street-level” problems at your site
It seems counterintuitive to focus on little problems instead of big ones. But cracking down on your version of squeegee men, graffiti, etc. could yield surprising results.

Some related ideas:

• Web apps can show someone’s “on the case” by posting a list of recent changes and what’s coming next (example). [SvN]
• Divide problems into smaller and smaller pieces until you’re able to digest them. [Getting Real]
• Show your product is alive by keeping blog posts coming post-launch. [Getting Real]

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/127-solving-big-problems-by-paying-attention-to-small-things