Ajax Girl

Alex Tew, the mastermind behind The Million Dollar Homepage is most certainly pressing his luck. Tew sold one million pixels worth of advertisement for $1 per pixel and made $1 million. It worked so well that he thinks he can do it again, this time for twice the price.

Tew is reportedly on the verge of launching a second site called Pixelotto. Instead of selling each pixel for $1, he plans to sell each pixel for $2, plus hold some kind of lottery where the winner who clicks the right advertisement will win $1 million.

I will gladly eat my words if Tew can pull this off but I just don’t think that lightning strikes twice. It was a good idea…once! Second time around, it’s not, as Michael Arrington calls it, “another stupid, brilliant idea.” It’s just a stupid idea.

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/~3/56324021/

A representative for Shawn Fanning called TechCrunch today to make it clear that the social networking site that the Napster founder plans to launch next year will indeed be compliant with World of Warcraft’s (WoW) terms of use.

BusinessWeek reported that Fanning, the founder of Napster and Snocap, is in the development stages for a new social networking site called Rupture. The site will have a WoW plugin so that players can network within Rupture directly from the game.

Early blogging on the subject speculated that Rupture might “run afoul of Warcraft’s terms of use.” Fanning’s representative insists that this isn’t the case and that Rupture is “absolutely consistent with World of Warcraft.”

Rupture will reportedly allow social networking from other games in addition to WoW.

We requested an interview with Fanning but he is not taking them until the site launches, which his rep could only say will be in the first half of next year. For now, visitors to the site can request additional information when it becomes available by providing their email, guild, and realm. Fanning told BusinessWeek he raised capital for the site from a group of investors including Ron Conway and Joi Ito.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/56287913/

Yahoo! insists that they are not developing anything to compete with Google Book Search.

Google slapped Yahoo! with a subpoena on November 20 inquiring about their activity in the library lawsuit. In response, Yahoo!’s lawyers released a legal brief claiming that the company has no intention of competing on the library front and has simply been financially backing the parties involved in the case against Google.

“Yahoo has not launched an independent book scanning project or a ‘Yahoo Book Project’ as defined by Google in the Subpoena,” reads the brief. “Instead, along with over 40 other entities, including public libraries, major colleges and universities and leading Fortune 500 companies, Yahoo has backed a non-profit alliance run by the Open Content Alliance (OCA) and Internet Archive to digitize books and make them searchable through any web search engine. Yahoo supports the approach adopted by the OCA which digitizes only text in the public domain or where copyright holders have expressly given permission for such works to be included, and Yahoo exercises no direction and control over the OCA’s operation of its project.”

In early October, it appeared that Yahoo! would spearhead the OCA operation, which is contesting Google’s rights to digitize books. Now Yahoo! seems to be backtracking, claiming they only have given financial support to the project but have no authority on the matter. This is very passive-aggressive on behalf of Yahoo! in the never-ending Yahoo!/Google saga.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/56264475/

Kalem Fletcher wanted to call his company Yoda.com because he believes that he has created the all-wise search site. Unfortunately, Yoda.com has to do with someone’s freakish cat so Fletcher came up with the name Swamii.com instead.

A swami is a Hindu religious teacher. Swamii is a customizable search engine that gives users updates on any Web-related activity around a given search parameter.

Users can set as many as 10 keywords or key searches that they’d like updates on. They can search terms like “Star Wars” or parameters like “Star Wars NOT Star Trek.” Swamii will perform the searches regularly and give results, flushed out by news, blogs, peer to peer sites, web videos and multimedia, television, and job pages. Users can login to see updates on their set searches or have them emailed at a given time interval.

Setting up regular search and news alerts isn’t a new thing but Swamii’s searches are the most comprehensive we’ve seen so far. Google Alerts and Spotback only search news results but both will email you results. Fletcher believes that Swamii’s search algorithms are superior to both but said that the most difficult parts in designing them was making sure that results filtered out unwanted items.

“Typical search engines deal with relevance by eliminating the ‘time’ factor,” Fletcher said via IM today. “The challenge with Swamii was actually focusing on the time factor (i.e. what’s new) but not giving too much irrelevant stuff - its a fine balance.”

Swamii went public on Wednesday and since then has had 1,500 user sign ups. Fletcher and his two partners self-funded the operation, which is headquartered in London.

The site is not dependent on banner ads for revenue, which is a good thing because their Amazon.com advertisement (on the screenshot below) has a bug which only advertised UK promos and pricing to me here in San Francisco. All other ads were geographically appropriate and search results are supposed to be location-based as well. Swamii also makes money if users purchase certain products that come up in their results.

Swamii was designed for the hobbiest searcher but the company also designed Swamii Business for more serious monitoring.

As far as I can tell, there is just one thing that is missing from Swamii that would make it more comprehensive and decidedly Web 2.0. That one thing is the social element. I only see what is being published online but there is no recommendation of what else I should read or see from others with similar interests. But then again, if the Swamii knows everything, why would I need that?

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/~3/56260629/

Update: The reference to SDS has been removed from the Amazon site linked to below. The original text is saved at the bottom of this post.

A new and unannouced Amazon Web Service to be called “SDS” is referenced on this Amazon web page discussing customer YouOS (see second to last paragraph - screen shot is also below) and is being tested with a select few Amazon partners. After a little digging, we heard that it may stand for “Simple Data Service” and will be launching sometime this year, although another source said that the name is incorrect. A representative from Amazon would not comment on whether the service exists or not.

Amazon’s web services unit (see our discussion of Mechanical Turk, Simple Storage Service (S3) and Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)) has been making waves this year, and a number of high profile startups are using one or more services to speed deployment time and save money. In a recent interview, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos discusses Amazon’s strategy around their Web Services unit.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/56253629/

NYC-based Indeed.com, a niche search engine, has announced a partnership to power Mamma Careers. I’ll be the first to admit, this specific instance isn’t big news, but they are on a partnering spree, alongside their primary competitor, SimplyHired. SimplyHired powers MySpace Jobs, as well as LinkedIn Jobs (to name a couple). Both Indeed and SimplyHired are securing as many partnerships as possible to power the job search functionality on various websites. Employers can submit URLs to job listings, but can’t directly post jobs on Indeed or SimplyHired — that is still left to the established job sites including Yahoo’s HotJobs (insert link here), Monster.com, and CareerBuilder (insert link here).

Newspapers have long been the place to go for jobs — then the job sites (and Craigslist) popped up to provide an online version of the same service electronically. Now specific vertical job search engines (including Google Base) have evolved to aggregate and index job postings from online listings.

Enter social networking. The next evolution of online job searching would seem to be within social networking websites where users could refer friends to a job. As of now, Facebook and Friendster don’t have job searches yet. Look for partnerships in the future.

Jobster is a start-up that is heavily funded and focusing on adding some social networking aspects to the job hunt process. Another stealth start-up looking to “revolutionize” the online job search is itzBig, which we are told is backed by an investment bank and is being run by CEO Hank Stringer (founder of Hire.com) and Chairman Jim Hammock (former CEO/Chairman of Hire.com).

Online job websites have been around for 10 years now — they haven’t made much change since originally launching to improve the process of candidates looking for jobs, and recruiters looking for candidates. Recruiters have to paw through tons of resumes (that lack format consistency), and candidates have to search through multi-level marketing scams and other spam.

In all honesty, finding a job online sucks. Indeed and SimplyHired have taken it to the next level by aggregating all jobs into one search, but I want to see a company come out and eHarmony-ize the job market. Make it so candidates go through a 15- to 30-minute application process that might include various tests related to their claimed skillsets. Allow recruiters to specify what skillsets are required and make them somehow rank the importance of the required skillsets.

I’d also like to see some social networking aspects along the lines of LinkedIn — allow people to refer their friends to jobs. Yahoo! could integrate HotJobs with their 360 service. . Monster.com could integrate with the Facebook API to add some social networking. IAC has put a hault on acquisitions, but a jobs website seems like a good addition to their extensive consumer portfolio — their own Ask.com search engine doesn’t offer a vertical job search. Possibly an Indeed or SimplyHired acquisition?

Editor’s Note: This post was written by Steve Poland, a guest contributor. Steve is the founder and web strategy consultant for Vested Ventures, a firm specializing in website consulting, internet marketing, and high-end custom web development.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/56248656/

htmlPlayground is an XHTML, CSS reference with example + starting point of Web 2.0 Code editor written by Zsolt Georgescu using GWT.

HTML tags and CSS properties, the most common technologies used in making web pages connected each with an example what you can see in action in the online code editor. With our on-line HTML Code editor you can edit the examples and experiment with the code on-line.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/htmlplayground-gwt-based-reference-guide

Take a view source on the Ajax Video Player at the morning outline.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/the-morning-outline-ajax-video

The 10 most popular typeface families in American newspapers according to a study by Ascender Corporation:

1. Poynter

2. Franklin Gothic

3. Helvetica

4. Utopia

5. Times

6. Nimrod

7. Century Old Style

8. Interstate

9. Bureau Grotesque

10. Miller

Related: Newspaper Body Text [Design With Reason]

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/140-the-10-most-popular-newspaper-typefaces

TIBCO General Interface 3.2 was released earlier this month under the rather liberal BSD open source license.

The intent behind that release was to enable developers to use and deploy the product at no cost under the terms of the BSD license.

Now TIBCO has taken the next step, bundling the fully commented and unobfuscated JavaScript source with the product download so that it can serve as a reference to those that really want to get in under the hood and see what makes GI tick.

TIBCO also states on the GI download page that implementing a full open source eco-system will occur in phases.

• Phase 1: Source code is provided with the download for use as a reference. The product and its source are free to use under a BSD license; Full support, warranty, and more is offered under separate TIBCO agreements.
• Phase 2: Source compilation, compression and obfuscation tools will be provided so that you can generate optimized runtime code for multiple platforms from your modifications to the source.
• Phase 3: Community contributions under separate contributor agreements for those that want to contribute their good stuff.

Developers wanting to create modifications and extensions to the GI libraries can now do so more easily with access to the fully commented source. However close inspection of the source will reveal that the raw JavaScript source can also be run through a “pre-compiler” that compresses, obfuscates, and generates separate runtimes for each of the supported browsers—and that pre-compiler will not be out until Phase 2 of the open source implementation process. In effect the source code has forks in it for various browser types, but the pre-compiler generates optimized code for a single browser, thus increasing performance and shrinking the footprint while packing in lots of capabilities.

With over 100 Ajax components, it’s pretty amazing all the features the GI team can get into such a small footprint. Taking a peek through the source reveals some of the ways the GI team whose been in the Ajax business for 5 years now, has architected the product to do so much with so little.

You can download GI and its fully-commented JavaScript source @ developer.tibco.com.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/tibco-gi-32-take-a-peak-at-the-source-code-that-was-just-released