Ajax Girl

There is a rumor on the blogosphere that Steve Jobs will announce some sort of partnership with TiVo at the next MacWorld.

Rumors usually get pretty crazy around MacWorld time. During last year’s Intel announcement, I heard that all press in attendance would get new notebooks but that didn’t happen. This one is probably just a rumor but if we think along the lines of iTV on its way, then it wouldn’t be a bad idea.
http://www.pvrwire.com/2006/12/06/rumor-tivo-and-apple-to-partner-not-likely/”>PVRWire thinks that a partnership is highly unlikely but a licensing deal may be a possibility. TiVo has brand name recognition but declining market share. Apple has undeniable power, especially considering the amount of movies they’ve been able to sell for Disney on iTunes, but they have absolutely zero footing in the television market. They need each other. Problem is, Apple doesn’t often admit to needing anything or anyone.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/57928440/

Smartsheet, a web-based spreadsheet software, will release new storage and sharing capabilities tomorrow on Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3).

Previously, the company’s server was located in Dallas, Texas but with the new capability to share files and send attachments, Smartsheet needed horsepower from Amazon. S3 gives developers access to storage to run their own global network, which Smartsheet needed for it’s December release. The new version allows users to attach documents from a hard drive or server, and send emails updates about any changes made to a document.

Smartsheet also announced a new pricing structure, which will include a free version of the software without the storage and email capabilities.

“We are shifting away from a corporate team pricing structure to one that broadens the audience,” said Mark Mader, president of Smartsheet, in a phone briefing on Wednesday. “We’re moving into a high-volume type mode and, in a community settings, the last thing you want to do is introduce a barrier to using it.”

Smartsheets is interoperable with Excel but Mader says it is not a duplication of the program. When asked why Smartsheet is any different from Google Spreadsheets or Zoho Sheet, he pointed to three differentiating capabilities: (1) it provides streamlined updates to any document changes; (2) it allows for “relevant alerts,” meaning you can subscribe to only the alerts you want regarding a document at a time interval that you specify; (3) it gives a history of changes on all fields.

Smartsheets also allows users to request changes be made to a document through email. So if I want someone else to change the value of a certain cell, I can email a request so that they can fill out the answer within the email, and changes will be made without that person ever logging into their Smartsheet account. Mader said that the company will look into Outlook integration for their next release.

Smartsheet is a solid offering but can a spreadsheet-only Web app really survive? Zoho is out waving its presentation application as the differentiating factor from Google Docs & Spreadsheets and now it has Office plugins that make it even more universally useful. Plus, it’s free. I’m not sure who will pay for Smartsheets just because it’s a little more convenient but the company says that it has about 2,000 companies using its program since it launched back in August. I’m all for competition in the marketplace but I really think you need a well-rounded Office-type suite of applications if you’re going to be a SaaS documentation program.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/57900596/

Wikia, a for-profit sister site of Wikipedia, received a second round of funding today, all of it coming from Amazon. No word yet on how much Amazon has forked over.

Just this week, Wikia announced that they would purchase ArmchairGM, an online sports community, for $2 million in cash and Wikia stock.

In March, we reported that the company received $4 million from Bessemer Venture Partners and Omidyar Network, with participation from angel investors Dan Gillmor, Reid Hoffman, Joichi Ito, and Mitch Kapor.

Wikia’s Gil Penchina told GigaOm that the funding and acquisition were “frankly very separate events” that “just happened to come together at the same time” but that the acquisition would have been hard to accomplish without Amazon’s money.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/57858428/

There’s a big difference between trying something and using something.

Trying something is more common than using something. That’s why most products are optimized for trying.

Trying something is looking at some screenshots, signing up, playing with it for a couple of minutes, forming an opinion, and then moving on. Trying is mainly about first impressions and surface appeal.

Most product reviews are based on trying something, not using something. That’s why many reviews are pretty thin or don’t get to the core essence of the product. The real deep knowledge of a product can only come from using it. Using it is what reveals greatness or failure on an intimate level.

You don’t notice the quirks and shortcuts when you try something. Those revelations only come from real use. Eye candy shines during trial, but fades fast during use. Cool wears off quick, usefulness never does.

Think of the difference between something painted gold and something made of gold. They’re both gold now, but once the paint wears off the first one you’re looking at something different. On the other hand the solid gold one continues to be gold no matter how much you use it.

In some ways it’s the difference between meeting someone and knowing someone. You don’t know someone until you’ve really spent some time with them. How do they react in certain situations? Are they kind or only friendly on the surface? Are they smart or can they just recite a few facts? The same goes for a product. How does the product react? Is the product just clever enough or is it too clever? How does the product make you feel when you use it?

… I don’t know how to end this post, but I’ve been sitting on the content for about a week now so I figured I’d share it as is. It’s been a frustrating post to put together and I’m not sure why. I’m having a difficult time clearly explaining why the difference between trial and usage is such an important distinction. Anyone care to finish my thoughts?

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/147-the-difference-between-trying-something-and-using-something

PalTalk, a video chat messenger, is rolling out its new 9.0 client over the next two days with the help of several celebrities, including blogger Ariana Huffington and Amanda Congdon of Rocketboom fame. Paltalk’s messenger client has all the basic IM chat features you expect including interoperability with AIM, Yahoo!, and ICQ, but distinguishes itself by throwing video and chat rooms into the mix.

The new 9.0 client features what they call “SuperIM”, where you can chat with up to nine other people in live video and audio. You view video feeds of your friend’s webcams on a strip running along the top of the window, like the one above. From the strip, you can break out and expand a video feed for a closer look. Such a rich chatting experience may prove hectic for most users used to carrying on multiple conversations, but the ability to switch your focus and audio feed between windows helps control the chaos.

The video quality is great if you shell out the extra $4.99 each month ($59.95/year) for the best version, Paltalk x-treme. The basic version, however, only displays user snapshots, while the second-tier version displays video at about half the frame-rate of x-treme, but for $39.95 per year. There is a good comparison preview here.

Paltalk is known for creating communities out of its four million users (amassed over the past eight years). They have hundreds of chat rooms categorized by topics such as religion, politics, and technology, with subcategories narrowing them down even further. Radio shows like Opie and Anthony use Paltalk to broadcast to a couple thousand fans while they’re on the air, and I expect the same will happen for their guest line-up.

Regular chat rooms on PakTalk can be overstimulating to the unaccustomed user. There are often several IMs at once and music can be blaring from the administrator’s room. You can control some of that by muting audio, ignoring users, sending a personal IM, or raising your hand to talk (similar to Skype Live). If things really get out of hand, users can report abuse through a team of 250 volunteer who police the rooms and respond to complaints.

Amanda Congdon will go live on Paltalk tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern. Everyone who visits the celebrity chat room on Paltalk will get to experience the full video feed for free. See the full schedule here.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/57839292/

Erik Swenson of Open Reports has created an Ajax Report Viewer: OpenReports Report Viewer.

The example uses YUI and YUI-EXT. Click to see the flash demo.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/ajax-openreports-report-viewer

The Dojo Toolkit has a new version 0.4.1 release.

We talked to Alex Russell about the release:

What is good about 0.4.1

It’s a stability and performance release so we recommend it for everyone who was already using 0.4.0. For those folks, it should be a very straightforward upgrade. The last major release added a lot of new features and in the intervening time we’ve had a chance to shake those things out a bit more. Notably:

• James Burke’s excellent work (thanks to AOL) on safe cross-domain XHR has yielded a solution for IE 7. This is the best way to do serious, safe cross-domain work while we wait for something like Doug Crockford’s <module> proposal to be implemented by the browsers.
• resource and localization “flattening” for builds makes the system perform better when using i18n.
• a native dojo.storage provider for the WhatWG storage APIs. Apps that have been using the Flash storage provider don’t have to change any of their code to take advantage of it. It Just Works thanks to Brad Neuberg.
• we spent a *lot* of time adding documentation for many of the previously opaque modules. Owen Williams, Carla Mott, and Neil Roberts have been building tools and herding cats to get this done.
• Bill Keese and Liu Cougar closed more bugs than everyone else combined while they polished and and improved the widgets. Everyone using widgets should see the impact of their work in improved reliability.

Why should people upgrade?

If folks were holding out on 0.4.0, I think think they’ll be happy with the state of thing in 0.4.1.

What is next on the agenda?

We’re keeping the roadmap at:

http://trac.dojotoolkit.org/roadmap

What’s not outlined there right now is that we’ll be plugging the new data binding layer into the widget system and making changes to the template syntax to support that. This is exciting work and the culmination of a huge amount of background work by some very smart people.

Data binding will allow us to more quickly attach widgets to services and systems, and I’m excited that we’re in the home stretch for getting it done.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/dojo-041-stability-performance-and-more

While the major networks are trying to repurpose shows that work well on TV, D7TV is starting from scratch. The company wants to be “the” channel for mobile content and has already started producing shows before there is an actual distribution channel.

D7TV is currently filming short movies for their Web site, and by short we mean less than three minutes each. The plan is to build up an audience so that if and when mobile video subscriptions become commonplace, D7TV will be a brand consumers demand. ABI Research predicts that there will be at least half a billion subscribers to mobile video worldwide by the year 2011. So why not be ready?

D7TV was started by Michael O’Rourke, who also founded a projection media company 10 years ago called Dimension 7. O’Rourke calls Dimension 7 a “video band” because they filmed DJ dance events and made animation movies to stream online.

“In the early days all of our shows were netcast so we would actually send out both the video and audio stream,” O’Rourke said in a phone briefing on Tuesday. “We were obviously way too early in thinking that the Internet would be used as a distribution medium for video but now we’re at that point and online video is on everybody’s mind and we’re looking more towards mobile phones as our next platform.”

Party Crashers is one of D7TV’s more popular new shows. It is a tongue-in-cheek look at Silicon Valley social events. Sarah Meyers, host of the show, made a cameo at Monday night’s Google press party but press reps asked the crew to turn off their cameras before they could get much footage.

“We’re developing a whole series of programs early and the great thing about this medium is that it’s relatively low production cost compared to traditional television,” O’Rourke said.

D7TV is not to be compared with YouTube or VodPod or any other social video sharing site because they are uninterested in user-generated video. They make it, you watch it. That’s how it works.

Also, D7TV wants very little to do with the actual distribution of its content. O’Rourke said he will leave that to the pros, meaning he’ll let the mobile carriers decide how content is delivered.

Right now, D7TV content may be a little too edgy for the mainstream. Go to the site and you’ll know what I mean. But that doesn’t mean it won’t work. If mobile video becomes staple entertainment, it will be necessary to have a network that has flushed out a successful mobile video equation.

In the meantime, D7TV needs to work on its Web site. It isn’t very well organized but more like a hodgepodge of everything that the company is working on. At first glance, it looks like it isn’t meant for anyone Generation X or older.

“We’re putting it out there now just to sort of get critical feedback from people,” O’Rourke said. “There are a lot of user interface issues and one of them is how you find valuable content online.”

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/57813817/

Shopping guru Paco Underhill: “The perception of ease is as important as the reality of ease”

“It is very important to be cognizant that while the connection between our eyes and our brains has never been better, our eyes themselves are tired. One of the challenges that the design profession has is that the overwhelming majority of people constructing designs in 2006 are generally under the age of 30. And one of the persistent problems that they have is that they are designing for themselves and not for the larger audience…We live in a world in which time is in a state of acceleration. And therefore the perception of ease is as important as the reality of ease.”

The formula for “a truly great life”

“[The] author of the book ‘On Death and Dying’ asked people on their deathbeds what they regret the most about their lives…The number one response was: I wish I would have taken more chances. I feel like I lived my life playing it too safe. The number two response was: I wish I would have taken more time to reflect. I never stopped and smelled the roses in life.”

Caterina Fake on getting high performance out of high potential people

“Figure out what work activities turn them on and off. Then for their job, downplay the stuff they hate, or that are their weaknesses, and figure out what they love doing. Make their job mostly about the things they love doing. And figure out what they are solving for not only in their jobs but in their personal lives as well.” John Gruber recently said, “My pick for Yahoo CEO would be Caterina Fake…Almost everything Yahoo does ought to be more like Flickr in some ways.”

Self-parking Lexus befuddles Automobile editors

“Shows three men first parking the Lexus LS460 on their own in the magazine’s parking lot, and then again with the Advanced Parking Guidance System. We’ll let you watch the video to see how the Three Stooges fair against the computer power of a Lexus, but one of the two almost manages to take out a minivan and a Ford Five-Hundred.” [tx MG]

Japanese Get A Mac ads

PC and Mac, Japanese style.

Jeff Nolan’s Digg buzz wears off

“Digg really is an innovative site but I’m finished with it…Digg just isn’t doing anything for me to make my day easier. I’m finding this with a number of ‘Web 2.0’ sites, after the initial enthusiasm wears dull I’m left with a big ‘so what’ feeling that I can’t escape.”

Interesting facts about the Blue Angels

“The Blue Angels don’t wear G-suits, because the air bladders inside them would repeatedly deflate and inflate. That would interfere with the control stick between a pilot’s legs. Instead, Blue Angel pilots tense their stomach muscles and legs to prevent blood from rushing from their heads and rendering them unconscious…The Blue Angels try to be in position exactly, every time, by ‘flying paint’ — looking over at the next jet and aligning to a position based on some letter or spot on that plane.”

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/146-sunspots-the-flying-paint-edition

Justin Palmer has written about avoiding bloat in widgets with respect to Prototype.

Widgets walk a fine line between abstractions and implementations. Implementation, in this case, is a practical solution chosen to perform a given function. The problems with widgets occur when the widget author walks too far in one direction, or worse, walks an outward spiral covering both directions. Both choices lead to script bloat and complexity thats hard to manage. You no longer have a simple solution for a defined problem, you have a complex solution for a variety of problems. The good news is there are ways to avoid both the bloat and complexity.

He details the world of extending classes in JavaScript, and then gets to actsAsAspect, which lets you get AOP-y via before, after, and around advice.

As someone who has worked with AOP via AspectJ and other libraries, it makes me a bit queasy to consider this AOP. One of the key elements is the pointcut language, which is very primitive here.

I do like the conclusion though:

While this is a rather convoluted example, the premise is solid. When creating widgets, don’t over abstract, and avoid hacking when possible. Even though we jazzed up our widget in the end, it’s original purpose is still intact and we added no additional overhead to it. Those who want ”more cowbell” can get it by plugging-in the additional scripts.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/creating-extensible-prototype-widgets