Ajax Girl

More information on TheVeniceProject from beta testers is starting to come in. We’ve covered the rumors of the new online tv, or IPTV, project since the rumors surfaced in October.

Last week, CenterNetworks (great up and coming blog) posted a review but didn’t include screen shots due to the nondisclosure agreement. Today, though GigaOm got access to a beta account for The Venice Project and has posted screen shots - possibly in violation of the NDA.

Most of the hype around it stems from the fact that the company was started by Kazaa and Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. Otherwise, this would likely have been lost in a sea of new IPTV startups we’re seeing almost daily. But the fact that the founders are so high profile gives The Venice Project an edge besides press hype: it may also give them the status they need to land crucial content deals with the TV networks.

If The Venice Project has those deals, however, the content hasn’t made it to the beta project. GigaOm reports that very little content is on the site.

The software seems to work well, but Janus and Niklas have built a desktop client, not browserware. It’s only available for Windows machines, and the minimum requirements are a 600 MHz machine with 512 MB of RAM. That’s well below what any new PC has under the hood, but it will still keep out millions of users with older machines. And, of course, Mac users.

Screen shots below.

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Source: TechCrunch
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Superfluous visual effects at Quicksilver

Doeke Zanstra writes, “Preference pane of Quicksilver.
I really like the option ‘superfluous visual effects.’ It makes me
feel…spoiled.”

Unspecific message at Logitech

Brian Parker writes, “Congrats Logitech! You win the Least Helpful Search Results Award. Not only did you not return any relevant result but you also managed to tell me that: ‘Your search was either too broad… or too narrow…’ I think that’s about as helpful as having the GPS in your car instructing you at an intersection to: ‘Turn left or right.’”Shaming at Yikers

Thomas Balthazar write, “Here is a screenshot from yikers.com. They have a strange way to welcome their first time visitors: ‘Your
first visit to Yikers.com? Shame on you!’”

Got an interesting screenshot for Signal vs. Noise? Send the image and/or URL to svn [at] 37signals [dot] com.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/164-screens-around-town-quicksilver-logitech-and-yikers

Dylan Schiemann, co-creator of the Dojo toolkit, has written a broad piece on creating cross browser vector graphics with Dojo.

The article delves into the new dojo.gfx library that abstracts the slight mess of SVG vs. Canvas vs. VML.

One of the examples in the article discusses drawing a clock with this snippet that shows drawing the clock hands, along with their shadows:

What features are supported

• Strokes (borders)
• Fills
• Shapes and Paths
• Opacity
• Linear Transformations
• Rounded Corners

If you have wanted “the ability to draw and modify non-rectangular, browser-native shapes” then check out the article and dig deeper:

• Dojo: documentation, book, and download
• Clock: demo and source
• Circles: demo and source
• Charts: demo
• Canvas: mozilla tutorial
• Comet: Cometd, Lightstreamer, KnowNow, and DWR

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/create-cross-browser-vector-graphics-with-dojo

A couple of new mapping mashup tools have been released: dsSearchAgent Home Search and WeatherBonk.

dsSearchAgent

Diverse Solutions created a new property search application that implements Prototype, the latest version of YUI, and MooFx v1 into our very own, and we think quite unique, home finder app.

Weather Bonk

Weather Bonk mashes up weather onto a map, and also aggregates live traffic feeds, and data from other weather sites.

Do you have a mapping mashup that you can’t live without?

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/new-mapping-mashups-home-search-and-weather

We don’t mention Coldfusion enough. Sorry guys. Rey Bango told us about a JavaScript version of cfdump:

The Dump method is based on one of the tags available in Coldfusion ( <cfdump>) providing the ability to display simple and complex variables in a user friendly way that is perfect for debugging/inspecting data. There is no way to do this with javascript and often I had wanted a method to do this. This method will do just that allowing for an infinite amount of data nesting complete with color coding for different data types, the ability to show/hide the data’s type (String/Number/Boolean/Object/Array/Function), expandable and collapsible tables/keys and cross browser support.

Download the dump function

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/javascript-variable-dump-in-coldfusion

I first met Eyal Gever, the founder of Gizmoz, at the Israeli Web Tour conference in Palo Alto a couple of months ago. Later that day I say Eyal again, at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. This time he was giving a demo (in the middle of a hallway) to a group of Fox Interactive folks, including their M&A team. I sat in on the demo, which went on for half an hour or more as the Fox people asked question after question.

Here’s why they were intrigued. Gizmoz has a Flash-based 3D avatar product that is made from a single picture of a person plus their recorded voice. See Eyal’s MySpace page which has an embedded Gizmoz and you’ll understand why this blows away what SitePal and others are doing in this space.

Users start by uploading a picture of themselves or their pet. Gizmoz turns the picture into a 3D model (see image to right), and the avatar can then be customized with a body, clothes, effects (scars, tattoos, etc.) and backgrounds. You then record a message and sound effects, and your avatar is created. The end result has a moving mouth and facial expressions while you talk, and the effect is quite stunning. Eyal calls it “bringing Pixar to the people.”

Here are a couple of videos they made with my picture - see here and here. I’d embed these but they auto-play and people would not be happy. Also, sorry for the lame audio, this was done in the hallway at Web 2.0 while I was surrounded by the Fox team. But I want to show what Gizmoz can do based on a couple of minutes of setup.

The personalized avatar product is still in private beta. The existing product on the site requires the use of a library face, but can be customized and a personal voice can be added. These avatars can be embedded in websites, and Gizmoz also has a downloadable application that adds these avatars to all major instant messaging services.

MySpacers are going to go absolutely nuts over this. Lots of Screenshots below.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/64604304/

The new Blogger beta product, open to a limited number of users in August, is now live for all users.

The key changes include the addition of tags, which Google has always called “labels,” and an option to create a private blog. You can also now sign into your blogger account using your Google credentials, and Google has made editing the template and posts significantly more user friendly.

None of these changes put Blogger ahead of its primary competitors. For example, SixApart’s Comet product allows not only for private blogs, but privacy setting can also be changed for each post. but it is a sign of hope for Blogger users who’ve been stuck with last generation software for years.

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Source: TechCrunch
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Yesterday I wrote about some of the changes at top dating site Yahoo Personals, designed to make profile matching easier and faster. And I also dug into some of the new business model experiments being conducted by some of the younger startups out there. A good example is YesNoMayB, a South African startup that allows users to quickly scan photographs of potential mates and pick out the ones they like. If the other person picks you as well, there’s a match.

In a poll included with that post I asked whether looks or personality are more important. A huge majority, 71%, of the 698 responses so far indicated that “looks come first,” while a mere 18% put personality first. If TechCrunch readership is any indication of the dating pool in general (I have a feeling it isn’t), startups like YesNoMayB and HotOrNot’s MeetMe have a very bright future. Note to VC’s: Invest immediately.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/64519157/

A number of record labels finally pulled the trigger and filed suit against Russian music site AllofMP3 today. The lawsuit was filed in New York. Given that AllofMP3 maintains that it complies with Russian law, it might not be a stretch to assume that AllofMP3 won’t be showing up for their day in (a U.S.) court.

AllofMP3 is still in business, but under a triage of attacks. Their own government sold them out in U.S. trade negotiations, promising to shut them down. Visa and MasterCard stopped accepting credit card transactions from the site. And now the record labels are on the case.

All of this is great marketing for AllofMP3, but it’s unclear how long the service will last under this kind of pressure. Whatever happens, though, something else will spring up in its place. At the end of the day, the labels will have to choose between suing a very large percentage of the world’s citizens, or else finally coming up with a digital music model that makes sense (meaning, no DRM).

It’s too bad that AllofMP3 is too hot for even Google to handle. After seeing how they’ve bribed, bullied and basically generally rightsholders after the YouTube acquisition, its nice to imagine what they could do on our behalf if they were running AllofMP3 as well. More from Techdirt.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/64509037/