Ajax Girl

TagWorld, the social networking site that launched in late 2005, has been the subject of a lot of speculation lately. Valleywag speculated that the company was in trouble and pointed out that the management page (cache here) had been removed. Others have noted that TagWorld’s Comscore numbers have dropped significantly from earlier in 2006. At the very least, the company has made little headway against MySpace and the others.

But there are other rumors as well. Viacom and NBC are still figuring out their social networking strategies (NBC is doing so publicly), and insiders are saying that Viacom will likely announce an investment and/or partnership deal with TagWorld in the near future. It’s likely that TagWorld’s engine will be the back end to the much anticipated MTV social network. TagWorld won’t comment on the story, other than to say that they remain healthy and will be launching a new version soon.

TagWorld previously raised $7.5 million from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, in March 2006.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/76190479/

David Sacks new startup Geni, which we wrote about last week, has gone live.

The initial product is a very easy to use Flash tool to create a profile and a family tree - including siblings, spouses, cousins, aunts and uncles, and their families. When you add a relative, there is an option to add their email address and have the tree sent to them as well. They can add their own data, extending the tree, and Geni will launch tools to merge overlapping trees.

There is more information on the About page. The company has raised a round of financing from Founders Fund.

I’ve started my family tree and have added a few email addresses. It will be cool to see my relatives further expand the tree. And it will be really interesting to take a look at Geni a few years from now, as more and more trees are merged together.

Update: Geni is viral. In my test tree, I added my dad’s email address but didn’t otherwise mention the site to him. I just went back to Geni and noticed the tree has been extended significantly (see image below). And now some of those people have been emailed as well.

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/~3/76143016/

We’re happy to announce two new additions to the roster of sites that make up The Deck, our advertising network for creative, web and design professionals. Effective immediately, YayHooray!, the long-standing, always-changing, hard-to-classify web and design community is carrying the Deck feed. Yay! is a product of the crew at skinnyCorp, who you may also know from Threadless, their user-designed tee shirt juggernaut.

The second addition is the site for a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture that looks at the proliferation of a single typeface. Welcome aboard to Gary Hustwit’s eagerly anticipated documentary, Helvetica.

At The Deck, we won’t take an ad unless we have paid for and/or tried the product or service. So, sell us something and we’ll sell you an ad.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/197-the-deck-update

MobileCrunch has announced the beta release of Nimbuzz Talk, a mobile/PC app that connects cellphone and PC users. The application supports voice, presence, conference calls, and SMS messaging between mobile devices, PC’s, and mobile to PC or PC to mobile. It currently works with MSN, Google Talk, and their own Nimbuzz chat client. It reminds me of another mobile/PC release, Talkster.

Mobile-to-mobile calls placed between Nimbuzz users are billed at local rates, making for some cheap or even free international calls. Nimbuzz’s presence support allows users to place calls by selecting a contact off their buddy list. The service then connects users via an 800 number. MobileCrunch’s Oliver Starr says the mobile-to-mobile quality is “excellent”, but mobile-to-pc “leaves something to be be desired”.

The new service also has a “Buzz” feature that lets an offline contact know you’re trying to get in touch. In their next release, this will cause Nimbuzz to wake up on the contact’s phone.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/76174375/

Many CSS advocates curse and tear out their hair as they see the slow slow growth in pure CSS designed sites. It has definitely picked up in the last couple of years, and the Dutch government is doing their bit.

Quirksmode has posted on the dutch accessibility law that went into effect last year:

A few examples will show you where Dutch government accessibility is heading. As of 1 September last year, every website built for a government agency is required by law to use:

• valid HTML 4.01 or XHTML 1.0
• CSS and semantic HTML and separation of structure and presentation
• progressive enhancement
• the W3C DOM (instead of the old Microsoft document.all)
• meaningful values of class and id
• meaningful alt attributes on all images

Furthermore:

• scripts that work on links should extend the basic link functionality (think accessible popups)
• if a link makes no sense without a script, it shouldn’t be in the HTML (but be generated by JavaScript)
• use of forms or scripts as the only means of getting certain information is prohibited
• removing the focus rectangle on links is prohibited
• information offered in a closed format (think Word) should also be offered in an open format
• the semantics of many HTML elements are explicitly defined

(Related: use ajax, get sued)

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/dutch-government-websites-be-accessible-or-break-the-law

We somehow haven’t mentioned Rialto here before:

Rialto (Rich Internet Application Toolkit) is a cross browser
javascript widgets library. Because it is technology agnostic it can be
encapsulated in JSP, JSF, .Net or PHP graphic components. Nowadays it
supports pure javascript development , JSP/taglib, PHP, JSF and Python
integration. The .Net integration is on the road.
The purpose of Rialto is to ease the access to rich internet application
development to corporate developers. Ideally a Rialto developer have
neither need to write or understand DHTML, Ajax or DOM code. The target
of Rialto is corporate web applications and not internet web sites.

There is a tool to create drag and drop code, released here, and Rialto Studio is a WYSIWYG editor built in Rialto itself

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/rialto-rich-toolkit-platform-with-drag-and-drop

Bulletproof Ajax is a new book by Jeremy Keith (of DOM Scripting fame).

This book is slightly different that many of the other Ajax books in that it is targeted on the design side.

The website that accompanies the book has some good examples to look at, so check it out and see if it is for you.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/bulletproof-ajax

MyPunchbowl has launched just in time for you to plan your superbowl party with it instead of evite.

Matt Douglas and his team have put together a highly interactive and rich party planner, currently focused on the at-home party space.

Not only does MyPunchBowl had the rich editing of a party, but it does all of the mashup goodness that you would expect. Embed a Google Map, find photos on Flickr to embed, etc.

It is also nice and social as a site like this should be, with good comment support.

The site is built on Prototype/Script.aculo.us and more. This will give you an idea:

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/mypunchbowl-plan-your-superbowl-party-with-ajax

Roger Ebert once said, “A movie is not what it is about, but how it is about it.” Riffing off this, Tom Asacker writes, “If your business is struggling with disengaged employees, fickle customers and razor thin margins, it’s because you believe that your brand is what it is about instead of how it is about it.”

The post reminds me of the MacGuffin, a filmmaking concept used frequently by Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock’s description of the MacGuffin:

[It’s] the device, the gimmick, if you will, or the papers the spies are after…The only thing that really matters is that in the picture the plans, documents or secrets must seem to be of vital importance to the characters. To me, the narrator, they’re of no importance whatsoever.

In an interview with Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock discussed the importance of keeping the MacGuffin as simple as possible:

When I started working with Ben Hecht on the screenplay for Notorious, we were looking for a MacGuffin, and as always, we proceeded by trial and error, going off in several directions that turned out to be too complex…So we dropped the whole idea in favor of a MacGuffin that was simpler, but concrete and visual: a sample of uranium concealed in a wine bottle.

David Mamet has discussed the power of the MacGuffin too:

The less specific the qualities of the MacGuffin are, the more interested the audience will be…A loose abstraction allows audience members to project their own desires onto an essentially featureless goal.

Update: A couple of commenters mentioned the suitcase in Pulp Fiction as another example. Pulp Fiction co-author Roger Avery said:

Originally the briefcase contained diamonds. But that just seemed too boring and predictable. So it was decided that the contents of the briefcase were never to be seen. This way each audience member would fill in the blank with their own ultimate contents. All you were supposed to know was that it was “so beautiful.” No prop master can come up with something better than each individual’s imagination.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/196-the-macguffin

Richard McMahon has wrapped the oft-seen resizable text areas in a simple Prototype component ResizingTextArea:

JavaScript

UJS Rule

It responds to keystrokes by parsing the text value into lines, accounts for a bit of line wrapping, and ensures that the number of rows presented grows (and shrinks) to match what has been typed in. The solution is best suited where the text entry is likely to be in the 0-50 line range.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/resizingtextarea-prototype-component