Ajax Girl

Meebo, a site where users can access all of their instant messaging applications in a single browser window, is announcing a $9 million Series B round of financing from Draper Fisher Jurvetson this evening, adding to the $3.5 million they raised from Sequoia in December 2005. As part of the round, Tim Draper is joining Meebo’s board of directors.

Our first post on Meebo was written the day it launched in September 2005. Since then we’ve watched them grow significantly (see our coverage here).

Meebo competitors include eBuddy, KoolIM and others listed here.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/77125021/

New Jersey based Shycast will be launching later this month and will put a new spin on brand promotion and paid contests. Like Bix, which was aquired by Yahoo in November 2006, Shycast will sponsor video-based contests with fairly large cash prizes.

Shycast will launch with a sponsored contest by Ikea called “Break the Rules BedMaking.” Users will be asked to create a video showing how crazy and creative they can be in decorating their bedroom. The videos will be rated by other users, and Ikea will choose a group of finalists based on user feedback and other (transparent) criteria. The winner will be chosen from the group of finalists based entirely on user voting and will receive a $5,000 prize.

Founder Drew Peloso says that he hopes to create a community where brands can reach out to receptive users and engage with them directly. Brands give back to the community by sponsoring contests. Users are encouraged to tag themselves with brands they like, and to recommend new contests involving any brand. Other users will comment and vote on those suggested contests, and Shycast will then propose these potential contests to brands.

The business model is solid, if Shycast can get brands to participate. Brands pay not only the contest prize, but a fee to ShyCast that is “many time the prize amount” says Peloso.

Bix showed that contests around user generated content can be very popular. If ShyCast can tweak this model and focus entirely on brands, it could be a winner.

Peloso and co-founder Chris Bryant think so, too. They’ve funded ShyCast to date out of their own pockets, and think that they can hit profitability based just on currently signed partners who will be launching contests in the near future. Their goal is to never raise outside capital.

Sign up to be notified by email of the Shycast launch on their home page.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/76984474/

San Francisco based social networking site Piczo will announce a third round of financing later today - $11 million, led by new investors U.S. Venture Partners and Mangrove Capital Partners (an early Skype investor). Existing investors Sierra Ventures and Catamount also participated. Piczo previously raised $7 million over two rounds.

Piczo is one of the larger social networks, with 20 million unique visitors generating 2 billion or so page views per month. Their niche is younger teens - 75% of Piczo’s members are between 13-16 years old. And Piczo focuses on security and privacy. Site visitors cannot search or browse user profiles (they must know the exact URL of the member profile), and and there are numerous ways for users, parents and others to report inappropriate behavior. Piczo has full time staff reviewing all complaints and takes swift action to protect its members. The company’s largest single market is the UK, which accounts for 40% of their users and 50% of page views.

We compared Piczo to MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Tagged, Friendster and others back in September. See here for other Piczo coverage.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/76918998/

Maverick Mark says “Why I Don’t Wear a Suit and Can’t Figure Out Why Anyone Does.”

To me this is the key point:

Now I understand some people think wearing a suit provides them with a certain level of stature. It gives them confidence. It helps them feel good about themselves. Well let me be the first to tell you that if you feel like you need a suit to gain that confidence, you got problems. The minute you open your mouth, all those people who might think you have a great suit, forget about the suit and have to deal with the person wearing it.

I’ve actually found that suits can have a negative effect on my perception of some business people—especially salespeople. When you sound sharp you sound sharp no matter what you wear, but when you don’t know what you’re talking about you sound worse with a suit on. It has something to do with expectations. The suit magnifies missed expectations. It’s like wearing a first place medal around your neck before the race and then finishing 7th.

That being said, I don’t have any problems with suits themselves. If you like a suit, wear a suit. I believe you should wear what’s comfortable. Comfort is a huge part of productivity. If you’re comfortable in a suit, wear it proud. If you’re more of a t-shirt and jeans person, go for it.

Of course where you work and what you and social/business norms play a big part in all of this. It’s easy for Mark Cuban to decide he’s not wearing a suit, but I think Mark’s “Someone had once told me that you wear to work what your customers wear to work” point is a good one.

So, what’s your take?

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/200-mark-cuban-on-the-suit

“Empathy suit” simulates the reduced mobility, hearing and sight associated with aging so designers can feel what it’s like

“Goggles reduce vision, and a headset reduces hearing. Heavy gloves simulate the reduced mobility of arthritis. Back, knee and neck braces reduce flexibility, while special shoes make walking painful. Shoulder straps prevent arms from being raised. The result is a full-body prosthetic that ages its wearer 40 years.” [tx JC]

RIcky Gervais explains Spinal Tap's influence on The Office

“The brilliance of the film is that it’s for everyone. It’s universal, it just happens to be guitars. It was the biggest influence on ‘The Office.’ The actual vehicle and the rendering was Spinal Tap all the way…The characters in Spinal Tap and the characters in ‘The Office,’ they have a blind spot. That’s what’s funny about them. You laugh at them because, as a viewer, you see the difference between how they are and how they see themselves. It’s the gap that’s funny.”

Top 100 ad campaigns of the century

Top 5: Volkswagen’s “Think Small”, Coca-Cola’s “The pause that refreshes”, The Marlboro Man, Nike’s “Just do it”, and McDonald’s “You deserve a break today.”

Head of Yahoo Music says subscription models will make DRM irrelevant within 10 years

“Eventually, perhaps in 5 or 10 years, he predicts, all portable players will have wireless broadband capability and will provide direct access, anytime, anywhere, to every song ever released for a low monthly subscription fee. It’s a prediction that has a high probability of realization because such a system is already found in South Korea, where three million subscribers enjoy direct, wireless access to a virtually limitless music catalog for only $5 a month. “

Why Seattle's Qwest Field is the loudest stadium in the NFL

“[Paul Allen] had the architects design the structure of the stadium, especially the roof, to direct as much crowd noise as possible on the field. In addition, the north end zone seating, called the ‘Hawks Nest’, was specifically designed for rowdy fans; the seating consists of metal bleachers which reflect sound, and fans often stomp to create even more.”

Theodore Roosevelt quotes

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

Royksopp “Remind Me” video featuring information design

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/199-sunspots-the-prosthetic-edition

Apple, Amazon, and Blockbuster are hot on Netflix’ trail. Result: The company’s stock price is down more than 12 percent since Jan. 1. Now the company is looking to turn the tide with a plan to deliver movies and television shows via streaming video free to Netflix subscribers (Windows/IE only for now).

Beware of the supposedly seemless installation process though.

First-time users of the service must download a special piece of software, which, if all goes well, also takes only a few seconds. (When a reporter tried the system at home, however, the process stalled because of a mismatch between the version of Microsoft’s antipiracy software expected by the Netflix viewer and the one loaded in the PC, and it took about 15 minutes to fix the problem with the help of a customer-support specialist. A Netflix spokesman said the problem was known, but occurred only rarely.)

Not exactly the sort of thing you want to see in an article on your exciting new product launch. And it’s not the first time the Netflix PR machine has misfired. CEO Reed Hastings had an embarrassing moment during his recent 60 minutes profile when he was unable to find his own company’s support number on his site.

The “60 Minutes” report introduced us to a couple in Northern Maine – Bob and Bobbi Henkel – who are big fans of the service, but who had a few problems along the way with delivery of their discs. They wanted to call to express their frustration, but couldn’t find a phone number for Netflix anywhere on the site.

When correspondent Lesley Stahl asked Hastings about that, he responded, “I’ll show you that here,” and then clicked on the site which was already open on his laptop.

And then he clicked. And clicked again. And again.

He couldn’t find it. “Ah… how do I contact customer service?” he asked, answering his own question by saying “Okay, it’s all by e-mail.”

A support number, 888-Netflix, was added soon after.Another interesting bit from the launch article: Blockbuster’s online rental service is taking off.

With aggressive promotion of a new service called Total Access, which costs the same as Netflix’s service for three movies, and allows subscribers to exchange movies in stores, Blockbuster has added a staggering 700,000 subscribers since Nov. 1…“I wouldn’t be surprised to see our online subscribers double by the end of 2007,” John F. Antioco, the chief executive of Blockbuster, said.

Also, Netflix’ plan will be a pay-per-minute offer so users can test drive a movie.

Mr. Hastings said he chose the instant delivery afforded by streaming technology over downloads, which can take a while, because it would encourage subscribers to use the system to browse the catalog and discover new movies. If they do not like a movie, they can stop it and will be charged only for the minutes they actually watched.

If this model takes off, could it have an impact on how movies are actually structured? Will we see less slow developing plots and more explosion-filled intros?

Related: Netflix nails it

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/198-netflix-bumpy-introduction-of-streaming-video

Richard McManus is holding a poll on whether Ajax is RIA.

These questions are always a little silly (users do not care about this answer…. they care about the usability of your application) but let’s indulge.

This stemmed from a post by Ryan Stewart who things that Ajax != RIA.

Wikipedia defines RIA as “web applications that have the features and functionality of traditional desktop applications.” You could argue for a long time on what these features are and if your RIA platform has to embrace everyone of them (including the bad ones?). For example, most desktop applications include an install step.

When I took a lot of the poll, Ajax was winning out. With some of the recent Ajax examples, it is hard to say that it isn’t rich. That doesn’t mean to say that it can do everything that Apollo, WPF, XUL and friends can do. It’s different.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/poll-is-ajax-ria

ID Magic is a French site that allows you to build custom calendars, photo albums, etc with drag & drop, inline editing and other rich techniques.

It is kinda fun to see the web 2.0 features, with a web 1.0 look and feel.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/id-magic-custom-built-calendars-albums-and-more

Geni is going social with the family tree. It must have a long way to get as much information as the LDS church, but they did a good job with the interface.

It looks to be using Prototype/Script.aculo.us and YUI components with a major sprinkling of Flash for good measure.

You can zoom in and out of the tree using sliders and drag and drop.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/geni-your-family-tree-ajax-style

London-based Spinvox is a voice to text service that we wrote about last May (see MobileCrunch coverage as well). The key product takes voicemails, converts them to text and sends them via email and/or SMS to you to read. At the time they were only available outside of the U.S. Now, they are starting to take U.S. customers.

Spinvox mainly distributes their product through cell phone carriers, although they will set up customers directly as well. Pricing will be determined by carriers, but UK pricing is here, and it isn’t cheap.

I have been lucky enough to be using Spinvox to convert voicemails to SMS text messages since December, and it has been an incredible efficiency tool. If I miss a call while I’m in a meeting, I can see the SMS message a few seconds later and decide if I need to step out immediately and call the person back. In general, using Spinvox saves a ton of otherwise wasted time.

The company has set up a blog site to allow anyone to test the product - Go here, call the phone number on the site and leave a message. It will be converted to text and posted on the blog a few moments later.

Spinvox is currently negotiating carrier deals in the U.S., but has agreed to sign up 100 TechCrunch readers with free accounts, and there won’t be any charges for converted messages. If you live in the U.S. and would like to try Spinvox now, just leave a comment below and (this is important) leave your email address within the comment itself. Spinvox will contact you with the details.

See our coverage of Seattle based Jott, a company with similar technology but a slightly different product. SimulScribe is another company doing something similar to Spinvox, and charges $10/month for 40 voicemail conversions.

Spinvox has 150 employees and has raised a significant round of financing. The company says it should reach profitability by the end of 2007.

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/~3/76475563/