Ajax Girl

CrunchGear has some exclusive info on a Zune-enabled phone coming from Microsoft later this year. Hot on the heels of Vista, we can’t be sure if this is a software addition to their current mobile line up or an actual device, but now that they’re in the race with the Zune itself, it makes sense they’ll try to beat the iPhone at its own game. More details to come but check out CrunchGear for full details.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/84990104/

Darryl Taft has written up a talk that Adam Bosworth (not at Google, created Ajax at Microsoft) gave in New York entitled Physics, Speed and Psychology: What Works and What Doesn’t in Software, and Why.

Bosworth said he has been building software for about 30 years and “not all of it works” all the time. “The reason, on reflection, turned out to largely depend on physics and human psychology,” he said. And “a lot of it had to do with Tom Cruise,” Bosworth said, citing the actor’s line in the movie “Top Gun” where Cruise says, “I feel the need, the need for speed.”

Indeed, speed or lack thereof has played a role in hampering the success of various software innovations, including AJAX, Bosworth said. Had chips been a little faster and broadband been more ubiquitous, AJAX might have caught on a lot faster. However, the physics of the technology was only one of the factors holding AJAX back.

He goes on to explain why Ajax failed (misperceptions of the realities of the way people would use the technology: “Gestures like tooling, icons, right-click and drag-drop are too obscure”), and how it got a second life:

However, in the end, AJAX got a second life, primarily because the physics changed, Bosworth said

For one thing, the use of broadband soared suddenly, and then chips became “massively faster” than they had been in 1997. This helped make carefully crafted applications “quick enough,” though it’s still hard to write these applications, Bosworth said.

Meanwhile, usage also changed. “A large number of people started using Web applications more than once a day,” particularly for functions like e-mail, calendars, social networking and trading.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/adam-bosworth-why-ajax-failed-then-succeeded

Getting Real translations are underway. They are linked from the Getting Real Table of Contents page. Here are the languages so far (number of chapters translated in parentheses):

• Croatian (1)
• Deutsch (1)
• Español (6)
• Francais (1)
• Italiano (7)
• Japanese (1)
• Nederlandse (7)
• Norwegian (1)
• Polish (1)
• Portuguesa (16)
• Romanian (1)
• Russian (6)
• Slovenský (1)

Thanks to all the volunteer translators. Obviously we still have a ways to go so, if you’d like to help, contact us via email.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/244-update-on-getting-real-translations

The archives at the Cathedral Church Of Saint Peter In Exeter have some interesting examples of layouts from centuries ago.

Rosa Medicinae

“A page from John de Gaddesden’s Rosa Medicinae, a 14th century work. The author is mentioned in the Prologue to Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’. This is almost certainly the earliest medical work surviving in Exeter.”

Pythagoras’ Theorem

“Proof of the Theorem of Pythagoras in Euclid’s De Arte Geometrica – late 13th century.”Milton’s Tenure of Kings and Magistrates

“Frontispiece of John Milton’s ‘The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates’ 1649, with a presentation inscription ‘from the author’.”

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/216-blasts-from-the-past-rosa-medicinae-pythagoras-theorem-miltons-tenure-of-kings-and-magistrates

Greg Murray of Sun has put together a sample jMaki widget revolver that you use like this:

Check it out to see animated revolving in action.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/jmaki-revolver

After reporting that Flixster closed a highly competitive venture round earlier today, I did some digging on available growth statistics for the service. According to recent Comscore data, Flixster has had a terrific period of unique visitor and page view growth over the last several months. Alexa and Compete also show a solid growth trend.

Comscore data graphs are below. They show Flixster growing from 4 million to 31 million monthly page views from March - December 2006. In that same period, unique visitors grew from 328,000 per month to just over 1 million. Comscore generally under reports younger, smaller sites, but the trend is clear.

Flixster is still a small social network, but the growth trends are way up and to the right. Venture capitalists, not surprisingly, like to see this in a potential investment.

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/~3/84837880/

Flixster, a San Francisco based social network where users rate and discuss movies, closed a round of financing today with LightSpeed Ventures. This was a small round of financing - $2 million or possibly less, but there was apparently heavy competition from Sequoia Capital in the deal (and possibly Kleiner Perkins). Flixter has recently seen very heavy user registration and page view growth, so a sub-$10 million valuation, which this deal almost certainly was, could be considered quite cheap.

There are also rumors that major studios got involved in the Flixster bidding as well, either as an investment or an outright acquisition.

Look for an announcement in the coming weeks.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/84790961/

Wolfgang Bartelme (designer of this site) took the work by Justin Palmer and friends and created a Prototype Reference widget.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/prototype-reference-widget