Ajax Girl

Google and Fox Interactive are in the process of turning their “short form” $900 million advertising deal into a more fully negotiated arrangement, according to sources close to the companies. Rumor is that the original deal, which was closed after just a few days of all-night negotiations, has been performing at or above expectations.

There are also, rumors, however, that certain provisions of the agreement may have been negotiated too hastily, and both sides are pushing for changes. We’re also hearing that the deal may be expanded well beyond the original terms, which gave Google the right to show cost-per-click ads after searches and also gave them certain rights of first refusal on display ads.

With so much revenue at stake, these new negotiations may take some time to complete. But Google’s foothold on the largest site on the Internet may be getting even stronger.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/85724066/

This morning it appears that a number of Google services are having problems. We first noticed last night when our Google Analytics account wasn’t reporting any new data since 9am yesterday, but Analytics is often notoriously slow in receiving updates. This morning there were no further updates with our Analytics data, and in addition to that we have heard reports that both Google Finance and Gmail were and still are also having problems. Below is a screenshot of the Techcrunch stats from Google Analytics from yesterday, showing the sudden drop in hits being recorded.

It appears that the outages have affected a subset of Google’s servers and only those servers that are responsible for collecting analytics data and serving both Finance and Gmail for some users. Despite the huge capacity that Google has, and with plans for multiple new large datacenters across the country - they still at times experience outages on some of their services. Google is so big and so popular that even the slightest outage or problem is felt across the web. Since becoming open to all for registration for free, Google Analytics has become a very popular service, especially amongst bloggers. A quick scan of Technorati or Google Blogsearch results shows a large number of bloggers who have been reporting the outage in the past few hours.

Search Engine Roundtable was amongst the first to report the issue with Google finance (see the screenshot below, courtesy of their post)

GigaOm is also reporting the outages, and as yet there has been no official word from Google nor from any of the Google blogs or bloggers. Analytics has been affected for more than 24 hours now, the other problems seem random. If you have any news on any other outages to other Google services, or if you know what went wrong, leave a comment here. We will continue to try to find out what has happen and to get an official word from Google.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/85615228/

Google was slammed today by a demand from Viacom to remove over 100,000 MTV, Daily Show, SouthPark BET and other copyrighted materials. This comes after months of failed negotiations between the two companies to find a way for Google to compensate Viacom for this content. According to Viacom, he clips in question have been viewed over 1 billion times.

In a prepared statement emailed to us, Viacom says:

After months of ongoing discussions with YouTube and Google, it has become clear that YouTube is unwilling to come to a fair market agreement that would make Viacom content available to YouTube users. Filtering tools promised repeatedly by YouTube and Google have not been put in place, and they continue to host and stream vast amounts of unauthorized video. YouTube and Google retain all of the revenue generated from this practice, without extending fair compensation to the people who have expended all of the effort and cost to create it. The recent addition of YouTube-served content to Google Video Search simply compounds this issue.

Virtually every other distributor has acknowledged the fair value of entertainment content and has taken deliberate steps to concluding agreements with content providers.

Despite rumors that Google has been very close to announcing deals, to date no major network has agreed to a long term agreement to allow their content to appear on YouTube. A broad deal with CBS which was reportedly very close to being finalized, was slated to be announced at CES. That announcement never came, and insiders are questioning whether Google is simply stalling for time as they try to figure out exactly how they are willing to proceed. There are rumors that Google pulled multiple offers to Viacom, leading executives there to throw up their hands in frustration. Their statement today, along with the takedown demand, is a very tangible result of that frustration.

When Google acquired YouTube, a lot of people speculated that the popular video sharing site could suffer the same fate as Napster, with copyright holders suing it out of existence. Those speculations were silenced when Google engaged in direct negotiations with copyright holders, offering rich licensing fees and revenue sharing for content. Now, with Google yet to show a single major deal, those speculations are sure to resurface, louder than ever. The future of IPTV is still very much in play.

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/~3/85555753/

Digg’s Kevin Rose announced yesterday that they were removing the list of top users from the Digg site. Today that list is back up, but not on Digg.

Christopher Fink, who works for Digg competitor Netscape, is scraping user rankings off of individual profiles on Digg and compiling his own list here.

This information is still available because Digg still shows the ranking for each user on that user’s profile page (example). Simply scanning through all the user pages will show the top Digg users, and that data is updated daily.

I’m imagining this list will get even more attention than it previously did. Tell people they can’t have something, and they want it even more.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/85536851/

We’re looking for Basecamp customers in the NYC or Chicagoland area who would be interested in being interviewed for short on-site video vignettes demonstrating how you use Basecamp. We’ll be promoting these videos on our site.

We’re looking for customers from all walks of life and all industries. From educators to designers to writers to marketers to performers to lawyers to anyone who considers Basecamp an integral part of their business.

If you are interested in participating, or have any questions, send us an email. Thank you.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/247-calling-all-basecamp-customers-in-nyc-or-chicago

We’re looking for Basecamp customers in the NYC area who would be interested in being interviewed for short on-site video vignettes demonstrating how you use Basecamp. We’ll be promoting these videos on our site.

We’re looking for customers from all walks of life and all industries. From educators to designers to writers to marketers to performers to lawyers to anyone who considers Basecamp an integral part of their business.

If you are interested in participating, or have any questions, please email matt [at] 37signals.com. Thank you.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/247-calling-all-basecamp-customers-in-nyc

FordDirect.com has some interesting ideas about which features on a car are optional…

Optional brakes? That certainly is a Bold Move.

And if cash is really tight, you can also have ‘em leave off the wheels and pedals…

[tx RA]

Related: ‘06 Ford loss: $12.7 billion

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/245-optional-brakes

Bas Wenneker has written Plotr, a charting engine in Prototype that uses canvas.

Example

More examples

• Horizontal/vertical BarChart example
• LineChart example

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/plotr-charting-library-via-canvas-with-prototype

A redesign usually implies a major overhaul. But it’s interesting to watch a site like Amazon keep its overall look and feel constant while continually testing new elements. Below are some examples relating to search, recommendations, shipping, etc.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/246-screens-around-town-amazon

Qooxdoo 0.6.5 has been released with improvements in the core framework, theming, and server-side (now with Perl).

Check out the showcase for examples, and the release notes for detailed changes.

This released adds an Eclipse license that enables it to be the core of the new Eclipse Rich Ajax Platform (RAP) Project.

What is RAP?

The RAP project aims to enable developers to build rich, AJAX-enabled Web applications by using the Eclipse development model, plug-ins and a Java-only API.

Objectives

• Enable the development of Rich Internet Applications that are based on
  the Eclipse Plugin architecture. The Eclipse OSGi framework (Equinox)
  can run inside of a Web application. This has been demonstrated by several
  parties, and a subproject of the Equinox project has already been
  established (see http://www.eclipse.org/equinox/incubator/server/)
• Enable AJAX UI development based on a Java component library with SWT api. For
  enabling UI development based on a Java component library the project has
  received an initial code contribution from Innoopract (W4Toolkit). NEW: Based on the
  infrastructure provided by this code contributions we have implemented a first
  version of a new widget toolkit with SWT api, called RWT. More info on RWT can be
  found here:
  http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/RWTOverview. RWT is using a sophisiticated JavaScript
  framework for client side rendering: qooxdoo.
• Provide a Web Workbench similar to the Eclipse platform workbench:
  • provides selection service (with session scope),
  • provides extension points for action sets, workbench parts,
    perspectives, preference pages, etc.,
  • enables plug-ins to contribute to workbench parts provided by other
    plug-ins (e.g. action contributions)
  • NEW: A first implementation of a web workbench is in CVS
  • Check out the RAP demo: RWT / Workbench demo
  • RWT demo: RWT widget demo
• The RAP API will be aligned with the Eclipse platform API as much as possible

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/qooxdoo-065-release-now-with-rap