Ajax Girl

Steve Jobs has stepped up to the plate and written an open letter to the music industry in the fight against DRM. We wrote our thoughts on the eventual demise of DRM just last month. Bill Gates gave his own thoughts on DRM back in December.

Despite Apple’s near monopoly on legal digital music sales, he discusses how they got to where they are now with DRM and options moving forward. The record labels then and today demanded protection of their songs — and thus Apple created their internal DRM called FairPlay.

Jobs speaks about how DRM is an ongoing fight — there are a lot of smart people in this world that have spare time on their hands, and like to discover the “secrets” that keep the songs protected. As soon as the DRM is hacked, Apple works to update the DRM by updating the iTunes software, as well as the software found in their hardware devices (iPod). He says that if their DRM is compromised, they have only a few weeks to fix it, or the labels are able to exit their agreement with Apple entirely. Rolling out these security updates is a difficult task with just one company, but if they were to license out their DRM to multiple software and hardware vendors, it’d be a nightmare — this is not an option that Apple will consider.

Another option is continuing the same course — software/hardware vendors writing their own DRM and consumers purchasing songs that only work in certain software/hardware. He brings up that Microsoft decided to ditch their own ‘PlaysForSure’ DRM technology and create a brand new (proprietary) one for their Zune.

The third option that comes as a bit of a shocker is Jobs promoting DRM-free music. He discusses how 90 million iPods have been purchased and 2 billion songs — equating to an average of 22 songs per person on iPods that hold 1000 songs. Internal research at Apple shows that the average iPod is full — meaning that only 3% of songs on an iPod are DRM-protected, with the remaining 97% unprotected (ripped audio CDs; illegally downloaded tracks).

Jobs discusses how 90% of record label sales revenue comes from the billions of CDs sold — CDs that are not DRM-protected (consumers can go home and rip their CDs). In 2006, 2 billion songs were sold DRM-protected, while 20 billion were sold unprotected (as audio CDs).

He makes a good point — and he likely feels Apple could sell more digital music than the mere 3% that occupy iPods, by selling unprotected songs. The question on everyone’s minds is whether the music industry would sell more than the 20 billion total songs in a year if they opened the DRM-free floodgates online. Emusic has been the poster-child for the DRM-free sales of straight MP3s by the Indie labels. Amie Street is another model we like.

Editor’’s Note: This post was written by guest contributor Steve Poland, whose blog Techquila Shots brainstorms web start-up ideas.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/87412340/

We’re just getting news that domain name registrar (the original one) Network Solutions has been acquired by General Atlantic, a private equity firm. The price hasn’t been disclosed, but it will be leaking soon.

Network Solutions was the original domain name registrar and was part of Verisign until it was spun off in 2003. Since that time, they’ve lost a stupendous amount of market share to discount operations like GoDaddy, eNom and others. They now have about 6.6 million domain names under management.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/87349159/

This is what Walmart’s brand new video site looks like in the Firefox browser. It works fine in Internet Explorer, but the CSS is not loading properly in Firefox. One designer’s opinion: “Somebody really fucked up. I could fix this in 30 seconds. Did they even test this in Firefox before launching?”

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/~3/87347008/

We at Ajaxian have long been hoping for a JIT compiler inside of the browsers’ JavaScript interpreter — so we were pretty stoked when Adobe donated their excellent JIT-compiling JavaScript virtual machine to Mozilla back in Nov. ‘06. The new open-source codebase, maintained by the Mozilla Foundation, is known as Project Tamarin.

In this episode of Audible Ajax (~14 MB, ~27 min.), we look into Project Tamarin in a bit of detail, analyzing what kind of an impact this will have on the Ajax community. Let us know what you think!

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/audible-ajax-episode-20-project-tamarin

In an excellent article at the Adobe Design Center site, David Womack describes the significance of one visualization in ”Seeing is believing: Information visualization and the debate over global warming.” Womack describes the the considerations around presenting visualizations of global warming in Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth.  There are lessons here for us as both consumers of information and as designers.

When Roger Friedman of Fox News said in his review of Al Gore’s recent film on global warming, “It doesn’t matter if you’re Republican or Democrat, Liberal or Conservative, your mind will be changed in a nanosecond,” he wasn’t referring to scenes of Gore reflecting on the meaning of life before a slow-flowing river or even the images of glaciers collapsing or polar bears swimming in the open ocean in search of vanished ice. He was talking about a particular graph shown in the film that depicts the variation in temperature compared to the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over the last thousand years. Whether or not you accept the claim put forward in “An Inconvenient Truth” that the earth is getting warmer as a result of human activities will rest in large part on how you respond to this one slide.

Source: Emily Chang
Original Article: http://www.emilychang.com/go/weblog/comments/the-impact-of-one-visualization/

Happy birthday Basecamp! Our flagship product celebrated its third anniversary yesterday. Here’s the original launch announcement made right here on Signal vs. Noise. And my, look how our baby has grown:

• Over 1,000,000 people have Basecamp accounts worldwide.
• 94% of customers surveyed said they would recommend Basecamp to a friend, client, or colleague.
• Great reviews from our customers and mentions in major publications.
• Integration with other great products like Blinksale, Harvest, Phonified, Project Recon for Windows XP, Dashboard widgets, and more.
• Big productivity boosts on Basecamp’s most popular feature: To-do lists.
• We just increased storage limits across the board (2x on the Personal, Basic, and Plus plan, 3x on the Premium plan, and 4x on the Max plan).

We’re constantly adding tweaks and improvements and have plans in 2007 to keep the improvements coming. Over 90% of all changes we make to Basecamp are based on customer requests so thanks for your feedback. And thanks to all our customers for helping make Basecamp’s success possible.

To help celebrate, here’s a coupon code for $10 off your next month when you upgrade: XYN58UA6F2.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/254-happy-birthday-basecamp-turns-3

Niall Kennedy has taken a look at the various local storage options from various browsers, and cross-browser in Boost Ajax performance using local storage.

His article touches on the good ole cookie, Flash local Shared Object, Internet Explorer userData, and Firefox DOM Storage.

He talks about pros and cons, and efforts such as dojo.storage.

Conclusion

Client-side storage addressable from any web page has the potential to change the way we build web pages and the division of labor between client and server. Just as CSS and JavaScript created new ways to style and interact with a page, the client-side storage capabilities of modern browsers will create a new concept of a web application runtime. It’s yet another step in the progression of web applications trying to create the best possible experience using the latest widely deployed web browsers and browser plugins.

Web applications using these latest technologies can deploy an upgrade on-the-fly, initializing a new set of libraries and web page templates after examining a user’s browser and bandwidth for compatibility. Web applications such as Google Calendar might store your appointments locally, exposing this data to Google Maps or other mapping applications to plan the route to your next appointment without submitting a new server requests for the same data. Your webmail will be downloaded locally, quickly loaded even if you are on a plane.

Speaking of dojo.storage, there is another update:

• New Dojo Offline Release: Offline Files + Automatic Network Status
• Moxie demo application
• Latest Status report

It is cute that the namespace has “.dot.” in it

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/boost-ajax-performance-using-local-storage

Process One has announced a new IM client called OneTeam.

The client is XUL based, so requires Firefox 2 or can be run as a stand-alone XULRunner:

OneTeam handles presence, one-to-one chat, file tranfert, user business card and group-chat in realtime. Based on the XMPP protocol, it enables both secure and private chat inside the company, but can also be opened in a control manner to selected servers in partner organizations.

For example, it is possible to be interrupted only by people working on the same project at a given time. Other messages will be delayed until a moment you have chosen.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/oneteam-instant-messaging-client

In Oh, Sweet Revenge, an oldish Newsweek article, Dunkin’ Donuts’ chief Jon Luther says his company is helped by its rivalry with Starbucks: “[It’s] created an awareness for the category, and we’re benefiting.”

The chain’s success illustrates a little-advertised truth of business. Too often the financial pages read like the sports section, filled with winners and losers. Reality is more complex. In many markets, business is not a zero-sum game, and competitors create opportunities.

The article includes some lessons on playing “business defense”…

Markets Have More Niches Than You Think: Dunkin’ Donuts, Starbucks and Krispy Kreme all sell pastries and caffeinated beverages, so they’re obvious competitors. But beneath that similarity, they’re serving different markets. Krispy Kreme’s customers visit only occasionally but buy dozens of donuts; that chain is peddling a dietary splurge, not daily sustenance…Starbucks chief Howard Schultz has always seen his stores as neighborhood hangouts, a sort of nonalcoholic “Cheers” setting with comfy chairs, porcelain cups and, increasingly, wireless Internet access. Dunkin’ Donuts, in contrast, is increasingly built on speed. Most of its new stores feature drive-throughs, and the chain bills itself as a pit stop for harried commuters…

Grow at Your Own Speed: If Starbucks seems ubiquitous, that’s because national expansion was part of Schultz’s game plan when he began reinventing the coffeehouse in the mid-1980s. But that fast-growth strategy caused growing pains early on. Dunkin’ Donuts, by contrast, is still concentrated on the East Coast; it has just a few dozen locations west of the Mississippi. Instead of conquering new lands, Dunkin’s managers have spent much of their energy exploring how deeply the brand could penetrate existing markets. The result: in Massachusetts, where the quickest way to get someone lost is to give directions that include the phrase “Turn left at Dunkin’ Donuts,” there’s one store for every 7,389 residents, compared with one Starbucks for every 15,383 in its home state of Washington.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/252-competitors-create-opportunities

Jean-Francois Arcand has followed in the footsteps of Jetty with gCometd, a service to do Comet style applications in Java.

His article discusses “The Cometd framework and its Bayeux protocol is now supported starting with Grizzly 1.0.11 and GlassFish 9.1 b35. In this first blog, I will talk about the gCometd implementation, how to enable it and describe a dojo cometd enabled example.”

Dojo cometd example

To see the gCometd in action, you can download a sample here. This sample is an adapted Chat application available in Jetty, written by Greg Wilkins. Greg Wilkins is a member of the Cometd specs and the creator of Jetty. Jetty was the first cometd implementation and I’ve decided to adapt its cometd example for the purpose of this blog.

For Grizzly, just unzip the war file under the cometd folder. For GlassFish, just deploy the application. Then start your browser and point to the context-root of the sample (”/index.html” for Grizzly, “cometd-example/index.html” for GlassFish). An excellent tool to use to see what DOJO’s Cometd client is sending to gCometd is Firebug. I strongly recommend you install it. It really help understanding what is Bayeux!

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/gcometd-comet-on-java