Ajax Girl

Today we are announcing that we have acquired Philip “Pud” Kaplan’s FuckedCompany.com in a stock for assets transaction. The basic details of the transaction are included in a press release that will go out shortly, and Pud has mentioned this on his personal blog. We weren’t going to announce this for another week or so (even though I hinted at it on CrunchNotes), but too many people know about it already and news of it was starting to leak (see Wired and CNET as well). I don’t want to be in a position again where other sites are breaking our news, so we’re announcing officially this weekend.

We’ve been working on this deal for months, it is good that we are finally able to close and announce it.

FuckedCompany first went live in 2000, chronicling failing and troubled companies in its unique and abrasive style after the dot com bust. Within a year it had a massive audience and was getting serious mainstream press attention. As the startup economy became better in 2004, much of the attention the site received went away. But a large and loyal audience remains at the site, coming back day after day for its unique slant on the news. At its peak, FC had 4 million unique monthly visitors.

Since FC focuses on the negative news coming out of startups, and TechCrunch tends to focus on the positive, this combination may seem odd. But the sites are in fact extremely complimentary. For example, the audiences are about equal in size and have very little overlap. So from day one we will double our reach and traffic.

Reasons For The Merger

The market moves in cycles, and its clear that we are at the tail end of the current boom (despite recent statements I’ve made to the contrary). Thousands of startups launched in the last year and a half, and well over a billion dollars was invested in them. Even in good times, 90% of startups fail. But recent events make me believe that even a 10% success rate might be optimistic going forward. Some recent trends that alarmed us:

• Smart people are saying the end of the current boom is near, and these guys are rarely wrong in their predictions. See, for example, Peter Rip’s recent post “Web 2.0 - Over and Out.” Peter really nailed the analysis in that post - and it’s hard to argue with any of his conclusions.
• The TechCrunch DeadPool, where we track failed startups, is growing exponentially. If the failure rate of startups continues to grow this fast, we will be at a point where failures will begin to outnumber new funded startups. Since 9/10 startups fail, by focusing on the negative we will have much more content for the site.
• While plenty of startups are launching, we aren’t seeing nearly as much innovation or the “wow” factor like we did in 2004/2005. That does not bode well for the future.
• We’ve noticed a significantly higher number of negative comments on TechCrunch relative to past periods. Our readers are unhappy; they want a change in editorial tone.

Also, the current trend in blogging, led by Valleywag and others, is to “go negative first, and ask questions later.” That tabloid-style journalism tends to generate a lot of eyeballs and, subsequently, advertiser dollars. This is something we just can’t compete with. By acquiring FC, we can go more negative faster than anyone else out there, when and if we need to.

With the combination of these two companies, we can now effectively cover a startup from the idea stage, through the hype and funding stage, and then ultimately cover its inevitable bankruptcy and liquidation as well.

What To Expect

Integration will occur slowly. The FuckedCompany site has a notice on it about the announcement and will soon be upgraded to more of a TechCrunch look and feel (white background instead of the previous black and red, and a new logo that matches our font and style. For now, though, we are keeping the sites separate and each will continue to operate normally. Deeper integration will occur over time.

Many of our readers still enjoy reading about new startups, and we won’t stop covering them. But we will likely move new startup coverage, which will be a secondary consideration going forward, to a new blog over time. TechCrunch and FuckedCompany will begin to mirror each other’s content, and at the appropriate time the brands and sites will be merged.

Please Give Us Your Feedback

It’s important that we continue to tweak our business model to ensure that we stay relevant and publish compelling content going forward. That’s the main reason this transaction occurred - we are seeing the end of an era and are acting on what we are seeing.

I know our reasoning won’t satisfy every one of our readers, and I understand that this is a lot of change coming very quickly. I want your feedback to ensure that the merger is done tastefully and properly. Leave your comments below, or send me a private email (my email address is on the About page). I definitely want to hear your opinions.

When TechCrunch first launched in June 2005, there were no blogs dedicated to covering new startups. Today, nearly two years later, there are dozens of excellent blogs doing this, and mainstream media is paying attention as well. Entrepreneurs with new ideas will always have a way to reach potential users and customers. They just won’t be able to do it here any more.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/105646005/

Today we are announcing that we have acquired Philip “Pud” Kaplan’s FuckedCompany.com in a stock for assets transaction. The basic details of the transaction are included in a press release that will go out shortly, and Pud has mentioned this on his personal blog. We weren’t going to announce this for another week or so (even though I hinted at it on CrunchNotes), but too many people know about it already and news of it was starting to leak (see Wired and CNET as well). I don’t want to be in a position again where other sites are breaking our news, so we’re announcing officially this weekend.

We’ve been working on this deal for months, it is good that we are finally able to close and announce it.

FuckedCompany first went live in 2000, chronicling failing and troubled companies in its unique and abrasive style after the dot com bust. Within a year it had a massive audience and was getting serious mainstream press attention. As the startup economy became better in 2004, much of the attention the site received went away. But a large and loyal audience remains at the site, coming back day after day for its unique slant on the news. At its peak, FC had 4 million unique monthly visitors.

Since FC focuses on the negative news coming out of startups, and TechCrunch tends to focus on the positive, this combination may seem odd. But the sites are in fact extremely complimentary. For example, the audiences are about equal in size and have very little overlap. So from day one we will double our reach and traffic.

Reasons For The Merger

The market moves in cycles, and its clear that we are at the tail end of the current boom (despite recent statements I’ve made to the contrary). Thousands of startups launched in the last year and a half, and well over a billion dollars was invested in them. Even in good times, 90% of startups fail. But recent events make me believe that even a 10% success rate might be optimistic going forward. Some recent trends that alarmed us:

• Smart people are saying the end of the current boom is near, and these guys are rarely wrong in their predictions. See, for example, Peter Rip’s recent post “Web 2.0 - Over and Out.” Peter really nailed the analysis in that post - and it’s hard to argue with any of his conclusions.
• The TechCrunch DeadPool, where we track failed startups, is growing exponentially. If the failure rate of startups continues to grow this fast, we will be at a point where failures will begin to outnumber new funded startups. Since 9/10 startups fail, by focusing on the negative we will have much more content for the site.
• While plenty of startups are launching, we aren’t seeing nearly as much innovation or the “wow” factor like we did in 2004/2005. That does not bode well for the future.
• We’ve noticed a significantly higher number of negative comments on TechCrunch relative to past periods. Our readers are unhappy; they want a change in editorial tone.

Also, the current trend in blogging, led by Valleywag and others, is to “go negative first, and ask questions later.” That tabloid-style journalism tends to generate a lot of eyeballs and, subsequently, advertiser dollars. This is something we just can’t compete with. By acquiring FC, we can go more negative faster than anyone else out there, when and if we need to.

With the combination of these two companies, we can now effectively cover a startup from the idea stage, through the hype and funding stage, and then ultimately cover its inevitable bankruptcy and liquidation as well.

What To Expect

Integration will occur slowly. The FuckedCompany site has a notice on it about the announcement and will soon be upgraded to more of a TechCrunch look and feel (white background instead of the previous black and red, and a new logo that matches our font and style. For now, though, we are keeping the sites separate and each will continue to operate normally. Deeper integration will occur over time.

Many of our readers still enjoy reading about new startups, and we won’t stop covering them. But we will likely move new startup coverage, which will be a secondary consideration going forward, to a new blog over time. TechCrunch and FuckedCompany will begin to mirror each other’s content, and at the appropriate time the brands and sites will be merged.

Please Give Us Your Feedback

It’s important that we continue to tweak our business model to ensure that we stay relevant and publish compelling content going forward. That’s the main reason this transaction occurred - we are seeing the end of an era and are acting on what we are seeing.

I know our reasoning won’t satisfy every one of our readers, and I understand that this is a lot of change coming very quickly. I want your feedback to ensure that the merger is done tastefully and properly. Leave your comments below, or send me a private email (my email address is on the About page). I definitely want to hear your opinions.

When TechCrunch first launched in June 2005, there were no blogs dedicated to covering new startups. Today, nearly two years later, there are dozens of excellent blogs doing this, and mainstream media is paying attention as well. Entrepreneurs with new ideas will always have a way to reach potential users and customers. They just won’t be able to do it here any more.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/105646005/

Magnify.net is a new video startup that is different from the rest of the crowd. Unlike YouTube and dozens of others, it isn’t focused on building a portal around user-uploaded videos. Instead, they are allowing website publishers to create their own video channels, and populate it with videos from other sites (like YouTube, Revver, Yahoo Videos, etc.) that allow embedding.

The result is a highly targeted niche video site that integrates very well into existing content websites. To see it in action, see this channel that they created for TechCrunch. There are a ton of publisher settings to allow customization, but the general idea is that we would add this to the site, and allow readers to add their own videos that they think will be interesting to this audience.

I’ve set the TechCrunch page up so that any reader can add video (direct from their computer, via a search feature or by pasting the actual video URL from a video site), and it will go into the collection after at least three others have reviewed it and it has at least a 5/10 rating on average (or an admin approves it). Videos that are approved can be rated, commented, tagged, shared, etc. Magnify.net also offers a RSS feed of all videos on the site, so readers can subscribe and stay up to speed on new videos.

Here’s an example of deeper integration with TechCrunch: One of our recent posts showed a Joost commercial. This video has also been added to the video site where others can interact with it as well.

This is actually perfect for the new CenterNetworks experiment where Allen Stern is calling for companies to send in demo videos of their products. They should set up a Magnify.net channel to organize these - the ratings feature is already built in. I’d like to get these videos onto TechCrunch as well, and readers can simply add them.

I’ve also been adding startup demos from ScobleShow. If startups have demo videos that they’d like to have this audience see, this would be a good place to add it.

There are other features as well that I haven’t mentioned (playlists, widgets, etc). The site is still very much in beta and needs some work on flow and the user interface (some features are hard to find). I’ve also noticed it runs very slow.

Magnify.net was founded by Steve Rosenbaum and Simon Cavalletto, and Scott Milener (previously Browster) is also involved. They have raised $1.2 million in seed financing from New York Angels and NextStage Capital. 3,500 channels have been created to date.

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/~3/105563205/

Whos.Amung.us is a neat widget we came across tonight that some websites will want to add. It shows the number of concurrent users on a site at any given time.

Clicking on the widget also gives good stats on the recent URLs people visited as well as popular pages. Like Sitemeter (which we also have in the bottom right of the sidebar), it doesn’t do anything Google Analytics or other stats services don’t do - but it is an easy way to share more data about your site with your readers.

There is also a firefox extension that shows the total number of readers on your site at the bottom of the browser at all times.

We’ll keep it on TechCrunch until it manages to take the site down for the first time (every widget we add seems to do this eventually).

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/105547869/

I have to say that I expected something a little more exciting. Our previous Joost coverage is here, and we have a long post on them coming up. Thanks Orli.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/105471107/

If you’ve applied for a job before, you’ve probably fretted over how to answer questions like “are you inclined to rely more on improvisation than on careful planning?” or “do you like to create challenges for yourself when you take on a new project?”. Companies commonly use personality tests filled with questions like these to assess the fit of a potential employees with the company. There’s a whole laundry list of these personality tests here. Some companies, like Google, have even developed their own.

All of these tests are sets of written questions meant to poke and prod at a candidates mind to get a real sense of their ability and personality. However, the meaning behind these questions is relatively transparent, motivating candidates to give the answers they think their employer wants to hear.

Startup Pairwise is taking a different approach to personality tests. Instead of words, Pairwise will use images to test a candidates mentality using data gleaned from their LikeBetter picture game. LikeBetter is a flash based game that shows you a series of pairs of images uploaded by users. For each pair, you pick which image you prefer. Based on the choices you make, LikeBetter makes a guess about your personal traits, which you then confirm or correct. As more people use the system, LikeBetter discovers the strong correlations between the choices people make and the attributes they express.

Based on this data, Pairwise creates a quiz using some of the most highly discriminating pairs, chosen to have the strongest and most confident predictive power across the broadest spectrum of personality traits. They can then track a candidate’s behavior through the test and make an educated guess about their personality based on the correlations they made in LikeBetter. Pairwise does their best to make the test harder to read into by being a completely image based test and using non-obvious pairs (no GI Joe vs. Barbie).

Under the hood, LikeBetter is using an iterative application of Bayes rule called Naive Bayesian inference. The method uses a lot of dense statistics involving proposing hypotheses and dependent probabilities. If you really want to learn about it, check out the Wikipedia entry. On the other hand, the employment quiz is not making and testing hypotheses, but comparing the user’s behavior with the statistics they collected through LikeBetter and determining the the applicants tendency toward either extreme of an attribute (i.e cleanliness vs. messiness).

Pairwise’s first customer is Y Combinator, for whom they crafted this little Y Combinator founder quiz based on personality tests done on all their current founders. Y Combinator will be using the test in their application drive ending April 2nd. We’ve included the test for you to take below. Here’s how I fared.

Y Combinator Founder Personality test. Pick which images you prefer:

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/~3/105454411/

Kevin Henrikson of Zimbra gave a presentation on Ajax Unplugged at ETech.

The presentation discusses the various options for offline that are out there, the approach Zimbra has taken, and the challenges for the developer:

• Selecting *what* to take offline
  • Security risks
  • Does the user need it?
  • Can they use it offline?
• Sync is hard
  • Conflict resolution
  • Multi-user and multi-client
• End-User Desktop Support
  • Risk of increased support/debugging costs
• Upgrades and Patches
  • Have a plan *before* you release

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/zimbra-presentation-on-ajax-unplugged

Clotaire Rapaille believes all purchasing decisions lie beyond conscious thinking and emotion and reside at a primal core. He helps Fortune 500 companies discover “the code” (i.e. unconscious associations for their products) that will help them increase sales.

In this interview, he talks about the limits of traditional market research.

They are too cortex, which means that they think too much, and then they ask people to think and to tell them what they think. Now, my experience is that most of the time, people have no idea why they’re doing what they’re doing. They have no idea, so they’re going to try to make up something that makes sense. Why do you need a Hummer to go shopping? “Well, you see, because in case there is a snowstorm.” No. Why [do] you buy four wheel drive? “Well, you know, in case I need to go off-road.” Well, you live in Manhattan; why do you need four wheel drive in Manhattan? “Well, you know, sometime[s] I go out, and I go—” You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand that this is disconnected. This is nothing to do with what the real reason is for people to do what they do. So there are many limits in traditional market research.

Rapille argues that for communication to succeed it has to speak to someone’s inner reptile. “We’re cheaper” doesn’t connect with people in a lasting way. You have to go deeper than that. Plus, when you offer a deeper connection, it’s harder for someone else to come along and copy your success.

It’s absolutely crucial for anybody in communication…to understand what I call the reptilian hot button. If you don’t have a reptilian hot button, then you have to deal with the cortex; you have to work on price issues and stuff like that.

In the kind of communication I’m developing and using, with 50 of the Fortune 100 companies who are my clients, almost full time, it is not enough to give a cortex message. “Buy my product because it’s 10 percent cheaper”: That’s cortex. Well, if the other is 15 percent cheaper, I move to the others. You don’t buy loyalty with percentages. That is key. It’s not a question of numbers; it’s the first reptilian reaction…

Everything has to be on code. Everything you do should reinforce the code; not just the packaging or the communication should be on code. The leaflet, the brochures, everything should be on code. And if you are the first one to position yourself like that, knowing all the different aspects, you have a competitive edge. They might try to copy, but they don’t know the formula; they don’t know the code behind it.

Examples of products that are on code after the jump.The PT Cruiser is a reptilian product…

The PT Cruiser is a car [that] when people see it, they say, “Wow, I want it.” Some people hate it; we don’t care. There is enough people that say, “Wow, I want it,” to make a big success. And then when we tested that, and we say, “How much will you pay for this kind of car?,” people say, “Oh, we’ll pay $15,000 or $35,000.” You know that when you have a product where people say $15,000 or $35,000, the price is irrelevant.

What is it that make[s] the PT Cruiser a reptilian car? First, the car has a strong identity. What people told us is that “We’re tired of these cars that have no identity. I have good quality, good gas mileage, good everything else, but when I see the car from a distance, I have to wait till the car gets close to know what it is, and I have to read the name.” When you go to see your mother, she doesn’t need to read your name to know who you are, you see? We want this reptilian connection. And so this notion of identity, absolutely key, was very reptilian for a car.

Nextel and Hummer…

The Nextel campaign, “I do, therefore I am.” Right, bingo. This is not “I think, therefore I am.” And the campaign for the Hummer—the Hummer is a car with a strong identity. It’s a car in a uniform. I told them, put four stars on the shoulder of the Hummer, you will sell better. If you look at the campaign, brilliant. I have no credit for it, just so you know, but brilliant. They say, “You give us the money, we give you the car, nobody gets hurt.” I love it! It’s like the mafia speaking to you. For women, they say it’s a new way to scare men. Wow. And women love the Hummer. They’re not telling you, “Buy a Hummer because you get better gas mileage.” You don’t. This is cortex things. They address your reptilian brain.

Folgers…

I don’t know if you remember this commercial, but it was really on code. You have a young guy coming from the Army in a uniform. Mother is upstairs asleep. He goes directly to the kitchen, “Psssst,” open the coffee, and the smell—you know, because we designed the packaging to make sure that you smelled it right away. He prepares coffee; coffee goes up; the smell goes upstairs; the mother is asleep; she wakes up; she smiles. And we know the word she is going to say, because the code for aroma is “home.” So she is going to say, “Oh, he is home.” She rushed down the stairs, hugged the boy. I mean, we tested it. At P&G they test everything 400 times. People were crying. Why? Because we got the logic of emotion right.

and Jeep…

We discovered that Jeeps should not have square headlights. That’s a very practical thing: no square headlights. Why? I don’t want to go into anything secret, but let’s suppose the code for a Jeep is an animal like a horse. You don’t see a horse with square eyes. The Jeep people didn’t say that; they said, “Yes, I want round headlights, like a face.” And we use the face of the Jeep with the grille as a logo for Jeep. So when I discovered that, that was like a very reptilian dimension. And since then, no Jeep Wranglers have square headlights.

As for who gets it wrong, Rapaille thinks the airline industry has a lot to learn.

Right now you have a whole industry — the airline industry — that doesn’t understand at all their customers. They’re making big, big mistake. They still don’t understand. Why? Because they have marketing research that goes to the people and says: “What do you want? Do you want cheaper or more expensive?” And of course people say cheaper. So they say, “You see, they want cheaper, so we’re going to give them cheaper airlines, cheaper, cheaper.” Now this is how, in terms of reptilian, [cheaper is interpreted]: “I can’t breathe; I can’t move; they don’t feed me.” This is awful, right? So I’m not flying anymore. I drive my car. Why? Because they’ve not taken care of my reptilian. And then emotionally they treat me like, you know, [I’m] checking [into] a high-security prison.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/346-people-have-no-idea-why-theyre-doing-what-theyre-doing

Clipperz is an online password system that contains a JavaScript library to provide web developers with an extensive and efficient set of cryptographic functions. It is released under a BSD license.

Clipperz include portions of code from few third party libraries, such as: MochiKit, YUI and Ext to allows smoother and quicker coding.

In order to save downloading time and memory space the original Clipperz code is compressed into a large single file using Dojo Compressor.

The library presently includes:

• SRP authentication protocol
• SHA2 hash functions
• AES symmetric encryption
• Fortuna PRNG
• Big Integers

Coming soon:

• elliptic curve cryptography
• secret sharing schemes.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/clipperz-crypto-library-and-online-password-manager

InfiView is a mapping development tool that empowers engineers to build infinite-sized Web 2.0 mind maps, network topologies, organization charts, LDAP tools and technical diagrams.

InfiView uses Ajax technology and its own unique dynamic memory management to enable developers to systematically create graphical web applications using any amount of data (from very small all the way to infinite). With InfiView-built web-applications, end-users seamlessly interact (pan, zoom, right-click for actions…) with all types of graphical data - such as network topologies, DNA sequences or genealogy charts - oblivious to the vast amounts of data available.

100% built in Bindows (www.bindows.net), InfiView is built on top of the Bindows framework which is back-end/server agnostic, and provides best-in-industry support for section-508 accessibility compliance, internationalization and localization.

Try the demos and watch the screencasts

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/infiview-interactive-ajax-graphical-maps-and-diagrams