Ajax Girl

We heard about a new “startup” yesterday. You type in a phone number and tell it how many times you would like the service to call it. The service will then call the phone that number of times.

We’re not going to say the name of it, or link to it, because it has no practical use and can be used to crank call people incessantly. The entrepreneur argues that it is useful for people trying to find a lost phone. We say, use another phone to call the lost one. Instead, he’s created a fifteen year old’s perfect crank call tool - set it to nine repeat calls, the maximum, and let it rip at 3 in the morning.

We tested it. It works. And it’s stupid.

But there’s a point here. People complain that we don’t cover enough startups here on TechCrunch, and that more (or all) that submit profiles deserved to be covered. Most aren’t anywhere near as idiotic as this service, but applying a filter does have a purpose. We see stuff like this every day, and just this once we thought we’d share one of them with you.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/104620292/

Financial news site MarketWatch added a number of new features to their site recently, including a single search box (you no longer need to look up stock symbols separately) and a new user-generated stock price predictor called MarketPerception.

The predictor is a small widget included on every stock listing page (example). Users are asked whether the stock will move up or down on the next trading day from its current price. Once a selection is made, the overall user votes are shown.

Users can also see which stocks are getting a large number of user votes on any particular day.

Last year a number of other sites began experiments in gathering user opinions on stocks to create additional content and potential revenue streams. See our articles on SocialPicks, Motley Fool CAPS and The Street’s Stockpickr for examples.

MarketPerception is a very simple tool at this point, but the company says they’ll be expanding functionality later this year. The long term goal is to develop more community features on top of the market perception rating. The finished product will most likely resemble other social stock market sites out there, with a rating system based on the accuracy of your predictions and performance of your stock portfolio.

MarketWatch was a partnership of Dow Jones and Viacom until Dow Jones bought the entire operation for $500 million in January 2005. Last November, MarketWatch had five million unique visitors and 180 million monthly page views.

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/~3/104599568/

The submission process for for the Connected Innovators program at Supernova 2007 is now open. I co-sponsored this event with Kevin Werbach from Supernova last year, and we had an excellent batch of startups present to the audience.

Here’s how it works: Companies need to submit a brief application by April 27 that summarizes what makes their product groundbreaking and buzzworthy. The overall conference theme is Defining the New Network. Twelve companies will be selected to deliver on-stage presentations during a Supernova general session. I will be providing coverage of the presentations on TechCrunch. There is a participation fee for selected companies. Additional details on selection criteria, marketing benefits and program features are available here.

You’ll be familiar with last year’s Top 12 presenters: Attensa, Ether, Lifeio, Netvibes, PostApp, PROTOMOBL, Sharpcast, SoonR, StumbleUpon, Vpod.tv, Webaroo an Zixxo.

The Connected Innovators showcase will be held June 21 at the Westin St. Francisco in San Francisco.

TechCrunch readers are eligible to receive a $200 discount via email on early bird registrations for Supernova 2007, June 20-22. The discount expires May 11. To receive the discount, email tcreg@supernova2007.com for the code.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/104590178/

Thinkmetric
From: Eli Duke

i live in seattle and recently drove up to vancouver (bc) for a friend’s bday. there was a long line at the border check, so i got out of the car and took a few pictures. i thought that you guys might appreciate this one:

it’s simple, effective, and clever; and just the right amount of each.

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Tax Preparation Software Pricing Comparison
From: Samuel Peery

I recently posted a tax software provider pricing comparison with some interesting results. I calculated and compared “out-the-door” pricing including both state and federal tax-prep and e-filing. I think you’ll find the results very interesting.

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Talk to Wesabe
From: Siddharta Govindaraj

“Talk to Jason” at Wesabe

Hi! I’m Jason Knight, the CEO and co-founder of Wesabe. Every afternoon, from 12 to 4 p.m. PST, you can reach me directly at (800) 511-8544. If you have comments about our product, questions about how it works, or just want to chat a bit about what inspired us to create Wesabe, please give me a call. Sure, I could have an intern man the phones, but I can’t think of any job more important at Wesabe right now than talking to our new members and people who are thinking of signing up.

Very cool that you can talk directly to the CEO.

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VC Failures
From: Ed Raynham

Thought you may find this interesting..

Venture Capitalists are usually quick to tell you about their successes but Bessemer Venture’s anti-portfolio tells you about the companies they turned down…apple, google, intel, paypal, ebay to name a few.

Refreshing to see a large company telling you about their failures rather than covering them up.—

In Praise of Slowness
From: Dhrumil K. Purohit

In Praise of Slowness

Why I’m recommending this: 37signals mantra is about more by doing less. This talk by Carl Honore is about getting more from life by going slower.

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Woot copy
From: Kevin O’Malley

Don’t know if you all have ever written about woot.com, but their
copywriting is consistently excellent. And funny.

I can’t help but think the sarcasm and most-important detail nature of it is a true reflection of their audience.

Example 1: The blog shows past product write-ups. Always interesting to read, and well-executed considering the context – single item, undoubtedly loyal geek-followers.

Example 2: The ‘What is Woot?’ page:

Will I receive customer support like I’m used to?
No. Well, not really. If you buy something you don’t end up liking or you have what marketing people call “buyer’s remorse,” sell it on eBay. It’s likely you’ll make money doing this and save everyone a hassle. If the item doesn’t work, find out what you’re doing wrong. Yes, we know you think the item is bad, but it’s probably your fault.

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Embracing constraints
From: Peter Hentges

Thought you’d like to see one way someone is embracing constraints: Exactly 101 word short stories.

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Washable PDA for doctors
From: Jason Turgeon

A PDA for doctors designed to fit in a shirt pocket and survive thousands of trips through disinfectant, via today’s Boston Globe.

Relevant snip: “It’s not the technology that drives this market,” Caspe said. “It’s the usability. The form and function is going to determine the success of this product.”

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Kaizen software manifesto
From: Robert Hoekman, Jr.

Since you guys have talked about kaizen and other Japanese-related approaches before, I thought you might be interested in this:

http://www.kaizenmanifesto.org/

It’s about applying kaizen to the software industry, its products, and its customer experiences. Instead of religiously following defined processes (Agile, UCD, etc), the goal is to help people see that they can look for ways to improve those things, and to find new solutions.

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Saw this in St. Louis and thought of 37s
From: B.J. Schaefer

I saw these hours posted on a breakfast/lunch restaurant in St. Louis and immediately thought of you guys.

Got an interesting link, story, or screenshot for Signal vs. Noise? Contact svn [at] 37signals [dot] com.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/335-mailbag-thinkmetric-wesabe-tax-software-etc

Worldmapper features world maps re-sized according to different values, like wealth, carbon emissions, population, etc.

GDP Wealth

Carbon Emissions

Total Population

[tx Phil]

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/314-worldmapper

Dean Edwards has followed up on his base2 library posting with another way to use base2 and rules for JavaScript Library Authors.

In “the other way” Dean shows how to use the library as library functions instead of strapping on to objects, and his library rules are:

1. Be unobtrusive
2. Object.prototype is verboten!
3. Do Not Over-extend
4. Follow Standards
5. Or Follow The Leader (Mozilla)
6. Be Flexible
7. Manage Memory
8. Eliminate Browser Sniffing
9. Small is Better
10. The Tenth Rule: Be Predictable
11. Bonus Rules: Documentation. Annoying but true., The more namespacing you use, the less likely I am to remember your phone number., Remember that potentially millions of people will be executing your code.

This is good advice whether you are writing the next Dojo, or working on your own project too. Code bases get bigger, and you don’t want to clash with your own code.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/more-base2dom-and-advice-for-writing-javascript-libraries

David Alberts of yWorks GmbH has created yFiles AJAX, a library for creating web based diagrams built on top of the Dojo Toolkit.

A couple of demos are available such as:

Graph Viewer

The Graph Viewer Demo Application
demonstrates viewing a graph with zooming,
panning, overview and additional node and edge information.

Realizing a slightly simpler version of this application is described step by step
as a tutorial in the
Developer’s Guide.

Launch Demo

Collapsible Tree

Initially, a rooted tree with many nodes is loaded into the canvas. However, most
of the nodes are not shown, because their subtrees are collapsed. The nodes are
rendered with custom icons that indicate their current state. You can collapse or
expand nodes. After an expand or collapse operation, the graph is redrawn using a
configurable layout algorithm.

Realizing a slightly simpler version of this application is described step by step
as a tutorial in the
Developer’s Guide.

Launch Demo

Graph Editor

With the
Graph Editor demo application you can add new nodes
and edges to a graph, move or delete nodes, change node labels, apply a
layout algorithm, download the current graph etc.. For details see the online help
of the application.

Launch Demo

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/yfiles-ajax-web-diagram-tool

Antony Zanetti of HylioSoft have created Click2Map, an Ajax map editor.

The application is based on Bindows, the .NET Ajax framework, and it allows you to create maps, add markers, and build out the Google Map.

I was a bit surprised at the startup time (loading X/Y), but to be fair this is an early beta.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/click2map-ajax-map-editor

James Mc Parlane has created a rich live view on the BigPond V8 Supercars 2007 site.

The application is written in JavaScript and uses Flash elements as a ‘dumb’ display terminal. This provides a simple and highly reactive coding environment coupled to lovely anti-aliasing and scaling via Flash. Each of the panels are detachable (and soon drag/swap-able) and can be made to detach, re-size and go full screen, so if you have multiple monitors, you can really have a good time

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/bigpond-v8-supercars-2007

Steffen Rusitschka is keeping the rounded corner legend alive with his new RUZEE.ShadedBorder JavaScript library.

Why another?

• JavaScript-only Photoshop(tm)-like rendering without external images
• Round corners
• Drop shadows
• Glow effects
• Borders with different widths
• Full support for liquid designs
• Anti-Aliasing
• On-hover support (except for IE 6.0)
• Disable some of the corners, e.g. bottom-left
• Change borders on-the-fly
• Real transparency - looks perfect on any background
• Cross-Browser: Firefox, Internet Explorer (>=6.0), Safari, Opera
• Non-obstrusive
• Leight-weight (7.7KB uncompressed)
• Fast (0.6s for the example on a 2.2GHz machine)
• No JavaScript library dependencies

How to

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/shadedborder-javascript-round-corners-with-drop-shadow