Ajax Girl

We’re getting information about a new stealth startup called Vutool. The founder is Sebastian Thrun, Director of the Stanford AI Lab. We hear that he has a team of ten or so people, most of them Stanford Ph.D. students.

Vutool is a “Google Earth” from the ground level. It is being created the hard way - a battalion of cars are traveling around major U.S. cities and taking pictures at ground level, with 6 degrees of rotation. The company calls the experience “street level immersive imagery.” Images are captured from every possible angle - the default view is as if you are in the driver’s seat.

In principle it sounds a bit like Microsoft’s Street-Side service, but on a much grander scale. Where Street Side has only a few photos every block or so, Vutool is a more realistic virtual world. One source described it as “like grand theft auto, but the real world.” Huge amounts of intellectual property were reportedly developed for the project, particularly around image processing, filtering, storage and rendering.

But the service may never launch. They were talking to a number of Silicon Valley venture capitalists, looking to raise $18 million or more in a Series A round of financing. But after receiving a number of term sheets Thrun backed out, saying the company had been acquired.

There are strong indications that Google is the acquiror, and will eventually pair Vutool with Google Earth. Users could zoom from street level to satelite view at will.

Google Metaverse may be here sooner than we think.

The vutool.com domain currently redirects to http://dent.stanford.edu/flash/start.html. Vutool.com is registered to Thrun, but there is little other interesting Whois information. Thrun did not respond to an email requesting comment.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/104842460/

New service BegForPost takes on the ethically questionable PayPerPost service that allows advertisers to pay bloggers to write about their products.

BegForPost promises none of the ethical hassles of PayPerPost. There’s no payment, just begging for coverage:

You’ve worked for months building a startup on a boostrap budget and the launch is near. How will you get an initial influx of traffic to propel your product/service into viral bliss? Don’t pay off bloggers to promote your startup, beg! Getting started is quick and easy. Fill out the form below, sit back, and wait for Internet stardom. You’re almost there!

* Completely free
* No chicken hats
* No conflicts of interest
* No annoying reality show
* No direct deployments to production
* No premature acquisition announcements

The first “begger” is Sparkmeter a “tool to help cut through the ‘08 election news.” They requesting a review on TechCrunch. Nice.

Our previous PayPerPost coverage is here. I expect a cease & desist letter from PPP to BFP to be arriving momentarily.

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/~3/104830813/

Yahoo is announcing that all Yahoo Mail users will have free unlimited email storage starting in May 2007. The current storage limit is 1 GB per account (2 GB for $20/year premium users). With this change, Yahoo leapfrogs Gmail (2.8 GB and growing) and Live.com Mail (2GB). Yahoo mail currently has 250 million global users, more than any other online service (Live.com has 228 million and Gmail has 51 million users). See this feature by feature comparison of the services for more information.

I spoke with Yahoo’s Vice President of Mail, John Kremer, this afternoon about the announcement. He says the new storage limits (or rather lack of a limit) affect all Yahoo mail users, not just users of the new beta product.

Users are subject to Yahoo’s abuse policies, which requires users to follow “normal email practices” and not engage in activities like using Yahoo mail for basic online storage (a number of services have popped up to help people use Gmail for this purpose). Abusive accounts will not be summarily deleted - users will be notified by Yahoo and/or accounts suspended, but users will still have access to the data.

Kremer says they want their customers to be satisfied and happy with the new unlimited storage feature. Users who have paid $20 to upgrade to a premium account to get 2 GB of storage will be able to get a refund if they request one.

Interesting historical information: Yahoo mail will be ten years old soon. When it launched in 1997 it included a whopping 4 MB of total storage. This was increased to 100 MB in 2004, and 1 GB in 2005.

Is Yahoo Mail now the best webmail product? Not in my opinion, even with this announcement. It has the best and fastest user interface (although many users prefer Gmail), but does not support IMAP, and POP access and forwarding are premium features (Gmail offers POP access and forwarding for free). Gmail also allows tagging of emails, a feature I find extremely useful for organizing archived mail. Still, the Yahoo Mail team seems up for a fight, and their massive lead over Gmail isn’t going anywhere soon. My bet is that more features are coming soon.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/104815392/

We were mortified by the news of Kathy’s death threats. Our Campfire was flush with wtf’s and holy sh*ts. Kathy Sierra is probably the most universally liked blogger among the 37 crew. To see her subjected to this kind of vile, despicable, criminal behavior is heartbreaking.

Hopefully the guilty will be duly punished and Kathy will be back to her usual cherry, wonderful, insightful self shortly.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/340-wishing-kathy-well

Silicon Valley based Coghead is announcing an $8 million Series B round of financing this afternoon, adding to the $3.2 million raised previously from El Dorado Ventures in March 2006. New investors American Capital and SAP Ventures invested in this round, and El Dorado participated as well.

We covered Coghead on its launch in October 2005. We have previously reviewed a number of apps in this space (sometimes referred to as the ‘online access’ space, a reference to Microsoft Access) including Dabble DB, Zoho Creator and WyaWorks. Also see our related post, Five Ways to Mix, Rip, and Mash Your Data. The premise of these web applications is that they allow non-programmers to easily build record-driven web-based applications.

The primary use of these products is to create business applications that deal with everything from task tracking through to purchase orders. What is special about CogHead is that users building applications with the product require less technical skills because the process is all drag-and-drop and visual.

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/~3/104797201/

A year after VOIP phone service Jajah launched their service, they’ve announced over 2 million registered users (Up from 1.2 announced in January) and officially announced Trevor Healy as the new CEO.

See our consumer VOIP comparison post for an overview of Jajah and some of its competitors.

Jajah is a VOIP service that gives you lower long distance rates by bridging standard phone lines with a cheaper VOIP alternative. You can place Jajah calls by clicking on your contacts through their website (desktop and mobile), Symbian client, various browswer plugins, or Google Gadget. You can try out a one time call by going to Jajah and typing in you and your contacts info. When you initiate a call by clicking on a contact, Jajah calls back your phone and your contact’s phones. The call is then routed through your phone network (land or mobile), to Jajah’s servers, and then back out through your contact’s phone. Similar to Jaxtr and Jangl you can keep your number private. Call rates very, but are in the 2.8 to 3.2 cent range and remain free between Jajah users.

The founder and former CEO Roman Scharf has stressed the company’s obsession with quality several times. They have over 250 telecom engines in over 45 countries worldwide and chose the best data carriers for their call paths in real time. They’ve done this on a relatively tighter budget ($8 million) than the competition to boot.

Recently their strategy has been focused around large business deals. Currently Dell, Logitech, and Symbian use their service, they were recently incorporated with Joyent, and are working on an anonymous call deal with a large dating site (Jangl has a deal with Match.com).

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/104757147/

Someone on Presidential hopeful John McCain’s staff is going to be in trouble today. They used a well known template to create his Myspace page. The template was designed by Newsvine Founder and CEO Mike Davidson (original template is here). Davidson gave the template code away to anyone who wanted to use it, but asked that he be given credit when it was used, and told users to host their own image files.

McCain’s staff used his template, but didn’t give Davidson credit. Worse, he says, they use images that are on his server, meaning he has to pay for the bandwidth used from page views on McCain’s site.

Davidson decided to play a small prank on the campaign this morning as retribution. Since he’s in control of some of the images on the site, he replaced one that shows contact information with a statement:

Today I anounce that I have reversed my position and come out in full support of gay mariage…particularly marriage between two passionate females.

The story is also up at Newsvine here. This reminds me of a similar situation when Microsoft used an image hosted on Flickr on one of its blogs without the permission of the owner, Niall Kennedy. Niall replaced the picture with a pornographic image, which was then published on the blog. His idea was to send a message to Microsoft on the importance of respecting licensing of IP, although some people thought it was childish.

McCain’s MySpace page is significantly higher profile than the Microsoft blog, and Davidson isn’t posting pornography to the site. He’s making a political statement while also sending a message about respecting the property rights of others. I expect the hack to be taken down very quickly, unless the wrong person is sick or out to lunch today. Either way, we’ve captured the hack above.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/104720876/

“In business, I look for economic castles protected by
unbreachable ‘moats’.”
-Warren Buffett

According to Buffett, the wider a business’ moat, the more likely it is to stand the test of time.

In days of old, a castle was protected by the moat that circled it. The wider the moat, the more easily a castle could be defended, as a wide moat made it very difficult for enemies to approach. A narrow moat did not offer much protection and allowed enemies easy access to the castle. To Buffett, the castle is the business and the moat is the competitive advantage the company has. He wants his managers to continually increase the size of the moats around their castles.

When looking to purchase a business, Buffett pays careful attention to a business he understands not just in terms of what the business does but also of “what the economics of the industry will be 10 years down the road, and who will be making the money at that point.” He is “also looking for enduring competitive advantages.” This, in a nutshell, is what makes a company great: the width of the moat around the company’s core business.

Morningstar’s site explains why the concept of economic moats is a cornerstone of its stock-investment philosophy and describes some of the main features of wide moats.

Low-Cost Producer: Firms that can figure out ways to provide a good or service at a relatively low cost have an advantage because they can undercut their rivals on price. Dell Computer is a textbook example of a low-cost producer because its large size allows it to negotiate favorable component costs, and its direct-sales distribution system allows it to sell PCs more efficiently than rivals who use resellers.

High Switching Costs: Porter defines switching costs as a barrier to entry that involves the one-time inconvenience or expense a buyer incurs to change over from one product or service to another. Buyers in these cases often need a big improvement in either price or performance to make the switch to another product worthwhile. Medical-device companies Biomet and Stryker benefit from high switching costs because, for example, a surgeon would have have to forgo the comfort and familiarity of doing procedures with one artificial joint product. And because the surgeon would have to be trained to use competing products, he or she would also have to contend with lost time and money resulting from not performing as many surgical procedures.

The Network Effect: The network effect occurs when the value of a particular good or service increases for both new and existing users as more people use that good or service. It can also occur when other firms design products that compliment an existing product, thereby enhancing that product’s value. For example, the fact that there are literally millions of people using eBay is the thing that both makes eBay’s service incredibly valuable and makes it all but impossible for another company to duplicate its service.

Intangible Assets: Intangible assets generally refer to the intellectual property that firms use to prevent other companies from duplicating a good or service. Of course, patents are the most common economic moat in this category. In techland, Qualcomm’s patents give it a strong moat in the cellphone industry…A strong brand name can also be an economic moat—just consider consumer-product companies like Coca-Cola and Gillette.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/333-warren-buffett-on-castles-and-moats

“In business, I look for economic castles protected by
unbreachable ‘moats’.”
-Warren Buffett

According to Buffett, the wider a business’ moat, the more likely it is to stand the test of time.

In days of old, a castle was protected by the moat that circled it. The wider the moat, the more easily a castle could be defended, as a wide moat made it very difficult for enemies to approach. A narrow moat did not offer much protection and allowed enemies easy access to the castle. To Buffett, the castle is the business and the moat is the competitive advantage the company has. He wants his managers to continually increase the size of the moats around their castles.

When looking to purchase a business, Buffett pays careful attention to a business he understands not just in terms of what the business does but also of “what the economics of the industry will be 10 years down the road, and who will be making the money at that point.” He is “also looking for enduring competitive advantages.” This, in a nutshell, is what makes a company great: the width of the moat around the company’s core business.

Morningstar’s site explains why the concept of economic moats is a cornerstone of its stock-investment philosophy and describes some of the main features of wide moats.

Low-Cost Producer: Firms that can figure out ways to provide a good or service at a relatively low cost have an advantage because they can undercut their rivals on price. Dell Computer is a textbook example of a low-cost producer because its large size allows it to negotiate favorable component costs, and its direct-sales distribution system allows it to sell PCs more efficiently than rivals who use resellers.

High Switching Costs: Porter defines switching costs as a barrier to entry that involves the one-time inconvenience or expense a buyer incurs to change over from one product or service to another. Buyers in these cases often need a big improvement in either price or performance to make the switch to another product worthwhile. Medical-device companies Biomet and Stryker benefit from high switching costs because, for example, a surgeon would have have to forgo the comfort and familiarity of doing procedures with one artificial joint product. And because the surgeon would have to be trained to use competing products, he or she would also have to contend with lost time and money resulting from not performing as many surgical procedures.

The Network Effect: The network effect occurs when the value of a particular good or service increases for both new and existing users as more people use that good or service. It can also occur when other firms design products that compliment an existing product, thereby enhancing that product’s value. For example, the fact that there are literally millions of people using eBay is the thing that both makes eBay’s service incredibly valuable and makes it all but impossible for another company to duplicate its service.

Intangible Assets: Intangible assets generally refer to the intellectual property that firms use to prevent other companies from duplicating a good or service. Of course, patents are the most common economic moat in this category. In techland, Qualcomm’s patents give it a strong moat in the cellphone industry…A strong brand name can also be an economic moat—just consider consumer-product companies like Coca-Cola and Gillette.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/333-warren-buffett-and-wide-moats

Ryan Johnson is up to his tricks again. This time he has created Control.Modal, an unobtrussive CSS modal window based on the Prototype library.

It weighs in at around 8K and hit a sweet spot for some functionality. The Prototype
window class was overkill, and he needed more than just a lightbox).

Example Code

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/controlmodal-unobtrusive-css-modal-windows-and-lightboxes-for