Ajax Girl

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.

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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:

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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

Statsaholic (formerly Alexaholic) launched a year ago and provided much easier access to Alexa traffic data than the Alexa site itself. Statsaholic also had other features Alexa didn’t offer, like embeddable graphs and data smoothing. Others agreed, and soon started linking to Statsaholic instead of Alexa when doing traffic comparisons. At one point, Alexa was the no. 3 search result on Google for “Alexa.”

Statsaholic was not using the Alexa web service to get the data, because Alexa doesn’t offer the graph data via their web service. Amazon, which owns Alexa, could have complained or simply shut them down when it launched, but they didn’t. They actually complimented the service in a post on the Alexa blog last April.

But somewhere along the line Amazon decided they didn’t like Statsaholic and got their lawyers involved. They filed a domain name dispute earlier this year to get ownership over the Alexaholic domain name. Ron Hornbaker, the owner of the service, stopped using the alexaholic domain name and moved the service over to Statsaholic.com while the dispute was ongoing.

That didn’t appease Amazon, which then took the step of blocking Statsaholic from accessing Alexa graphs, although they left other sites doing the same thing intact. Statsaholic started getting data in other ways, and eventually Amazon just turned off all ability to hot link to their graphs from any outside site.

Meanwhile, Amazon implemented many of the Statsaholic features and pushed the graphing function to the home page of the Alexa site.

The Statsaholic side of the story is here. I’ve been playing phone tag with Amazon PR to talk about this for over a week but have been unable to do anything other than swap emails and voicemails to try to schedule a time to talk. In their defense, they say they tried to work with Statsaholic, even going so far as to “explored an acquisition” before shutting them down.

What bothers me about the situation is that Amazon sat on it for a year, complimenting the service along the way (and copying it). Then, just when the service started getting really popular, they took drastic measures to shut it down.

I’ll continue to try to talk to Amazon about the situation, and there very well could be additional facts that put this in a different light. But for now we are left without a service that many of us used regularly for research, and Amazon looks like a bit of a bully.

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The “enhancement” that Newsvine CEO Mike Davidson made to Presidential Candidate John McCain’s website was mentioned on the Daily Show Thursday evening. Lots of other mainstream press attention, too. Davidson’s shareholders should be happy - this was a major guerrilla marketing event for Newsvine.

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Yesterday I sat down with Sean Parker at his offices at the Founders Fund in San Francisco to see a demo of his new and yet-to-be-named startup (the working name for the project is Project Agape).

Parker is a larger-than-life twenty seven year old who co-founded Napster and Plaxo and was the founding president of Facebook. He’s been working full time on Project Agape for the last eight months, while still putting in the hours at Founders Fund as a Managing Partner.

Parker knows about how to apply viral principles to ideas. Half of our 1.5 hour meeting was spent discussing these principles and how to fine tune ideas to the point where they can grow exponentially. The only thing that can stop a good viral idea is when it runs out of population, he says. If Napster, Plaxo and Facebook are any example, he just might be right.

Project Agape is still under a heavy cloak of secrecy (Om Malik first got wind of the new venture a week and a half ago), although I was able to see a demo and some additional conceptual work. Parker’s goal, he says, is to apply the same ideas around virality that worked so well on his previous projects to the idea of altruism and activism.

Charities, political parties and affinity groups all rely on participation from people who share the same beliefs and ideals. But recruiting and fundraising are largely stuck in the pre-Internet era: social pressure and guilt are applied to get others to donate to that marathon for the Leukemia society, or donate time working with the homeless. Parker wants to harness those proven incentive structures use his new startup to increase their effectiveness.

New sites like Change.org and dotherightthing and Six Degrees help people talk about issues online, but they don’t go far enough in using virality to get new users and get them actually doing things. Parker wants the kind of activity around these organizations that Facebook sees - tens of thousands of new daily users and hours and hours of social interactions. The result, he says, will be a much more efficient engine for organizations to get volunteers and raise money.

The company is based in Berkeley and will make some announcements in the coming weeks, and a beta product will be available in a couple of months. Stay tuned for more.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/105299709/