Ajax Girl

News site Topix.net will relaunch this evening under their newly acquired domain name Topix.com. They are also launching a new product that will allow readers to write and edit local news articles directly.

The news was first written about by USA Today this afternoon. Topix is partly funded by USA Today’s parent company, Gannett, McClatchy and Tribune.

Topix already has local news pages for cities and towns across the United States and Canada (here’s the page for Atherton, CA). The news is auto-generated for those pages currently. Tonight, Topix will let users of the site become local editors, and write or expand on articles that will be of interest to that community.

Topix started allowing readers to leave comments on the site just over a year ago. The first editors will be selected from heavy commenters on the site.

Screen shots below.

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/~3/105923692/

Ask any self-respecting Ajax developer how they time events, and they’ll tell you “I use setTimout()” or more likely, “I use setTimeout(), duh”. However, two new Ajax patterns are making that “duh” seem just a little tenuous. One new timing technique relies on the notorious <blink> tag, the other is all about the whitespace. That’s right folks, setTimeout() is about to go the way of the fob watch.

• <blink> timing For a long time, the ignoble <blink> tag seemed destined for all the one-hit wonderness of a Vanilla Ice or an MC Hammership. Loved for a month or two, then cast aside with nought but the occasional fond memory. Yet in an unanticipated turn of events, intrepid developers have recently been asking hard questions about <blink>. “If it was really as dumb as people make out, why was its timing so precise?” asked one Ajax guru who wished to remain anonymous on the grounds that he had been consuming Red Bull for the past eight hours. Another guru in questionable state pointed out “setTimeout() isn’t all that! Did you ever try it in lynx? Total no-op!” And so it was that <blink>’s true purpose became known. Reborn as much out of frustration with setTimeout as it was with the promise of a more robust solution. No longer eye candy, but a super-precise timing mechanism. The thinking geek of 2007 embeds a single <blink> tag on the page, hides it with CSS, and arranges all application scheduling against the swift oscillations of this postmodern crystal timer.
• HTML whitespace. If you’re still working in Ajax 1.0, you probably haven’t paid much attention to the biggest portion of your HTML - the whitespace. But then, three-quarters of the world is water, and where do we devote all our attention? So it’s hardly surprising that whitespace’s virtue has largely gone unnoticed. In design, getting whitespace right is a vital task, and likewise in modern Javascript code, whitespace is everything. The secret of HTML whitespace is that programmers can use subtle variations to affect speed of processing. Say you have a script that needs to interact with an element of your page. The old, clunky, way would be to rely on document.onload. The new way is to output the element first, followed by 1-2MB of whitespace, followed by the script tag. By the time the whitespace has been processed, the element will have been placed on the page. You may object to all this whitespace consumed by this hack, but bandwidth is cheap these days and IDEs can hide it while you’re developing. So what’s the catch now, wise guy? With the trend towards parallel computation, whitespace promises a way out of the concurrency and synchronization headaches that Ajax developers often endure.

We’ve yet to see these facilities live, but then we haven’t yet seen Vanilla Ice live either and he’s doing just fine. setTimeout() is dead, long live the <blink> tag!

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/the-new-timers

Google takes a lot of time with its April Fools jokes, and they generally center around new products. Last year we saw the launch of Google Romance. This year, they have two solid fake product launches: Google TiSP (free broadband service) and Google Paper (Prints out Gmail on paper and sends it to you).

In addition to TiSP and Paper, see Google Writer, a product invented by the Google Operating System blog that will handle most of the creative parts of writing for users.

Google TiSP

Google TiSP is a free, self installed free home wireless broadband service. This goes without saying, of course, but it operates via via fiber-optic cable strung through local municipal sewage lines.

Among the requirements are a “round-front or elongated toilet providing at least 1.0 gallons per flush,” although luckily “the fiber optic cable that enables TiSP will not interfere with your toilet’s regular operations.” The service is free and ad supported:

We use information gathered by discreet DNA sequencing of your personal bodily output to display online ads that are contextually relevant to your culinary preferences, current health status and likelihood of developing particular medical conditions going forward.

Scatological references are always good for an easy laugh, at least in the U.S.

Google Paper

Google Paper is a new feature being promoted on the Gmail home page. You can request a physical copy of any email with the click of a button, and Google will deliver paper printouts to you in 2-4 days via the mail.

Like TiSP, Google Paper is also free and advertising supported. In this case, the “relevant, targeted, unobtrusive advertisements” will appear on the back of printed emails “in red, bold, 36 pt Helvetica.” Nice.

Google also promised that Google Paper is good for the environment. “Gmail Paper is made out of 96% post-consumer organic soybean sputum, and thus, actually helps the environment. For every Gmail Paper we produce, the environment gets incrementally healthier.”

This is an excellent addition to Gmail in their race with Yahoo for the best webmail product. Gmail itself was actually launched on April 1, by the way.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/105771883/

Yahoo Underground went live yesterday, although the blog post on Yodel Anecdoteal is dated April 1. April Fools joke? I have no idea. There was no PR outreach on the product prior to launch, which is rare at Yahoo. And the blog post won’t accept comments, which is also odd.

But the Underground site itself is fairly elaborate (creation of the underground.yahoo.com subdomain, and lots of original video and conent). If this is an April Fools joke it sure was a lot of work to throw away on April 2nd.

It’s purpose is to “explores America’s fringe cultures with reporting brought to life with original songs and music.” It’s run by Brad Miskell, who writes for the New York Times and seems to be an actual person who is into fringe culture. The site is integrated into Yahoo News and readers are invited to submit their own content via blog posts, flickr photos and Yahoo Video.

Yahoo Underground introductory video below:

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/105764633/