Ajax Girl

Social music site Finetune (profiled here along with competitors) launched their Apollo-based desktop music player this evening. To use it you must download and install the Apollo runtime on your Mac or PC, and then install FineTune. Links to both are here. After installation, you can run the Finetune web service on your desktop, outside of the browser.

The player has been around in beta for a couple of months now (see Ryan Stewart’s review here). It has a number of advantages over Pandora, including playlists with songs on demand (the playlist must have a minimum of 45 songs), and the desktop client is a great addition as well. In my opinion Pandora is still superior to Finetune when it comes to finding related music that you might like. But Finetune wins flat out on design and user experience.

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/~3/107923858/

Salesforce released a new content management platform this evening, called Apex Content. It allows customers to build applications around unstructured “documents” such as office documents, HTML, audio/video and email files and then integrate those applications into other Salesforce applications.

The technology behind Apex Content was originally developed by Koral Technologies, which Salesforce acquired in March 2007. As an aside, Salesforce has made a habit of acquiring companies that create Salesforce applications. Last year they bought Keiden Corporation, another company with an Appexchange application they liked.

In a discussion I had today with Salesforce VP Product Management Woodson Martin, he stressed that they looked for best of breed features in many consumer web applications in building the platform. Many of these features shine in the first application on the platform, called ContentExchange, which lets users organize documents by tags and share them within the enterprise.

Documents can be uploaded, downloaded, and shared within project “workspaces”. Versioning support is built in, along with the ability to tag, rate, comment and get automated file recommendations based on the document’s meta data. User can also subscribe to documents via RSS (based on tag, author, etc.). Salesforce uses an example - a user in the legal department wants to know when any new documents are created on Sarbanes Oxley compliance, and can receive them automatically by subscribing.

Each project workspace will support more structured workflow as well, allowing users to check documents in and out, create multiple versions, and define the required action steps in a document’s workflow (approval, task assignment, etc.). It is also integrated with Salesforce’s CRM application, allowing users to attach documents to the CRM records they already have.

The application’s AJAX interface is relatively plain, consisting tabs for managing your requested workflow tasks, searching files, contributing content, managing subscriptions, running reports, and viewing dashboards. The content tab, where you manage search files, consists of a simple file list, tag cloud, and recent activity. The file list can be sorted by name, type, your subscriptions, file size, author, and modification date, or selected by tag from the tag cloud. The general search functions searches all text included in any uploaded document as well as the metadata. Mousing over a file gives a preview of its meta data (title, rating, tags, description, etc.). They’re also building out a file preview system, which currently only pops up a Flash preview of PowerPoint slide shows.

ContentExchange is a hosted, stand-alone enterprise content management system (ECM). This puts them firmly in competition with Microsoft’s Sharepoint, ECM’s Documentum, Hummingbird, IBM, FileNet, Corel Lightning, and Oracle, which acquired Stellant last November for $440 million. However, Saleforce’s simple approach to document management by tags is relatively unique in an industry filled with dense whitepapers on “Unified Enterprise Content Management” systems. Pricing is yet to be announced.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/107878150/

Last week we started a contest to give away three free passes to the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco on April 15-18, valued at $1,500 each. The rules were simple: dig out the worst post in TechCrunch history and write about why it’s so bad.

We’ve gone through the submissions and have carefully chosen the ten most creative posts (we did not include a couple of submissions where the writers said they weren’t interested in the tickets, and we decided former TechCrunch writer Marshall Kirkpatrick wasn’t eligible to win even though he wrote an excellent post).

We’re conducting a reader poll to determine the top three submissions. This isn’t scientific and it’s possible to game it; however, any obvious mass-gaming will make that submission ineligible to win.

In no particular order, here are the finalists:

• Techcrunch, Go Back to the Basics
• New Direction for TechCrunch
• Delusions of skill and of grandeur
• Trashing TechCrunch
• Techcrunch Trashing (Road to Web 2.0 Expo)
• How to Read TechCrunch
• ZapZap What?
• TechCrunch Contest
• A Sucker is Born Every Minute…
• TechCrunch’s worst post

Here are the ones that just missed the cutoff:

• To All the TechCrunch Haters (too nice)
• TechCrunch Contest Submission (too short)
• Criticism Of Arrington’s Prejudice Against My Religion (good post, but I am currently being accused of being a Google-lover, so missed the mark)
• Adobe Apollo - doesn’t quite cut it.. (too logical, not enough trashing)
• Getting editorial coverage to launch your startup… (zzzzzz - nice trademark infringement though)
• PayPerPost > (TechCrunch * 1000) (the anger just didn’t seem genuine)
• Trash TechCrunch? I’ll Choose the Business Perspective (of course) (too nice)
• Content streams for online TV (too nice)
• Where’s my flying car? (angry his post on TC didn’t result in a buyout. heh.)

Please vote for the post you like the best. The writers of the top three posts will receive a pass to the Web 2.0 Expo. Voting ends in roughly 48 hours - at 6 pm PST on Wednesday, April 11.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/107838972/

Did you know there are a lot of third-party products that integrate with Basecamp?

From time trackers to billing to mobile apps to widgets… And there are more on the way. Stay tuned!

You can extend your own product to work with Basecamp by using the Basecamp API.

Thanks to everyone who’s put in the time to make their product work well with Basecamp. Our customers really do appreciate it.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/362-the-basecamp-ecosystem-grows

It took just over five years, but Apple has sold its 100 millionth iPod. iTunes is keeping up its share of the bargain, too. 2.5 billion songs, 50 million TV shows and over 1.3 million movies have been purchased through the service.

Other interesting statistics: 4,000 iPod accessories have been created, and more than 70 percent of 2007-model US automobiles offer iPod connectivity.

See our recent coverage around iTunes beginning to sell DRM-free music as well.

Will Apple sell 100 million iPhones by the end of 2012?

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/107818341/

We’re psyched to launch our first release of Twitterverse tonight after working on the idea for the last couple of weeks and then the last 48 hours straight.

Twitterverse is a mashup and a visualization layer for Obvious‘ hot new product, Twitter, a “sophisticated, device-agnostic, social message routing system that nobody realizes they need until they try it,” as Biz Stone so aptly described.

We’re self-proclaimed Twitter addicts.  It’s given us a glimpse into the lives of so many and let us share those moments in time, both mundane and magnificent, that otherwise would have gone unnoticed.  Where blogging gave us a similar connection to the thoughts of individuals worldwide, Twitter is capturing these little moments in time - much like a photograph momentarily stops and captures time visually. This power to make the invisible, visible, is something that’s always intrigued us regardless of the medium.  These moments show us that our thoughts and actions are interwoven and unique, and that our desire to stay within each other’s attention periphery is what makes us human.  The 140 character format of Twitter also lends itself to a specific style of prose or poetry that readily displays one’s personality.

As soon as we got on Twitter, our first thought was, “what’s everybody on Twitter doing?” We wanted to see a visualization that showed text/content overlaps and popular words used by people over any timeframe.  In the spirit of Hackers and Painters, we threw together a mashup to show this view into the content. 

In its current form, Twitterverse displays popular words based on time and popularity. We’re pulling data every minute from the public timeline RSS feed as it updates. The data is parsed by word match, eliminating certain types of words, and a script generates the cloud based on time frame and popularity.  We’ll be adjusting the algorithm frequently as we get more data, as well as limiting out certain words (or display names).  For now, words are displayed based on being repeated a certain number of times during the specified timeframe.

Even at this basic level, you can start to get a sense of our collective activity and the general zeitgeist of the day.  For example, since we cleared our test data and started re-collecting data off the public timeline on Sunday, April 8 at 5:40pm PST, we started to see a shift from people twittering about “easter” early in the day to a growing number of people twittering about “sopranos” as the night progressed.  You can imagine checking in daily to see what topics arise.

We have a full list of features that we’ve considered and that we’ll be adding, both in terms of user functionality (eg. login and navigate in your own Twitter theme) as well as other visualizations of data and word types. 

Keep up to date by subscribing to our blog RSS feed.

You can follow us on Twitter here:

http://www.twitter.com/tw1tterverse (for news, features, updates)

And here:

      

We hope you enjoy Twitterverse!  Let us know what you think.  The name, Twitterverse, is a play on both our focus on the content and verse being created on Twitter, as well as the community and cosmos that makes up the Twitter[uni]verse.

If you’re a developer or a server expert and would like to help out and get involved, please get in touch!  We’d like to send out a special thanks to Andrew Weaver and Ver Pangonilo for their great scripts.

Twitterverse is the first project by Ideacodes Labs, a new experimental component of our web consultancy. 

Twitter on!

Emily and Max

Source: Emily Chang
Original Article: http://www.emilychang.com/go/weblog/comments/twitterverse-launches/

Making Every Pixel Count talks about the importance of photography at real estate sites. “It’s so important to have photos that are professionally presented,” says Rosalind Clarke, a senior sales associate with the Corcoran Group. “If things look shoddy or unprofessional, not only are buyers going to find the property unappealing, they’re going to associate you with being shoddy and unprofessional.”

A Realtors’ association survey found that when it comes to web features that buyers consider “very useful,” 83 percent cited pictures, 81 percent cited detailed property information and 60 percent cited virtual tours. (I bet the tours figure is low because few sites offer them. I’d much rather see a video walkthrough of a place than a couple of still shots.)

Below are some example photos (befores are first, afters are second) from the article and accompanying slideshow. They show the difference good equipment, a wide-angle lens, and a sharp eye for composition can make.

A general photography rule of thumb is the closer the subject, the better the photo. But in these photos you can see the impact of taking a few steps back (or using a wide-angle lens to give that impression). It gives the viewer more context and makes the place seem more spacious.

Notice the impact of removing the loud green couch on the right.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/356-real-estate-photos-worth-more-than-a-thousand-words

This is definitely in the double-check department.

JSASM is an x86 assembler written in less than 1000 lines of JavaScript.

This sample version has 80+ opcode variations. My current version has 727 opcode variations (7000+ lines 411kb document for desktops only) created through an automation, and I am slowly verifing opcodes and correcting where nesseary (and yes, there is a lot of nessecity). As is, JSASM can create simple, operable, com files, but the opcode results should be verrified before executing any file.

JSASM will eventually include defines, labels, subroutines, macros, etc. along with utility operations (open, saveas…).

Note this is a view of a very raw work - right now JSASM is very strict, inneficient, and with no built in operational help if you want to jump you’ll need to count bytes and specify target memory locations.
If you want to use this script please let us know.

An interesting experiment. Can anyone think of practical uses?

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/jsasm-for-when-you-need-a-x86-assembler-in-javascript

Ten Ships has a Jungle Gym site that showcases their products.

It is an example of a “feels like Flash” site that is built using Mootools for effects. If you take a peak under the hood via View Source you will see how simple it all is. A bit of markup here, some fly-in effects there, and Bobs your Uncle.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/ten-ships-jungle-gym-showcase

Getting a widget onto a website, whether its a blog or a MySpace page or anything else, is a bit of a pain. Users generally have to copy an embed code, log into their website, and paste it into the appropriate place. While that hasn’t proven to be an insurmountable obstacle, widget startups that have found ways to make it easier for users to add widgets to their sites have seen significantly higher growth rates v. their competitors.

Slide, RockYou and Photobucket were early experimenters in this space. Instead of forcing users to do the cut and paste, they simply asked them to input their MySpace (or other social network) credentials and then put the widget onto the site directly, on their behalf. When they first started doing this in 2006 everyone expected MySpace to cut them off for security reasons, but that never happened. MySpace let the companies log in as users and publish the widgets. Slide, RockYou and Photobucket saw growth explode. Competitor FilmLoop, who chose not to offer this feature, stagnated and is now in the DeadPool.

But offering this feature is a bit of a hassle. There are a number of large social networks to deal with, and they occasionally change their APIs or login procedures. When that happens, the feature breaks until changes are made. So most widget companies today simply stick to the tried and true “cut and paste” approach to widget proliferation.

Enter Gigya, an Israeli startup that launched a tool in November 2006 that allows people to email widgets to others instead of just posting them on websites. Their initial product is doing well, they say. And now they are launching a new product called Wildfire that will allow widget producers to directly embed their widgets into the bigger social networks (MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Hi5, Xanga, Blogger and Tagworld are currently supported). There is a do-it-yourself option for small widget startups, and they are working directly with some of the larger ones.

Once Wildfire is implemented with a partner widget site, users simply select the social network they use, type in their credentials and the area of the site they want it to appear, and hit submit. The widget will then be placed on their MySpace or other social network page. I’ve embedded a very high level overview video of the service below.

Snapvine and Bolt/GoFish have already integrated Wildfire into their sites. A number of other widget startups will be launching with Wildfire in the next week.

Gigya isn’t charging partners for the service, saying they have plans for expansion into mobile and other areas where they can begin to generate revenue. Co-founder and CMO Rooly Eliezerov says they want Gigya to be a platform for widgets, and their first two products (Gigya and Wildfire) are just the beginning.

The company has done a lot without spending much money to date. They’ve raised just $600,000 in a single financing round from Benchmark Capital and First Round Capital in November 2006. Even though the round was small, those are tier-one investors who must see a good long term business plan.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/107687578/