Ajax Girl

This morning we wrote about StumbleUpon’s site specific stumbling and Rafe Needleman’s idea of having a button on blogs that pulls up a random article. I pinged Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg (TechCrunch runs on Wordpress) after the post and asked him if anyone has created a plugin for Wordpress that does this. They hadn’t, so Matt wrote one and published it.

The plugin is available here. Click here to see a random TechCrunch post from the past, or use the icon in the far right area of the navigation bar above.

If StumbleUpon does decide to offer this functionality as a widget, we’d probably integrate it. The plugin Matt created doesn’t assign any value or ratings to posts. With StumbleUpon, it’s much more likely the random post would be interesting to the reader.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/110714213/

The most recent StumbleUpon Toolbar (v. 3.05) includes a new feature called StumbleThru, which allows users to stay on a specific web site while stumbling through pages that they might enjoy. Wikipedia, Flickr, MySpace, YouTube, Wordpress, The Onion, and CNN are some of the sites currently enabled (as are the .edu and .gov domain names).

It’s a cool way to find those YouTube videos or Onion articles that will appeal most to you. But I agree with Rafe Needleman - StumbleUpon should release this functionality through an API and let sites include a “Stumble” button. If the reader is a StumbleUpon user, it will take them to a page on the site that they’ll like. If they aren’t, it should take them to a random page on that site and can prompt them to become a StumbleUpon user to get more customized results.

Creating a link to take readers to a random post is a good idea and would only take a couple of minutes to code in WordPress (we’ll do it for fun this afternoon). If StumbleUpon gives away the functionality, my guess is a lot of sites would integrate it to increase page views.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/110669626/

Paul Graham recently proclaimed Microsoft is dead. Time will tell, but at this very moment I’d rather be Microsoft than Yahoo.

Microsoft is still a leader. They rule the OS space, they rule the corporate desktop. They remain influential in many areas. They may not rule the web, but at least they remain leaders in very profitable spaces. And they have $40 billion in the bank.

Where is Yahoo’s leadership? What are they leading in? If they are leading, are their leadership positions profitable? Is their trajectory up or down? Their revenues are relatively flat, growth is flat, it’s all flat. You can stand to be flat for awhile when you are way ahead, but when you’re #2 and flat you’re not in a good place.

And it’s not like Yahoo is being attacked on all sides. They’re not being eaten alive by a gang of rats. They are being devoured by the 900-pound Googlerilla in the room. Google’s revenue is growing at twice the rate of the Internet ad business overall and 9x faster than sales at Yahoo.

Yahoo’s woes seem like a management issue. Semel’s gotta be on the way out soon. Yahoo has a boatload of talent. Yahoo is full of good people. But they’re not being led in the right direction. That’s on Semel.

So, yeah, for now I’d rather be Microsoft than Yahoo.
What about you?

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/387-id-rather-be-microsoft-than-yahoo

Everyone wants to be a hero. Techies especially so. And there are special occasions where true glory awaits the hero. When there’s a crisis, it can pay to just carry on no matter what. Get the problem solved and celebrate victory. Winning through shear effort.

But most days are not like that. Most features need not heroes. They need realists. People who are willing to give up and walk away. Being a hero is all about sitting aside all costs and winning anyway. That’s not a prudent way to drive everyday development.

Here’s the problem: You agree that feature X can be done in two hours. But four hours into it, you’re still only a quarter of the way done. The natural instinct is to think “but I can’t give up now, I’ve already spent four hours on this!”.

So you go into hero mode. Determined to make this work, but also embarrassed that it isn’t already so. So the hero grabs his hermit cape and isolates himself from feedback. “I really need to get this done, so I’ll turn off IM, Campfire, email, and more for now”. And some times that works. Throwing sheer effort at the problem to get it done.

But was it worth it? Probably not. The feature was deemed valuable at a cost of two hours, not sixteen. Sixteen hours of work could have gotten four other things done that individually were at least as important. And you had to cut the feedback loop to avoid feeling too much shame, which is never a good thing to do.

That’s where the concept of sunk cost gives us a guide on what to do. It doesn’t what you’ve already spent. That time and money is gone. It only matters whether spending what’s left is worth it or not. Business school 101, but one of the hardest lessons to internalize.

In other words, stop being so afraid of calling it quits. You’re playing to win the full season, not a single game. Every time you play the hero card, you’re jeopardizing the next game.

Heroics are for when you have no other choice. When you can afford to take on tremendous risk because there’s no alternative. That’s probably not today.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/386-dont-be-a-hero-giving-up-is-good

Everyone wants to be a hero. Techies especially so. And there are special occasions where true glory awaits the hero. When there’s a crisis, it can pay to just carry on no matter what. Get the problem solved and celebrate victory. Winning through shear effort.

But most days are not like that. Most features need not heroes. They need realists. People who are willing to give up and walk away. Being a hero is all about sitting aside all costs and winning anyway. That’s not a prudent way to drive everyday development.

Here’s the problem: You agree that feature X can be done in two hours. But four hours into it, you’re still only a quarter of the way done. The natural instinct is to think “but I can’t give up now, I’ve already spent four hours on this!”.

So you go into hero mode. Determined to make this work, but also embarrassed that it isn’t already so. So the hero grabs his hermit cape and isolates himself from feedback. “I really need to get this done, so I’ll turn off IM, Campfire, email, and more for now”. And some times that works. Throwing sheer effort at the problem to get it done.

But was it worth it? Probably not. The feature was deemed valuable at a cost of two hours, not sixteen. Sixteen hours of work could have gotten four other things done that individually were at least as important.

That’s where the concept of sunk cost gives us a guide on what to do. It doesn’t what you’ve already spent. That time and money is gone. It only matters whether spending what’s left is worth it or not. Business school 101, but one of the hardest lessons to internalize.

In other words, stop being so afraid of calling it quits. You’re playing to win the full season, not a single game. Every time you play the hero card, you’re jeopardizing the next game. Heroics are for when you have no other choice. When you can afford to take on tremendous risk because there’s no alternative.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/386-dont-be-a-hero-giving-up-is-good-to-do

Over on my personal blog I discussed Unobtrusive JavaScript, Microformats, and the Google AJAX Feed API.

The posting discusses an example that creates a Feed Billboard using the Google AJAX Feed API released the other day.

Here is the outcome:

The fun part was creating a microformat that would degrade nicely:

I have gone into more detail over there.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/unobtrusive-javascript-microformats-and-the-google-ajax-feed-api

Scott Schiller is a great participate on Ajaxian, and works over at Yahoo!

How I hadn’t found his DHTML Arkanoid before amazes me, and it is the perfect Friday game.

This is a real labour of love. Not only did he create a great version of the game, but he stores high scores, and users can create levels. User generated content? He should sell that to the big boys!

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/arkanoid-something-to-spend-friday-on

Charlie Hubbard has released Flexjson, a lightweight JSON library for Java. Most JSON serializers mimic object serialization libraries and try to serialize the entire object graph from the object being turned into JSON. This causes problems when you want a connected object model on your server, but you can’t send that object model to the client because the serialization library will try to send the entire object graph. This is terrible for performance, causes most JSON libraries to blow up if they encounter circular references, makes it difficult to follow good OO practices, and makes it nearly impossible to use libraries such as Hibernate. Other JSON libraries require you to create a lot of boiler plate code to translate your object representation into a JSON object.

Flexjson tries to solve both of these problems by using a DSL approach to sending JSON. You don’t have to create lots of boiler plate code or modify your object model to make it work.

Examples:

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/flexjson-a-dsl-approach-to-json-for-java

Dan Yoder has released Specifications, a BDD framework built on top of Prototype.

This is different to the builtin framework that comes with Script.aculo.us.

You write a spec such as:

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/specifications-bdd-framework

After reporting a monster fiscal quarter (the company has close to $12 billion in cash sitting around now and has hired nearly 2,000 new employees this year), Google made a quiet announcement on its corporate blog tonight - they’ve acquired Swedish startup Marratech for an undisclosed price.

This is the first I’ve heard of Marratech, which is broadly in the e-meeting space and certainly competes with WebEx (recently acquired by Cisco for $3.2 billion). Users are able to communicate via text chat, VOIP and video, and share applications in a virtual meeting.

Their service requires a download, whereas most of the newly released e-meeting solutions are browser based (and therefore have less functionality). The Windows version of the software is 31 MB; the Mac version is just 9 MB. Google already has software on many computers with their GTalk, Desktop and Toolbar applications. Bundling this in isn’t unthinkable.

Google’s enterprise ambitions move forward another step.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/110558854/