Ajax Girl

Adobe continues to impress with the direction that it is pushing with open products. Adobe Flex is being open sourced under a Mozilla-style license.

This announcement is more than a “hey, now you can peak at the source code” move. Flex has shipped with source code for quite some time, and some core members of the community have been able to find bugs themselves. Moving to an open source development model now completes the roadmap, allowing for these developers to contribute their skills.

Changing to an open source development model isn’t a trivial task. As such, it will take some time to implement everything that Adobe wants too. Putting a copyright on code is one thing, openings up a bug database and subversion is another. Cultivating the community is the hard part, and Adobe is carefully trying to do this right. I think that they understand that this will only be a true success if a rich community of contributors grows out of this. When talking to them, they often mentioned how the Flex development team will bring in outside developers who will become just as much a part of the product as the Adobe employees. I hope this happens.

A few things are opening up here. The core Flex framework itself, the debugger, the XML compiler, and the components themselves, some of which are used in the Apolo framework.

I hope that this is a success, and prooves to the Adobe boardroom that it should continue in their path to opening up other products within Adobe. Many would like to see a fully open Flash (although there are good reasons not to).

What do you think about this announcement. Do you care about an open Flex? Do you want an open Flash?

Podtech has published a video interview on the topic:

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/adobe-announces-that-it-will-be-opening-flex-under-mozilla-license

Telephone management startup GrandCentral launched a mobile version of the service yesterday, although they have not announced the product yet. The mobile site is available at grancentral.com/mobile. It will not load properly from a desktop browser, but it works just fine from all the mobile devices I tested. I assume they are blocking normal browsers to keep it quiet until the official launch.

Like Gmail’s mobile site, GrandCentral Mobile is a lightweight version of your normal account and the primary use of it will be to review and administer voicemails. All of the normal functionality is included (view and play messages, reply, forward, flag, delete, etc.) You can also access your address book and make basic ringing and greeting account changes. Voicemails are in MP3 format, so your phone will need to be able to play MP3s if you want to listen to them.

The interface provides “visual voicemail” which is one of the anticipated features of the upcoming iPhone (see our coverage of GotVoice from last month, with similar features).

Another cool feature of GrandCentral: set your cell phone voicemail feature to forward calls to your GrandCentral phone number. That way all of your voicemails will be kept in one place even if people still use your cell phone number. GrandCentral does not simply re-ring your cell when you make this setting.

Our recent coverage of the company is here.

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/~3/111959874/

It looks like Y Combinator funded Scribd, a “YouTube for documents” is close to closing its first round of financing, possibly from Redpoint Ventures. Om says this is done; our sources say it will close next week. The rumored valuation of more than $10 million is very high, although the current trend is for entrepreneurs to take big money when it’s offered.

We’ve been tracking them since early last month when they launched, and Nick Gonzalez recently noted that their growth spiked immediately from launch and hasn’t slowed down much since.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/111932559/

A new version of Protoype has dropped.

Prototype 1.5.1 RC 3 gives us features such as:

• Ajax.Requests now supports per-request onCreate callbacks. [#8011]
• JSON strings are automatically stripped of their security delimiters (if present) before eval. More details on this security issue here (PDF document). [#7910]
• all toJSON methods now generate YAML-loadable JSON. [#7883]
• Event.element now returns an extended element. [#7870]
• Linefeed normalisation is now prevented in IE on String#escapeHTML and String#unescapeHTML for consistency with other browsers.
• Added a new Element.childElements method (shorter alias of Element.immediateDescendants).
• Added a new Element.firstDescendant method (same as using Element.down with no arguments).

Performance improvements:

• Faster $$() utility and Element.getElemementsBySelector method. [#7873], [#7901]
• Optimized Element.next, Element.down, Element.up and Element.previous DOM methods. [#7848]
• Speed improvements of String#escapeHTML and String#unescapeHTML in IE and Safari.

And plenty of bug fixes. You can see the gory details in the change log.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/prototype-151-rc-3-released

Dustin Diaz has written an article on the Seven JavaScript Techniques You Should Be Using Today.

Dustin delves into:

• Branch when possible: When performance matters, it’s often advisable to branch out your functions in a way that ensures processor-intensive or memory-hungry tasks won’t be frequently repeated. One of the most common scenarios where this situation can arise is handling browser differences
• Make Flags: var w3 = !!(document.getElementById && document.createElement); The not operators (!!) simply perform a Boolean conversion. The first operator changes the type of the object on the right to a Boolean, and then the second will just reverse whatever the first returned
• Make bridges: function getUserNameByIdBridge (e) { getUserNameById(e.id); }
• Try Event Delegation: Read Christian Heilmann’s work
• Include methods with your getElementsByWhatever: Use callbacks. getElementsBySelector(’#example p a’, function(el) {}
• Encapsulate your code: (function() { ..... })();

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/seven-javascript-techniques-you-should-be-using-today

“The Dance of Life: The Other Dimension of Time” by Edward T. Hall studies “how people are tied together and yet isolated by hidden threads of rhythm and walls of time.” It contains this fascinating passage describing how humans sync up with each other:

Rhythm is basic to synchrony. This principle is illustrated by a film of children on a playground. Who would think that widely scattered groups of children in a school playground could be in sync. Yet this is precisely the case. One of my students selected as a project an exercise in what can be learned from film. Hiding in an abandoned automobile, which he used as a blind, he filmed children in an adjacent school yard during recess. As he viewed the film, his first impression was the obvious one: a film of children playing in different parts of the school playground. Then — watching the film several times at different speeds, he began to notice one very active little girl who seemed to stand out from the rest. She was all over the place. Concentrating on the girl, my student noticed that whenever she was near a cluster of children the members of that group were in sync not only with each other but with her. Many viewings later, he realized that this girl, with her skipping and dancing and twirling, was actually orchestrating movements of the entire playground! There was something about the pattern of movement which translated into a beat — like a silent movie of people dancing. Furthermore, the beat of this playground was familiar! There was a rhythm he had encountered before. He went to a friend who was a rock music aficionado, and the two of them began to search for the beat. It wasn’t long until the friend reached out to a nearby shelf, took down a cassette and slipped it into a tape deck. That was it! It took a while to synchronize the beginning of the film with the recording — a piece of contemporary rock music — but once started, the entire three and a half minutes of the film clip stayed in sync with the taped music! Not a beat or a frame of the film was out of sync!

…When he showed his film to our seminar, however, even though his explanation of what he had done was perfectly lucid, the members of the seminar had difficulty understanding what had actually happened. One school superintendent spoke of the children as “dancing to the music”; another wanted to know if the children were “humming the tune.” They were voicing the commonly held belief that music is something that is “made up” by a composer, who then passes on “his creation” to others, who, in turn, diffuse it to the larger society. The children were moving, but as with the symphony orchestra, some participants’ parts were at times silent. Eventually all participated and all stayed in sync, but the music was in them. They brought it with them to the playground as a part of shared culture. They had been doing that sort of thing all their lives, beginning with the time they synchronized their movements to their mother’s voice even before they were born.

Related: “Sync” by Steven Strogatz explores “the mysterious synchrony achieved by fireflies that flash in unison by the thousands, and the question of what makes our own body clocks synchronize with night and day and even with one another…The author traces how the isolated and often accidental discoveries of researchers are beginning to gel into the science of synchrony, and he amply illustrates how the laws of mathematics underlie the universe’s uncanny capacity for spontaneous order.” Here’s a review of the book and an interview with Strogatz.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/390-hall-and-strogatz-on-getting-in-sync

Jesse Kuhnert was looking at the Google Rounded Corners and decided to implement his own, using the same URL structure.

You can see his demo at work, and you can add corners by doing this:

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/rounded-and-shaded-corners

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Y Combinator can now consider itself twice flattered. Y Combinator’s funding methodology of investing a small amount of money across a wide array of young entrepreneurs has already inspired other programs, such as TechStars out of Colorado.

And earlier this week, Y Combinator was cloned again, this time in Europe. YEurope (not affiliated with Y Combinator) launched its own similar program for European internet and communication technology startups. The choice of the name launched a small flame war on Y Combinator’s news site, but understandably so. The program not only copied the “Y” and front page slide show (ironically a product of a Y Combinator startup), but also the entire application.

But, those details get in the way of what YEurope is really trying to do, which is encourage entrepreneurial spirit in Europe. Paul Böhm started the project after his own frustrated experiences financing a “social sorting” startup (detailed in his comments). A recent study by the Aho Group, chaired by the Former Prime Minister of Finland, echoes his concerns at the state European investment in innovation. After closing shop on his startup, Böhm went back to his original work in security consulting and started a non-profit project center called Metalab, which will house the quality time and lectures selected applicants will get with the entrepreneurial community .

Like Y Combinator and TechStars, YEurope invests in startups based on the number of founders (1-3, 5000€/each), and taking a 2-10% stake in the company. They plan on accepting 8 startups, who will travel to Vienna to build their companies. Their application drive ends May 15th.

We applaud the initiative. Perhaps a different and less confusingly-similar name would have been a better choice.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/111792281/

Vancouver-based EQO, makers of a mobile VoIP and IM client, just closed a $9 million second round financing on top of their $4 million CDN (~$3.5 US) series A financing. The round was made by existing investors GrowthWorks and BDC Capital, with new investor, Ventures West, taking the lead. EQO is a J2ME application that runs on over 450 phones across all the major carriers that functions kind of like Meebo for your mobile.

EQO lets you chat on AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, Google, Jabber, and Skype IM networks as well as place calls over Skype (Skype plug-in required). To use the IM client, you enter your credentials into your mobile phone, which logs you on to the services using your data network. Skype calls are placed through Skype and an EQO plug-in on your computer. When you want to call a Skype contact, or other PSTN number, your phone sends a data message to Skype on your computer to set up the call. When the call is ready, your computer calls back your phone over the voice network using SkypeOut. This is the same as SoonR’s product.

There have been several startups pursuing Skype on mobile phones, including another Canadian startup, Mobivox. However, Skype has been endorsing iSkoot as their mobile partner, taking much of the wind out of these companies’ sails. GigaOm has some good coverage on the subject.

EQO plans on using the new money to expand their team, internationalization, and consumer reach. We got a first taste of their developing consumer facing portion of their product back in November when they launched an embeddable widget that lets your friends send you multi media messages from your web page.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/111788737/

Newsvine has relaunched itself. The “evergreen” release empowers the user to create a newspaper that fits their taste.

You will now see:

• That you can drag and drop content around the page
• You can add news sources
• You see how live the web stream is

The live piece is a little disorientating (but you can of course just click the X and be done).

The cool Ajax features are done using YUI, and there are age old hacks hidden in a view source, such as:

Just having an unbeforeunload event handler — regardless of whether or not it actually does anything, regardless of whether or not you spawn a dialog box or not, even if the entire function declaration consists entirely of just { } — just defining an event handler will prevent the page from being cached — ever.

As a matter of fact, even if you allow page caching, the page will be not be cached. Having an onbeforeunload event means the page will be re-built every single time it is accessed. Javascripts will re-run, server-side scripts will be re-run, the page will be built as if the user was hitting it for the very first time, even if the user got to the page just by hitting the back or forward button.

I have always liked the look of Newvine. It is great to see the relaunch.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/newsvine-live-evergreen-is-forever