Ajax Girl

Personalized desktop startup Pageflakes has long offered collaborative desktop sharing, allowing users to share pages within a private group, edited by multiple people, or published to the world. From Wednesday the service gets an overhaul complete with a new name specific to group pages: Pagecasts, which the company describes as “the intersection of personalized pages with social media”.

Pagecasts launch with impressive numbers, over 100,000 Pagecasts will be available in the Pageflakes Pagecast directory. The new release includes stronger indexing tools that provide improved access to publicly available group pages.

Users can use Pagecasts to easily and quickly mashup a multimedia page with interactive Flakes (widgets) that enable them to interact with others.

The potential uses for the service are broad. Examples include teachers educating students, families reaching out across the globe, political opinions being voiced, fans expressing their love for their favorite teams and celebrities, small business owners reaching new customers, professionals exchanging ideas, and even children being adopted from Africa.

Scheduled for June, Pageflakes next release will see new customization tools that include advanced theming.

Discloure: Pageflakes is a TechCrunch sponsor

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/118902042/

Music streaming service Pandora has had its ups and downs over the last two years since launching. People love to listen to their personalized radio stations that get more and more tailored as you tell it what you like and don’t like. But recent changes to the royalty rates they must pay the RIAA for playing music over the Internet will be going up drastically in the coming years. And licensing complications have led them to block out all non-U.S. listeners.

Tonight, however, Pandora and its users are celebrating. At a 7 pm meeting for press at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, they just announced a bunch of new features:

Pandora For Sprint

In their first mobile deal, Pandora is offering to stream radio stations on a number of Sprint handsets via pre-installed or downloaded software (take your Sprint phone browser to Pandora.com and you will be prompted to download the client). This is free for 30 days. After that you must have a Pandora premium account, which costs $3/month (this also removes ads from Pandora.com when you listen there).

Pandora For Sonos

Sonos now supports Pandora, so you can stream Pandora music through your normal home sound system. Sonos has been aggressive about getting deals done with partners. They launched with Rhapsody last year, and announced support for Microsoft DRM earlier this year - meaning music from AOL Music Now, MTV Networks’ URGE, Napster, Wal-Mart, Yahoo! Music and the Zune Marketplace now play on Sonos devices.

The State of Pandora

Pandora has also redesigned its website to better integrate the listening and community features. The company says they now have 6.9 million registered listeners who have played 4.7 billion songs and voted up or down half a billion times. This makes them, they say, the third largest Internet radio station in the world. They play 94% of their entire catalog every day, so they are dipping far into the long tail of music.

Pandora also invited some of their heaviest users to the event tonight. On average, they say, their heavy users listen to Pandora for 18 hours/week.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/118873459/

Business 2.0’s Paul Sloan has been digging into the .CM domain name scam. A domain name broker managed to convince the government of Cameroon, which controls .cm, to do a deal where any mis-typed domain name, like Google.cm (instead of google.com), takes the visitor to an advertising-filled landing page (the ads are served by Yahoo).

The .CM pages are served based on a wildcard. If the domain has not been registered, the user is redirected to agoga.com. Since the redirects are taking place via a wildcard, and domains are not actually being registered, there is little trademark holders can do to fight this (other than register the domain themselves).

This is actually one of the cleaner scams occurring in the extremely dirty domain name business. ICANN, which oversees top level domains like .com, .net and .info, has no oversight or regulatory powers over the two-letter country code domains like .cm. It’s up to the individual countries to decide what is ethical and what isn’t. And when money is thrown at these small countries, it seems that they have little hesitation in giving control of their namespace to a relatively unknown speculator.

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/~3/118851704/

Here’s an odd story. Google just took a $3.9 million stake in a biotech company called 23andMe Inc. The company was co-founded by Anne Wojcicki, who married Google co-founder Sergey Brin earlier this month.

The company is going to help people take DNA tests to get more information on their genetic health.

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/~3/118825008/

Joost has created our very own signup page for Joost invitations. Just go there and get one. There are 10,000 to start (proving that Joost loves us just half as much as GigaOm, but oh well), and more will come later.

This is much easier than our previous method of giving out invitations on the TechCrunch Forums. Thanks, Joost.

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/~3/118802649/

A year ago, I posted this article showing a count of 134 Ajax frameworks, according to the frameworks area on AjaxPatterns.org.

Today, a recount shows there are 210 Ajax frameworks and libraries listed on the site - the real figure is probably much higher, and by the same token, some of those listed may well be past expiry date. And there’s probably a miscount or two in there, or a duplicated framework - so take it all with a grain of salt! In any event, this means around 1.5 new frameworks per week, a little less than the previous period (around 1 every 3 days from December, 2005 to May, 2006). This time round, there’s a more detailed breakdown available as a Google Spreadsheet, counting by language and framework category. There are 79 pure-Javascript frameworks and 131 server-side frameworks, up from 58 and 76 last year.

Pure Javascript

Server-Side

TOTAL 210

The Ruby count caught my eye: one, but it’s a biggie :).

What does this mean? That a Java developer has 44 frameworks and libraries to choose from? No, the more accurate answer would be around 130-odd. That’s 44 Java, around 8 multi-language (most of the multi-language frameworks offer Java plus one or more other languages) and 79 Javascript frameworks. If you’re still rolling your own XMLHttpRequests or visual effects, now might be a good time to start investigating the alternatives.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/210-ajax-frameworks-and-counting

Queplix has open sourced a GWT application called QueWeb Customer Care.

The application is an example of a desktop-looking app, with a rich tree based view that ties into a lot of data munging.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/queweb-customer-care-gwt-application

[On Writing posts offer up interesting copy from around the web.]

SORBS Dynamic User and Host List
SORBS is the “Spam and Open Relay Blocking System.” Check out the site’s perplexing explanation of how to get deleted from the Dynamic User and Host List:

Anyone else may request delisting of addresses or netblocks provided that reverse DNS naming is set to indicate static assignment. SORBS will consider unique names that are not part of a generic naming scheme, or a generic naming scheme with an indication of staticness (we prefer the word “static” being included in the names, but will accept any existing ISP convention if the ISP just informs us of it) as proof of static assignment. Also, the Times to Live of the PTR records need to be 43200 seconds or more. This is an arbitrary limit chosen by SORBS. And of course, the reverse DNS names need to be valid; i.e. the names given in reverse DNS need to map forward to the IP addresses for which they were given.

Wondermill
User Experience Design Ninja job description:

When people have created an account with one of our products, they should shed a tear because the experience is over.  They should write ballads and march from town to town reading them to anyone who’ll listen.  They should hang signs from highway overpasses proclaiming our good name, hold 3-day block parties and call up radio stations to dedicate cheesy songs.

They should obsess.

Banzai De Bug
Banzai De Bug Pest Control shows that even unsavory industries can come up with an interesting story:

The pest control industry is changing. Most people picture a pest control operator as a guy walking around with a tank spraying chemicals. George started out with a sprayer but for the past 5 to 6 years has been using glue boards and baiting techniques.

George goes to work every day dressed in a blazer and gets to his clients on his motorcycle. He got into this business at the age of 43 and loves it. He feels this job is great for his personality and feels he needs to be his own boss.

George’s specialty is treating for rats and mice. He describes his job as that of a detective. “A big piece of this job is getting the details and facts, figuring out how it can happen and then solving the problem. The real satisfaction comes when I go back to the job to see that it worked.” His approach to catching the rodents is to give them a well balanced meal, served up on a glue board. He takes a piece of cardboard and spreads glue all over it. Then he takes bits of meat, sardines, and a Hershey Bar with almonds for dessert. The beverage of choice to serve with this feast is beer. George knows that the rats will drink until they can’t drink anymore and eventually they will become sick, choke and die. This is all done without pesticides.

George feels that if you are honest and good you get better at what you do and you will do well. He created his business; no one gave it to him.

Think Like a Chef
From Think Like a Chef by Tom Colicchio:

Roasting in an oven cheats me of the audible, visual, and tactile cues that are such a gratifying step of the cooking process. For some people, the end result alone — the perfectly browned sea bass, the crisp chicken — is the point, but for me the process of browning the meat, watching the sugars in the surface caramelize, and listening to the sizzling sound of the butter, the sputter as the moisture in the herbs meets the juices in the pan, is as satisfying as the result. Watching as the dish transforms from a group of separate, inert ingredients into a new thing altogether is rewarding even before the first bite. When you learn to pan roast for yourself, a practical benefit is that in time you’ll come to recognize the audible and visual cues of correctly cooked food, and you’ll find yourself relying less and less on the times and temperatures printed in any recipe.

Oprah-speak
From How to explain RSS the Oprah way:

The technical acronym for RSS is “Really Simple Syndication”, an XML format that was created to syndicate news, and be a means to share content on the web. Now, to geeks and techies that means something special, but to everyday folks like you and me, what comes to mind is, “Uh, I don’t get it?”

So, to make RSS much easier to understand, in Oprah speak, RSS stands for: I’m “Ready for Some Stories”. It is a way online for you to get a quick list of the latest story headlines from all your favorite websites and blogs all in one place. How cool is that?

Got an interesting link, story, or screenshot for Signal vs. Noise? Contact svn [at] 37signals [dot] com.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/428-on-writing-sorbs-wondermill-banzai-de-bug-think-like-a-chef-oprah-speak

24/7 reality online TV show Justin.tv has has turned into a bit of a mini-phenomenon since launching just two months ago. Their apartment was raided by the police, and they were later evicted by their landlord. They were on the Today Show. Justin has hung out with famous rappers. They’ve taken extravagant dares from their audience, and a crowd always surrounds Justin and his ubiquitous camera. Hundreds of adolescent viewers watched (sort of) as Justin had sex on the show, although users were left with a black screen and silence until the Justin.tv team started playing porn music. The site has been far more successful so far than the founders anticipated.

The site is so successful, in fact, that many people have said they want to start their own real-life television shows. Startup Ustream launched just in time to take advantage of this - they give users the tools to easily duplicate the Justin.tv experience.

Today, Justin.tv is launching its own network to allow users to create and publish their own shows.

The site has been redesigned to improve usability and in preparation for expansion into a network of live video streamers. Ustream.tv currently has a fully open lifecaster network, with profile pages and all, but Justin.tv is expanding more slowly.

Each Monday for the following weeks, Justin.tv will be opening their network to a new live video casters, serving as examples for the different ways fans will be able to use live video. Some may be like Justin Kan, with a now more affordable mobile hat came based on off the shelf hardware. Others will stream from their computers or static cams set in the public. They’ve got a list of the upcoming casters but are keeping the names secret for now.

Each caster will get their own fully skinable page on Justin.tv, complete with vanity URL (http://justin.tv/name). They’ll also get the all the new features released on Justin’s page: a more stable chat room, calendar, new player, and clip voting system. To handle the relatively high volume of simultaneous chatters Justin gets (150 - 600), Justin.tv switched the chat room over to an IRC back end. To keep viewers updated, Casters will be able to post their show schedule on their own calendar module (Kiko?) and feature their most recent Twitters.

Their new player lets viewers get the live feed and navigate archive clips in a simple calendar interface in the same player. Every clip can be called by a permalink and embedded. It also features a somewhat unique take on user generated advertising. The little film reel in the lower left corner of the screen links to somewhat quirky and at times irreverent custom made advertisements by Justin Kan.

Realizing not everything they tape is pure entertainment gold, Justin.tv has implemented a Reddit-like real-time voting system called “Tips.” Tips allows any user logged into their chat account to submit the current streaming video to a leader board, where other logged in users can vote up the clips they like. The power of your vote will be impacted by your user karma, which varies based on how successful the videos you “Tip” are and how long you watch the shows.

Although the network isn’t completely open, it’s plain to see that Justin.tv is testing the waters before opening the site to everyone.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/118705752/

Jim McCabe had a question for the community, so we thought it would be good to hear your thoughts:

Over the past year or so I’ve gradually integrated AJAX into a web
application. While this is great for our customers, I’m increasingly
disturbed by the ugliness of the code on the server side. We have nice
Java objects representing various components, but the code for those
components is getting uglier by the month. Java that writes HTML was
bad enough. Java that writes JavaScript is even less readable.

I’ve been looking around for information that would help me approach
this problem better but can’t find anything that really discusses this
specific problem. Are there design patterns that help? Are there
libraries that help Java build JavaScript, or even just any good
suggestions on how to keep things readable and clean?

There are many directions that you can take this, and there are many takes on it:

• “I hate JavaScript”: These frameworks abstract away from the JS itself so you don’t care about it. GWT and RJS are two very different examples here
• Finally. web services matter: You can code the server side to speak web services, and then the client is responsible for doing the right thing, and both are very separate layers.
• JavaScript everywhere: Imagine if you just coded in JavaScript throughout the tiers. The client/server piece could blur, and you could share the object model. This could make offline simpler. A framework could be smart enough to grok annotations of methods to know when to go back or not. Of course, we don’t want to make the same mistakes as distributed object systems.

Do you have any advice for Jim?

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/ask-ajaxian-are-there-clean-techniques-for-writing-javascript-on-the-server