Ajax Girl

Google has announced a closed beta test of Adsense for Video.

According to the post on Inside Adsense, Adsense for Video consists of “in-stream” advertisements. Publishers define at what point the advertisements will appear for each video.

It’s a change in the right direction for Google. The previously announced advertising trials for YouTube consisted entirely of text advertising overlays that lead to video-on-video click to play advertisements; a form of advertising that can easily be ignored by the viewer. Whilst many may find in-video style advertising annoying, it at least comes with a guarantee that viewers are going to see the advertisement.

Adsense for Video, as it is currently explained lacks contextual delivery. Allowing publishers to select where a video is played may empower content creators, but it does nothing in terms of automatically optimizing advertising for the viewer.

Google appears to be lagging in this market; the technology to contextually serve advertising within video is already available, ScanScout providing such a service. Given the massive market share Google holds in the online video hosting marketplace through YouTube, it would normally be expected that Google would be leading development in this field. For reasons unknown, they are not doing so.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/119183011/

The May 28th subscriber’s edition of Time (Al Gore is on the cover) includes a piece on 37signals called Small Is Essential by Jeremy Caplan.

It includes a 3/4 page shot of the whole team. It’s rare we’re all together in the same place so it’s pretty cool to have it on film.

The article focuses primarily on how we’re structured, what we’re focused on, and how we place high value on small and simple.

Special thanks to Jeremy for writing the article and to Chris Strong and his crew for the working around our schedule to slip the photo shoot in. Much appreciated.

Note: This article only appears in the subscriber edition of the magazine. The newsstand edition does not have this article.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/432-37signals-in-time-magazine

Web analytics startup Compete.com opened its API for public use today. Websites and applications can now access Compete’s data and incorporate it into their own products.

This is timely for the company, which competes directly with Amazon’s Alexa. Recenty, Statsaholic has been in a very public dispute with Alexa over use of its data, with both sides looking bad. That dispute recently went to litigation. As some services shy away from Alexa, either due to public perception or inflexibility over the Alexa APIs, Compete could grab additional market share.

Compete is using Mashery to handle the logistics and distribution of its API. We wrote about Mashery when they launched late last year. Our previous coverage of Compete is here.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/119174800/

Music playlist sharing site Webjay, acquired by Yahoo in January 2006, will be closing June 30 according to a message that has appeared on the site.

The announcement gives Yahoo a hat trick of closure announcements for May, Webjay joining Yahoo Photos and Yahoo Auctions in the TechCrunch DeadPool.

Founded by Lucas Gonze, Webjay allowed users to publish music playlists on the web. Media players such as WinAmp and Windows Media Player could then be given a list of songs to play from locally stored music or via web streaming.

No reasons have been given for the closure. Alexa traffic data for Webjay shows a gradual decline in traffic from a peak in early 2006.

(via Search Engline Land)

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/~3/119168761/

All that new traffic from the relaunch, and the site goes down for the count. Or maybe it really is “scheduled maintenance,” in the middle of the day, at peak traffic times. I love Technorati, even when they lie to me.

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/~3/119140301/

Clickbank
Brian Armstrong: “Clever wording on the first field of this signup form from
clickbank.com. I bet it substantially reduces people’s subconscious
aversion to filling out forms.”

Commerce Bank
Daniel Drucker on Commerce Bank: “Most useless icons EVER.”

Freshbooks
Nick Grossman on Freshbooks: “They have been determined to improve their product – since I’ve been a customer, they’ve steadily rolled out helpful changes. They are obviously listening to their customers. This caring and determination is exemplified by their new logout page, which doubles as a customer feedback form: otherwise unused space that catches people at a moment when they might have a constructive comment brewing. Brilliant!”

Btw, FreshBooks integrates with Basecamp for generating invoices, tracking time, etc.

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/399-screens-around-town-clickbank-commerce-bank-freshbooks

Dave Sifry announced that Technorati has had a refresh.

The core changes are in simplicity, and working across more than just blogs.

You will see the moving header across the top, trying to show the live web. The Ajax goodness on Technorati is brought to us via jQuery, as you can see via:

The blog-only search subsite is also very lean and mean.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/technorati-relaunch

Rumors about Google acquiring RSS management company Feedburner from last week, started by ex-TechCrunch UK editor Sam Sethi, are accurate and are now confirmed according to a source close to the deal. Feedburner is in the closing stages of being acquired by Google for around $100 million. The deal is all cash and mostly upfront, according to our source, although the founders will be locked in for a couple of years.

The information we have is that the deal is now under a binding term sheet and will close in 2-3 weeks, and there is nothing that can really derail it at this point.

Huge congratulations to Feedburner. The company was founded in 2003 and has raised just $10 million in capital over two rounds. Portage Ventures funded their $1 million Series A round in 2004. The $9 million Series B round was closed in mid 2005 (second close in 2006), from Mobius Venture Capital and Union Square Ventures.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/119052278/

We recently went out and filmed some of our customers talking about why they love Basecamp and the positive impact it’s had on their businesses. It was really great to meet these fans in person and hear their eloquent descriptions of how Basecamp helps them get projects done.

The first group of video profiles:

• R.BIRD, a consulting firm with 25 years of experience in packaging design and branding.
• Atelier Weddings, planners of top-notch weddings in NYC.
• Elsewares, an online catalog of unique products from independent designers, artists, and entrepreneurs.
• TransactTools, the commercial technology arm of the New York Stock Exchange.

Why video?
Why did we decide to do these videos? Benefits over features. Tours and screenshots do a great job of explaining what Basecamp does but we wanted to do a better job of showing how it makes people’s lives better.

Video turned out to be a great way to do that. There’s nothing like seeing real people talking about how easy Basecamp is to use and how valuable it is to their businesses. These people talk about how they love Basecamp and we’re proud of that. (As Richard Bird commented to us, how often is the word love used when describing software?)

Btw, the videos were shot and edited excellently by our friends at Coudal Partners. Kudos to Coudal’s Steve Delahoyde for doing a great job on ‘em. Stay tuned for more of these clips in the future.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/429-i-heart-basecamp-customer-videos

Jangl, the guys that brought you anonymous numbers, has retooled its service today. Jangl’s old service was geared toward people simply wishing to keep their phone number private.

Users could give their number to Jangl and get an ID in return. Whoever had the ID could go to Jangl.com, enter their own number, and get a number to call them back on. A separate phone number was made for each person who used the ID. A Jangl user could then decide which numbers they would accept or reject based on who the announced caller was. Don’t want to talk? Kill the number and never be bothered again. Once accepted, the caller could phone you directly in the future without every giving up your real digits.

While simple, the process still required users to jump through some hoops, such as going to the Jangl home page and looking up an ID. Today’s release removes a lot of that friction and refocuses Jangl as platform for calling between people who don’t want to share their number, but also between people who can’t know each other’s numbers because they’re not expecting a call.

Jangl users will now be able to essentially call anyone with an email address. You just drop your own number and their email address into a form on the Jangl site and you get a local number to call them at. When you call the number, you’ll record whatever message you like. A link to the recorded message will be emailed to the person along with a local number (local to them) to call you back on without revealing their real number. It’s easy to see that Jangl could use this feature to transition other modes of communication on to the phone by expanding the modes they invite people through.

Rounding out the offering will be some other modes of displaying your Jangl number, such as a revamped Jangl widget and call me link. Jangl is pushing the voice mail feature out to these products as well to deal with a projected increase in the volume of calls. Jangl users won’t be bothered with every call to their phone, but will instead scan a list of voice mails from new callers and choose to connect or not.

In the long run, Jangl plans to make money off of hosting long distance VOIP calls. Social networking’s internationalization seems to be a ripe breeding for these types of calls. Members may choose to first connect call over Jangl instead of message or email, and then hold on to the number instead of switching over to other VOIP plans offering similar long distance discounts.

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/~3/118992438/