Ajax Girl

There’s no arguing that Facebook’s new Facebook Platform is inspired thinking. The noise about it speaks for itself. Facebook users will soon have access to extra functionality.

Given my own time difference (+8GMT) I’m late to the story, reading it first on TechCrunch and then on Techmeme. After reading the coverage I immediately logged into Facebook to see how I could use Facebook Platform. There’s nothing. Not one thing on the official Facebook communication pages about Facebook Platform. Facebook users are not all tech savvy types; they won’t read about the news on tech and web 2.0 related destinations including TechCrunch.

At the time of writing this post;

Press Releases: last press release is dated April 6

Facebook Blog: last post May 22 talking about Facebook’s Infrastructure

Recent Headlines: top story is a May 2 post on using the Facebook API.

New Features: Facebook Mobile now works in Canada (May 23).

Shyness from Facebook after the privacy issues last year? If it’s an oversight it certainly is a large one. Controlling the message is not only important from a PR perspective, communication = trust in Web 2.0, silence, at least in direct communications with users, can often be viewed with suspicion. Surely Facebook would want to share this with their users?

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/~3/119464369/

We wrote about Project Agape, a new startup that is applying viral principles to altruism and social causes, in late March (”Project Agape” is a working name for the service, it is yet to be formally named). Today, the service is launching as one of the initial Facebook Platform partners.

The company was founded by Sean Parker and Joe Green and is designed to help social causes - charities, religions, political parties and candidates, etc.

Integration with Facebook is very, very deep, which isn’t surprising given the founders connections to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and CEO. Parker was Facebook’s founding President, and Green was Zuckerberg’s college roomate.

Facebook already has a popular “groups” application, and many social causes are represented as a group. Groups, however, don’t let users do much more than join. With Agape, users can create causes, take donations, and recruit members. Whenever someone creates a cause or joins one, it shows up in their news feed for their friends to see. Information about the cause is also included in the profile itself, including total amount raised by that user and new users recruited.

There’s a multi level marketing approach, too. Any money donated by other users you’ve recruited is also included in your “money raised” total (see top image). Gaining status by recruiting members and getting donations will be a big incentive for users to not only join a cause that they feel strongly about, but will also get them to participate on an ongoing basis.

I spoke with Green and Parker and asked them why they decided to show their service to the public for the first time via Facebook instead of launching on their own site. The answer: Facebook has a huge and active user base (20 million users viewing 50 pages daily on Facebook), and they are a demographic that is highly likely to want to become involved actively in causes they believe in. The hugh popularity of Facebook Groups is evidence of this, they say.

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/~3/119425309/

Facebook is holding a massive press event today in San Francisco to officially launch Facebook Platform. Twenty or so third party applications will also be announced, ranging from RockYou to HotorNot. Mark Zuckerberg goes on stage at 3 pm to make the official announcement, and I’ll be blogging live from there.

Facebook is giving an unprecedented amount of access to developers. The API would allow, for example, a third party to recreate Facebook Photos, the most used photo application on the web. Users could then remove the default Facebook Photos and install the third party version instead.

There will be a special applications area on Facebook where users can browse and add third party apps. But there is also a crucial viral component - when a friend adds an application, it is noted in their news stream on their profile. Clicking on the item brings you to the app, where you can add and/or interact with it yourself.

Users will also be adding applications widgets to their site, where others can click and add it to their own profile.

The payoff is two way. Not only do developers get deep access to Facebook’s twenty million users, Facebook also becomes a rich platform for third party applications.

Facebook’s strategy is almost the polar opposite from MySpace. While MySpace frets over third party widgets, alternatively shutting them down or acquiring them, Facebook is now opening up its core functions to all outside developers.

I’ll be adding my real time notes to this post.

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/~3/119401543/

Spout is a social networking site aiming to give users a better way to find new films.

Described as a hybrid between MySpace and Netflix, Spout was founded by four filmmakers in Grand Rapids, Michigan, who wanted to create a web experience that was a “trusted place between the multiplex and the film festival”.

Spout users are connected by their personal profile, which grows and changes dynamically every time they visit the site and express an opinion about a movie. Results are based on user submissions alone and none are computer generated.

Spout originally launched in March 2006 and has undergone several upgrades since, the most recent upgrade included a new feature called MovieMind that provides recommendations based on expressed user interest. For example, by entering Startup.com a user receives a list of movies they may enjoy that are similar to Startup.com as recommended by Spout users.

It’s not the most technologically advanced Web 2.0 site, but the simplicity is a positive. Ignore the positive review for Babel on the front page and you’ll be pleasantly surprised. The drag and drop functionality in MovieMind is smart and providing dynamically generated links to other sites is an inclusive move that improves the overall user experience.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/119358087/

James Surowiecki on why feature creep is so hard to stop

“Although consumers find overloaded gadgets unmanageable, they also find them attractive. It turns out that when we look at a new product in a store we tend to think that the more features there are, the better. It’s only once we get the product home and try to use it that we realize the virtues of simplicity.”

Panel of CEOs and experts pick the best business books of all time

“The responses ranged far and wide: Military metaphors popped up occasionally, with Sun Tzu’s The Art of War rearing its age-old head. But books about biology were also surprisingly prevalent, not only for their insight into how business environments imitate the natural world but also, several executives said, because understanding biology helped them appreciate the concept of randomness.”

How does Bill Gates feel about about the John Hodgman character in those Mac ads?

Gates: “Yeah, I’m not gonna comment on someone else’s ad.” Garfield: “OK, well, Bill Gates, thank you so much for joining us.” Gates: (Silence)

The value of sketching

“Sketches, he argues, are quick, inexpensive, disposable, plentiful, offer minimal detail, and suggest and explore rather than confirm. (It should be noted that he doesn’t limit “sketches” to pen on paper—a sketch might be digital or three-dimensional.) The value of sketching is less in the artifacts themselves than in the cognitive process of working through dozens of ideas, of considering as many options as possible, and allowing each option to raise new questions…Sketching is less expensive than prototyping, and far less expensive than trying to fix problems late in the development cycle.”

Ajax violating expectations?

“The availability of Ajax technology is causing some developers to diverge from the native look and feel of the web in favor of a user interface style I call ‘desktop app in a web browser’…When you build a ‘desktop in the web browser’-style application, you’re violating users’ unwritten expectations of how a web application should look and behave. This choice may have significant negative impact on learnability, pleasantness of use, and adoption. The fact that you can create web applications that resemble desktop applications does not imply that you should; it only means that you have one more option and subsequent set of trade-offs to consider when making design decisions.” [via OR]

Ask the Wizard

Great blog by FeedBurner founder Dick Costolo. Includes very detailed posts about running a biz, funding, etc.

What the Agile Manifesto left out

“If you snoop around my house, you’ll notice that there’s a silverware drawer that’s rather tidy and a junk drawer that’s not. It’s much easier to find a spoon than a battery. There’s a reason for that: my family and I look for spoons several times a day, but for batteries much less often. Things you use often should be easy to find. Things you do often should be easy to do. Properties like this, which Gabriel collectively calls “habitability,” can go against software principles.”

How do they create patterns in a baseball field grass?

“The designs are created through a process called lawn striping…Many professional groundskeepers use old-fashioned reel mowers to cut a stadium’s grass. Attached just behind the blades of the mower is a lawn roller that bends the grass down…Whatever pattern you make is revealed by the light shining off of the bent grass.”

Internet Radio Equality Act

“The Internet Radio Equality Act (H.R. 2060) now has over 80 Congressional co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle. Your calls and emails are making a difference. This bill does provide reasonable royalties for artists and their labels. We still need more co-sponsors and can only do it with your help. Support this legislation, act now!”

World Clock Meeting Planner

Make sense of time zone differences when planning conference calls, etc.

About Summize’s ratings display

“It’s similar to the star rating you’ve seen on other sites, but reveals so much more. For example, when you see a rating of two-and-a-half starsshould you conclude the product is… average? Not really…In fact, products with sharply divided reviews are often the most interesting products — they are anything but vanilla. The so-called ‘wisdom of crowds’ is as much about disagreement as it is about agreement. A world of two-and-a-half stars would be a pretty boring place.”

Working at Google vs. working at Meetup

“At Meetup, there are no options when flushing the toilet.”

A home that heats and cools itself

“Mr. Sykes, who has built 80 of these homes, says that he was inspired by the way the earth’s own atmosphere keeps the planet at a relatively constant comfortable temperature despite the frigidity of space. It occurred to him that a house could have its own atmosphere, which might work the same way. As a side benefit, he says, one Enertia house has an environmental impact akin to taking 50 cars off the road.”

Grandmas of the world share their special recipes

“What’s Cooking Grandma? is a project to create a cookbook of the grandmothers of the world sharing their special recipes.” Includes “Tips on filming a grandma.” [via RD]

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/433-sunspots-the-silverware-edition

Real estate search engine Trulia joins an elite Silicon Valley Club today with the announcement of $10m Series C funding in a round headed by Sequoia Capital.

Trulia moved out of beta earlier this month and launched a number of new features.

Sequoia is joined in the funding round by previous investors Accel and Fayez Sarofim & Co. The $10m takes Trulia’s total funding to $17.7million. The new money is being used for additional staff, product development and a new marketing push.

There’s a wealth of potential in the real estate market. Advertising spending alone in real estate will total $11 billion in the United States in 2007 (Borrell Associates), with over 80% of the consumers using the Internet as part of their home buying research.

Trulia is not alone in chasing this market. Zillow has raised $57 million and Redfin has previously raised $9 million in two rounds. Internet Brands also is also a competitor with Real Estate ABC.

Trulia’s main features include a comprehensive database of active real estate listings, price trend heat maps, and a Q&A service.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/119290130/

The Dow Jones index site has a new look. They have taken Ext JS and as Claude Betancourt says: “use Ext 1.0 to render the Dow Jones Indexes intraday grid on the homepage and search results page as well as some utilities behind the scenes.”

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/dow-jones-index-ajaxified

John-David Dalton is up to his packing tricks again, and has created ProtoPacked 2.13:

This updated pack includes compressed versions of Prototype: 1.4, 1.5,
1.5.1 and Scriptaculous: 1.7.1_beta2.

There is also a “Protoculous” option as well (Prototype and
Scriptaculous combined)

Smallest files are:
Prototype 1.5.1 @ 15.8kb
Scriptaculous-1.7.1_beta2 @ 17.9kb
Protoculous (1.5.1 + 1.7.1_beta2) @ 32.5kb

Download from here and find protopacked_v2.13.zip.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/protopacked-213-protoype-scriptaculous-32kb

Social media network Buzznet today announced the closure of a $6 million round of financing led by Redpoint Ventures and Anthem Venture Partners.

Buzznet is the largest social network site you’ve possibly never heard of. The Sunset Boulevard based company was established in 2003 and was last covered by TechCrunch in June 2005.

Buzznet has an extraordinary presence given it only returns a page and a half of results in Google News (at the time of writing). Buzznet ranks in the Top 1000 sites online according to Alexa and the Top 500 according to Compete. The company boasts of having over 6 million users and is the fastest growing social networking site according to data from Hitwise.

To put that into perspective (Buzznet is the blue line):

The site launched with an initial focus on music and has evolved into something like Flickr meets MySpace. BuzzNet is primarily a photo-sharing community with a much stronger pop-culture focus than similar services. Users share news, participate in community groups, vote on polls, keep journals…and yet it’s not like MySpace, it’s hard to describe.

The pop culture/ music focus is working well for Buzznet. Fall Out Boy, AFI, Cartel, up-and-coming indie artists and “internet celebrities” such as Jeffree Star now call Buzznet home.

Obscurity though seems to be working for Buzznet and the traffic and ranking figures speak volumes for the service. Hitwise ranked Buzznet at No. 17 on its list of Top 20 social network sites in March, Buzznet having the same market share as Windows Live Spaces and not far away from Friendster and Google’s Orkut. With $6 million in the bank it’s a company that is not only going places, it’s unlikely to ever return to relative obscurity again in the future.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/119276675/

Interface Elements is to jQuery, as Script.aculo.us is to Prototype.

It contains a slew of UI controls such as:

• Animate
• Effects
• Draggables
• Droppables
• Sortables
• Selectables
• Resizables
• Slider
• Tooltips
• Slideshow
• Imagebox
• Autocompletion
• Autoscrolling
• Autoexpander
• Accordion
• Tabs in Textareas
• 3D Carousel
• Fisheye menu

You can see these all in action via the demos which include some real world-like examples.

Download the package here (zip).

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/interface-elements-for-jquery