Ajax Girl

Leading cricket portal Cricinfo has been acquired by ESPN.

The site is considered by many to be the online bible for cricket. Although not popular in North America, Cricket has an audience in the billions with fanatical support across the former British Empire.

The purchase by ESPN is said to be part of the push by the cable sports network to broaden its appeal outside of the United States.

Cricinfo is one of the oldest online sport portals, first launching in 1993. The site now has in excess of 7 million unique visitors per month and is ranked in the top 300 sites online according to Alexa.

Cricinfo was a pioneer in developing online sport related services, from living blogging test matches through to extensive user friendly and searchable databases of players.

The acquisition price was not disclosed.

(via The Age)

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/124110737/

Mosoto launched their peer-to-peer file swapping and chatting application using the Facebook API back in February. It was one of the best executed programs using the API when they launched. Now they’re back and integrated into the Facebook platform, making it easy to catch up with your friends on the newsfeed and snatch their music.

Mosoto Remix adds a little widget on your profile that shares the music you and your friends are listening to. Within the widget you can upload full songs, create playlists, and see the most recently uploaded/played music from your friends. If you hear something you like, you can also add songs from your friends to your own account or buy it from iTunes. It’s essentially a specialized implementation of the Box.net widget, which provides the storage for all the files. Their canvas page also lets you chat with other Mosoto users.

Remix walks a gray line by giving users the ability to upload and play back full songs, although they don’t allow downloads. Facebook music applications from startups like Last.fm (70K+ users) and the incredibly popular iLike (3 million+ users) service restrict playback length or order. There are a couple other music widgets on Facebook as well. Audio (500K + users) and Boombox (17K users) also allow members to upload songs and create playlists.

Audio’s large user base has upped it’s profile and caused it to respond to allegations of piracy. In a note to his users, the developer of Audio denies being a “digital anarchist”, saying “I’m a good friend of the music industry, and someone trying to help come up with ways for it to grow. I truly believe that the sort of socially-integrated audio experience that Audio can offer will lead to the future of the music industry - both in terms of relevance and revenue.”

However, other music services have had to pay for the privilege of playing full copyrighted songs. Lala expects to fork over $143 million in the next two years for royalty fees. Pandora had to shut off international access because of licensing issues. With both systems playing by a separate set or rules, it seems inevitable that the pay to play and free movements will clash, with Facebook in the middle.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/124069472/

Controversial pay-per-post startup PayPerPost has raised $7 million in a second round of financing, bringing their total raised capital to just over $10 million. Like their previous round from last October the financing was led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, with participation from Inflexion Partners and Village Ventures. New investor DFJ Gotham, a fund affiliated with Draper Fisher Jurvetson, also participated.

It is generally a bad sign when a company is not able to bring in a new investor for a financing. The company and existing investors generally like to do so because it brings in fresh connections and ensures that a new third party is involved in valuing the round. When a company does a second round with the same investors, it can be (but isn’t always) a sign that the company is in trouble. In Pay Per Post’s case, the simplest explanation would be that most VCs want to keep their hands clean. Getting involved with PayPerPost could hurt their reputation and exclude them from other deals.

Listen to our podcast interview with founder Ted Murphy and investor Josh Stein here. The company’s profile is here.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/124042910/

It looks like Google has a major problem with their Google Reader product today. Reports are flying on blogs, twitter and elsewhere that feeds have been deleted from people’s accounts.

We have an email in to Google PR for comment. Some users are now reporting that their feed subscriptions are coming back, so perhaps Google reverted to a backup or they have restored the cluster. Something similar happened with Gmail last year, although the problem only affected a small number of users.

We’re trying to figure out if any users were not affected. Let us know if your feeds seem intact.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/124037191/

Nothing earth shattering coming out of the Apple WWDC conference today in San Francisco. One interesting tidbit, though: Apple will release a version of their Safari browser for Windows machines. Safari 3 is available now as a free download for Mac OS X, Windows XP and Windows Vista.

This is a big move for Apple, which now provides iTunes and Safari for the Windows platform. Microsoft stopped developing its IE browser for the Mac platform in 2003. Today, Firefox and Safari are both popular choices for browsers on the Mac platform. Steve Jobs claims 5% market share for Safari across all operating systems, and says it is twice as fast as the competition.

Apple is also “opening” up the iPhone to third party applications…via Safari.

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

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/123995641/

Steve Jobs made a very interesting announcement today at the WWDC Keynote. Wanna write for apps for the iPhone? Make them web apps that work on Safari. Done.

That is a bold idea. Very forward thinking. A whole new product with the opportunity for a whole new platform. But instead Apple chooses simple and familiar: HTML and Javascript. Tens of millions of developers already know it. Instant developer uptake and an instant batch of apps that likely already work with the iPhone.

This is the coming out party for web apps. We are very excited about this. These are exciting times.

And one more thing… Something else that makes us smile is a paragraph on this page at the Apple Site:

Mac OS X is now the ideal platform for all kinds of script-based development. Ruby 1.8.6 and Python 2.5 are both first-class languages for Mac development, thanks to Cocoa bridges, Xcode and Interface Builder support, DTrace monitoring, and Framework builds — plus AppleEvent bindings via the new Scripting Bridge. Leopard is also the premier platform for Ruby on Rails development, thanks to Rails, Mongrel, and Capistrano bundling.

Hells yeah.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/459-iphone-sdk-its-called-safari

Steve Jobs gave the keynote at WWDC this morning, where he announced a couple of items that affect Ajax developers.

Safari for Windows

Apple is releasing the public beta of Safari for Windows today. Steve gave demos of Safari, claiming that it screams:

• ibench html performance: IE 4.6 sec, FF 3.7, Safari 2.2 seconds
• javascript: IE 2.4 sec, FF 1.6, Safari 0.9 seconds

WebKit is getting a real solid foundation on Windows with Apple joining Adobe on the Windows port. I bet Adobe is happy.

iPhone Development

Scott Forstall, VP of the iPhone Division, showed off a corporate address book database application using LDAP. It looks like a native iPhone application. The card looks the same as the address book. You can direct dial from the application, email, display a map (can tie directly into the built-in Google Maps application on the phone), and more.

Since this is all on Safari, I wonder what plugins are available too.

Great to see that the SDK for the iPhone is Ajax. We all know that

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/safari-for-windows-ajax-on-iphone

Some recent postings at the 37signals Job Board:

Northwestern University is looking for a Sr. Web Applications/Software Developer in Evanston, IL.

LevelTen Design is looking for a Web Developer in Cleveland, OH.

imeem, inc. is looking for a Visual/Interaction Designer in San Francisco, CA.

Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum is looking for a Web Innovator in New York, NY.

SpikeSource is looking for a UI Designer in Redwood City, CA.

Link to Life Connect Ltd is looking for a Technical Architect in Nantgarw, Cardiff.

Waterfall Mobile is looking for a Software Engineer in San Francisco.

Skype is looking for a Product Designer in London.

Epoch.com is looking for a Senior Web Developer in Santa Monica, CA.

Comcast is looking for a Web Developer in Philadelphia, PA.

Joost is looking for a Web Designer in New York, NY.

Library of Congress is looking for an Information Technology Specialist in Washington, DC.

Inkling is looking for a Senior Rails Developer in Chicago, IL.

Avenue A Razorfish is looking for a User Experience Lead in Austin, TX.

AOL is looking for a Tech Analyst in Dulles, VA.

Find a job or put your design/programming job in front of the best at the Job Board. Freelancers/contractors can meet their match at the Gig Board.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/458-recent-job-board-postings-cooper-hewitt-skype-aol-etc

Adding support for AIR feels kinda funny to write. I guess Aptana wants to be life support for Ajax development (boom, boom). The Aptana IDE now supports Adobe AIR:

This means that Ajax developers can now use our IDE to build desktop apps seamlessly using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Some of the features we added to the Aptana IDE to add support for Adobe AIR include:

• AIR Project contains all necessary files for out-of-the box launching of Adobe AIR applications
• Export wizard for bundling and deploying Adobe AIR applications
• Easy import of Ajax libraries into Adobe AIR projects
• Integrated content assist for Adobe AIR SDK
• Help and online documentation

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/aptana-ide-adds-air-support

Jack Slocum saw our post on the Joomla widget, and pointed us to a his FeedViewer 3 application, slated to be released with Ext 2.0:

The FeedViewer example app has been rewritten from scratch for Ext 2.0. It is intended to be a good reference implementation of 2.0 and unlike the other examples which were written with speed of development in mind, FeedViewer 3 features it’s code broken up into logical classes. This makes the code much more organized and easier to maintain.

Some new things in FeedViewer 3 are reading pane placement, post summaries, context menus (tabs, grid and tree context menus), combobox (in “Add feed” window) and some significant performance improvements. It starting to look pretty decent, so I have thrown a dev copy up. It is checked into the examples folder of the Ext 2.0 branch in SVN.

There is also a beta of Ext 1.1:

This build includes Ext Stand-alone, a lightweight HTML editor, Ext.Ajax utility class, DateField enhancements, more documentation and many bug fixes.

Ext can now run on its own without a base library. The ext-base file weighs in at 34kb minimized. This is less than YUI utilities + adapter (58kb), Prototype/Scriptaculous + adapter (71kb) or jQuery + required plugins + adapter (62kb - minimized, not packed).

They are moving pretty darn fast.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/ext-11-beta-feed-reader-3-demo