Ajax Girl

Online office suite provider Zoho has launched a Zoho Facebook application.

Zoho for Facebook allows users to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations from within Facebook. Support includes the ability to view and edit all existing documents, spreadsheets and presentations (both personal and shared) from Zoho Writer, Sheet and Show.

Whilst Zoho on Facebook will expose Zoho to a broader audience, the new application has one large issue: a complete failure to integrate with the Facebook user/ login system; Zoho on Facebook still requires a Zoho account. That of course begs the question: if Facebook login is not supported, why would users switch from using Zoho directly to using Zoho on Facebook? Perhaps Zoho knows better and the application will be well received; providing choice to consumers is a positive even if the logic of providing that choice isn’t immediately clear.

Previous TechCrunch Zoho coverage here.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/129960311/

I read my favorite business book of all time at least once a month. Luckily it’s only 30 pages.

Benjamin Franklin’s The Way to Wealth, was first published in 1758 as a preface to Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac. It’s a summary of his previously published thoughts on how to succeed in business (and, I’d say, life).

It’s chock full of astute observations such as:

Creditors have better memories than debtors

If you want to be wealthy, think of saving as well as earning

A ploughman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his knees

If you want to know the value of money, go try to borrow some

Buy what you do not need, and soon you will sell your necessities

It’s easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow it

Experience keeps an expensive school, but fools will learn in no other

A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two different things

Keep your shop and your shop will keep you

…and so on.

And if you’ve ever wondered where “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise” and “There are no gains without pains” came from, now you know.

It’s really a wonderfully simple read that’s packed with reason. You can buy it for a few bucks or read it online for free. I’d recommend the purchase—it’s a great little book to have around.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/503-the-way-to-wealth-the-best-business-book-is-also-the-shortest

It looks like the RIAA and big music labels have won a battle, if not the war, against massively popular AllOfMP3, a Russian music download site that sells MP3s for as little as two cents per megabyte. The site has been shut down, again, reportedly at the hands of the Russian government.

Russia agreed to force the site to shut down last year, in response to pressure by the U.S. government and the RIAA.

The site has been under constant fire over the last two years. For a brief history of its travails, see our coverage (in chronological order, skip to the end of the list for the most recent stories):

AllofMP3 Down - For Good?
AllofMP3 Outsources Marketing to U.S. Government
Russia Agrees To US Request To Shut Down AllofMP3.com
I Wish Google Could Buy AllofMP3
AllOfMP3 Responds To RIAA’s $1.65 Trillion Lawsuit
AllOfMp3 Down For 8 Hours And Counting

AllOfMP3’s parent company, Media Services, has taken a firm position that the RIAA should go to hell. In a now famous response to a RIAA $1.65 trillion (yes, trillion) lawsuit for copyright infringement, the company said:

“AllofMP3 understands that several U.S. record label companies filed a lawsuit against Media Services in New York,” an unnamed “senior company official” stated. “This suit is unjustified as AllofMP3 does not operate in New York. Certainly the labels are free to file any suit they wish, despite knowing full well that AllofMP3 operates legally in Russia. In the mean time, AllofMP3 plans to continue to operate legally and comply with all Russian laws.”

A new site, very similar to AllOfMP3 and also owned by Media Services, launched simultaneous with the shutdown. MP3Sparks looks to be a clone of AllOfMP3 in all but name.

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/~3/129921675/

Local.com saw its stock price rise 52% today after it was awarded patent number 7,200,413 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. According to the text of the patent, it covers what they term “Enhanced Directory Assistance”, which will deliver keyword specific ad referrals based on user input via operator, SMS, WAP, or voice.

This is in addition to their recently granted patent number 7,231,405, which covers crawling the web and geocoding location based content. This seems similar to a pending patent application that Google already has. For more info, Bill Slawski has an exhaustive list of Google’s local search patent applications including term definitions. He has a similar page focusing on Microsoft’s local search patents.

A lot of other patents have popped up in the local search space. Free 411’s Jingle Networks was recently granted a patent for rolling contextual advertisements before delivering directory assistance. Google recently applied for an ambitious local search patent.

Local search companies have already started having patent fights. London-based Geomas, owner of patent 5,930,474, which enables users to select information from a map, is using the patent in a suit against Verizon.

There’s some suspicion of how Local.com will be using these patents. However, in a rather unambiguous reference to the competition, CEO Heath Clarke states that “We encourage directory assistance and free 411 companies that are interested in using our intellectual property to enter into licensing agreements with Local.com.”

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/129915960/

Google has confirmed the Grand Central Acquisition we suspected would be confirmed soon. No official word on a price, but we believe it’s in the $50 million range. Google will be moving the service over to Google’s network. A limited number of invitations for GrandCentral beta accounts will still be available. If you have a U.S. telephone number, you can sign up for an invitation at www.grandcentral.com. Current GrandCentral customers will continue to have uninterrupted access to the service.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/129859748/

We just got word that genealogy site Geni will be announcing that they’ve hit their 5 millionth profile, just five months after launching the service. This is up from 2 million in March.

This is not the number of registered users (Geni had 100,000 when reporting 2 million profiles), but rather the number of people put into Geni family trees. A user, after adding themselves, begins to add other people. If you include an email, that user is notified of the existence of the tree and can choose to sign up or not. Every non-deceased person who’s added, therefore, is a potential Geni user. That single viral component to the service will ensure orders of magnitude greater growth compared to established competitors like ancestry.com.

Geni has raised a total of $11.5 million in capital - the last round was $10 million on a $100 million valuation. They continue to add features that have proven to be successful at creating growth at Facebook and other social networks, suggesting that valuation may not be as crazy as it seems at first blush.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/129829816/

A follow up to our post a week ago: A source close to the deal has confirmed to us that Google has closed the acquisition of GrandCentral and will be announcing it this week, probably today or tomorrow. Acquisitions are generally announced after the close of market, so look for this after 1 pm PST on the Google blog or in a press release (or both). If not today, possibly tomorrow. We have been unable to get the company or Google to comment on this, but our source is solid.

We still don’t have confirmation of a price, but we’ve heard it’s in the Jotspot range - $50 million or more.

When the deal is announced we’ll hopefully hear details on planned integration with Gtalk, Gmail, etc.

Our overview of GrandCentral features is here.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/129815485/

This weekend we flipped the switch on Ta-da List for the iPhone. If you have an iPhone, just visit tadalist.com and you’ll see the iPhone version. You can access the standard web version with your desktop web browser. Both versions share data and lists.

Here’s what it looks like:

Your lists.

A sample list.

Tapping an item to mark it done, edit, or delete.

We hope you like it.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/502-ta-da-list-for-iphone

As a follow up on our earlier post about Apple’s $300 million iPhone weekend - January estimates guessed that Apple was making 20-50% margins on the iPhone (probably closer to 20%).

New estimates, based on a tear down of a unit by Austin-based Portelligent, put the cost of components at a mere $220. This does not include the cost of final assembly.

The most expensive part is the touch screen, (probably) produced by a German company called Balda. The estimated cost of the screen is around $60. Samsung produced the main microprocessor chip and the NAND-type flash memory.

The production cost of the much less popular 4 GB version of the iPhone is $200.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/129799095/

High Level / Big News

June has been a busy month, and the focus has been around the release of Google Gears, and the Apple iPhone. Both have shaken up the market showing the the future for Ajax is bright and expanding. It is reaching to the desktop, and the phone.

Offline: Gears and AIR

Shortly after Gears was released we saw a flurry of activity that consisted of apps being ported to work offline and libraries being extended to support offline use:

• Interview with Mike Tsao of the Google Gears team
• Aflax and Google Gears
• Flex-based SQLAdmin for Google Gears
• Google Gears DB Abstractions
• GearShift: DB Migration Handling Library
• Ext JS Gears Integration
• Experimental WorkerPool API
• Remember The Milk Offline
• jMaki Extension for Google Gears
• Base diving with Gears
• Mandelbrot Demo using a WorkerPool

Adobe renamed Apollo to AIR and continues to stay in the news:

• Adobe AIR: Fresh name for Apollo
• Aptana IDE adds AIR support

Mobile / iPhone

The hype around the iPhone is almost unprecedented. We have tried to keep from joining in, but there has been a lot of interesting work done around Ajax support, and the iPhone is pushing the bounds on Mobile Ajax, just by getting users online. The users will demand more, and vendors will have to step up. We will then have to deliver the applications that they deserve. In the US there isn’t the luxury of a top notch network, so we need to deliver it in a smart way too.

• Safari for Windows, Ajax on iPhone
• iPhone Interface in JavaScript
• iPhone Application List
• Mobile Ajax News: iPhone and Opera Mini
• iPhone and Ajax: onpinch(), mac simulator, and Cringely
• iPhone Development: Aptana and Morfik
• iPhone Safari Notes and Quirks

Browsers and Standards

With Safari for Windows being announced there has been a lot of talk around browsers. We also got some good news with significant IE memory leaks being fixed.

• “The CSS working group is irrelevant”
• ECMAScript Edition 4 Reference Implementation
• Safari 3: Onload firing, and bad timing
• Firefox 3: SQLite and more
• Safari 3 and CSS 3
• New Safari / WebKit Inspector
• IE Memory Leaks Be-gone
• SlickSpeed CSS Selector TestSuite

Ajax Libraries

General JavaScript

• EJS: Embedded JavaScript Client Side Preprocessor
• JsLex: Profile your Ajax applications
• qooxdoo 0.7 released
• SlickSpeed CSS Selector TestSuite
• A JavaScript Module Pattern
• Ajax, javascript and threads : the final truth
• Magic DOM
• DP_Debug: JavaScript Debugging Extensions

GWT

• GWT a Year Later: Was it the correct level of abstraction?
• Chronoscope: GWT Charting and Vector Graphics platform
• GWT Ext Integration

Moo

The FancyUpload with MooTools component is yet another attempt to help with browser based uploads.

Ext

Ext is growing from strength to strength. The team announced Ext 1.1 Beta + Feed Reader 3 Demo, thoughts on 2.0 alpha, a new Ext Accordion Control, and IDE support via Spket IDE: Ext Support. I think July will be an even bigger month.

Prototype

• Object.Event: Event model for all JS Objects
• Prototype Upgrade for Safari

jQuery

• Digg’s new comment system and jQuery

Showcases

Some high profile sites and apps have gotten an upgrade such as Apple, CNN, and Google Docs and Spreadsheets Updated.

We also saw useful tools such as an Entity Lookup that helps.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/129775343/monthly-ajaxian-roundup-for-june-2007-airing-out-the-gears