Ajax Girl

The demonstration of Microsoft’s LiveStation last week shone the spotlight back on the live P2P television market. Whilst P2P on-demand video participants such as Joost and Bablegum gain the most attention in the broader market, the live television streaming market (ie: not on demand like Joost, not user generated cam sites such as Ustream) has continued to thrive in relative obscurity. Here’s a quick look at some of the bigger players.

The newest competitor and still in private beta testing. Built on Silverlight, LiveStation has the ability of becoming a serious player due to its backing by Microsoft. See our previous coverage for a demonstration.

TVU Networks would be the most well known provider in this space. Copyright issues aside, there lineup of live channels is fairly solid with a range of US based content, although like most in this space, you’ll get better value from it if you speak Mandarin. I’ve used TVU previously, and again with my testing for this post; both times picture quality was flaky; audio is fine but it’s difficult to watch. It’s a service that would probably work better with a high speed internet connect, one quicker than my 2mb cable.

Sopcast is a very similar offering to TVU Networks but with a less polished interface. Looks aren’t everything as in my tests the picture quality from Sopcast was of a higher quality than TVU, although still not perfect. A somewhat different range of channels, for example Channel Ten Australia is available and quite watchable, although there would appear to be not quite so many US channels.

Zattoo could quite easily become the leader in this space if it wasn’t currently restricted to Switzerland and the UK, and then only by invite in those countries. The channel lineup on Zattoo is excellent, and unlike many others it’s all broadcast legally as well. Reviews for Zatto elsewhere would indicate that the viewing quality is first rate. If anyone knows how to view Zattoo outside of these countries, let us know.

PPLive comes in an English version, but that’s about the extent of English on the service. A fairly extensive range of Chinese programs. Streaming quality was pretty good for me in testing, even if I had no idea what anyone was saying.

PPMate, like PPLive and a number of other platforms (we won’t cover them all) is Chinese based and doesn’t include English content. Lots of Chinese content though and stream quality was good.

There are others. StreamStar has a reasonable list.

Web TV

An alternative to Live P2P television programs is Web TV. Many providers stream live content online now, however quality, both in terms of content and quality of the picture itself can be hit or miss as programs are not streamed by a P2P network but directly. All of these stations can be viewed for free and without special program aside from the video codec support (Real, QT, WM). WWiTV is the oldest and best portal online for those looking for web TV. For unique content, ManiaTV would be one of the largest web only live TV stations.
The Mac problem

Not one live P2P television program I tested offered a Mac version, although they did work well under Parallels. There’s not a lot of legitimate money in the space due to the copyright issues involved so don’t expect to find a lot of Mac clients any time soon.

Overall

Live P2P television services do provide an alternative to on demand services such as Joost. Live P2P television lets you watch channels you may otherwise never have access to; the value provided is similar to the value many, many people get by downloading American television shows from Bit Torrent instead of waiting 6-12 months to watch them locally. It’s another nail in the coffin for geospecific broadcasting; when more and more people bypass traditional broadcast models, the old location based television model will eventually fail and we’ll all get to watch programs at close to the same time worldwide.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/133572504/

The latest figures released by Hitwise indicate that traffic to LinkedIn is up 323% in the last year and 17% in the last week alone. It’s a healthy rise, and something LinkedIn should be pleased with, however the real question becomes: is this growth high enough given the rising popularity of Facebook as the social networking destination of choice?

The comScore figures speak for themselves:

The natural reaction by some will be to argue that comparing LinkedIn to Facebook is like comparing Apples and Oranges, and in part that is true. LinkedIn provides a more focused business networking product and it works fairly well for that purpose, but people flock where other people are going and nearly everyone who takes their social networking seriously (ie: adults) are joining Facebook.

By no means is Facebook the perfect business networking platform in comparison. The relationship options for new contacts remain a bit of joke, yet it would be stupid to believe that this will always be the case. Facebook will improve their product to satisfy this market, it’s not a question of if but when.

LinkedIn is trying to respond to the Facebook challenge; as we wrote June 24, LinkedIn is moving to open up its platform to third party developers to better compete with Facebook, but the delivery time on the project was said to be “in the next 9 months”. LinkedIn has added new features such as an Answers service and service recommendations, and also has $25.8million in funding behind it.

The problem for LinkedIn is now time. As Facebook powers ahead with a superior and more compelling offering, the relatively static LinkedIn may continue to operate, but it faces the real risk of becoming irrelevant in the medium term, if not more quickly.

Previous TechCrunch LinkedIn coverage here.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/133544473/

Two Rochester Institute of Technology students, Jaimen Brill and Asmah Abushagur, are launching an online clothing site for the blind and visually impaired. The site, White Cane Label, is a non-profit effort to help blind people shop online and easily keep track of their wardrobe without the help of a sighted friend.

The site’s interface will be driven by sound and text instead of images. Customers will receive recommendations based on their answers to a clothing questionnaire that gauges their personal style. The recommendations will consist of detailed descriptions of each item, including styles and price ranges. After ordering an item, they’ll be mailed the outfit with braille tags indicating the designer, clothing type, size, and color for easy reference. A second label will include washing instructions.

They are relying entirely on designer donations to supply their inventory, but will be charging full price in an effort to stop sighted buyers from taking advantage of any deals.

The site started as a school project, but soon captivated the pair as they looked into it deeper. White Cane Label is set to launch this fall, as they announced at the Fashion for Good Roundtable in Rome during Rome’s Summer Fashion Week.

Readers interested in learning more about internet accessibility for the disabled should see the W3C’s reference page.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/133543049/

The guys behind Worth1000 and Plime have been tooling away at a new venture called Aviary (although it’s confusingly hosted at CreationOnTheFly.com). With Aviary, the New York based team is aiming at the rather ambitious goal of not only creating a marketplace for multimedia artwork, but a suite of robust collaborative online applications with which to create the works.

The obvious question is “why both tools and a marketplace?” As founder Avi Muchnick believes, both are needed for the other to be successful. They need a marketplace for creators to sell their works and encourage use of the tools. They need tools so they can confirm and maintain the copyright of the works created on the platform.

The lingering question is whether online tools will be of a high enough caliber to produce marketable content. So far, signs are pointing to yes.

When completed, Aviary will consist of 14 online tools of varying complexity: an image editor, color swatch generator, pattern generator, vector-based editor, 3D modeler, audio editor, music generator, video editor, desktop publishing tool, word processor, painting simulator, custom image product creator, photo analyzer, and file system to store it all on. Each of the applications is programmed in Flex, making them ready to meld with your desktop upon Adobe AIR’s public release. Adding an artsy twist, each tool will be named after a different bird.

All items created in these programs will be stored on their own file system called Rookry. From there, artists will be able to sell their creations on the open market. Even small pieces, such as patterns or sound effects will be marketable. If the works are made within Aviary, buyers will have the security of knowing they are buying an original work. If they incorporate outside content, they will be flagged as such. From within Aviary’s platform artists will also be able also create derivative works while maintaining attribution and royalty rights upon sale.

The team will be releasing the tools as they’re completed. They’re already showing some pretty serious results with their image editor (Phoenix), Vector Editor (Raven), and 3D editor (Hummingbird) outlined below:

Phoenix

Phoenix is like Photoshop without trying to replace it. You get a lot of the familiar features such as brushes, patterns, stamps, smudging, shapes, blending options, and more.

The Aviary team decided on a core feature set by polling their band of PhotoShop fanatics using Worth1000 to find Photoshop’s most frequently used features. The editor can work on an image of max dimensions of 2880 by 2880 pixels.

The editor does support importing and exporting images of familiar formats, but any Aviary work that includes an imported image not created in the suite will be marked as such in the marketplace. This will help alert buyers to the possibility that the creator doesn’t have full copyright over the work.

Raven

Raven is their vector based drawing program. It’s based on a lot of the design from Phoenix, but allows artists the flexibility of vector based drawing (e.g. easy scaling/rotation without losing quality). Raven will connect with Phoenix, allowing illustrations created in Raven to be rasterized and edited in Phoenix.

Click on the image to the right for a larger view.

Hummingbird

Hummingbird is their 3D editor designed completely in Flex. Right now they’ve just got a 3D model renderer along with some basic editing tools (element selection/deletion), but are working on a more robust UI for creating new models from scratch.

The hummingbird on the right was rendered with the engine in real time with a metallic gold skin.

Click on the image for a real time demo of the 3D rendering engine.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/133478932/

Robot Replay is a Rails application written by Nitobi that allows you to record how your users use your site, and play it back later.

You include a piece of JavaScript on your site, and then user events are chunked, and sent up to RobotReplay every now and then. Once the user is done with their session you can see it, and play it back as it happened.

The playback happens by using the browser itself. This means that at anytime you can stop the playback and actually interact with the site. Pretty cool.

There is obviously much use from a usability standpoint, and we were also told that SEO folk find it useful.

Watch an example of mouse gestures and forms.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/133444589/robot-replay-watch-your-users-via-ajax

Slimmy
The funny copy for Slimmy explains it is not for people with a “George Castanza wallet.”

STYLE WARNING: This wallet is not a magic trick.

If you have a “George Castanza wallet,” with over 10 credit cards, pictures of distant relatives, and 5 years of financial records, you WILL NOT be able to magically conceal the same contents in the Slimmy.

The Slimmy experience is about security, comfort and minimalism. Carry only what you need so that you are less exposed to theft, less emcumbered, and look better…

A Slimmy can help, but you have to want to change.

Mosso
The Mosso Story talks about how the company’s founders decided to scratch their own itch.

We were a two-man operation: a graphic artist and a web developer. Everyone said that for the sites we wanted to create, we really needed to get our own server and spend the time to manage it. But to us, that was as crazy as saying that to sell t-shirts online, we had to spend our time driving a Mack truck doing the deliveries. There had to be a better way to host our projects. Right?

We started Mosso because we knew there were others like us: other web agencies who wanted to promise their clients that their websites and email would work—always work—without being the ones responsible for all the technology.

Antipodes
How much story is there to a bottle of water? Antipodes water explains the idea behind its H2O.

First we wanted to source one of the world’s purest waters. It was a mystery to us why much of the bottled water in New Zealand was being shipped in from Europe – one of the most industrialised continents on Earth.

In contrast, Antipodes is sourced from one of the least populated countries on Earth and in a place renowned for pure water, Antipodes is rated as the purest.

Next we wanted to create the perfect sparkling water
to compliment well crafted food and wine. To achieve this we added a fine bead.

Finally we wanted it to look good. It didn’t have to stand out on a supermarket shelf, because it would never be on one. We didn’t want it to stand out on a restaurant table either – even though it would most certainly be on one. We wanted it to compliment a table setting rather than dominate it. We believe the heroes of the table should be the wine and food, not the water bottle.

So we kept the bottle short and fat and we kept it clean and simple. We wanted it to look as pure on the outside as it in fact was on the inside.

That’s basically the story of us and the water – everything else is just bookkeeping.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/499-on-writing-slimmy-mosso-and-antipodes

Remy Sharp has just released his initial version of JavaScript Speech Bubbles - allowing you to place and share speech bubbles with your own commentary from any web site like Facebook or Flickr.

Remy said:

I’ve often looked a picture of friends and wanted to slap on my own
speech bubble with some amusing comment, so I went about writing this.

The size and orientation of the speech bubble is fixed, but it adds
to the creative fun - a bit like twitter’s 140 character limitation.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/133311284/friday-fun-with-speech-bubbles

UK-based Moo, a startup that prints “mini cards” from photos and other images that you upload directly or point them to via Flickr, Bebo, or their other partners, has been a real hit among the early adopter, silicon valley crowd. People hand them out like crazy, and they are great, if somewhat expensive, conversation starters.

Next week the company will expand beyond cards and into stickers, which I predict will be even more popular than the cards. Look for them on July 19 on the Moo site.

The stickers, which will be high quality vinyl, will be sold in batches of 90 for $10. And this is cool - every single one of those 90 stickers can be a different image (just like the cards).

Moo, which raised $5 million from Atlas Venture and Index Ventures in April 2006, has sold “several million cards” to customers in 143 countries - including North Korea.

We’ll be giving away some free orders for stickers on the day of launch. Check back then for details.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/133286611/

Startup Phanfare, which stores a lot of user generated media, announced today that they are in the process of moving all of their backups of stored user data - 40 terabytes - to Amazon’s S3 storage service.

Amazon S3 has been on a bit of a roll lately, recently surpassing 5 billion stored objects and growing fast.

It’s also racking up a number of passionate users who swear by it for reliability and cost savings. Phanfare is just the most recent example, albeit a large one.

Phanfare stopped short of moving all data over to S3, though. For now they are just moving backups. They admit they’d save more money by moving the storage function entirely to Amazon, but note that:

After all, right now, Amazon does not provide a Service Level Agreement (SLA) or even a phone number to call if you are unhappy with the Amazon web service. I don’t expect that Amazon will ever lose our data of course, but we would like an SLA before we bet our customer’s data on that.

On the subject of Amazon, rumor has it that they’ll be adding to their storage and computing web services by year end - and adding a MySQL database web service to compliment the other two.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/133269731/

I haven’t seen many languages implemented in PHP. J4P5 “is a JavaScript interpreter written in PHP 5, that allows to run untrusted scripts in a sandbox on your server. It aims to implement most of Ecma-262 3d edition.”

J4P5 uses a modified version of the CFG parser of the MetaPHP project, and is licensed under the GPL

This project is new. The current version already exposes most of the features commonly associated with JavaScript, such as objects, prototypes, closures.

Notable caveats of this version (aka “the TODO list”):

• No support for unicode strings
• No support for regular expressions
• Semi-colons at the end of statements are not optional
• Most of the pre-defined objects/methods have not been tested
• The speed is definitely slower than PHP. It’s getting better though.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/133266589/j4p5-javascript-interpreter-written-in-php-5