Ajax Girl

You read the story and you heard the podcast. Now you can try out Ooma yourself, way before they go on sale to the public in September.

We have fifty to give away. This isn’t like most account giveaways - each of these packages will be sold for $399 retail in September and gives you free VOIP phone service on your normal phones for life (the life of you or the company, whichever ends first). You get it for free, and you get it right now.

Here’s another cool thing about these - each one includes three free “white rabbit” tokens that you can give away to others so they can try out Ooma, too. They have a limited number of these, but they’ll continue to give three to everyone until they start to run out.

Here’s what you have to do. Just write a short comment below telling us why you want it. Or tell us about your favorite Ashton Kutcher movie or tv show (since he’s the Creative Director of the company). Or both. You don’t have to be truthful or nice, but you do have to be creative and entertaining. All you have to do is be one of the fifty most entertaining comments and you’re in. You have until end of day California time on Friday to write. Make sure you use your real email address in the comment or we won’t know how to contact you.

Ooma will only ship these in the U.S. for now, so you must be living here. And there’s one more rule - We’ll be adding Ooma to InviteShare later tonight and allowing people to sign up to get one. If you are selected you have to agree to give at least one of the systems to the person on the top of the InviteShare list. That way we can possibly get some more of these to TechCrunch readers.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/135514308/

Any profitable sector of the internet is bound to draw the eyes of new startups. This is particularly the case for the $78.8 billion online travel industry. It’s spurred the development of over a dozen meta-search engines, trip trackers, and trip planning tools.

The latest travel site, VibeAgent, should look familiar to you. It’s TripAdvisor with a social networking twist. Like TripAdvisor, you can use the site to find, review, and book hotels (TripAdvisor also does flights). However, on TripAdvisor, every gets the same reviews. It can be hard to guess at motivations behind the poster, or how relevant they are to your tastes and preferences. They recently received an undisclosed seed round of funding from Trip Davis, President and CEO of the publicly traded TRX Inc.

VibeAgent helps add context to the reviews and search results by exposing the profiles of the reviewers and ranking search results based on your relationship to the reviewer. Reviews consist of text, ratings, and photos of the area. Every review is labeled by the person who posts it and ranked in search results with review by similar reviewers, friends, and members of groups you’ve joined pushed to the top. The idea is that these people have the opinions that you can trust and which are closest to your views. Of course, if you don’t join the system, they won’t have very many details to base their results on.

So far VibeAgent is sticking to hotels because they want to focus on purchases with subjective aspects. Flights are fairly commoditized, with pretty much every airline sticking you in the same cramped chair. Hotels are hard to assess from a price tag and even a photo, which is the reason VibeAgent wants to personalize reviews. Their next target will most likely be vacation homes.

One of the major problems review services have with getting of the ground is building a critical mass of reviews before it becomes a self sustaining community. Yelp has done it by focusing on a few metros and copious amounts of parties. VibeAgent, with their older crowd, plans on rewarding top users through “travel-related” rewards.

While the service is still in private beta, they’ve also extended a 100 invites to us available on InviteShare.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/135523150/

When the “always on” social network Velvet Puffin first launched, it seemed like a tough sell for users. They tied together the web, desktop, and mobile phone interfaces into one social network accessible anywhere, but you had to download a desktop and mobile application to do so.

Velvet Puffin is back and has shed one of the desktop downloads while keeping a presence on the desktop. However, they didn’t use one of the rich internet platforms (Adobe AIR or Silverlight) to do it. Instead, they’ve created a “quick launch” version that allows you to easily access their social networking/chat application on any system with desktop functionality. They’re using a combination of a java applet, Flash, and C++ programming to quickly launch their chat and content sharing application outside of the browser. How they are being used is a bit of a secret sauce, but Founder and CEO Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan says the java is used to ensure security integrity before session is established, Flash for the application, and C++ for maintaining the connection.

Now when you log in, the social networking program launches in its own window, providing the full functionality of the downloaded app. You can even upload photos to your account by dragging them on to the application. As we described during their launch, you can use the client to chat, blog, and share photos and videos. The chat application interacts with Yahoo, GTalk, AIM, MSN, and ICQ. It also sends messaging updates and grabs a spot on your system tray. A chat application like this really benefits from being on the desktop since you can still receive updates while your browser is out of focus. However, the first time you sign on, you do have the annoying chore of giving the java applet permission to run.

Velvet Puffin decided to take this “un-web 2.0″ route instead of siding with AIR or Silverlight because they utilize technologies already on people’s systems. We still have yet to see what platform decisions a lot of sites are making as they merge from the web to the desktop. Pownce and eBay have already sided with AIR. Silverlight is still waiting on some big applications like Popfly to come out of beta.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/135504765/

SocialText, a wiki startup based in Palo Alto, is looking for a new CEO. Founder and current CEO Ross Mayfield wrote a post on his personal blog today, saying the company is looking for a new leader to “take it to the next level.”

I spoke to Ross for a few minutes this evening. He says he’s really good at the early stage and externally focused stuff - marketing, strategy, fundraising, etc. He’s looking for someone to compliment those skills - a seasoned CEO who has experience growing a company through later stage hurdles and, particularly, to streamline operations. Ross will stay on as Chairman and president of SocialText.

Many companies go through this - the type of person who can make something out of absolutely nothing and get a startup off the ground often doesn’t have the skills or desire to manage the growth phase of a company. Ross also started SocialText in 2002 - and guided it through the very dark days of the downturn. I don’t blame him for looking for a partner to help him move the company forward. He’s been at this for five years and probably needs a break.

I also think SocialText is going about this the right way, with an up-front blog post saying exactly what they intend to do. Compare this to how Technorati handled their CEO search, which was done in secret and eventually leaked because the executive search firm tasked with finding the executive sent out the document to one too many bloggers. They weren’t able to control, or even contribute to, the messaging, and by the time CEO Dave Sifry confirmed the search a lot of damage had already been done to the company.

JotSpot, a competitor, was acquired by Google in late 2006.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/135480961/

Their first acquisition: Facebook has bought Parakey, the yet-to-launch “web operating system” created by Mozilla co-founders Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt. The price isn’t being disclosed, but Facebook should be issuing a press release this afternoon.

Parakey was founded in 2005 and raised a seed round of financing from Sequoia Capital (although this was never confirmed). There is a good background story on Parakey, which will include both browser and client software, here.

As he describes it, from a user’s point of view, Parakey is “a Web operating system that can do everything an OS can do.” Translation: it makes it really easy to store your stuff and share it with the world. Most or all of Parakey will be open source, under a license similar to Firefox’s…Parakey is intended to be a platform for tools that can manipulate just about anything on your hard drive—e-mail, photos, videos, recipes, calendars. In fact, it looks like a fairly ordinary Web site, which you can edit. You can go online, click through your files and view the contents, even tweak them. You can also check off the stuff you want the rest of the world to be able to see. Others can do so by visiting your Parakey site, just as they would surf anywhere else on the Web. Best of all, the part of Parakey that’s online communicates with the part of Parakey running on your home computer, synchronizing the contents of your Parakey pages with their latest versions on your computer. That means you can do the work of updating your site off-line, too.

Update: Was Google a bidder for Parakey? One source says they were, but couldn’t compete with Facebooks pre-IPO stock. Facebook isn’t saying if this was a stock or cash deal, but it wouldn’t be dumb to assume that Facebook stock was at least part of the acquisition price. In an IPO the value of that stock would probably increase dramatically, giving the Parakey stockholders a nice additional return on investment.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/135429206/

Apparently all presidential candidate logos must use red, white, and blue.

2008 logos:

2004 logos:

I know, I know. Gotta look patriotic and all that. But isn’t there some virtue in standing out from the crowd?

When every candidate uses the same color scheme, it ceases to convey patriotism or “a stronger America” and starts to reek of bureaucracy, design by committee, fear of change, and politics as usual.

The last candidate to break from the r/w/b convention? Not surprisingly…

Logos from 4president.org.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/522-presidential-candidate-logos-politics-as-usual

Crackle’s eating some of their own dog food since launch to produce this corporate viral video. This is the second in their Kung Fu series where grouper takes on the competition, with a noticeably higher production value. I don’t know what it is about working at Grouper that breeds a love of kung fu films (see their previous video), but the ending may be more justified with Sony’s backing.

There’s a more serious version available here.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/135388844/

As promised, London-based Moo has released a new sticker product this morning. $10 plus shipping gets you 90 small but high quality vinyl stickers, and each can be a different image if you like.

If you want to try this out, we have something cool for you. The first 100 people to place an order through the link below get a free order, with free shipping. After 100 orders, you have to pay the $10, but the shipping is free:

Free Moo Stickers From TechCrunch

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/135323812/

The new Volvo S40
From: Régis Kuckaertz

Volvo has redesigned (sic) the S40 model, following a few — scandinavian — design principles:

1 Less is more
2 Treat everything like a piece of art
3 Form follows function
4 Redefine luxury
5 Never stop learning

Seems to be the perfect car for a designer!

Seagate packaging like Apple
From: Ross Hill

I just came across How Seagate learned to package like Apple. and thought you might be interested. A ‘corporate’ company jumping on the design bandwagon – with human copywriting.

“Crap” design regurgitated as “good” design
From: Yong Bakos

Check out the last half of this post from David Byrne, on design masters feigning crap design as style.

I guess at some point designers (and others) get bored with “good” design and the increasing ease of making tasteful design that looks more or less like everything else, which is exactly the point, and also not the point. At some point I guess people designing things want them to look tasteful so that they’ll appeal to a semi-sophisticated crowd. And now it’s pretty easy to do that. With computers, and under the influence of the wealth of slick packaging in the world, tasteful layouts are pretty easy to emulate. The general public is fairly sophisticated in their design sense these days — they “read” the language of design — but, it being a visual language, they are not able to articulate the “text”. But if as a designer you want to be really hip and to appeal to those who deem themselves above mere tasteful design, then you have to have to work a little harder. One way to achieve this ultra cool surprise is to look intentionally bad, but to drop little visual ironic winks into the mix so that the audience knows it’s not really buying a record by a crappy East German band.

So, over the years, every genre of crap design — East German products, tacky back of magazine ads recycled by Warhol or Lichtenstein, sleazy RnB and Rock and Roll record covers, amateur porn and scientific textbooks — gets regurgitated as “good” design. Everything gets mulched and reused. So how does anything truly new ever get created?

Jack White in Esquire Mag on Constraints
From: Howard Mann

Stumbled on the attached “What I’ve learned” piece in this month’s Esquire Magazine that features Jack White and thought you would like a few of his thoughts. In particular the comment on constraints.

Erik Spiekermann on ideasonideas
From: Peter Pimentel

I thought I’d let you know about a great interview we have with Erik Spiekermann.

The renowned designer gave us a surprisingly candid look at the challenges of running a design business. We asked some him tough questions and each of his answers was insightful.

Tufte Mint
From: Theodore Jacobson

I ran across a well-designed style for Shaun Inman’s Mint stats package called Tufte Mint. It’s based on Edward Tufte’s book on data graphics. Rob Goodlatte, the author of the style, explains how he stripped out as much non-data visuals in this post.

It’s a beautiful and simple interface for Mint.

Steve Jobs Thoughts on Beating Microsoft
From: David Duran

Came across this great quote from the Steve and Bill interview at D. It’s at about 2:00 in the Part 2 video. Thought you guys might enjoy it.

Steve Jobs on changing the way of thinking when he returned to Apple:

[There was this belief that] for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose, and it was clear that you didn’t have to play that game because Apple wasn’t going to beat Microsoft. Apple didn’t have to beat Microsoft. Apple had to remember who Apple was because it had forgotten who Apple was. So for me it was pretty essential to break that paradigm.

Robert Frost on control vs communication
From: Josh Clark

Among my favorite of your essays is the “control vs communication” post from a few months back. Your advice to consider simple, human communication as an alternative cuffing users was, as usual, spot on.

I was just blogging about this in the context of my own software and along the way found that poet Robert Frost shared your skepticism about building unnecessary barriers. In the very poem where Frost coined the phrase “good fences make good neighbors,” he gives some advice that seems oh-so-relevant to software developers:

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.

From Mending Wall

Thought you might appreciate the sentiment.

Have 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/520-mailbag-volvo-seagate-tufte-mint-etc

Customized home page startup Pageflakes launched a slew of new features this morning under what it is calling its “Blizzard” release.

Among all of the new features, the two that are important to highlight are social networking and customizable themes on pages.

Until today Pageflakes users could create pages for their own use, and/or make public pages called Pagecasts. The content was and continues to be completely up to the user. Now, however, each user also gets a profile page and can add other Pageflakes users as friends. Effectively, Pageflakes is now a social network, and users can connect based on common interests. See a screen shot of my profile page above (click for larger view). Users with common interests are shown on the bottom right.

Pageflakes is also releasing “themeable” public pages and has partnered with a number of high profile media companies to create their own Pagecasts - USA Today, Rolling Stone, CNN, WashingtonPost, Newsweek Interactive, Entertainment Tonight, The Insider, Slate, AOL, Die Welt, Bild and others. This is comparable to Netvibes’ Universe product, although Pageflakes is live and anyone can create a themed public page (Netvibes still requires a partnership, you can’t just create one yet). Over 120,000 public pages have been created by users to date - now those pages can have custom themes. The TechCrunch public Pageflakes page is here.

Pageflakes also continues to roll out more widgets - they have 240,000 so far. And new users will like the auto-customization that lets them create a customized page quickly based on a few questions.

See a full profile of the company here, and note previous product releases as well. This continue to be a heavily competitive space, but that competition is driving innovation - from Pageflakes as well as the others. Consumers win.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/135308533/