Ajax Girl

Another Ajax Experience is over. We had a blast and it was a tons of fun to see so many of our friends in the community and to have so much top-notch content. Many thanks to all those who came out, especially the speakers, many of whom came to present at great personal sacrifice. And, a tip of the hat to those who held some announcements for the show, such as:

• Brendan’s monkey triplets
• Adobe’s surprising URL state standards proposal and JavaScript Flash video embedding library
• Steve’s YSlow! library (okay, this went to beta right before the show, but we’re claiming it)
• Greg’s jMaki RC

As the last sessions were wrapping up, a group including Brad Neuberg, Glen Lipka, Alex Russell were seen huddled together in an animated discussion. Glen kindly pointed us to a summary of their chat, which includes what he’s calling “browser possession”:

The most exciting idea, which several people seemed to be noodling on at the same time was what I am loosely calling Browser Possession. It goes like this:

1. You make a web page using HTML, CSS and JS.
2. You test it in ONE browser. Probably Webkit.
3. You include a single JS at the top of your page, a spinoff off of SWFObject.js
4. The JS would instantiate a SWF file which would fill the 100% of the height and width of your browser window.
5. The JS would then suck in the HTML of the page, and feed it to the Flash Movie.
6. Then the Flash movie would instantiate Webkit inside it and render the page.

Glen goes on to simplify the proposal as:

1. Same as above, but instead of a Flash movie, it would be a Webkit native plugin.
2. This would need it’s own JS that was specific to this task.

Back when Adobe started briefing developers on Apollo/AIR, a few of us joked about WebKit running in a plug-in rendering web pages inside of a web browser. Funny to see it proposed as a serious idea.

With ScreamingMonkey proposing essentially the same idea with the JavaScript run-time, it’s interesting to imagine a world where Ajax applications can choose from several HTML renderers and JavaScript run-times, much like IE lets devs choose between the “Quirks” and “Standards” code paths.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/138147235/the-end-of-tae-and-browser-possesion

Interactive video startup Kyte.tv will also be broadcasting tonight’s party on one of their interactive TV channels. The channel will be available at kyte.tv/techcrunch and host video and photos from the event.

Party goers can stop by the booth to make quick recorded messages or upload pictures and video from their mobile phones to the channel via email. All contributed content will be displayed in the embedded widget below with an open chat window available if you click the “live chat” bar.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/138130862/

The TechCrunch Meet-up at August Capital Live, complements of Ustream.tv. The feed should be live from 5:30pm PST and is scheduled to finish around 10pm. Chat is available on Ustream.tv here.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/138128623/

People aren’t wasting any time trying to figure out how to monetize all those thousands of Facebook apps that have sprung up over the last couple of months. At least three advertising experiments have launched - the most promising, by far, is RockYou.

fbExchange

The first out the door was FBExchange, a copycat of the LinkExchange idea from the nineties. It was created by the 30Boxes Calendar team - Narendra Rocherolle, Julie Davidson and Nick Wilder. Display others’ ads on your facebook application and build up credits, which can then be used to run your own ads on other apps. It’s a cheap and easy way to get exposure for your application, should the viral Facebook machine not create enough growth to keep you happy. See GigaOm for more. The company says they’ve booked $200k in revenue after just two weeks live.

Lookery

Lookery, founded by serial entrepreneur Scott Rafer, is a straight up advertising network targeted solely at Facebook applications. They say they’ll have access to deep demographic data on users and can therefore target ads to users with very specific characteristics - a woman between the ages of 20-25 in New York, for example. That theoretically will lead to much higher advertising rates. I like the idea, but Facebook itself has access to the same data and more and has had trouble selling high CPM ads at scale. Lookery needs big scale to be successful, and so will likely struggle in the early days. For now, Rafer says, they are passing 100% of revenue to content providers and will start to take a cut in a month or so when the economics support it.

RockYou

RockYou has been quietly testing their own idea of an advertising network - selling “users” to other applications. They’ve had a tremendous amount of success building viral applications on Facebook so far. Their Super Wall app, for example, has nearly 3 million users and is adding hundreds of thousands of new users each day. It’s basically what it says - a better “wall” where friends can leave messages. With Super Wall, people can add pictures, video and other rich media.

They’re offering to promote third party applications on Super Wall, and charging on a per-user-acquired (CPA) basis. When a user is signing up for Super Wall they are asked if they’d like to also add a additional application (the advertiser). See the screen shot to the right (click for large view).

The test so far are going very well. CEO Lance Tokuda told me today that they moved $30k in inventory in just four hours. They are testing various price points, but the low end seems to be around $0.30 for each user they sell to another application, and they believe they can get as much as $1 over time. The effective CPM (or revenue per 1,000 pages) is a “multiple of $20″ he says. This make them possibly the first Facebook application to have found a real way to monetize users and pageviews.

Tokuda also says they have developed an API for Super Wall and will give free access to other applications to build their functionality into it. This can make your head spin a bit - Facebook is now widely considered a platform, and now Super Wall is a platform on top of a platform. It’s a good thing I guess that no one is slowing down long enough to really think too hard about how quickly the online world is evolving. Instead, they’re experimenting wildly. And some of this stuff is going to stick.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/138107227/

So Podtech is apparently unhappy with the post I wrote last evening - What’s Really Going On With Podtech? First Podtech subsequeCEO John Furrier emailed me repeatedly this morning asking for changes, then later Robert Scoble wrote on Twitter that much of my post was incorrect. It may well be incorrect, but it is certainly what I believe to be true after the extensive research I did on the company.

This is a post that Podtech pleaded with me to write, to counter the massive negative publicity they’ve been getting around the blogosphere. I agreed to write after two phone conversations with Furrier and some independent digging suggested that the whole story was not being told.

Much of Furrier and I talked about in our two conversation was off record at his request. But if Scoble, and executive with the company, is going to publicly state that the post is inaccurate I’m not sure its appropriate for me to keep that information non-public. Also, I’ve kept most of my personal opinions about Podtech to myself so far. I haven’t for example, said that I personally find 90% of Podtech content just slightly more entertaining than watching paint dry.

I stand by my opinion that Podtech is on the right track by focusing on aggregating third party content under its Flash player and advertising network and moving away from the highly-competitive content creation game. I assume that’s what they are focusing on, since John told me that repeatedly.

I write stuff how I see it, which is not always what the companies involved want to see. Never confuse TechCrunch with your PR or marketing team. And if your messaging isn’t clear, don’t shoot the messenger. Clean up your own mess first.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/138109781/

A Cook County, Illinois resident has filed a class action lawsuit against Apple and AT&T over the iPhone.

Jose Trujillo is claiming that Apple and AT&T misled iPhone buyers by not clearly informing them that the iPhone battery was sealed, and could only be professionally replaced.

According to the papers:

Unknown to the Plaintiff, and undisclosed to the public, prior to purchase, the iPhone is a sealed unit with its battery soldered on the inside of the device so that it cannot be changed by the owner…The battery enclosed in the iPhone can only be charged approximately 300 times before it will be in need of replacement, necessitating a new battery annually for owners of the iPhone.

The suit would appear to have little credibility; the sealed battery issue was reported extensively prior to the iPhone being launched and was certainly never kept as a secret.

Looking at the phone prior to buying it and noticing it was a sealed device was would also appear to have been a difficult task for Mr Trujillo; perhaps it needed a sticker warning of the fact, something along the lines of “Presuming nothing, ask questions first” or “Not to be purchased by people chasing a quick buck and 15 minutes of fame.”

(via Daily Tech)

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/138105264/

At the end of every interview someone inevitably asks “Where do you see 37signals in five years? Ten years? 20 years?” My answer remains the same: “Still in business. Beyond that I have no idea.”

Five years ago I had no idea we’d release Basecamp. Four years ago I had no idea we’d release Ta-da List. Three years ago I had no idea we’d release Backpack or Campfire. Two years ago I had no idea we’d release Highrise. Did I ever think we’d write another book? Not until we started it. And what about next year? I’m not entirely sure what we’re going to be working on.

You know more later than you do now

Just as we don’t believe in functional specs for software, we don’t believe in functional specs for companies. Planning it all out beforehand puts too much faith in the unknown. You know more about something while you’re doing it than before you’ve started. Just as we don’t much about the product we’re going to build before we build it, we don’t know much about the business opportunities before they happen. Books, plans, and documents may tell you how things should be, but only real experience tells you how things really are.

But??!!

“But if you don’t know where you’re going how are you going to get there.” We don’t know where we’re going. We know where we are. For us, what’s next is what’s now and what’s now is probably what’s next. Today’s weather is the best indicator of tomorrow’s weather. Things change, but not as much or as fast as most think. Focusing too much on the stuff that changes is why many companies lose their way. They’re always tripping over themselves as they try to keep pace with what’s new. People want what works, not what’s new.

Focus on what won’t change

The best business advice I’ve ever heard was this: “Focus on the things that won’t change.” Today and ten years from now people will still want simple things that work. Today and ten years from now people will still want fast software. Today and ten years from now people will still want fair prices. I don’t believe we’ll have a “I want complex, slow, and expensive products” revolution in 2017.

You can still evolve, improve, and innovate

Focusing on the things that won’t change doesn’t mean you’re stale, slow, or unwilling to adapt. It means that in ten years time your products will be more refined, more perfected, more efficient. Japanese cars sucked when they first came on to the market, but today they’re seriously refined and seriously good. This is because Japanese auto makers focused on principals that don’t change: Reliability, affordability, practicality. People wanted those things 30 years ago, they want them today, and they’ll want them 30 years from now. Constant refinement of those principals yields wonderful products.

Real opportunity comes from being opportunistic

Opportunities are spontaneous, but when you’re sticking to your five year plan you don’t deviate. You’re putting the blinders on. “This is where we’re going because that’s what we said!” When you don’t have a plan you can pick up on an opportunity that comes along. You’re taking the blinders off. “This is where we’re going because it makes sense today.” I’d rather stroll into the future with my blinders off.

Your mileage may vary

Of course it all depends on what you’re doing. Boeing probably needs a pretty stiff plan when building a new airplane. NASA needs to plan rocket launches many years in advance. If you want to be a doctor you’ll need a longer-term educational plan. But most businesses most of the time could benefit by just keeping their eyes open, being aware of what’s going on now, focusing on the basics that will be important to their customers today and tomorrow, and not looking too far ahead.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/542-the-5-10-20-year-plan

Performance marketing company MediaWhiz has snatched up eBay affiliate marketing service AuctionAds, which launched back in March. The price was not disclosed. AuctionAds is an advertising widget that serves contextually relevant eBay auctions based on tags supplied by the publisher.

MediaWhiz had previously purchased another sensibly named advertising startup, TextLinkAds, last November (TextLinkAds is a long time TechCrunch sponsor). Since the acquisition TextLinkAds expanded into RSS ads on top of direct website linking.

AuctionAds has been paying out 100% of eBay affiliate fees to publishers. Since eBay pays fees based on the total business a partner drives, AuctionAds can generate their own additional revenue from a combined network while still paying out the same rates affiliates would receive on their own. Since launch, they have registered over 20,000 publishers on their network.

Similar services to AuctionAds include BooBox and FavoriteThingz.

AuctionAds was launched as a partnership between Shoemoney Media and MediaWhiz. MediaWhiz has purchased Jeremy Schoemaker’s majority ownership to fully acquire the company.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/138089528/

Here’s an unconfirmed but well sourced rumor: silicon valley based Zazzle will be closing a second round of financing in the $30 million range, at a $300+ million pre-money valuation. The round is expected to be led by an as-yet-unnamed hedge fund. Kleiner Perkins (which led the company’s $16 million Series A round in 2005, is supposedly also particpating in the round. Look for confirmation from the company in the next couple of weeks.

The company competes with CafePress and others.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/138083069/

Wikia has acquired the distributed web crawling engine Grub from Looksmart.

Grub utlizes spare computing cycles on users’ computers to index the web, a similar concept to that used by SETI@home in the search for extraterrestrial life.

Grub originally started in 2000 and was purchased in 2003 by LookSmart. Grub was shut in 2005 following some minor controversy over the closed source code and the failure to comply with Robots.txt blocking requests.

Wikia will open source the Grub code “as soon as possible” and use the data from Grub to feed the Search Wikia Project.

The price of the acquisition was not disclosed.

(via R/WW)

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/138064886/