Ajax Girl

Scrybe, the online/offline calendar and organizer, has closed their series A round of financing from Adobe Systems Incorporated and LMKR. In what is becoming an annoying trend, the company is not disclosing the size of the round.

You’ll probably recognize the company from the somewhat viral product demo that swept the blogosphere last October. Since then they’ve been through a private and public beta.

Scrybe is a Flash-based organizational and productivity tool that works both online and offline. It consists of multiple calendar management, to do lists, web clip bookmarklet, contact list (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail or Outlook importing), and The system operates offline by caching your changes and then uploading when the system reconnects. Zimbra and Google Gears provide similar online/offline products.

The driving principle behind the application is usability. Scrybe’s main selling point is that the application retains the context of the data that you’re working with by “zooming” instead of flipping to the data. One example is the calendar. The cells of the calendar expand and contract as you edit a week, day, or hour more closely while still showing the details of the surrounding days. See the extended video below for more details.

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/~3/141847974/

Germany is starting to build a name for itself as the startup cloning capital of the world. German clones of popular U.S. services keep popping up. Twitter (Frazr, Dukudu). and Facebook (Studi.vz) are two recent examples. TechCrunch contributor Gregor Hochmuth termed these German clones Copy/Paste innovation.

The latest German clone, Verwandt, means “related” in English. Its design and functionality is very similar to its U.S. counterpart, Geni. In fact it goes well beyond similar - Verwandt is a Geni clone dressed up in some cuddlier graphics. It uses the same layout and quick sign-up flash-based registration form as the U.S. site. They’ve also copied the family tree navigation and profile pages. Take a look below to judge the similarities for yourself.

The motivation and business process is clear: 1) Find a proven concept in the U.S. or elsewhere, 2) Clone the service, 3) Profit. And they have been profiting off these clones quite a bit. The Samwer Brothers have invested in Alando.de (eBay clone sold to eBay) and Studi.vz (Facebook clone sold for $100 million). They’re also investors in Frazr. See Gregor’s post for a longer list of clones. Certainly other countries, including the U.S., engage in their fair share of cloning as well. However, the flood of clones coming from Germany suggests an unwelcome trend.

Vanderwandt seems to be cloning some of Geni’s success as well. They have over 1.5 million profiles in under 2 months of operation, compared to Geni’s 5 million. They’ve also secured an undisclosed level of financing, most certainly helped by Geni’s $100 million valuation.

There’s a lot of great innovation going on outside the U.S., but this rip and flip mentality may prove short-sighted as the real McCoys continue to innovate and internationalize, and solid German startups like Xing are forgotten in the controversy.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/141798357/

New York based Clipmarks, a del.icio.us-like social bookmarking service, may have been acquired by Forbes. We have no information on the size of the transaction, but my guess is that it was on the very low side.

The service allows users to bookmark all or a portion of a web page and annotate it. It is then shared with the community and popular new bookmarks are “popped” to the top of the site. In some ways it is more competitive with Digg than Del.icio.us since popular stories are linked from the home page. See our post on Digg-like competitors from earlier this year where we talked about Clipmarks and others.

I never took much of a liking to Clipmarks - it wasn’t as interesting as Digg and was lost in the sea of social bookmarking competitors. But I congratulate them on the acquisition and look forward to seeing what Forbes does with it. I wonder if Condé Nast’s acquisition of Reddit last year prompted Forbes to take a look at some of the available competitors out there.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/141809257/

Ian Hickson likes to get practical. He was able to run some reports on ~ten billion documents in the Google index
, and used the data to be able to give real advice to HTML parser implementors.

As always, it is always interesting to see what real world data throws out at you.

The three sets of data that I posted are all derived from parsing several billion documents from Google’s Web search index using a parser I wrote in Sawzall.

The first set of data gives the relative aggregate distribution of invocations of the “in head”, “in body”, and “in table” insertion modes, for each of the insertion modes. This allows implementors to determine, for instance, that invoking the “in body” code while in a cell must be very efficient, while invoking the “in body” code from the “after frameset” code need not be as efficient, in case the implementor has a strategy that optimises one at the cost of another. See: documentation, data.

The second set of data gives the relative aggregate distribution of tokens for each phase/insertion mode pair. This can help implementors that are using a cascade of if statements decide on the right order for their statements. For instance, the most common token type seen in the “in body” insertion mode is character data, and the second most token is the start tag token for an a element, but the isindex start tag was almost never seen. This tells implementors that they should check for characters and a start tags long before checking for isindex tags. See: documentation, data.

The last set of data examines the number of attributes per element. It allows implementors to decide on the optimum memory allocation strategy for attributes. For example, since most elements have 9 or fewer attributes, the data structure that stores attributes can be optimised for simply having 9 attributes, using little memory, and if an element has more than this number of attributes, the implementation can switch to a separate implementation that is more memory-heaving but is optimised for large numbers of attributes. See: data.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/141776381/html-5-parser-optimizations

Colorado-based startup incubator TechStars has launched their second company today, Intense Debate. We covered TechStar’s first company, MadKast, earlier this week.

Intense Debate is a souped-up blog commenting system that adds a lot of features for publishers and commenters alike. Installing the plug-in on your blog (WordPress, Blogger, and TypePad) adds threading, comment analytics, bulk comment moderation across all your blogs, user reputation, and comment aggregation. You can test out the system on the TechStars blog, but you’ll have to apply to the private beta if you want to install it on your own.

Threaded comments are nothing new and few blogs attract enough comments to make analytics a necessity. However, the system really shines when it comes to features for individual commenters.

While you can still leave anonymous comments, signing up for an account turns your commenting into a mini-blogging platform. The system lets you establish a reputation, link a profile, make friends, and syndicate your comments. Since all the accounts are on Intense Debate, it tracks your activity across any enabled blog. The networking benefit of the plug-in would make it a great addition to a blog network like Wordpress.com.

Your profile consists of an optional photo, links to other social media profiles, your recent comments, and friends. You can see David Cohen’s profile here. Having a profile lets other users easily follow your comments over all or on a specific blog via RSS. Your reputation is based on the number of comments you’ve made and the quality of those comments as voted on by the other users.

Intense Debate competes for space on your blog with several other commenting systems, such as JS-Kit, SezWho, and Tangler. JS-Kit lets you add ratings and comments easily with a couple lines of code, but doesn’t have a user profile system. SezWho has a very similar commenting system that works for Wordpress and Movable Type. Tangler has a soon-to-be released embeddable commenting widget that brings its real time forum system to your blog. CoComment has a similar system, but tracks comments across any blog without requiring a plug-in.

The system provides a lot of value for prolific commenters. In fact, a lot of TechCrunch commenters have already established their own following and reputations. A system like this provides the infrastructure to make them explicit. Yet it may be a tough sell for larger blogs who want to own their user data.

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/~3/141770629/

It’s cool how Apple’s design language keeps evolving. One product design follows another. There’s a continuity this way, yet things continue to feel new. And it’s interesting how their small designs influence their large designs.

Take a look at the back of the iPhone. It’s silver on top, black on the bottom. Then take a look at the new iMac. It’s is black on top, silver on the bottom.

The iPhone design has influenced the new iMac design just as the widescreen iPod influenced the previous iMac design:

The old iMac basically looked like a huge iPod and the new iMac looks like an iPhone. I love watching them iterate and evolve. Each product playing off the next. Each new material finding its way into new products. This is design at its best.

Just one more thing…

Absolutely stunning.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/565-how-apples-small-things-influence-their-big-things

Megavideo, a new online video sharing site based out of Hong Kong, has YouTube in its sights. In a video on its homepage, the company claims to best YouTube for ten reasons:

1. Video publishers can earn money through a rewards program
2. Publishers can also earn money through AdBrite in-video advertisements
3. Users can move the playback position to anywhere in the video
4. The website supports twenty languages
5. The video player can be customized to match the designs of websites where you want to embed
6. There is no maximum playtime for video uploads
7. Video conversion takes no more than 30 minutes
8. Videos can be uploaded in batch
9. Original video files can be downloaded
10. Megavideo loves you more than YouTube

Since users can also move the playback position to anywhere within a video on YouTube, and the last given reason is pure filler, only eight of these advantages seem to be justifiable.

The site is notable for its lack of banner advertisements. The company appears to be aiming to generate revenue by charging people for premium features. Premium members must pay at least $10 per month, but they can upload videos up to 5GB in size and their uploads get prioritized before regular members. Also, only premium members can download videos from the site (as opposed to streaming) and earn revenue from advertisements and the Megavideo rewards program.

Megavideo is provided by the same company that created Megaupload.

Watch Megavideo’s self-proclaimed ten reasons for preferring their service to YouTube below:

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/141725744/

Google continues to add cities to its Street View maps product that launched earlier this year. You can now view and stroll through high quality photos of most of the downtown areas of San Diego, Los Angeles, Houston and Orlando. Nine cities are now covered - click on the camera icons to dive into the city and see it.

Microsoft is working on competing products, but they are not as elegant or easy to use. See our coverage of Street Side and Virtual Earth 3D.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/141715828/

We all knew big layoffs were coming at the San Francisco Chronicle, but I had hoped that they’d try to keep at least one of the business/tech writers that is responsible for my occasional purchase of a copy of the paper. No luck.

The paper that is losing $1 million per week could fire every journalist it has on staff and still not break even. But that hasn’t stopped them from trying. 80 reporters, photographers and copy editors plus 20 in management will be gone by end of summer. Among the ones who’ve already left are the few that were trying new and innovative things.

Jessica Guynn and Dan Fost are gone. These were the reporters that were regularly attending events, talking to tech execs and developers and generally gunning for the interesting stories. They’ve landed on their feet, though, as talented people usually do. Fost is freelancing. Guynn got a raise and a new job at the L.A. Times covering silicon valley.

Ellen Lee, Ryan Kim, Verne Kopytoff and Tom Abate remain to cover business and technology. They are fine writers, but the loss of Guynn and Fost is a serious blow to the newspaper. I found that when I was reading an interesting story in the Chronicle, it was usually written by one of them.

One bit of good news. David Lazarus, the brilliant strategist who suggested that only newspapers are qualified to do “real” journalism, is among those who’ve left. I’ll miss his occasional rants, but his blog-hate wasn’t helping the newspaper.

Al Saracevic, who’s taken an occasional public shot at TechCrunch, was promoted to Business Editor - he now controls the entire business section of the paper. Al is an incredibly nice guy but, like Lazarus, he’s firmly in the “does’t get new media” camp.

These layoffs may have made the bottom line look marginally better for this fast sinking ship. But I wonder if politics had more to do with who stayed (and got promoted) than talent. The readers ultimately decide. But I, for one, think some bad decisions were made.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/141684372/

A big chunk of our paid customers start out on the free plan and the upgrade to paying plans. It’s a bit of an art to figure out when and where to suggest an upgrade. Too often and it’s irritating. Not enough and your customers may never see it. Too big and it’s annoying. Too small and people may miss it.

Before

Here’s how Backpack used to let people know they could upgrade to get more pages, etc:

This message was always displayed right under the “Make a new page” button. It worked pretty well, but it was always there. It was too in your face.

The first time you go to click the “Make a new page” button you’re hit with a sales message right below the button. That’s not an impression we wanted to make.

After

A big part of the new Backpack upgrade was a focus on the experience. We wanted to make things smoother, more elegant, and more streamlined. This included the upgrade pitch. We think it’s more polite now.

Here’s the new free account sidebar with a few pages:

You’ll see there isn’t an upgrade pitch under the “Make a new page” button. The free account includes 5 pages. This example account has 3 pages. We don’t need to tell people about upgrading to get more pages until they need more pages.

Now here’s the new free account sidebar after they’ve hit their 5 page limit:

Since they’ve hit their limit we replace the “Make a new page” button with a yellow “sticky” notice. We delicately explain they’ll need to upgrade (or delete pages) if they want to add more pages. We give them a link to upgrade or find out more.

Manners

Before it felt like you were walking into a store and a salesperson immediately came up to you and told you about today’s sale. That’s an unpleasant experience.

Now it feels like a helpful suggestion when the time is right. We think that demonstrates better manners. It’s how we’d want to be treated while evaluating something new. A quick sales pitch feels rotten. A natural pitch when it makes sense feels right.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/563-design-decisions-when-to-prompt-for-an-upgrade