Ajax Girl

If you are going to have a private beta, it may be a good idea not to publish the access code to the site on your forums. But that is exactly what Nokia did with their new Mosh service.

If you want to see what Nokia Mosh is all about, just type “ALLACCESS” into the box on the landing page. You can then register for the service.

Mosh is actually a great idea, albeit not great enough to counter the iPhone tidal wave that is coming. It’s a portal that can be accessed from a normal computer or a Nokia mobile device where users upload and share content - applications, games, images, etc. These are then downloaded to the mobile device.

Coincidentally, Yahoo is also working on a new service with the working name “Mosh.”

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/142527083/

AOL is considering killing off the “Digg Clone” social news site that they launched a little over a year ago at Netscape.com, and redirecting traffic to the Netscape portal instead. One source says it’s a done deal. Another says no final decisions have been made. But the Netscape editorial team is runored to be completely freaked out, and they are starting to talk to outsiders. Either way, take a good look at that screen shot to the right. It may be the last chance you have to see the service.

It’s unclear as to why the site might be scrapped or changed. Netscape.com and netscape.aol.com are controlled by different groups with AOL. It’s clear that at the very least a turf war of some kind is playing a part. And since Netscape’s primary champion, Jason Calacanis, left the company late last year to start a new company, it may leave the social news property without enough clout to protect itself.

See this announcement on Netscape.com that some of the traditional portal/news features are being incorporated into the site. One source says this is a testing of the waters to gather data for a final decision:

Just launched this week, there is a new AOL.com site available for the Netscape Community. Over the past year, there has been a lot of feedback regarding some of the features of the previous Netscape.com site that have gone away, and this site hopes to being some of that functionality back. Check it out!

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/142519491/

Perhaps new Veoh CEO Steve Mitgang is the kind of guy you don’t want to try to intimidate. He just called me to say that Universal Music made one too many threats to sue his company. To protect themselves, they are suing Universal Music in federal court and seeking what is known as a declaratory injunction to bar Universal from taking legal action.

Given that the lawsuits tend to flow one way against the video startups, this is a major surprise.

In the press release, Veoh says they acted based on “unreasonable threats” from Universal and filed the lawsuit under the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA. In a phone call a few minutes ago, Mitgang told me that the two companies met recently, and that Universal made it clear that they would be suing Veoh for copyright infringement in the near future. These kinds of threats are not idle - Universal tends to follow up with actual lawsuits.

When a company feels that a lawsuit is imminent, they can strike first to head it off. Since Veoh feels it has protection under the DMCA for its business model, they are striking first.

Mitgang also mentioned to me that Universal Music has never sent them a DMCA take down notice of any kind. He says that they would have complied immediately.

Story in progress, check back for more.

Complaint is below:

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/142497793/

Pay per call advertising service VoiceStar has been acquired by local advertising company Marchex.

Terms of the deal are as follows:

Marchex total anticipated investment to acquire VoiceStar will be $28 million, consisting of approximately $20 million in transaction consideration and $8 million in company investment. Specifically, transaction consideration consists of approximately $12.9 million in cash consideration and Marchex will issue approximately $7.1 million in restricted stock that is subject to vesting over two-and-one-half years from closing to certain employees of VoiceStar; and company investment consists of $8 million relating to products, infrastructure, human resources and other items through 2008. The acquisition is expected to close by October 1, 2007.

VoiceStar helps track how effective your newspaper and online advertising campaigns are at generating calls to your business. To do this, they sell advertisers a block of phone numbers ($10/month/number) to be placed in news papers or on websites. Each number is unique to an advertising campaign and can be linked through a softswitch to your existing phone lines.

For instance, the number from a newspaper campaign can be routed to a specific department or only accept calls during business hours. VoiceStar then tracks calls from these numbers as they are routed through their softswitch to your phone line. They can then compile data on the return on investment from each of these campaigns distinguished by phone number.

VoiceStars primary clients are advertising networks, who use the service to help individual advertisers. As of this past February, they claimed 400 clients with 20,000 individual advertisers working through those clients.

Other competitors include Ingenio and eStara. Google has also dabbled in click to call.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/142510112/

So the internet looks like a huge cloning jungle? Ideas blossom here and others replicate it there? Often abroad. TechCrunch covered yesterday a german copycat of Geni and the connection was indeed pretty obvious.

Business2.0 just released in its august edition (print magazine) a list of clones per country of 4 star Web2.0 companies Digg, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn. There is just one problem, the information is pretty much inaccurate and even wrong. Let’s take France for example. SkyBlog, the largest french social network, is nowhere near FaceBook, and even so it was there much before (would be closer to MySpace maybe). Scoopeo, supposed to be a Digg clone, is not a French company, but a Belgium company (the service is in French though). DailyMotion was created before YouTube: who is cloning who?

Other local players might have been much more relevant to quote and it seems like their source of information is not bullet proof. And from what i can read here, the same goes for the India selection. I don’t know well enough other countries to detect other mistakes, but maybe you can.

There is clearly a case to be made here: clones are everywhere and this is the price to pay in a booming industry; But Business2.0 failed in pointing the right players out.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/142429328/

Kris Zyp have released a JSPON browser, a free, open-source tool for browsing and manipulated JSPON persisted object graphs/data sources. JSPON is a JSON extension for robust access and manipulation of persisted objects that includes definitions for how to support object and array identification, referencing, lazy loading/partial graph transfer, object modification, prototype definition, and more. The JSPON specification can be found at jspon.org.

Try out the JSPON browser, learn more about JSPON, and view some examples within this persisted object graph. I recommend that you try out the JSPON browser with Firebug net monitor, ieHTTPHeaders or your favorite net monitor so you can see what data is transferred as you traverse object graphs and manipulate the data, and gain an understanding of how JSPON works. This url connects the browser to one of my JSPON data sources, but the browser can connect to any data source that might provide JSON data according to the JSPON specification. The following properties of the root object from the example url illustrate some of the major aspects of JSPON:

• types - Just the different types of values that can be transferred with good ol’ JSON: string, boolean, number, array/list, object, and null. This includes a real dat a object (defined by JSPON).
• referencing - This demonstrates how identification/referencing allows circular referencing and multiple references to single objects. This is a graph of the Doe family, and the properties refer to the family members by relation, but since the objects are referenced not just copied, the graph can be infinitely recursively drilled down, and it is still the same objects being accessed.
• lazyLoading - Lazy loading can be seen when drilling into any part of the persisted graph that has not been loaded yet. Properties can reference data that has not been loaded yet and you can see how values are loaded into the graph as needed. JSPON provides definition for the identification and lazy endpoints so this client browser can provide lazy loading for any JSPON data source.
• inheritance - This is an object that is defined to inherit properties from another object. This object is inheriting from the object referred by the type property. In other words the object with the id of dyna/107650 (note: all objects have an implied URL) has a prototype or delegate that is the object with the id of dyna/107653. If a property is changed or added in the delegate object, they will be reflected in the instance object, unless the instance object defines that property. In this case the stringField property is defined in the instance and all the other properties are inherited from the delegate object. The basis property refers to the delegate/prototype object. The browser provides coloring to help know what is inherited and what is not.
• modifiableData - This object has been defined by the server to be publicly modifiable, so you can create and modify objects on my server. You can go ahead and add new properties and modify values in this object. You can delete properties if it looks like there are plenty of other ones, but please refrain from deleting all the properties, we want to keep it fun for everyone. You can modify properties and watch your HTTP traffic to see how the object modifications are sent back to the server. You can view the headers (the Access-Level header) to see how the definitions for access levels is transferred to the client from the server. Of course, a server shouldn’t and this server doesn’t count on the client to enforce the access levels, but maintains its own securit y as well.
  • structuredObject - This object has a structure definition, in the structure property (provided that no one has deleted it, it is publicly modifiable), and it is defined to allow only a string value in the stringOnly field, and only a number in the numberOnly. You can try to change value of the numberOnly property to have letters in it, and it should complain.
• crossDomain - The browser supports the JSON-P protocol for cross domain transfer, so this persisted object graph actually spans domains, and references objects from another host within the graph. Of course, the usual warnings about using cross-domain dynamic scripts applies, you don’t want to use the browser to connect your high-security objects with an untrusted source using JSON-P, but rather use a proxy, but in this case the foreign host is one of my own domains ( www.authenteo.com), so it is trustworthy. This property refers to a list of persitent objects that represent the pages on my www.authenteo.com site. Having persisted object graphs that span domains can make mashups have a much more consistent object model.
• differentSources - This object references JSPON objects that represent different source mediums. There is an SQL database (HSQL), an XML file, and an RSS source. The server can expose all of these data sources as JSPON, and they can even be modified using the JSPON browser, and server can make the appropriate SQL updates, or XML file changes (OK, the RSS isn’t modifiable, and you can’t modify any of these data sources, because I haven’t given you that access level). This demonstrates the flexibility of JSPON as persistence protocol for different mediums of data (and it also demonstrates the capabilites of the Jsponic server that is used). If you want access to modify the SQL tables, or the XML files, let me know, and I can set you up with an account.
• perseverePreview - This is all built with my soon-to-be-released Persevere Ajax persistence framework which maps remotely persisted data to JavaScript objects in the browser with orthogonal persistence. This property refers to a persisted function object that gives a little preview of the capabilities, and uses the persistence mapped objects to access a persisted property ( this.referencing.wife.name). When accessing properties, the framework will transparently perform lazy loading through JSPON of any data that has not been transferred. Then the function sets a new value in this.modifiableData.randomNumber . This value is automatically persisted to the server and should be available if you come back to the page later (if someone else hasn’t changed it). Since the data is mapped to JS objects, you can also look at this object graph in JS debugger (like Firebug). Add a watch for the global variable “rootObject”. The debugger won’t be capable of lazy loading, but you can see everything that has been downloaded.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/142411070/jspon-browser-persistent-json

New natural language search engine Powerset, still in pre-launch stealth mode, has had a ridiculous amount of press this year. And while some have said there is too much hype around this company (even me), you have to give them some credit. They are certainly open with their plans, and willing to experiment with new ideas.

An example: they announced Powerlabs, a sandbox for users to suggest and give feedback on future Powerset features. People who sign up for Powerlabs are also promised early news, at least an hour before it is posted on the Powerset blog.

Another example: In May Powerset COO Steve Newcomb talked about how the company was predicting future growth, and posted data on their model on the company blog. When readers bravely requested that Powerset release the model itself, Newcomb complied, saying it would be made available this summer. In a post on his personal blog he said the reason for sharing the models was to show that the company intends to be open and give users unfettered access to information:

As I mentioned before, opening up our modeling techniques is part of a larger goal to begin the process of changing our image of a secretive stealth startup to a completely open company that gives you unfettered access to our product(s), the ability to help us design them and to provide insight into the way we think inside of Powerset.

Today, Powerset published the first in a series of models, with a Flash interface. Company-specific baseline assumptions have been removed or altered, but most of the industry assumptions remain intact.

Neal Mueller (Powerset Product Manager) walked me through the models and how they work. This first set helps a company that intends to index the web whether it is better to purchase, lease or create virtual servers on Amazon EC2. Assumptions about the size and refresh frequency of the index can be changed. Since the model is forward looking, it also makes assumptions about future server power and cost reductions from Moore’s Law.

All of the assumptions can be altered in the Flash interface, and the models can be embedded into other websites (although I could not get it to properly embed here).

Mueller says that at least two more dashboard models are coming - one for unique user forecasting and another one that they are not yet disclosing. The company is asking for feedback on the models, and will clearly take it seriously. Newcomb’s personal email is listed on the front page and he requests that feedback come directly to him.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/142409127/

A couple of Gears samples have been released.

Arjun Kalura has created a
database sync module that shows the progress of a sync between a remote database, and a local one. The example also uses the worker pool to execute SQL in its own thread and hence keeping the user interface freed up to show the progress report on how the sync process is going.

Steve Yen of TrimPath has created a bare bones contact sample that shows you how to use the Junction framework (which is Rails-esque in JavaScript).

You can handle migrations via:

Validate your model:

and much more.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/142407647/sync-progress-and-contact-management-with-gears

Polar Rose, a European startup that has a unique approach to recognizing faces in photos (remember Riya?), is having a bit of a pre-launch coming out party at the Gnomedex conference in Seattle today.

We first wrote about the company last December, way before they were ready to take beta testers. But even then it was clear that they were on to something. They use a browser plugin to allow users to tag people in photos anywhere on the web. They use those photos to construct a 3D image of the person, and then make educated guesses as to who is in untagged photos. See the post linked at the top of this paragraph for more details.

The company has been testing the service with a very limited number of beta users. The beta will expand significantly today, however. Every attendee of the Gnomedex conference will be able to register, and will be encouraged to tag photos of the event. A special page at Polar Rose was set up to show the tagged photos (none yet, the conference hasn’t started).

250 Polar Rose Beta Accounts Available

Polar Rose has also given us 250 beta accounts to give out immediately. Just send an email to techcrunch@polarrose.com. If you aren’t one of the first 250, you’ll be placed on the waiting list for the beta - more invites are coming every week.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/142403507/

Is ANYONE at NBC or News Corp. embarrassed that they can’t agree on a name, even a working name (or a website), for their new Not-A-YouTube-Killer video joint venture?

It was announced in March to fanfare, and a steady stream of news has been written about it ever since. But no one has a name for it, not even the New York Times which reported today that the joint venture managed to find someone willing to throw $100 million at it for 10% (reports that they were pitching this came out in June). And so we keep referring to it as Clown Co., which is the name Google execs reportedly refer to it as behind closed doors.

But back to the news. Providence Equity Partners, a Rhode Island based private equity firm, put up the $100 million to buy 10% of a company that didn’t exist three months ago. I hope that means a launch is imminent. It would be hard to launch without a name.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/142381495/