Ajax Girl

Later this week, weight loss community Diet Television will announce it’s shortened its name to DietTv.com and raised a $2 million series A. The round was led by MentorTech Ventures.

The site consists of dieting resources and a social network. Their resources include a diet directory, videos, and articles. The diet directory consists of all sorts of diets rated by users and analyzed by professional nutritionists for various factors like ease of implementation, speed of weight loss and allowable alcohol consumption.

You can use their diet and exercise finder to construct the right weight loss program for yourself. Just tell the program what you’re willing to give up and it spits back the best plans to lose weight.

There is an accompanying social network where users can connect with other dieters, share goals and diets. Each user writes down their experiences and tracks their progress in a diet diary. A network seems useful because in an industry full of snake oil salesmen, you’d be more likely to trust a fellow dieter.

DietTv is part of the growing number of social health sites online which include: Wellsphere, Traneo, DailyStrength, OurHealthCircle, RevolutionHealth, and many others. The formula is pretty straight forward: find people with a common problem and link them together for support.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/143856860/

Strayform is a Texas startup that, like SellaBand and the recently funded Amie Street, is giving unsigned artists a way to promote and sell their music.

Like SellaBand, artists sign up, upload some of their music and then create proposals for new music they want to create. Fans can listen to and download the music (DRM free), and donate directly to proposals they like. The proposals are all different. One artist, for example, says he will mention the name of person who pledges the most in the song itself.

The service is more like SellaBand than Amie Street. SellaBand also lets artists upload music and takes donations. If donations get to $50k, as they have for several artists already, The artist gets a contract with a label. Amie Street, by contrast, simply lets artists sell their music on the site. Downloads starts at free and the price increases steadily as more downloads occur.

Strayform has had little press, but, inexplicably were covered by Fox News in a 3 minute segment. The video is available on their home page. I like the service, but the site sure could use a redesign.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/143879615/

We’ve gotten a few “tips” that YouTube has actually grown larger than Google in terms of page views according to Alexa.

This is, of course, complete fiction. And it shows just how useless Alexa has become as a method for measuring web traffic and reach. Comscore tells a much different (and more accurate) story - Google is nearing 100 billion monthly page views; YouTube sees around 16 billion.

Even newcomer Compete, which measures traffic in a similar way as Alexa, seems to be getting it right. Alexa needs an overhaul. It’s long since become less than useful.

For smaller sites it is understandable that Alexa may not have good data. But Google and YouTube are among the largest sites on the Internet. To get it this wrong is embarrassing.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/143829075/

Here’s a me-too service that won’t last long. Yappd, a Twitter clone, launched today. In their email to us they describe themselves as “Twitter with picture messaging,” and that pretty much sums it up. It is a service that allows you to quickly tell the world what you are up to. You can add content via their website, email or sms.

So while we debate whether Kevin Rose’s Pownce, another recent entrant to this space, is different enough from Twitter to become successful, yet another hopeful young gun enters the space with little to differentiate itself except the addition of a photo to your status messages.

Unless Yappd has a brilliant marketing strategy up their sleeve, I don’t expect them to get much traction. I do like the photo feature, though. Hopefully Twitter will add it soon.

My Yappd account is here. Don’t even think about adding me.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/143807738/

European ISPs are up in arms over the BBC’s new online TV player, iPlayer. Concerns from service providers such as Tiscali and Carphone Warehouse center around, of all things, a fear of the BBC’s player being too successful and pounding their networks during peak hours.

Apparently the internet isn’t ready for IPTV. As the Financial Times reports Mary Turner, CEO of Tiscali UK says, “The internet was not set up with a view to distributing video. We have been improving our capacity, but the bandwidth we have is not infinite”. Add to this concerns over Joost’s ability to compete head to head on quality with other online video providers and it paints a poor picture for TV getting online.

However, this seems a thinly veiled return to the net neutrality debate that periodically pops back up when ISPs start thinking of ways to increase revenue without increasing network capacity. As GigaOm cites, it could cost UK ISPs up to $2 billion to upgrade their capacity to match increasing demand.

We’re due for an upgrade in the U.S. The U.S.’s top broadband speeds actually lag behind other OECD countries. Japan’s surfers can connect to the internet on a 100 Mbps Ferrari compared to the U.S topping out at a 40 Mbps 1970’s hatchback. They also pay much less, $0.22/Mbps to our $3.10/Mbps. And to think companies brag about a $260/month 50 Mbps connection in Sacramento.

New IPTV startups are only a slice of internet traffic. According to a report by CacheLogic, more than 60 percent of Internet traffic is used by peer-to-peer swaps, and about 60 percent of those swaps involve video content. IPTV adds to demand, but has been singled out most likely because there are a few large content providers to point the finger at.

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/~3/143788411/

Ok, the title is a bit ridiculous. But 37Signals has been urging developers for years now to charge for their software, and attacking anyone who suggests a business can be made from giving that software away for free instead. Their model works for their own products, at least so far. But I believe they are responsible for influencing a number of startups to charge for products that were already commoditized by the time they launched. Which is suicide.

Feedlounge, a subscription-based online RSS reader, is the most recent casualty. They launched in 2005 and offered a web based feed RSS feed reader for a monthly subscription fee. There were a number of free competitors at the time, including Bloglines and NewsGator, which had dominant market share. FeedLounge planned to carve a niche for itself by offering speedier and slightly better service.

The reader was good but not great, and came out in the middle of the pack when we reviewed the competition in mid 2006. But the company defended its business model until the end - hear our podcast interview at TalkCrunch with founder Alex King where he defended his business model.

They shut down over two months ago, canceled everyone’s subscriptions, and no one seemed to notice until now. FeedLounge is now in the deadpool, although they may re-emerge as a free service at some point.

If you are in a position to charge for your software and you aren’t that concerned with dominating your category, by all means go for it. But to blindly follow the idea that software must not be free because, damnit, people put a lot of time and effort into it, means you probably shouldn’t be making the business decisions for your company. And if you are entering what is already a commoditized business (online feed readers in this case) that has a price point of zero, you are absolutely crazy to try to charge for that product.

Offering your product for free isn’t always the right choice, either. Often, the right choice is to never have entered the market to begin with. But just because 37Signals tell you you are dumb to go the free route doesn’t mean you have to be a lemming and walk over the cliff.

Thanks Smaran for the tip.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/143782792/

Hello, New York! On Monday, August 20, 2007 from 7pm until 11pm, we’re going to hold a super fancy birthday party at Red Sky in Manhattan. There will be a open bar — the CG staff will hand out drink tickets like madmen — and we’d love it if you all could join us. Read more about it here.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/143771909/

I recently tripped over some fields on this sign-up form:

“If no, please type DNA” so naturally I start typing ATCG AATT CCTC TATT GTTG GATC ATAT… (rim shot!)

I figure DNA means “Does Not Apply,” but it’s also strange that answering “No” to the form question above still requires manual entry into the field below. This “No” then “type DNA” sequence shows up twice on the form. It’s odd, unfamiliar, and confusing. If anything, “n/a” would probably be recognized by more people than “DNA.”

When you build your forms be clear. Think about what you’re asking, why you’re asking, how you’re asking for it, and where you’re asking for it. All these little things matter—especially on long forms. Minor issues on long forms begin to stack up pretty quickly. Remember, copywriting is interface design.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/567-on-writing-please-type-dna

Steffen Rusitschka wanted a cross-browser text-overflow:ellipsis, so he created it and told us all about it via Ellipsis or “truncate with dots” via JavaScript.

You can see it in action, or download the code. The main ellipsis function:

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/143649222/ellipsis-or-%e2%80%9ctruncate-with-dots%e2%80%9d-via-javascript

Glen Lipka wanted an easier way to manage the “one big matrix image that CSS uses to chop up to display pieces” technique, and wrote about the right sprite where he delves into various cleaner workarounds for the fact that Firefox doesn’t support background-position-x. He ends up with foreground-sprites.

Jonathan Snook also talks a bit spritly in his piece on the 6 Keys to Understanding Modern CSS-based Layouts which includes details on the:

• Box Model
• Floated Columns
• Sizing Using Ems
• Image Replacement
• Floated Navigation

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/143636803/css-keys-and-the-search-for-the-right-sprite