Ajax Girl

Movable Type is releasing the final version of their 4.0 platform tonight. We covered the beta, their turn towards open source, and new feature set previously. The new release, no doubt, comes under pressure from the success Wordpress has had as an open source platform. Unfortunately, we’ll still have to wait until later in the year for Movable Types’ open sourced version.

The finalized version includes 50 new features, a component based architecture, a new plugin directory, and some new launch partners. It looks like a solid release that comes with a lot of the functionality Wordpress MU is aiming for. Notably, Boing Boing will be upgrading soon.

We covered the upgraded features in depth before. They included a new installation and upgrade wizard, easier and more powerful template management tools that speed site development, all new default templates and themes, and a completely redesigned user interface focused on streamlining common tasks. You can see a full list here.

However, the release also includes a shift to a component based architecture running on top of a single MT 4 code base. Components will be paid extensions of the platform meant to provide greater functionality out of the box. The first example component will be their enterprise version. Instead running as a separate installation, the enterprise version of the software will run on top of the basic MT 4 code base. It will feature the original enterprise feature set, including LDAP and Oracle support.

They have also released a new community component that beefs up the basic community features. The component adds a ratings system and deeper user profiles. The ratings system consists of post specific user ratings and a buzz feature that tracks the highest rated content. The new profile pages consist of a blog, their latest comments, and recommendations on your site. The infrastructure for these enhancements exist in the basic version, but buying the community component provides them out of the box and comes with support. They plan on releasing more components in the future.

Accompanying the release, Movable Type is launching a new plugin directory. They’ll also have some partners throwing their own plugins into the mix. Partners developing supporting applications and tools for MT4 include HP, Amazon, Sphere, Technorati, Snap, Feedblitz, NewsGator, SimplyHired, SocialText, Fliqz, Box.net, Mpire, Vizu, SodaHead, and Oodle.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/144264804/

TokBox is a new site that we just heard about moments ago. It’s completely live but appears to have been flying under the radar until now.

It allows you to set up a video chat channel in seconds. It instantly and accurately detected the camera and microphone on my Mac laptop after registration. At that point, I’m prompted to invite someone to the chat via email. They click on the link and can participate even without registration. The controls are simple - set volume, mute or kill camera. That’s all there is to it.

If you enable browser popups you can pull the video chat out of the browser and go to other websites or applications without disrupting the conversation. The chat box can also be embedded on another website.

TokBox is also a basic social network - you can add friends who’ve registered to call them more easily. You can also tag yourself, suggesting that the site will try to find people with similar interests and put them together. That also suggest online dating, which is a big venture capitalist-pleaser.

While there are plenty of video chat products out there on the market, including Skype, something about the simplicity of TokBox suggests it might get very popular very fast.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/144204924/

PubSub is certainly more well known for its self-induced implosion last year than for the product itself. The company developed what they called a “future search engine” that allowed users to type in keywords and get blog and other RSS-enabled news back as it was published.

It was a good idea, and one emulated by most of the blog search engines over time. But the company’s founders, Bob Wyman and Salim Ismail, never got along and their private disputes eventually turned very public. Ismail was ousted after a power struggle, a merger with KnowNow fell apart and the company shut down. Even after that, Wyman kept swiping at Ismail on his blog.

Today, Ismail and Wyman have moved on. Ismail heads up Yahoo Brickhouse, a new semi-autonomous business unit to foster new product development within Yahoo. Wyman works for Google on an internal project known, intriguingly, as PubSub as well.

I thought we’d heard the last of PubSub. But today Ian Bell emailed to say that the company is in the process of relaunching - and sure enough a new home page is up. Bell says that PubSub’s investors, who took over the company after a controversial recapitalization which left some of the minority stockholders steaming, have sold most of the assets to his startup, along with $1 million in fresh capital.

Bell says they’ll relaunch PubSub in six months or so as a “consumer friendly version of Yahoo Pipes.” Since he won’t say any more right now, we’re left speculating exactly what that will be and how PubSub’s technology fits into it. In the meantime, he says, they’ll be launching a Facebook application in the next month that directly uses PubSub’s matching engine. You tell the application what you like and it will deliver relevant news and information to you on the subject.

Just Don’t Look Under The Carpet

All of the bad blood created with the original PubSub saga hasn’t completely settled yet. The minority shareholders, we hear, are very upset about the way Polygon Capital handled the KnowNow merger discussions and eventual winding down of the company. In the end, Polygon and their associates supposedly owned all of the assets of the company, leaving the founders and minority stockholders with nothing. Polygon never settled the matter with them, and there was little reason to sue given that the company was in limbo. But if the new PubSub is successful there could suddenly be a pot of money to go after, and that could spark new litigation interest from the old shareholders.

Whatever happens, the drama is likely to continue. And all that attention, Bell says, is “great PR” for his new startup.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/144198517/

When I wrote about Amy Tenderich’s call for someone to design a better Insulin pump, perhaps by taking inspiration from the iPod, I didn’t really think anyone would actually do it. This certainly wouldn’t be an attractive market for Apple, and there are only so many design firms out there who would be willing and able to dedicate time to the project without being paid.

But I was wrong. Almost immediately San Francisco based Adaptive Path met with Amy and decided to spend time trying to design a more attractive Insulin Pump. They’ve now completed the initial design work and have been writing about it on their blog. Amy also followed up today with a long post describing the project. A video overview is below.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/144141396/

Dave Winer is tracking some new features being released by Facebook that debunk the theories that the company is focused on building a completely closed silo of user data and news.

Facebook’s news feeds, launched last year to a lot of controversy, has proven to be a brilliant move. It gives users a constant stream of data on what their friends are up to, and help spread new memes through Facebook at a lightning quick pace.

But all that information was stuck in Facebook and there was no way to access it other than logging in and looking at your home page. Now, though, Facebook is starting to turn those news feeds into RSS feeds.

Available feeds include status updates for your friends, posted items for friends, and notifications for any user.

This allows Facebook users (or anyone really) to keep track of what’s going on with their friends without actually visiting the site. Facebook hasn’t made any announcements on this yet, so we don’t know what else is coming. But embracing RSS is sure to win them a lot of friends who’ve been wondering if Facebook is just another closed silo of data. Winer looks to be the first.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/144119988/

We caught wind this morning of some new social features on the Netflix website. Members can now navigate to a “Community” section, which replaces an older “Friends” page.

According to the Netflix Community Blog, the company unveiled the new community section on July 30th and has been tweaking it significantly over the last couple of weeks. There are a number of community features so far:

1. Latest reviews stream that continually loads movie reviews in real time as people post them to Netflix
2. “Members’ Top 10 Lists” widget that displays user-generated movie lists based on what Netflix thinks you will like
3. “Unique in…” area that shows the movies that are uniquely popular in your hometown
4. Selection of strangers on Netflix who share your interests or are most “similar to you”
5. List of your friends’ recent activities with Netflix (what movies they have requested, whether they have been returned, etc.)
6. “Friends’ Quiz” that generates simple questions to test you about your Netflix friends’ movie-renting behavior
7. Friends’ Love/Hated area that shows the movies your friends loved or hated (pretty self-explanatory)

If you are a Netflix user, check out these new features and let us know what you think in the comments. The Netflix developers are also open to feedback, so head over to their blog as well to give them your two cents.

In light of our recent coverage of social networking platforms, Netflix appears to be implementing features that support the notion of niche social networking.

These developments also put Netflix in more direct competition with companies like Flixter that provide social networks for movie fans.

Thanks for the tip Joel Simkhai.

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/~3/144104131/

The drugs of choice for the MySpace generation: prescription painkillers (oxycodone, hydrocodone, morphine and methadone) and heroin. So says Reckitt Benckiser Pharmaceuticals, the company behind a new drug addiction area of MySpace called Addiction411.

The site says it was developed to educate the public about dependence on opioids and provide “user-friendly” information on the dangers of drugs and how recreational use can turn to addiction. “The availability of this site comes at a perfect time considering the rate of prescription painkiller abuse has seen a drastic spike in recent years, particularly among the demographic of teens and young adults (16 – 25 years old) that utilize MySpace.”

What this really is: advertising revenue for MySpace and a marketing site for Suboxone and Subutex, two drugs that help fight painkiller addiction. Most of the links on the site forward on to TurnToHelp.com, another marketing site for Reckitt Benckiser.

If MySpace wants to be serious about addressing the issues facing its users, they should put up a non-sponsored resource. The function of Addiction411 is to sell more drugs, not necessarily to help users.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/144092300/

Las Vegas based (where else?) Swamble is a new mobile-focused website that lets users place and accept wagers on just about anything they can think of. It’s a bit like UK-based Gottabet. But U.S. residents can’t legally use Gottabet because it allows cash wagers. Swamble, for now, allows bets to be settled only with things other than cash.

The site is optimized for mobile use. Click “Create,” add a title and description of the wager, and tags. Other users then jump in and accept, and leave (generally) taunting comments. One of the early beta testers set up a wager that Transformers would have a bigger opening weekend than SpiderMan 3. The wager required the loser or losers (which turned out in this case to be the creator) write a blog post linking to the winner(s).

These kinds of non-cash wagers won’t lead to a lot of success for the company, but the founders say that they will soon add a private wagering feature (where the government’s prying eyes can’t see what’s being bet on).

And there are currently two bills before Congress that might ease the restrictions on Internet gambling enough for Swamble to take cash bets (HR 2607 and HR 2046). If that happens, they may be in a good place to capitalize quickly on the changes in the law.

The company is in private beta but is giving out invitations pretty quickly. Sign up on the home page.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/144080610/

We’ve previously mentioned Ask The Wizard, the biz advice blog of FeedBurner founder Dick Costolo, but it’s worth another mention for its wise and winning posts. Aspiring entrepreneurs should listen up.

Too Many Companies? explains why Dick feels there’s a 90% chance the initial business model is wrong. The solution? You’ve just got to start peddling and see what happens.

On a psychological level, I think a lot of people confuse fear of failure with not having enough confidence in the ultimate success of their idea. They thus conclude that they aren’t confident enough in their idea or their strategy because it seems to have holes and flaws for which they don’t have answers. This is a tremendous mistake. While I won’t pretend to speak for the entrepreneurs I mentioned above, I bet if you asked them if they were confident on day 1 that they had a winner with each of their previous successes, they would look at you sideways and say “of course not”. Speaking for myself, I can say that my cofounders and I try to find a market opportunity that seems like it will need to be addressed and for which we think we have some angle and then we just pull out shovels and start digging and figure other things out as we go.

Personally, I know going into any new company that there is a 90% chance we have the business model wrong on day 1. I also know that I have a historically poor track record for understanding what will and won’t attract customers or defeat competition (I didn’t get Twitter when Obvious Corp first launched it without an “e” in the name, I thought eBay would be out of business in six months after Amazon launched auctions, and I was certain Netscape would crush Microsoft in the browser wars because Netscape was more nimble). But the opposite of ‘fear of failure’ isn’t confidence. The opposite of ‘fear of failure’ is just not bothering to think about failure (BIG difference between this and thinking about risk profile for your idea/company)…

The key is to just get on the bike, and the key to getting on the bike is not the confidence in knowing you will be successful if you do x,y,z. The key to getting on the bike is to stop thinking about “there are a bunch of reasons i might fall off” and just hop on and peddle the damned thing. You can pick up a map, a tire pump, and better footwear along the way.

In You Always Start the Last Company, he talks about the need to have a “revenue animal” on your team, how to control costs, and why you shouldn’t obsess about competitors.

Lesson One: At some point in the company’s first two years, the executive team needs to become passionate about revenue. This may seem obvious to the point of inviting ridicule, but there’s a difference between “concerned about revenue” and “passionate about revenue”. In the first year or two of the company’s life, the passion has to be almost single-minded around the product or service. There is then a transition in which the management team needs to also become passionate about the customer, and then finally also passionate about revenue. Some people are revenue animals and some aren’t. If you’re founding a company and you’re not a revenue animal, then you need to understand that you should bring somebody in to run the company who is a revenue animal at some point…

Lesson Two: It is easier to not start spending one new dollar in expenses this month than it is to stop spending one existing dollar of expenses next month. This is true for travel, infrastructure, marketing, development tools, web services like salesforce.com, on and on. If you engender a strong sense of capital efficiency in the company, it’s much easier to KEEP spending under control than it is to GET spending under control.

Lesson Three: Goals, not competitors. When you focus on your company’s goals, you are focusing on something you have control over, you make strong decisions, and everybody knows what success looks like. When you obsess about your competitors, you are focusing on something over which you don’t have control, you make bad decisions, and nobody is sure what success looks like, since the company’s actions are in reaction to a third party….The best way to compete in the market is to focus on those things you can strive toward independent of what anybody else does.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/558-dick-costolo-the-wizard-is-in

Brandon Aaron has developed a general work around for the common, nagging problem with IE6 and heavyweight components such as a select drop down ignoring z-index.

Brandon created the background iframe (bgiframe) jQuery plugin which “provides a very small, quick and easy way to fix that problem so you don’t have to worry about it. No matter the size, borders or position the bgiframe plugin can fix it.”

In the simple case, you can grab a collection and call bgiframe on it: $('.fix-z-index').bgiframe();. You can also pass in data to mess with the top, left, width, height, opacity, and src parameters.

How does it work?

The bgiframe plugin works by prepending an iframe to the element. The iframe is given a class of bgiframe and positioned below all the other children of the element. In the default configuration it automatically adjusts to the width and height of the element (including the borders) and the opacity is set to 0. The element needs to have position (relative or absolute) and should have a background (color or image).

Check out the test page to see the plugin in action.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/144021444/work-around-the-z-index-issue-with-heavyweight-ie-components