Archive for September 3rd, 2007

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Monthly Ajaxian Roundup for August, 2007: CSS frameworks and the reboot of top frameworks

Written by on Monday, September 3rd, 2007 in Ajax News.

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August is often a slow month. The summer is in full effect, which can lead to chill out time. It didn’t feel slow to me though, in fact, it has picked up a lot in the last few weeks. I have seen a noticeable increase in the number of submissions that we receive, and interesting news that comes down the pipe. This leads me to believe that we are going to have a great fall and winter.

But, back to August, and the trends that we have seen. Web developers are frustrated with the lack of practical innovation that they can use wrt CSS. We have rich JavaScript libraries that make JavaScript and Ajax easier to do from the JS side of things. We have the promise of faster JS runtimes with the like of Tamarin and maybe the DLR. HTML 5 made a splash and there is a hope that some of its goodness reaches into the real world. What about CSS? We are starting to see more frameworks come along to join the likes of YUI’s CSS work. It appears that once again Web developers are making the most of what they are given, and innovation on top. As we see how we can do this, I expect that we will continue to see new approaches to CSS. Layouts are painful, and tools and frameworks should be able to help us out more than they do now.

There were some significant reboots for some of the big guys. Prototype 1.6 is a great overhaul, with great stuff to come. Dojo’s 0.9 release marks its new future, which offers a lean base with a fantastic extension, and widget story. GWT 1.4 marks a “un-beta” release with a killer compiler and compelling features.

This is the tip of the iceberg. The iPhone keeps trucking. More applications are coming offline, and we are still learning a lot of interesting stuff about JavaScript.

I can’t wait to see what pops up in the coming months. Please let the community know, and join us in Boston. Here is the roundup!

Frameworks

jQuery

Prototype

Yahoo! UI

GWT

Dojo

Other

CSS

JavaScript

Browsers

Offline

Standards

iPhone

Showcases, Tools, and Components

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/151884125/monthly-ajaxian-roundup-for-august-2007-css-frameworks-and-the-reboot-of-top-frameworks

Digpicz: The Unofficial Digg Picture Browser

Written by on Monday, September 3rd, 2007 in Ajax News.

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digpiczlogo.pngDigpicz delivers a much asked for, and yet to be delivered feature of Digg: picture browsing.

Digpicz comes from Peteris Krumins, the same guy behind the unofficial multimedia-only version of Reddit, RedditMedia.

Details of how the site was made can be found here. Digpicz pulls its data from the Digg API so it should be fairly accurate and thorough, although as an unofficial site with a logo and name that is bound to cause trademark issues it will be interesting to see whether it’s left alone by Digg itself.

(via Frantic Industries)
digpicz.png

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/151868742/

Fake Steve Jobs Was A Blog Hater

Written by on Monday, September 3rd, 2007 in Ajax News.

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forbes.pngI was researching something unrelated yesterday when I stumbled upon a gem from the past of Daniel Lyons, a.k.a. Fake Steve Jobs.

It was November 2005, TechCrunch was 5 months old and had yet to break into the Alexa top 10,000, and Lyons was then, as he still is now, writing for Forbes. Despite the growing tide of positive publicity surrounding blogging following the 2004 Presidential Elections, Lyons hadn’t yet received the memo that blogs were actually good.

Perhaps Lyons feared for the future of mainstream journalism? Perhaps he was trying to be the Andrew Keen of 2005? In the Forbes Cover Story “Attack of the Blogs” he makes his blog hating stance plainly clear in the first paragraph:

Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective. Their potent allies in this pursuit include Google and Yahoo.

It gets better:

Blogs started a few years ago as a simple way for people to keep online diaries. Suddenly they are the ultimate vehicle for brand-bashing, personal attacks, political extremism and smear campaigns…

The online haters have formidable allies amplifying their tirades to a potential worldwide audience of 900 million: Google, Yahoo and Microsoft…Google and other services operate with government-sanctioned impunity, protected from any liability for anything posted on the blogs they host. Thus they serve up vitriolic “content” without bearing any legal responsibility for ensuring it is fair or accurate;

And though they have First Amendment protection and posture as patriotic muckrakers in the solemn pursuit of truth, the blog mob isn’t democratic at all. They are inclined to crush dissent with the “delete” key…

OK, sins of the past and all that, but going back two years Lyons’ story made major headlines; this was an attack article that didn’t even pretend or try to be subjective or fair. So what changed? Did Lyons see blogging as a tool for fame and a book deal despite his hatred of the medium? Would Fake Steve Jobs have had a lesser following if people knew of Lyons’ past? Perhaps not, but recalling that article certainly makes me personally less inclined to be supportive of his future endeavors.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/151856846/

Return Of The Schwag

Written by on Monday, September 3rd, 2007 in Ajax News.

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The true hard core geek/fanboy crowd loved ValleySchwag when it launched in the Spring of 2006. For $15 per month you would receive a package containing tshirts, stickers, pens and other junk that new startups pay a fortune to have created with their logo printed on it. Usually this stuff is handed out at parties and conferences, but ValleySchwag created a way for people to get it even if they didn’t, or couldn’t, attend the events.

Sadly, ValleySchwag faded away as the founders moved on to other projects. Now another service, Startup Schwag, is taking its place with a similar business model. For $15/month, plus shipping, you receive a monthly shipment containing a startup tshirt and possibly other stuff as well.

Startup Schwag was created by Roddy Richards, a web developer, and is based in Chicago. Richards says he’s going to tweak the way they fulfill demand substantially to allow it to scale up. ValleySchwag failed, he says, because too many subscribers wanted a limited supply of schwag, and it became a real burden on startups to get enough actual stuff to fulfill that demand.

Startup Schwag won’t be looking to startups to send them stuff to pass on to subscribers. Instead, Richards says they’ll be licensing logo rights from hot startups and creating the schwag themselves, at exactly the amount to fulfill demand.

That means tech geeks who think a Digg or Twitter tshirt is cooler than a Nike logo will have a way of getting exactly what they want. Startups will pay nothing for the stuff, although they will be expected to license their logo to Startup Schwag for free. Something tells me that PR hungry companies will be more than willing to do exactly that.

The first shipments will go out in early to mid October. Sign up now - Richards says that first shipment will contain a TechCrunch tshirt, to kick things off.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/151716752/

Google Wiki Prepares To Launch

Written by on Monday, September 3rd, 2007 in Ajax News.

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Google may finally be preparing to re-launch wiki service Jotspot, nearly a year after it acquired the company. Jotspot has not allowed new customer registrations since the acquisition was announced, although existing customers retained access to their accounts.

Google Operating System noted that the Jotspot discussion board and help desk have moved over to Google. More telling, Google Blogoscoped discovered that “jotspot” is now a Google Apps service code name. Attempts to log in to the service are shown a page with a (somewhat fuzzy) Google Wiki logo.

Google previously announced that Jotspot would be integrated into Google Apps and part of the suite of online office applications Google is developing or acquiring.

We now have two fairly high profile Google product launches to anticipate in the near future. Google announced in April that an online presentation application would be launching soon as well.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/151708336/

Dojo powering some big players

Written by on Monday, September 3rd, 2007 in Ajax News.

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The Dojo team released v0.9 last week which included some big enhancements to the Dijit component library, the core of Dojo and DojoX. While its always good to hear about new features coming out, it’s equally important to know who is benefiting from the enhancements.

Alex Russell, lead developer of the Dojo project, did just that in a recent blog post:

In particular, Plaxo Pulse, AOL’s TinyBuddy (app here) and the new Bloglines beta are all 0.9 based and the experience really shows it. They’re all “data stream” apps, things you fire up and then leave open or spend lots of time in, and they’re amazingly useable, responsive, and useful.

These are impressive names and really shows the power that the Dojo framework provides. Great job Alex and the Dojo team!

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/151616479/dojo-powering-some-big-players

File uploader for the Ext framework

Written by on Monday, September 3rd, 2007 in Ajax News.

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Last week I posted about AjaxRain.com and at the end of the post I asked for links to other sites that were along the same lines. Well, someone posted about another very cool site called WebAppers.com which has amassed an amazing collection of widgets, apps and content.

So I hit it up today and BAM, the first widget I find is a very cool file upload control for Jack Slocum’s Ext framework. Ext is known for its rich UI controls so any widget made to compliment it is usually pretty sweet looking as well and this one follows suit. While very simple in appearance, it seems to pack some nice horsepower:

Files are first added to an “upload queue” and then they are uploaded to the server. Any file can be individually removed from the queue before upload or the whole queue can be cleared.

It seems every major library is on a mission to build a nice and stable file upload control and it seems that the Ext community has found one of its own.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/151611440/file-uploader-for-the-ext-framework

The Pros and Cons of Adobe AIR

Written by on Monday, September 3rd, 2007 in Ajax News.

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Adobe AIR is really getting a lot of press and I have to say that I am a fan of the technology. Having come from a client-server background, its nice to leverage the technologies that I’m currently using to build desktop apps.

There are pros and cons, though, and I think Tim Anderson has done an excellent job of listing some of the good and bad of Adobe AIR:

Some pros:

1. Fast execution. ActionScript 3.0 has a JIT (just-in-time) compiler, putting it on a par with Java or .NET for raw performance.

2. Cross-platform. AIR apps will run on Windows XP and Vista, Mac OS X (PowerPC and Intel), Linux (though not in the beta).

3. Easy conversion of existing Flex or HTML applications. It’s the same basic runtime. In the case of HTML, AIR apps rely on WebKit, the core component in Apple’s Safari web browser.

4. Easy installation. Provided the runtime has installed successfully, installing AIR applications is likely to be be trouble-free, since all the files go into the application directory.

Some cons:

1. Limited extensibility. AIR apps have file access, clipboard access, support multiple windows, support drag and drop, and can trigger notifications (”toast” in Windows). If you app needs to interact with the desktop in other ways, the chances are that AIR is not suitable. For example, there’s no access to COM automation, and no way to execute external applications. The reason is to maintain cross-platform compatibility. That’s a worthy goal, but it would be good to have a way out of the sandbox. Unlike Java or .NET, you cannot extend AIR with custom native code libraries. Nor can you call operating system APIs.

2. Database access limited to SQLite or web services.

3. Enterprises need to roll out applications over the network in a controlled manner. AIR has no specific support for enterprise deployment. On Windows, AIR does not use the Windows Installer service. Either Adobe or 3rd parties will need to create deployment wrappers to overcome this.

4. Proprietary technology. AIR applications depend on Adobe’s runtime.

Two things that I’m not quite in line with are his concerns about the proprietary nature of AIR and security concerns. First, being “proprietary” doesn’t mean its a bad thing. I realize that people have become accustomed to OSS but that doesn’t mean that EVERYTHING needs to be OSS in order to be a valuable solution.

Secondly, I had a great conference call with Adobe regarding the security considerations with building AIR apps and can say that they are very much in tune with this. They’ve had conference calls with some JavaScript industry heavyweights and are taking security VERY seriously.

Overall, though, Tim does touch on some very key points and its definitely a good read for those considering Adobe AIR.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/151602743/the-pros-and-cons-of-adobe-air

Windows Live Installer Thingy Coming This Week

Written by on Monday, September 3rd, 2007 in Ajax News.

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In June Microsoft said that they would soon be aggregating the Windows Live services into a single downloadable installer to give users an easy way to access the suite of services. Today the New York Times is reporting that Microsoft will release the Windows Live software suite sometime this week.

The applications that will be included in the installer include Windows Live Photo Gallery, Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Messenger 8.5 and Windows Live OneCare Family Safety. A full list of all Windows live services, many of which are browser based and not part of the installer, is here.

A Netscape-Level Event?

The NYT calls this a Netscape-level event, meaning it may be as significant as when Microsoft released the first version of Internet Explorer in 1995 and eventually brought Netscape to its knees. “The empire is preparing to strike back — again” writes John Markoff.

That seems like a bit of a stretch to me. The important new web services are all browser based, and Microsoft has no competitive advantage over offerings from Google, Yahoo, AOL and thousands of new web startups all trying to move users from away from the desktop. The browser is the future, and this offering doesn’t touch those purely web services. To win today, Microsoft must offer compelling services that appeal to users, not simply roll up a bunch of me-too services in new pretty packaging. Microsoft’s competitors will not, in my opinion, be scrambling to address this most recent volley from the Empire from Redmond.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/151578452/

Powerset Parses Miss South Carolina

Written by on Monday, September 3rd, 2007 in Ajax News.

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In a less than shining moment, Caitlin Upton, the 18 year old Miss South Carolina Teen, answered a fairly simple pagent question with a nonsensical answer:

Q: Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can’t locate the United States on a world map. Who do you think this is?

A: I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don’t have maps and, uh, I believe that our, uh, education like such as in, uh, South Africa and, uh, the Iraq and everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should, uh, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, should help South Africa and should help Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future for our children.

Not one to miss a PR opportunity, yet-to-launch natural language search engine Powerset took a shot at parsing her answer so that queries could be run against it. Based on the query “Who does education help?” the index returned the result “Americans.” That’s an impressive result, given the nature of the data being queried.

The test shows the potential usefulness of Powerset as a search engine. The query does not match the content based on a keyword match, and the answer can only be determined via a contextual analysis of the data.

Powerset tends to look very good in demos against a limited index, as the above example shows. but it still has to prove that it can index and analyze large chunks of the web to become a viable competitor to Google and other search engines. That’s going to be their biggest challenge (and cost). Powerset still has much to prove as they prepare to launch.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/151560962/

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