Ajax Girl

The Podcast Network (TPN) has announced the signing of English actor, writer and comedian John Cleese for an exclusive video podcast series titled “Headcast.”

Cleese describes the show as “a somewhat humorous, somewhat more thoughtful, [a conduit that] gives me a chance to sound off in my old age.”

A free version will be made available over the next few months on The Podcast Network and a premium version will also be available. The show will be produced by UK new media company Funk, which currently produces audio podcasts for Clease.

TPN CEO Cameron Reilly from The Podcast Network said that “having a living legend like John Cleese joining The Podcast Network’s growing roster of talent is a coup for the business and a personal thrill.”

The Melbourne, Australia run TPN has continued to grow without funding and is currently profitable, whilst others in this space burn venture capital. TPN did 700,000 downloads and 6.5 million page views in August.

Disclosure: I podcast for TPN

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/~3/162252405/

Jajah will be officially announcing their click-to-call buttons on Monday. The buttons, which let people call the owner for free and anonymously, have been quietly in private beta over the past year. They are also taking on international calling card services and Jaxtr and Jangl, who already have click-to-call offerings on social networks and dating sites.

The call buttons are available to registered Jajah users and come as a bit of embed code you can put on your web page or at the end of an email. They come with several customizations. You can adjust the CSS styling, adjust the number it calls, and restrict which countries can try to call you.

When users click the button, the caller enters their phone number and Jajah connects the two parties over a VOIP line. The callee is then told who called and asked if they want to accept the call, say they’re busy, or blacklist the number. If they accept the call, the minutes are charged to their Jajah account, like an “800 number”. At two to three cents per minute, it can be used for some cheap long distance calling. For the cost conscious, Jaxtr and Jangl are still free, however.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/162251907/

Google has entered an agreement to acquire “certain assets and technology” from mobile platform operator Zingku.

According to Zingku:

Our service is designed from the mobile phone, outward, allowing you to create and exchange things of interest ranging from invitations to “mobile flyers” with friends in a trusted manner. On the mobile phone, Zingku uses standard text messaging and picture messaging features that come with every phone. On the web, our service uses your standard web browser and instant messenger. There is nothing to install.”

We don’t have a lot of information about the company (including location; there are no details on their site) although a Google search would suggest that the company may have been funded by Flagship Ventures. If we find any more details we’ll update the post. The acquisition price was not disclosed.

(via Google Blogscoped)

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/162199115/

April writes Ask 37signals:

As a developer, I often feel overwhelmed by the amount of new technologies and languages to learn. I work long hours as it is, and the last thing I feel like doing when I get home is spending more time trying new stuff out at the computer. Do I really have to be the kind of person that is excited about spending 24/7 at the computer to be a programmer? I love my job, and I love what I do, but I want a life outside of it too.

I think the best programmers are those that do have a life outside of computers. Those who value their time in front of the screen because it’s finite, because it’s competing with other interests. That usually drives you think twice about spending eons just playing around for the heck of it (not that there’s anything inherently wrong with that).

In my opinion, the best way to learn new technologies is on the job. I learned Ruby because I wanted to escape the pain that PHP and Java was giving me and because I had a fresh project to try it on (Basecamp). I built Rails because I needed it for Basecamp. I got into Ajax because we wanted to give Ta-da a compelling UI experience. I got into REST because we didn’t want the API for Highrise to be an afterthought. I picked up on OpenID because the thought of building single-signon for all 37signals’ products sounded like a drag to build from scratch.

Sure, you some times need to do a cursory investigation on a new technology to see whether it would be a good fit for the work you’re considering it for. But that shouldn’t be a two-week project. If the technology you’re considering takes more than a few days to get a feel for, that’s information in itself (I would probably never bother with it). So you go for the taste and if it feels good, you apply it to something real.

That does require that you’re working in an environment that’s open to new technology and willing to invest in your growth as a developer by allowing you to use it. If you’re not working in a place that fits that description, I’d start looking for a place that does.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/621-ask-37signals-how-do-you-keep-up-with-new-technology

The guys who spent a lazy weekend writing a free iPhone IM client that currently has 30,000 users, Flick.IM, are back with a web chat client for AIM, MSN, Google Talk, ICQ, and Jabber. I know, another multi-service chat client - *sigh*. There’s already Meebo, eBuddy, KoolIM, and a host of other services integrating existing chat services. However, Flick.IM has a rather significant twist, they’re acting as a platform for integrating web applications into IM.

FlickIM is letting applications integrate right into chat messages or as widgets along a sidebar. For instance, a Yelp widget will let users search for restaurants and send the reviews to friends through a chat message. Similar to Facebook, users will be able to add and remove the applications and notify their friends about what apps they have installed. Another startup, Imified, integrates web applications into IM, but does this for desktop chat applications through commands to chat bots. Facebook is also a company to watch for this functionality.

For now Flick.IM has launched with a handful applications, but will soon let developers add their own widgets and services to the platform through an API released in the next two to three weeks. All the new applications and information will be available at Flickapps.com. While the depth of the API is still under scrutiny, it may even let developers provide contextually based services by scanning user’s conversations (with permission). For instance, if you’re talking about a movie, a Flick.IM application could automatically provide links and times for that movie.

Their starting applications included six widgets and two integrated services. The integrated services allow you to embed photos and videos right into chat messages. Photos are shared by uploadeding them directly, while videos can pulled from a YouTube video search by typing “/video VIDEONAME”. Non-Flick.IM users will get links to the pictures and videos instead of an embed. Widgets include restaurant search on Yelp, Google Gmail, Last.fm radio, LiveNation, Yoink’d video search, and a beercam for kicks. The Yelp widget has the greatest amount of integration right now. It lets you run a quick restaurant search and send the link to your chat box.

Flick.IM has broader ambitions than this IM client, with an overall focus on real-time social networking. The chat client will eventually be one of many services incorporated in a new domain to be launched in the coming months.

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/~3/162166372/

Seth Porges, who writes for a column called “The Futurist” every Thursday on CrunchGear, this week discusses what he thinks will eventually prove to be Web 2.0’s achilles heal.

His thesis: “The Web 2.0 era will come to end sooner rather than later. Because if there is one immutable law of humankind, it is that we are really, really lazy.”

Unlike with Web 1.0, most Web 2.0 companies rely on user generated content (UGC) for their success. Read The Futurist: Will Human Laziness Burst The Web 2.0 Bubble? to find out why Porges thinks UGC’s heydey will eventually come to an end.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/162088051/

Our sources are telling us that tomorrow afternoon Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang will be holding a confidential meeting for all Yahoo execs (vice presidents and above, called the “leadership team”) to map out his strategic plan for the company going forward. This is the next step in executing on his promised 100 day plan back in July.

I’m hoping we’ll have the opportunity to live blog the event via one of our sources, which we did the last time one of these was held.

Separately, the company will shortly (today) be announcing a strategic shift away from premium content in Vince Broady’s entertainment group: music, games, TV, movies, OMG. Nothing will be shut down; however, people and money (marketing dollars) are moving to other areas of Yahoo. The company will focus on free content over premium services, which are not performing well. The changes have been occurring over the last week, look for a Yahoo announcement later today.

Update: Yahoo blog post here discusses streamlining of entertainment group.

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/~3/162087309/

Time-waster of the day: Sim Web 2.0. It’s a little flash game that automatically generates a name for your Web 2.0 startup, like Twitcast or Youcrunch, a press clip, and a list of things to do to build the company:

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/162148512/

Do you think you know who is going to buy Facebook, or how many copies of Halo 3 will be sold by the end of the year? You can make your make your best guess on ZiiTrend, a social prediction site that launched on Monday. (The answers to those two questions right now are: No one and 6.2 million, respectively).

ZiiTrend comes up with a group prediction based on every player’s vote. Unlike a true prediction market like Trendio, though, where players actually trade virtual stocks around events and predictions are derived from the resulting price, ZiiTrend makes things simpler. You simply make a prediction, and ZiiTrend’s neural-network algorithm blends your answer with everyone else’s to come up with a statistically valid answer that captures the crowd’s intelligence. Rather than revolving around trading, which is hard for many people to grasp, the site’s main appeal is designed to be more around social news exchange. Similar to PlaytheDay, which creates group predictions out of a quiz, ZiiTrend wants to make the whole process accessible to more people.

Members who predict correctly are rewarded with higher status and their votes carry more weight when they make further predictions. The clever bit is a tag-based scoring system that makes the votes of good predictors count more only on questions whose topics match the tags that they’ve proven their expertise on. So if you correctly answer the question, “Who will win the 2008 Oscar award for best actor?”, your personal tag score will go up for any future questions that include the words “Oscar award” or “best actor,” but not for ones about “oil prices.” That’s a steal-able feature for any startups out there trying to build expert databases or knowledge-management systems.

The problem with all prediction markets is that it is difficult to get people to participate. And that will be ZiiTrend’s biggest challenge. The site does make it easy for anyone to upload their own question for everyone else to vote on, which could help it spread virally. But what they really need is a Facebook/MySpace/blog widget that could bring people into the system.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/162114505/

Brian Dunnington liked what he saw with the Dojo Offline Toolkit, and wanted to abstract it out so you could use functionality with any JavaScript library.

He ended up with a new library called Vortex, a 10k JavaScript file that features:

• Ability to automatically detect referenced resources such as images, scripts, and stylesheets (including nested @imported stylesheets)
• Automatic detection of network state with corresponding UI/feature changes (also implements .isOnline() and .isOffline() methods)
• Auto syncing of events. it essentially records any user-defined actions and automatically plays them back when the network comes back online
• A generic storage provider to quickly and easily save javascript objects (JSON-encoded)
• Graceful fallback if no offline support is available (google gears not installed or not allowed to run)
• Library-independent (does not require dojo, prototype, Ext, YUI, etc) and cross-browser compatible

He has a simple RSS demo that shows the library at work.

I took it for a spin and went online and offline to see how it automatically detects. Also in the video below I take a peak at the code and we see what the definition of “online” means (able to XHR a particular file).

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/162066538/vortex-a-new-offline-abstraction-on-top-of-google-gears