Ajax Girl

Yahoo is adding some major features to its search engine today. For instance, images from Flickr and playable videos are now embedded in the main results page. A search for a major rock band like U2 brings up information from the artist’s Website, along with a list of songs that can be played as 30-second audio streams (courtesy of Yahoo Music).

Do a search for a restaurant or hotel, and results from Yahoo Local come out on top, with links to maps, ratings, and reviews. Type in “bourne ultimatum,” and the top result is a widget from Yahoo Movies with a trailer you can click on, audience reviews, and show times nearest you. Search for “Vancouver,” and the top result is a widget from Yahoo Travel, with links to a guide, hotels, restaurants, flights, and maps. Type in “digital camera,” and you get shortcut results from Yahoo Shopping.

Customized results also come up for searches dealing with health, sports, and events—all without you having to specify what type of search you are trying to do. Instead, Yahoo attempts to figure out your intent based on the search terms and the topics associated with them (Google espouses a similar Universal Search approach, as does Microsoft).

But the most important feature is an Ajax assistant pane that drops down when it detects you hesitating while typing in a search term. It gives you suggestions to complete the keywords, as well as related concepts that you might want to try. So if you type in “energy savings,” it suggests click-able links to related terms such as “energy star,” energy efficiency,” and “thermostats.” And this one is close to home for me. Type in “office sublets” and it suggests “small office sublets in new york city,” since Yahoo knows my zip code.

Yahoo has really nailed guided search with this release—as long as what you are looking for can be found somewhere else within Yahoo. That’s my one pet peeve about Yahoo’s new search “assistant.” All of these shortcuts are helpful, but they are not all objective. Most of them point back to Yahoo.

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/~3/164020804/

Techmeme’s new popular list product Leaderboard launched today, and the reaction has been interesting. Some are suggesting that it’s not a representative list, others (well Scoble) are suggesting that it is the death of blogs.

First the big news: more Meme Leaderboard products are on the way, with Leaderboards to be launched for Gabe Rivera’s other sites Memeorandum, WeSmirch and Ballbug. Like the Techmeme Leaderboard these lists will focus on the popular blogs in each respective area; politics, celebrities and baseball in that order. There are no plans as yet to launch a combined list, although Gabe liked the idea when I suggested it to him. The new Leaderboard sites will be launched over the next week.

In noting the new Leaderboard sites, it highlights the very nature of the product: these are popular lists based on verticals, not an all-up list such as the Technorati Top 100. In one respect they are not direct competitors, yet the continued decline of Technorati has left an opening for competing popular lists, and in this regard the Leaderboard products have their place.

As vertical lists they are by their very nature unrepresentative of the entire blogosphere because they only track a particular vertical, and I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. The cliques in blogging have been long established, and at the end of the day many will find personal interest in reading a list of the top 100 blogs in their own favorite vertical. Where as I might prefer a tech lists, others might prefer politics or celebrities; choice in this example is a good thing.

The argument that the list (by Scoble) is representative of the death of blogging couldn’t be any further from the truth. As the graph shows, 64% of the list is held by blogs. When we look at the non-blogs, it gets greyer, because many of the online publications (13%) and mainstream media sites (17%) either have blogs or are using blog like features such as comments.

Scoble’s argument that most of the 64% that are blogs aren’t real blogs as they are written by more than one person is perhaps one of the weirdest propositions I’ve heard this year. I’ll accept that a blog is only a blog if it has comments (which they should) but since when did a blog stop becoming a blog because there are multiple bloggers? If anything, the strength of multiple author blogs demonstrates the growing maturity of the blogosphere, in that to be at the top, leading blogs have adopted to the 24/7 news cycle by bringing in additional bloggers to cover breaking events, and to provider a richer, and perhaps more comprehensive coverage of news events.

This is not to take away from single-author blogs at all; I was at a conference last week where a Professor told the audience that group blogs are the future of blogging and I publicly disagreed: single-author blogs are and will always remain the bread and butter of the blogosphere, however expecting that single author blogs will dominate links and traffic is akin to running a Mini into a B-Triple Truck: the truck will nearly always win.

Note: The Techmeme Leaderboard Distribution graph is based on Dave Winers list here. Given the updating nature of the product the distribution will constantly change over time.

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/~3/163994233/

Fav.or.it is tiny start-up based in a small office an hour’s drive from London. But this “feature rich community-based feed reading system” is about to unleash a wholly original take on reading blogs and news feeds which could see it face-down even the social bookmarking giants like Digg and the newer kids like CoComment.

[Note: this is an edited version of a much longer post which appears on TechCrunch UK]

Favorit brings together blog reading and replying into one simple web application. Its innovative web interface is designed to allow users to let users read any kind of RSS feed, cut-up, mashed-up with other feeds or “sliced” in any kind of way.

It’s also is a classic Web 2.0 startup which will attempt to solve one of the web’s most frustrating issues, i.e. the separation of reading RSS feeds from being able to comment on the post. Admittedly any blog post is only a click away from a user being able to comment on it. But imagine being to comment, Twitter-like, under a feed and not even have to care about filling in your name, email, etc. Just comment, save and carry on reading. Having witnessed it myself at an exclusive demo, I can confirm that this is what Favorit is capable of.

Favorit will this week launch a private beta based on a submitted database of 10,000 blog feeds. (The site is exhibiting at two events in London, FOWA and mashup demo).

Turning feeds into slices

Favorit approaches the issue of reading RSS feeds with the concept of ’slices’. Each post in a feed is categorised and tagged. By choosing a category, tag or rank (or a combination of each) the user can filter what they are reading in a more efficient manner than the normal ‘hose’ effect of having to laboriously wade through hundreds of blog posts in hundreds of feeds.

Comment posting with an API

Based on PHP and the Zend Framework, Favorit will launch an API during the public beta enabling it to hook into many more blogging platforms to allow it to send comments back to the sites. Founder Nick Halstead hopes the API will create an ecosystem outside of Favorit.

Now of course there is a glaring issue here. Sites thrive on traffic. But by removing barriers to commenting, Favorit potentially creates a faster turnaround of comments to blogs, and especially blogs at the end of the ‘long tail’.

Tracking attention beats voting

Because Favorit uses Javascript it will gauge how long you read a post and what you did before during and after. This data is invaluable both for advertising targeting and for data mining, and its far more sutble than Digg’s voing system. Eventually the site hopes to rank as many as a million blogs in order of attention.

Because it will track what people actually read, Favorit will be a far more accurate reflection of what is popular online than Digg, which everyone knows is increasingly subject to gaming.

Although Halstead went to great lengths with me to emphasise that Favorit is a different animal than Digg, there is no getting away from the comparison. And it’s quite clear that capturing attention meta-data beats ‘voting’ hands down.

A blogging platform as well?!

Favorit is not just going to be a feed reader. It is also a blogging platform. By creating a subdomain, such as ‘gadgets.fav.or.it’ users will be able to write their own posts into the system. Using this, they can pull in their feed from their blog as well as post directly into Favorit. Any comments on the Favorit subdomain blog then appear back at the original blog.

Since it’s all widget based, users will be able to ‘pimp’ their Favorit blogs with a set of widgets - many form outside suppliers - which Favorit will build into the system. But you won’t be able to access the underlying HTML or CSS.

Here’s where the revenue comes in. Favorit plans to share advertising revenues with users who create these subdomain blogs.

However, controversially, a user could create a subdomain site with someone else’s feed.

If the Nike subdomain pulls in everything there is to know about Nike, Google could be among those knocking on the door given the usefulness of this data. But so could the lawyers.
Because of its simplicity for reading and commenting Favorit has the potential to open up feed-reading to a wider audience than perhaps other aggregators have done so far. And could well disrupt older ‘voting’ style social bookmarking sites.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/163985135/

Technorati today announced it’s search for a new CEO was over, with Richard Jalichandra being appointed to the role, some 6 weeks since Technorati’s founding CEO David Sifry stepped down and 5 months since it was publicly confirmed that Technorati was seeking a new CEO.

Prior to joining Technorati, he held Jalichandra roles at Exponential Interactive, Fox Interactive Media and IGN Entertainment. Most recently Jalichandra was Entrepreneur-In-Residence at Battery Ventures, an advisory board member at MyYearbook.com and Pixsy, and as an M&A and strategy consultant for several other startups.

The once great Technorati has floundered in recent years as attempts to broaden its product offering resulted in its core blog search product suffering for lack of development and support, all at the same time that Google Blog Search came to the fore. More recently, Technorati started downsizing staff as the approx. $20 million raised over three rounds started to dry up.

As I’ve noted previously, I’ve always had a soft spot for Technorati. When I started blogging in 2002, the only way of tracking the blogosphere was Technorati and perhaps to a lesser extent Daypop, which was never as good. Jalichandra’s challenge will be to focus Technorati on achievable goals, whilst purging the company of the excesses of the past. Technorati’s failed Digg clone WTF (the most unfortunate acronym I’ve ever seen) should be the first to go. Core competencies in blog search, in particular with focus on filtering results from spam blogs must be a priority. Given the new competition from Techmeme on the popular blog list side, a more frequently updating service from Technorati should be on the to-do list, with perhaps more contextual lists; say popular blogs by vertical and filtered results based on link age, for example link popularity over 1, 3, 6, and 12 months, then maybe an all-time popular list would be nice.

If you’ve got any advice for Jalichandra on how Technorati can rise from the endangered list, let him know in the comments.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/163969251/

Everyone likes to complain about the sorry state of education in this country, but when was the last time you actually did something about it? Well, here’s your chance. TechCrunch is participating in a blogger challenge to see who can raise the most money for DonorsChoose.org, a great non-profit that lets you specify which educational projects you want your money to go to. Teachers across the country typically ask for a few hundred dollars per project to buy things like computers, digital cameras, or other basic supplies that their schools won’t cover. And donors vote for the best ones with their cash. It’s like a charity version of Digg.

We’ve selected a few worthy projects aimed at improving computer literacy, especially in underprivileged schools. But you can choose to give money to hundreds of projects in any subject, region, or type of school that you feel is the most deserving. Just start at this link. We are trying to raise at least $25,000 in the month of October. That seems kind of low to me, given how many VCs read this blog.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/163934009/

This past July we reported that Joost, a company that has been working for two years to provide quality on-demand IPTV, would launch by the end of this year.

Today, the company announces the availability of public Beta 1.0 on its blog. This would be a bigger deal if Joost had not already signed up over one million private beta users, 10,000 of which came directly from TechCrunch.

If you haven’t checked Joost out yet, head over there to see what all the fuss is about. You can find our previous coverage of the company (and its competitors) here.

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/~3/163909321/

Apple recently posted an iPhone update which, among other things, adds an “iTunes” icon to the iPhone home screen.

I love where they put it. They didn’t put it where consistency tells you to put it. That would be on the left side. They put it where context tells you to put it. On the right side right above the iPod icon. Even the icon’s arrow points right down to the iPod.

A few other observations… This is currently the only button on the screen (perhaps besides the SMS button) that makes Apple any incremental money. Setting it off by lining it up on the side really makes it stick out. I think that had something to do with the decision. It’s also the only icon in purple. It really stands out. I think that was intentional too.

Anyway, I love that Apple favored context over consistency in this design decision. Consistency is the easy choice. Context is the thinking choice.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/628-iphone-context-over-consistency

The TechMeme Leaderboard, which we wrote about last night, is now live. See it here. Founder Gabe Rivera’s announcement of the new site is here.

The leaderboard shows the top 100 news sources, ranked by the number of headlines attributed to that blog on TechMeme over the previous thirty days. Archives of previous lists will be available, and an OPML file of all included sources can be downloaded from the site.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/163828566/

A week ago we announced the SEED Conference. We’ve sold over 100 seats so far and only about 20 seats remain. If you want to attend, you’ll want to act quickly.

Visit the SEED Conference site to find out more and get yourself a seat for $399.

We look forward to seeing you on Oct 29 in Chicago.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/627-seed-almost-sold-out

Oliver writes:

I become frustrated at trying to introduce more innovative methods of software development at the large IT consulting firm I work for. Are there any methods to trying to get 1980’s waterfall lovers to even think of rapid development techniques as anything but “silly crap suitable for start-ups but with not place in Real Development Companies” (paraphrased), or should I just quit and find somebody more exciting to work for?

Most people fear change because they overestimate the risks and underestimate the gains. If you want to convince them to change, you have to address both issues.

In my experience, the only way to address the perception of risk is through first-hand experiences that Nothing Bad Will Happen. Anecdotal, or even hard, data rarely sways anyone unless they’re already in a desperate situation.

So pick something small in your organization. Internal systems are usually a good fit. The worst that could happen is usually that you’ve wasted a little time (and organizations running waterfalls should be intimately experienced with wasting time for much less noble causes). You don’t end up looking foolish to clients (a common fear).

Pitch this system as a test balloon for another way of doing things. To smooth things further, you could throw a boon to kick it off the ground, like “Peter and me will come in on Saturday to set everything up for this”, so that you reflect that you have some skin in the game too and that you care.

Odds are that people will like how things work on the test trial (i.e., they’ll start reevaluating the gains). They’ll appreciate that you’re working in iterations, how quickly you can adapt to changes, and how enthusiastic people on that project seem to be.

If all goes well, this will lead to “why can’t we work like this on project X?”. Maybe this call won’t come from top decision makers right away, but it’ll come from anyone else who’s been exposed, and it’ll hopefully start an internal debate based on first-hand experience.

Then again, maybe it won’t. But at least you’ve given it a shot, so you won’t feel bad at all when you hand in your resignation and move on to a place that provides a more rewarding work environment.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/626-ask-37signals-how-to-escape-the-waterfall