Ajax Girl

AllFacebook is running a rumor that Facebook is prepping an online music store that will see it compete with Apple’s dominant iTunes.

According to the report, Facebook has been searching for a CEO to head up a new MP3 sales subdivision and has been pursuing agreements with a number of record labels.

If true, it would be an interesting move by Facebook, particularly into a market space where many have tried to take on Apple in the past, and have all miserably failed. Apple itself sees value in social networking as a platform for music sales, having integrated iTunes into Bebo UK and Ireland in June.

Without knowing exactly what Facebook might be offering it’s far too early to pass judgment on any Facebook Music store, but with any luck we might see low cost or even free MP3’s on offer. Better still the music might all be offered DRM free. Wishful thinking perhaps, but it never hurts to dream.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/165990417/

The domain name industry is all abuzz today (or will be soon) with the launch of a new service called NameJet. The service will compete in the $75 million/year “deleting domain name” business - when someone doesn’t renew a domain name it goes through a lengthy expiration process and is eventually spit back out to the market. 25,000 domains delete daily on average, and a lot of those (about 8%, to be exact) are immediately re-registered by domain speculators.

A number of companies compete to get those domains and then resell them via auctions. The most successful was a Portland startup called SnapNames, which won largely because they locked up agreements with the big registrars to get exclusive access to deleting domains. SnapNames and its competitors would then auction off deleting domains, generating an average of $100 per domain (with some going for $100k or more).

SnapNames was recently acquired by Oversee.net for $35 million, based on yearly revenues of around $40 million and profits of $3 million or so. About half of that revenue, and all of the profit, came from a single exclusive Snapnames’ registrar partner - NSI. A small portion of the purchase price was held back in escrow based on the company meeting revenue projections of $70 million/year.

That acquisition looks a little dumb right now, and those revenue projections of $70 million/year aren’t going to happen. NSI, exercising a change in control termination clause, notified Snapnames/Oversee today that they were terminating their agreement and simultaneously launched Namejet with a rival registrar eNom (eNom is owned by Demand Media).

Congratulations to the SnapNames shareholders, who sold at exactly the right time and left Oversee.net holding a now unprofitable business.

Disclosure: I once ran a company in this space called Pool.com, and later briefly consulted for SnapNames.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/165985536/

I was hoping that the changing of the guard at Technorati would mean that the company would learn to become somewhat humble. Early signs say that isn’t the case. In a Wired interview, incoming CEO Richard Jalichandra did note that the company has some challenges ahead (in reality, the only challenge is to find a buyer, fast).

But he also describes Techmeme, which has a single employee, never raised capital and yet has beaten Technorati at everything it has chosen to do, merely as “a great little site.” He also says Techmeme is not nearly as embedded in the blog community as Technorati:

WN: What’s your take on TechMeme’s leaderboard?

RJ: It’s a great little site and there are a lot of cool things on there, but when I look at the assets we’re sitting on it’s clear that we’re doing something different. They don’t track 100 million blogs and they’re not nearly as embedded in blog community. There’s nothing wrong with that, but in terms of how deep we can go, I feel like we’re in a pretty good place.

Jalichandra may learn the hard way that belittling competitors may not create loads of goodwill for his company. He would be far better off simply stating the truth: that Technorati managed to burn through $20 million in capital and has created little more than the second most popular blog search engine after Google blogsearch (and with how quickly Google is indexing blogs and other news sites, many loyal blog searchers simply search google.com today anyway). They missed huge opportunities - Techmeme (rapidly passionate readers), MyBlogLog (social network around blogs) and Sphere’s related search product (stole Technorati partners like WSJ and Washington Post) are all opportunities that Technorati just plain missed, and shouldn’t have. All of those “great little companies” could have added up to one big company, and Technorati could have been it.

So what is Jalichandra going to focus on as CEO (the real answer is selling the company, but he can’t say that). Here’s his answer:

WN: What can we expect to see from Technorati in the next year with you at the helm?

RJ: We’re really centered on trying to create a wholly unique media experience and improving our properties. Our big thing is going to be working on the advertising side of things to connect brands to the idea of global conversation that we strive for. Most of the opportunities and initiatives we’ve got coming up are going to address those two things.

He’s going to create a “wholly unique media experience,” improve their properties and focus on advertising. That could be inspiring, I guess, if I knew what the hell it meant. Sounds like big company marketing gibberish to me.

On a related note, here’s a juicy rumor that’s been floating around London this week at the Future of Web Apps Conference: In late 2005 Technorati may have turned down a $90 million acquisition offer, demanding $150 million instead. Needless to say, the potential acquiror came to its senses and declined.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/165929404/

Apple cares about typography, so it only makes sense that Webkit has joined Opera in supporting @font-face.

The Surfin’ Safari blog said it all:

WebKit now supports CSS @font-face rules. With font face rules you can specify downloadable custom fonts on your Web pages or alias one font to another. This article on A List Apart describes the feature in detail. All of the examples linked to in that article work in WebKit now.

@font-face is on the WebKit feature branch, and a nightly build of that is available. You can try it out here.

Just in time for Leopard

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/165921604/webkit-joins-opera-with-font-face-support

As if we didn’t have enough advertising in our lives, now we can look forward to listening to ads while on hold during a phone call, or while using a free Web telephony service. One startup trying to make that happen is VoodoVox out of New York City. Backed by Softbank Capital, Apax Partners, and Steamboat Ventures (Disney), VoodooVox has raised a total of $13 million so far. CEO J. Scott Hamilton wants to make VoodooVox the DoubleClick of what is known as “in-call” advertising. “It’s 1994 again” he says, “and I’m selling banners to people who don’t even know what a banner is.” What he is really selling is a relatively new form of audio advertising.

VoodooVox started out five years ago building automated systems to handle incoming calls to radio stations, but in the past year-and-a-half it’s expanded to delivering targeted audio ads over the phone and elsewhere. Radio shows like Howard Stern’s or request shows on MTV can generate hundreds of thousands of calls per day. VoodooVox’s software handles those calls, records the incoming messages, and can collect the demographic information from callers as well. Adding advertising was a no-brainer. For instance, here is one ad for MSN Music that ran on NYC hip-hop station Hot97’s call-in line. (Listener’s were prompted to “press 9″ to get an offer from MSN Music sent to their mobile phones).

The 400 or so radio stations that already use VoodooVox for call management, and 200 other “voice publishers” like calling card companies, receive 300 million calls a month. Currently, VoodooVox is serving audio ads in about 10 percent of those and getting average CPMs of $10 to $15, which it splits 50/50 with the companies receiving the calls. That gives VoodooVox the critical mass to become an audio ad network. It just struck an undisclosed $2.3 million deal with Jones MediaAmerica (a radio ad sales rep firm) for Jones to resell VoodooVox ads to radio and TV stations.

But radio is the just the start. “We happen to be serving them into phone calls but there is no reason why we cannot serve them into other media,” says Hamilton. These ads could just as easily be inserted into Web-based telephony services or even online music services. In fact, VoodooVox powers ads on Web-based voicemail services MyVox and SayNow, and is in talks with audio app Blabberize . In a way, this is like radio ads all over again, except these tend to be 10 to 15 seconds long and work best when placed in spots that don’t interrupt actual calls or entertainment experiences.

Ad-supported Voice 2.0 apps like free 411 calls are nothing new, but Hamilton has higher ambitions. “We feel cell services and even your landline will be supported by ads,” he predicts. Maybe some day. But for now, just look at all the VOIP calls being generated over the Web. It’s easier for startups to come up with new Voice 2.0 apps than with a way to make money from them. Hamilton sees all of those calls as inventory to fill with his ads. It is not difficult to imagine how online music services could benefit as well. Most experiments with ad-supported calls or music on the Web today still stick with visual banner ads on the Webpage serving the audio. But who looks at those pages? When I am streaming music from an online music site, for instance, I usually have it in an open tab in the background. I am consuming the service through my speakers instead. Same with telephony apps. The experience is through the headset.

An audio ad is something I wouldn’t be able to avoid so easily. On the other hand, it could be much more annoying if it wasn’t opt-in because listening to something I don’t want to actually wastes my time and would be more likely to drive me away from a service forever. But the idea of a DoubleClick for audio ads is still very intriguing.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/165915238/

The first TechStars company to launch, MadKast has raised a $300,000 series A round of financing from EONBusiness Venture Capital and several Angel investors in California and Colorado. Another TechStars company, EventVue, closed their own round of funding last week.

MadKast is an embeddable widget that lets you easily share links with your friends on any of 15 link sharing sites (Digg, Delicious, Reddit, …). But unlike other link-sharing widgets such as AddThis, MadKast also lets you send links via email, SMS, or IM. It’s a rather simple, yet useful, tool for letting your readers spread your posts.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/165880832/

One of Yahoo’s most successful product launches in recent years has been Yahoo Answers, which is showing more than 50 percent year-over-year growth in pageviews, according to comScore. Yahoo keeps pushing the crowd-sourcing property, which lets 95 million registered members around the world answer each others questions.

Now Yahoo Answers is going mobile, with results from the service to be included in Yahoo’s mobile search, known as oneSearch. My guess is that this is just the start and Yahoo Answers will add more mobile features over time, such as the ability to ask and answer questions on the go, in addition to looking up previous answers. Wikipedia results will also be included in the upgraded oneSearch.

(The Yahoo Search blog follows up with details).

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/~3/165812684/

Google is really growing into its gorillahood. A quick calculation (via HipMojo), based on the latest figures from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, shows that in the first half of 2007 Google commanded a 40 percent market share of all online advertising in the U.S. (Okay, I’m rounding up. It was really 39.8 percent). But that compares to a 34.6 percent share in the first half of 2006, based on IAB data for that period. Here’s the math:

$3.98 billion (Google’s U.S. revenues in the first half of 2007)/$9.99 billion (IAB’s estimate of total U.S. online ad revenue in 1H07) = 39.8 percent.

For the first half of 2006 the numbers are:

$2.732 billion (Google’s U.S. revenues in 1H06)/ $7.9 billion (IAB’s estimate of U.S. online ad revenues in 1H06) = 34.6 percent.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/165785528/

The first rule of career planning: Do not plan your career

“The world is an incredibly complex place and everything is changing all the time. You can’t plan your career because you have no idea what’s going to happen in the future. You have no idea what industries you’ll enter, what companies you’ll work for, what roles you’ll have, where you’ll live, or what you will ultimately contribute to the world. You’ll change, industries will change, the world will change, and you can’t possibly predict any of it. Trying to plan your career is an exercise in futility that will only serve to frustrate you, and to blind you to the really significant opportunities that life will throw your way. Career planning = career limiting. The sooner you come to grips with that, the better.”

“Four Principles of Interpersonal Communication”

“We don’t actually swap ideas, we swap symbols that stand for ideas. This also complicates communication. Words (symbols) do not have inherent meaning; we simply use them in certain ways, and no two people use the same word exactly alike.”

Yahoo revival meeting features Steve Jobs

“Among the key focuses of this ecosystem mentioned Friday was: the building out of Yahoo’s ad network, taking advantage of its ‘consumer insights’; the creation of a healthier corporate culture where fresh ideas could bubble up more effectively and be launched with less agony; and a new move to create a more open network a la Facebook on Yahoo for third-party developers to publish on and create more robust offerings.”

NASA on using color in info display graphics

“The process sketched below is intended for design of color usage in complicated graphics that support high-information-load, high-threat decisions, as in aerospace applications. Design of the color scheme must take into account the overall design of the application’s functionality—what the user is trying to do and how.”

Life as a barnacle on Facebook’s hull

“Last month, there were reports that Microsoft was considering a $500 million investment that would value the three-year-old company at up to $15 billion. Now it appears that such exuberance has infused the expanding Facebook universe, even though no one has yet proved it is possible to build a profitable business with sustainable revenues on the site. Some developers report earning tens of thousands of dollars in advertising with the applications they have created. Yet their applications are mostly running ads promoting other Facebook applications — a situation that recalls the earliest Gold Rush miners, who earned a living selling shovels to other miners. And developers must cover the cost of hosting the applications on their own Web servers.”

Interview with Khoi Vinh about his role at the Times

“That is number one on the top of my list when I hire someone: Will I be able to work with this person day in and day out, and would my peers feel comfortable working with these people? I’ve been very lucky, we’ve been able to find really good people who really believe in the brand and who have the character makeup that allows them to work efficiently and positively with their peers.”

"Click Here" works better than other terms

“Marketing Sherpa recently tested click-through rates for anchor text links in email. They found that ‘Click to continue’ works far better than ‘Continue to article’ or ‘Read more’. But why? Copyblogger’s Brian Clark concludes, ‘Not only should you use actionable anchor text if you really want someone to click, but you should also tell people to take the exact action you want them to perform in order to get the best response.’”

A look at how two companies boosted conversion rates on landing pages

“Take a look at the lessons both companies learned from the process. The changes on display may seem small and subtle, but the effect on conversion rates has been anything but.”

Threadless’ retail store

“It seems to be an odd move for Skinnycorp to take on the added costs and management overhead of a brick-n-mortar store. It makes more sense when you remember that Threadless is built on community. Having a physical space lets them give back to the community in ways a website never will. It helps them expand the brand beyond their current internet-found customer base, while maintaining the personal and respectful relationship with their t-shirt artists—something that they couldn’t do with many partners.”

Radiohead to Let Fans Set Price of Downloads

“Fans are free to name their own price for a digital-download version of the 10-song album, ‘In Rainbows.’ ‘It’s up to you,’ a message reads when a user clicks on a question mark next to a price box that has been left blank. A subsequent screen adds: ‘No really, it’s up to you.’”

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/637-sunspots-the-barnacle-edition

Zappos
Alex Labbett writes: “I just placed my 5th order over 4 months at Zappos.com and decided to read through their ‘Shipping Notification’ email. Attached you will find what they had to say, and I believe it follows some of the principles shown on SvN.

I placed my order close to 2:30PM and it has already shipped (the day I ordered it) for me to receive by tomorrow. Also, the overnight shipping is free.

Specifically, this paraphraph is what sets them apart:

While most companies spend a lot of money on marketing in order to grow
their business, our philosophy at Zappos.com is a little different.
Instead of spending a lot of money on marketing, we would rather work on
improving the customer experience (running our warehouse around the clock,
super-fast free shipping, free return shipping, 24/7 customer support,
etc.), and rely on repeat customers and word of mouth to grow our business
instead.

I’ve recommended Zappos to all my friends before, but this follow-up email just further solidifies my opinion that they’re the best online shoe store. Period.”

Chocolove
Kathy Sierra used to rave about Chocolove for their smart packaging (which includes poetry inside the wrapper). History of Chocolove is from the company’s site and tells a story that sets the company apart from the Snickers of the world.

Chocolove started as the classic entrepreneur story – a dream, a garage, extended credit card debt and loans from friends and family. With its visionary chocolatier, and a solid concept, Chocolove became, and continues to be, a pioneer in the chocolate industry.

Timothy Moley is the founder, owner and chocolatier at Chocolove. A tall and slightly eccentric man, he reminds you a little of Willy Wonka. His laid-back attitude, wry grin, and lanky physique would never lead you to believe he is a man who lives and breathes chocolate, and has been consuming two chocolate bars, every day, for the past ten years. Seriously.

It all began in a cocoa field in Indonesia… Timothy was chewing on some cocoa beans doing volunteer work for USAID, a government program that promotes agricultural and technical education in developing countries. He had been living abroad on and off for two years, visiting over 28 countries, developing his palate with spices, teas and wines. And, like most of us, he had always dreamed of being his own boss, dedicated to something he loved. The idea of a career in chocolate inspired him and an idea began to form -  to create a premium chocolate bar, paired with the romance of love.

Bill Bryson
The Houdini Solution page at Squidoo offers a bunch of interesting examples of “putting creativity and innovation to work by thinking inside the box.” This one, titled
“Houdini And The Sportswriter,” compares two different accounts of the end of the 1960 World Series.

In his memoir, “The Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid”, author Bill Bryson tells a great story about his father, a sportswriter for the Des Moines Register.

October 13, 1960. Bill Mazeroski hits a home run in the ninth inning to win the World Series for the Pittsburgh Pirates against the New York Yankees. With the clock ticking down, every sportswriter in the stadium is furiously pecking out their story, their deadlines rapidly approaching.

Here’s the opening paragraph of the story that ran in The New York Times:

“The Pirates today brought Pittsburgh its first World Series baseball championship in thirty-five years when Bill Mazeroski slammed a ninth-inning home run over the left field wall of historic Forbes Field.”

Here’s what people in Iowa read:

“The most hallowed piece of property in Pittsburgh baseball history left Forbes Field late Thursday afternoon under a dirty gray sports jacket and with a police escort. That, of course, was home plate, where Bill Mazeroski completed his electrifying home run while umpire Bill Jackowski, broad back braced and arms spread, held off the mob long enough for Bill to make it legal.

“Pittsburgh’s steel mills couldn’t have made more noise than the crowd in this ancient park did when Mazeroski smashed Yankee Ralph Terry’s second pitch of the ninth inning. By the time the ball sailed over the ivy-covered brick wall, the rush from the stands had begun and these sudden madmen threatened to keep Maz from touching the plate with the run that beat the lordly Yankees, 10-9, for the title.”

Two sportswriters. Two stories. Same deadline. Ticking clock a barrier to creativity? You tell me.

Have an interesting link, story, or screenshot for Signal vs. Noise? Contact svn [at] 37signals [dot] com.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/606-on-writing-zappos-chocolove-and-bill-bryson