Ajax Girl

Hosted social voting site provider coRank has relaunched with a list of new capabilities.

The new options can be enabled/disabled by owners of coRank sites as they see fit (except for the personal dashboard). New features include

• Local copy: Being able to store local ‘cached’ copies of anything that is submitted. coRank note that this may be controversial, but claim that legally it has been cleared. It certainly sounds evil.
• Collaborative editing: Users can now edit submitted stories, and also have access to wiki-style features such as view “change history.”
• Individual privileges: Users can now decide who can/cannot submit stories and edit submissions
• Full Template Edit: Site admins can now edit all of the coRank site templates, allowing for 100% customization. coRank claim that from a development standpoint, this feature + the API offers a platform only matched by the freedom of using Open Source.
• My Dashboard: A central location from where a coRank user can get a glance of whatever is that he/she is doing at any coRank site

Users can already eliminate the Digg-style voting feature, which coRank claims opens up the possibility of using the service for a plethora of different uses, such as collective social bookmarking and dynamic repositories such as Wikimarks.

coRank currently has 1600 registered site owners, of which around half are regular users.

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/~3/166766628/

Jihad On You is a new satirical website that allows users to vent their everyday frustrations by issuing a “jihad” against the things that annoy them.

When users declare a jihad, the “infidel” can be notified that a holy war has been declared against them. The site also allows readers to comment on jihads and rate them.

The site was built as part of a challenge to build a website over one weekend, and the entire process can be read about on Hibernation9.com.

It’s a well designed site that is pleasing to look at, but the taste has much to be desired. I’ve always considered myself to have a broad sense of humor, but this is just a step too far. There is a jihad against the London Transport System; I wonder how the victims of the London Bombings will feel about those horrid events now being part of someone’s trying to be funny website; Jihads are not a funny business by any stretch of the imagination. I suppose some will like the site, for others it’s just downright offensive.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/166757468/

SAP, the world’s largest provider of business software, has agreed to buy Business Objects for €4.8 billion euros ($6.8 billion).

Business Objects is a business intelligence software company with some 43,000 customers including over 80 percent of companies listed the Fortune 500.

Business intelligence software taps into an organization’s disparate data “to provide meaningful information and analysis to employees, customers, suppliers, and partners for more effective decision making.”

Although both are pre-Web 2.0 software focused companies, SAP and Business Objects have started providing online services that are an extension of their main products. SAP has focused on online business collaboration, and has developed web based widgets that interact with SAP productivity tools.

Business Objects offers a number of online applications under the “BI 2.0″ banner on its Business Objects Labs Web site. Tools include BI Annotator, a tool that combines external data feeds with the structured data in a data warehouse, and BI Desktop, for creating programs or widgets that display current BI information on the desktop.

(via AFP)

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/166745797/

Online news site Newsvine, which launched in March 2006, has been acquired by MSNBC.com, a fifty-fifty joint venture between Microsoft and NBC. This is MSNBC.com’s first acquisition.

The deal, which closed on October 5, was all cash, but the acquisition price is not being disclosed. Both companies are based in Seattle. Mike Davidson, the founder of Newsvine, said that the companies will continue operating separately but that technology integration will occur over time. MSNBC has around 200 employees; Newsvine has just six.

Newsvine reaches this liquidity event after having raised just $1.5 million in capital. It joins both Stumbleupon and Mozy , each of which were also acquired earlier this year after having raised less than $2 million in venture capital.

Newsvine was recently mentioned on the Daily Show when Davidson “enhanced” Senator John McCain’s Myspace page.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/166659890/

Since launching and winning the top spot at our TechCrunch40 conference three weeks ago, personal-finance startup Mint has been on a roll. On Friday, Mint was named Best of Show at the 2007 Financial Innovations conference (along with peer-to-peer lender Prosper and mortgage-finder Mortgagebot).

CEO Aaron Patzer reports to us that, in just the past three weeks, Mint has already helped organize more than $2 billion worth of people’s personal financial accounts, and identified more than $40 million in potential savings for those members. (Mint helps you find better interest rates on bank accounts, credit cards, and other financial products). Interest in the site spiked right after TC40. At one point, Mint was signing up a new member every five seconds. Not bad for a service from a previously-unknown startup that asks for access to all of your private financial data, including your bank and credit-card accounts.

Apparently, getting consumers to give up that level of privacy, has not been an issue so far. (The old axiom is true: people really will do anything to save a buck). Now comes the hard part. Getting all those people to keep coming back past the initial stage of curiosity.

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/~3/166661429/

Al Jazeera signed a commercial agreement with Google last week to share advertising revenue on their YouTube channel. The channel originally launched in April 2007.

This comes even as U.S. cable operators continue to shun the 24 hour news service - only Toledo, Ohio based Buckeye CableSystem and the municipal cable suppler in Burlington, Vermont offer the channel to viewers.

Al Jazeera uploads all original programming and unique news to the channel. An arabic channel is also available here. If you live in the U.S. and Al Jazeera is your flavor of news, You Tube (or satellite) is the only easy way to see their content

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/~3/166611213/