Ajax Girl

AOL’s MapQuest may be the market-leading map site by a long shot (with 50 million monthly visitors versus 30 million for Google Maps), but it is still playing catch-up when it comes to features, functionality, and mash-up capabilities. Today, it finally took a big step into the modern Web era with the launch of MapQuest Beta. This is not just a sandbox where MapQuest can safely play with the newest Web 2.0 toys. It’s the new face of MapQuest and by the end of the year will take over the main site, which still remains a very 1.0, page-based destination. MapQuest Beta, in contrast, is built on Ajax, and is thus more of a single-pane experience. I got a sneak peek.

Here’s a screen shot of the new MapQuest:

. . . versus what you see today:

Despite the improvement, the new MapQuest is still pretty bare bones at this point. You can see the map and driving directions in different panes on the same page, and can also create routes for multiple cities (same as on Google Maps). Or, you can collapse the directions pane so that the map covers the entire page. The search and navigation has been simplified to a one-box approach. You can save maps and routes, and share them with people. And you can print out the exact map image easily at the zoom level you want. There is nothing earth-shattering here, but it adds up to a much-needed upgrade for MapQuest. You can read more details here on the new MapQuest Beta blog.

Over the next few months, though, expect to see new features rolled out at a rapid clip, about every two weeks You will soon be able to drag the location pins around to read what’s underneath (they will remain connected to the spot they are marking by a thin line). The maps will become embeddable in other sites. Live traffic updates will be added. And people will be able to annotate the maps. Again, many of these features are already available on Google Maps or Yahoo Maps.

But MapQuest still has the biggest market share, and that share is not yet declining (see chart). Given all the innovation going on with online maps these days, that market share is extremely vulnerable. Now MapQuest will be based on a new technology architecture that hopefully will allow it to respond more nimbly to the incredible diversity of map features and applications that are out there. Still, don’t expect it to do anything too crazy. It’s got 50 million mainstream users that it does not want to alienate. My prediction is that it will remain very much focussed on driving directions and other routing applications, which is its strength. I don’t think we’ll be seeing too many geo-tagged videos on MapQuest. Instead, it will deploy Web 2.0 features to improve its core mapping functions and deepen the loyalty of its existing users. Imagine how grateful they will be when they realize they no longer need to be stuck with a user interface from 1999.

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/~3/169116834/

The third match in 2007’s Layer Tennis season is underway between Steven Harrington and Chuck Anderson. It’s the best one yet.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/645-layer-tennis-match-three-underway

Douglas Crockford continues to bang the drum for securing JavaScript in his latest post:

It is possible to make secure programming languages. Most language designers do not consider that possibility. JavaScript’s biggest weakness is that it is not secure. That puts JavaScript in very good company, but it puts web developers in an untenable position because they cannot build secure applications in an insecure language. JavaScript is currently going through a redesign that is again failing to consider the security of the language. The new language will be bigger and more complex, which will make it even harder to reason about its security. I hope that that redesign will be abandoned.

A more fruitful approach is to remove insecurity from the language. JavaScript is most easily improved by removing defective features. I am aware of two approaches that allow us to build secure applications by subsetting the insecure language.

The first approach is to use a verifier. That is how ADsafe works. A verifier statically analyzes a program, and certifies that the program does not use any of the unsafe features of the language. This does not guarantee that the program is safe, but it makes it possible to make programs that are safe. Any program can compromise its own security. The improvement here is that a program’s security is not compromised by the language it is written in.

The second approach is to use a transformer. A transformer verifies, but it also modifies the program, adding indirection and runtime checks. The advantage of transformers is that they allow the use of a larger subset of the language. For example, ADsafe does not allow the use of the this parameter. A transformer can allow this because it can inject code around it and its uses to ensure that it is never used unsafely. The benefit is that it is more likely that existing programs could run in a safe mode with little or no modification. I think that is a dubious benefit because programs that are not designed to be safe probably are not. The downside is that the final program will be bigger and slower, and debugging on the transformed program will be more difficult.

Both approaches work. But we still need to fix the browser.

A new project, Google Caja, is trying to do source-to-source translation to secure things:

Using Caja, web apps can safely allow scripts in third party content.

The computer industry has only one significant success enabling documents to carry active content safely: scripts in web pages. Normal users regularly browse untrusted sites with Javascript turned on. Modulo browser bugs and phishing, they mostly remain safe. But even though web apps build on this success, they fail to provide its power. Web apps generally remove scripts from third party content, reducing content to passive data. Examples include webmail, groups, blogs, chat, docs and spreadsheets, wikis, and more.

Were scripts in an object-capability language, web apps could provide active content safely, simply, and flexibly. Surprisingly, this is possible within existing web standards. Caja represents our discovery that a subset of Javascript is an object-capability language.

FBJS is also trying to do some of this too. Got some time on Friday to look around some code? Take a look at some Caja.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/168991929/making-javascript-safe-with-google-caja

There’s a time bomb out there with Joost’s name on it. Full-screen, broadcast-quality video streams—the main selling point of Joost’s peer-to-peer Internet TV client software—is quickly coming to the Web. Brightcove will soon be offering such streams to its video publishers using BitTorrent DNA. But the real threat to Joost will be coming from Adobe and its ubiquitous Flash player.

Sometime in the next few months, Adobe is expected to incorporate the H.264 codec in all Flash players with the general release of Flash Player 9. You can already download a beta version from Adobe Labs. The H.264 codec is part of MPEG-4 and is the codec that Apple uses to compress all of the video downloads on iTunes. Once H.264 is part of Flash, the quality of streaming video on the Web will roughly double at current bandwidth speeds. That means YouTube videos will look twice as good—and those will likely remain on the low end in quality.

Every video site on the Web (and quite a few that are still in stealth) is just waiting for Flash Player 9 to be distributed widely and become the new standard. That will allow them to launch their own full-screen Internet TV services with video streams that are just as good or better than Joost’s, and that will require nothing more than a regular browser to watch.

Joost’s greatest asset right now is not it’s peer-to-peer technology. It’s the momentum its gained so far by being an early mover. When Joost finally came out of its private beta on October 1, it had already signed up one million beta users and seeded its network with 15,000 shows. But the vast majority of that video is not exclusive to Joost. All the Internet TV services are lining up the same content. And better-quality video is not going to remain a differentiator for long.

As compression technologies get better, video sites will be able to dial up the quality of the video streams. Joost’s P2P approach is not a benefit to the consumer as much as it is a benefit to Joost (because it offloads the bandwidth costs of the most popular video streams to the users themselves). But streaming video on the Web is about to get a whole lot cheaper—and as Web video advertising takes off, a whole lot more lucrative. Some people argue that once the economics kick in, centralized Web streaming will offer a better, more consistent viewing experience than P2P streaming. That’s why H.264 is so important. It will change the economics of streaming.

Joost’s only remaining competitive barrier will be its network of viewers and their interactions among each other, along with the third-party apps built around it. If viewers feel that the experience of watching videos on Joost is more social or pleasurable than watching streams by themselves on the Web, maybe they’ll stick around. But social features are not exclusive to Joost, and neither are its platform ambitions. The slam-dunk days for Joost will soon be over.

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/~3/168965195/

“So, how does this help the user kick ass?” According to Kathy Sierra, it’s the key question to ask when you’re trying to create passionate users.

Along those lines, check out SmileOnMyMac’s brief but informative email newsletters. They reek of someone at the company asking, “How can we help our customers kick more ass?” Here’s one that was recently sent out to TextExpander customers (text is copied below)…

What makes a good abbreviation to trigger expansion of your snippets? Here are some basic guidelines:

1. Make it short.
2. Make it easy to remember.
3. Make sure it’s not likely to be typed by accident.
4. Make it unique.

One easy strategy is to repeat the first letter of the abbreviation. “sig” would be a bad abbreviation for your customized email signature: everytime you tried to type words like “sign” or “signal”, you would not get past the third letter before automatically triggering your email signature. But “ssig” would work perfectly, because no word starts with those letters.

By default, you’ll find the snippets with the abbreviations “ddate” and “ttime” already set up by TextExpander. You might want to create your own snippets like:
- ttel
- llogo
- llink

With the right abbreviations, you’ll be on your way to saving hours of unnecessary typing with TextExpander!

Just a brief tip and that’s it. Here’s another:

You can set up snippets in TextExpander that will help you fill out forms more quickly and accurately. Create abbreviations for the most common form fields like:

aadd: street address
ccity: city (or use your airport code, i.e. “pdx” for Portland, or “sfo” for San Francisco)
ttel: telephone number
mmail: your email address

These abbreviations are just suggestions; just remember that you’ll want to create abbreviations that are unlikely to be first letters of an actual word.

Some computer security experts recommend disabling the “auto-fill” feature on your browser, arguing that this personal information might be exploited in a malicious attack. With TextExpander snippets for the most common form fields, you can disable such features and still fill out forms quickly without having to type the same information over and over.

SmileOnMyMac has already made the sale. Yet the company doesn’t stop selling the product. It’s giving customers a path to dig deeper. Smart move.

Is there a software company or product that sends you emails that you find really useful? Tell us about it in the comments.

Related: Tips and tricks for 37signals products [Product Blog]

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/635-newsletters-that-teach

Yahoo! has got a parallel universe going on between the US and the UK.

Last week we interviewed Steve Souders, Chief Performance Yahoo!, on the update to YSlow. Steve has a book out called High Performance Web Sites.

Meanwhile, in the UK, Stuart Colville and Ed Eliot also of Yahoo! have a book in the works called High Performance Web Site Techniques.

Stuart and Ed recently released the CSS Sprite Generator tool, and we sat down to discuss it, and other performance related topics:

I can’t wait to hear what Yahoo! Australia has to offer next!

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/168943137/web-performance-interview-stuart-colville-and-ed-eliot-of-yahoo

Microsoft doubled the online storage consumers can get for free in Windows Live SkyDrive. It’s hard to get excited about that when Gmail is already giving me 2.9 GB of storage, with more on the way—4GB by the end of the month, and 6GB by early January, according to one estimate.

Keep that free storage coming. We’ll use it.

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/~3/168929078/

Jason Harwig has written a quick tip on Testing JavaScript Objects with Function.prototype.call. The example that he uses is:

In the context of Crosscheck, the JavaScript unit testing framework, you would see this work via:

What is Crosscheck?

Crosscheck is an open source testing framework for verifying your in-browser javascript. It helps you ensure that your code will run in many different browsers such as Internet Explorer and Firefox, but without needing installations of those browsers. The only thing you need is a Java Virtual Machine.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/168925981/testing-javascript-objects-with-functionprototypecall-and-crosscheck

Bob Buffone (Nexaweb, XAP, and a lot more) has created an application to test JavaScript performance. You can run the app in various browsers to compare the results.

Bob has done that work for you though, and has documented his findings which has him concluding that the general ranking is Safari, Firefox, IE.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/168919581/evaulate-low-level-javascript-performance-characteristics

Yossi Vardi is one of the people I’ve had the pleasure to get to know since starting TechCrunch. You can find him at technology events worldwide - just look for the smiling, wild-haired guy surrounded by a pack of people.

To understand what he has accomplished, see his wikipedia entry. He is most famous for being the original investor in ICQ, but he’s also invested in over 60 other companies.

Yossi was generous enough with his time to join our panel of expertes at TechCrunch40 last month. At one point in the discussion of a group of startups he quoted Theodore Roosevelt from a 1910 speech in given in Paris, and drew an analogy to today’s entrepreneurs:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

I spoke with Yossi this week and asked him about his investment approach. He generally invests in young entrepreneurs and only takes common stock. If someone has failed before he’s even more likely to invest - “It makes them want to win even more,” he said. He generally doesn’t look at business plans at all, and just invests in the individual.

I am not nearly as eloquent as Roosevelt or as smart as Vardi, but the words ring true to me, and it was a very special moment at the conference when Vardi spoke about this. If you are an entrepreneur (or think you may be), forget the critics (even us) and the naysayers and just do what your heart tells you to do. You may be wasting your time, but at least you got into the arena. And if you fail, make sure you fail while “daring greatly.” Then, get into the arena again, having learned from your mistakes.

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/~3/168853811/