Ajax Girl

Justin.tv “lifecasters” are starting to get the cold shoulder when they bring their video cameras into situations that people don’t necessarily want recorded.

Sarah Meyers was recently booted out of a book reading in New York. Less surprisingly, another Justin.TV lifecaster, Ronald Lewis, was told he couldn’t record a movie at a theater and had to put his video camera away before the movie started. He wasn’t kicked out, but that didn’t stop him from referring to the confused but polite manager as a “fucking bitch” as he walked away. The video clip is above, and his blog post on the incident is here.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/170468729/

Chinese ecommerce company Alibaba.com is looking to raise HK$10.3 billion ($1.3 billion) from its IPO according to documents released to potential investors today.

Alibaba.com Ltd. and Alibaba.com Corp. will sell a combined 858.9 million shares (17%) in Alibaba.com at HK$10 to HK$12 apiece, with Yahoo, currently a 40% share holder in the Alibaba Group buying HK$776 million of the IPO shares, resulting in 8.2% ownership of Alibaba.com Ltd, the newly listed IPO entity.

As we reported in July, the IPO will see the partial spin-off of Alibaba.com from the Alibaba Group, the China based holding company that owns sites including Alipay, Taabao.com and Yahoo China.

The IPO will value Alibaba.com at up to $7.8 billion.

As Bloomberg reports, the Hong Kong IPO is likely to encourage other China based companies to consider listing locally as opposed to the NASDAQ only, where many leading Chinese ecommerce ventures are currently listed.

In related news, Baidu’s market cap has now passed $10 billion, up from $7.97 billion September 17. At close of trade 15 October Baidu stocks closed at $314.95 for a market cap of $10.69 billion, nearly double the market cap the company had in August.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/170449336/

Sherman Oaks based online video animation company Fix8 has raised $3 million in a round lead by Vickers Financial Group.

We first wrote about Fix8 in May; the company offers a service that brings computer generated animation to the webcam. Fix8’s H.E.A.R.T. (Human Expression Analysis and Rendering Technology) digitizes human expressions, gestures, and movements via webcam, enabling users to create, interact, and share their creations across the web, TV, and soon mobile phones.

Fix8 users can broadcast their video creations over instant messaging services including MSN, Yahoo and Skype or save and post creations to YouTube, MySpace and FaceBook.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/170433571/

Google is finally putting some teeth behind its heretofore dubious assurance that it really does want to keep copyrighted material off YouTube.

The company has announced a beta version of technology called “YouTube Video Identification” that is meant to help copyright holders control the distribution of their content. Here’s how it works:

Copyright holders, such as Time Warner, Disney and CBS (who helped Google test the new identification system), upload full digital copies of their content to YouTube. These copies are not distributed by YouTube at all. Rather, they are stored privately by YouTube so it will know how to recognize copyrighted content.

The copyright holders who upload their content then indicate whether they want YouTube to automatically remove uploaded copies of the same content, or whether they want YouTube to forcefully display advertisements on top of uploaded copies of the same content (revenue from which will go into the copyright holders’ pockets).

The video identification system will know when to remove a copyrighted video or display advertisements, because it will scan the frames of all uploaded videos and use a complex set of algorithms that compares them to those in YouTube’s stockpile of copyrighted material. The system won’t be perfect, of course, and poor copies of copyrighted material in particular can be expected to slip underneath the radar.

While this new technology appears to be YouTube’s biggest effort to stop the distribution of copyrighted material to date, many copyright holders will inevitably cry foul at YouTube’s insistence that they must manually hand over full copies of their content before they are given any serious protection. It’s hard to believe this effort will do much to pacify Viacom, which brought a $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube this past May.

In today’s announcement, Google outlines all of the anti-piracy measures it takes in addition to this video identification system. Users who repeatedly upload content that is eventually taken down as the result of DMCA notices are banned; hash codes of removed content are stored so that exact copies of the content cannot be uploaded again; only 10-minute long videos are allowed; copyright holders have access to an “electronic notification and takedown tool;” and users are shown “copyright tips” when they upload content.

YouTube, which has developed this new image recognition technology internally, will continue to use Audible Magic for detecting copyrighted audio in video uploads.

In large part via Webware.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/170418697/

One of the biggest drawbacks to working with Webtop productivity applications such as Google Docs or Buzzword is that they force you to work simultaneously in two different worlds: the online world and the desktop world. You can upload your desktop documents one at a time to these services, and they convert them for you into a Web-based document, but there is no easy way to bulk upload your docs. And syncing between the two worlds is more trouble than it is worth.

A new service called DocSyncer hopes to fix all that. DocSyncer is going to launch an invite-only beta in a few weeks (TechCrunch readers can sign up here to get first dibs). It uploads all of your Microsoft Office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) from your desktop to Google Docs and then keeps them in sync. Whenever you make a change on your desktop, the change is automatically reflected in the corresponding file on Google Docs, and on DocSyncer.com. The service will require a small software download, which at first will only work on Windows computers (a Mac version is coming). But you will be able to sync from more than one computer—up to Google Doc’s current limit of 5,000 documents.

“DocSyncer is always sitting in the background,” explains founder Cliff Shaw, “watching for new documents. When something is added, it’s immediately synced up to our online viewer and Google Docs.” Shaw is also the CEO of ProtectMyPhotos, which synchronizes your desktop photos with an online storage service and with Flickr. DocSyncer, which is currently seeking angel funding, is based on the same technology. If you go to DocSyncer.com after downloading the app, you will see icons for all the documents in your computer organized in the same folder structure as on your desktop:

When you click on a document icon, a second browser window instantly opens it up in Google Docs, like this:

Through the browser interface, DocSyncer is trying to replicate the desktop experience. “The goal,” says Shaw, “s to build seamless desktop integration of Google Docs so the advantages of using Microsoft Office begin to fall away.” That’s a huge ambition, but DocSyncer could offer a small step in that direction. For instance, Shaw wants to get the load time from clicking on a browser icon to launching the Google Doc faster than launching a Word doc that is installed locally. He is not quite there yet. It took me about 7 to 10 seconds to launch a document in a demo account I was given access to, versus about 3 seconds to open up a Word doc (with Microsoft Word already fired up). But it does seriously close the gap compared to always hitting the back button inside Google Docs itself.

DocSyncer could be used in many ways—for remote access to all your desktop documents or a secure off-site backup. Each document is individually encrypted and sent to Google over Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). Shaw’s hope is to make it a key migration tool for the next wave of people who are curious about Webtop productivity apps, but don’t want to give up their desktop documents (and why should they?). Google Docs needs a bulk-uploading and synchronizing feature. And all it would take would be a few tweaks to the Google Docs API to make that synchronization two-way so that any change in Google Docs would also be reflected in the original docs on your desktop. But I’m not sure this is a standalone company—ultimately either Google becomes DocSyncer’s angel buyer, or it builds this itself.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/170351194/

Intelligently tagging the content on a site can be done either by hand as the content is created, or with some kind of text analysis algorithm. But the former is inefficient and time-consuming, while the latter can be expensive. Jiglu, which launches an official beta today, plans to tackle tagging in two ways. First with a free, ad-supported widget, which aims to re-point site visitors to further internal content, thus lifting page views and ad-revenue. Secondly with a white-label/OEM service for bigger content providers which will be disruptive to the normally more expensive enterprise systems.

Jiglu was in the Demo pit at TechCrunch40 and attracted some interest at the time, but made no announcement then. Today it is going after news sites and blogs, which want to suggest extra, in-site material but have so far had to tag the content by hand. It is often forgotten that tagging is a largely manual game. So anything that can automate the process, creating dynamic links and tags, and taking readers deeper into other content, is welcome.

Available for use with any English language website, the Jiglu javascript widget sends out a call for Jiglu’s servers to break down posts into component parts and analyze how the content fits together. Once the relationships are established, Jiglu tags and links to the content. Jiglu is also capable of aggregating up to 10 blogs or websites, working out the connections between the content. The free widget will be supported by advertising - initially AdSense - against its search results. You can see the widget running on a blog here.

But more interestingly, Jiglu is also launching a white-label version for sites over a million monthly page impressions that will be fee-based rather than free. This means all the results will have the Jiglu branding removed in favour of the site’s brand. CEO Nigel Cannings told me that content providers will also get a better understanding of how users are moving through their sites as the OEM version produces analytics.

This is potentially a bigger source of revenue for Jiglu than it’s ad-based widget, especially since enterprise-level systems to tag content are typically very expensive. If Jiglu can do as good as or even nearly as good a job as, say an Autonomy, but for a a much more competitive price, then it become a properly disruptive service. Autonomy, and similar services, require serious integration. Jiglu is just a like of Javascript. You do the math.

It’s therefore no surprise to learn that Jiglu is actually a re-named and re-launched enterprise service. Formerly known as Mailspaces, its tool to analyze email traffic became what Jiglu is today. Enterprise’s loss is the bloggers gain.

The firm behind Jiglu is coming out of the UK but, says Cannings, is basically going to be running the bulk of its operation out of Silicon Valley. Funding has come from UK VCs, including Oxford Technology Partners.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/170334418/

We all have bad days (or weeks/months) but many of us may be wary of venting our frustrations online using Facebook, especially since our parents and bosses can now see our status updates and wall posts.

A well-executed Facebook parody site called Hatebook has stepped in to provide (temporary) misanthropes with a place to air grievances about everything they hate.

Hatebook looks and functions much like Facebook, except with an evil twist for everything. The color scheme is hellish red, profiles include a section called “Why I’m Better Than You!”, and members can create “Hate Albums” that consist of photos and descriptions of things they hate.

The German creators of this jaundiced social network have done a surprisingly good job replicating much of Facebook’s functionality, and they have even thrown in some useful features not found as a default on that more popular website. Google Maps are integrated into Hatebook so you can visually locate other members by looking for their avatars on a map. You can also see which members have last visited particular profiles.

But don’t play around with Hatebook too much if you are concerned about privacy, because all messages (”junkmail”) are viewable by all other users, and there are no privacy controls.

This is not the first attempt to parody or lash back at more mainstream (and self-serious) social networking websites and the general trend towards constant online interconnectedness. Way back in Spring 2006 we reported on a couple of anti-social web services, and this past August we wrote about a website that encourages users to unplug themselves from everything, including each other. With the development of the Facebook platform, we are even seeing these efforts made within Facebook itself, with the Enemybook app. Why hate outside of Facebook, when you can hate within it?

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/170277044/

Music industry “gets it” eight years too late

“Amazon’s finally done what was clearly the right solution in 1999. Music in the format that people actually want it in, with a Web-based experience that’s simple and works with any device. I bought tracks from Amazon (Kevin Drew and No Age), downloaded them, sync’d them to my new iPod Nano, and had them playing in my home audio system (Control 4) in less than five minutes. PRAISE JESUS. It only took 8 years. 8 years. How much opportunity have we lost in those 8 years?…We certainly didn’t gain mass user adoption or trust, two prerequisites to success on the Internet.”

Black Google would save 750 megawatt-hours a year

“Take at look at Google, for instance, who gets about 200 million queries a day. Let’s assume each query is displayed for about 10 seconds; that means Google is running for about 550,000 hours every day on some desktop. Assuming that users run Google in full screen mode, the shift to a black background will save a total of 15 (74-59) watts. Now take into account that about 25 percent of the monitors in the world are CRTs, and at 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, that’s about $75,000/year, a goodly amount of energy and dollars for changing a few color codes.” [tx AK] (Update: Google responds)

Two weeks with Django (and then back to Rails)

“Despite it’s warts, Rails is still the fastest, easiest way to get things working and out to customers, which is absolutely critical. I’m now back to quickly adding new features into our app. And by tomorrow, we’ll just have a web host that specializes in Rails. Depending upon user acceptance and incoming revenues, it might make sense down the road to invest time, money, and mental angst in rewriting in something like Django for better performance, but not right now.”

Zappos brings customer to tears

“When I came home this last time, I had an email from Zappos asking about the shoes, since they hadn’t received them. I was just back and not ready to deal with that, so I replied that my mom had died but that I’d send the shoes as soon as I could. They emailed back that they had arranged with UPS to pick up the shoes, so I wouldn’t have to take the time to do it myself. I was so touched. That’s going against corporate policy. Yesterday, when I came home from town, a florist delivery man was just leaving. It was a beautiful arrangement in a basket with white lilies and roses and carnations. Big and lush and fragrant. I opened the card, and it was from Zappos. I burst into tears. I’m a sucker for kindness, and if that isn’t one of the nicest things I’ve ever had happen to me, I don’t know what is.”

Gladwell on the workplace

“The concept of the workplace has become more flexible and I think that’s only going to accelerate. When I walk around Manhattan in the middle of a weekday I see untold numbers of people sitting in coffee shops with their laptops. I mean, they’re working; but they’re not working in a way that would have been recognizable to anyone 10 years ago. I suspect that kind of thing will only increase.” [via JK]

Video of pretty realtime logfile visualization

“View real-time data and statistics from any logfile on any server with SSH, in an intuitive and entertaining way.”

Combining arrogance and humility

“Arrogance without humility is a recipe for high-concept irrelevance; humility without arrogance guarantees unending mediocrity. Figuring out how to be arrogant and humble at once, figuring out when to watch users and when to ignore them for this particular problem, for these users, today, is the problem of the designer.”

Top 100 user-centered blogs (SvN is #1)

“Web designers often concern themselves with optimizing sites for spiders from Google, Yahoo, and other search engines, but pay little attention to creating sites that real people can use. This problem has sparked a movement towards user-centered web design, a topic that covers accessibility, web standards, and interfacing. Check out these blogs for the latest and greatest in this people-centric field of design.”

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/647-sunspots-the-fragrant-edition

As expected, there will be more blood-letting at AOL, where another 20 percent of employees (out of 10,000 total) will be let go. Kara Swisher got a copy of CEO Randy Falco’s Dear John letter to AOL workers, where he lays out his priorities:

Put simply, my vision for AOL is to build the largest and most sophisticated global advertising network while we grow the size and engagement of our worldwide audience.

What it boils down to is that he is doubling down on turning AOL into an advertising network (via Platform-A), keeping traffic up at its destination sites, and continuing to squeeze all the cash that’s left out of the dial-up business. So not a huge strategy shift, other than the renewed focus on advertising. If Falco can make Platform-A work, it will most likely be spun off in a sale or IPO down the road. Anyone care to guess how many employees AOL will have left when that happens?

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/170224590/

Some interesting audience-engagement data just came out from AddThis.com, which ranks the top feed readers and bookmarking services by how actively they are used. These rankings are based on how many times people across the Web add a link to a bookmarking service or a feed to an RSS reader using the AddThis button. (That’s the little orange button with the gold cross you see below each TechCrunch post that lets you bookmark to whatever service you happen to use. Tens of thousands of Websites have incorporated the AddThis button—including Time.com, ABCnews.com, and LonelyPlanet.com—and people use it nearly 2 million times a month to add feeds and links to various services_.

Let’s take these rankings one at a time. On the feed reader side, according to this sample of data, Google comes out on top with 37.7 percent of activity, versus 20.7 percent for MyYahoo, and 9.7 percent for Bloglines. Although if you add up the No. 4 (Windows Live) and No. 5 spots (MyMSN), Microsoft as a whole would nudge Bloglines out of the No. 3 position with a combined 13 percent share. Remember, these numbers don’t mean that there are more people who read their RSS feeds via Google Reader than via MyYahoo. It just means that people are adding more feeds to Google Reader (which makes sense, since it is a younger service and people are still filling out their reading lists, whereas with an older service like MyYahoo, people tend to stop adding feeds after a while). You can compare these engagement stats to some old Feedburner data.

On the bookmarking side, in September Google commanded a 17.0 percent share of all Web bookmarking activity, followed by native-browser bookmarking (i.e., “Favorites”) with a 16.1 percent share. Yahoo’s Delicious dropped to third place with a 9.2 percent share, and Facebook came out of nowhere to claim the fourth spot with a 7.1 percent share (beating out Windows Live, Digg, MyWeb, Furl, StumbleUpon, Ask, and Reddit). Again, what this measures is how many times someone actually added a bookmark to one of these services, not how many total subscribers each service has. Bloglines may have more subscribers than Google Bookmarks. All this data shows is that the Google Bookmarks subscribers are more active. Here is a graph of the top-ten bookmarking services over time (notice the dip by Delicious and Facebook’s rise):

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/170194129/