Ajax Girl

On the final panel at Web 2.0, Kleiner Perkins venture capitalist John Doerr really went after the cellular telecom companies (Verizon and AT&T), explaining why he is fighting so hard to influence the rules of the next auction of 700MHz wireless spectrum. Doerr is on the board of Google, which has committed to bid $4.6 billion in the auction, and is an investor in Frontline Wireless, which is also a key player in helping to shape the auction’s rules. Doerr explains why this fight is so important:

This is the last auction. It is the last opportunity in our lifetime (for the United States). Otherwise, there will continue to be a duopoly. A lot is at stake. How will the next Internet be controlled?

Can we win or not? I don’t know. If there is a real revolution, there are losers as well as winners. Will the incumbent wireless systems see disruptive change or very gradual evolution?

He also implored the entrepreneurs in the room to do something about climate change:

The size of this problem is enormous. It is the biggest problem we all face. We share one atmosphere. Never underestimate the power of a handful of dedicated entrepreneurs to change the world, because in my experience that is the only thing that ever has.

I’m sure Margaret Mead would agree.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/172327854/

Anyone out there with a great idea for building a startup around Amazon Web Services can enter a $100,000 challenge that Amazon is sponsoring. Amazon’s collection of Web infrastructure services include hosted storage (S3), compute cycles (EC2), computer-to-computer messaging (SQS), payments (FPS), and an on-demand workforce (Mechanical Turk). AWS has already attracted more than 265,000 developers. And some of the services are growing at a nice clip. For instance, S3 has gone from storing 800 million files in July 2006 to 5 billion files in April 2007 to 10 billion now in October. So usage of S3 alone has doubled since last April. Companies like Zillow already base their Websites on Amazon’s back-end infrastructure. Amazon wants to get a lot more.

The $100,000 will be split in half between $50,000 cash and a $50,000 credit for Amazon’s infrastructure services. The winner will also get an investment offer from Amazon. The deadline for applying for the prize is October 28.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/172280276/

I was excited when Google announced their first JavaScript API that allows you to write back to a service.

Now, they have released a Blogger client that does the same, which means that you can now manipulate your blog posts directly from JavaScript.

Along with the release there are a few examples such as:

• A tool that takes your upcoming Calendar entries and creates blog posts of the events
• A code snippet that you can add to your website that enables visitors to your site to click on a link to comment on your content on their own blog
• Code that allows you to search blogs on various topics, find entries, and again allow users to comment on their own blog

And finally, Blog.gears, an offline blog editor:

I tend to write a fair share of blog posts, and whenever I am writing them while offline I tend to open up Textmate to do the write-up. Wouldn’t it be nice if I could open up my blog editor and do it all while I am offline?

The architecture behind the editor follows the pattern of:

• The UI looks to the local DB for data
• When an event happens it gets queued
• When an event happens the UI tries to send it to the cloud
• Events have status flags to let the system know what is happening

We interviewed Pamela Fox about the application, and she went through the architecture at a high level, and also did a screencast of the application itself.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/172277529/bloggears-an-offline-blogger-client-using-the-new-gdata-blogger-javascript-client

Fotoflexer may be my personal favorite among the many online photo editing tools, but Flickr has chosen Seattle-based Picnik (profile) to handle the long requested photo editing feature for Flickr users.

Currently, you can rotate photos on Flickr, but the editing stops there. When the new tools launch, users will be able to edit photos more extensively using the Picnik Flash based tools (see our review here).

The deal has been signed and implementation will occur sometime in the next few months, Flickr told me yesterday. Flickr users will have an edit button on their photo pages. Clicking on it will import the image into Picnik for editing; when finished, it can be sent back to Flickr.

Basically, the integration is not much different than most of Picnik’s competitors who use Flickr’s API. But the crucial difference is that the edit feature will be highlighted on Flickr itself, pushing Flickr’s 15 million registered users towards Picnik.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/172247380/

Joost CEO Mike Volpi just suggested on stage at Web 2.0 that Joost is working on a browser-based version of its peer-to-peer Internet TV service. “At some point, when we can deliver the quality that Joost is known for, we will deliver an in-browser experience,” he told the audience here. I got up and asked him if he faces any legacy issues, since Joost is based on a peer-to-peer client that must currently be downloaded. His answer was that it is possible to separate the file-sharing from the viewing experience and that in fact Joost is working on just such a browser-based solution. It’s not clear whether people would still need to download a separate piece of software to do the P2P file-streaming or whether that could just be a browser plug-in. But with in-browser Flash video about to get a whole lot better over the next few months, Joost will have to respond with it’s own browser-based expereince.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/172208679/

InterviewUp is following in Yahoo Answers’ very successful footsteps on Monday by officially launching a site where users can share questions and answers with one another.

While Yahoo Answers appeals to people who are itching to ask all types of questions - and others who inexplicably have the time and desire to answer those questions - InterviewUp focuses on the niche of people interested in sharing job interview questions and answers. The site is meant to appeal to both interviewers and interviewees: interviewers benefit from the availability of questions that they might want to use in their own interviews, and interviewees get to check out the questions that might be asked of them and what answers they might want to respond with.

The site is fairly straightforward; you don’t even have to sign up for an account to begin posting questions and answers. Questions can be tagged, voted on, and printed out. You can also set things up so you are notified when certain questions are answered.

Clutter and authority problems are two of the biggest reasons I am personally disinclined to use this sort of site. If I have an important question to ask, I don’t want to throw it up on a site aside questions like “What to eat before wearing a bikini?” or “What’s your Theory?” (both taken from the front page of Yahoo Answers today). InterviewUp doesn’t appear to have that bad of a problem with clutter (yet), probably because there is a defined topic for the site and its been in private beta.

However, it has (and will continue to have) the same authority problems that plague other Q&A sites. Without knowing more about who answers my questions, I’m not going to desire strangers’ feedback enough to use the site instead of looking stuff up on my own with Google or Wikipedia. Because of this, InterviewUp’s greatest value will probably come from its repository of questions, not so much from its answers. Now if InterviewUp were to develop a good user profiling system and somehow attract experts to the site, then we’d have a different a story.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/172258357/

Eric Abouaf has released Gears in Motion, a tool that allows you to quickly and easily look at your local SQLite database, and make edits on the fly.

You can make schema changes, data chances, and see the entire flow of relationships. It even groks URLs so if you put a JPG in the database, it will just show it to you as you look at the data.

See a running example.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/172190369/gears-in-motion-database-tool

On Wednesday night at the Web 2.0 Summit, when Rupert Murdoch and Chris DeWolfe were on stage announcing that MySpace is going to open up its innards to developers and try to seriously compete plataforma-a-plataforma with Facebook, you’d think there would have been cheers from the programmers audience. And there were.

Except there was at least one, very loud, very forceful attendee who stood up and demanded more. It was Marc Canter, the CEO of Broadband Mechanics, who seems to be a fixture in the audience at every major tech conference I go to these days, always throwing bombs at the official panelists. Canter asked Murdoch and DeWolfe (as he had asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg earlier in the day) whether they would agree to create not just one-way APIs for developers to create apps inside MySpace, but two-way APIs so that they (and MySpace members themselves) could take those friend lists to create social applications outside of MySpace. He was saying, in effect, “Thanks for letting us in. Now tear down this (other) wall!”

At first blush, it sounds like something that will never happen. Social networks like MySpace and Facebook are happy to let other developers make their platforms better by creating apps for inside their Websites. But their customer lock-in is the fact that only they understand the connections between you and everyone on your friend list. Why would they give away the one thing that gives them competitive advantage and creates compounding network effects? This is the big knock against Facebook. It’s a black hole. Everything can go in, but nothing can come out. (It won’t even forward e-mails—you have to login just to read messages from other Facebook members).

But creating a two-way API is probably one of the smartest things MySpace can do right now. Instead of merely being reactive to Facebook, it could trump it by being even more open. In terms of attracting outside developers, the two big honey pots are big audiences and open platforms. If the Web is the platform, then any barriers to moving data in or out of a Website (or Web-based application) will one day become a barrier to growth rather than a barrier to entry.

Already, smaller, more forward-thinking startups like Twitter and Twine are embracing two-way APIs where the data you put into the service can be freely taken out. Google plans on taking this approach with its social network and other services. And speaking to folks from MySpace in the hallways at the conference here, I was assured that when it does open up its platform it will be a two-way street. At least, that’s MySpace’s intention. I got the feeling, though, that they have not yet worked out the details of how exactly they will do that. We’ll find out once the API’s finally come out. But this wall is going to come down one way or another.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/172185734/

Interview with author of "Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow."

“Make customers feel like they’re part of a bigger cause. Hummer buyers may feel that connection, but most people would say that it’s lacking a socially responsible element. Patagonia – the company, not the region in Argentina – runs its “1% for the planet” campaign, and its loyal customers are “Patagoniacs.” They love being associated with Patagonia because it’s part of a bigger cause. For people who buy from Apple, it’s not just “I’m an iconoclastic rebel,” but “I’m part of a bigger cause,” the anti-Microsoft attitude. At Whole Foods Market, you may go there because you love the product, but lots of people buy there because they love the sustainability cause.”

Blind boy masters echolocation

“Ben has learned to perceive and locate objects by making a steady stream of sounds with his tongue, then listening for the echoes as they bounce off the surfaces around him. About as loud as the snapping of fingers, Ben’s clicks tell him what’s ahead: the echoes they produce can be soft (indicating metals), dense (wood) or sharp (glass). Judging by how loud or faint they are, Ben has learned to gauge distances.” Related: Video profile.

Recently flipped Zimbra: Building to flip doesn’t work

“We set out to build a great company with a real business behind it. That’s what I think people should do when they start a business. They [have] got to think about: How do I make this an independently successful cash flow self-sustaining business? Then, there’ll be very interesting M&A opportunities that will come and knock on the door. If instead we started a company thinking that there is going to be a quick flip, [in] 90% of the cases that does not work out because no one is interested in buying – or they want to buy you off really cheap. We were not thinking of an ideal nor were we thinking of an M&A. We were just thinking: Let’s go and create a compelling product and create some real business in specific markets. That’s what we started out to do and that’s what we did.”

Irrational exuberance makes a comeback?

“Internet companies with funny names, little revenue and few customers are commanding high prices. And investors, having seemingly forgotten the pain of the first dot-com bust, are displaying symptoms of the disorder known as irrational exuberance.”

Creating online charts and graphs

“This article presents an overview of tools, applications and techniques for visualizing data in charts and graphs. Among other things both free and commercial chart tools, services, desktop-applications and web-based solutions (Flash, JavaScript, CSS) — you can use them on your server — are presented.”

The seven secrets of inspiring leaders

1. Demonstrate enthusiasm.
2. Articulate a compelling course of action.
3. Sell the benefit.
4. Tell more stories.
5. Invite participation.
6. Reinforce an optimistic outlook.
7. Encourage potential. [via OR]

The grief behind Peanuts

“The clean, minimalist drawings, the sarcastic humor, the unflinching emotional honesty, the inner thoughts of a household pet, the serious treatment of children, the wild fantasies, the merchandising on an enormous scale—in countless ways, Schulz blazed the wide trail that most every cartoonist since has tried to follow.”

Dean Esserman and friendly policing

“By having the same officers in the same community, every day, accountability measures are also now in place. Every week, the commander of each neighborhood is grilled on local crime statistics and held responsible for crime in his area. That accountability travels the ranks of the entire police force. ‘I tell my people it’s not a fair world,’ he says. ‘You produce bad results, you got problems with me. You produce good results but alienate the community, you got a problem with the community. You’ve got to answer to both.’”

The Wilhelm Scream (one of the most-used sound effects in movie history) [via BF]

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/663-sunspots-the-echolocation-edition

Marcel Oelke has resurrected some code that he wrote to record mouse movement using JavaScript and Ajax.

The “movelogger” records the mouse movement a users does on a web site. Just before the user leaves the current page, the recorded data get posted back to the server using Ajax.

The cool thing is that you can “replay” these movements afterwards. The movelogger records clicks on links and other elements. In replay mode this events are fired in the exact same order as they have been recorded.

That way it would be possible to record a websession (the click-flow) in a heavy Ajax based application. It would even be possible to record keyboard strokes and other type of events.

Check out a demo of the logger at work

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/172132530/javascript-mouse-move-logger