Ajax Girl

MySpace will announce plans to introduce a new advertising platform, “SelfServe by MySpace,” at Ad:Tech Monday.

SelfServe by MySpace will allow users to directly purchase, create and analyze the performance of ads throughout the MySpace network, in a similar fashion to Google Adwords. MySpace will be the first of the big social networking sites to announce an advertising product such as this, with Facebook said to be announcing a similar service Tuesday.

The new tool will enable users to select from a number of ad targeting factors such as geographic, demographic, and various user interest categories. The service will be ready for use by early 2008.

MySpace will also announce the completion of the first phase of another new advertising platform, “HyperTargeting by MySpace” which allows marketers to buy advertising targeted to specific interest-based segments of the MySpace audience. The service first launched in July and has around 50 advertisers using the service including Procter & Gamble, Microsoft, Ford and Taco Bell.

MySpace

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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/~3/179879939/

Yahoo isn’t just announcing Kickstart this evening. Salim Ismail’s Brickhouse is announcing a very useful new platform service tonight tentatively called FireEagle, which is currently in closed alpha testing. The team is working on the launch name and final launch date now - it’s expected to be open later this month.

FireEagle, which is built entirely on Ruby on Rails, was originally inspired by Yahoo’s ZoneTag research product. It is a platform for controlling people’s location information. Tell it (directly or via a third party application built on FireEagle’s APIs) where you are (give it specific lat/long, or a city name, or a zip code, etc.) and it will note your location. Alternatively, users with GPS phones (or other GPS device) could set it to periodically update FireEagle with geo information.

Users can turn off tracking at any point, of course, and can also go in and delete any or all stored geo data about themselves. Yahoo says it will be immediately removed from their servers.

Then other applications can take that data with your permission and build it directly into their service.

This is perfect for services like Flickr, which still struggle to get users to add lat/long information to photos (With FireEagle, Flickr could just look at the time stamp on photos and note where you were on FireEagle at that time). FireEagle can also benefit by working with established place-blogging services like Plazes, both by giving and receiving geo information on users.

The service will have open APIs for both adding and taking information. Ismail says they have been working with 50 or so third party developers in secret over the last couple of months, many of whom will have applications using FireEagle ready to go on the official launch date.

I was able to take a few camera phone pictures during a demo of the product last week at Brickhouse. The resolution isn’t great (in fact it’s terrible), but you can get a feel for what the platform will look like. I’ve also included a shot of a Facebook application, below.

I think I can safely say that there are a ton of developers who are going to be extremely excited about FireEagle.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/179865317/

Just when you thought Digg cloning was dead, Salesforce has thrown its hat into the ring. The company best known for their SaaS CRM is unleashing their Digg-for-ideas, “Salesforce Ideas”, into the wild. Although announced back in October, they are now releasing the product publicly. Now any enterprise can order their own clone of Salesforce’s IdeaExchange, which lets customers post ideas on how the company can improve their product.

It’s targeted at, and works best for, existing Salesforce customers with a specific community of customers. Unlike the free opensource Pligg, this software may cost you. It’s being release for free to professional, enterprise, and unlimited customers. But anyone off the Salesforce platform using the service has to buy a license, which can cost anywhere from $50-$100 per user per month. I’d recommend (free) Satisfaction’s help and idea board for businesses with larger audiences.

Salesforce is pushing the platform integration because unlike Pligg, Ideas’ will know who your customers are. The system will integrate with your CRM account to let only those users in.

The concept is pretty straight forward and a bit more exciting than a straight idea forum. Yahoo has even launched a similar product for their own use. On Salesforce Ideas Users can post product ideas to a moderated board, which everyone can promote or demote up and down the board. The most popular ideas, based on the frequency of promotions over a period of time, make it to the top of the board. Attached to each idea is a discussion thread, where members can leave comments building on the idea.

Salesforce claims to have used ideas on the board to improve their product, and even drive ideas for some AppExchange startups (AppExtremes, Appirio). After a year, their board has about 13,000 users, 5,000 ideas, and drives 100K pageviews per month. Dell runs an instance of the board on Dell Idea Storm, which it credits with the idea to pre-install the Ubuntu Linux operating system on select consumer desktops and notebooks in the U.S, UK, France and Germany.

Digg

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Satisfaction

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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/~3/179865318/

Yahoo’s advanced products group, led by Scott Gatz, is launching a new service this evening called Kickstart.

While immediate analogies will be drawn to Facebook, the service is actually much more like LinkedIn in that it connects students and alumni at specific colleges and universities and helps them connect on a professional level. Alumni can help students get jobs (or can find good students to fill spots at whatever company they work at), and students can reach out to others to help jumpstart their professional career. Doostang, an invitation-only job network which just raised $2.5 million, is also a point of comparison.

New users sign up for the service and add basic college and work information (by choosing a college, they also choose a network). Users are automatically connected to others than went to, or are going to, the school. And they can make other friends in the network as well.

Once the network gets started, Gatz says they’ll start to focus on events, message boards and other features. Eventually recruiters will be let in (Gatz promises not to let them spam users) as well.

Kickstart is focusing on getting alumni to sign up first, and will be offering a $25,000 prize to whichever college/university gets the most alumni to sign up before December 31.

What I liked about the service when I saw a demo last week was the possibility to find a deep database of individuals that went to the same schools that I did. And this clearly isn’t a place for pictures of partying and drinking - the whole point is to build up a professional network to help you move your career along. For young students just getting out of college this can be a very useful service. And they can keep having fun on Facebook…while pointing potential professional contacts to their Kickstart profiles.

Yesterday we covered a number of startups that are trying to recreate the college-only magic of Facebook. Kickstart isn’t one of those services, but college students may be flocking to it nonetheless.

You can see the whole team behind Kickstart here.

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/~3/179860350/

We reported in July that Palo Alto-based wiki startup SocialText was looking for a new CEO to help speed growth.

Tonight they are announcing their new CEO - former Cisco and Adobe exec Eugene Lee. Founder and former CEO Ross Mayfield becomes Chairman and President of the company. The company is also announcing a $6.5 million second tranche of its Series C funding ($3 million was announced in May 2007). The company has now raised a total of $14.1 million.

Socialtext

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/179859866/

Snap.com will launch the Snap Shots Ad Network Monday at Ad:Tech, a new program that allows advertisers and ad networks to deliver context-based ads to Snap Shots users.

Snap Shots, for those not familiar with the service, are the little site preview windows that pop up on websites with the service enabled, mouse over the image at the end of this link to Snap.com for a demo.

Under the new program, each time a Snap Shot is triggered, the Snap Shot window reveals both the information the user specifically requests and a context-based ad centered directly where the viewer’s eyes are focused. The focus of the ads is said to be better as the are contextually served against a specific link, ignoring other information on the same page that may otherwise result is lower quality contextual results.

Snap.com has over 2,000,000 Web site operators, bloggers and individual Web surfers currently using Snap Shots served via a webpage or browser. The Snap Shots service is used approximately 15 million times daily and is available in 43 different languages.

The Snap Shots Ad Network will initially offer three ad formats that include simple banners and text to expandable rich media, with ad serving provided by DoubleClick.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/179865985/

We reported Thursday on the gPC going on sale at Wal-Mart, a $199 bare bones PC that runs a Linux package by the name of gOS. Unlike some initial reports suggested, this isn’t the long fabled Google Operating System, but the folks behind it most definitely had Google on their mind.

In an interview at Fsckin, David Liu, founder of the gOS project gave some indication of what they are trying to achieve:

I got interested in Google applications, especially docs and spreadsheets, presentations; and originally, I wanted to create my idea of what a Google OS would look like.. if there were such a mythical OS. As I started looking around at all the Google applications out there, I realized that all of our “computing” could eventually be done in the Google cloud. We just needed an OS that looked really good and pointed people to Google in a really friendly, intelligent way. After seeing this, I got excited because I saw it was also commercially viable for the mainstream end user… Google makes Linux familiar.

gOS is billed as “Linux for human beings who shop at Wal-Mart” but how does it really stack up? gOS is available for download so I gave it whirl under VMWare Fusion to see if we are seeing the future of PCs.

Not your usual Linux desktop

The most obvious difference in gOS to a usual Linux install is the use of the Enlightenment windows manager as opposed to the more commonly used Gnome and KDE managers. KDE and Gnome in a standard install look and feel a little like Windows, Enlightenment looks a bit like OS X, complete with the rounded window open/ close buttons to the left of each window.

A dock bar runs across the bottom and provides links to a range of Google tools, Meebo, Skype, Wikipedia, Facebook and a couple of OS specific apps. A Google search box is embedded in the desktop in the top right corner.

A leaf icon bottom left opens up a familiar Windows style menu, complete with program short cuts and settings options. Interestingly the Live CD comes with Open Office, despite the emphasis on Google apps elsewhere.

It Works

I tested a number of Google apps and they all work, pretty much as they would on any machine. Apps are delivered via Firefox. The only drawback I found is one of aesthetics: the standard font pack in gOS doesn’t make for the nicest online experience, but many wouldn’t notice.

The dock shortcuts are handy, and will probably be more appreciated by those who aren’t highly computer literate, like those who cant save a bookmark or type in a web page…perhaps that’s a little bit harsh but most people don’t need gigantic shortcut buttons.

The Future?

This isn’t a PC anyone reading this article will likely buy, the specs are low and if you’re competent enough to read blogs then you can use an operating system that isn’t gOS. It is however an interesting exercise in where computers may well be heading. In a range of areas, web apps are now the equal to their offline equivalents, or are quickly catching up. If we get to the point where we can do the majority of our activites via an online interface, the need for all-powerful operating systems and computers diminishes. gPC and gOS is a nice try, and for people out in middle America looking for a cheap second or third PC for their kids to do their homework on, or conversely to do their own work on as their kids are using the main PC for gaming, its a pretty good buy. This is very much a first generation, or perhaps even 0.1 effort, but going forward it’s an option we will see more and more of. In 10, 15 or even 20 years time, when the idea of locally installed applications may be foreign, the likes of gOS may well be the norm.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/179836805/

Remember the new iPhone ads that left us puzzled? Saturday Night Live has a funny spoof on them that, frankly, tells a much more believable story. No man purses in this ad.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/179807605/

Splashup è un nuovo servizio online per condividere e modificare online le nostre foto. Al contrario di altri servizi del genere ben più limitati, Splashup sembra avere un’interfaccia davvero ricca che richiama decisamente Photoshop e ne emula molte delle funzionalità. Il sistema si integra anche con altri servizi per lo sharing delle foto come flickr

Source: Web 2.0 Blog
Original Article: http://web20.blogon.it/picture-sharing/splashup-ancora-editing-online-di-foto.html

If you haven’t bought a ticket yet for the LeWeb conference in Paris this December 11 & 12, you can still get a 100€ discount from the normal price. I’ll be there, speaking on two or three panels and look forward to seeing everyone.

Loic Le Meur has also offered two free tickets to TechCrunch readers. You’ll have to get to Paris and pay for a hotel on your dime, but you won’t have to pay or the conference itself. If you’d like to win one of the tickets, please leave a comment below saying what you think you’ll get out of the event, and Loic and I will pick two winners. Just make sure you leave your real email address in the form.

There are now more nearly 750 people registered for the event from more than 30 countries (see if your friends are going here). Le Meur says he expect 1,300 or more people at LeWeb, which makes it the largest web conference in Europe.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/179778697/