Ajax Girl

We first covered the rather different advertising campaign for Microsoft’s iPod wannabe MP3 player the Zune in November. Enamored perhaps by the surrealism presented in the original campaign, Microsoft has sponsored a project called Zune-Arts, which created the above ad for the Zune.

According to Wired earlier this week, the site is dedicated to creating “pieces of art, content with viral potential, instead of just a [regular] 30-second commercial.” Microsoft’s Robert Schaltenbrand said that the campaign is part of Microsoft’s push to target “the cultural core, the key influencers in society that pay attention to this kind of art,” presumably so they’ll buy Zunes. Each clip created for the project revolves around the concept of sharing, which apparently is the Zune’s main selling point.

Regular TechCrunch commenter Fake Steve Ballmer claims that Microsoft has “finally cracked the cool thing” but I can’t help that think that this would be way cooler under the influence of one of a variety of drugs*, as opposed to it being appealing to a broader spectrum of key influencers. Does this make you want to go out and buy a Zune?

*TechCrunch does not condone the taking of illicit substances, description for graphical demonstration purposes only

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/196992539/

Some of my worst retail memories are of moments spent at CompUSA. Bad prices. Bad selection. Customer anti-service. Don’t even think about returns.

Well, it’s in the deadpool now. They’re closing all of their remaining 103 stores.

Have a particularly egregious story to share about CompUSA? Tell me all about it. You’ll feel better after the purge.

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

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/196965961/

I’d think this was a joke, except for the USPTO entry. Fark has lodged a trademark application for the term “Not Safe For Work.”

According to this USPTO entry, Fark wants sole rights over NSFW in the following areas:

Entertainment Services namely providing a website featuring photographic, audio, video and prose presentations featuring comedic captions regarding current events and online discussions and/or reviews of web materials of an adult nature; Entertainment services, namely, providing a web site featuring musical performances, musical videos, related film clips, photographs, and other multimedia materials; Entertainment services, namely, providing on-line reviews of photogrpahs and /or web postings of an adult nature

As Trademork points out, it might be a little difficult to protect and enforce this mark given its already widespread usage, including a range of other websites the use the term (and the NSFW abbreviation) in their title. NSFW has also become a common term used widely to the point that it even has its own Dictionary entry.

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

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/196933956/

We opened up nominations for the upcoming Crunchies Awards a week ago. In that week, over 13,000 nominations have been cast, for thousands of startups and products.

Nominations stay open until midnight December 12. At that time, we’ll take a day or two to tally the results, remove any spam and fraudulent votes, and the top five nominees in each category will go up for a general vote. The winners will be announced on January 18 at a ceremony at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco.

Remember that some of the awards are specific to new 2007 products startups. Others (most of them) are more general and aren’t tied to the launch date of the company.

Tickets will be made available soon. The theater holds nearly 1,000 people, and there will be a big party afterwards.

The competition would not be possible without our sponsors. Thanks to Sun Microsystems Business Analytics, Microsoft and Charles River Ventures for sponsoring the Crunchies. Contact us if you’re interested to sponsor an award or other part of the evening festivities.

If you are a startup and want to encourage your users to nominate you, blog and website badges are available here.

And rememeber that this is not solely a TechCrunch effort. We are partnering with GigaOm, Read/WriteWeb and VentureBeat on this as well.

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

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/196900977/

We’ve been working with and on Rails for the past four and half years here at 37signals. The sum of those efforts just got a new label today: Rails 2.0.

It contains a ton of good stuff. Lots of things regarding our love of all things HTTP. The RESTful angle. Multiviews. Security improvements. Lots of speed tweaks.

It’s been a joy extracting all these features from their origins in Highrise, Basecamp, and the rest of our applications. Deriving frameworks from production code really is a pleasant way of arriving at something useful.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/734-rails-20

So I’ve been blogging all this week from the Voices That Matter: Google Web Toolkit Conference. For those who requested a summary of my posts on various sessions, they are…

• GWT as a Replacement for Java Swing Apps
• GWT Pronounced "Gwit"
• Josh Bloch Intro Q&A
• Coming in GWT 1.5: Selenium testing support
• Bruce Johnson/Dan Peterson Presentation on Productivity
• GWT Security Talk
• GWT Performance Talk
• Chat with Bruce Johnson
• GWT App Panel
• GWT Conference, Day 2
• Deferred Binding with Ray Cromwell
• David Geary’s Cool and Useful Stuff
• Interesting Amateur Demographic
• Creating Widgets (or really, why GWT won’t leak memory)
• Bruce Johnson’s Tour of GWT Core Libraries
• Joel Webber on Architecture Best Practices
• GWT Tools Panel
• GWT Conference, Day 3
• Best Practices for Building Libraries
• Final Q&A

Really, there were three highlights of the conference for me, two of them reminders, and one of them a surprise.

1. GWT is a compiler. Let me amplify: it is a compiler, not just a Java to JavaScript converter. It inlines methods, removes dead code, optimizes loops, all those things that a compiler can and should do. And if you play by the GWT rules, you will not leak memory. Want a faster, smaller app? Wait 3 months and recompile with the newest version. Eventually, the compiler will produce better, more efficient JavaScript than you can produce by hand.
2. The security concerns for GWT are the same as for all sophisticated Ajax applications: the more state and control logic you put in the client, the more you open yourself up to really nasty attacks. In a sense, the fact that GWT makes writing sophisticated client side code so easy and obscures which Java code is in the client and which in the server, it can increase the potential for making these mistakes.
3. The surprise? The conference was not attended by that many GWT newbies or web developers looking to bring their Struts apps into the Ajax light. A show of hands brought home the fact that the audience consisted of mostly folks with Swing/AWT/SWT experience (though they also worked with webapps).

This last item made this the most unusual conference I have attended. Usually, when a technology is barely a year old, you expect the first conference to consist of newbies listening to the vendor and a few select clients talk about the technology and their early adopter experiences. If any of the attendees have written apps of their own, they suffer from all of the "version 1 on a new technology" problems, i.e. in version one you don’t have your model quite right, your UI is a bit off and fighting with your model, and you’ve brought other, inappropriate platform idioms to the new technology. With version 2 you fix all of the version 1 problems and introduce a bunch of new ones. With version 3 your model is pretty good and in harmony with your UI and you’ve started to introduce some framework code that makes you more productive.

Well, the folks at the conference were already past version 3 on some pretty slick desktop apps, and the resulting ports to GWT had even the GWT team scratching their heads and saying "wow, I didn’t know you could do that with a browser."

All in all, a very promising start to a conference. If year 2 improves on year 1 and adds a few more tool vendors, as I expect it will, I will definitely attend.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/196847992/gwt-conference-voices-that-matter-summary

When Oliver Starr (former MobileCrunch writer) attacked employer Sam Sethi (former TechCrunch UK writer), the person who currently controls Blognation, in a 3,000 word diatribe, a lot of people came to the conclusion that Blognation was dead in the water.

The chain of screw ups was just too long. Sethi had an emotional explosion and threatened to kill his cofounder over a legal dispute. He reportedly lied to his editors flat out that he’d raised a £1 million (more here) so that they’d continue to work for free. He allegedly forged bank transfer documents to stall for time. To sum things up, even when Sethi had something truthful to say, he apparently lied anyway just to make things more interesting.

But he may raise an angel round of funding anyway, and keep Blognation alive for a few more months. We have been emailed a draft term sheet that shows the willingness of Secora PLC, a London based company, to invest £250,000 for 25% of Blognation. Payments would be made in stages, with £130,000 payable as soon as the deal closes. This may or may not be an authentic document. I’ve emailed Secora for comment.

If the deal closes, Secora will prove itself to be an investor with a backbone. Not many entities would back a startup with this much baggage.

Putting Sethi aside, this is good news. Mostly because the 13 or so Blognation blog editors, some of whom are reportedly due as much as 30,000 Euros for past work, were looking at a bleak holiday season. Now, at least, they may be able to put food on the table and buy gifts for their children.

More on this as it develops. Term sheet is below.

Update: I’ve removed the embedded term sheet at the request of Sam Sethi.

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

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/196822373/

Google Docs and Spreadsheets has hit a bit of a growth curve since June. About 1.6 million people used the Web-based service in October, compared to 635,000 in June, according to Compete. That is a nice jump, but 1.6 million is still a marginal number compared to the desktop productivity apps (on just about every PC) that it is trying to replace. But, hey, it is still early days.

Notice in the reproduced chart below that Google Spreadsheets seems to be a tad more popular than Google Docs. The same trend is true on average time spent on each app (8 minutes per month for Spreadsheets, versus 6 minutes for Docs). For right now, I think that online Spreadsheets are the more compelling app. I use Google Spreadsheets on occasion to organize conferences and such, but have yet to write anything on Google Docs other than to test out the service.

I think that is because the utility of these services is as a collaboration tool and spreadsheets offer a way to structure information that lends itself to that type of usage. For documents, it is more often a read-only experience, for which e-mailing the document still works. If I do need to collaborate on a document, I do it in an online editor that is also a publishing system (Wordpress).

Beyond these numbers, what I’d like to see is a comparison to other online productivity apps from Zoho, Glide (which recently came out with a spreadsheet that works offline and syncs to the Web), and others.

Update: Ask and ye shall receive. Compete sent me comparable numbers for Zoho, Officelive, and Thinkfree, and Zimbra. (see second chart below). Google Docs and Spreadsheets dominates on monthly uniques. For November 2007, it had 1.6 million, versus 133,000 for Zoho, 168,000 for Officelive (which really isn’t a competing product yet), 46,000 for Zimbra (also not fully comparable since that is an e-mail client mostly), and 18,000 for Thinkfree. On a more apples-to-apples comparison, Zoho Writer had 31,000 unique visitors in November, versus 677,000 for Google Docs alone. Zoho Sheets had 12,000 users versus 694,000 for Google Spreadsheets. So even Google is leading by a mile here.

But Google cannot sit on its haunches. When you look at pageviews, Officelive, which is still a joke (although that will be changing soon), actually beats Google Docs with 4.8 million versus 3.5 million for November. Google Spreadsheets had 7.5 million pageviews, and Google Docs and Spreadsheets (including Presentations) had 17.3 million. (See third chart below, followed by a table with the corresponding pageview numbers).

Zoho

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Live Documents

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Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/196733822/

As expected, EchoStar has filed with the SEC to split its business in two, reports GigaOm. The two businesses will be the Dish Network satellite TV service and its set-top box business. That set-top box business includes place-shifting Slingboxes, which Echostar acquired with its $380 million purchase of Sling Media in September.

The satellite TV business will change its name to DISH Network, and the TV technology company will be called EchoStar Holding Company. Charlie Ergen will remain CEO of both. My suggestion: Sell the satellite TV service to AT&T or some other buyer and buy TiVo (current market cap is $820 million). Then start selling combined TiVo-Slingboxes to all the cable and satellite TV companies. Make sure they all have Ethernet jacks to incorporate Internet TV services so that I can watch everything from Joost to Youtube and Hulu on my TV. That assumes Ergen can succeed in selling these boxes to cable companies, an area where TiVo has struggled. But his status as one of the old boys in the industry (remember when he was considered a maverick?), could help him win over the incumbents.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/196713108/

Early products by James Dyson

“James Dyson’s first product, the Sea Truck, was launched in 1970 while he was studying at the Royal College of Art. A few years later came the award-winning Ballbarrow that can go where no wheelbarrow has ever been before. Then there was the Wheelboat and the Trolleyball. Even the integral hose, seen on most upright vacuum cleaners, is a Dyson invention.”

Building loyalty with the long wow

“True loyalty grows within people based on a series of notable interactions they have, over time, with a company’s products and services. No card-carrying programs are necessary: Apple doesn’t have a traditional loyalty program; neither does Nike or Harley-Davidson. These companies impress, please, and stand out in the minds of their customers through repeated, notably great experiences.”

Joel on installable software

“Making an elegantly-designed and easy-to-use application is just as gnarly, even though, like good ballet, it seems easy when done well. Jason and 37signals put effort into good design and get paid for that. Good design seems like the easiest thing to copy, but, watching Microsoft trying to copy the iPod, turns out to be not-so-easy. Great design is a gnarly problem, and can actually provide surprisingly sustainable competitive advantage.”

Turtles all the way down

“For Hawking, the turtle story is one of two accounts of the nature of the universe; he asserts that the turtle theory is patently ridiculous, but admits that his own theories may be just as ridiculous. ‘Only time will tell,’ he concludes.”

The "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks

Pretty self-”explanatory.”

Nike’s Phil Knight at Stanford

“But it was around that time that Mr. Knight was surfacing anew in the classroom. Though not registered as a student, Mr. Knight has periodically taken classes with Stanford undergraduates over the past three years, swapping homework assignments and even going out with fellow students for a few beers at Palo Alto bars. He has told fellow students that he is writing a novel.”

About blogs on the Kindle

“If Amazon charged a monthly connection fee for the Kindle and made blogs free, instead, no one would complain (about the blog part). Because that’s the pricing model they’re used to.”

Global open-source car design summit

“Each team contributes a different set of parts or designs. I thought writing for my college newspaper was cool. These kids are building a hyper-efficient car, which, they hope, ‘will demonstrate a 95 percent reduction in embodied energy, materials and toxicity from cradle to cradle to grave’ and provide ‘200 m.p.g. energy equivalency or better.’ The Linux of cars! They’re not waiting for G.M. Their goal, they explain on their Web site — vds.mit.edu — is ‘to identify the key characteristics of events like the race to the moon and then transpose this energy, passion, focus and urgency’ on catalyzing a global team to build a clean car. I just love their tag line. It’s what gives me hope: ‘We are the people we have been waiting for.’”

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/733-sunspots-the-turtle-edition