Ajax Girl

Ah, the courts. The latest case aimed at Microsoft is from Opera, as they urge Microsoft to give consumers a genuine choice of standards—compliant Web browsers:

The complaint describes how Microsoft is abusing its dominant position by tying its browser, Internet Explorer, to the Windows operating system and by hindering interoperability by not following accepted Web standards. Opera has requested the Commission to take the necessary actions to compel Microsoft to give consumers a real choice and to support open Web standards in Internet Explorer.

“We are filing this complaint on behalf of all consumers who are tired of having a monopolist make choices for them,” said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO of Opera. “In addition to promoting the free choice of individual consumers, we are a champion of open Web standards and cross-platform innovation. We cannot rest until we’ve brought fair and equitable options to consumers worldwide.”

Opera requests the Commission to implement two remedies to Microsoft’s abusive actions. First, it requests the Commission to obligate Microsoft to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows and/or carry alternative browsers pre-installed on the desktop. Second, it asks the European Commission to require Microsoft to follow fundamental and open Web standards accepted by the Web-authoring communities. The complaint calls on Microsoft to adhere to its own public pronouncements to support these standards, instead of stifling them with its notorious “Embrace, Extend and Extinguish” strategy. Microsoft’s unilateral control over standards in some markets creates a de facto standard that is more costly to support, harder to maintain, and technologically inferior and that can even expose users to security risks.

Mary Jo Foley quickly chimed in on why it is a bad idea:

1. Should antitrust courts be the ones in charge of determining which versions of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), XHTML, Document Object Model (DOM) and other Web standards are the ones to which all browser/Web developers should be writing? Participants in various standards bodies can’t even agree among themselves which version of these standards is the best. How are judges supposed to wade through the browser-standards confusion in a good/fair way?
2. Would it be positive for customers if Microsoft were suddenly forced to create a version of IE that looked good on paper, in terms of more complete standards compliance, but which broke third-party and custom Web applications? Microsoft has argued that it is trying to avoid this situation with IE and is working on various ways it can make IE more standards-complaint without breaking existing apps, completely upsetting the partner/customer universe.
3. With Mozilla, Firefox has proved you don’t need government intervention to wrest a substantial percentage of the browser market from Microsoft. You just friends with deep pockets (like Google) and a community of dedicated developers — plus a guaranteed customer base who prefer anything other than Microsoft technologies.

   In the end, Microsoft’s own inertia, browser-security problems and inability to react quickly to market changes (where, oh where, is IE 8?) will continue to help its browser competitors more than a ruling by the EU or other antitrust body would.

   What do you think? Is Opera’s attempt to get the European Commission to force the unbundling of IE from Windows too late? And what’s your take on Opera’s attempt to get the courts involved in enforcing Web-standards compliance?

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/200104403/opera-sues-microsoft-of-standards-compliance

When it comes to Google, nothing should surprise us any more. Last month it was Digg style social voting on search results, this month its a new project called “Knol” (which apparently stands for a unit of knowledge), a user generated knowledge project that combines parts of Wikipedia and Squidoo (and to a lesser extent Mahalo) into what could easily turn out to game changer in this space.

The idea behind Knol is “to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it.” A knol on a particular topic is “meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read.” Google essentially is the conduit for user generated authoritative content, Google provides the tools (editing tools, space etc) and you contribute the content. Then we get into Squidoo territory as writers will own pages (”The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors”) and the trump card: Google will offer a revenue share of ads displayed against the content.

Duplication could become an issue however, with Google saying that they will not serve as an editor in any way, and “will not bless any content.” To quote Google:

All editorial responsibilities and control will rest with the authors. We hope that knols will include the opinions and points of view of the authors who will put their reputation on the line. Anyone will be free to write. For many topics, there will likely be competing knols on the same subject. Competition of ideas is a good thing.

It would appear that Knol’s will appear in Google search results, but which ones appear would be based upon peer review, which pages able to be voted up and comments left.

Once testing is completed, participation in knols will be completely open, and we cannot expect that all of them will be of high quality. Our job in Search Quality will be to rank the knols appropriately when they appear in Google search results. We are quite experienced with ranking web pages, and we feel confident that we will be up to the challenge. We are very excited by the potential to substantially increase the dissemination of knowledge.

I’m sure they’re excited, once again they could change an entire market space. Screen shot as below and full details on the Google Blog here.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/200088264/

Flickr has provided an attractive place to show off your photos and get constructive feedback from the community. However, their advanced comment and tagging system leaves out the vast number of people that simply peruse the site. But today Flickr unlocked those stats for Pro users.

Earlier this year Flickr whetted our appetite for stats when they released numbers on what kinds of cameras are used on the site. The stats are like Google Analytics for your photos. They track page views and visitors across each of your photos and go all the way back to the start of your pro account (or at least 28 days back if you upgrade from a free account).

The numbers are updated daily and don’t count views you make yourself or that are from embedded versions of your images around the web. Referrals are only listed for the past couple of weeks. For search engine referrals, stats will show what people searched for to find your pictures.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/199967996/

One of the few triumphs Yahoo has had over Google in the past few years is Yahoo Answers, which is one of Yahoo’s fastest-growing properties. Meanwhile, the more academic (and lumbering) Google Answers was shut down in 2006 when Google figured out that nobody wants to pay “researchers” to do Google searches for them. Some of those researchers went on to start UClue. But now the Google Operating System blog has uncovered some evidence suggesting that Google itself is going to revive Google Answers as a new service called Google Q&A. Excerpt:

Google intends to relaunch the question-answering service Google Answers, which was closed last year. . . . Google Q&A, code-named Confucius, no longer has paid experts and works in a similar way with Yahoo Answers. Google Q&A was launched in Russia in June and in China, two months later.

The way the service in Russia works is that you get points based on how good your answers are. So instead of paying with money, you pay with reputation points. No official word from Google as to whether or not this relaunch is actually happening in the U.S. But AOL is also getting into the game with its recent acquisition of Yedda. Still, Yahoo answers already has so much traction that Google really has to come up with something new to move the ball forward. Maybe it should just launch a service where Larry and Sergey answer all your questions.

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/~3/199963537/

Some recent activity at the internal 37signals Campfire chat room.

New feature at Amazon

Jason F.	Neat new feature on Amazon…
Jason F.
Jason F.	"Most Helpful" good and bad review
Mark I.	I noticed that the other day. Amazon felt like it didn’t change much for a long time, but over the past several months they’ve made a bunch of nice tweaks.
Jason F.	I like their redesign.
Mark I.	Just renewed my Amazon Prime membership the other day.
Mark I.	It’s such a no-brainer.
Mark I.	I ordered four gifts for my kids the other day, one at a time and didn’t worry about bundling the purchases up to save shipping.
Mark I.	That’s the one feature I really want that they won’t give me: the ability to filter results by Prime status.
Jeremy K.	Mark – you can limit Seller to Amazon.com
Mark I.	I didn’t realize that.

Full Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in 37signals.

EVDO

Mark I.	My cable went down last night in the middle of all that drama. I was very happy to have EVDO at that point.
Jason F.	Oh Mark how has that been BTW? The EVDO?
Mark I.	It rocks.
Mark I.	I was getting just under T1 speed.
Jason F.	no kidding. wow.
Mark I.	At 4 out of 5 bars.
Mark I.	I’m very happy with it.
Jason F.	And how much is it per month?
Mark I.	$60
Mark I.	It’s dirt cheap.
Jason F.	Unlimited access?
Jason F.	This is through Sprint, right?
Mark I.	Yep.
Mark I.	Sprint has the best EVDO network right now.
Jason F.	And what USB "card" do you have?
Jason F.	I may sign up for emergency access.
Jason F.	My cable connection has been a bit unpredictable lately.

Gmail spam filtering

Tips

Ryan S.
Ryan S.	why do apps offer "tips" when you start?
Ryan S.	i don’t want a "tip". i don’t even know how the app works yet
Ryan S.	it sounds like a game or something
Ryan S.	"want a hint?"
Jason F.	"Tips" is the wrong word, agree

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/738-fly-on-the-wall-new-feature-at-amazon-evdo-gmail-spam-filtering-and-tips

The problem with automated advertising on news sites has always been the placing of inappropriate ads next to serious news issues. Take today’s report on steroid use in baseball. For at least a brief period, the story on CNN.com was matched with these “Ads by Google” shown at right trying to sell you the very steroids that the baseball commission is so upset about

What’s next? Ads for plutonium next to stories about nuclear proliferation?

I don’t see the steroid ads popping up anymore on that CNN page, so maybe someone at CNN (or Google) got wise to the inappropriate mismatch. (Although, if you were in the market for steroids, you would probably be reading such stories). But the same types of ads come up when you do a search for “steroids” on CNN.com:

This is not limited to CNN. Here are sponsored results for a similar search on the LATimes.com, which also shows Google ads:

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/199927785/

A new service called Simkl History Saver, still in private beta, will keep a running log of all your instant messaging conversations and allow you to access that log via the service’s website wherever you go.

Simkl currently only works with desktop IM clients (albeit many of them, such as AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and ICQ - see the full list on the homepage). Setup is fairly simple, although it could be a little intimidating for the technically illiterate. You just need to sign up for Simkl and change your desktop client’s connection settings to use a certain proxy server. The term “proxy server” could cause some eyes to glaze over, but it’s really just as easy as setting up an email account in Outlook.

Once configured, Simkl will record all of your conversations and store them on their servers. Just head to history.im and sign in whenever you want to check them. The service can track conversations from multiple IM networks and multiple computer installations all in one place. If you ever want to delete message history, you can do that as well. The company assures us that it is serious about your data’s privacy and it never asks for passwords to your accounts.

I can see this as useful for IM power users or backup fanatics. I personally try to stay away from IM because it seems to suck time out of my day. But many rely on it to get work done, especially when collaborating remotely, and this backup feature could become particularly popular among business people who can’t afford to lose their messaging data and need access to it wherever they go.

Simkl doesn’t currently work with online IM services like Meebo, which keeps a log of the conversations on its site anyway. Whether or not it would be in Meebo’s interest to partner up, Simkl is willing to work with any web-based service to store messages through an API.

While Simkl is in private beta and won’t open up for at least a couple more weeks, the New York-based company has offered our readers 700 private beta invitations. Just enter invitation code “TechCrunch” when you sign up. Be kind by sending the team your suggestions and notifying them of any bugs (you can spot one in my screenshot, for instance).

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/199917077/

A new service called Kwiry launched today that lets you text yourself things so you don’t forget them, and then e-mails you a link to search results for the same terms. Huh? That was our reaction too. Nick Gonzalez covered the site earlier today on MobileCrunch:

The product is pretty straight forward. It lets you SMS reminders to yourself while you’re on the go. Hear about a new band, product, or restaurant, but don’t have anywhere to save it? Just message the reminder (i.e. Alicia Keyes) to K-W-I-R-Y (59479) and the service will email you a list of search results related to the message. The “Kwiry’s” are also saved to your online account, where you can organize and review your previous messages or those of your friends.

The product’s dependence on SMS is designed to make it work with the large number of “dumb” phones out there. However, my sense is that a product designed for collecting reminders on the go has a rather narrow use case. When I hear about something I’m interested in, I have several more options before SMSing a new service. I can simply remember it until I get to my computer, write it down, or search for it immediately. Google has an SMS product that works even on my “not-so-smart” Katana.

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/~3/199894476/

In our ongoing series of top search terms for 2007 (check out Yahoo’s list here), Google released its Zeitgeist list for 2007 of fastest rising and fastest falling search terms (see below). And guess what? The Google Zeitgiest list for fastest growing U.S. terms is the same as what we reported ten days ago. But Google did release terms for global searches as well. The No. 1 fastest growing search term in both the U.S. and globally this year was ‘iphone.” But No.2 globally was London-based social networking site “badoo,” instead of “webkinz” in the U.S. “Badoo” didn’t even make it onto the U.S. list. Other terms that made the top-ten globally but not domestically: “dailymotion,” ebuddy,” “second life,” and “hi5.”

On the loser’s list: “kazaa,” “xanga,” and “mp3.” But don’t feel bad for them. They are in good company. No. 2 on the falling list is “mozart.” That’s right, “mozart.” I have no idea why that is on the list either. But my prediction is that “anna nicole smith” will be joining the diminutive Austrian in 2008.

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/~3/199885009/

I’ve long been a proponent of server-side Ajax frameworks — frameworks that store state on the server and use an Ajax engine in the browser to drive the display. The advantages: state and control logic stay on the server, so security compromises that exploit client-side state and logic are more difficult to pull off; developers can work in one language and, for the most part, ignore the fact they are writing a web application. The disadvantages: the server retains a large amount of state, so scaling your application can be problematic.

There’s one other large disadvantage to these open source server-side frameworks: for every 100 Java developers who use the framework, there is only 1 of them that can do serious JavaScript development. That means that the lifeblood of these frameworks — the development of new and cool JavaScript widgets — is sluggish at best. That has certainly been the case with the best known 3 frameworks: Echo2, ZK and ThinWire (though ZK does wrap a number of Ajax widget libraries, such as Dojo).

Back when GWT was introduced, it struck me that this would be the perfect way to write the client-side engine, to let the other 99 Java developers join in. I had the good fortune of being seated next to Joonas Lehtinen, IT Mill’s CEO, at the GWT Conference in SF this past week and was blown away when he demo’d  IT Mill Toolkit 5, his server-side Ajax framework (dual Apache 2.0 and commercial licenses) that, yep you guessed it, uses GWT for its client-side engine.

One important thing to consider is that IT Mill has extended the default GWT widgets so that they can be fully "rebranded" with CSS. They do provide an extensive reference manual that will guide you through developing your own custom components and integrating them with the server side.

I’d like to see the other server-side frameworks follow IT Mill’s lead in using GWT for the client side, but given the amount of effort that they have put into building their client-side engines, that may be a ways off.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/199846687/server-side-ajax-framework-it-mill-toolkit-5-now-with-gwt