Ajax Girl

Tis the season for everyone to make predictions and whilst a well thought out predictions list can make for an interesting read, some are just beyond bizarre.

UK based research firm Scivisum has predicted that Web 2.0 will die in 2008, as “cautious companies pull their advertising from user-generated content web sites, worried about the effect on their brand of appearing alongside questionable content.”

Scivisum also suggests that “consumers and companies will continue to adopt a nomadic attitude towards web 2.0 websites, flocking to the ‘next big thing’ until the market becomes so saturated that consumers will actually be turned off.”

I can see some validity in predictions of market saturation, although every year seems to attract similar predictions and the market continues to grow. Will there be fads in 2008? likely. However the notion that advertisers will abandon sites with user generated content is fanciful to say the least. Ultimately advertisers will continue to flock to sites people are visiting, and as long as there are visitors on those sites there will be advertising.

See some of the more recent reports on online advertising growing (including Web 2.0 and social networking sites) here and here.
(via PCW)

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/206301749/

Spanish tech site Techtear is reporting that Digg may have acquired Spanish social voting site Menéame and possibly coRank as well.

A sort of translation of what Techtear is saying

…Then we found out that people Digg approached Allen & Company, a private investment firm. At that time it was believed that Digg was organizing a possible sale, but Kevin Rose replied “we never comment on acquisitions.” Nobody understood it referred to the acquisition of Menéame, and not the sale itself Digg.

Rumors of an acquisition of coRank first surfaced in November, when Co-rank denied takeover talks. We learnt since that following these rumors (and subsequent denial) coRank was approached by two possible buyers, one of whom may have been Digg.

On the Menéame side we don’t have a lot of information aside from Techtear’s report and a post by Enrique Dans talking about a sale and pointing to the Meneame blog that talks about a big announcement before the end of the year. Making it harder still: Google Translate translates Menéame to Reddit (here and here). More if and when we get it.

coRank

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Digg

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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/~3/206290966/

When comScore releases its monthly lists of top performing sites there’s one result that has always surprised me, and that’s seeing “Yahoo sites” ahead of “Google sites.” Google remains the dominant leader in search, but when it comes to traffic across all properties Yahoo remains on top. In November 2007 Yahoo sites tracked 136 million unique visitors in the United States compared to Google’s 131.5 million, numbers that have continued to narrow over the years but ones for which Yahoo still rules.Breaking down Yahoo’s performance isn’t an easy task; comScore tracks 1084 different Yahoo subsites.  Yahoo remains the clear leader in online email, but growth there remains low at around 3%. Across the board Yahoo’s growth figures are all over the place. Here’s the top performers for the year based on percentage growth:

And the worst performers based on percentage of traffic lost, but not including sites that comScore no longer records traffic for and excluding traffic to Yahoo Photos (that traffic is now going to Flickr):

It’s hard to know which numbers to pick when looking at Yahoo’s performance over 2007. This the top ten sites in Yahoo’s network by traffic:

The key to fixing Yahoo’s woes in 2007 won’t be finding more traffic and providing compelling content, it should be 100% focused on better monetizing it.

Christmas is often a time of gluttony for many. From a traditional roast through to too much alcohol, many will be suffering long Christmas hangovers, particularly those not fortunate enough to live in a country with a gazetted post Christmas recovery public holiday (Boxing Day on Wikipedia here).

Even if you do have December 26 off, with January 1 around the corner it’s time for resolutions about getting fit and healthy. Here’s a few sites we’ve reviewed that will help you along the way.

Fat Secret
(review: April 2007)

Fat Secret is designed to help overweight people leverage a network of friends and online resources to lose weight by building a support network around you to monitor your progress.

Users first state their current and goal weights, and are urged to report in daily with their updated weight. This data builds a graph that is included on their profile page showing progress over time. Each user is also provided with a blog/journal and can add other Fatsecret users as friends.

DietTV
(previously Diet Television: review November 2006)

The site is a directory of diet plans that combines user ratings and professional nutritionist analysis of various factors like ease of implementation, speed of weight loss and allowable alcohol consumption. The company says it is based on two ideas: that dieting is hard and that community is one of the biggest factors in successful weight loss. There was information available on 47 different diets when we first reviewed the site. To search for a diet, users move 12 sliders to indicate which diet and food factors are most important to them. The site recommends which ones could best fit their needs. Users can also contribute off-site links related to any diet.

Traineo
(review December 2006)

Traineo is a health and fitness support site where users report their weight, diet, and exercise daily to a group of friends who help monitor and support one another….Instead of inputting how many ounces of cheese you ate in your burrito, and how much cream you put in your coffee, Traineo allows you to just give an estimation of how you think you ate each day. Based on your age, weight, and goal, it tells you how many calories you should aim for and, at the end of the day, you tell the program if you ate poor, average, fair, or great.

If you’ve spent Christmas alone, or you need some more rounded/ broader help, here’s a few sites that may help as well:

Wellsphere
(review January 2007)

Wellsphere is concerned with day-to-day sorts of health choices that make up “wellness”, the kind you don’t ask your doctor, but consult your peers about. Wellsphere is meant to help people with these choices and motivation by providing users with access to similar people and to health-related resources in their area. These resources are split between personal profiles and databases of health-related locations they’ve put together.

DailyStrength
(review November 2006)
A social network that provides a space for people with a wide variety of medical, psychological and life conditions to discuss their struggles and the treatments they are undergoing.

The highlight of DailyStrength is that users are asked to describe medical and psychological treatments they have undergone. They indicate what conditions those treatments were for, whether they were effective and provide a narrative about the experience. That information is then aggregated by condition and treatment - so it’s easy to see what a large number of people have done in response to a condition or what it’s really like to undergo a certain treatment.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/206201909/

2007 is just about wrapped up. Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates it, and Happy Holidays to all. Thank you for everything you’ve given to us and for making TechCrunch the best job I’ve ever had (most of the time).

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/~3/206191606/

Email remains one of the most popular of online services. Companies such as Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft have offered free online email since the earliest days of the internet. Google was late the party, launching Gmail in April 2004. Where as Google has come to dominate many of the verticals it enters, email hasn’t been one of them. This Christmas many more people will be using Yahoo! Mail to send Christmas well wishes than will be using Gmail.

Statistically this is where tracking online email popularity becomes difficult. This year Microsoft has launched Windows Live Hotmail with users logging in via its various “Live” properties, making it difficult to place exactly how many users were logging in and using Live and Hotmail email addresses. In April comScore placed Hotmail at 47 million unique visitors. No figures were available from comScore on Live.com traffic (which includes search and related traffic as well) or Windows Live Mail, although sites such as Live.fr hit 154,000 uniques in November and Live.de did 1.39 million. AOL remains a fairly popular choice for email as well, with comScore reporting 42.3 million uniques in April.

There are still no shortage of Gmail fans out there, but at its current growth rate Google wont be catching Yahoo! Mail until 2010. Yahoo showed 3.21% growth for the 12 months to November 2007 compared with Gmail’s 53.60%

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/~3/206139539/

Re-posted from devphone.com.

Apple has put up some sample code that shows off the new window.onorientationchange and window.orientation ability that lets you detect the orientation of the iPhone.

You setup your HTML with a body tag with the class of “portrait” or “landscape” and most of the CSS goes from that. You also put an empty div with the id of currentOrientation that is used for some of the magic.

Below is a simple JavaScript handler:

And, since it is Christmas/insert your winter holiday here, there is a nice sample snow globe that you can shake by changing the orientation of your iPhone.

Have a great holiday period, and try to stay off of your phones and spend some time with the family

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/206122584/iphone-windowonorientationchange-code