Ajax Girl

Colin Morris, author of Y-Validator, has written a piece on JavaScript: It’s Just Not Validation! which discusses JavaScript validation, and “input assistance”:

JavaScript input assistance, when built separately from back-end validation, is not ideal. At worst, the two piece of functionality work differently, and what’s valid on the client side isn’t valid at the server. At best they work fine — initially. But with validation logic in multiple locations, there’s an increasing likelihood that only one will get updated when changes are required, at which point we get inconsistent results.

Finally, back-end validation is required. JavaScript assistance is nice.

The use of a central object to manage both the validation and input assistance tasks creates a consistent end user experience even with JavaScript disabled.

• We have one place to update both the enhancement (JavaScript assistance) and the required functionality (back-end validation). Therefore, the two can’t get out of step, and we can ensure a seamless experience for the user.
• We have one place to find the enhancement, so it’s less confusing for future maintainers of our code to located the points at which various validations and assistances are implemented in the code.
• The code also promotes the separation of behaviour from presentation. The programmer programs the validation and the designer implements the presentation of the feedback.
• The user feels in more control, having confidence in hitting the big submit button.

Don’t forget: the code for the PHP-Validate and a sample form is available for download.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/209707939/javascript-its-just-not-validation

A follow up to our story December 30 on the Australian Government joining China is broadly censoring the internet. Now apparently if you believe in Free Speech you believe in Kiddie Porn, via the SMH:

“Labor makes no apologies to those who argue that any regulation of the internet is like going down the Chinese road,” [Telecommunications Minister Stephen] Conroy said yesterday. “If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd Labor Government is going to disagree.”

No one equates freedom of speech with watching kiddie porn, only the Australian Government does.

Whilst no one would disagree with the notion that kidde porn is abhorrent, it should be noted that the Australian Government’s censorship regime is going to be much broader than sites that show activities that are already illegal to distribute and watch across the world. Further still, as local civil libertarians have pointed out, it will not only take all of two minutes to bypass the great firewall of Australia, and worse still it will actually provide a false sense of security to parents who will wrongly believe that the internet is now a safe place for their children, when it still isn’t.

At least they’ve now admitted to taking lessons from China, not that this is something to be proud of, although the Australian Government seems to think that it is.

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/~3/209706547/

Google Operating System points out something interesting in Google’s algorithm recently: a preference in favoring recent content.

The example provided would seem to favor the conclusion; TCP/IP’s anniversary today has resulted in Google preferencing recent posts, including from Digg, over informative articles related to the search term such as Wikipedia who would have normally had the top or near to the top position.

Indexing recent posts has been a strength for Google, to the point that at least for areas like Blog Search they’ve become the defacto standard as others such as Technorati have struggled to keep up. That Google would preference recent posts in its search results without the usual incoming authority links throws out the rules we’ve always known with Google, and I’m not sure if this is a good thing or bad thing. It would depend a lot on the results, but it would limit attempts to game Google results through incoming links. Perhaps it’s the first step towards Google embracing Web 3.0 with semantic search that learns as it goes, constantly updating its results to suit the user at the time they are searching, complete with contextual awareness as well.

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/~3/209696545/

US ally in the “War on Terror” Saudi-Arabia has arrested the country’s most popular blogger for “purposes of interrogation,” according to the NY Times and VOA.

Fouah al-Farhan writes at alfarhan.org and has been vocal in discussing corruption and advocating government reform. A Interior Ministry spokesman said al-Farhan was “being questioned about specific violations of nonsecurity laws.” No charges have yet been laid but family members have been denied visitation rights.

Saudi Arabia’s community of over 200 bloggers have been protesting the arrest and are calling for international support.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/209689029/

It has come to my attention that CG writer Doug Aamoth was married last night in a clandestine ceremony. While I cannot now punish him for his transgression, I would encourage both CG and TC staffers to reconsider the urge to marry beautiful women for the simple reason that it reduces our geek cred considerably. Doug, for example, is now on a “honeymoon” instead of posting, a massive breach of the Blogger Code, specifically by-law 1.894 of the Winer Addendum which states:

Bloggers cannot take vacation or stop thinking about blogging. Blogging, like breathing, is the blogger’s top priority and no amount of sun, fun, and well drinks should change that.

I encourage you to express your displeasure to doug@crunchgear.com. Unity is strength.

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/~3/209612411/

This will be the third annual post on “Web 2.0 Companies I Couldn’t Live Without.” The first post, for 2006, is here. The 2007 post, written a year ago, is here.

This is a list of the products I tend to use daily. Some are for work (Wordpress, Delicious, Google Docs, etc.), some are for fun (Amazon Music, Amie Street, etc), and some are useful for both (Digg, Skype, YouTube, etc.). But I use most of them every day, or nearly every day, and I would not be as productive or happy without all of them.

The list changes a bit from year to year (see chart). Five products have been favorites all three years (Flickr, Netvibes, TechMeme, Skype, Wordpress). Five more were favorites last year and this year, but not in 2006 (1-800-Free-411, Amie Street, Digg, Gmail, YouTube). Two were off the list last year but are back now (Delicious, Technorati). And there are seven new products on the list (Amazon MP3 Store, Facebook, Firefox, Google Reader, TripIt, Twitter, Zoho). Some of my picks might be surprising, like Firefox just being added to the list this year (I used Flock previously and was unhappy with Firefox on the Mac, but the 3.0 beta is performing very well). Some of these are close calls (I love Pageflakes, but just not enough to fully switch from Netvibes, for example). And there are a bunch of startups that didn’t make the list to keep it short. I’ve put a few “almosts” at the end to round out the list, as well as a couple of favorite gadgets.

Here’s the current list, in alphabetical order, of products I use every day and couldn’t live without:

(more…)

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/209516076/

Wow, you don’t see rants like this every day. Zed Shaw, who created Mongrel, a library and web server that just about everyone uses to serve rails applications, is basically a God in the Rails community. In a post today called “Rails Is A Ghetto” he tears into a number of leading Rails developers, the community in general, and a number of startups (and Google).

The post is long but highly entertaining, even to those of us outside of the core community. Basically, Zed just started a shitstorm that is going to reverberate through that community for months.

Most entertaining quote: “This is exactly what makes Rails a ghetto. A bunch of half-trained former PHP morons who never bother to sit down and really learn the computer science they were too good to study in college.”

And: “After Mongrel I couldn’t get a gang of monkeys to rape me, so forget any jobs. Sure people would contact me for their tiny little start-ups, but I’d eventually catch on that they just want to use me to implement their ideas. Their ideas were horrendously lame. I swear if someone says they’re starting a social network I’m gonna beat them with the heal of my shoe.”

And: “Then there’s the social network idiots. They all have a social network plus something fucking stupid to sell, but of course no MBA can actually code so they come running to me. However, there’s a slight problem. You see, I have a business degree you cock suckers. If you tell me that your social network will take on facebook because it includes baby pictures then I’m going to laugh in your face. They are an established player with CIA backing. You won’t wipe them out.

Google was a total riot. They offered me a job twice. I went with it, and they never responded. Probably because the job they were offering me—someone who’s been coding for 21 years, 15 professionally—was as a junior system administrator. What the hell does a junior sysadmin do at google? That’s probably like mopping the floor at a glory hole in Queens. I told them to review my resume and offer me a real position.”

And (last one): “With Rails I get scrawny cock suckers with carpal tunnel syndrome talking to me like they’re gonna eat my young. Their feeble PHP infected minds can’t grasp advanced shit like objects or closures. When you combine stupid businesses with stupid people using a stupid framework based on a big fat fucking lie on a shitty platform you get the perfect storm of dumbfuck where a man like me can’t find work.”

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/209500212/

Tel Aviv, Israel based MeeMix, which we first covered in August, is kicking-off the New Year by moving their taste-predicting Internet radio service from closed to open Beta.

Internet radio is already a very crowded space dominated by entrenched startups like Last.fm and Pandora. Smaller players and recent entrants such as SpiralFrog, Jango and Slacker are not increasing the breathing room. MeeMix wants its share of the pie, too, and is keeping its crosshairs focused on the U.S. market and its dominant revenue potential.

MeeMix’s public beta launch is marked by the addition of new features:

• Meeps: Comment-based conversations users can have regarding a song, album or artist.
• Station Home: Every MeeMix station now has a dedicated page allowing users to interact in its context and shape its playlist.
• Mee Feeds: This is basically MeeMix’s version of Facebook’s News Feed. The feed indicates songs favorited, stations rated, friends added, etc.
• Mee Journey: Users can see other members’ public log or “journey” of actions in MeeMix.
• Station Gift: Users can now send other members a station as a gift. The station is then the “property” of the recipient who can customize it without affecting the original station.
• Twitter Integration: Users can update their Twitter accounts with songs they’ve listened to, their favorite stations, etc.

MeeMix claims to have doubled its music catalog, but a search for my personal favorites ‘John Coltrane’ and ‘Miles Davis’ came-up empty. The same searches on Jango and Slacker both came-up positive.

I would like to have seen the addition of “genre” to the channel creation wizard which is still limited to artist and song. A widgetized player also would have been a welcome addition, especially the desktop kind.

In my original post, I hypothesized that licensing its engine could become MeeMix’s core business. Looks like this might not be far fetched as the company says they have been approached by a mobile operator for the purpose of powering a taste-based cellular music streaming service. The company has also shared with me some interesting offline deals on the horizon that should keep MeeMix’s potential on a positive note for 2008. We’ll post another update soon. In the meantime, let us know how you think MeeMix compares to the competition.

Meemix

Loading information about Meemix…

Pandora

Loading information about Pandora…

Last.fm

Loading information about Last.fm…

Slacker

Loading information about Slacker…

Jango

Loading information about Jango…

cb_widget_report_widget(”cb_widget_1199273730″); cb_widget_report_element(”cb_widget_0_1199273730″,”meemix”); cb_widget_report_element(”cb_widget_1_1199273730″,”pandora”); cb_widget_report_element(”cb_widget_2_1199273730″,”last.fm”); cb_widget_report_element(”cb_widget_3_1199273730″,”slacker”); cb_widget_report_element(”cb_widget_4_1199273730″,”jango”);

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/~3/209462534/

Chinese search giant Baidu has lost its CFO under mysterious circumstances, but has won a major piracy case.

In a statement, Baidu said that CFO Shawn Wang had died in “an accident” whilst on holidays in China. No further details on the death were provided. Baidu shares dropped $9.07 following the news.

On a more positive note a Beijing appeals court ruled that Baidu was not guilty of copyright infringement for posting links to websites that offer illegal music downloads. Baidu offers music search on its front page and the service is often cited as being one of the core reasons behind its success in China over Google, who does not offer a similar music search facility. Yahoo China lost a similar case December 21.

(via AFP/ NY Times)

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/209309076/