Ajax Girl

Spanish language social networking site Sonico is the biggest social networking site you’ve probably never heard of before today. If you haven’t you wouldn’t be alone, it has zero hits in Google News as I write this post.

Buenos Aires based Sonico from FNBox launched in August 2007 with the usual social networking mix of message boards, profiles and networks based on school or workplace. Nothing remarkable, until you look at the numbers.

Sonico now has over 8 million registered users, and has recently launched a Portuguese version as well (so as to cover the rest of South America). According to Alexa the site now ranks at 167, and is in the top 50 sites in Colombia, El Salvador, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Peru, Honduras, Panama, Chile, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Argentina, Cuba and Mexico. We can only get the worldwide figures from comScore and although it’s still below the leading second tier social networking sites, it’s still placed extremely well for a site that is just 6 months old.

Targeting the South American market is in vogue at the moment with players such as MySpace and Facebook now offering Spanish language versions, and smaller players such as Wamba trying to get a foot hold in a continent that has a growing online user base. Google’s Orkut is already big in Brazil and Hi5 is also popular locally. If their current growth continues Sonico will be a site to watch.

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/~3/236358045/

URL shortening services have grown in popularity as services such as Twitter have driven demand for shorter URLs (although the idea has been around for a long time).

For those not familiar with the concept, you add a URL to one of these services, and it provides you with a shortened URL you can share with friends. Some also come with bookmarklets for one click shortening.

LinkBun.ch takes the idea of shortening URLs to multiple sites. Users simply add the URL’s they want a LinkBun.ch URL for, and they get a short URL in return. For example http://linkbun.ch/0hl offers a page with links to both TechCrunch and CrunchGear on it, that can be shared on Twitter or similar services with friends.

LinkBun.ch isn’t going to win any awards for being amazing, but none of the services is this thriving sector would. Ultimately it’s a case of simplicity combined with functionality and LinkBun.ch meets that criteria.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/236338794/

If you are looking to sell your company to Google, David Lawee is the guy to be stalking. Lawee, a source says, is the new Vice President of Corporate Development at Google, a spot that has been vacant since Salman Ullah, the previous VP, left (along with Sean Dempsey, also from Google corp dev) to form new venture fund Merus Capital.

Lawee, who started off in corporate development at Google but was most recently their VP Marketing, was a bit of a surprise choice, we hear. Many insiders expected Megan Smith, Googles VP New Business Development, to get the job. Both Smith and (now) Lawee report to SVP David Drummond.

Google’s corporate development group has been a bit of a revolving door over the last couple of years. In addition to Ullah and Dempsey’s departures, Chi-Hua Chien (now at Kleiner Perkins), David Friedberg (Weatherbill), Stephen Chau (now at Google Maps/Local), Jeff Donovan (retired) and Jeremy Wenokur have all left the group and or the company. There are just three people left in Google’s U.S. corp dev team (four now with Lawee), and another four or so abroad.

Part of the problem may be that Google’s corp dev team, always hesitant to step on toes or pursue deals that won’t have internal corporate sponsors for integration, isn’t allowed to source acquisitions and investments. Only deals brought to them by others in the company could be pursued, and the corp dev team chafed at these restrictions. No word on whether things will change under Lawee.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/236226453/

Nothing mind blowing here, but RosterBot will be a welcome application for coaches of kids or adults informal sports teams. It’s simple, it’s free and it works, unlike existing applications (let me know if you know of an alternative that you like).

Like most of the good applications we see, it was created not from a spreadsheet but from the need to solve a problem. In this case, Canadian Ian Bell (founder of the new and improved PubSub) came up with the idea when he got tired of reading through email strings about upcoming games for his hockey teams.

In an email, Ian wrote “Lots of companies vying for domination in this space. My approach is to focus on the core value and really get good at solving the pain most people have around organizing their teams, and not worry about all the other big-ticket aspects such as photo sharing, scorekeeping, etc. Other companies are good at that but they’re mired in the process of making big sales to leagues, etc. I’m hoping I can make the appeal directly to teams, which is far less costly and more viral.”

RosterBot works for any sport, and it takes about a minute to get the team set up and invitations sent out. If you are on or coach a team that can use this, you’ll love it. Otherwise, move on, nothing to see here.

So Ian, when’s the new PubSub launching, anyway?

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/236249968/

I’ve now been using the Air for some time as my only laptop. The Pro still hasn’t left the desktop and I doubt it ever will while I own it. My girlfriend replaced her regular MacBook with an Air as well. The verdict after extended use? L-o-v-i-n-g it. Both of us.

Gruber has a great post today on the appeal of the Air, which serves well to sum up the experience. The machine is plenty fast for everything I do with a computer. It’s plenty fast for emailing, browsing, photos, programming, and more. Probably the only people who wouldn’t find the performance of the Air good enough are the same people lusting after an 8-core Mac Pro.

That’s certainly a fair position. If you do computational intensive work, then you’ll want all the firepower you can get. Most people are not like that, though. I think we’ve reached the point where the computational firepower for laptops is simply Good Enough in the Innovator’s Dilemma sense of the term. Meaning that the puck is going to go somewhere else. That we’ll start caring about other things now.

For a laptop, those other things are exactly what the Air is optimizing: Thin, light, and sleek. But what I continue to be impressed with the most on the Air is simply the build quality. The MacBook Pro has OK build quality, but the regular MacBook frankly blows in this department in my mind. The plastic feels too cheap, it creaks and bends, and the black surface gets permanently smudged way too quickly. It just doesn’t feel tight in the same way the Air does.

The Air also works great with a 24” screen hooked up. I actually enjoyed working on one of those at the office the other day. No, it’s not as gorgeous as the 30” running at home, but it’s still pretty alright. So the only reason I still have the Pro is to run that 30” at home and even that is somewhat of a dubious argument if I hadn’t already invested in it.

That’s a long way around of saying I couldn’t agree more with Gruber. The Air is a perfect one-machine solution for a heck of a lot of people. Dismissing it as merely a 3rd computer vanity accessory, as I’ve seen many do, is misguided and not based on actually using one for a longer period of time.

If you fall into the category of feeling your machine is fast enough to do what you’re currently doing, I’d strongly encourage you to take a look at the Air and enjoy somebody optimizing for other factors than just performance.

BTW, I promise this will be the last love song I write for the Air. At least for a while

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/858-the-macbook-air-could-easily-be-the-only-machine

New data released by Hitwise yesterday shows that the difference between those using Yahoo and Google can be shown by the wealth of each user.

The graph right demonstrates “Online Representation” based on demographic types. The Y axis represents Yahoo, the X axis Google, with the higher the number, the more that particular group of users uses each service. Yahoo is strong in “struggling societies,” “blue collar backbone,” and “remote America,” where as Google obtains higher use in “small town contentment,” “affluent suburbia,” and “upscale America.” The size of each circle represents how many in each group have spent $500+ online.

The differences between the groups aren’t great, but the results do go some way in explaining the Yahoo conundrum. Although a distance second in search, Yahoo has remained the number one traffic destination online ahead of Google, so you’d think with more traffic Yahoo would convert that traffic into similar returns to Google. But alas we know that not to be the case, and that would appear in part to be related to people using Yahoo not spending as much online and being in poorer demographic categories than Google users, providing a lower return per user.

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/~3/236027674/

Singapore based Comiqs gives users the ability to create their own comics with a rich web based editing suite.

Sites and services that provide comic generation aren’t new. Comic Life from Plasq (makers of Skitch) would be the best known in the field, and comes installed on new Macs. There’s also no shortage of “add speech bubble” style web editors available as well. Comiqs offers a similar feature set to Comic Life, but online and totally free.

Users can use Comiqs with photos uploaded from their computer or from a photo-sharing website like Flickr to create a comic. Tools include speech bubbles of different kinds and shapes, frames and fonts. The interface is drag and drop so the learning curve is next to zero. Comics can also be embedded on other sites in a custom viewer for multi-page productions.

Comiqs is currently securing investors to take the service to the next level, where they intend to “work closely with cartoon artists in a revenue sharing arrangement that open up new revenue streams for talented artists and position our site as a place to find talented cartoon artists.”

The demo video below shows one frame editing, but it should be noted that the tool can be used for traditional style (frame by frame) comics. You can also play with the service directly without the need to set up an account.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/235993377/