Ajax Girl

Update: The first batch of 200 tickets sold out almost immediately. PopSugar readers get the next batch, but more will be available soon. Also, if you plan to attend, please add yourself to the Facebook event here. MySpace coming soon.

This is going to be our best party yet.

PopSugar is a (huge) blog all about fashion, beauty, shopping and celebrity news. TechCrunch is about startups and the geeks that create them. These two groups definitely need to mingle.

So on April 10, in Hollywood of course, we are putting on a huge party with them. The theme - Geek Goes Chic. Expect lots of startup geeks commingling with, well, normal people. Who are most likely attractive. And can carry on a conversation. What could could possibly go wrong? See how PopSuger is presenting it to their readers here.

The party is being held at Vanguard in Hollywood, which holds up to 1,500 people. Like our previous events, there will be sponsors, hors d’oeuvre and an open bar. Unlike our previous parties, not all of the sponsors will be startup and tech related.

Event Details:

• Date: Thursday, April 10, 2008
• Time: 6:30 pm - midnight
• Venue: Vanguard, 6021 Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood (maps: Google / Microsoft / Yahoo)
• Photo/Flickr Tag: PopCrunch2008

We’re releasing the tickets in stages - the first 200 tickets are available now. As usual, tickets are $10 to manage the guest list, and proceeds will be donated to charity. All ticket purchases are non-transferable and non-refundable. If you purchase multiple tickets under your own name, your guests will need to arrive together with you at the event. Photo IDs are required for event check-in; no paper tickets necessary. Hope to see you there!

Sponsor Opportunities

The Vanguard is a huge club with outdoor patio and cabanas. The club can hold over 1,500 people, and we expect this to be the largest MeetUp yet. The large-format venue is very conducive to creative sponsorship opportunities that can really showcase innovations in new and interactive media. Sponsorship packages are available in all shapes and sizes– dedicated entertainment rooms, specialty cocktails, MeetUp giveaways, demo tables, etc. Please contact Jeanne Logozzo to learn more about sponsorships.

There are a limited number of sponsorship spots for companies to take “center stage” during the entertainment portion of the evening. The venue has a built-in catwalk, a stage/dance floor and the latest high-tech production equipment.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/238537405/

LiveVideo.com from MySpace founder Brad Greenspan’s company LiveUniverse is yet another live streaming service, but it combines the best of existing services with Yahoo Live style functionality for a package worth looking at.

LiveVideo.com offers the following features:

• show archiving, so users can record shows to be played back later
• embedding of live streams
• chat associated with the stream
• video conferencing Yahoo Live style, in that users can add other streaming users to their page and interact with them
• Comment board/ profile page similar to YouTube where users can leave comments
• Photo gallery, no quite Flickr, but allows users to share photos

LiveUniverse is pitching LiveVideo.com as “the first fully interactive, global, live streaming platform;” it’s not, but it is a feature rich offering that may well find favor.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/238539730/

Google is considering working with, or buying Space Data Corp, a company that provides wireless services via Balloon, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Space Data Corp targets areas without existing internet access, such as rural areas and highways, providing wireless and internet services to truckers and rural folk. The company currently launches 20 balloons a day, and a single balloon can service an area equivalent to 40 cell phone towers.

The balloons cost $50, however the transceivers attached to them cost $1500, but parachute back to the earth once the balloon is no longer in service.

(via Gigaom)

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/238466645/

Why isn’t there a Google News for video? That is what Onar Vikingstad, a 27-year-old Norwegian Web developer with a day job at Apple, asked himself before he created NewsClipper. The site is a side project of his that brings together news video clips from the Websites of ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, ESPN, Fox News, NBC, and MSNBC. He explains:

What I wanted to create with NewsClipper was a site that consolidates all news clips from the major TV news networks in one location. No more having to run around to different carefully managed and controlled individual websites. Basically it lets you view the latest news clips from the major TV networks in one location, without having to go to their slow sites overloaded with ads.

The site is dead simple. There is a list of video clips in a pane on the left which can be sorted by “most recent” or “most viewed.” You can create a playlist and sort by network or category (such as Politics, International, Domestic, Business, Technology, Sports, Weather, etc.). There is no search, but that is coming soon, as are viewer ratings and commenting features. Click on a link and the video starts playing in the middle pane. NewsClipper uses the open-source Flowplayer. The player offers full-screen viewing and—here is the controversial part—the ability to embed any video on any other site.

If you go to CNN.com, for instance, it does not allow you to embed any of its videos. You can e-mail a link, but that is it. With NewsClipper, not only can you watch videos from CNN, but you can use the embed code from its player to put them on your blog or MySpace page as well. (See embedded video below, for demonstration purposes only). I am not sure if this is a copyright violation or not, but it is similar to what Veoh does with its Veoh TV downloadable client software. Vikingstad argues:

Technically, the video content/stream itself is coming from the TV network. I am just embedding it. So in a way you could say I’m embedding videos that are not proclaimed to be embeddable.

Technically, he my be correct. he is not hosting the videos. It is streamed from CNN’s servers. But the fact that he is stripping out the ads will not endear him to the lawyers at the TV networks. It is a really nice site, though. Check it out before it gets taken down.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/238428282/

Version 2.5 of the Yahoo User Interface Library (YUI) was released today. You can get all the details on the official blog post, but here’s the “change log”:

• The new Layout Manager allows you to create multi-pane user interfaces that are collapsible and resizable.
• The Flash-enhanced File Uploader control might be known to you from Flickr and and allows you to easily batch-upload files and images with progress bars.
• The JavaScript Profiler now has a graphical front-end to make the information more easily understandable
• The YUI Data Table performs faster and got new features, including horizontal and vertical scrolling, a paginator class, drag and drop columns and an API to access, add and remove columns.
• The Image Cropper control allows you to pick a part of an image to be cropped server-side
• The Cookie Controller provides a wrapper for all things to do with cookies
• The Slider Control got updated to support multiple handles to define a range rather than just a state.

In addition to that, some of the components left beta status. These are the Get Utility to retrieve scripts and style sheets on the fly, the ColorPicker Control, the JSON Utility to validate JSON, the ImageLoader Utility to load images on-demand to increase page performance and the YUI Test Utility.

The really detailed report on all the changes is available on the YUI list/forum.

If you want to have a quick glimpse of what the Layout Control allows you to create, check out the demo application interface simulating simulating Yahoo Mail.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/238427513/yui-25-released-layout-manager-file-uploader-and-graphical-javascript-profiler-and-that-is-just-the-start

Since launching four and half years ago, Skype users have talked to each other for 100 billion minutes, and that is just counting free Skype-to-Skype phone calls. Of course, many of those calls would never have been made if Skype didn’t exists, so you cannot count the entire 100 billion minutes as a loss for the phone companies. But a significant chunk of that has got to be eating away at phone company profits.

Skype’s owner, eBay, is not necessarily the winner here either. While Skype has been a boon for consumers, it’s eBay that is footing the bill. Even at the reduced $3.1 billion acquisition price after the write-down, eBay still ended up paying roughly 3 cents a minute for all of those calls. I think I pay less with Verizon.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/238405138/

Facebook announced a number of steps today to battle the growing problem of application spam - stuff that is sent from your Facebook friends asking you to try out new services. Generally, applications force users to send these invitations in order to get access to the more interesting features.

The result can be dozens or hundreds of messages a day asking you to join some service that you really don’t want to join. And if you do join it, you make the whole spam cycle continue.

The growing problem has led to a number of users taking matters into their own hands, Facebook-style. The “No, I will NOT invite 20 friends just to add your application!” group on Facebook, for example, now has nearly 100,000 followers.

Facebook, eager to avoid “Pulling a Plaxo,” isn’t sitting still either. They’ve shown a willingness to put a stop to bad behavior by application developers in the past. Today, they announced additional steps on their blog.

First, users can block applications when they receive a request, so no additional requests from that app will get through. Second, they added a “clear all” requests feature that erases all pending requests (my new favorite, and most used, Facebook feature). Also, Facebook is watching how many people block or ignore application requests - too many, and an application has restrictions placed on it.

There are a few other tweaks as well, which will hopefully have the combined effect of reducing the problem. I also have my own method for dealing with it - by removing friends who get too spammy.

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/~3/238390182/

I love that OS X automatically fires up iPhoto when I plug in my digital camera. It’s one of the Mac’s many little touches that make it such a pleasure to use.

But ever since I got an iPhone, I’ve been frustrated that plugging it in opens up iPhoto, too. The combination of iPhoto and iTunes opening and syncing slows my computer to a crawl. And it’s particularly painful when most of the time I just want to sync my address book or music.

Fortunately it’s pretty easy to work around this annoyance. Keep reading to see how you can teach your Mac to open iPhoto when you plug in your camera but not your phone.

I recently stumbled across an option in Image Capture’s preferences that lets you select any application to open when a camera is connected. That gave me an idea: what if I could tell it to open a special application that would check to see which camera I’d plugged in? Then that application could in turn open iPhoto only if I’d plugged in my Digital Rebel.

It turns out you can do all of this using the command line and a little bit of AppleScript. Here’s how:

1. Set up the script

Open Script Editor (in the AppleScript folder inside your Applications folder). Copy and paste this script into the editor window:

on device_is_connected(device_name)
  set check_for_device to "ioreg -rn " & quoted form of device_name
  return (length of (do shell script check_for_device) is not equal to 0)
end device_is_connected

on run
  if device_is_connected("") then
    tell application "iPhoto" to activate
  end if
end run

2. Get a list of all the USB devices connected to your computer

Keep Script Editor running, and open Terminal (in the Utilities folder inside your Applications folder). Copy and paste this command into the terminal window:

ioreg -Src IOUSBDevice | grep '^\+' > /tmp/ioreg

This command lists all the USB devices connected to your computer and stores the list in a temporary file.

3. Find OS X’s name for your camera

Plug in your digital camera and turn it on. Then copy and paste another command into the terminal window:

ioreg -Src IOUSBDevice | grep '^\+' | diff /tmp/ioreg - |
  tail -1 | sed 's/^> \+-o \(.*\)@.*/\1/' | pbcopy && pbpaste

This command again lists all the USB devices connected to your computer and compares it with the previous list you saved to a temporary file. Then it extracts the name of the camera you just plugged in. You should see this name displayed in the terminal (for example, when I plug in my Digital Rebel XT, I see Canon Digital Camera). It’ll be copied to your clipboard, too.

4. Insert the camera’s name into the script

Quit Terminal and switch back to Script Editor. Find the line that reads:

    if device_is_connected("") then

Place the cursor between the two quotes and choose Paste from the Edit menu, so that you see your camera’s name in the quotes, like this:

    if device_is_connected("Canon Digital Camera") then

Make sure there’s no line break between the camera name and the last quote mark.

You can also change “iPhoto” on the next line to “Aperture” or “Lightroom”, if you’d prefer to open one of those applications instead.

5. Save the script as an application

Choose “Save As…” from the File menu, pick “Application” in the “File Format:” dropdown, and save the script as “Camera Connected” in your Applications folder.

6. Set the application to run when you connect your camera

Quit Script Editor and open Image Capture (in your Applications folder). Choose “Preferences…” from the Image Capture menu and pick “Other…” in the “When a camera is connected, open:” dropdown. Then select the “Camera Connected” application you just created.

Done!

Next time you connect your camera iPhoto will open, and when you connect your phone it won’t.

(Confused? Watch a QuickTime demo of the steps above.)

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/873-tip-prevent-iphoto-from-opening-when-you-plug-in-your-iphone

Ever since Yahoo rejected Microsoft’s $31 a share offer to buy the company, the two sides have been gearing up for a prolonged fight over Yahoo’s fate. Microsoft is preparing to try to unseat Yahoo’s board members in a proxy battle that could cost as much as $30 million (which is still cheaper than raising its bid). Yahoo, for its part, amended its severance plan to cover all employees in case of a change in control of ownership. It includes accelerated vesting of options, continued severance pay of between four to 24 months of each employee’s base salary, plus $3,000 to $15,000 in outplacement services per laid-off employee. And there are going to be a lot of those after the merger. Henry Blodget estimates this severance plan alone will cost Microsoft an additional $1 and $3 billion, which pretty much wipes out the $1 billion in savings Microsoft thinks it can get from merging the two companies (i.e., by laying off redundant employees).

It is in Yahoo’s interest to keep fighting and adding poison pills to any takeover attempt. The longer this drags out, the more likely that Microsoft will raise its bid or lose heart. Could Microsoft already be rethinking its hostile-takeover strategy? It’s stock has taken a hit since it announced its bid and most of the press has been negative on the deal, pointing out the challenges of large mergers. The fact that this is a hostile attempt adds to the uncertainty. Hostile takeovers tend to work best when the targeted company has some hard assets that can be stripped and sold off or ripped apart and recombined in new ways.

That is not the case here. For this merger to work, Microsoft will need to retain the best employees (many of which are already fleeing Yahoo) and keep its customers happy. It can’t do that if it is preoccupied with merging two very different cultures and paying less attention to the Web properties that Yahoo’s business depends on. Of course, even if Microsoft loses its resolve, Yahoo would still need a strategy to compete.

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/~3/238337356/

London-based startup Openads has changed its name to OpenX and former AOL CEO Jonathan Miller has joined as chairman. OpenX is an increasingly popular open-source ad server (we use it here at TechCrunch). Since his departure from AOL, Miller has become quite active in the startup world as an investor and board member. He is a partner in the Velocity Interactive Group with former Fox Interactive Media chief Ross Levinsohn. Miller also sits on the board of Clickable, another advertising startup in which he has personally invested.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/238309816/