Ajax Girl

How do you “poke” someone in German? Facebook users decided the right word is “anklopfen.”

Facebook will launch in German tomorrow, thanks to 2,000 users who’ve helped translate the site using an application that Facebook released a couple of months ago to a limited number of users. Supported languages include German, Spanish and French - more will presumably be coming after these versions are launched. User can set their language to German, and anyone who visits the site from a German speaking country will automatically see the site in German.

Users translate small bits of the site, and those translations are then voted on by other users until the process is complete. Spain launched last month, although only 1,500 users helped out there. The French version is basically done as well from what I’ve heard.

Facebook says they have about 1 million users from German speaking countries. That number will likely skyrocket now that they can read the site in their own language.

Application developers aren’t being left out of the party, either. Soon, Facebook says, they’ll make the same tools they’re using available to developers as well, and users can translate their Facebook applications.

Competitor MySpace takes a much different approach to localized sites. They tend to put a team on the ground locally (they are now hiring in Turkey) and then build the site not only in the local language, but promote local artists and other popular culture as well. MySpace now has offices in London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Milan, Stockholm, Helsinki, Oslo, Copenhagen, Sydney, Mexico City, Sao Palo, Buenos Aires, Toronto, Tokyo, and Beijing. Offices will be opening up soon in Mumbai, Moscow, and Istanbul.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/244652958/

I’m not sure what JuicyCampus founder Matt Ivester expected when he launched a gossip site for college students, but apparently things are getting out of hand. People, who can post anonymously, are being “mean.” And despite some legal protections, Ivester might be getting a little nervous about defamation and libel lawsuits.

In a blog post on Friday, he says “Some of the things that have been posted have been mean-spirited, and we have received emails from people claiming to have been defamed on the site,” and adds “We want you to make JuicyCampus Juicy, not hateful.”

He’s also quick to point out that he’s not liable for anything said on the site: “Please be advised that Juicy Campus is not the author of the posts that appear on the site. Rather, Juicy Campus is the provider of an interactive computer service. As such, pursuant to 47 U.S.C. Section 230, Juicy Campus is immune from liability arising from content posted by users.”

As users, posting anonymously, accuse others of being child molesters and debate who is the sluttiest girl in school, page views will likely rise. But Matt will be dealing with a nearly constant barrage of legal threats from quite-rightly angry students and parents. Appeals to simply be nice won’t do anything to stop it. And those legal protections may not be as bullet proof as he thinks. The whole thing may fall apart when the daughter of the wrong politician gets attacked.

Philip Kaplan dealt with almost exactly the same issues with FuckedCompany back in 2000-2001. Matt, you may want to give him a call, and ask for a referral to a good attorney.

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/~3/244465557/

I purchased a $1,000 23andMe DNA test back in December, spit in the tube when the kit arrived and, just a few weeks later got the results back. Yeah, its too bad I didn’t wait a month when I could have gotten a kit for free, but a lucky reader was able to get one instead.

I promised to post the results so people can get an idea of what 23andMe is offering (without paying that fee), and here they are. Also, as of last week 23andMe started allowing users to create free demo accounts. if you create one, add my username, TechCrunch, as a friend and I can share the data with you directly.

Results are below:

(more…)

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/244458914/

On Friday, I moderated a fun panel at the Future of Web Apps conference in Miami (see photo above). The basic premise was to try to come up with a compelling web app in 40 minutes. There were a lot of good ideas, but the best ones centered around communications and how to use technology to get around the frustrations of e-mail and phone calls. It was clear that the panelists think these communication modes that we rely on every day may very well be in the process of breaking down. (CNet’s Caroline McCarthy, who was covering the conference, notes this as well).

A lot of the ideas were about getting around current communications bottlenecks. Leah Culver of Pownce came up with a white pages service that uses SMS text messages to look up phone numbers. Blaine Cook of Twitter suggested creating a call-back service that would, in effect, allow you call companies and put them on hold until a human answered. In other words, you would specify what department you want to speak with at a company, and the software would call and go through the phone tree, and digitally push all the right buttons until it got to a human operator, at which point it would ring your phone. I thought this was brilliant.

But the app we ended up spending the most time brainstorming was one that Digg’s Kevin Rose dreamed up to help him manage his e-mail. He can’t keep up with it all, and wanted to come up with a way to stop offending people who he never gets back to by sharing some of his e-mail data with them. The concept was a site that keeps stats on your e-mail usage that your friends can check to see how far behind you are in responding to e-mails in general. (”It’s not you, it’s me”).

The stats would show your friends things like how many e-mails you got today, how many you’ve responded to, average response times, etc. When you look at the site, you’d get a deeper view, including alerts on who you are responding to and who you are not (but should be) based on your past e-mail behavior. The way it would know how to prioritize your e-mail would be to figure out your social network based on who you email a lot (similar to what Xobni does for Outlook). It would create alerts like: “Email Mom!” We ended up calling the app Mail Model, per Matt Mullenweg’s suggestion (other name suggestions were Mailr, which is already taken, Mail Stats, and Don’tBeAnEmailJerk.com).

I am not convinced this would actually be a viable service. If I think you are a jerk for not responding to my emails, getting a notice that I am No. 300 in your queue is not going to make me feel any better about you. But I thought the panel was instructive because it points to a problem that is starting to effect everyone, not just Kevin Rose. It’s not just that people are having a hard time keeping up with email. It is that email is having a hard time keeping up with us and our insatiable need for constant communication. If an e-mail falls below the fold, which in my case on Gmail is the last 50 e-mails, it is pretty much lost. And anything more than 48 hours old is a dead conversation.

Why doesn’t email work anymore, and what can be done to fix it?

(Photo via White African)

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/244355438/

Having a page put up about you in Wikipedia is difficult, mostly because of the Notability requirement for inclusion - and you aren’t “notable” unless you’ve received significant media coverage elsewhere. Other services have filled in the gap for the billion or so people online who can’t get onto Wikipedia - sites like LinkedIn, Wink and Spock (as well as most social networks, for the less professional profiles).

New Y Combinator startup Biographicon, founded by CEO Ethan Herdrick and CTO Daniel Terhorst, aims to fit itself somewhere in between Wikipedia and LinkedIn. Anyone can be included. And anyone can edit any page, like on Wikipedia. For now, that’s it. The founders say they’ll add more structure over time, and give dedicated places to add bio information (schools, work, etc). Here’s my page.

Biographicon will have a significant hurdle to overcome - until it gets traction people won’t for the most part bother entering in their information. But like all Y Combinator startups it’s used just a tiny amount of capital to get to launch. We’ll check back in in a couple of months and see how they’re doing.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/244192777/