Ajax Girl

Very few would argue with the statement that video is hot right now. From the cultural phenomenon of YouTube, through to the rise of live streaming services, money is pouring into startups from content creators through to service providers. Getting into video isn’t as easy as setting up a blog, so here’s some advice of which direction to head in.

The basics

Obviously you’ll need camera to get started in video; if you’re a Mac user you might have a cam built in, but if not web cam’s are fairly cheap. Alternatively people like Chris Pirillo stream from a professional video camera, but even a second hand older model can also work, for both live and recorded shows to computer. For camera effects, CamTwist for the Mac is free and fully featured with effects such as text, clocks, image overlays, Picture in Picture, and much more. Fix8 (our coverage here) offers cartoon style overlays if animation or funny faces are more your thing.

Recording

You’ll have two ways of recording a video: local or to the web. Local could directly on to a camcorder through to Quicktime or something in-between. Quicktime Pro (around $45) does the recording and it’s a quick and easy solution. To the web means recording your video directly to a website; the advantages are that you don’t have to upload it and it’s available immediately, however depending on your internet connection the recording quality can be significantly poorer than recording a video locally and uploading it. YouTube offers the direct recording option and is an obvious candidate, but the Live streaming services also allow you to record to their services and even distribute your video out to sites like YouTube later. I’ve also found that the quality of the live stream services can often be higher in recording than YouTube.

Streaming Live

Live in the newest sector in online video with venture capital being spread around a range of services. Live offers some advantages over doing recorded video alone (although they are not mutually exclusive); streaming live means you can interact with and network with your audience while creating archive footage than can be distributed later. Companies in this space include Justin.tv, Ustream.tv, Mogulus, BlogTV, Stickam and others. All of the services have strengths and weaknesses and you should explore each one, but if you haven’t got time for that I’d recommend Justin.tv or Ustream.tv. Ustream.tv is attracting the professional, higher quality streaming shows so if you want to be in that space, you’ll be well positioned. Their tool set including full video conversion makes for a solid product. Justin.tv has a slant towards a younger, Gen Y audience, and if you’re pitching more to that audience it’s the better place to be. I also found when testing both that Justin.tv was more reliable for streaming quality from outside of the United States, and at times Ustream.tv was unusable for me, even on a 14mb down, 1mb up ADSL2 connection; you wouldn’t experience this in the US however. Of the others, Mogulus has a stronger emphasis on professional video and doesn’t have the strong community yet, BlogTV has a lot of potential, and Stickam seems to be dominated by soft porn, at least when I visited it.

Distribution

I asked Chris Pirillo for some tips for this post and one of his key points was simply: “you must understand that (a) It’s all about YouTube, and (b) It’s all about YouTube.” Like it or not YouTube dominates online video today more than Google dominates search in the United States. Other video bloggers I’ve spoken to suggest distribution to many sites, but always making sure YouTube is top of the list. TubeMogul is one the oldest of the video distribution sites, and is simple to use and free. You upload your video to their servers, enter you user name and password for a list of sites (first time only) then press the button and off they go. TubeMogul also tracks traffic statistics from each site so you can see which videos are being watched there. An alternative service is Hey!Spread (our review here).

The other consideration in distribution is getting your video onto other devices, like iPods. The key is to provide the correct file type and feed for services such as iTunes. You can do it manually with a WordPress plugin and by making sure the file is available on your server in the correct format, or you can use Blip.tv.

We’ve covered the occasional content deal on Blip.tv but we’ve never seriously looked at their distribution platform, and it’s the reason shows like Rocketboom, Mahalo Daily and Moblogic are using Blip.tv. On top of the obvious video hosting everyone in this space provides, Blip.tv also offers distribution to external blogs (including an automatic option), the Internet Archive, de.licio.us (links), Flickr (pics from the video), Adobe Media Player, MySpace, Twitter (text alerts), Facebook, Yahoo Video, AOL Video, Akimbo, Lycos Mix, MeeVee, MeFeedia, Meebo, Blinkx, Splashcast, Pando and the most important one of all: iTunes. Blip.tv offers an iTunes subscription feed and file conversion service; users do have to manually go to the dashboard within Blip.tv and request the file conversion on a free account, but with a premium account ($8/ mth or $80/ yr) get the conversion done automatically. A premium account also has other benefits, such as priority file transcoding that in my testing made it the quickest service available (that is time from when the video was uploaded until it was ready to view).

There was an argument between Ze Frank and Rocketboom a year or two back where Ze Frank disputed Rocketboom’s viewer numbers as they were reporting 10x the traffic of Ze’s The Show. The key to Rocketboom’s success has always been distribution, and for a long time you couldn’t open a new media player or see review of a new device without seeing Rocketboom pre-loaded. Distribution is key, and combining services like TubeMogul and Blip.tv make it a lot easier.

Content

Chris Pirillo told me that the key is to make sure every video has something different, and that you should use supportive text with each video posted as Google loves text. Ultimately what you decided to create is up to you: it may be something simple like a web cam chat, or you may want to get more creative. We cant tell you what will work for you, but the easiest way to start is to get on YouTube and just see what different people are doing, you’re sure to find something to inspire you.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/272622693/

YouFig is a free social platform for collaboration that just entered public beta.

During its closed beta period, which started in January, it saw activity in over sixty communities including one used by an internal Cisco team. While there are a number of similar (and more feature complete) competitors already available, YouFig hopes to set itself apart by emphasizing security and an improved social networking experience.

YouFig centers on small, quick widgets that can be manipulated in realtime alongside a user list and chat window. So far the site’s widgets include editable documents, file downloads, and games.

YouFig’s API allows developers to design their own widgets, which can be used on and off the site. While it’s good that there’s an API, YouFig is currently notably lacking in several features that can already be found on competitors’ sites, such as spreadsheets and calendars (though both, we’re told, will be implemented soon).

In catering toward large corporations and universities, YouFig has included support for a matchmaking system that analyzes usage behavior and recommends possible co-workers for collaboration. They have placed a heavy emphasis on privacy and security, using proxies to help secure widgets that interact with external sites such as YouTube.

In practice, the site’s widgets seem to work well, though it is difficult to tell how useful they will be in a work environment - many may choose to use more robust editors like those included on Google Documents. That said, the community features have been thought through and the site’s accessible design could help it gain a following outside of the corporate world.

YouFig sees its greatest competition in Jive Software and 37 Signals. The Israeli company has raised $268k in funding, the majority of which has come from ICQ founding investor Yossi Vardi.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/272578763/

Montreal based MediaScrape, a Google News meets video translation service has taken $3.2 million in a new round from we don’t know who, for total funding or over how many rounds we have no idea either.

MediaScrape’s new service is updated every 30 minutes and gives users full control on the way they receive their news, from on demand through to regional loops. The company syndicates content from Reuters, AP, Canadian Press, Dogan News Agency, and others, and translates these clips into English when required. MediaScrape claims to have a distribution deal with YouTube as well.

The site has received fairly extensive positive press coverage in Canada, but there are a couple of oddities that I cant quite work out. There was zero details on the investment round other than the figure; it’s not completely unusual that investors don’t want to be named, but usually this would be noted by the company, it wasn’t in this case. MediaScrape claim the $3.2 million is a second round, and yet when they talked to the Montreal Gazette in September 2007 when they took $1 million, they claimed the $1 million was their third round (making todays round the 4th). They claim to be a “leading online broadcast news network” and yet their traffic is so small that they aren’t being tracked by comScore, and even Alexa puts them at over 200,000; their so-called YouTube syndication deal has only netted 714 videos in 7 months, with most videos getting viewer numbers only in the low three figures. Then there’s the web site, with the cheap logo, the stolen BBC world map down the left hand side, cheapy Google logos and just a general look and feel of a site done on the cheap, not by a company with 2-4 rounds of funding who apparently leads the field in news syndication.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/272568140/

Socrato is a Massachusetts-based company bringing test preparation materials online so they can be distributed and used more effectively.

The team behind Socrato started off by loading all of the site’s content manually, including sample questions for the SAT and Massachusetts state tests. Realizing that it would be much easier grow its collection by crowdsourcing, it has built a user generated content system that teachers and academic coaches everywhere can use to upload their own materials.

Most of Socrato’s tests consist of multiple choice, fill in the blank, and true/false questions. Long essay support is not quite there yet but will be added in the future. Users who want to add tests can do so by uploading PDF, Word, PowerPoint, and other files as complimentary materials. Teachers who want to distribute test prep materials to a particular classes can also set up groups on Socrato for that purpose.

Socrato isn’t supposed to be used to actually administer tests (although I would really like to see it evolve to that point because it would be much more powerful). Rather, students can take the practice tests on the site and it will tell them how well they did and where they need to improve. The service is smart enough to tell which subjects students did well on, and in the next release it will even be able to track how students deliberate on questions by analyzing which answers they cross off first.

This site needs some work in terms of its user interface and the ease with which users can add tests. But I think it’s a great idea to bring more educational resources online.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/272525697/

Rumors about the acquisition of Farecast are accurate - in a very brief blog post CEO Hugh Crean says they’ve been acquired by Microsoft.

SeattlePI, which first broke the rumor last week, says the price tag was $115 million. While the two companies are an understandable fit given their proximity and partnership over MSN Travel, SeattlePI reports that Farecast entertained multiple offers before accepting Microsoft’s.

Farecast is an airfare pricing comparision tool that also uses a predictive algorithm to recommend when you buy your ticket. So the idea is to show the user not just who has the cheapest ticket, but whether or not waiting might make sense as well. The site has also guarantees tickets at its predicted prices for an extra charge. As of this past fall, it also began helping travelers determine the fairness of hotel pricing.

The deal follows the acquisition of competitor SideStep by Kayak in December.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/272508294/

What’s the first thing Amazon does to counter the launch of Google App Engine? Makes sure its current customers are happy just where they are by providing two premium tech support packages.

AWS users can now pay for either a silver or gold level of support. Both packages offer “fast and predictable response times, an unlimited number of support cases, and personalized support from our team of developer support engineers.” The gold version takes things up a notch by also affording developers with round the clock phone support and a max 1 hour response time to urgent requests.

The silver package will cost $100 per month or $0.10 per dollar spent on monthly AWS usage, whichever is higher. The gold level is either $400 per month or $0.20 per monthly usage up to a certain charge, after which the rate declines.

Amazon hasn’t been slacking in terms of releasing new features, but we can expect that App Engine to drive even more rapid innovation from Seattle-based retail giant.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/272477637/

Google reported earnings for the first quarter. The fears of a meltdown were overblown. Revenue was $5.2 billion, up 42 percent year-over-year and up 7 percent from the fourth quarter in 2007. After traffic acquisition costs (what Google pays its publisher partners) revenues directly to Google were $3.7 billion. Net income for the quarter was $1.31 billion, up 8 percent from the fourth quarter.

Paid click growth was 20 percent year-over-year, vastly different than the flattish growth comScore was estimating.

The earnings call is about to start. Here are my notes:

Eric Schmidt: Strategy of search, ads, and apps is beginning to pay off. Actually “transformative” in that it is letting people do things they were not able to before.

We are putting more control in the hands of advertisers. Doubleclick is hugely strategic. Allows us to offer a more comprehensive solution.

The recently announced Salesforce.com partnerships allows us to integrate Salesforce and Google apps. by doing these partnerships and investing in the app model, we think people will be able to do more things online in a way that was not possible before like share documents and calendars.

George Reyes: Results include DoubleClick since the acquisition was complete, but not materials in the quarter. Paid click growth on Google.com remains healthy.

Traffic acquisition costs of $1.5 billion in the Q was 29% of revenues, down from 30% in Q4.

19,156 employees at the end of the quarter, including DoubleClick. 20% (?) of U.S. DoublelClick employees have been laid off, and another 15% are expected to leave. Only in the U.S., Internationally, keeping all the headcount.

$1.78B cash flow, capex $842M,

free cash flow $938M, up 50 percent year-over-year

Sergey Brin:

Let me highlight search improvements in last 90 days. have launched more than 100 improvements in search quality. New tailored home pages in international markets, such as Japan. Also better job in foreign countries selecting domestic results.

UI improvements: can search within site on the search results page.

In the past year we have deployed Universal Search. Over the past year since we launched it able to double the number of queries where we show theses, especially images, maps and books.

On maps, have deployed Streetview in more cities (12?). Also including user-contributed data. allow users to correct information on Maps.

We have also been working on difficult queries. We were able to make a very large improvement in what we consider the hardest 20 percent of our queries. that was a big achievement that really stands out n my mind.

Mobile: faster search experience. Mobile available in 40 languages. Mobile search growing very rapidly. Mobile users now get entire library of YouTube videos.

We were pleased with our participation in the 700MHz spectrum auction. We are pleased with the results that will benefit Google and developers alike.

Larry Page: Launched Google Ad Manager for publishers. In testing publishers greatly increased their revenues. Also launched demographic targeting on social networks.

On AdWords, Conversion Optimizer which we launched in Q07 now seeing a lot of adoption. Can pay by conversion instead of by click. In Analytics, we launched industry benchmarking. A very popular feature. We find that people who use Analytics end up increasing their ad spend with us.

On YouTube, AdSense for video and in-video ads, seeing much better clickthroughs than banner ads.

Launched Google Sites, also rolled out offline Docs using Google Gears. We are also very excited about our Salesforce.com partnership [Oh, just buy them already].

Q&A:

UBS: Can you talk about key initiatives at DoubleClick? How are video ads doing? Also update on CFO search.

Eric: On CFO search, we have a whole bunch of interesting candidates. We have not made any offers yet.

?: From a customer relationship point of view on the display side we are taking advantage of our properties,especially YouTube. We are taking advantage of the DoubelClick salesforce to reach new advertisers.

Jonathan: We feel we are in a position to become the world’s largest display ad provider. 90 percent of our ads are available for display ads. Activision used 7 Google products to launch Tony Hawk game [really going after integrated buys].

Merrill Lynch: Can you talk about display model, on network sites or your own? What is driving cost of revenue growth?

Sergey: YouTube is already running display ads. Other sites like Orkut could be candidates. Also making strides on the network. Optimistic on both fronts.

Reyes: Costs are driven by data center expenses, bandwidth costs and some DB amortization.

Q: Is Google not seeing macro impact

Eric: on the macro side, we have looked at this closely and not seeing that at this time. We are well positioned should economics change because our model is so targeted, and targeted advertising does well in most scenarios we feel.

Sergey: I was not referring to advertising improvements. But clickable backgrounds that we eliminated resulted in improvements. Certainly dozens of improvements in advertising quality we launched in the quarter.

Q: Which quality improvements have had the greatest impact on advertising?

Jonathan: There were relatively fewer in terms of impact on the quarter than we normally have because they came at the end. landing page quality improvements. have removed a lot of the made for ad. pages. Also URL matching policy, change in UK trademarks policy, removed restrictions on trademarks in the UK. The one other thing that I saw was just a very modest test, automatic matching beta test, trying to extend reach of advertiser.

Mark Mahaney: Are there enough data points so you know what the economics of mobile search will be vs. desktop search. At 20% year over year paid click growth, that was better than expected. Is that sustainable?

Sergey: On mobile anecdotally, in countries and markets where mobile has been developed, where there are devices and low latency like Japan. Mobile search and ads work very well. I don’t have the exact data. Nothing to dissuade me that it would be substantially different than traditional desktop search. In Europe and the U.S., which are behind but progressing, you will see more usage.

You have smaller screens so cannot display as much but have more information.

Eric: answer to your deceleration Q is No. We k now if we can improve aggregate quality the number of paid clicks will grow. We are very optimistic that this model of staying focussed on quality will give us the strongest ad network.

JPMorgan: You talked about monetization improvement fro social networking. What kind of improvement versus Q4? Also in terms of search quality

Larry: On social networking monetization, it is an area where we have tried a lot of new technologies. Demographic targeting has been successful. The challenge and the opportunity is that there is a lot of inventory. Part of it is just getting the advertising ecosystem built up and targeting in a way that makes sense. We have made some improvements but there are more improvements to be made. It takes time for advertisers to [get up to speed].

Q: Should Yahoo choose to outsource search to you, what benefit would it be to Google’s own network? And can you talk about different economic sectors, what you are seeing?

Eric: On the yahoo Q, we are very excited to be participating in this test. Second week of the test. It is nice to be working with Yahoo and we like them very much. Not appropriate to comment beyond that.

Jonathan: in an economy hat is slowing you would look at sectors like autos and travel. What we see is that clicks in some of those ares grow less than other areas, but on an absolute basis hose areas are doing well, absolute growth. Even in mortgages.

Q: Any updates on China and the team there?

Eric: On the China side, things are moving well. Why don’t we move to the next question. [Hmm, sounds like he really didn’t want to talk about that. Actually he just didn’t hear it. See response below.]

Q: Which area is growing faster, small self-sign up advertisers or large agencies?

?: We do see bigger advertisers be bigger drivers of growth [because they use more tools].

MorganStanley: As DoubleClick is integrated, will that drive more revenue growth?

Adding more display creates more competition among advertisers. There are plenty of reasons to believe there are positive dynamics.

Q: You mentioned 90% of ad formats are eligible for display, can you talk about effective CPMs of display versus search ads?

Omid: We let advertisers pay any way they like.

Jonathan: what we are trying t do is come up with a way to manage the auction so the text ads compete with the display ads, so three text ads versus one display ad units. That is basically how it works.

Eric Let me on china, we are seeing market share and revenue growth as we learn to operate in that environment. The market is nascent by the Internet is so large. [He wasn’t ducking the question before, just didn’t hear it the first time].

Q: U.S. revenues were up $29 million. Without DC it could have been flat. Is this sequential growth that you put up this Q is that more a reflection of where we are in the search cycle in the U.S.

Eric: We know what it is not, not macro economic. could have something to do with timing of deals, maturity of search advertising n the Us.

Jonathan: you have to be careful when you look at annualized YOY comparison. In the base Q you are comparing to, this Q last year we added a lot of big partners to AdSense. relative to that year we did not have a lot of big partners to add. It is primarily a factor for that. Also the AdSense for Domains cleanup.

Eric: This is the Q our international sales are 51 percent, I don’t think that number is going to go down. this is the quarter the sales team made Google a truly international company.

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/~3/272417571/

Adobe AIR for JavaScript developers provides an introduction to Adobe AIR for developers using interested in building AIR applications using JavaScript, HTML and CSS. The book has been updated for the latest and greatest, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License. Yup, the book is free.

You can download it first on Ajaxian here, or you can order on Amazon for a dead-tree version.

The book has several pieces:

• Introduction to Adobe AIR
• Getting started with Adobe AIR
• Working with JavaScript and HTML Within Adobe AIR
• Adobe AIR Mini-Cookbook

It is written by members of the AIR team itself, so you know that the information will be correct. Very smart of them to release it to the public like this. Congrats on finishing it guys!

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/272384581/adobe-air-for-javascript-developers-pocketguide

It’s my own damn fault. I should have never listened to Mike. This morning I installed Twhirl on my desktop in a failed attempt to keep up better with Twitter and Friendfeed. I was hoping it would help me manage the never-ending flow of information from those two services—which, I admit, I’ve been increasingly ignoring. Instead, it took over my desktop and I couldn’t make it stop (see image above).

Twhirl solves one problem (the need to constantly visit the Twitter and Friendfeed Websites), only to create another one (information overload that clutters your desktop). I’m sure there is some setting I could change to fix the issue, but this highlights a bigger problem with the Web today. There is too much to pay attention to and not enough ways to reduce the noise. Even Robert Scoble, the biggest Twitter whore on the planet who follows 21,000 people and receives one Tweet per second, can’t deal with it anymore.

And it is not just Twitter. Lifestream aggregators like Friendfeed are supposed to make things simpler by consolidating the activities of everyone you know across the Web into one single view. But every day a new lifestream aggregator pops up to the point that it’s gotten to be ridiculous. Now, desktop utilities like Twhirl and Alerty Thing are taking these services out of the browser so that they are always on your desktop.

But if you think it is hard enough to keep up with e-mails and instant messages, keeping up with the Web (even your little slice of it) is much worse. Putting Twhirl on your desktop and hearing the constant “ding” of new messages coming in will make you realize that this is IM on steroids. (You will quickly turned off the sound).

Bringing all of this Web messaging and activity together in one place doesn’t really help. It reminds me of a comment ThisNext CEO Gordon Gould made to me earlier this week when he predicted that Web 3.0 will be about reducing the noise. (Some say it will be about the semantic Web, but those two ideas are not mutually exclusive). I hope Gould is right, because what we really need are better filters.

I need less data, not more data. I need to know what is important, and I don’t have time to sift through thousands of Tweets and Friendfeed messages and blog posts and emails and IMs a day to find the five things that I really need to know. People like Mike and Robert can do that, but they are weird, and even they have their limits.

So where is the startup that is going to be my information filter? I am aware of a few companies working on this problem, but I have yet to see one that has solved it in a compelling way. Can someone please do this for me? Please? I need help. We all do.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/272377099/

For about the last year we’ve been using an internal app we developed called In/Out. This tool grew out of our need to keep track of what people are doing right now, plus the last few things people have completed.

We used to do this in Campfire. At the beginning of every day people would check [in] with a list of things they wanted to do. At the end of the day they’d check [out] with a list of things they actually did. It was a good way to see what people had planned for the day, and what actually happened that day.

Twice a day updates weren’t enough

But once in the morning and once at the end of the day wasn’t really enough information to know what people were working on right now. So we often asked “Matt, what are you working on?” or “Sam, what’s keeping you busy right now?” We knew there had to be a better way. Interrupting people just to find out what they were doing was counterproductive.

In/Out was born

So we built a little tool in a couple days called In/Out. In/Out let everyone set their current status (“Working on the Affiliate Program” or “Preparing for my presentation on Friday”), plus In/Out allowed you to make journal entries for the things you’ve finished (“Updated book proposal” or “Modernized list reordering” or “Deployed Backpack calendar reminders”). People were encouraged to be as specific as they wanted to be.

One screen, left and right

Your stuff was on the left and everyone else’s stuff was on the right. It was a one-screen app with everything right in front of you. It was killer. We quickly got a handle on who was busy on this and who finished that.

Here’s what it looks like:

Other people would find this useful, yeah?

We had been thinking of releasing In/Out as its own product, but it would require a fair bit of work which we knew we’d never get around to. We’d have to build a site, allow people to sign up, and deal with all the other stuff that comes with launching a brand new product. We knew In/Out had a lot of value, but we just had more valuable things to spend our time on right now.

Coming to a Backpack near you?

Over the past few days we’ve been working on adding the In/Out concept to Backpack. It seems like a good fit since relaunching Backpack as more of an intranet and workgroup tool.

So we’ve retired In/Out internally at 37signals and are now using the version we built into Backpack. It’s not public yet — we’re going to use it for the next few days and see how it feels. If we think it’s a good fit we’ll likely launch it publicly as part of Backpack sometime in the next few weeks.

Stay tuned.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/976-a-peek-at-inout-an-internal-app-at-37signals