Ajax Girl

Update: Just as I finished writing this post, I received word from the company that a third attack had begun.

SlideShare, a Mountain View-based startup that lets you upload and embed PowerPoint presentations on the web, appears to have stirred the red dragon last week.

About ten days ago the company began receiving anonymous requests to delete slideshows that were deemed “illegal” by the requesters. The SlideShare staff checked out these slideshows and discovered them to be quite innocent. While some described ways to fight corruption in China, none of them violated the company’s terms of service, and so SlideShow did nothing to fulfill the requests.

SlideShare soon began receiving a different type of request from the same people, who could now be identified by their email addresses. This time they were pretending to be users who had lost their passwords. Once again doing nothing, the company got a very demanding, and almost threatening, call to its Indian office on Wednesday, one that insisted that the company grant access to an account.

After these three failed attempts, SlideShare experienced a massive distributed denial of service attack starting at 10pm on Thursday, one day before the CNN website was attacked by Chinese instigators in apparent backlash to its coverage of the Tibetan protests. We’ve been told that the attack reached a peak of 2.5GB/sec and consisted entirely of packets sent from China.

Not long after the first attack subsided, SlideShare was hit a second time on Friday and the site went down again until Saturday morning. Since then there have been no more attacks, but the company continues to receive fake password recovery and illegitimate takedown requests at a rate of about 5-10 per day (it has accumulated about 50-60 total).

There’s a lot of speculation around just what has happened here since no one knows for sure who is behind the requests and attacks. However, it seems likely that they were from the same hacker groups - possibly linked to the Chinese government - that attacked the CNN site (and later called their attack off after getting too much publicity). Some of the slideshows with takedown requests have been viewed many times recently, so their popularity seems to have landed them on the Chinese government’s radar.

SlideShare insists that it will do everything it can to protect its users’ freedom of speech. As such, it has no plans to remove any of the content in question.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/276617092/

Look closely at the photo of Google’s booth at the Web 2.0 conference, because there is apparently something there that Google didn’t want photographed. Do you see it?

Yeah, me either. Looks like a normal, non-confidential type booth to me. Apparently they were demoing Adwords.

But both Scott Beale and Jeremy Johnstone were told that photos of the booth were prohibited and were asked to “vacate the area”. Beale was polite and walked away (annoyed). Johnstone, though, did the right thing: he took the picture above and posted it to flickr.

Whatever Google’s reasons for not wanting the booth photographed, the prohibition quite predictably had the opposite effect. Eventually, Google software engineer Bob Lee took the initiative to track down the reason for the ban. Problem solved.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/276635399/

Salesforce’s stock price jumped over 10% today to an all time high (the Nasdaq rose a little over 1%). The company’s market cap rose $743 million, to $8.06 billion. Why the big jump? There is no public information or news emerging to support the increase.

Our sources in private equity say it was fueled by whispers of Google acquisition talks. And short sellers (Salesforce has a lot of them) may have moved to cover their positions, magnifying the rumor effect. 2.92 million shares traded today, about 55% more than average.

A week ago Google and Salesforce announced broad integration of Google Apps (Docs, Calendar, Gmail, and Gtalk) and Salesforce’s online enterprise apps, which, our sources say, may just be a test of a more serious relationship.

If Google were to acquire Salesforce (and to be clear, we’re hearing nothing other than the private equity based rumors) it would likely be a cash deal to avoid earnings dilution. Salesforce is trading at an impressive 319 times forward earnings, compared to Google’s 32.66. Cisco and Oracle are said to be interested as well, but not Microsoft.

Here’s the interesting thing about the rumor - everything we hear from Silicon Valley sources says it isn’t happening. We’ve heard Google’s corporate development team is actually knee deep in another, much smaller transaction. And why put so much time into ironing out the elaborate business development deal announced last week if it’s only a prelude to an acquisition?

Salesforce’s Q1 financials will be announced on May 6.

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/~3/276575794/

We’ve received word that Monster has decided to lay off the 30-35 employees that work for subsidiary Tickle, a company that it acquired in May 2004.

Tickle includes not only a tests and quizzes site that shares the same name but also Ringo, a photo and video-sharing site, and LoveHappens, an online dating site.

As part of the decision, Ringo and LoveHappens will be completely shut down while Tickle will be absorbed into Affinity Labs, a content verticals company recently acquired by Monster.

The Tickle site will change focus once absorbed by Affinity Labs, although just how is yet to be seen. All layoffs will be complete by the end of June; employees were told of the decision at an internal meeting yesterday.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/276571454/

Mezmerizing. For more information see Festo.

[Sent in via email by Peter Urban]

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/994-festo-airjelly

The Facebook developer community is thriving but faces a good deal of uncertainty about its future. That was the general message from a session held at the Web 2.0 Expo today called “The Facebook Platform: Finding Success in the Facebook Economy.”

The session started off with a disagreement over how much money developers are actually making through Facebook. Naval Ravikant from Venturehacks estimated that over $100M would be made in 2008, whereas Joyce Park of Renkoo and Matt Sanchez of VideoEgg predicted revenues as low as $10-35M this year.

All panelists agreed, however, that CPM rates on Facebook are miserably low, perhaps averaging 15 cents. Developers have begun experimenting with other sources of revenue, such as the sale of virtual goods and premium services, but advertising still generates more than 80% of the platform’s revenue.

The panelists also agreed that Facebook’s recent moves to block viral distribution channels have made life harder for the developers of low engagement apps such as Slide’s FunWall. These apps suffer most because they depend on Facebook’s viral channels for their adoption, having given users little reason to invite their friends proactively.

In the long run, more engaging apps such as Scrabulous are set to do better not only because they attract more dedicated users, but because they provide better opportunities for direct monetization, even if their CPMs are also quite low. Ravikant made a point to say that travel, dating, book, and game-related apps have the brightest futures whereas “everyone else is kinda screwed”.

Despite the shift away from low engagement apps, the platform will remain the most attractive economically for independent developers. Small teams can crank out applications within days and earn decent paychecks, but large companies only have a handful of opportunities to make worthwhile returns on their investments. Ravikant made a point to discourage multi-million dollar investments in Facebook app developers, citing the difficulties associated with monetizing and maintaining a strong user-base. The sense I got, however, was that independent developers will also face hard times, since traditionally they don’t deploy high engagement apps.

The consensus from the panel was that Facebook needs to continue building a strong infrastructure for its developers. Park even suggested that Facebook roll back some of its restrictions on viral distribution since they were hurting growth of many legitimate applications (the distribution mechanisms were the main reason developers came to the platform in the first place).

She also wants Facebook to enforce its policies more clearly and fairly, since there are currently too many incentives to cheat. None of the panelists, however, were concerned that Facebook itself would trample many 3rd party apps with its own feature additions, since Facebook has the mindset of a platform provider, not an app developer.

Ravikant particularly looked forward to Facebook providing a good micro-payment system since it will spur innovation in monetization strategies, which could in turn inform how Facebook itself does business. Providing developers with better ways to make money is perhaps the most important thing Facebook can do now, especially if it continues to restrict how quickly its applications can grow.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/276485670/

Despite the decent first quarter earnings it announced yesterday and all the progress it claims to be making in closing the search marketing gap with Google, Yahoo still has plenty of advertisers unsatisfied with the return Yahoo gives them on their search marketing dollars. One of them (name redacted) sent us the correspondence below from Yahoo Search Marketing, which he received after closing an account and requesting a refund of the remaining $375 balance.

Imagine his surprise when a Yahoo customer service rep informed him that a refund of nearly $9 billion was waiting for him! Luckily for Yahoo shareholders, he only found a credit for the original $375 when he checked his account.

And this is the same company advertisers are supposed to trust to be able to calculate what their minimum bids on search ads are going to be.

From: Yahoo! Search Marketing
Date: Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 9:36 AM
Subject: Re: Case #1604XXXXX
To: XXXXX@gmail.com

Apr 17 2008 09:36 PT

Hello AXXXX,

As you requested, we have completed refunding $8962385800 to your VISA ending in 7134. Depending on your bank, you should find this refund reflected on your next credit card statement.

This transaction is also reflected in the Billing Transaction Detail Report, available in the Reports section of your account. You can find this report by doing the following:

1. Log into your account at the following link: https://login12.marketingsolutions.yahoo.com/adui/signinXXXXXX.
2. Click the Reports tab.
3. In the Financial Reports area, click Billing Transaction Detail.

Sincerely,

XXXXX Smith
Customer Solutions
Yahoo! Search Marketing

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/276450257/

Apple’s Q2 2008 financial results were very strong and above expectations. The bottom line: they are selling a lot of stuff at very good margins.

Total revenue for the quarter was $7.51 billion; profit was $1.05 billion, or $1.16 per diluted share (up from $.87/share a year ago). Profit estimates were in the $1.10/share range. 2.3 million Macs, 10.6 million iPods, 1.7 million iPhones. The company now has nearly $20 billion in the bank and maintains 73% U.S. market share for music players. They expect to sell 10 million iPhones this year.

In the conference call, Apple gave guidance on the iPhone 2.0 - late June. 200k+ downloads of SDK to date, and “1/3 of Fortune 500 interested” in the new iPhone, with enterprise-friendly features.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/276449176/

Ryan Stewart of Adobe and I got to give a joint talk this morning that covered Adobe AIR, Gears, and how you can build offline and desktop applications right now.

Obviously, Ryan gave an overview of AIR, and I did the same for Gears. We also discussed reasons to be excited about Web development, some of the ideas that are out there in the community, and how AIR and Gears can be seen as complementary.

We had some requests to put the slides online, so here they are below. I know it is hard to peruse slides without the talk over, but just think of it as a fun exercise to wonder what we said

If you are at Web 2.0 Expo, give me a shout on twitter.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/276418519/taking-web-applications-offline-to-the-desktop-and-beyond

Aciphex.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/993-ask-your-doctor-if-ass-effects-is-right-for-you