Ajax Girl

The tagging and link-sharing market has no shortage of competition, but that doesn’t seem to be deterring many developers. Mento, which has just launched in an invite-only beta, is the latest to arrive on the scene, sporting a very well designed site and a number of options that make sharing links a breeze.

Beyond the features typically found on tagging sites, Mento strives to simplify sharing links with friends by allowing users to import and interact with their Facebook contacts. The site also differentiates itself by keeping track of how many times a link you’ve shared has been clicked, and which members have clicked it.

Mento can be used either with bookmarklets in your browser’s toolbar or as an extension that appears as a button (available for both Firefox and IE). The extension isn’t intrusive, but it doesn’t seem to offer much extra functionality over the bookmarklet at this point (though this will likely change in the future).

Mento’s main goal is to provide a lightweight solution for easy sharing, bookmarking, and tagging. After clicking on the bookmarklet, a small browser window pops up, asking if you’d like to Send, Save, or comment on a page. The Send form features a handy autocomplete for your contacts, though you can manually enter email addresses. The Save form leaves a bookmark and description of the page on your Mento profile page for future reference.

Mento facilitates link sharing by allowing you to publish links to del.icio.us, FriendFeed, Magnolia, Tumblr, and Twitter. There’s also a Facebook app that allows friends to view and comment on links without having to install the application themselves (a rarity these days).

Mento’s CEO Gregor Hochmuth is quick to acknowledge the obvious comparison to del.icio.us, explaining that Mento takes the del.icio.us model and improves on it by including robust sharing support. In practice, the sharing functionality does work well, especially when you’ve imported your friends from Facebook. But a number of other sites, such as Zigtag and Yoono, have very similar offerings. Only time will tell if Mento will melt under the pressure, or if it’ll stay fresh, cool, and full of life.

You can get one of the 500 invites here.

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/~3/286553000/

Erick appeared on Fox Business last night to talk about the recent $3.2 billion WiMax deal between Sprint Nextel and Clearwire that’s expected to go through.

He tries to discuss the questionableness of the deal from a business standpoint despite the promises of WiMax as a technology. However, there’s clearly some frustration that Cavuto would rather talk about the future of mobile devices in general, and his daughter’s technology habits in particular, rather than analyze the viability of the deal.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/286511816/

Microsoft is taking one of its options off the table in its on-again, off-again pursuit of Yahoo. It has told members of the alternate board of directors it had lined up for a possible hostile proxy battle over Yahoo that it won’t be needing their services. The news was delivered to each alternate in a short e-mail this morning from Microsoft’s law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, according to the Wall Street Journal

Yahoo’s shares have been rising most of this week, after taking an initial hit on Monday. The relative strength in the shares have been partly fueled by hopes for renewed negotiations between Yahoo and Microsoft.

This action represents an important new data point in the battle of wills between the two companies. Is Microsoft really no longer interested in acquiring Yahoo, or is it just trying to signal that it has lost interest to drive down Yahoo’s shares and thus strengthen its negotiating position?

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/~3/286412771/

Shawn Fanning, best known for founding Napster, has a new job. He will be working at Electronic Arts, which is about to buy his social-network-gaming startup Rupture for $30 million, according to sources with knowledge of the deal. His co-founder Jon Baudanza will also join Electronic Arts. We first heard of a possible deal back in February, but did not know who was the buyer. Rupture’s first product was a social network for players of the online video game World of Warcraft, but it only came out with a beta version and kept delaying its public launch.

Electronic Arts is buying the company for its technology, since it doesn’t have a lot of users (it was only ever in beta) and never launched the second version of its service. Presumably, creating social networks around massively multiplayer video games is a key component of its online strategy. The company has not yet officially announced the acquisition, but it is expected to do so soon. [Update: The closing of the deal is imminent, but there are still some papers to sign].

Rupture had previously raised only $2.5 to $3 million in an angel round last summer from investors including Ron Conway, Joi Ito, Reid Hoffman, and Baseline Ventures. Although this is not Fanning’s first startup, it is his first real payday. Napster helped change the music industry, but it went bankrupt doing so. And although he just sold his second startup SnoCap to Imeem, that was more of a mercy acquisition. It is doubtful that he made more than a few pennies on that sale. You know what they say. Third time’s the charm.

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/~3/286383021/

When early adopters sit at their computers, what applications and websites do they use the most? The answer: Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Office, and MSN Messenger—just like most everyone else. At least according to data from RescueTime, the productivity app that monitors the amount of time a user spends on every application on his desktop. The Y Combinator-funded startup has given us an exclusive look at the usage data they’ve compiled from over 30,000 users (most of whom are early adopters). This data represents real-life usage on a huge scale, totaling 475,190 man-hours.

Gmail, Facebook, and Skype make strong showings, but still lag behind Microsoft’s desktop apps. Microsoft Websites, however, are nowhere to be seen. All of this suggests that among early adopters, desktop apps still rule, but Webtop apps are gaining ground in terms of what they use every day. After Outlook and Word, Gmail is the third most-used application, Facebook is No. 6, Google search is No. 10, iTunes is No. 11, and Skype is No. 16.

If you add up all of Google’s apps and sites, they take up 17 percent of the time this group spends on their computers. But Microsoft’s apps collectively take up 41 percent of their time, so Google still has some catching up to do.

Here’s the disclaimer: This data is by no means scientific. It represents mostly early adopters, but these are the people who are supposed to figure out what’s useful before the rest of us do. They are the canary in the coal mine. The data also has an international slant, with only 40% of users in the US (a total of 60% are English-speaking). About 35% of the users are on Macs, a rate over three times higher than the international estimate of 10% Mac market-share.

Here’s a breakdown of the top 20 applications and Websites, ranked by the overall time spent in each.

The Top 3

The top of the list is dull. Outlook stands tall with 12.4% of all the time spent on a computer, with MS Word(9.4%) and Gmail(6.6%) rounding out the top three. No surprises here.

Chat

In the battle for chat-client supremacy, MSN Messenger comes away with a whopping 4.14%, more than twice as much as the next leading client. Adium’s high performance is indicative of the high proportion of Mac users (it is easily the best client on the Mac).

Websites

Facebook holds a surprisingly strong lead over other websites, with nearly three times as much usage as Wikipedia’s English site. Also notable is Twitter.com’s usage (this is the site itself, not the API, which reportedly sees ten times more action). Digg is more popular among this group than the NYTimes.com, and gaming site Kongregate makes a strong showing as well. TechCrunch comes up right behind YouPorn (NSFW), which isn’t such a bad place to be in.

In all, RescueTime users spent 44.6% of their time using communication services, beating out work-related apps by a large margin. The trend is probably much worse for the typical user, as RescueTime users are more likely to try to stay on task (in theory, at least).

We’ve included the full spreadsheet below, and would love to see further analysis in the comments.

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/~3/286359461/

We’re fast approaching our super fun CrunchNetwork Prague Meet-up and we’re prepping the pivo and knedliky for the big night. We’re going to have some surprises coming up so watch this space but until then feel free to RSVP by email or on Facebook.

Remember the event is on Friday, May 23, 2008 from 7pm until 1AM. That’s right. 1AM.

Special thanks to Jack DeNeut who is assisting in the planning for this event and extra special thanks to all these sponsors:

Nelso - Multi-language local search for Europe

Geewa - Multiplayer games for PC and mobile

Newstin - Connecting people through news to create global communities
of interest

Wirenode - Simple-to-use tools that allow anyone to create a mobile website

GoodData - A complete, on-demand business intelligence platform

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/286377448/

Heroku, the online Ruby on Rails (RoR) development and hosting environment, has raised $3 million from Redpoint Ventures and other angel investors.

The Y Combinator startup aims to make software development more accessible for a wider range of people. It does so by providing a browser-based programming environment that cuts out steps traditionally needed to produce RoR applications.

The founders picked RoR because it was designed for developers who want to actualize their ideas quickly. Heroku not only makes the development process easier, but it helps deploy and scale web applications, thereby making the maintenance of online software more feasible as well.

The service remains in private beta but we’re told the curtain should lift pretty soon. Meanwhile, developers interested in using Heroku can put their names down on a waitlist.

Co-founder James Lindenbaum says that the platform already supports over 10,000 developers and more than 12,000 applications. Almost all of them are non-critical sites, however, since the service is still working to maintain stability.

Also see Engine Yard, a company with a more hands-on approach to RoR hosting.

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/~3/286241641/

MySpace is announcing a broad ranging embrace of data portability standards today, along with data sharing partnerships with Yahoo, Ebay, Twitter and their own Photobucket subsidiary. The new project is being called MySpace “Data Availability” and is an example, MySpace says, of their dedication to playing nice with the rest of the Internet.

A mockup of how the data sharing will look in action with Twitter is shown above. MySpace is essentially making key user data, including (1) Publicly available basic profile information, (2) MySpace photos, (3) MySpaceTV videos, and (4) friend networks, available to partners via their (previousy internal) RESTful API, along with user authentication via OAuth.

The key goal is to allow users to maintain key personal data at sites like MySpace and not have it be locked up in an island. Previously users could turn much of this data into widgets and add them to third party sites. But that doesn’t bridge the gap between independent, autonomous websites, MySpace says. Every site remains an island.

But with Data Availability, partners will be able to access MySpace user data, combine it with their own, and present it on their sites outside of the normal widget framework. Friends lists can be syncronized, for example. Or Twitter may use the data to recommend other Twitter users who are your MySpace friends.

The data sharing is dynamic, meaning it is updated constantly. And that also means user permission is not a one time thing. At any time a user can change or revoke the rights of a third party to access the data. Those third parties are “being held to strict terms of service,” says MySpace, which prohibits them from storing the data or using it once permissions are revoked.

For now, just the four launch partners will have access to Data Availability, and the features should go live in the next couple of weeks. More partners will be added over time, and MySpace says they eventually want to give even “mom and pop” websites ways to be involved.

What About Open Social?

MySpace is a partner in Google’s OpenSocial project, but this is being done outside of that framework. MySpace says they’ll adopt the Open Social APIs that evolve around data sharing once they are developed and announced.

The Center Of All User Data

Historically MySpace has lagged Facebook in terms of innovation. But they definitely “get it” this time. Sharing user data so openly (with user permission) is a terrific way to incentivize users to store all their core data at MySpace to begin with. Users eventually need one place on the Internet to store their data, or lots of places to store different types of data. But what they don’t want is today’s world where they are recreating and storing the same data over a plethora of social networks just because all those sites refuse to share. We’re starting to see the floodgates open and the idea of data sharing become a reality (thanks largely to the efforts of DataPortability and other activists in this space).

By acting first, MySpace takes the lead and has a shot at being the long term winner - meaning lots of people use MySpace as the place to store data, and share it out to other applications from there. Look for Google to make their move next.

See my post on “The Centralized Me” for more of my thinking on this.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/286206156/

Last, but never least, is Alex Russell of the Dojo Toolkit and SitePen. In Alex’s five minutes of video footage for our JavaOne talk, he explained how Dojo enables you to built fantastic, responsive applications for everyone. The everyone piece revolves around accessibility too, which is core to Dojo thanks to work from Becky Gibson and others on the team.

The Dojo grid and charting packages are very rich these days, and continue to get better. Alex also noted in a separate discussion how there are subtle advantages to the charting package such as being able to print the darn things out nicely. Other flashier products may not allow that minor feature.

Previously on Ajax Pioneer Week…

• John Resig of jQuery
• Bruce Johnson of GWT
• Sam Stephenson of Prototype

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/286198963/ajax-pioneer-week-alex-russell-of-dojo

I have talked before about the desire for a Notification API on the Web. As a Mac user, I would love to see Growl from JavaScript, and there have been libraries written from as far back as protoGrowl.

The difference is between a JavaScript API that does notifications on the desktop, versus trying to get little custom notifications inside the browser window itself. I am talking about the former.

Brian Dunnington has developed Growl for Windows, and with his latest version, he allows you to talk to the system via JavaScript.

You can check out the growl.js library.

What was interesting was the implementation side, and the paths Brian went down to get this working. I asked him for his thoughts, and he wrote up the following:

One of the biggest new features in the latest version of Growl for Windows (v1.2 alpha) is the ability to receive notifications from websites running in your browser. i spent quite a bit of time working out the best way to handle this functionality and thought i would share my thought process.

since Growl can already receive notifications over the network, i figured that it would be easiset to build the Web-based notification system on top of that. Growl receives network notifications using a simple protocol over UDP. ok - first hurdle: browsers and javascript dont do UDP, so i figured i would have to go with some kind of add-on. i wanted the solution to work cross-browser, so Firefox extensions and ActiveX plug-ins were ruled out. i also wanted the solution to work for the broadest range of people, so i didnt want to write a custom add-on (a la Gears). i knew that Flash and Silverlight both had networking support, but neither can do UDP, so they were both quickly ruled out.

that left Java as the only other widely-installed cross-browser extension at my disposal. Java obviously has robust networking support, including UDP, so i headed down that path. the biggest problem now was that i have never created a Java applet, nor even written a line of Java code. but the syntax was familiar enough, and i was able to find some good sample code on the net that i was able to mash into a tiny applet that could send UDP packets. it actually worked brilliantly, and i was quite happy with myself for solving the problem so easily.

but of course, it was not that easy. there is that little restriction known as the ’same-origin policy’. running the applet on my localhost worked great, but as soon as i ran it from any other location, i would get a secuirty exception. i tried all kinds of combinations of values for the CODE and CODEBASE attributes, including file:// urls and even encoding the applet code as a data: uri, but i was thwarted at every turn (as so i should have been - the entire reason the restriction is in place is to prevent what i was trying to do). right before i gave up on the applet idea, i had the realization that if i could serve the applet up from the local host, then it would be able to communicate with the local host later. but configuring and installing a simple web server just to serve up an applet seemed like overkill. alas, the Java idea was a dead end.

so, it was back to the drawing board. what did the browser have access to that could bridge the gap? i decided to try a custom protocol handler, similar to the Itunes Music Store (itms://). a couple of simple registry entries and i had my growl:// protocol working. i had a helper process that sat in the background and everytime a growl:// url link was clicked, the browser would pass it off to my handler, along with the original url. i decided that i could pass any information as a JSON-encoded string in that url information. again, it worked great and seemed to be a good solution, but that made me sure that it must have a drawback. turns out the drawback in this case was that there was no way for the browser to know if the protocol handler was installed on the user’s machine - if the protocol handler was installed, the browser passed it off nicely and all was good, but if the protocol was not installed, Firefox would present a dialog saying something like ‘firefox doesnt know how to open the address because the protocol is not known’ (IE and Safari both just returned a 404-type page). since i wanted websites to be able to use the communication feature if the user had Growl installed, but not mess up the experience if they didnt, this was a deal breaker.

i was starting to run out of ideas at this point, but i remembered the idea of serving up the Java applet locally. while i was pondering the details of that solution, i thought ‘if i am going to have a local server to serve up the applet, why not skip the applet and just communicate with the local server?’. so i implemented a very simple webserver that runs when Growl is running that can be accessed at something like http://localhost:9889. the idea of using the url to pass JSON was repurposed and soon i was able to pass JSON-encoded Javascript objects to the local server, which code then parse the data and handle it in real application code. i couldnt use ajax to communicate with the local server (same-origin policy strikes again), so i decided to use the hidden iframe technique. i wrote a small js library to abstract everything out, so now you can write code in Javascript that almost mimics the code you would write if you included the Growl libraries in you application code:

PLAIN TEXT

JAVASCRIPT:

1.  
2. Growl.NotificationType someKindOfNotification = new Growl.NotificationType(”some kind of notification”, true);
3. Growl.register(”Website Name”, [someKindOfNotification]);
4. Growl.notify(someKindOfNotification, ‘Notification from the web’, ‘this is the description’, Growl.Priority.VeryLow, false);
5.  

of course, receiving notifications from websites opens up the possiblity of spam and other noise, so applications that register from the web have their notifications disabled by default (thus requiring the user to explicity grant the notifications they wish to receive). but that is another topic for another day.

Ed: I decided to make today, “Extend the browser through APIs Day”

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/286190830/growls-for-windows-and-a-web-notification-api