Ajax Girl

We introduced Spotplex in February 2007 as a potential Digg killer that served up popular stories by monitoring how many people read them. Somewhere along the way, it also turned into an Alexa-like analytics service. Unfortunately, neither market worked out for them and they’ve been forced to shut their doors.

The Digg-style service used JavaScript that was embedded on participating pages to track how often posts were read, and top-read posts were featured on Spotplex’s homepage. The service set itself apart from Digg by requiring no intervention on the reader’s part to promote a page. On the other hand, Spotplex only recorded hits on blogs that had embedded the Javascript snippets, which severely restricted its sources of content.

Spotplex’s JavaScript embeds were also used to offer an analytics service that was designed to contend with sites like Alexa and Compete. While the addition of this service marked a shift to a very different market, both of Spotplex’s services leveraged the same backend.

CEO Doyon Kim says that the company’s ultimate failure was due to a lack of adequate funding. The company underestimated the resources that were required to build and maintain its service, and it neglected to seek venture funding after its $450,000 seed round. This is surprising given Kim’s experience in the industry: he co-founded DialPad, which was acquired by Yahoo in 2005.

Spotplex is now in the TechCrunch Deadpool.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/287209101/

Want to be one of the first to customize your site’s search results using Yahoo SearchMonkey? Sign up for the developer preview here and tell them TechCrunch sent ya.

The first 100 people to mention TechCrunch in their application will obtain access to the service. They will also get tickets to the SearchMonkey launch party on May 15th in Sunnyvale.

SearchMonkey allows web publishers to create applications for Yahoo Search that customize the way their results are displayed. The semantic tool can be used to replace traditional result descriptions with relevant links, structured information, and even images. See our detailed review of the service.

The Yelp example below shows how it could be used by that website to surface better information about local joints:

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/287189250/

Craig Riecke, Rawld Gill, and Alex Russell, along with the Pragmatic Programmers themselves have been kind enough to give the Ajaxian community some exclusive extracts from the Mastering Dojo beta book.

What do we have on the docket?

First, we have details on the Dojo DOM Apis. Specifically, the author takes us through a challenge involving interview questions and manipulating the DOM for them. We end up seeing code that uses dojo.query, and class addition such as:

It then delves into the intricacies of dojo.query and beyond.

Secondly, we have Ajax the Dojo way which takes us on a trip down dojo.data and dojox.Grid lane… two differentiating features that Dojo comes with. The chapter builds a wishlist system using these features.

There is a lot lot more in the book, which the table of contents covers for you. There are 400 pages of material here that cover the huge variety that exists within the Dojo community.

Thanks to the authors and the editor for sharing this with us.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/287177795/exclusive-mastering-dojo-chapters

A class at MIT built some mobile apps for Google’s Android operating system and presented them today. CrunchGear’s own superblogger Doug Aamoth reports on the seven apps—loco, Flare, GeoLife, Re:public, Locale, Kei, and snap—that he saw. Below is a slightly edited version of the original post:

loco

If there’s a particular user that’s uploaded a bunch of cool stuff, you can subscribe to his or her stuff. Arrows on the map change color the more popular they get. Very cool.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/287160965/

Daniel Burka, co-founder and head designer for Pownce, has generated some buzz by posting a screenshot teaser of an upcoming release (shown above).

From what we can see in the shot - a search box, an upload link, and parts of the words “Artist” and “Playlist” - it appears to be some sort of browser-based music player.

Just a couple days ago Pownce started allowing users to post files to the general public, not just their Pownce friends. The micro-blogging format, however, only allows one file to be posted at a time, although these individual files can be played back in a simple Flash player.

This new player might allow users to upload batches of audio files and share them with friends as mixtapes, which would put the service in competition with sites like Muxtape, Mixwit, Mixaloo, and Imeem.

Seen more broadly and in light of recent lifts in file size limits, this could be a sign that Pownce is trying to differentiate itself from Twitter by heading further in the file sharing direction, as suggested by Duncan Riley just the other day. It seems as though Pownce’s already-vague “send stuff to your friends” tagline isn’t broad enough after all.

Thanks Ryan for the tip.

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/~3/287152733/

Inquisitor, the Safari search plugin billed as “Spotlight for the web”, has been acquired by Yahoo. The plugin enhances the browser’s standard search engine by offering suggested links and bookmarks in real time as the user types.

Yahoo has already made some minimal changes to the software. The plugin’s integrated Affiliate Links, which have been the source of some controversy, have been removed. And the default search engine has been changed to Yahoo!, though users are still free to choose another engine.

Developer David Watanabe (blog) has created a number of popular applications for the Mac, including the RSS reader NewsFire and Acquisition, a P2P client. He will continue working on Inquisitor, but will not be joining Yahoo! as an employee.

You can find more details on the Yahoo! Blog. And for those who are curious, this application has no relation to TechCrunch alum Duncan Riley’s blog, The Inquisitr.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/287145207/

San Francisco based Zivity, a self described “community-powered showcase of female beauty,” will add a high profile technologist to their executive team next week. Napster co-founder Jordan Ritter, who was subsequently the CTO of Cloudmark and Columbia Music Entertainment (and a man who enjoys wearing sunglasses indoors), will join Zivity as chief technology officer.

Zivity continues to roll after their launch last September at TechCrunch40. They’ve raised a total of $8 million now over two rounds of financing and have successfully created a site that combines adult content with social networking. And the mainstream press is beginning to become as fascinated with Zivity as we have been since we first heard about them last August.

Zivity remains invite only and has about 12,000 members, 70 models and 30 photographers. 30,000 people are on the waiting list to get in.

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/~3/287099240/

TimeTube is a new mashup from Dipity, the interactive timeline site, that takes the mostly unsorted mess of videos that is YouTube and arranges them by date, offering a useful (and often unexpected) perspective on recent events.

Links to each video are situated across a horizontal timeline, with emphasis placed on the most popular videos (they appear bigger). Users can expand or contract the timeline to isolate a particular time period, and the viewing window features a handy “next event” button.

The site is a great diversion. The featured searches, ranging from Global Warming to David Hasselhoff, are all impressive, but half the fun comes from finding your own gems using the keyword search (recent scandals work best). I’m particularly fond of Eliot Spitzer’s TimeTube, which provides a nice contrast between his cheery political ads and the infamous Client Number 9 debacle.

TimeTube seems like it could be a handy reference for getting quick overviews on current events, but at this point it won’t be much more than a novelty for most people. Videos are placed according to when they were uploaded, which isn’t always indicative of when the events shown were actually taking place, making the validity of the timeline shaky at best. That said, if the site can figure out a way to keep dates consistent, TimeTube could evolve into a powerful tool.

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/~3/287106963/

The more I learn about the $3.2 billion deal announced earlier this week to salvage Clearwire’s and Sprint’s WiMax businesses by merging them together, the more I am convinced that someone got snookered. And that someone was Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Maybe he just can’t say “No” to visionary billionaires like Clearwire chairman Craig McCaw. Or maybe McCaw got Intel CEO Paul Otellini to lean on his buddy Schmidt. Otellini himself pledged $1 billion of Intel’s money towards the venture because he has made a big bet at Intel on selling WiMax chips. He also happens to sit on Google’s board. I don’t know if any of the above happened or not.

What I do know is that Google came reluctantly to the table and that for a long time the deal was being blocked internally at Google for some very good reasons. The main reason is that WiMax as Clearwire is deploying it is not a very good replacement for mobile broadband services. It is, above all, a fixed wireless solution. What it replaces is wired broadband services to homes and offices delivered through cable and DSL. That is how Clearwire is selling it today.

But to get Google (and Comcast and Time Warner Cable) to put up the cash, Clearwire had to promise it would build out a richer mobile broadband service as well. This is why Google invested—to bring the broadband Internet to mobile devices (some of them hopefully running the Android operating system). And it is why Comcast and Time Warner Cable invested. They don’t need a replacement for cable broadband to people’s homes. They need a wireless offering to fend off AT&T’s and Verizon’s incursion into their television market. (It’s all about who has the better bundle). Everyone is enthralled with this idea of WiMax as a disruptive wireless mobile broadband alternative. Even Neal Cavuto couldn’t stop waxing about the wonderful wireless future that this deal represents.

I wish that it were true. But here are a (more) few problems:

1. Clearwire and Sprint have not yet proven that WiMax is a viable business even for fixed wireless. Clearwire lost $727 million last year, nearly five times more than its total revenues. And it is projected to lose increasingly more over the next couple years during the expensive growth phase of its business. Moreover, the uptake of the service in the 50 or so cities where it is available has not been so great. That is because, unless you live in a rural area with no other broadband alternative, it is trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. At this point, most people in the U.S. can get broadband at their home just fine through cable or DSL.

2. WiMax hasn’t proven itself elsewhere either. Even in Korea, which has had WiMax for two years and is supposed to be a broadband paradise, consumers are not clamoring for WiMax. There are only about 150,000 WiMax subscribers in Korea, well below initial expectations.

3. Before you can turn Wimax into a mobile broadband service, you need mobile WiMax equipment. Cell phones, laptops, and other devices with WiMax chips in them are a long way away. Intel is ready to sell those chips, but device makers are not going to put them in their gadgets until enough consumers want them. And most consumers are going to wait for a WiMax network to show up that they can access both where they live and when they travel. So there’s a chicken and egg problem there.

4. Clearwire doesn’t know how to act like a mobile company. It doesn’t have a mobile business plan. It has a fixed wireless business plan. In order to make WiMax truly mobile, you need to build out a network dense enough to cover subscribers as they move from one place to another. That is simply not the case today, even in the markets where Clearwire operates.

5. Sprint is conflicted. To deal with roaming and coverage gaps, Clearwire would need to use Sprint’s 3G cellular network as a backup. That would require another chip in each device, which would make them more expensive than competing devices from AT&T or Verizon. Also, it would require Sprint opening up its 3G network to Clearwire and, by extension, Google. That’s not going to happen.

6. WiMax is not a global standard. Here in the U.S., WiMax is built on 2.5 GHz spectrum. Overseas, it is built on 3.5 GHz spectrum. That makes it harder for equipment manufacturers to achieve the scale they need to make money from WiMax devices and network equipment.

7. McCaw may be a visionary, but sometimes he doesn’t see so clearly. Yes, he built what is now AT&T Wireless and sold it for $11.5 billion. But after that he also was responsible for Teledesic and XO Communications—two massive failures that cost investors billions of dollars. Clearwire was about to join those latter two before Schmidt & Co. came to the rescue.

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/~3/287075255/

Innovation requires a fascination with wonder

“Whenever we initiate change, even a positive one, we activate fear in our emotional brain. If the fear is big enough, the fight-or-flight response will go off and we’ll run from what we’re trying to do. The small steps in kaizen don’t set off fight or flight, but rather keep us in the thinking brain, where we have access to our creativity and playfulness.”

Larger design businesses don’t allow good design to happen

“The problem is that the structures of most larger design businesses cannot effectively facilitate the the transmittal of ideas. They don’t allow good design to happen, because they are overburdened with the organizational overhead of running a business: org charts, jurisdictions, inconsistency, poor communications, etc. All the complications that large groups of humans create for one another when they work together, complications that are not about doing design.”

Pixar’s Brad Bird on fostering innovation

“Steve Jobs basically designed this building. In the center, he created this big atrium area, which seems initially like a waste of space. The reason he did it was that everybody goes off and works in their individual areas. People who work on software code are here, people who animate are there, and people who do designs are over there. Steve put the mailboxes, the meetings rooms, the cafeteria, and, most insidiously and brilliantly, the bathrooms in the center—which initially drove us crazy—so that you run into everybody during the course of a day. [Jobs] realized that when people run into each other, when they make eye contact, things happen. So he made it impossible for you not to run into the rest of the company.” [via JK]

Must-see photo project examines death and dying

“This exhibition features people whose lives are coming to an end. It explores the experiences, hopes and fears of the terminally ill. All of them agreed to be photographed shortly before and immediately after death.”

A new spin on the RSS reader

“Instead of treating news like email (as most RSS readers do), Times presents you with headlines and photos from a variety of sources all in one place, letting you more easily discover the news you want to read. Like your own personal newspaper, you can put feeds into separate areas, create pages for different subjects, and more.”

Success = sustainable execution

“I’m not suggesting that scale equates success. A business that can do a million in revenue per year and live comfortably in that range to me is just as successful as Google is. The scope of execution is unimportant. The sustainability of that execution is what I consider success.”

Turn your $60 router into a user-friendly super-router with Tomato

“There’s a lot you can do now that you’re running Tomato on your router, but let’s go straight to one of the sexiest tweaks supported by Tomato: Wi-Fi signal boosting. Just click on Advanced -> Wireless in the Tomato sidebar and find the entry labeled Transmit Power. The default transmit power is 42mW, but it’s capable of transmitting at up to 251mW.”

Fear and America

“Fear, in other words, is a tax, and al-Qaeda and its ilk have done better at extracting it from Americans than the Internal Revenue Service…Never before have so few terrorized so many with so little.”

Art exhibit: “Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy”

“Through fashion and the superhero, we gain the freedom to fantasize, to escape the banal, the ordinary, and the quotidian. The fashionable body and the superhero body are sites upon which we can project our fantasies, offering a virtuosic transcendence beyond the moribund and utilitarian.”

Louise Fili design

Specialists in the design of restaurants & food packaging. Beautiful typography.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1019-sunspots-the-small-steps-edition