Ajax Girl

Google has experimented with search features that let users vote on search results, and/or recommend other results than those given, since late 2007. They generally bucket test these features (meaning some small percentage of users, randomly chosen, see them), and if testing goes ok, they move them into the optional experimental area where any user can add them.

One of our readers, Adrian Pike, may be included in a new bucket test that includes a variation of last year’s experiment. The screen shots he’s sent show an up arrow and an X. Clicking on the up arrow turns it green and adds to the total vote count at the end of the search result. The main difference between this and last year is that it looks like users can change their vote. If anyone else sees this, please let us know.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/335717315/

With my Google hat on, I got to interview Michael Marcus and Rui Ma, two recent graduates from a masters program at NYU. They joined me to discuss Gears on Rails, their open source framework that makes it easier than ever to take a Rails code-base offline.

They take the approach of giving you a high level Ruby-ish way of developing your Rails app and having it work offline against local storage.

This means that you end up building actions like this:

They build the local framework on the Jester framework that is a “JavaScript client for REST APIs that uses Rails conventions, and is inspired by Rails’ own ActiveResource”.

This means that you can write client side code like this:

Listen to the audio interview directly (or subscribe via iTunes).

Source: Ajaxian » Front Page
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/335471420/interview-with-the-gears-on-rails-team

When 37signals first started out, we didn’t make products. We did client work.

From the beginning, we allotted plenty of time for side projects. Things that would get us attention (eNormicom), experiments with new ways of selling our services (37express), ways to show off our design thinking (37Better Project), etc.

Here are a few of the key non-client projects that enabled us to build up an audience before we launched Basecamp:

The 37signals manifesto
We started with a philosophy. The 37signals manifesto, which explained our approach to design, was our original site from 1999-2001. This collection of 37 nuggets of online philosophy and design wisdom was our initial “declaration of intent.”

We’ve changed a lot over the years. But the manifesto set the table for what followed. Usability, valuing people over org-charts, simplicity, speed, anti-jargon, small teams, emphasis on copywriting, eliminating bells and whistles, etc. It was all there, in the manifesto, back in 1999.

The 37Better Project
In “The 37Better Project,” we’d take frustrating online experiences and show how we thought they could be better.

Complaining is easy. Offering solutions is the tough part. When we have an idea about how to improve a specific web site or concept, we post our pro bono “better” design comp here.

The 37Better Project included: 37BetterBank, 37BetterFedEx, 37BetterPayPal, 37BetterMotors, 37BetterGoogle. Some examples (click image for full size version):

eNormicom
eNormicom was a parody site we made mocking the new media branding foolishness that was all the rage during the web bubble.

It takes a lot to differentiate your brand in today’s “me too” world of electronic business solutions. At eNormicom, we create and develop campaigns that break through the chatter clearly and consistently.

“Homing In on ‘Intelligent’ Web Design” is an article in the NY Times about the site.Design Not Found
We also started collecting good and bad error messages at our site “Design Not Found.” The site’s no longer around but it eventually evolved into our book on the same topic: “Defensive Design for the Web: How to improve error messages, help, forms, and other crisis points.”

37express
With 37express, we offered quick, effective, subtle revisions done for a fixed price in one week. It was our way of getting work done quickly without having to deal with all the back and forth headaches that typically accompany client work.

Research
We also published this E-Commerce Search Report (1.2 MB PDF) which analyzed, reviewed, and rated the search engines and search results at 25 popular e-commerce sites. (Originally sold for $79.) There was also the Holiday E-Commerce Ideas and another report titled “Sites that Don’t Click” (now out of print).

Signal vs. Noise
And of course there was Signal vs. Noise too. We would trade lots of interesting emails or have conversations over lunch that seemed like they would be interesting to others too. So we converted these emails and topics into blog posts.

I remember thinking we were a little late to the blog party but, in retrospect, we were fortunate to get a blog up and running still relatively early. (Lesson: Technology that’s a year or two old may seem like old hat to us web freaks, but there’s still a while to go before saturation.)

Building an audience
Since we didn’t advertise and relied on word of mouth, projects like these were essential. They kept us in people’s heads.

They also freed us from the restrictions inherent in client work. We were able to play and experiment which, in turn, kept us happy/sane.

We built up an audience that turned out to be an invaluable headstart when we eventually launched Basecamp. It’s a lot easier to market a product when you already have thousands of fans — ones who are the perfect target market for what you’re trying to sell.

It’s also worth reemphasizing one thing that’s been there from the beginning: Our philosophy. By knowing what we stood for, we always had an internal compass to guide us. We knew which clients were right/wrong for us. We knew which projects we wanted to spend time on. And we knew what we stood for.

P.S. A big shoutout to early members of the 37signals team who have moved on: Ernest Kim, Carlos Segura, and Scott Upton. They’re all brilliant.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1125-the-early-days-how-37signals-built-buzz-out-of-the-gate

Gordian worms live inside crickets. Once fully grown, they inject chemicals into the cricket’s brain, brainwashing it and forcing it to kill itself by jumping into water. Once in water, the worm wriggles out of the writhing body and swims off in search of a mate.

[Thanks: JD]

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1136-nature-is-amazing-gordian-worms

The video above is Tom Robinson, one of the 280 North fellas who is smart enough to port Cocoa to the Web, showing us his multitouch “virtual light table” using the JavaScript APIs nicely documented by SitePen, as well as Apple.

His ~100 lines of code uses the new CSS transforms handles all of the touch events: touchstart, touchmove, touchend, touchcancel with code such as:

He also added a nice bridge to allow you to somewhat play from the desktop:

Source: Ajaxian » Front Page
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/335759634/iphone-web-multitouch-javascript-virtual-light-table

John Resig goes into more detail on the HTML 5 data- elements that gives developers a valid place to store metadata:

This allows you to write valid HTML markup (passing an HTML 5 validator) while, simultaneously, embedding data within your page. A quick example:

PLAIN TEXT

HTML:

1.  
2. <li class=“user” data-name=“John Resig” data-city=“Boston”
3.      data-lang=“js” data-food=“Bacon”>
4.   <b>John says:</b> <span>Hello, how are you?</span>
5. </li>
6.  

Which you can get at via some simple code:

PLAIN TEXT

JAVASCRIPT:

1.  
2. var user = document.getElementsByTagName(“li”)[0];
3. var pos = 0, span = user.getElementsByTagName(“span”)[0];
4.  
5. var phrases = [
6.   {name: “city”, prefix: “I am from “},
7.   {name: “food”, prefix: “I like to eat “},
8.   {name: “lang”, prefix: “I like to program in “}
9. ];
10.  
11. user.addEventListener( “click”, function(){
12.   var phrase = phrases[ pos++ ];
13.   // Use the .dataset property
14.   span.innerHTML = phrase.prefix + user.dataset[ phrase.name ];
15.  
16.   // OR, to work with old browsers
17.   //span.innerHTML = phrase.prefix + user.getAttribute("data-" + phrase.name );
18. }, false);
19.  

Using data- is a very practical solution, but people in the comments of John’s post would much prefer a more “pure” solution. There are the “Just use XML namspaces” crowd, and the “define the data outside of the page” group, and the “use an XML island” folk. What are you?

Source: Ajaxian » Front Page
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/335456017/html-5-data-elements-to-store-private-values

Thomas Fuchs and Amy Hoy have teamed up again for a micro-app called Creativescrape “an inspration utility for those moments when you just seem to be braindead. It comes with a OS X screensaver for your enjoyment.”

All via 188 lines of fun living on top of Prototype and Script.aculo.us.

Source: Ajaxian » Front Page
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/335456018/creativescrape-thomas-and-amy-team-up-again

275 or so people congregated on the small town of Sebastopol, located 60 miles north of San Francisco in the heart of wine country, for the 2008 Foo Camp this last weekend. Attendees included technologists, professors, researchers engineers, major company executives, billionaire entrepreneurs, students, press and the odd astronaut.

They all had one thing in common - a love of technology. Foo Camp, which stand for Friends of O’Reilly, is an annual three day tech event put on by O’Reilly Media at their Sebasopol headquarters. They supply a huge lawn area where attendees put up tents, food and drinks, bathrooms, Wifi and one very large blank piece of paper marked off in a grid.

There is no structure to the event - if an attendee wants to hold a session on anything at all, they simply write the name of the session somewhere on the grid, which tells people what day/time and place the session will be held. People attend any sessions they like, and with 15 or so happening at any given time, there may be 2 people, or 75 people, in any particular session.

Sessions this year included, to name just a few: “how to fly the space shuttle” by a former astronaut, “the future of news,” “user generated meta data,” “the metrics of virtual worlds,” “decentralizing social networks” and “online hate/trolling.”

In one session on Sunday that I co-led with Tim O’Reilly and Danny Sullivan, we debated the need for competitive search. This was an offshoot of a previous debate we held on our blogs, but this time with audience participation in real time (including people from the companies being discussed).

The sessions are in an unconference format, meaning the leaders are there to guide the discussion only. Audience participation isn’t just encouraged, it’s a well exercised right (in the picture to the right, you can see Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales behind the table with his hand raised to make a comment in the “user generated meta data” session led by Esther Dyson). With so many different types of interesting people in any given session at any time, the conversations tend to be fascinating, and occasionally explosive.

Everything said in sessions is off record, although people tend to Twitter most of the conversations anyway. Hallway/lawn conversations are also off record unless everyone agrees otherwise, which is rare. For the most part, people speak freely about their ideas. For bloggers and press, it’s like being in a candy store but not having any money. You can listen and talk, but you can’t write about the endless streams of tidbits you pick up.

Between sessions and late into the evening people talk, try out gadgets (I had my first ride on a Segway yesterday, and watched some 3D video on a huge LCD) and generally geek out. In the evening beer and wine is served, and the hard alcohol comes out later. People stay up talking and playing a social game called Werewolf into the wee hours. I got sucked into the hugely addictive game last year, and wisely stayed away this time to get a little sleep between sessions.

Past attendees eagerly await their invitation to Foo Camp in the Spring, but most are disappointed. O’Reilly tries to make sure that half of all attendees in any year have never been to a previous Foo Camp. That means most people don’t get in again after attending, and it’s rare to meet an attendee who’s been to more than 2 or 3.

Foo Camp isn’t perfect - it is invitation only and the exclusivity of it has caused extensive griping over the years. An open version of Foo called Bar Camp sprang up in 2005, and those events are held all over the world for anyone who wants to attend.

But the imperfections aside, Foo Camp is a special event that leaves most attendees charged with ideas for new things to change the word, and new friends to stay in touch with. It reminds me of everything I love about Silicon Valley, without all the annoying distractions that come and go with the ups and downs in the flow of venture capital.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/334969426/

Last week a Swastika appeared on Google trends as a top queried term (leading to an endless debate as to whether the symbol was offensive or not). Google removed the symbol and returned our email query saying that a link on a a popular Internet bulletin board was to blame:

The Hot Trends list is automatically generated by machines and algorithms that detect hot or breaking queries. In this case, it appears that the html code for this query was posted on a popular internet bulletin board, which led to quite a few people searching to find out more about this symbol. The Hot Trends list reflected that surge due to people searching with this query.

A site called 4Chan may have been the bulletin board Google referred to as the original cause of the Swastika issue, it turns out.

Today it happened again, but instead of a Swastika the statement “ǝlƃooƃ noʎ ʞɔnɟ” appeared as the top queried term on Google Trends before again being taken down by Google. A comment in Google Blogoscoped forums noted that a tool called Flip can be used to invert text quite easily.

That explains how the text was flipped, but not how it managed to get by Google’s spam filters. My guess is they’ve put an engineer or three on fixing the problem to avoid further embarrassments, but they appear to have a dedicated opponent. No word yet on whether 4Chan was involved in this most recent spamming attempt or not.

Thanks for the tip Dave.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/335005763/

Starting today Google has integrated results from Code Search as snippets in the main search results page. Code Search was launched by Google in October of 2005 as a seperate vertical search property. As the name suggests, Code Search indexes and parses source code on the web and provides users a simple but flexible search and repository browsing interface.

For a Google property such as Code Search, integration into the main large-scale traffic flow via the primary search results page is an indicator of product maturity. Previously seperate properties such as Finance and Maps followed a similar development and audience exposure path.

Users of Code Search are able to locate reference implementations of common algorithms or routines, or search for best or worst practices amongst the code published and available. and queries filter based on license, language, package and more. Code Search competes with both Krugle and Koders, startups that were both founded prior to the launch of the Google code search service but that both provide their own unique features respectively.

Last week Google announced a number of improvements to Code Search, namely improved code highlighting, browsing (especially with larger projects) and ability to refine results based on class, project, file etc.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/334952222/