Ajax Girl

The time has come for us to release our final 200 tickets to the 3rd Annual August Capital Meet-Up. To join us this Friday, on July 25th, register at EventBrite. We look forward to seeing you along with hundreds of other techies at August Capital’s amazing outdoor patio in Menlo Park, California.

The only tickets left for August Capital are reserved for event sponsors. We still have a few sponsorship opportunities and demo tables available for companies to show off their products. If you are interested in supporting the event, please contact Jeanne Logozzo or Heather Harde. If you are a member of the press wanting to cover the event, please contact Sarah Ross.

We will be donating 100% of the ticket proceeds to Malaria No More, an inclusive, grassroots movement to control malaria, a preventable and treatable disease that kills more than one million people each year. $10 happens to exactly cover the cost of a single bed net that will protect a child from Malaria, by the way.

Attendee identification will be checked at the door. Due to the strong demand for tickets, we regret tickets are not transferable and not refundable. If you use your name to purchase multiple tickets, your guests must arrive with you to check in at the door.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/342012622/

I’m tired of waiting - I want a dead simple and dirt cheap touch screen web tablet to surf the web. Nothing fancy like the Dell latitude XT, which costs $2,500. Just a Macbook Air-thin touch screen machine that runs Firefox and possibly Skype on top of a Linux kernel. It doesn’t exist today, and as far as we can tell no one is creating one. So let’s design it, build a few and then open source the specs so anyone can create them.

Here’s the basic idea: The machine is as thin as possible, runs low end hardware and has a single button for powering it on and off, headphone jacks, a built in camera for video, low end speakers, and a microphone. It will have Wifi, maybe one USB port, a built in battery, half a Gigabyte of RAM, a 4-Gigabyte solid state hard drive. Data input is primarily through an iPhone-like touch screen keyboard. It runs on linux and Firefox. It would be great to have it be built entirely on open source hardware, but including Skype for VOIP and video calls may be a nice touch, too.

If all you are doing is running Firefox and Skype, you don’t need a lot of hardware horsepower, which will keep the cost way down.

The idea is to turn it on, bypass any desktop interface, and go directly to Firefox running in a modified Kiosk mode that effectively turns the browser into the operating system for the device. Add Gears for offline syncing of Google docs, email, etc., and Skype for communication and you have a machine that will be almost as useful as a desktop but cheaper and more portable than any laptop or tablet PC.

It will also include a custom default home page with large buttons for bookmarked services - news, Meebo/Ebuddy for IM, Google Docs/Zoho for Office, Email, social networks, photo sites, YouTube, etc. Everything that you use every day.

We’re working with a supply chain management company that says the basic machine we’re looking to build can be created for just a few hundred dollars. They need us to write the software modifications to Linux and Firefox (more on that below) and spec the hardware. Then they run with it and can have a few prototypes built within a month.

What will we call it? The best name I can think of is the Firefox Tablet, but that will take a round of discussions with Mozilla.

Here’s The Plan

We’ll organize a small team of people to spec this out. First is the marketing document that just outlines what the machine will do - we have a first draft of that already and will post it soon. Then we’ll spec out the hardware and get people to help write the customized Linux and Firefox code. Once we’ve completed the design we’ll start to work with the supply chain company to get an idea on the cost of the machine (the goal is $200), and hopefully build a few prototypes. Anyone who contributes significantly to the project would get one of those first prototypes. If everything works well, we’d then open source the design and software and let anyone build one that wants to.

The goal is to keep the machine very simple and very cheap. I think this will be a lot of fun, and it may just turn into an actual product that we can use to surf the web and talk to our friends.

We’ll be coordinating the project over at TechCrunchIT. Leave a comment there if you want to participate and we’ll be in touch soon.

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/~3/341871724/

One of the most frustrating things about online music services like Last.fm and Pandora is that they don’t allow users to play back songs in their entirety on demand. The sites have made some progress in the last few months (Last.fm introduced full-song playback for some labels in January and iLike implemented it this morning), but for the most part these features are still limited by the agreements each site has forged with record labels.

Today sees the launch of Favtape, a new mashup that mixes Pandora, Last.fm, Seeqpod, and Slinkset to offer full playback of your favorite songs on demand, without any limitations. The site was created by Ryan Sit, one of the developers behind blog/lifecasting service Swurl.

Favtape pulls your Favorites (or “Loved”) list from Pandora and Last.fm and generates a playlist that contains full versions of each song. The interface is overly basic at this point - you can start and stop the song by clicking on its title, but there’s no way to rearrange them to create a new playlist. Below each song is a list of related links that allow users to purchase the song, view lyrics, and see a list of similar artists. Favtape will initially generate revenue through the links to iTunes, Amazon, and Ringtones displayed under each song.

The site also features a Digg-like “Discovery” option that allows users to vote on the best playlists. Unfortunately, there’s no way to actually tweak your playlists to make them more appealing without modifying your “Favorites” from Last.fm or Pandora. This lack of playlist customization is frustrating, but will likely be added soon.

Favtape makes heavy use of the Seeqpod API, which it uses for song playback and recommendations. While this presumably will help Favtape avoid any legal trouble (it isn’t actually hosting any music), it is also making it totally reliant on a service that is on shaky ground. Seeqpod isn’t hosting any music either (it crawls the internet searching for files hosted on other servers), but that hasn’t stopped the lawsuits from coming. For the time being, though, Favtape offers a great way to listen to your favorite songs without paying a cent. A simialr site that relies on Seeqpod (but doesn’t auto-generate playlists) is Streamzy, which we covered earlier this month.

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/~3/341849498/

MySpace will announce support for the OpenID single sign-on framework sometime this week, we’ve heard from multiple sources. This will be the second largest implementation ever and will bring the total number of OpenID-enabled accounts to over half a billion. MySpace’s 200 million user IDs join Yahoo’s 250 million or so accounts, plus accounts from a number of other large providers.

Like most large company integrations, MySpace is at first becoming an OpenID issuer only, and may integrate as a relying party down the road. We’ve argued that becoming an issuer is essentially a land grab for user identities. The integration work on accepting OpenIDs from others is harder, and the payoff is less.

MySpace may also be writing code to extend the OpenID spec and allow easy integration of their Data Availability product to sites that accept MySpace OpenIDs.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/341744537/

I can’t even begin to imagine the complexity of rolling out something as big as the iPhone 3G/2.0. You have to coordinate retail, marketing, web services, support, manufacturing, shipping, and many of other business and tech units months in advance.

They all have to be ready by a a date determined by guesswork, pressure, and wishful thinking. Which means that you essentially have to make the call that the product is going to be done long before it actually is.

For the iPhone 1.0 launch, that bet paid off. The software for the phone felt solid. Everything just worked well. Fondling with the phone for the first time was intoxicating. It just tasted so incredibly Apple.

With the iPhone 2.0 launch, not so much. I’ve been using the phone every day for about a week now and it just isn’t up to the great expectations set by the first version. Everything feels so incredibly fragile. Here are just a few of the griefs I’ve felt:

• Annoying delays all over the place.
• Changing to the SMS view can take more than 10 seconds at times.
• Transitions between apps are being dropped entirely or cut short (the latter looks like a UI stutter).
• It some times requires 3 clicks on the fast-forward button in iTunes to get a response.
• The screen will freeze for 4-5 seconds not accepting any input, then replay ALL your feverous tapping when it finally returns.
• Some times the keyboard will not keep up with your input (and I’m not that fast of a typer).
• I’ve had applications crash numerous times.
• The entire phone has crashed twice.
• Restarting the phone kinda helps some of these problems, but not for long and it feels so dirty and Windows-like to do.

Now all of this could probably have been overlooked and forgiven if the payback from the new features was immense, but to me, it just isn’t. I have two screens of applications installed, but don’t really use them that much.

3rd party apps doesn’t make up for it
Twitterific is nice, but not much of a step up from just using the iPhone-optimized web version. I like WeatherBug too to get a doppler radar reading, but nothing a bookmark to weather.com didn’t do almost as well. I’ve installed but not actually used AIM, NetNewsWire, Yelp, Movies.app, Facebook, PayPal, NYTimes, Light, Sketches, and VNC yet.

It seems like the biggest new thing is the games. I’ve been playing some Tetris, some Super Monkey Ball, and a few others. And they’re really impressive! The graphics are great and controlling with the accelerometer often works better than you’d think.

3G is bliss and bastard all in one
The hardware features are also a nice improvement. The built-in GPS is fast and accurate. The 3G is a lot more mixed bag, though. When it works, it’s absolutely fantastic. It’s so much faster than Edge and really takes the experience that 2.0-like step up. The voice quality is also significantly up. But it’s just so incredibly unreliable.

Getting a 3G signal in central Chicago is like playing the corner on roulette. And when it drops back to edge, you lose all your chips of joy. I actually kinda like getting ultra fast just 20% of time and slowpoke speeds 80% of the time less than just being slow always.

As to double down on the insult, the battery life is absolutely terrible with 3G turned on. You’re absolutely required to recharge every day and it’s not unlikely that you’ll flame out in the middle of a day either with heavy use.

The cumulative effect of small problems is exponential
Combined, it’s a rather big disappointment. I’m surprised just how much impact the small griefs have when they add up to a lack of confidence in the system. It’s a great example of the cumulative effects of problems. They have an exponential damage on the experience.

And I haven’t even gone into much detail on how ridiculously bad the buying experience is compared to the first time around. Jason and I bought a EVDO card in a Sprint store the other day and we spent probably 30 minutes there. We joked about how lame that experience was. Buying the iPhone 3G took almost as long and felt almost as bad.

That’s not to say that the iPhone isn’t the best phone I’ve ever had. It is. By a wide margin. But the 2.0 launch itself has been a big disappointment and that’s too bad.

It feels a little like Apple got swept up in knocking down every single detraction point from 1.0 that they lost sight of what everyone loved about the first version. Yes, it got cheaper (not really), faster (some times), installable apps, and GPS, but it lost a bit of Apple soul in the process.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1148-iphone-20-the-glory-wore-off-in-wash

Thsrs

Thsrs helps you get briefer.

If only there were a service that helps with the struggle of rewriting a 146-letter message to fit in a 140 character limit. Well now there is: Thsrs, the thesaurus that only gives you synonyms shorter than the word you’re looking up. Just enter one of the longer words in your message, and Thsrs will suggest shorter words to use instead.

Posterous

Posterous, a Tumblr-like service, lets you post things online fast using email.

You can attach any type of file and we’ll post it along with the text of your email. We’ll do smarter things for photos, MP3’s, documents and video links.

Lohse
The Richard Paul Lohse site has pretty colors.

T-26

37signals affiliate badges at T-26. Sign up for the 37signals Affiliate Program to post your own and make money selling 37signals products.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1145-screens-around-town-thsrs-posterous-lohse-and-t-26

Carl Icahn and Yahoo have come to a settlement over control of Yahoo’s board. In return for three board seats, Icahn has agreed to withdraw his alternative slate of nominees and back down from a full-fledged proxy war. Icahn will be given a seat on the board, existing board member Robert Kotick (CEO of Activision) will step down, and the board will be expanded to 11 members from the current ten. The two resulting empty seats will be determined by vote, filled from Icahn’s alternate slate of directors and giving him three seats on the new board. Former AOL CEO Jonathan Miller will also be eligible to take one of the empty seats, and likely will.

This outcome is probably the best that Icahn could have hoped for. Icahn overplayed his hand by trying to negotiate directly with Microsoft before he had enough authority to do so (he owns five percent of Yahoo’s shares). The result was a three-way negotiation between Icahn, Microsoft, and Yahoo that resembled a game of Telephone, with mixed messages flying everywhere.

Microsoft ended up distancing itself from Icahn, and other large institutional shareholders like Legg Mason’s Bill Miller decided that ganging up with Icahn would be a bad idea. And Yahoo began soliciting votes for its current board members on its homepage.

It appears that realized he couldn’t win the proxy fight, and took the opportunity to grab a portion of the board. While other activists would have liked to see Icahn take four seats, three seats still gives him a strong position from which to agitate for change. So we haven’t heard the last from Icahn on the future of Yahoo.

(Photo by Sam Lustgarten)

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/341478343/

Mariam Naficy, co-founder of failed beauty startup Eve.com (which went belly up when the bubble burst in 2000), has launched her latest venture: Minted, an online stationery store with a competitive marketplace reminiscent of the one found on custom t-shirt store Threadless.

The site offers graphic designers a community to showcase and (hopefully) sell their designs, which are voted on by customers. The best designs are printed and sold, with about 5% of the retail price going to the designer (this may sound small, but Naficy says it is near double what a designer might get from a traditional card company like Hallmark). On top of the revenue sharing, the site will also hold regular competitions, with winning entries winning on the order of $1000. To further sweeten the deal for the designers, all cards have the artists’ name emblazoned in fine print on the back (another thing you won’t see on typical greeting cads).

The store will sell a mix of designer-submitted cards and cards from established independent card companies. While Minted is starting with stationery, it will likely expand to other products in the future. Minted will initially only sell its cards through its online storefront, but Naficy says that there ample opportunities for partnerships and alternative distribution channels down the line. If the site is going to succeed, it will need to establish these ties quickly - few people are going to buy from a stationery store they’ve never heard of, giving designers little reason to submit their designs in the first place.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/341695921/

We’ve been wanting to offer regularly scheduled webcast tours (or is it a webinar??) of our products for a while now, but we’ve been unable to find the right piece of software on the Mac to get it done.

Here’s what we want: We want to be able to share our screen and our voice and allow up to 100 (?) people at a time to follow along in their web browsers. People who wanted to participate would go to a URL to watch the presentation. Voice could be handled via the net or via a coordinated conference call.

At the end we could do a Q&A session. We’d need some way to moderate the questions so everyone doesn’t jump in at once. We could ultimately just take questions via text/email and then pick a few to answer.

We’re aware of services like GoToMeeting, but you can’t initiate the webcast from a Mac. You can watch along on a Mac, but you can’t seem to broadcast from a Mac. Adobe Captivate looks interesting too, but you can only have a max of 5 people on the webcast.

Anyone have any ideas? Anything I’m overlooking? Thanks for your help.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1147-webcasting-software-for-the-mac

Adam DuVander over at WebMonkey has compiled a list of their five favorite Firebug extensions. The ever-popular YSlow tops the list, but to that they add:

• Firefookie for easy access to cookie information
• FirePHP to integrating server-provided PHP debugging information with the Firebug UI
• Pixel Perfect for overlaying mock-ups on top of the real thing to ensure you’ve got a good implementation
• Rainbow for JavaScript syntax highlighting

Nice list!

Source: Ajaxian » Front Page
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/341564288/webmonkeys-five-best-firebug-extensions