Ajax Girl

In the startup world, server spikes and downtime are a fact of life. We’ve seen countless startups fall prey to the huge rushes of traffic they receive at launch, and while it can be frustrating at times (see past comments), it’s not generally viewed as a sign of failure or incompetence.

But when you’re one of the largest tech corporations in the world, launching a much-hyped service, you’d think you might be prepared for something out of the ordinary.

Today Microsoft released Photosynth, a site that stitches plain photographs together to create a pseudo-3D world. Microsoft first presented the product back in 2006, and has since demoed it a number of times. The two year wait for Photosynth ended today as Microsoft finally opened the doors to the public.

And the millions of users who clamored to try it out promptly brought the server to its knees.

Okay, so Microsoft’s servers failed. It’s not something that should be happening to a massive tech company, but it isn’t the first time and it certainly won’t be the last. But instead of issuing a standard explanation apologizing for the outage, Microsoft wrote a blog post that sounded downright happy. Here’s an excerpt:

With everyone waking up around the world traffic has been on a steady ramp up since that release and has far exceeded even our most optimistic expectations.

Getting ready for the launch we did massive amounts of performance testing, built capacity model after capacity model, and yet with all of that, you threw so much traffic our way that we need to add more capacity. We are adding that extra horsepower right now and should be back up shortly.

Thank you for the incredible reception!

We see similar optimistic responses to server failure all the time from startups. Except they’re startups. Imagine if Apple had responded to the iPhone’s server registration outage by proclaiming that it was overjoyed by the overwhelming response. It’s understandable that Microsoft is happy to have made a product people like, but let’s save the celebrations until the program actually works.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/K8NtThEL-eU/

For some reason “Groups” - a pretty standard feature in most social networks - seems to be giving LinkedIn more than a little bit of trouble. The site originally launched Groups without a search function, making it difficult to find groups that users were interested in. Last month, the site finally introduced a groups directory, but apparently the response has been too positive, leading LinkedIn to place restrictions on user accounts: the site has arbitrarily limited the number of groups each member can join to 50, and is doing users the courtesy of automatically dropping them from the most recent groups they’ve joined should they go over that limit.

Then, last week, LinkedIn introduced a new “update” that was supposed to enhance its Groups section. Unfortunately, as part of the update, the site has either purposely or accidentally removed a significant portion of its Groups functionality, leaving a number of group leaders distressed as they have difficulty managing their users.

One GetSatisfaction thread by user LinkedOut lists the following:

-LinkedIn just changed (translation: “broke”) many things about LinkedIn Groups
-There is no longer a way to click over to a group’s external website from the list of your groups.
-There is no longer a way for group managers to sort the list of group members by name or by date joined.
-There is no longer the management option to view/approve 50, 100, or 500 members at a time - now there is just a default view of 20 per page and no matter how many members the group actually has, a group manager/owner can now only see a management list with a maximum of 100 members?!?!??!?!?!
-There is no longer a way to search your member list by email address?!
-There is no longer a way to see the members the manager had previously removed from the group (and thus to have the ability to add them back as appropriate).
-There is no longer a way to see which group members withdrew from the group.

The thread has garnered 83 replies, mostly from users with additional complaints. A LinkedIn employee has responded to the thread, explaining that most of the bugs will be fixed in the next few weeks. It’s nice to see that the employees are concerned, but how did such a buggy release ever make it out the door in the first place?

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/tXZrR_-rC6E/

Creating email spam lists is a multi-billion dollar business. Most webmail providers long ago closed a number of the more obvious methods spammers used to put together their lists in an automated way. One example - you don’t get bounced email messages from webmail services for emails to address that don’t exist. That way spammers can’t verify if an email address is good unless they get a response (clicking the opt out link is one sinister method to verify an email is good) or include a tracking pixel.

Apple, however, has created a dead simple way for spammers to easily spider their idisk property to retrieve the entire MobileMe user name list. And each of those usernames can be converted to an email address by adding @me.com or @mac.com to the end of it.

Here’s how it works. Every MobileMe user gets a public idisk file sharing site where they can post files for their public or private use. It’s simple to set the page to private, but it still shows the username if you to to the page. An example of a bad username: idisk.mac.com/mehmehmeh-Public. Here’s a good one: idisk.mac.com/steve-Public (That’s Steve Jobs’ account). There is no way as a user to hide or delete your public folder. If you are a MobileMe customer, you have one.

Gathering the entire MobileMe username list, and therefore email list, via a simple dictionary attack is trivial.

Apple knows about the problem but insists it isn’t an issue because no one has complained publicly. An Apple representative said to one of our readers: “We’ve never had a complaint from a customer about people spamming them because of their iDisk public folder name. There is no way to remove your account name from the iDisk folders. I’m very sorry.”

So here’s our public complaint. The bad guys already know about this. Your engineers shouldn’t have designed the product without thinking this through. Please fix it.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/m5RodfATT6k/

Paper maps are a pain. They’re clunky, get torn easily, and never seem to fold back the way they’re supposed to. Sure, you can always turn to a laptop or iPhone to get a digital copy, but most transit websites are painfully slow and difficult to navigate. What’s a wandering traveler to do?

Urban Mapping, a San Francisco based company founded in 2001, may have developed the next generation of maps. At least, they’ve made some maps that look cool and fold up nicely, which is enough for me. Each map consists of a layered plastic material, which comes together to form three (or more) maps in one. Each map appears depending on the angle that you view the sheet - it looks a lot like those toys you used to find in Cracker Jack Boxes, and uses the same (albeit improved) printing technique.

The two maps currently in production display the street view, neighborhood layout, and subway routes of Chicago and Manhattan, and retail for around $20. Depending on their reception, Urban Mapping say it can create simialr maps for any number of cities or other applications.

Urban Mapping actually released similar maps years ago, but the idea never took hold and the company wound up going bankrupt. It then switched gears and now licenses extensive mapping data related to neighborhoods and transit to big players like Yahoo, along with a number of smaller companies. Now that he’s got a sustainable company, founder Ian White is giving the dynamic maps another shot.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/VtPXubh6rbo/

I know Mossberg ‘reviewed’ the service a while back, but he was on the plane by himself with a cornucopia of devices. That’s not a real world situation. I was skeptical of the whole thing like most of you were, but after yesterday I’m completely sold. It’s not earth shattering or anything. I mean, it’s only Wi-Fi on a plane, but it’s finally here and better than expected.

Let’s start with the good. Getting yourself set up is super easy, but there is one caveat. Managing your Gogo account from a mobile device is limited and you’ll need a laptop to get everything up and running. It’s also not really worth it to pay $13 if you’re only going to be using your BlackBerry, iPhone or Windows Mobile device, but I digress. Setup is simple, but if you do run into some problems there is a 24-hour help desk that’s available to you via IM regardless of whether or not you’re connected. I actually used it yesterday and they got me squared away in a matter of minutes. Also, for the next month or two there will be Gogo reps from Aircell wearing mint green polos on board to help customers out. After that there will be telephone CSRs at your beck and call.

Read more…

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/XgqN4oxwRxI/

This inbox item caught my eye. Ebay commissioned a survey on behalf of their fast growing Kijiji product (it competes with and engages in litigation with Craigslist).

The survey revealed surprising (I use the term sarcastically) facts such as:

• 90% of Americans have at least one unused item lying around the house
• Unused electronics items can be found in more than 2/3 of households (70%)
• 38% of men are holding onto old electronics, compared to 35% of women

Want to sell that junk? You won’t get much for it. The average purchase price and resale value is below. Ebay turns those lemons into lemonade though: “Although you may not get much money back in some cases, it’s better than nothing – especially in these tough economic times. And we all know how quickly the value of electronics depreciates, so those poor saps holding onto their first-generation iPhones should probably unload them ASAP!”

Get that stuff on Kijiji pronto! On a side note, I wish we had unlimited amounts of money to commission random surveys.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/uXPiiJi1_pY/

That didn’t last long. Pageflakes CEO Dan Cohen, who sold his company to LiveUniverse in April, has left the company to “focus on new ventures.” He gets a gold star for being able to work with the litigious and often-angry-at-TechCrunch Brad Greenspan for a solid four months.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Om4QRG-k8d8/

It’s been about a year since TechCrunch UK relaunched under the capable hands of editor Mike Butcher, and his hard work is paying off. Readers of the Computer Weekly have voted it the best Web 2.0 and business blog in the UK. Congratulations, Mike. He was also named one of the top 100 media personalities in the UK by the Independent and invite-only, hoi-polloi social club the Hospital. At No. 47, he even beat out Gawker Media founder Nick Denton, No. 58 (who is British, but lives in New York City).

We regularly highlight some of Butcher’s posts here at TC Central, but if you are interested in the European Web scene, we hope you’ll bookmark TCUK or add it to your feed. And for those of you who read French, Ouriel Ohayon at TechCrunch France often scoops us on news. Both blogs have really helped us raise our visibility in Europe, and help us keep tabs on Web startups over there.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/cIpRpYP-JqM/

For the unenlightened, Git is a distributed version control system that’s recently taken the software development world by storm. It’s what we use to manage all of our source code at 37signals. GitHub is an online service providing Git repository hosting and collaboration tools (we featured them recently on the Product Blog).

Rails, Capistrano, and Prototype are already hosted on Github, and we’re going to be releasing some of our internal libraries and plugins there as well. Feel free to follow, fork, clone, and contribute!

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1206-37signals-on-github

In the last year, we’ve covered well over a dozen activity aggregators, nearly all of which share a single goal: helping you keep track of your friends’ exploits across the web.

Today, we see the launch of Fwix, an aggregator that is taking a (thankfully) different approach. Fwix isn’t concerned with your friends - instead, it keeps track of what’s going on in your physical region. The site pulls data from over 30 APIs including Yelp, Twitter, and Eventful, with more on the way. Every 15 minutes it combs through thousands of potential stories, using a series of algorithms to determine what the hottest items are in your city - it’s sort of like a regional News Feed.

But Fwix doesn’t just bear a resemblance to Facebook’s News Feed in function - a quick tour around the site reveals that it’s nearly visually identical as well. This isn’t a coincidence: Darian Shirazi, one of the site’s co-founders, was an early Facebook employee who was involved with the News Feed project.

The site is laid out well and is very intuitive. Users can browse through stories by their category (News, media, etc.), and can also choose to look at a regional or universal stream. And because there’s no login, the site could easily serve as a Digg alternative for users looking for a constant stream of new content to read (though I quickly began to wish it refreshed more often than once every 15 minutes).

Fwix has potential, but it still lacks a number of key features. For one, there’s really no way to figure out why a given story is being displayed in the feed. This morning I was presented with a series of photos of a Renaissance fair, with no indication as to why this stream was considered popular. To remedy this, Fwix needs to include a descriptive measure of each item’s popularity (something along the lines of “there have been 3 blog posts and 5 tweets about this photo”). There’s also currently no way to select which APIs you’d like to draw data from, though the team says this is on the way.

Fwix will see competition from a number of other activity streams (FriendFeed) and news aggregators (SocialMedian and Regator), but most of these do not consider location in their algorithms.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/SeeX8YKp1GA/