Ajax Girl

With the economy slipping closer to rock bottom every day now, many of us are going to have to start cutting back on our day-to-day expenditures. Cue Voice2Insight’s The Expense Tracker, an online expense tracking system that makes entering every transaction as easy as calling a phone number and saying a few words.

Most expense trackers require users to input their daily transactions from their computers, which is time consuming and requires an impressive memory (or very organized receipts). Voice2Insight’s system allows users to call a designated number, where they’re prompted by an automated system to state the amount they’ve just spent and what category the transaction would fall under (for example, I might say “Groceries, $50″). And if you forget to leave one of the voice messages, you can manage your account from the computer as you would with a traditional system.

The service costs $15 a month ($10 if you buy six months at a time), which may be too steep for some people. I think The Expense Tracker would probably be better off adopting a model similar to Mint, offering ads for targeted financial products based on spending habits. Then again, paying for the service may make users feel obligated to use it religiously (some people swear by expensive gym memberships for this reason).

Other companies in the expense tracking space include Expensify and ShoeBoxed.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/cHZGzogY_z0/

Private equity fund Mithras Capital, which holds 1.9 million shares of Yahoo (about 0.14%), will propose to Microsoft that they buy Yahoo at $22 per share, Reuters reports. Microsoft would then unload Yahoo’s Asian assets adn non-search businesses, take $3 billion worth of cost savings and some tax benefits, and end up with Yahoo’s search business for $10.3 billion.

Microsoft is obviously thrilled to see this kind of corporate chaos at Yahoo, although they are unlikely to even respond to the proposal. Yahoo, as usual, looks like amateur hour as their shareholders conduct (or try to conduct) negotiations behind their back.

Mithras Capital partner Mark Nelson said he will send a letter proposing the deal to Microsoft and Yahoo this evening.

Meanwhile, Yahoo was down another 8.1% today, to $12.65, from yesterday’s close of $13.76.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/D81gBZF1L8s/

Since the launch of YouTube’s API and the release of Seeqpod, we’ve seen many sites emerge that allow users to create playlists of their favorite songs that can be streamed free of charge. Unfortunately, this can be a tedious task - oftentimes users are forced to recreate the playlists they already have in iTunes because the sites lack an upload function. SonicSwap, a startup that launched this week, has addressed this issue by creating a free streaming music site that can monitor a user’s iTunes music library, adjusting playlists in real time and effectively giving users access to their entire iTunes library from any computer.

The site features an interface that is nearly identical to iTunes (CEO Dan Skilken says that his artists redrew the familiar icons, but it’s tough to tell). Users can access their playlists on the left side of the screen and the main panel on right has a list of songs, with the video/music player controls at the top. The site pulls audio and video through the YouTube API, and while it comes up with a few false matches (playing back bad cover versions or karaoke), in general it is speedy and accurate.

To use the use the dynamically updating feature, users download a SonicSwap plugin that is available for both Mac and Windows. The plugin monitors songs that are currently playing as well as changes in iTunes playlists (including Smart Playlists), and frequently updates the user profile on the site. If you’re not comfortable installing a plugin, you can also upload your iTunes Music Library.XML file, but you’ll have to manaully do this each time you want to sync your SonicSwap library with iTunes.

Users can make their profiles public, so anyone can access their music library, or they can restrict it to only friends (or just to themselves). And in the next few weeks the site will roll out a widget that allows users to embed entire library and playlists as widgets into their blogs and social networks. The site generates revenue by driving traffic to iTunes and Amazon’s online stores.

For those that aren’t interested in uploading their playlists - with a plugin or otherwise- SonicShare is still worth checking out. It has a very well done interface, and seems to work just as well as its competitors, which include Songza, Favtape, and Streamzy. Another site that focuses on playlists is UPlayMe, which has created a playlist-centric social network.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/536cSblDnio/

This week’s award for best marketing promotion related to the election goes to AirBed & Breakfast, the peer-to-peer pad crashing site for travelers. (You list how much per night you want for travelers to stay on your floor, and they book through the site). Today, I received a package from AirBed & Breakfast containing the two boxes of cereal pictured above: Obama O’s and Cap’n McCain’s. In addition to the physical boxes of cereal, there are two catchy jingles for each cereal (embedded below), and a Webpage where you can vote for the cereal you prefer.

What does this have to do with AirBed & Breakfast? To promote the service, the startup is encouraging people across the country to put up get-out-the-vote volunteers for each campaign. Hosts can order a box of whichever cereal they prefer and serve it for breakfast. (Except each box costs $39, and the company only made 500 of each).

I just really like the design. The front of the Obama O’s box is stamped with “Hope In Every bowl” and on the back it calls itself the “Breakfast of Change.” The McCain character on the Cap’n McCain’s box is appropriately wearing a naval officer’s uniform, and the side of the box sings the praise of eating squares (inside the box are repackaged Quaker Puffs; the Obama O’s a re really Honey O’s). The copy on the side of the Cap’n McCain’s box could have been written by his campaign:

Os may look pretty, but have you ever noticed there’s something missing? That’s right, there’s a hole in the middle of every O. With Cap’n McCain’s you get a whole piece of cereal in every bite.

It also points out that “Squares Are Stackable” and that “Squares Keep America Regular.” But the Obama O’s jingle is catchier. Have a listen:

Obama O’s

Captn McCain

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/xAVfEFS09Ow/

Rails tip: Use subdirectories to namespace images by resource. Eg. images/people/add.gif vs. images/companies/add.gif

—Ryan

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1300-rails-tip-use-subdirectories-to-namespace

The Future of Web Apps conference kicked off in London today and almost 2,000 startups and developers hit the East of London for the event. Highlights from the day included Kevin Rose from Digg, and a bunch of great speakers. Every year the event changes and there is an interesting pivot point going on as the European scene develops.

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/~3/5ci3cKtYvgQ/

With Google’s stock down $100 in the past two weeks, the company all of a sudden isn’t so shy about pulling every advertising lever it can reach. So far this week, we’ve seen new click-to-buy buttons on YouTube (YouTubevertorials), AdSense for Flash games, and now text ads are appearing at the bottom of Google Maps. This may be bucket testing, but when I enter “New York City hotels” on Google Maps, I get a single line below with text ads for the Crowne Plaze Times Square and the Ramada New York. (An arrow lets you cycle through the ads).

Other bloggers around the world have noticed the same thing, including Amit Agarwal in India and David Shaw in the UK. The ads are local business ads, but seem to be triggered by the search terms.

What’s disappointing about these ads is that instead of taking you to a pushpin on the map itself showing you the location of the business doing the advertising, it takes you to the Website of that business like a normal search ad. But this is more about Google turning on a gusher of ad inventory that it was ignoring before than about creating an elegant map-based advertising experience. According to comScore, 131 million unique visitors worldwide checked out Google Maps in August. They generated 1.3 billion pageviews. That’s a lot of untapped ad inventory.

Where will we see Google place ads next?

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/10hNS6yjSW0/

Amazon has introduced a tiered pricing scheme for S3, its cloud storage service, that will take advantage of increasing economies of scale and go into effect November 1st.

Currently, American customers pay $0.15 for each gigabyte of data they store each month. With the new scheme, this will remain the price only for users who require less than 50 terabytes of storage. Once demands exceed that level, pricing drops to $0.14 and then $0.13 per gigabyte-month, and then settles at $0.12 for customers who need to storage over 500 terabytes of data.

Data transfer costs remain unaffected, as do those of simply making requests to S3. A similarly tiered scheme for storage will be made available to European customers, with pricing starting at $0.18 per gigabyte-month.

As part of the pricing announcement, Amazon has revealed that S3 currently stores over 29 billion objects with peak usage rates of 70,000 storage, retrieval and deletion requests per second.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/WDYyXCsc2dU/

You should never hire anyone for something you haven’t first struggled to do on your own. It’ll teach you most of what you need to know to actually interview candidates, it’ll allow you to understand the nature of the work better (do I even need to hire or can we outsource?), and you’ll know exactly what a job well done will look like. It’ll also give you a sense of whether the job is big enough for a full-time hire yet or if you can skimp by on your own (the latter is preferable if possible).

Jason didn’t hire me to help him program Singlefile (now defunct) before he had a sorta-just-barely-working prototype running off his own PHP skills. I didn’t hire Mark to do system administration before I had spent a whole Summer setting up a cluster. Jason didn’t get Sarah on board to do support before he had first done it for years on his own.

The benefits of having done the work yourself before seeking help doesn’t stop at hiring either. You’ll be a much better manager of roles that you’ve already held than when you’re completely in the dark about what it takes to perform. You’ll have empathy available when the going gets tough and it’s not their fault — and a stern voice when it is.

Don’t let big titles scare you off either. What does a business development person do? Find out by trying it on! Call people, make a few deals. Think you need a usability tester? Try a simple session on your own first with friends. No, it won’t be perfect. That’s okay. What you’re paying in initial execution will be repaid many times over by the benefits above.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1296-do-it-yourself-first

The team behind Wakoopa, a social network that tracks and shares information about the desktop applications used by its members, noticed that Firefox and Safari were consistently ranked as the network’s top two applications by usage. So they took this as a cue to start measuring web apps in addition to desktop apps, since their data confirm (at least among the developer types drawn to its service) what we already know anecdotally: that web apps are slowly replacing desktop apps.

Starting today, sites like Flickr will be listed as software programs alongside traditional desktop apps like Photoshop. And if you check out a user’s profile page, such as co-founder Robert Gaal’s, you’ll see sites like Scribd and Gmail ranked alongside Adium and iTunes.

Wakoopa faces a bit of a challenge when it comes to defining, and then identifying, web apps. Virtually all websites could be considered web apps, but the line has to be drawn somewhere for practical purposes (Picnik is undoubtedly a web app but your cousin’s GeoCities page clearly is not). Wakoopa has decided to leverage our very own CrunchBase API to make the distinction, since most of the sites in CrunchBase meet the relevant criteria.

How important is this new functionality to Wakoopa’s success? It may turn out to be one of the most important product decisions the company makes. Gaal himself says that he “wouldn’t be surprised if [they] end up only tracking online software in the future.”

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/XiA89_uSh54/