Ajax Girl

Design philosophies could hardly be further apart. Google’s ironically named Chrome browser, which launched last month, advanced the notion that browsers ought to be neither seen nor heard. Like operating systems, they should sit obediently in the background and make sure that the applications on top of them run quickly, reliably and safely.

Flock has always taken the opposite approach, insisting that the browser should provide a lot of upfront functionality on its own, not fade out of sight. Tonight’s release of Flock 2.0, which brings the Mozilla-based browser up-to-speed with Firefox 3 technology and adds new support for MySpace and media RSS, reasserts this notion by giving the browser an even higher visibility than before.

Flock 2.0 is the first browser to take advantage of media RSS, a standard developed by Yahoo that syndicates rich content like photos and videos much like regular RSS syndicates blog posts. Now Flock users can add media RSS feeds to their My World start pages from any website that provides them, such as 12seconds.tv and Qik. VP of Marketing and Business Development Dan Burkhart describes media RSS as the quickest way for small to medium sized startups to integrate with Flock.

MySpace has finally been integrated into Flock, allowing users to see their MySpace contacts in a sidebar where they can message them and easily share content they find while surfing the web. Perhaps most usefully, Flock users can now comment on friends’ profiles with videos and photos without needing to know any code. The developers at Flock have been working closely with MySpace to get this all set up and have leveraged the Data Availability platform to do so.

Lastly, and most importantly, the underlying code of Flock 2 has been upgraded to match that of Firefox 3. While most of the improvements are under the hood and include things such as better memory management, you’ll notice certain distinguishing Firefox 3 features such as the Awesome Bar.

What’s not in this release? Instant messaging is notably absent, although Burkhart says it’s definitely in development and will support the most commonly used IM protocols. No word on when it will launch but it sounds like Flock’s most important feature, now that MySpace integration has been added.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Unj3IfcZh9w/

When it comes to layoffs, 1/3 of total staff seems to be a magic number. Portland based Jive Software, which is backed by Sequoia, laid off around 40 people today, a third of their total staff. This follows massive employee growth over the last year. Twelve months ago the company had around 60 employees.

Two Vice Presidents are among those that left - Marty Kagan, VP Engineering and Scott Campbell, VP Sales.

One employee, Chris Kalani, had resigned and his last day was this Friday. But according to his blog he was walked out today along with the others. And as usual, standard human resources procedure meant he and the others couldn’t use their computers again. In a new twist, they weren’t even allowed back to their desks to collect their personal items.

We’re tracking layoffs under the DeadPool tag.

Update: I spoke with Jive CMO Sam Lawrence, who confirms the company had a Reduction in Force today. He won’t confirm how many people (or who) was laid off, but did say that Kalani’s blog post was inaccurate and overstated. He also confirms the company is financially healthy and remains profitable, but that they felt this was necessary given changing market conditions to “stay ahead of the curve.” Lawrence also said that employees who were let go were absolutely allowed to take their personal items with them.

Those of us who went through the last downturn will remember this: the first companies to let people go are often the ones who survive.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/2QN6p2BmLx4/

Ahead of tomorrow’s earnings announcement from Google, comScore just released its search market share figures for September. Google’s overall share of search queries in the U.S. dipped from 63% in August to 62.2%. Yahoo and Ask (whose search is powered by Google) saw the biggest gains.

U.S. Search Market Share (September, 2008)

On the bright side for Google, both its annual and quarterly search query volume growth rates are accelerating. Year-over-year, Google’s query growth was 38.6 percent, up from around 33 percent each of the past three months. (On a quarter-over-quarter basis, the growth rate was 35 percent). Wall Street will likely focus on this acceleration as a slight positive for the stock.

Google as helped by overall search queries growing 26.9 percent across all search engines. Only Ask’s search volume grew faster, at 45.5 percent year-over-year. And that helps Google as well, since Ask is a partner. AOL, another partner, saw 18.9 percent growth in search queries. Yahoo saw only 7.1 percent growth, and Microsoft saw a measly 3.0 percent growth (but at least its growth rate did not decline as it had each of the previous three months).

U.S. Y/Y Search Query Growth Rates (September, 2008)

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/mgaRO7qNFIM/

By this point, most Americans have made up their minds about who they are going to vote for President come Election Day. But if you are still trying to decide, or just want to reassure yourself that you are indeed voting for the candidate who most closely reflects your views, take the Glassbooth Quiz. The site is run by a non-partisan, non-profit organization. You tell the site what your positions are on a range of issues, and it spits back compatibility scores for each of the Presidential candidates (including third-party candidates Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, and Bob Barr). You can try it just to make sure you really are on the same page with your preferred candidate.

Here’s how it works. First, you indicate which issues you care about the most by distributing 20 points among 16 different topics (Taxes and Budget, Science, Civil Liberties and Domestic Security, Iraq and Foreign Policy, Internet and Media, Trade and Economics, Environment and Energy, Gun Control, etc.)

Then you are asked a series of questions, whether you support or oppose policy proposals such as tax cuts for the middle class or enforcing net neutrality. Each question has a rating scale from “Strongly oppose” to “strongly support”:

Once you finish the quiz, it shows you how you match up overall to each candidate, and issue by issue. You can then drill down by issue and read the candidates’ statements on each one, with links to the sources. It is a good way to start evaluating the candidates across more than one or two hot-button issues. You might even be surprised to find out who you agree (or disagree) with the most.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/GXq5LTQwp7k/

Yahoo! Releases OpenID Research

None of the users had heard of OpenID before, and none of them even noticed the OpenID sign-in box displayed below the traditional email/password login form on the site. In many cases, the test subjects entered their Yahoo email address and Yahoo password to try to log in. We had told the test subjects that they could sign into the site using their Yahoo! account without having to register…Certainly there is a lot of work to be done on the OpenID UX (user experience) front.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1309-yahoo-releases-openid-research

A few months ago iPhone application developer Tapulous announced FriendBook, an app that would allow users to hold shake their phones together to exchange contact information - a fun and simple alternative to pocketfuls of clumsy business cards. Unfortunately, FriendBook still remains unreleased after a wave of shakeups over at Tapulous, and while we’ve seen a few alternatives like rmbrME, none of them have the simplicity of a proximity-based, wireless transfer.

Thankfully developer Meganova BV has created an application called Nameo that manages to replicate much of the functionality promised by FriendBook. The app was released on the App Store last night and is available for $2.99 here.

To use Nameo, you open up the application on your iPhone and hit “Connect” as your peers do the same. The app will detect other phones in the vicinity and will display a list of available contacts. Clicking on a name will add that contact’s information to your iPhone’s address book. The process is very intuitive, though there was a noticeable lag time whenever I tried to add a contact.

In our testing the app seemed to work well, even when using a first generation iPhone that doesn’t have GPS. My main concern is that Nameo doesn’t seem to have any kind of authorization system when it comes time to swap contact information - the app just displays the name of everyone nearby who has hit Connect, and anyone standing in the vicinity is free to download their information. The app is also very barebones at this point, only allowing users to exchange their name, Email address, and phone number (the developer promises more options including contact photos in a future release).
Update: The phone does have a confirmation system - both users have to click Yes to allowing the other user to access their information. I misread the popup when we tested it.

Nameo is planning to introduce support for other platforms in the future, which will be essential if it ever hopes to become more than a neat trick - especially given the ubiquity of BlackBerrys in the business world. For now it’s a step in the right direction and hopefully will be enough to wake handset manufactures up to the fact that this is something people want, and that we’re desperately in need of a standard that works across all phones.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/cIAJo9KHGyM/

I spent a few days out in the country last weekend. The city may have the energy, but the country helps me recharge.

Something I really noticed this time was just how dark dark is in the country. The view through the window at night is empty. It might as well be painted black.

In Chicago you can’t find total darkness outside. Nighttime is tinted orange. Street lights, lamps, passing cars, reflections — they all dye the dark. When you look out the window at night in the city you can what’s outside.

It’s not any better or worse, it’s just different.

You also can’t really see the nighttime sky in the city. You can look up, but you can’t see what’s really up there. You may catch a few lucky stars and that moon, but there a million things missing.

All of this reminds me that everything is relative. Dark here isn’t dark there even though it’s nighttime in both places. The sky there isn’t the sky here. Even though you’re looking up at the same thing, they aren’t the same.

That’s a good thing to be reminded of from time to time.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1308-dark-and-dark

Yahoo wants to change your mind about its search engine. It wants you to know that it is better at helping you find things thanks features like its SearchAssist auto-complete keywords, safe searching filters, and Search Monkey add-ons. So it is launching a campaign with display ads like the one on the left for the Web and radio spots as well trying to paint Google’s search engine as an inferior product—a place where people go to get lost.

Of course, Yahoo’s market share numbers tell a different story. In the U.S., it’s share of query volume as measured by comScore declined about a point in August to 19.6 percent, while Google’s rose a point to 63 percent. And if you look at traffic to each search engine, In the U.S., Yahoo has been flat for a year (up 0.8 percent) with 76.1 million unique visitors in August, while Google is up 16.9 percent to 127.9 million uniques. (These numbers are just for their respective search engines). Worldwide, the gap is even bigger, with Google attracting a whopping 636 million unique visitors in August (up 31.7 percent), versus Yahoo’s 231 million (down 3.4 percent).

So can an advertising campaign change any of that? Search is not like a soft drink. People use the search engine that they think can do the best job in helping them find things. Now, maybe Google has brainwashed all of us to believe that it does indeed produce more relevant results. And in a blind taste-test, more people might choose Yahoo’s results. But if that is the case, I’d rather take an interactive quiz that puts each search engine to the test and make my own decision. That would go much farther to convince me to switch than Yahoo’s current creative.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/WlNAjmqra2U/

There is a home for creatives in between poverty and stardom. Somewhere lower than stratospheric bestsellerdom, but higher than the obscurity of the long tail. I don’t know the actual true number, but I think a dedicated artist could cultivate 1,000 True Fans, and by their direct support using new technology, make an honest living.

—Kevin Kelly: “1,000 True Fans”

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1294-there-is-a-home-for-creatives-in-between

Yesterday, President Bush signed into law the Pro-IP Act, which further criminalizes consumer behavior and appoints a new “Copyright Czar” to oversee enforcement of the new measures. The law triples damages in copyright infringement cases, allows the government to seize property used to usurp a company’s copyrights (hang onto those laptops), and makes each song, movie, or other piece of stolen content a separate criminal offense. (So somebody found guilty of pirating an album with ten songs will be guilty of ten crimes instead of one). The law is so over the top that even the Department of Justice opposed it.

Chalk this one up as another victory in the copyright wars to the reactionaries who don’t want anything to change. They think that copyright law written in the pre-digital age needs to be reinforced instead of rethought. Lawrence Lessig described what is at stake in an Op-Ed yesterday in the Wall Street Journal:

We are in the middle of something of a war here — what some call “the copyright wars”; what the late Jack Valenti called his own “terrorist war,” where the “terrorists” are apparently our kids. . . . Peer-to-peer file sharing is the enemy in the “copyright wars.” Kids “stealing” stuff with a computer is the target. The war is not about new forms of creativity, not about artists making new art.

Yet every war has its collateral damage. These creators are this war’s collateral damage. The extreme of regulation that copyright law has become makes it difficult, sometimes impossible, for a wide range of creativity that any free society — if it thought about it for just a second — would allow to exist, legally. In a state of “war,” we can’t be lax.

The copyright wars threaten to kill new forms of creativity and free speech that are emerging on the Web. What is lacking in bills like the Pro-IP Act is a counterbalancing protection of free speech and a clearer definition of fair use. A video mashup of a 13-month-old baby dancing to Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” should be fair use, but YouTube was asked to take down that exact video anyway and it did. Because nobody wants to take these things to court or pay triple damages. Under the new law, would each view of such a video be considered a separate infringement?

If John McCain or Barack Obama really want to show their independence from corporate lobbyists then they should explain how they will help to steer copyright law into the 21st Century.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/HZ_Vb-8yCps/