Ajax Girl

John Resig linked to an interesting new time picker UI that Maxime Haineault implemented as a jQuery plugin:

He made a “two click” time picker. The first click is within the time field. This activates the display and allows the user to choose the time - all of which is done by moving the mouse over the times that you desire. The final click is anywhere - filling in the time that was chosen. It’s hard to explain, you simply have to try it.

One thing that you’ll notice using it is that it’s fast. Very fast. I’d argue much faster than clicking into the input area, moving to the keyboard for entering the time, typing the time, then moving back to mouse.

I would be remiss not to mention John’s other post of the day, where he goes into detail on CSS Animations and CSS Animations.

Source: Ajaxian » Front Page
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/450303466/time-picker-ui

Time for a bit of fun. The eternal battle of tables vs. CSS layouts continues. We geeks have had classics such as vi vs. emacs, and Star Wars vs. Star Trek.

First up we have giveupandusetables.com:

And then we have shouldiusetablesforlayout.com:

You have to take a look at the source for that one

Who will win? Maybe both, with display: table in the future.

Source: Ajaxian » Front Page
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/450315522/css-and-tables-the-war-continues

Jaduka, a communications company that effectively creates an API for telephone-based services, has a launched a new conference call service called dukaUS that’s easy to use and totally free.

To initiate a call, you need to create an account (name, Email address, and phone number, but no billing information). After entering up to six phone numbers, the site will automatically dial each number and connect them over the service’s land-based phone system. After the call starts you can add more callers (up to the limit of six total participants) through the site’s web page.

Unsurprisingly, there are a few restrictions to the free service: all numbers involved must be in the United States or Canada, and you’re allotted a total of 30 minutes per day for group calls. The system also has a few quirks. In our test call with three people, there was a noticeable lag - nothing that would make a conversation unintelligible, but definitely enough to get annoying. The system also doesn’t seem to recognize if one of the members of the call gets disconnected, and there’s no ‘re-connect’ button - you’ll need to re-add dropped participants as another member of the call.

Still, for a free service that takes relatively little effort to set up, dukaUS delivers. And while it may not be suitable for lengthy business calls that are typically done over call bridges, it’s more than adequate for more casual group meetings.

Offering free conference calls isn’t a new idea, but it’s also one that never seemed like a viable business. We’ve seen similar services from startups like Gaboogie (which eventually shifted focus) and Foonz, which is still around but will likely have a hard time generating revenue. But dukaUS isn’t out to make money - it’s a product developed by Jaduka Labs to showcase the site’s technology and raise brand awareness, so it won’t be struggling to find a way to turn its complimentary service into a business.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/JDCSQSt6pN0/

London based uberVU is about to launch a discussion-tracking product that will aggregate comments, Twitters, FriendFeed comments, trackbacks and other information about any URL (like a blog post) on the Internet.

There’s real demand for this. Any given blog post, for example, may have lots of comments and trackbacks (links from other blogs discussing the post). But the conversation can soon splinter off as side discussions spring up on Twitter, FriendFeed, or other blogs. uberVU aggregates all that discussion (even trackbacks on trackbacks, for example), and presents it via a threaded interface both on its site and via an API. The company is also creating plugins for various blogging platforms, allowing users to easily pull the conversation back to the original posts.

This is an area that startups have experimented with for years, either aggregating by user or by URL. CoComment was an early attempt at aggregating unique user comments across sites (Disqus, SezWho, JS-Kit, Intense Debate and BackType are more recent examples). Less has been done on aggregating discussions around a specific story or URL, but FriendFeed’s API allows publishers to pull in specific FriendFeed comments on a story, and Quotably has tried to aggregate Twitter discussions (it is now deadpooled).

uberVU is distinctly different from anything that’s come before, however, and may go a long way towards organizing the discussion mess we’re in now. It’s in private beta now, but you can sign up on their home page to get an invitation.

UberVu is a Seedcamp startup.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/eQo8SdjuxRg/

Facebook is in the final stages of selecting five winners of $225,000 FBfund grants and has just put up a Facebook application that lets members vote for their favorite apps out of the 25 finalists. (See my earlier post for details). There is a video for each app, and you can vote once per day.

I took a quick look at the applicants, and the ones that get my vote are BottleRocket (wine recommendation app based on your taste, ratings and preferences), MouseHunt (social game) NewsBrane (personalized news recommendation feed), Pongr (social price comparison app with a mobile component), Teach the People (social education app that just launched). Which is your favorite?

The winners might get additional funding from the FbFund, which is a $10 million fund run by Facebook, Accel, and the Founders Fund.

Here is a list of the 25 finalists:

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Eg5kN5ZWEzM/

Loopt is in the news today. In addition to getting a nice surge in iPhone downloads after being featured in an Apple TV commercial, we’ve heard that they’ve hired investment bank Allen & Co. to represent them in a sale or financing transaction.

A sale in this economic environment is extremely unlikely, so we’re guessing they’re looking to add to the $13.3 million they’ve already raised from Sequoia Capital and New Enterprise Associates. The valuation on this round is likely to be north of $250 million, say our sources. Update: We’re hearing that Allen & Co. is pitching Loopt at a $500+ million valuation.

Allen & Co. Managing Director Dave Wehner is the guy pitching the deal, say our sources. He’s tends to get results - representing Bebo in their $850 million sale to AOL, Powerset in their $100 millionish sale to Microsoft and (we believe) Ning in their half billion dollar valuation financing round. Among others.

Disclosure: Loopt offers a TechCrunch branded version of the service here.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Izbz3LdYBMg/

MadeIT, a San Francisco-based startup we profiled over a year ago, is leaving the crowded space of event planning and invitation applications and entering the equally-crowded space of online ticketing service providers.

CEO Stephen Weir told me that the reason for the new direction is simply an economical one.

More specifically, he stated that he took a good look at the balance sheet earlier this year and ultimately decided the cost of acquiring a customer for the ‘old’ MadeIT was far too high compared to the projected revenue from selling ads based on their traffic projections, and that Facebook was effectively going to kill the event social networks / invitations service providers one by one anyway. Basically, he painted a pretty dark picture for startups like Evite (Ticketmaster), Eventful, MyPunchbowl, Socializr and a slew of other similar services.

Rather than giving up, Weir and co-founder Jonny Hendriksen decided to rethink the service from scratch and came up with a low-priced solution for helping organizers of small and medium-sized events sell tickets online. MadeIT aims to provide them with a set of tools for end-to-end event management, including publishing, promoting and collecting online payments for events (the latter comes with PayPal and Google Checkout integration). The service doesn’t cost a thing for free events, but MadeIT retains a commission of 2.5% for paid events, with a minimum charge of $0.99 and a maximum of $9.99.

Like many of their competitors, which include Eventbrite, TicketLeap, amiando and Eventbee, they face a chicken-and-egg problem: you need high volumes of events to generate enough, often non-recurring, revenue out of commissions on ticket sales, while the costs of marketing the service to potential customers is relatively high. The company claims to have come up with “innovative customer acquisition strategies” that bring in a lot of qualified leads for them to build a sales model around.

Personally, I applaud the fact that they’re going at it without taking a dime of funding from anyone else but themselves, but time will tell if MadeIT has what it takes to stand out in the crowded space they’ve entered, which is filled with similar startups who have a bit more breathing room thanks to institutional and angel investors.

(Disclosure: I am a partner in a soon-to-launch Belgian ticketing/event startup, and will be facing some of these challenges myself).

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/lPRn-EX9QGk/

Facebook and MySpace have great mobile apps. At least, they’re great if you’re satisfied with a subset of the features you get on their normal websites. But they don’t yet take advantage of location/presence features on the iPhone and other platforms. We said this summer that they ignore location at their peril, and we still believe it.

Loopt, one of a handful of location-aware iPhone social networks (and the one we are partnered with), is currently (meaning over the recent period, undefined by Apple) the 20th most popular free iPhone application, and is being downloaded more often than both Facebook and MySpace. Facebook is no. 25, and MySpace is no. 43. This is despite the fact that MySpace and Facebook heavily promote their iPhone apps to their 100 million plus users. Loopt doesn’t have that deep base of existing users to market to. All time, Loopt is the fourth most popular iPhone social networks after Facebook, MySpace and AIM.

But they do have Apple’s support. Last week Apple ran a Loopt iPhone television ad, which is shown above. That resulted in a big part of the surge in downloads, Loopt says.

Loopt won’t say how many iPhone downloads they have, but a source says they have tens of thousands of daily downloads across all their mobile platforms (including iPhone, RIM and other platforms).

Our version of Loopt is here.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/ZhPJO4e2Ldw/

This gets a 10 for creepy and a 10 for clever.

The creepy part

This is a 240 pencil set made from the carbon of a cremated human. Each pencil is foil stamped with the name of the deceased.

The clever part

Only one pencil can be removed at a time. You sharpen the pencil by putting it back in the box. The shavings then occupy the space of the used pencils. Over time the pencil box fills with sharpenings — turning the box into a new urn (it’s filled with the shavings which are made from the cremation).

Designed by Nadine Jarvis. Linked via Marc Ecko.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1392-carbon-copies-i-write-dead-people

Watch out Skype (and Meebo and Tokbox), Google is adding voice and video chat to Gmail today, all in one fell swoop. When you are having an instant message conversation with someone over Gtalk, a video and voice option will appear (after you download this plugin). From the Google Blog:

Just click on the new “Video & more” menu in a Gmail chat window and select “Start video chat” or “Start voice chat.” You can switch to a full screen view or pop out the chat window and change the size and positioning as you wish. Of course, not everyone has a webcam, but even if you don’t, you can still have voice conversations alongside your email and regular chat

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/nwrjwtN95mo/