Ajax Blog

As far as I know, YouTube never changed their logos for holidays like famously Google does. But today they did, quietly adding a pumpkin to the logo in lieu of the television screen we normally see. Too bad it wasn’t something a little scarier. An evil looking clown, for example, would have been perfect.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/177931382/

Advertising has gotten a lot more complicated since the early days of the internet. There are hundreds of ad networks out there. With targeting being the name of the game, efficiently allocating your ad space to visitors is nearly impossible. In response, automated ad optimization engines have started up to help manage these advertising complexities. Using one seems like a no-brainer for publishers concerned about making the most of their advertising. Advertising rates change too quickly over time and the complexity of serving the right ads to your different demographics is simply too hard to handle by hand, particularly on websites with large footprints.

There are several engines out there already, including YieldBuild and The Rubicon Project. Now TechCrunch 40 finalist Pubmatic is hosting a contest to draw more publishers to their platform. Every month, the two publishers who see the greatest gains using Pubmatic will receive thousands in free advertising on top “web 2.0 web sites” (i.e. blogs). The amount is still unknown because they are still finalizing the sites they are advertising on. You can sign up for the program here.

PubMatic’s ad optimization engine is similar to YieldBuild and the Rubicon project. Unlike these earlier two, Pubmatic is actually live with 1,300 sites and open to anyone else. The engine serves as a meta ad server that serves the highest revenue ad network for each visitor given the time, geographic, demographic, and layout aspects of your site. It currently supports ad networks like Google AdSense, Yahoo Publisher Network and Value Click. They also provide them with a central dashboard to track all their ad networks and ad configurations. Below you’ll find more information from their TechCrunch 40 video.

Pubmatic has already picked the November winners WinCustomize and BikerOrNot, which they claim have seen over 100% increases in their ad revenue since using PubMatic. YeildBuild and The Rubicon Project have boasted similar increases for their publishers. To a degree, it all just depends on how poorly monetized your site was to start. However, Pubmatic is looking for sensible successes from fairly well trafficked sites and will double check your previous monetization metrics to ensure the increase in revenue is real.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/177931384/

If you’re like Marie Eve Bergeron-Tourangeau from Canada, you’ve decided to become a Facebook profile page for Halloween. Which is better, I guess, than trying to dress up like a Google OpenSocial, since the only image really associated with that so far is this horny elmer’s glue thing.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/177875700/

One of the most disruptive startups in the financial industry is Prosper, a peer-to-peer lending marketplace. Since its launch in February, 2006, Prosper has attracted more than 450,000 members who have loaned $96.4 million to each other. There is so much liquidity on Prosper now that the startup wants to create a secondary market for loans on the site.

Right now, if you loan money to someone on Prosper, you have to wait for the term of the loan to expire to get all of your money and interest back (unless the debt is paid back early). A secondary market would allow individual lenders on Prosper to sell loans to each other right away, and perhaps even package them together. Such a secondary market could make Prosper a more appealing place for larger financial institutions to invest in.

Hints of what Prosper is up to can be found in an S-1 registration the company filed yesterday with the SEC (see press release). The part of the S-1 (which is not yet effective) that caught my eye was this:

The Lender Participant Rights are associated with the $500,000,000 in aggregate principal amount of Notes to which this prospectus relates. This amount represents the aggregate principal amount of Notes that Prosper expects will be originated on the Platform during the one-year period beginning on the date of this prospectus together with the principal amount of Notes that have been originated on the Platform prior to the date of this prospectus.

In plain English, that means that Prosper expects that the cumulative amount of loans on the site a year from now will be worth up to $500 million. That would still be peanuts for most banks, but would represent a fivefold increase from the amount of loans originated on the site so far.

Prosper has raised $40 million from Accel Partners, Benchmark Capital, the Omidyar Network, and Fidelity Ventures.

Prosper

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Zopa

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/177858942/

We are pleased to release our second batch of 250 tickets for the November 16 Boston MeetUp co-hosted with IDG Ventures Boston. All ticket proceeds go to DonorsChoose.org.

There also are a few spots left for start-ups to demo their products on site and what our CEO Heather Harde likes to call “creative sponsorship opportunities”. So far, we have sponsors picking up the tab for the music, specialty cocktails, themed entertainment rooms and a few other surprises. (Next thing you know, Heather is going to sell signage space on Mike’s forehead). If you are interested in supporting the event, though, please contact Jeanne Logozzo.

For more details, a list of participating sponsors, and to register to attend, please see our dedicated Boston MeetUp 11 page.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/177831910/

Is Facebook finally going to take on MySpace as a place for bands and music fans to hang out? We’ve heard various Facebook Music rumors before. The latest one comes from CO-ED Magazine.com (so you know it’s got to be true!).

According to CO-ED’s executive editor Stephen Gebhardt, who says he heard it from a group of marketing managers at a major music label, Facebook has been holding secret meetings with all the music labels and will announce Facebook Music next week at New York’s ad:tech conference (where it is also expected to announce its social ad network).

Here are the details Gebhardt was able to gather: Facebook Music will essentially be a way for musicians (or their labels) to create their own fan pages just like on MySpace, each with a separate sub-domain within Facebook. Facebook members will be able to join any artist’s network as a “fan.” This will be similar to joining a group, but centered around music. Members will be able to listen to streamed songs, watch videos, add music to their own pages, find out about upcoming tours, and meet other fans. Facebook is also supposedly working on sales widgets for these pages (to be introduced at a later date) so that artists can sell downloads directly through Facebook. (Watch out iTunes).

MySpace, Apple, Google . . . who will Facebook pick a fight with next?

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/177820510/

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:

New Highrise feature: Public tasks
Now you’ll find a checkbox when creating/editing a task that says “Let everyone see this task.” Checking this box makes the task visible to everyone in your Highrise account. So if you have a task to get done, and it’s not private in nature, you may want to check the “Let everyone see this task” so everyone else can see what’s on your plate. It’s entirely up to you.

Kayels offers ideas on how to use Backpack
“What do I use Backpack for? What don’t I use Backpack for? I’m going to go scan my list of pages and give you some examples.”

Layer Tennis uses Campfire as back-channel during matches
The participants use Campfire as a back-channel to discuss the match while it’s going on. Chris Glass, one of the players in a recent match, gave a behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like to “play” and praised Campfire as a better alternative to IM for group chat.

Basecamp is “a great tool for virtual project teams”
“Collaborating with other team members — or our mutual client — used to be a challenge before we discovered Basecamp from 37Signals. Basecamp offers a safe, secure, inexpensive hosted service to coordinate our activities. It’s lightweight, easy to use, and works well for both Windows and Mac OS X users across a range of browsers.”

Subscribe to the Product Blog RSS feed.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/684-product-blog-update

After sprucing up Ask.com earlier last summer, parent company IAC began spending $100 million this year on marketing to raise awareness of the Ask brand. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been seeing a lot of Ask.com ads on TV lately. (And I pretty much only watch TiVo, yet they are so ubiquitous that they still catch my eye as I fast-forward through the commercials). So how is that ad campaign doing?

Taking a look at IAC’s earnings today, it is not clear whether or not the expensive ad campaign will even pay for itself. Out of IAC’s $1.5 billion in total quarterly revenue, its media and advertising businesses (of which Ask.com is a part, along with CitySearch and Evite) accounted for only $190 million. While those revenues were up 40 percent from last year, the search portion of that saw a greater contribution from the Ask network (search results it powers on other sites) than from Ask.com itself. In other words, IAC’s media and advertising businesses saw a $54 million bump in revenues last quarter. Not all of that was due to Ask, and of the part that was, more than half came from traffic outside of Ask.com. The point of the ads, of course, is to drive traffic to Ask’s main site.

At least Ask is not losing market share. According to comScore, the search market share of Ask’s network as a whole nudged up 0.2 percent in September versus August to 4.7 percent (compared to 57 percent market share for Google, 23.7 percent for Yahoo, and 10.3 percent for Microsoft). Both Google and Yahoo still gained more share in September than Ask.com, although it did take some share away from Microsoft. And if you look on Compete.com, traffic to Ask.com itself does look to be picking up.

So it could just be too early to tell whether the TV ads are driving enough traffic to Ask.com to be worthwhile. But if they don’t show up more significantly in the numbers next quarter, those ads will be seen as a boondoggle. They are entertaining, though.

Enjoy the latest one, which pokes fun at Google (and which makes you think that maybe Ask won’t be renewing its search advertising relationship with Google when the deal expires at the end of the year):

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/~3/177788165/

A couple of weeks ago I had the honor of speaking at the BIF 3 conference in Providence, RI. Walt Mossberg and I discussed simple software, feature creep, and why the software industry is structured to churn out big software.

Watch the 20-minute interview

What’s BIF?

BIF (Business Innovation Factory) is a wonderful organization head up by a great guy named Saul Kaplan. Saul is one of those guys who lives innovation. He loves seeing it, he loves hearing about it, and he loves implementing it. He embraces Rhode Islands’ main constraint: It’s small size. He sees it as an opportunity to position Rhode Island as a controlled testbed of innovation. And the Business Innovation Factory is at the center of this innovation storm.

BIF-3, like BIF-1 and 2 before it, was about stories. Each storyteller had 15 minutes on the stage talking about something that inspired them, something that helped them innovate. Past speakers included Dean Kamen, Richard Saul Wurman, John Seely Brown, Jane Fulton Suri, and plenty of others making a real difference. This year they added interviews by Walt Mossberg and Bill Taylor to the mix.

I didn’t attend BIF-1 or BIF-2, but BIF-3 was amazing, enlightening, and inspiring. The great thing about BIF is that they bring people from different industries together to share their stories. This is not a technology conference, it’s a conference about ideas that can come from anywhere.

Some of my favorite talks from BIF-3

Colonel Dean Esserman talks about knowing your beat cops like you know your doctor. Nationally recognized as a leader in public safety innovation, Providence’s Chief of Police has revamped the city’s crimefighting force and sucessfully replaced the department’s traditional methods with a new community policing concept.

Denise Nemchev talks about inventing a nail that can save billions of dollars and millions of lives. Nemchev is President of Stanley Bostitch, a Division of the Stanley Works. The Stanley Works is a worldwide supplier of tools, hardware and security solutions for professional, industrial, and consumer use. Stanley Bostitch is a $600M division of SWK headquartered out of East Greenwich, Rhode Island employing nearly 3,000 people world-wide.

Clayton Christensen talks about education, health care, disruptive innovation and fearing the 12 year olds. Christensen is the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. His research and teaching interests center on managing innovation and creating new growth markets. A seasoned entrepreneur, Christensen founded three successful companies: CPS Corporation, Innosign, and Innosign Capital. Christensen is also author or co-author of five books and is presently completing two books concerning the problems of our health care and public education systems.

Mark Cuban is interviewed by Walt Mossberg on a variety of topics. Cuban is an active investor in leading and cutting-edge technologies and owner of the Dallas Mavericks. Prior to his purchase of the Dallas Mavericks, Cuban co-founded Broadcast.com, the leading provider of multimedia and streaming on the Internet. Today, in addition to his ownership of the Mavericks, Cuban is also Chairman of the high-definition television station HDNet which he launched in 2001. HDNet is the world’s first national television network broadcasting all of its programming in 1080i high-definition television (HDTV).

More and more

You can see all the talks from the conference online. I would highly recommend checking out a future BIF conference if you can. Providence is a cool town, the speakers are top notch, and you’ll definitely come away inspired.

Also, special thanks to Jack Templin and the Providence Geeks for inviting me to speak at their event while I was in town. Extra special thanks also go out to Tori Drew and Christine Flanagan for their magical organizational efforts.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/683-bif-3-a-wonderful-conference

This is the first in a series of posts showing how 37signals works and how we use Campfire as our virtual office. All screens shown are real and were taken during one week in September.

We’ve posted photos of our Chicago office before. But this series of posts is about taking you behind the scenes at our real office: Campfire.

Campfire is where our team — local and remote — gathers everyday. We use it to chat, show each other screenshots, get feedback, upload files, collaborate on copy, share code, get alerts when sites are modified, search previous conversations, and much more.

It does so many disparate things that it’s sometimes tough for us to explain its power. People get it but they don’t always really get it. The screenshots and video tour at the Campfire site are a good start. But there’s so much more.

One week in Campfire: How we use it for design
These “Behind the scenes” posts aim to show you 1) how we work and 2) all the little things that we get done in Campfire every day. We picked one week in September and took screenshots of some of our key interactions. This first batch focuses on design.

If you’re a designer, the great thing about using Campfire is that you can upload images and view them inline while chatting about them. If you use Pyro, you can even drag and drop the images right into Campfire. Once you share and discuss images so seemlessly, you’ll never want to go back to the old way again. On to the examples…

Tweak a screen’s interface on the fly
Ryan uploads a couple of screens and explains why he prefers one over the other. Jason suggests adding some explanatory text. When it was eventually implemented, it looked like this.

Upload a screen showing what changed on the server
Ryan commits a change. Then he uploads a revised screen and explains what’s different.

Show a programmer a UI and get a time estimate for implementation
Ryan posts a proposed screen change and queries Jeremy to see how much work it will take.

Hash out implementation of a new search feature
Jason starts a discussion about a new search feature. Sam uploads a relevant screen from Apple’s OS X.

Point out a cool UI feature at another site
Ryan uploads a screen at Facebook with a neat UI touch.

Post sketches
Matt sketches out some layout ideas, snaps some quick photos, and shares them with others.

Show an inspirational image
Creative thinking from other sites can provide a nice inspiration boost. Here, Jason posts a neat image from a pen site.

Figure out the best way to design a form
Ryan and Jason discuss the best way to layout a form. Jason offers a quickie pseudo-layout in the “View paste” field to illustrate his idea.

Coming soon: How we use Camfire for programming, sysadmin, and more.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/681-behind-the-scenes-at-37signals-design