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Want To Try Out Google Chrome OS For Yourself? Here’s How.

Jason Kincaid — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:18:21 -0800

The public debut of Google Chrome OS today has the press abuzz over the potential of the new web-based operating system. And now that it’s open sourced, you have the chance to try it out for yourself. Unfortunately, most people aren’t ready to undertake the daunting task of actually taking Google’s recently open-sourced code and turning that into a bootable computer. So we’ve put together a step-by-step guide to doing this, for free, in around 15 minutes (depending on how long it takes to download the OS itself). No, this won’t get your computer booting Chrome OS natively (and frankly, you probably wouldn’t want to yet anyway). But it will get it up and running in a virtual machine using the free software VirtualBox, which is available for Macs, PCs, and Linux.

First, a few caveats: we didn’t create the Chrome OS build ourselves — it was downloaded from BitTorrent. In theory it could possibly have been tweaked by some malicious hacker to steal your Google account information (this is unlikely, but who knows). There’s an easy fix if you’re worried though: just go make a throwaway Gmail account, and use that to play around with the OS. Also note that because this is running in a virtual machine, you’re probably not going to be seeing great performance (like that 7 second boot time). But it’s more than good enough to get a feel for the OS for yourself.

First, you need to get an image of Chrome OS. You can do that using this torrent. You can also try out the build that GDGT has uploaded, which worked fine in our test as well. If you get the torrent version, you’ll see it’s in a .BZ2 format. You’ll need to extract it. Macs should be able to do this automatically, but for Windows you may need a tool like Win Rar.

Once that’s done, download a version of VirtualBox for whatever OS you’re running on here and install it. After registering (or declining to) you’ll be met with a screen like this. Click the button that says “New” in the upper left hand corner. We’re going to be making a new virtual machine.:

You’ll enter a wizard like this. Hit next.

Go ahead and title the OS whatever you’d like. For the operating system, choose Linux, with Ubuntu as the version (other setups could potentially work, but this is the only one we’ve gotten working).

Choose how much memory to allocate to this virtual machine. This will be dependent on how much memory you have in your computer. The more, the better, but if you choose too much your real computer will become unstable/very slow.

Here’s the tricky part (fortunately it isn’t very tricky). You don’t want to create a new hard disk, instead, you want to use an existing hard disk. Don’t choose one from the drop down menu either — you’re going to want to hit the folder icon just to the right of that to enter the ‘virtual media manager’.

Hit the ‘Add’ button.

Now you have to find the Chrome OS image you downloaded earlier. This is probably on your desktop or in your downloads folder. Once you’ve found it, hit ‘Open’.

Hit ‘Select’ once you reach this window.

Almost there. Make sure ‘use existing hard disk’ is checked. Hit next.

Hit ‘Finish’

You’re done! Hit Start. Hopefully the screen will go black, but only for a little while (this could be anywhere from 10 seconds to a minute or so, depending on how fast your computer is).

Once you’re in, you’ll see a splash screen for ‘Chromium’ (which is what Google calls dev builds of Chrome). To login, you’ll need to enter a valid Google Account ID. Your standard Gmail account should work, but as we said before, this build of ChromeOS came from bittorrent, so you may want to use a throw away account like we did in the screenshots below (you can make one here).

You’re in. Now time to explore. To be honest, everything looks quite similar to Google’s Chrome browser, but there are a few key differences. Note the battery life indicator and options menu in the far upper right. Also try playing around with the ‘New Window’ functions — you’ll find that it’s difficult (if not impossible) to navigate between multiple windows. And be wary of the Bookmarks manager. As far as I can tell, there’s no easy way to get out of it — you’ll have to manually create a new bookmark, which will kick you back into the browser mode once you click it. Oh, and good luck finding the ’shut down’ button, because we sure can’t.

You probably won’t need it, but the shared user password for this install (which you’d need for functions like sudo) is ‘chromeos’ according to the torrent’s listing on ThePirateBay.

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Releasing the Chromium OS open source project

A Googler — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:31:00 -0800

In July we announced that we were working on Google Chrome OS, an open source operating system for people who spend most of their time on the web.

Today we are open-sourcing the project as Chromium OS. We are doing this early, a year before Google Chrome OS will be ready for users, because we are eager to engage with partners, the open source community and developers. As with the Google Chrome browser, development will be done in the open from this point on. This means the code is free, accessible to anyone and open for contributions. The Chromium OS project includes our current code base, user interface experiments and some initial designs for ongoing development. This is the initial sketch and we will color it in over the course of the next year.

We want to take this opportunity to explain why we're excited about the project and how it is a fundamentally different model of computing.

First, it's all about the web. All apps are web apps. The entire experience takes place within the browser and there are no conventional desktop applications. This means users do not have to deal with installing, managing and updating programs.

Second, because all apps live within the browser, there are significant benefits to security. Unlike traditional operating systems, Chrome OS doesn't trust the applications you run. Each app is contained within a security sandbox making it harder for malware and viruses to infect your computer. Furthermore, Chrome OS barely trusts itself. Every time you restart your computer the operating system verifies the integrity of its code. If your system has been compromised, it is designed to fix itself with a reboot. While no computer can be made completely secure, we're going to make life much harder (and less profitable) for the bad guys. If you dig security, read the Chrome OS Security Overview or watch the video.

Most of all, we are obsessed with speed. We are taking out every unnecessary process, optimizing many operations and running everything possible in parallel. This means you can go from turning on the computer to surfing the web in a few seconds. Our obsession with speed goes all the way down to the metal. We are specifying reference hardware components to create the fastest experience for Google Chrome OS.

There is still a lot of work to do, and we're excited to work with the open source community. We have benefited hugely from projects like GNU, the Linux Kernel, Moblin, Ubuntu, WebKit and many more. We will be contributing our code upstream and engaging closely with these and other open source efforts.

Google Chrome OS will be ready for consumers this time next year. Sign up here for updates or if you like building your operating system from source, get involved at chromium.org.

Lastly, here is a short video that explains why we're so excited about Google Chrome OS.

Update at 8:55PM: Watch the video of our Google Chrome OS event, which took place earlier today.

Posted by Caesar Sengupta, Group Product Manager and Matt Papakipos, Engineering Director

Everything You Need To Know About Chrome OS [Google]

John Herrman — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:30:00 -0800

Ajax Autocomplete for jQuery

(author unknown) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:00:24 -0800

@jquery wrote:
Ajax Autocomplete plugin for jQuery - http://bit.ly/4eAh56

Ajax AutoComplete for jQuery

Ajax Autocomplete for jQuery allows you to easily create autocomplete/autosuggest boxes for text input fields.

It is built with focus on performance. Results for every query are cached and pulled from local cache for the same repeating query. If there are no results for particular query it stops sending requests to the server for other queries with the same root.

Demo

Ajax autosuggest sample (start typing country name):

Local(no ajax) autosuggest sample (start typing month name):

Note: Delimiter support has been added in v1.0.5. Try separate countries by "," or ";".

What's New in 1.1

$('#query').autocomplete(options) now returns an Autocomplete instance only for the first matched element.

Autocomplete functionality can be disabled or enabled programmatically.

var ac = $('#query').autocomplete(options);
ac.disable();
ac.enable();

Options can be changed programmatically at any time, only options that are passed get set:

ac.setOptons({ zIndex: 1001 });

If you need to pass additional parameters, you can set them via setOptions too:

ac.setOptons({ params: { first:'John', last:'Doe' } });

New parameters when initializing autocomplete. They can also be set via setOptions.

- zIndex: default value is 9999.

- fnFormatResult: function that formats values that are displayed in the autosuggest list. It takes three parameters: suggested value, data and current query value. Default function for this:

var reEscape = new RegExp('(\\' + ['/', '.', '*', '+', '?', '|', '(', ')', '[', ']', '{', '}', '\\'].join('|\\') + ')', 'g'); function fnFormatResult(value, data, currentValue) { var pattern = '(' + currentValue.replace(reEscape, '\\$1') + ')'; return value.replace(new RegExp(pattern, 'gi'), '$1<\/strong>');
}

Installation

Include jQuery in your header. After its included, add autocomplete script.

How to Use

Here is an Ajax Autocomplete sample for the text field with id "query"

Create an instance of the Autocomplete object. You can have multiple instances on a single page.

Important: Autocomplete must be initialized after DOM has finished loading. Otherwise you will get an error in IE.

var options, a;
jQuery(function(){ options = { serviceUrl:'service/autocomplete.ashx' }; a = $('#query').autocomplete(options);
});

You can add extra options:

 var a = $('#query').autocomplete({ serviceUrl:'service/autocomplete.ashx', minChars:2, delimiter: /(,|;)\s*/, // regex or character maxHeight:400, width:300, zIndex: 9999, deferRequestBy: 0, //miliseconds params: { country:'Yes' }, //aditional parameters // callback function: onSelect: function(value, data){ alert('You selected: ' + value + ', ' + data); }, // local autosugest options: lookup: ['January', 'February', 'March', 'April', 'May'] //local lookup values });

Use lookup option only if you prefer to inject an array of autocompletion options, rather than sending Ajax queries.

Web page that provides data for Ajax Autocomplete, in our case autocomplete.ashx will receive GET request with querystring ?query=Li, and it must return JSON data in the following format:

{ query:'Li', suggestions:['Liberia','Libyan Arab Jamahiriya','Liechtenstein','Lithuania'], data:['LR','LY','LI','LT']
}

Notes:

query - original query value
suggestions - comma separated array of suggested values
data (optional) - data array, that contains values for callback function when data is selected.

Styling

Script generates the following HTML (sample query Li). Active element when you navigate up and down is marked with class "selected". You can style it any way you wish.

  Liberia
 Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
 Liechtenstein
 Lithuania

Here is style used in the sample above:

.autocomplete-w1 { background:url(img/shadow.png) no-repeat bottom right; position:absolute; top:0px; left:0px; margin:6px 0 0 6px; /* IE6 fix: */ _background:none; _margin:1px 0 0 0; }
.autocomplete { border:1px solid #999; background:#FFF; cursor:default; text-align:left; max-height:350px; overflow:auto; margin:-6px 6px 6px -6px; /* IE6 specific: */ _height:350px; _margin:0; _overflow-x:hidden; }
.autocomplete .selected { background:#F0F0F0; }
.autocomplete div { padding:2px 5px; white-space:nowrap; overflow:hidden; }
.autocomplete strong { font-weight:normal; color:#3399FF; }

If you will use this CSS, please make sure to correct path to the shadow.png image. Image is included in the package. It uses CSS Drop Shadow technique by Sergio Villarreal.

Download

Contact

Contact me tomas@devbridge.com for feedback and bug reports.

If you'd like to speak with us about your software development project, then please contact us.

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Good Karma: An In Depth Review Of Ubuntu 9.10

segphault@arstechnica.com (Ryan Paul) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:19:07 -0800

Salesforce Chatter: A Real-Time Social Network For The Enterprise

Leena Rao — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:06:42 -0800

We’re here at Dreamforce, Salesforce.com’s annual cloud computing event in San Francisco. CEO Marc Benioff is delivering the keynote and we will be live-bogging the news below. Salesforce has had a banner year, reporting strong earnings yesterday for the third quarter, launching a new version of their fastest growing product, Service Cloud 2; and rolling out a lightweight contact manager for small businesses. So what is the future? Benioff has long praised the virtues of the real-time cloud and said recently that real-time technology is not only crucial to Salesforce’s offerings but is the future of the company’s products. Benioff has even praised Twitter for making the transition between the cloud and real-time web seamless.

Today, Salesforce is making its own venture into the stream with Salesforce Chatter which allows any company to collaborate in real time with a secure, private social network for their business. Content, applications and people will now have profiles, feeds and groups, enabling them to be connected. In addition, developers will now be able to use the Salesforce Chatter platform to build social enterprise applications, and all 135,000 native Force.com applications will be able to tap into Chatter.

Salesforce Chatter will let users post profiles, like on Facebook, which include things like contact information, area of expertise, work history and a photo. The social network will also include the ability to post real-time status updates. And Salesforce is tapping into the real-time stream that will feature status updates, not only from people, but also from content and apps. Content will notify users in the Salesforce Chatter feed when new or updated content is available. Apps will join the conversation by posting when there is a change in status, like when an opportunity closes or a case is escalated in Salesforce CRM. Salesforce Chatter will also allow users to create groups within the social network.

Similar to Facebook, users will be able to post content, like documents, spreadsheets and presentations, in Salesforce Chatter’s feed. Companies can decide which employees have access to certain information on a network, with a multi-tenant sharing model.

Of course, Salesforce Chatter will enable users to filter the most relevant Twitter feeds into their Chatter app. For example, a user can set-up a Twitter search for a competitor and automatically stream the real-time results into Chatter. Employees will also be able to pull information from their Facebook profiles to auto populate their Salesforce Chatter profiles.

Any native app built on the Force.com platform can stream updates to Salesforce Chatter’s feed. And with all salesforce.com apps, Salesforce Chatter will be available on the BlackBerry, Windows Mobile devices or iPhone. Salesforce Chatter is currently scheduled to become available in calendar year 2010 and will be included in all paid editions of Salesforce CRM and Force.com. Chatter will also be sold for $50 per user per month and will include Salesforce Chatter, Salesforce Content and Force.com.

Benioff says that Salesforce Chatter is the “magic of Facebook and Twitter brought to the enterprise.” But the feed itself looks similar to FriendFeed.

Benioff will also be revealing more about Salesforce Chatter and his real-time strategy at TechCrunch’s Real-Time CrunchUp on Friday, November 20.

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Location Is The Missing Link Between Social Networks And The Real World

MG Siegler — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 03:08:22 -0800

Imagine a world where you sit at your computer and you never go outside. Where you never see another human being. This is the world that sites like Google and Facebook want you to live in.

Though they’d never admit to such a thing, the reasoning should be obvious: The longer you’re at your computer, the more time you’re spending on their sites. The more time your spending on their sites, the more ads you’re being served. The more ads being served, the more money they are earning. No matter why these sites originally started, or what features they add, that is, quite literally, the bottom line. They’d have us strapped to a chair with our eyes taped open like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, if they could. The only difference is that we’d have a contraption on our arms to allow us to click on the ads being shown every so often.

Thankfully, we don’t quite live in that world yet. And there are a couple factors pushing us the opposite way from that. Mobile devices are the biggest one. But even that is still just a screen. You may not be chained to a desk using it, but as plenty of people with an iPhone will tell you, you may end staring at this screen even more than you do a desktop or laptop monitor throughout a day. But there’s another up and coming factor working against our screen slavery: Location.

Social networking has been perhaps the most popular trend on the Internet over the past several years. At first the term was ironic. “Social networking” was anything but social in the traditional sense. But over time, we’ve grown accustomed to the idea that you can do social activities such as play games, collaborate on work, and talk, online. And in fact, many times it’s even more convenient than doing it in person. It’s social, but it’s a different kind of social.

Ever since the term was born, countless people have debated the implications of taking social interactions virtual. At one point or another I’m sure that it has been said that it would be both the downfall of mankind, and the thing that would bring the planet together. The truth is that social networking, while great in many respects, does not fulfill a fundamental human desire: To be in the actual presence of other people.

If you’ll allow me to be embarrassingly obvious for a second: Sitting in a chat room all day, even if all of your friends are in it as well, is not the same as being in the same physical room with them. Even if you all are having great discussions in the chat room, and not saying a word when you’re hanging out with one another, there is just something that’s different. Something that social networking will never be able to replace.

That’s where location comes in. It has the power to be the bridge between social networking and actual social interaction. We’re already seeing the very early signs of this with services like Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Brightkite, and Google Latitude, to varying degrees.

To the masses, most of these services still either don’t make sense, or are way too creepy. Social networks used to be thought of in the same way. This will change.

The people who do use these services likely have at least one story about a situation where a friend saw where they were, or where they planned to be, and showed up to meet up. Some have many of these stories. And for some of us in cities where these services are popular, this happens just about everyday. And it’s really quite amazing.

Is it annoying if a friend shows up if you want to be alone or don’t want to see them? Of course. But that’s why it’s important that you’re in control of what location information you are sending out. Is it creepy if a stranger shows up to meet you somewhere? Of course, but that’s why privacy settings are so important.

Make no mistake, there are hurdles to location-based services gaining widespread acceptance. But the upside of it far outweighs the downside. And with that the case, these types of services are ripe to take off.

At the core level, using a social network to facilitate actual social interaction just seems to make sense. Though I poked fun at them in the intro of this post, don’t think that Facebook doesn’t recognize this. In some ways they already do this through their popular events offering. But anything they do with location — which it should be no surprise, they are working on — will go far beyond this. When you have a social graph with over 300 million users and you add a realtime location component into the mix, it’s going to change things.

I remember the first time I used sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Friendster (back in the day) to find people that I went to high school with who I hadn’t talked to in years. It was a little weird, but also in some ways exciting. Imagine that transfered into the real world. Maybe you’re in a city with a person you went to high school with, but hadn’t talked to in years. It’s unlikely that the two of you were ever run into each other randomly, but maybe you can get pinged by Facebook location when they’re nearby. Maybe neither of you want to meet, and that’s fine. But maybe you do.

The word we keep hearing over and over again for such situations is “serendipity,” but really it’s not. None of this needs to be left up to chance. It’s simply an extension of social networking into the real world.

Another social network, Twitter, is already in hot pursuit of such functionality. Any day now, the service will turn on its geolocation service which will both allow you to send tweets with your location tacked on, and allow you to pass in location information from other services, like Foursquare. As a service with tens of millions of users, Twitter will be the first massive test of location as an extension of social networking.

It may be a while before users start truly taking advantage of it since it is an opt-in feature. But eventually, I believe we’ll see more and more users opt-in to be able to use third-party clients like Birdfeed which let them choose which tweets to attach their location to and let people know where they are.

And beyond individual user data, this location data will be very interesting as an aggregate. Undoubtedly people will use things like Twitter’s geolocation APIs to make services that can show where people are flocking to in realtime. This is the next step for what services like SocialGreat are doing with location data, showing hot spots in towns. And we already know that Twitter is planning to use the data to tailor its trending topics to show the hot things being tweeted about in specific places.

Social networking up until this point has been great. But it’s also really a bit odd. The core concept is still to gather your friends in a virtual construct, while the companies behind these constructs convince you to hang out in them as much as possible. Instead, they should be using the interesting social data they have to help you connect in other places as well. That’s what makes Facebook Connect is so powerful. But that doesn’t extend to the real world yet. But with location, it could. And that’s exciting.

We’ll be discussing this and other topics at our Realtime CrunchUp this Friday in San Francisco.

[images: MGM and Warner Brothers]

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Retrospectiva: Open Source Project Management Rails App

Peter Cooper — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:09:44 -0800

Retrospectiva is a new open-source project management tool built as a Rails application. It's interesting from two angles: first, as a project management tool, as it was designed; but secondly as a large, well built Rails 2.3 app to learn from.

Retrospectiva is a solid example of a rare sort of open source Rails project: one that's well presented, user friendly, and solidly developed. It has a well designed homepage with lots of screenshots and feature guides, and there's even a single step installation process so you can get up and running from a single line at your Terminal. Give it a shot:

wget -O - http://retrospectiva.org/download/script/remote/retrospectiva_installer.rb | ruby

Note: If you have an error like undefined method `destroy' for #Svn::Ext::Core::Apr_pool_wrapper_t occur, then download the above installer, go into the newly created retrospectiva directory and add SCM_SUBVERSION_ENABLED = false as the first line in config/environment.rb. Then run retrospectiva_installer.rb directly and installation will complete. I found this necessary to complete on OS X Snow Leopard.

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Over A Year After Android Launch, ShopSavvy Finally Comes To The iPhone

MG Siegler — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:45:14 -0800

ShopSavvy was one of the best early Android applications. It launched in October of last year after winning one of the initial Android Developer Challenge top prizes (when it was still known as GoCart). But despite the success it has seen on Android, one question remained: When would it be available for the iPhone. Today, it finally is.

Developed by the guys at Big In Japan, ShopSavvy is an app that allows you to use your device as a portable barcode scanner. You point your phone’s camera at any barcode and it will read it, do a product look up, and give you information about the product, as well as where you can find it online or at nearby stores and for how much. Obviously, something like this is a window shopper’s dream.

And while you might think retailers may hate something like this, because it gives shoppers all of their competitors’ information, increasingly, they’ve been working with ShopSavvy to come up with ways to allow you to make buying in their stores even easier. And honestly, what are the retailers going to do anyway? All of this information is out there on the web, ShopSavvy just gives you easy access to it. Are they going to ban mobile phones in their stores? That’d be a great story for us if that were to happen.

So what took so long? Well, for a while, the iPhone lacked a key feature needed for the barcode scanner: A camera that had auto-focus. The iPhone 3GS gained that, and so the team should have been good to go. The plan was originally to release the app this summer, but a internal mix up involving a team member who had since departed registering the app to his iTunes account caused a delay (more on that here). After some back and forth with Apple, Big In Japan was finally able to get that resolved.

While it’s great to see this product on the iPhone, it is a little buggy right now. The main issue is that it’s hard to scan the barcodes properly. Big In Japan says a fix for that is coming shortly, based on what they’ve learned from beta testers, but keep that in mind when using the app for now.

My own tests confirm that it is a little hard to scan, but it seems to work most of the time. For example, I just scanned the protein bar I’m eating, and ShopSavvy pulled it up right away and gave me a pricing rundown. Nifty.

ShopSavvy is available for free in the App Store. Find it here. Also read about Big In Japan’s other big plan for the iPhone (100 apps in a year) here.

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Jammit: Industrial Strength Asset Packaging for Rails Apps

Peter Cooper — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:26:45 -0800

Earlier this year on Ruby Inside, we wrote about Sprockets - a Ruby library from 37signals that could take the various JavaScript files used in your project and compress them down on the fly into smaller portions to be more easily sent over the wire. Now, however, say hello to Jammit, an "industrial strength" asset packaging library for Rails that handles not only JavaScript, but also CSS and inline images.

Asset packaging is nothing new, but Jammit has an unusual feature in that it can take small images used on your site and embed them into your CSS file using the data-uri mechanism. The benefit is that you reduce the number of files that need to be downloaded to render a single page - significant as most browsers have a limit to the number of files they can retrieve simultaneously from the same host.

Jammit has a well designed GitHub hosted homepage that goes into how to install it (just install a gem, add the reference to environment.rb, and add a route into config/routes.rb), set it up to take note of your assets (all done via a YAML file), and get things running in your views (add some helpers to your main layout), so refer to that for further details.

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Templates now available in Google Sites

A Googler — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:30:00 -0800

I'm pleased to announce we just added a stocked gallery of site templates in Google Sites. Anyone can browse the public template gallery, and businesses using Google Apps each have a private area where employees can share site templates with coworkers.

The rate that businesses are adopting Google Sites has surpassed our expectations, and templates will make Sites even more useful by dramatically reducing the time it takes to set up collaborative workspaces like employee intranets, project tracking sites, team sites and employee profile pages. Templates let you quickly start a new site with pre-built content, embedded gadgets, page layouts, navigation links, theming and more.

You can find more about what's new and read stories from customers about why they switched to Google Sites from on-premises collaboration solutions on the Google Enterprise Blog.

And because many of you are managing personal projects with Google Sites, we also added templates for family sites, weddings, neighborhood associations, clubs, charitable causes and more to the public gallery. Check out the Google Docs Blog for other examples and details, and if you have a personal site that others could use as a template, please submit your work to the public gallery!

Posted by Scott Johnston, Product Manager

Who is Paying Taxes?

Ross Crooks — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:19:46 -0800

Recent news articles have brought to light the fact that almost 47% of households in the US currently have zero or negative federal tax liability. We take a closer look at this lack of liability across each income level, highlighting the percentage in each range that will not pay any taxes. Also shown is a full breakdown of who is paying the bulk of all taxes collected by the Federal Government each year.

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Personal FinanceSoftware – Mint.com

The death of the URL

Chris Messina — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:20:46 -0800

Prelude

You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. Remember — all I am offering is the truth, nothing more.

In the Matrix, Morpheus presents Neo with a choice: he can take the blue pill and continue his somnambulatory existence within the Matrix, or he can take the red pill and become free from the virtual reality that the machines created to enslave humanity.

As you can see from the clip above, Neo chooses the red pill, severing his connection to the Matrix and regaining his free will.

Everyday, when you fire up your browser and type in some arbitrary URL in the browser’s address bar, you are taking the red pill.

Increasingly though, I see signs that the essential freedoms of the web are being undermined by a cadre of companies through the introduction of new technologies and interfaces that, combined, may spell the death of the URL.

Call me crazy, but it seems obvious enough when you put on the right colored paranoia goggles.

Exhibit A: Web TV

There’s an article in Friday’s USA Today suggesting that we’re finally at a point where web TV has a chance. But there’s an insidious underbelly to this story. Specifically: Consumers may balk if TV sets become too computerlike and complicated.

From the article:

Manufacturers say they learned an important lesson from earlier convergence failures: Viewers want to relate to sets as televisions, not computers.

That’s why the new Web TV models don’t come with browsers that would give people the freedom to surf the full Internet, even though the TVs connect to the Web via an ethernet cable or home wireless network. The companies want to promote consumer acceptance of Web TV by making the technology simple to use: That means no keyboard or mouse.

It’s just Step 1: Engineers are talking about changes that would make it easy to navigate the Internet. One thought is to program smartphones so they can change channels, send text messages to the set and move a cursor around the screen with the motion-sensitive technology that Nintendo uses with its Wii game system.

For now, though, people just need the TV remote control to select and launch prepackaged applications.

Emphasis mine.

In a twist of McLuhanesque determinism, it would appear that the apparatus and determinism of the television experience will overrule the freedom and flexibility of the web — because, well, frankly — all that choice…! It’s so… unseemly and unmonetizable.

Instead, Web TV will be made easier to use by removing the best parts of the web and augmenting the straightjacket features of the television.

Exhibit B: Litl, ChromeOS, JoliCloud, and Apple Tablet

I somewhat serendipitously stumbled upon Litl — a little design project of famous design firm Pentagram.

The thing is cool, I admit. The netbook/webbook market needs some design thinking. And heck, I’m as eager as anyone to see what Apple is going to do in this space, so I’m watching it closely… but something tells me that the next generation “PC” devices are going to revolve around slicker, streamlined interfaces that come pre-packaged with fewer choices drawn from a set of likely suspects (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo et al.).

Taking a look at the JoliCloud homescreen… you can start to see how this will be the next Firefox search box in terms of monetization:

Though I imagine you’ll be able to set custom options here, it’s the defaults that matter.

…and these homescreens become yet another funnel to drive users to a predetermined (and paid for) set of options.

Exhibit C: Top Sites

Similar to the netbook homescreens, both Safari and Chrome provide home pages that show you thumbnails of the sites that you visit most often (coincidence? I think not!).

Seems an innocuous feature. I mean, isn’t it easier to just click a picture of where you want to go rather than typing in some awkward string that starts with HTTP into the address bar?

AH HA! So, you’d take the blue pill eh?

See the problem?

Just as browsers currently come with a set of default bookmarks today, there’s no reason why the next generation browsers won’t come with their own predefined set of “Top Sites”, that, not unlikely, will come from the same list of predetermined companies that populate the home screens of the next gen Net/Web Books.

The more that the browser address bar can be made obsolete, the more it becomes just like TV, right?

Exhibit D: Warning interstitials and short URL frames

If you use Facebook, you’ve probably seen the above warning before — usually after clicking a link that a friend sent you. Now, I recognize why they do this. It’s true: on the internet, thar be dragons!

Now, nevermind the dragons on Facebook proper — this innocuous little screen was designed, one assumes, to keep you safe from things outside the Facebook universe. However, the net effect of seeing this page every time you click an outbound link is fatigue. You get worn down by having to click through this page until finally, after a while, you just give up and stop clicking links from your friends altogether. It just could be that a momentary delay like this is enough to change your behavior completely.

Even when you do decide to leave, Facebook comes with you — inserting 45 pixels of itself into your experience as a top frame:

This make it easier to get back to Facebook, and never skip a beat. But it also removes the need to visit the address bar and think about where you want to go next (let alone type it out). Of course Facebook isn’t the only service doing this — Digg and countless other short URL generators intrude on your web experience and put yet more distance between you and the address bar.

All these little hindrances add up — and if you’ve done any usability work — you know that the smallest changes can lead to huge impacts over time if the changes are so slight as to be essentially unnoticeable.

Exhibit E: The NASCAR

Now, this one hits close to home, y’know, since this is what I’ve been working on for the past year or so… but the reality is that more and more, companies are moving to accept this logo-splattered approach to user sign in forms — “the NASCAR” — which dispatches the uncomfortable “URL-based” metaphor of OpenID altogether.

Why?

Because it’s too “complicated“. People don’t get “URLs” for sign in.

Now, we’ve made progress moving forward with “email-style identifiers” for use in OpenID transactions, but we’re not there yet, and we’re not moving fast enough either.

The specter of the Facebook Connect button is ever-present, and, from a UI perspective, it’s hard to argue with one button to rule them all (even if it destroys individual autonomy in the process — hey! freedom is messy! Let’s scrap it!).

The NASCAR, then, is just one more way to put off teaching users to recognize that URLs can represent people too, chaining us to the silos and locking us into brand-mediated identities for yet another generation.

Exhibit F: App Stores

Finally, there’s been plenty written about this already, but what is the App Store except a cleaved out and sanitized portion of the web? In fact, people accustomed to the freedom and “flow” of the web go into anaphylactic shock when they realize that they must submit to the slings and arrows of the outrageous fortune of Steve Jobs when they want their iPhone app to show up in the Apple app store.

And it’s only going to get worse, because now everyone wants a goddamn app store.

Thanks a lot, Steve.

The rise of the “app store mentality” is a direct attack on the web, and on the very nature of free discovery and choice built upon URL-based hyperlinks. By depriving us the ability to pick and choose which “stores” we shop from on these devices — we’re empowering a new breed of middle men and ceding to them monopoly control over our digital experience. The architecture of the web was intended to withstand such threats — but that all changes when the hardware makers get into the content business! Even though developers are beginning to see the dark side of this faustian bargain, the momentum is huge — and big business smells money.

By removing our ability to navigate, choose, and share freely — these app stores are exchanging our freedom for a promise that they’ll keep us safe, give us everything we need, and do all the choosing of what’s “good enough” for us — all starting at ninety-nine cents a hit.

No doubt this model will be emulated and copied — across all platforms — until the last vestige of the URL is patched over and removed… the last reminder of an uncomfortable and much messier era of history.

Epilogue

I don’t know about you, but a future without URLs and without the infinite organicity of the web frightens me. It’s not that I know what we’ll lose by removing this artifact of one of the most generative periods in history — and that’s exactly the point! The URL and the ability for anyone to mint a new one and then propagate it is what makes the web so resilient, so empowering, and so interesting! That I don’t need to ask anyone permission to create a new website or webpage is a kind of ideological freedom that few generations in history have known!

Now, granted, there is still much work to be done to spread the power and privilege of the web, but what I don’t want to see happen in the meantime is the next generation of kids grow up with an “easier” laptop, Web Top, Net Book, Nook, or whatever the hell they’re going to call it — that lacks an address bar. I don’t want the next generation to grow up with TV-stupid controls and a set of predefined widgets that determine the totality and richness of their experience on a mere subset of the web! That future cannot be permitted!

Maybe I’m wrong or just paranoid, and maybe the web has won, forever. But I’m not willing to rest on my laurels. No way.

We all know that the internet has won as the transport medium for all data — but the universal interface for interacting with the web? — well, that battle is just now getting underway.

As a user experience designer, it’s on my discipline and peers to provide the right kind of ideas and leadership. If we get the design right, we can empower while clarifying; we can reduce complexity while enhancing functionality; we can expand freedom while not overwhelming with choice. Surely these are the things that good, thoughtful user experience design can achieve!

Well, friends, I’ve said my piece. Whether this threat is real or imagined, it’s one that I believe bears inspection.

Like Neo, if I were forced to choose between all the messiness of free will over the “comfortability” of a contrived existence, I’d choose the red pill, time and time again. And I hope you would too.

We heard you like APIs

(author unknown) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:06:00 -0800

Foursquare Lets Others Play With Its API

MG Siegler — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:04:22 -0800

Up until now, Foursquare, the hot location-based service, has only let a handful of developers play around with its API. Starting today, the company is formally unveiling it, hoping that a robust app community will form around their data.

Here’s the way they’re describing it:

The foursquare API enables developers to build applications that interact with the foursquare platform. You can use the API to create new ways to check-in to foursquare or visualize the data generated by the foursquare community. Our API is still a work in progress and we look forward to your feedback and suggestions!

In announcing the API, Foursquare has also created an app gallery to show what’s already been built ontop of the API so far. Included in this gallery are:

Foursquare Android, the open-source Android app (our coverage here)
SocialGreat, a venue popularity tracker (our coverage here)
MobZombies, a location-based Zombie check-in game
PeekMaps, a way to view your friends on a map on Peek Mobile devices
FourTap, links London subway card swipes with Foursquare data
YipIt, a way to find nearby deals in New York
A Foursquare WordPress plugin
Ul.timate.info, a way to send geo updates to Firefox
Last Night’s Checkins, a diary-creator for your Foursquare checkin history

Another third-party app just announced is Layar with support for Foursquare. The augmented reality browser has a new beta version with functionality that allows you to use your mobile device to look around and see Foursquare venues around you. You don’t even have to have an account with Foursquare for this to work, so it seems like it could be a good way to convince new users to sign up. If you do have an account, you can checkin to venues right from within Layar.

That’s a pretty good list of third-party support considering that access to the API has been very restricted up until this point. The opening of the data is likely to be important for Foursquare in the long run. Foursquare is getting traction with users putting information into its system, but a real explosion could come if third-party developers start making some great apps on top of the service. Obviously, we’ve seen that type of community swarm around and feed services like Twitter.

Foursquare has also already set up Google Groups to use for both documentation and developer discussion purposes.

[photo: flickr/indienate]

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

The War For the Web

Tim O'Reilly — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:29:43 -0800

On Friday, my latest tweet was automatically posted to my Facebook news feed, as always. But this time, Tom Scoville noticed a difference: the link in the posting was no longer active.

It turns out that a lot of other people had noticed this too. Mashable wrote about the problem on Saturday morning: Facebook Unlinks Your Twitter Links.

if you’re posting web links (Bit.ly, TinyURL) to your Twitter feed and using the Twitter Facebook app to share those updates on Facebook too, none of those links are hyperlinked. Your friends will need to copy and paste the links into a browser to make them work.

If this is a design decision on Facebook’s part, it’s an extremely odd one: we’d like to think it’s an inconvenient bug, and we have a mail in to Facebook to check. Suffice to say, the issue is site-wide: it’s not just you.

As it turns out, it wasn't just links imported from Twitter. All outbound links were temporarily disabled, unless users explicitly added them as links via an "attach" dialogue. I went to Facebook, and tried posting a link to this blog directly in my status feed, and saw the same behavior: links were no longer automatically made clickable. You can see that in the image that is the destination of the first link in this piece.

The problem was quickly fixed, with URLs in status updates automatically now linkified again. The consensus was that it was in fact a bug, but it's little surprise that people suspected otherwise, given the increasing amount of effort Facebook puts into warning people that they are leaving Facebook for the big bad unsafe Internet:

All of this is well-intentioned, I'm sure. After all, Facebook is attempting to put in place privacy controls that allow its users to manage the visibility of their information -- and the Web's expectation of universal visibility is not necessarily the best default for much of the information posted on Facebook. But let's not kid ourselves: Facebook is a new kind of web site (or an old kind redux), a world of its own, playing by different rules.

But this isn't just about Facebook.

The Apple iPhone is the hottest web access device around, and like Facebook, while it connects to the web, it plays by a different set of rules. Anyone can put up a website, or launch a new Windows or Mac OS X or Linux application, without anyone's permission. But put an app onto the iPhone? That requires Apple's blessing.

There is one glaring loophole: anyone can create a web application, which any user can save as clickable application on their phone. But these web applications have limits - there are key capabilities of the phone that are not accessible to web applications. HTML 5 can introduce all the new application-like features it wants, but they will work only for web applications, and can't access key aspects of the phone with Apple's permission. And as we saw earlier this year with Apple's rejection of the Google Voice application, Apple isn't shy about blocking applications that it considers threatening to their core business, or that of their partners.

And now, of course, we see the latest salvo in the war against the accepted rules of interoperability on the web: Rupert Murdoch's threat to take the Wall Street Journal out of the Google search index. While most people have repeated the existing wisdom that to do so would be suicide for the Journal, a few contrarian observers have noted the leverage Murdoch holds. Mark Cuban argues that Twitter now trumps search engines when it comes to breaking news. Even more provocatively, Jason Calacanis suggested, a few weeks before Murdoch's announcement, that all big media companies need to do to cut Google off at the knees would be to block Google, while cutting an exclusive deal with Bing to be found only in Microsoft's search index.

Of course, Google wouldn't take that lying down, and would likely make its own exclusive deals, leading to a showdown that would make the browser wars of the 90s seem tame.

I'm not saying that News Corp and other mainstream media publications would adopt Jason's suggested strategy, or that it would work if they did, but it is becoming clear to me that we are heading into a bloody period of competition that could be extremely unfriendly to the interoperable web as we know it today.

If you've followed my thinking about Web 2.0 from the beginning, you know that I believe we are engaged in a long term project to build an internet operating system. (Check out the program for the first O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference in 2002 (pdf).) In my talks over the years, I've argued that there are two models of operating system, which I have characterized as "One Ring to Rule Them All" and "Small Pieces Loosely Joined," with the latter represented by a routing map of the Internet.

The first is the winner-takes-all world that we saw with Microsoft Windows on the PC, a world that promises simplicity and ease of use, but ends up diminishing user and developer choice as the operating system provider.

The second is an operating system that works like the Internet itself, like the web, and like open source operating systems like Linux: a world that is admittedly less polished, less controlled, but one that is profoundly generative of new innovations because anyone can bring new ideas to the market without having to ask permission of anyone.

I've outlined a few of the ways that big players like Facebook, Apple, and News Corp are potentially breaking the "small pieces loosely joined" model of the Internet. But perhaps most threatening of all are the natural monopolies created by Web 2.0 network effects.

One of the points I've made repeatedly about Web 2.0 is that it is the design of systems that get better the more people use them, and that over time, such systems have a natural tendency towards monopoly.

And so we've grown used to a world with one dominant search engine, one dominant online encyclopedia, one dominant online retailer, one dominant auction site, one dominant online classified site, and we've been readying ourselves for one dominant social network.

But what happens when a company with one of these natural monopolies uses it to gain dominance in other, adjacent areas? I've been watching with a mixture of admiration and alarm as Google has taken their dominance in search and used it to take control of other, adjacent data-driven applications. I noted this first with speech recognition, but it's had the biggest business impact so far in location-based services.

A few weeks ago, Google offered free turn-by-turn directions for Android phones. This is awesome news for consumers, who previously could get this only in dedicated GPS devices or with high-priced iPhone apps. But it's also a sign just how competitive the web is getting, and just how powerful Google is getting, because they understand that "data is the Intel Inside" of the next generation of computer applications.

Nokia paid $8 billion for NavTeq, the leading provider of such turn-by-turn directions. GPS-maker TomTom paid $3.7 billion for TeleAtlas, the #2 provider in the market. Google quietly built an equivalent service, and is now giving it away for free -- but only to their own business partners. Everyone else still has to pay high fees to NavTeq and TeleAtlas. What's more, Google upped the ante by adding in such features as Street View.

Most interestingly, this move sets the stage for the future competition between Google and Apple. (Bill Gurley's analysis is an essential read.) Apple controls access to the dominant device of the mobile web; Google controls access to one of the most important mobile applications, and so far, is making it available for free only on Android. Google's prowess is not just in search, but in mapping, speech recognition, automated translation, and other applications driven by huge, intelligent databases that only a few providers can offer. Microsoft and Nokia control comparable assets, but they too are Apple competitors, and unlike Google, their business model depends on selling access to those assets, not giving them away for free.

It could be that everyone will figure out how to play nicely with each other, and we'll see a continuation of the interoperable web model we've enjoyed for the past two decades. But I'm betting that things are going to get ugly. We're heading into a war for control of the web. And in the end, it's more than that, it's a war against the web as an interoperable platform. Instead, we're facing the prospect of Facebook as the platform, Apple as the platform, Google as the platform, Amazon as the platform, where big companies slug it out until one is king of the hill.

And it's time for developers to take a stand. If you don't want a repeat of the PC era, place your bets now on open systems. Don't wait till it's too late.

P.S. One prediction: Microsoft will emerge as a champion of the open web platform, supporting interoperable web services from many independent players, much as IBM emerged as the leading enterprise backer of Linux.

I'll be speaking on this topic in my keynote at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York on Tuesday. I'll look forward to seeing many of you there.

Five Best Online Backup Tools [Hive Five]

Jason Fitzpatrick — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0800

5 Impressive Real-Life Google Wave Use Cases

Jennifer Van Grove — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 10:22:44 -0800

The Google Wave invite rollout extravaganza started more than a month ago. While in some respects the buzz around Google Wave has started to subside, the term is still constantly one of the top trending topics on Twitter, and new gadgets, extensions, and applications are now starting to appear on a daily basis.

Each day more and more people are opening up their email inbox to find an invite to Google Wave. With that shiny new invite comes the inevitable quest for ideas about to how to put the medium to good use.

Should you happen to be one of those people, we’ve got a number of different resources that you can use to get up to speed with Google Wave. This time around, however, we wanted to look at how people are actually using it now. From process modelling and customer service, to project collaboration, annotation, and gaming, the examples listed here highlight the power of the newborn medium, and in part, showcase what we can expect as the platform matures.

1. SAP Gravity: Modeling within Google Wave

Understanding the power of real-time collaboration and its relevance to clients, SAP Research in Australia has developed a business process modeling tool called Gravity that works within Google Wave.

The sophisticated tool, which can be embedded within a Wave as a gadget, allows for team members to remotely build complex models in unison, or after catching up via playback, without having to leave Google Wave.

Gravity and Google Wave work together harmoniously to create a modeling environment that appears to be just as robust as, if not more flexible than, expensive desktop software built for the same purpose.

We think SAP is certainly on to something here, and we encourage you to watch the video demonstration of Gravity in Google Wave in action.

2. Salesforce: Google Wave for Customer Service

Salesforce, like SAP, has figured out that they can use the Google Wave platform to support client needs and tackle real-life problems. As such, Salesforce has created a Google Wave extension that clients can use to help automate, and even personalize, the customer service experience.

Watch the demonstration video to see how the Salesforce extension gives customers the ability to use Google Wave to interact with an automated support robot. Of course, customers can request assistance from a human within the Wave as well.

What makes this example stand out is the fact that not only is the Google Wave dialogue being stored as a case record within Salesforce, but, because the robot is connected to the Salesforce Service Cloud, the robot can access previously stored customer data for tailored service. Ultimately, Salesforce has found a way to potentially save clients money on customer service efforts, all the while maintaining active records, with the assistance of Google Wave.

3. Mingle: Integrated Project Collaboration

Mingle is a project management and team collaboration tool developed by ThoughtWorks Studios, who realized that they could add Mingle’s project management metadata to conversations in Google Wave.

The integration is still a work in progress, but a demonstration of the concept was highlighted at Enterprise 2.0, and the basic idea is to give Google Wave users/Mingle clients the ability to bring their Mingle task data, which takes the form of cards, into Google Wave. Existing Mingle cards can be embedded into Wave conversation threads, and new Mingle cards/tasks can be created within Google Wave.

This particular use case highlights how Google Wave can work with existing project management systems for more streamlined and cohesive communication, creating parity regardless of where the user is accessing project data.

4. Ecomm Conference: Annotating a Live Event

Just last week our CEO, Pete Cashmore, wrote about how the savvy people behind the Ecomm conference doled out Wave accounts to attendees so that they could collaborate, in real-time, to annotate presentation content. The result was arguably a much better way to consume conference content than attempting to follow hashtag tweets on Twitter.

You can read the full account, which was documented by Charlie Osmond, on the FreshNetworks blog, but here’s an excerpt that we think drives home the utility of the use case.

“Here’s what happened: an audience member would create a Google Wave and others in the audience would edit the wave during the presentation. The result would be a crowd-sourced write-up of the presentation: a transcript of key points and a record of audience comments.”

We happen to think this particular use case is genius, especially for content-rich seminars and events where attendees are typically taking their own individual notes. With the shared Google Wave experience they can combine forces to create a more meaningful and accurate recounting of information shared in conference sessions.

5. Gamers: Google Wave RPGs

A very detailed Ars Technica post highlights that there’s a growing collection of Google Wave users who are using the medium to play wave-borne RPGs (role playing games). As mentioned in the post, there’s a even a Wave dedicated to serving as an index for all the Wave RPGs currently in existence, and the last time we counted it included upwards of 300 contributing members, and a combination of 30 different ideas or full-fledged games.

According to Jon Stokes, the author of the post, Google Wave is adequate for some RPGs, but it could certainly be improved to allow for a more enjoyable experience. In the excerpt below, Stokes describes the current RPG experience within Google Wave:

“The few games I’m following typically have at least three waves: one for recruiting and general discussion, another for out-of-character interactions (”table talk”), and the main wave where the actual in-character gaming takes place. Individual players are also encouraged to start waves between themselves for any conversations that the GM shouldn’t be privy to. Character sheets can be posted in a private wave between a player and the GM, and character biographies can go anywhere where the other players can get access to them.

The waves are persistent, accessible to anyone who’s added to them, and include the ability to track changes, so they ultimately work quite well as a medium for the non-tactical parts of an RPG. A newcomer can jump right in and get up-to-speed on past interactions, and a GM or industrious player can constantly maintain the official record of play by going back and fixing errors, formatting text, adding and deleting material, and reorganizing posts. Character generation seems to work quite well in Wave, since players can develop the shared character sheet at their own pace with periodic feedback from the GM.”

Image from watch4u on Flickr

Reviews: Australia, Flickr, Google Wave, RPG, Twitter

Tags: Google Wave, mingle, rpg, Salesforce, SAP

How Murdoch Can Really Hurt Google And Shift The Balance Of Power In Search

Michael Arrington — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:30:05 -0800

I’ve mostly been a spectator in this whole Rupert Murdoch de-indexing his news sites from Google circus. First because I didn’t really believe he even knew what he was talking about (or how much traffic he’d lose), and more recently because Erick Schonfeld took the story here at TechCrunch.

But suddenly this is a fascinating story to me for a bunch of reasons. This may be less about the self destruction of traditional journalism and more about the search wars.

Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis, who used to work for Murdoch’s Digital Chief Jonathan Miller when the two were at AOL, posted a video last week (embedded below) with a simple suggestion: Not only should Murdoch de-index from Google, but he should get Bing to pay him for the exclusive right to index it. TechCrunch Europe’s Mike Butcher has been sniffing down a similar trail.

If other media companies joined Murdoch Google could actually find itself in a very difficult position, where Bing had content that Google didn’t. If you knew that Wall Street Journal and, say, New York TImes content was only in Bing search results, mainstream search users would suddenly have a big reason to go to Bing.

This would shift the balance of power away from search engines and to the content sites – if they could pull it off. Bidding wars over rights to index content would conceivably break out between Google and Microsoft, just as bidding wars have broken out in the past over the right to serve search ads into third party publishing sites.

If Murdoch is going to go through with this de-indexing Mexican standoff thing, he might as well do it the right way and drive the fear of God into Google. As a spectator, I’ll enjoy watching the fireworks.

Of course there’s another sideshow going on here as well – the renegotiation of the MySpace search deal with Google that ends next year. That deal brings in $300 million a year to News Corp., and it’s clear Google is done paying that much money.

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

Don’t make me a target

Chris Messina — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:56:50 -0800

The augmented reality view in Brightkite’s mobile app.

Brightkite, a location-tracking service, recently launched version 2.0 of their service after merging with Limbo and taking $9M in funding this past April.

In recent months I’ve found myself using Foursquare more and more, though I still update Brightkite from time to time since it powers the location status on my personal homepage. In some ways, Foursquare is to Brightkite what Twitter was to Jaiku: a more personal, streamlined experience that builds on a core activity and dispenses will all other distractions. And, through game-like mechanisms, get you to perform the core activity more regularly (i.e. mayorships in the case of Foursquare, and, up until recently, follower counts in the case of Twitter).

I bring this up because I just stumbled upon Brightkite’s advertising section of their website, and there’s some extremely interesting stuff in there!

First of all, it’s very clear that Brightkite is one of the first (at least in my experience) to be pushing their location platform as a walk-up-and-create ad platform, much in the same way that Facebook is (you can start creating your own Facebook ads here).

Like Brightkite, Facebook gives you a considerable amount of control over the targeting of your advertisement as well, which leverages Facebook’s horde of user-contributed demographic information:

But here’s where Brightkite’s platform gets interesting: this class of mobile ads — which we’ve known have been coming for some time (so-called proximity marketing) — target the individual based on their location and real-time behavior. Thus, when a user engages in some kind of action or activity tracked by Brightkite, the system can respond with an “appropriate” ad in real-time, triangulated off of a number of aspects of the user’s situation. Brightkite has enumerated the current set of attributes that they use:

Location and place
Real world behavior
Time of day
Activity
Demographics
Language
Content and interests
Weather

The only thing missing, it seems, is friends, but they could easily fit into the “content and interests” category.

Now, as a user, if Brightkite is able to leverage all this information — presuming that I’ve provided them with accurate information — the ads in their app better be friggin’ awesome.

Indeed, Brightkite’s blog post on freebies (as in, “free beer”) suggests as much, and the example they provide shows that Brady (Brightkite co-founder), having checked into the Rackhouse Pub, has just been offered a free draft or well drink:

Hard to argue with that. But this is where things get dicey, isn’t it?

Maybe I’m reading this image wrong, but since Brady’s already in the Rackhouse Pub, why would they want to give him a free beer? Unless Brightkite is underwriting such a promo (say, to counter Foursquare’s similar promos), Rackhouse Pub wants to get OTHER people in — not just give away drinks to their current patrons.

Of course there are countless ways to spin this — for better and worse.

Word of mouth for Rackhouse Pub could skyrocket, since people would virally spread the offer to their friends through social networks — amounting to a fairly cost-effective way to “acquire” new customers, especially if Rackhouse is able to recoup the costs of its giveaway on new dine-in guests.

But it could also backfire. For the price of a free downloadable iPhone app, countless single-drink seekers could take up Rackhouse on their offer and then leave, making for a costly marketing ploy with little upside.

Who knows. It all depends on how Brightkite “pushes” this kind of information to its users.

And Brightkite et al. aren’t alone in this space. Some companies are starting to leverage location and social networks in their own apps too. For instance, the 1.1 update to the Starbucks iPhone app adds Twitter, Facebook, and location-sharing features:

Now, with all these companies offering deals and incentives, I want a piece of the action! But I don’t want to be treated like some generic, disposable target. I want to be engaged with, and respected by, companies that want my business.

We have a long way to go to make this kind of engagement simpler, but longterm, I want to be the one who manages who does and doesn’t get the right to “target” me. I don’t want to opt-out — I want companies to request the privilege of showing up on my phone, in my activity stream, or in my inbox when I ask them to, at my convenience. I want to be able to put out a list of my desires and requirements, and then have companies bid for my business. And it’s fine with me if there’s a middleman broker in the middle that takes a cut, as long as I’m getting a better deal with better service than I would have otherwise.

Is that too much to ask?

Some months back, I wrote up a vision for what I call “connected commerce“, using Comixology as a preview of where I see this going, though that service is still far too manual, anti-social, and, critically, a bottleneck between me and my preferred retailer. This is a recipe for disaster, as Apple’s App Store continues to prove.

Attention brokers, like Brightkite, therefore, need to remember their place in this ecosystem: they need to first be the friend to and advocate of the individual (their customer), and second, to the advertiser or brand. Companies that don’t get this prioritization right will fail (and is why, in some respects, Facebook continues to change its platform rules while drawing the ire of developers, because, in order to keep their users, they must ultimately continue to make their environment a safer and more trustworthy space).

Doc Searls calls this consumer-driven leverage VRM or “vendor relationship management”. I’ve been a fan of the idea, but I think it falls down on the last word: management. Big companies are willing to devote thousands and millions of dollars “managing” their customers; individuals are not. But services like Brightkite and Facebook are beginning to change that by enabling us to leverage our real-time, real-world behavior as a gating apparatus, removing the “management” requirement of VRM, and allowing us to “flow with the go”. As we invite these attention brokers into our list of recipients to whom we release increasingly contextualized and precise information about ourselves, we stand to benefit a great deal. And privacy, then, becomes a rational, economic instrument that determines whether a company gets to serve us well (based on knowing us better) or clumsily (as they make presumptions about us through circumstance rather than intentional disclosure).

Implicitly, I am already benefiting from such opt-in vendor relationships. Through Twitter, I’ve “invited” several local vendors to send me real-time updates about their offerings to me via SMS, from Luna Park around the corner to Sightglass Coffee across town. They’ve earned my trust by not spamming me, instead offering actual value and insider information, treating me as a member of their esteemed coterie.

On the surface this model doesn’t appear to scale, but that’s just a failure of imagination. Scaling up is what the web does — if you know how to embrace it. By giving individuals more control over their experience and over the kinds of data that they can share, the need to “target” (in the military sense), recedes. Instead, opportunity emerges from being available, on-demand, and ubiquitous. Attention aggregators and identity providers can then broker relationships on behalf of their customers, and both parties will, ideally, end up with a better experience, and stronger, enduring relationships.

I hope Brightkite and Foursquare and the other location-based services keep this in mind. In as much as we let them broker our attention, they work for us — and not the other way around.

For Charity: Foursquare Looking For Leaderboard Sponsors

MG Siegler — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:24:34 -0800

By now, if you’ve heard about the location-based service Foursquare, you know that a key component of it is the gaming element. One level of this game is that users compete to get mayorships of venues within cities. A second level involves obtaining badges. But a third level is much more straightforward: A leaderboard. Now Foursquare is trying to up the motivation behind that element of the game by bringing in charity.

Foursquare is teaming up with an org in New York City (where they are based), Techies Give Back, to translate checkins into donations. Ideally, this money would come from brands/organizers that would sponsor the Foursquare Leaderboard for a week, co-founder Dennis Crowley tells us. Money earned would be given to CampInteractive, a nonprofit that works with inner-city youth on both outdoors and tech projects, which Techies Give Back is working with to hold an event on December 13.

Here’s how this would work: When you checkin on Foursquare, you generate points that go towards your score on the leaderboard. These points differ based on a few factors. Generally, you get more points if you’re checking into a place you haven’t been to before, or in a long time. You also get more points for adding a venue that isn’t yet in Foursquare’s system. Based on these points, a sponsor would donate a set amount of money per point.

Foursquare is looking for a brand that will donate at least $0.03 to Techies Give Back for each point earned. In NYC, that means the charity would have raised over $4,500 last week. (For those keeping score at home, that means there were about 150,000 points earned from checkins in New York last week.)

The sponsorship would allow for a complete re-skinning of the Foursquare leaderboard, Crowley notes. The week they are targeting is December 7 through the 12. Ideally, they’d have a brand step up with a winning proposal by December 1. Those interested should email info [at] techiesgiveback.org.

While this will just be an experiment in NYC at first, Crowley hints that this is something the company is thinking about doing with its leaderboard going forward. And this extends upon the idea of using the game element of Foursquare for good. Last month, the service teamed up with BART, the public transportation system in the San Francisco Bay Area, to encourage people to check in more at BART stations to earn rewards such as free rides and a special badge.

Of course, none of this has to do with the business model Foursquare is also working on, which involves partnering with local venues to create incentives such as free meals/beer for users who checkin.

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

How to pick a co-founder

Naval Ravikant — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:32:20 -0800

Picking a co-founder is your most important decision. It’s more important than your product, market, and investors.

The ideal founding team is two individuals, with a history of working together, of similar age and financial standing, with mutual respect. One is good at building products and the other is good at selling them.

The power of two

Two is the right number — avoid the three-body problem. Think Jobs and Wozniak, Allen and Gates, Ellison and Lane, Hewlett and Packard, Larry and Sergei, Yang and Filo, Omidyar and Skoll.

One founder companies can work, against the odds (hello, Mark Zuckerberg). So can three founder companies (hello, @biz, @ev, and @jack). In three founder companies, the politics can be tough — gang-up votes, jockeying for board seats, etc. — but it’s manageable. Four is an extremely unstable configuration and five is right out. When 4-5 founder companies work, it’s because two founders dominate.

Two founders works because unanimity is possible, there are no founder politics, interests can easily align, and founder stakes are high post-financing.

Someone you have history with

You wouldn’t marry someone you’d just met. Date first. Guess which pair of famous co-founders is in this photo:

Go through something difficult, like a Prisoner’s Dilemma or a Zero-Sum Game. If being ethical was lucrative, everyone would do it!

One builds, one sells

The best builders can prototype and perhaps even build the entire product, end-to-end. The best sellers can sell to customers, partners, investors, and employees.

The seller doesn’t have to be a “salesman” or “business guy”. He can be technical, but he must be able to wield the tools of influence. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs aren’t salesmen, but they are sellers.

Aligned motives required

If one founder wants to build a cool product, another one wants to make money, and yet another wants to be famous, it won’t work.

Pay close attention — true motivations are revealed, not declared.

Criteria: Intelligence, energy, and integrity

It’s not the kid you grew up next to. It’s not the person you like the most. It’s not the hacker most willing to work for free.

It’s someone of incredibly high intelligence, energy, and integrity. You’ll need all three yourself, and a shared history, to evaluate your co-founder.

Don’t settle

If it doesn’t feel right, keep looking. If you’re compromising, keep looking. A company’s DNA is set by the founders, and its culture is an extension of the founders’ personalities.

Pick “nice” guys

Avoid overly rational short-term thinkers. There are bounds to rationality. Partner with someone who is irrationally ethical, or a rational believer that nice guys finish first. Be especially careful with the “sales” guy here.

What you don’t know

Business founders who don’t code use bad proxies for picking technical co-founders (”10 years with Java!”). Technical founders who don’t sell also use bad proxies (”Harvard MBA!”). Learn enough of the other side to have an informed opinion. If you’re not seriously impressed, move on.

FAQs

What if the right guy already has his own startup? Convince him to work on yours part-time — he’ll drop his idea once yours gets traction.

Breakups are hard

If you’re going to fall out with your co-founder, do it early, recover the equity into the option pool to keep the company going, and recruit someone else great to fill the missing slot. Build in founder vesting (a.k.a. the “Pre-Nup”) to keep the breakup from getting messy. Building a great company without a partner is like raising kids without a…

Nearly everything I’ve written on this topic applies to dating and marriage. Coincidence?

Go forth and multiply.

This post is by Naval Ravikant. If you like it, check out his blog and Twitter.

How Chipotle, Pinkberry, and others win big by doing just a few things well

Matt — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:42:00 -0800

Get Google Maps Navigation on Your G1 [Android]

Kevin Purdy — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 07:35:00 -0800

Digital Tattoo Interface Turns Your Skin Into A Display [This Cyborg Life]

Rosa Golijan — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:40:00 -0800

Robert Scoble stopped by Posterous HQ the other day and interviewed us for Building 43!

(author unknown) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:51:41 -0800

Dissecting the Dollar Re-Design Project

Joshua Ritchie — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:45:53 -0800

(Richard Smith )

With faith in the US dollar hitting new lows, some believe the solution lies not in politics, but in design. Meet Richard Smith, architect of the ambitious and infectiously popular “dollar rede$ign project.” Smith is a creative strategy consultant who feels, “…our great rival, the Euro, looks so spanky in comparison,” to US currency that, “…it seems the only clear way to revive this global recession is to re-brand and re-design.” But rather than merely arguing for a new-look dollar, Smith drummed up an impressive wave of support for a redesign by allowing people to submit their own ideas to a web-based contest.

The idea is roughly similar to corporate re-branding, which seeks to change the face of struggling organizations by adopting fresh, new images. Several banks, for instance, have undergone name, color and logo changes since 2008 to erase the negative perceptions attached to old branding. In Smith’s view, a re-branding of the dollar targets the same goal: expressing and revamping its emotional value and the connections people make with currency. Seen from this perspective, the negativity people feel about our money and economy stems not just from economic indicators and discouraging news reports, but from the very look and feel of the money we possess. Change the “brand”, Smith believes, and you take a bold step toward changing our entire emotional response to US currency. And Smith isn’t alone in advocating a graphical overhaul of the dollar. In a blog post applauding the redesign project, the New York Times quotes designer Michael Bierut calling the current dollar, “…a cake that has been decorated to within an inch of its life.” Specifically, Bierut derided the dollar’s new enlarged purple numbers (an anti-counterfeit measure) as, “…a denim patch on a satin dress.”

Few could argue with Smith or Bierut that the dollar could use a new look. The world was quite different when the dollar got its last, major visual upgrade in 1930’s. And to its credit, the dollar redesign project has produced numerous, beautiful designs that most of us would be proud to carry in our wallets. Take this concept from Kottle.org, featuring a sleek green layout, a bluish-purple vertical stripe, George Washington’s portrait and text from the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution. A full inventory of all redesign project submissions can be seen here. The project’s winner (announced patriotically on July 4), however, was 25 year old Kyle R. Thompson. Beginning from his convictions that, “…conceptual design can really transform the way people deal with their communities” and that current dollars, “…feel cold and outdated”, Thompson took home top project honors with this submission (shown below.) Indeed, Thompson’s concepts breathe some much-needed fresh air into US currency while honoring the great traditions of our founders and history. On purely artistic grounds, Thompson and the entire dollar redesign project are to be applauded.

(Kyle R Thompson)

Artistic merit notwithstanding, however, it is unclear whether redesigning the dollar will address the severest criticisms leveled against it. For all the similarities between currency redesign and re-branding, there is one large difference: a corporation’s products or services are consumed. A business can properly engage in an image overhaul on the assumption (or at least the hope) that a better image will attract more sales, customer loyalty or other results. Currency, on the other hand, is simply a nation’s medium of exchange. Put another way, a dollar de-design project that made our currency as hideous and unappealing as possible would still result in everyone who currently uses dollars using the new ones. While businesses can lose customers, citizens cannot start paying the local Wal-Mart (*now, Walmart) in Euros if they decide they’re unsatisfied with the dollar.

It is also worth noting that physical currency is not as prominent in day to day commerce as in generations past. The lion’s share of today’s transactions are digital – facilitated by debit/credit cards, PayPal accounts, wire transfers, gift certificates, direct deposit, electronic stock exchanges and other mechanisms that reduce the number of people physically using dollars. While cash-based businesses are still with us, the economy has largely “moved on” from printed money. Therefore, exactly what or how big of an effect a nicer-looking dollar would have on the economy is hard to forecast.

(Won Park)

Of course, one could argue that a snazzier dollar will attract currency speculators to invest here what they would have invested in the Euro, yuan or other currencies. No one can deny the worthiness of that goal. Harvard MBA John T. Reed recently likened bond traders and forex traders to, “…the canary in the mine” who would be, “…the first to herald the arrival of the financial apocalypse.” But unlike commodities (like coffee beans or diamonds) currencies do not share an ubiquitous price. Rather, currency speculators decide which currencies to invest in based on current or predicted value. Variables considered in currency speculation include political stability, national debt, deficit spending, and the willingness of foreign governments to buy your debt – all decidedly non-aesthetic considerations. Taking this into account, it’s hard to imagine currency speculators staking thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars of their own money on a currency solely because of a graphical makeover. Far more weighty in such decision making are things like China deciding to cease buying U.S. bonds.

None of this, again, downplays the artistic value of a new-look dollar. Few would oppose Kyle Thompson’s design replacing current dollars in our wallets and bank accounts. That being said, the link between how our dollars look and how they are percieved by foreign governments and speculators is less certain.

Loading Rails conditionally with Rack

(author unknown) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:56:13 -0800

Consuming XMPP PubSub in Ruby

Ilya Grigorik — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:22:39 -0800

XMPP is a very versatile protocol with well over several hundred proposed and working extensions, which has also proven itself in production (ex: Google Talk). Presence, roster management, federated and server to server (S2S) messaging are all examples of features that you get for free, which make it a very appealing platform for messaging applications. Combine it with extensions such as XEP-0060 (PubSub), and we have all the relevant buzzwords: pubsub, real-time, federated, and presence.

The PubSub specification within XMPP, as defined in XEP-0060, is definitely not as flexible as that of AMQP, but it is often times enough to cover the most popular use cases. However, technical merits aside, one of the key missing components, especially in Ruby, has been the historical lack of functioning libraries - xmpp4r claims to support it, but examples are lacking. Thankfully, after test driving the latest batch of gems, it looks like we're finally there.

Getting off the ground with XMPP

Without a good toolkit XMPP can be a gnarly protocol to get started with - Pidgin IM client has some great tools for spying on the exchange, but monitoring pages of XML scroll by can only get you so far. Thankfully, Seth Fitzsimmons has built switchboard ("curl for XMPP"), which offers a powerful command line tool to greatly simplify the process. Make sure to read the full tutorial, or jump right into it by testing it with the Wordpress XMPP stream:

# list available options, subscribe to a blog, list subscriptions and then open the stream
switchboard disco --target pubsub.im.wordpress.com info
switchboard pubsub --server pubsub.im.wordpress.com --node /blog/icanhazcheesburger.com subscribe
switchboard pubsub --server pubsub.im.wordpress.com subscriptions
switchboard pubsub --server pubsub.im.wordpress.com listen

Based on xmpp4r, switchboard is also a toolkit for assembling your own XMPP clients, which means that it can be easily customized to power a PubSub consumer. From start to finish, and since examples are still hard to come by:

> switchboard-pubsub.rb

require 'rubygems'
require 'switchboard' class WordpressJack def self.connect(switchboard, settings) switchboard.plug!(PubSubJack) switchboard.hook(:post) switchboard.on_pubsub_event do |event| event.payload.each do |payload| payload.elements.each do |item| on(:post, item) end end end end
end settings = Switchboard::Settings.new
settings['pubsub.server'] = 'pubsub.im.wordpress.com'
settings['jid'] = 'user@im.wordpress.com'
settings['password'] = 'password' switchboard = Switchboard::Client.new(settings)
switchboard.plug!(WordpressJack) switchboard.on_post do |post| puts "A new post was received:" puts post.methods.sort.uniq exit
end switchboard.run!

XMPP with EventMachine and Nokogiri

If you have an EventMachine stack, or looking for a high performance library, Jeff Smick's blather is definitely a gem to investigate. The combination of the asynchronous nature of EventMachine, a SAX parser within Nokogiri, and a great DSL make it very fast and a pleasure to work with:

> blather-pubsub.rb

require 'rubygems'
require 'blather/client/client'
require 'blather/client/dsl/pubsub'
require 'blather' EventMachine.run { host = 'pubsub.im.wordpress.com' node = 'blog/icanhazcheesburger.com' user = 'user@im.wordpress.com' pass = 'pass' jid = Blather::JID.new(user) client = Blather::Client.setup(jid, pass) client.register_handler(:ready) { puts "Connected. Send messages to #{client.jid.inspect}." pub = Blather::DSL::PubSub.new(client, host) } client.register_handler(:pubsub_event) { |event| puts event } client.connect
}

PubSub & Event-Driven Architecture

Having personally struggled in the past with XMPP PubSub and Ruby, it's been great to revisit the use case and find a new set of fully functional libraries. The event driven architecture which is enabled by technologies such as XMPP, AMQP, Comet, Webhooks and PubsubHubbub are increasingly becoming the staple of many web applications, and for a good reason. If you haven't already, grab switchboard or blather and take XMPP for a test drive.

The Font Kingdom: Search, Explore, Create, and Download Fonts for Free

(author unknown) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:07:00 -0800

Being a blogger, I often find design elements on the web for my posts or my blog in general. It’s becoming a very common experience for bloggers to know a thing or two about web design. I’m guessing it is the web that taught us to be quasi-designers by offering us lots of easy-to-use tools that help us create just about everything we need: photo-editing, widgets, logos, buttons, and yes, fonts as well. Fonts are a big focus of the Web2.0 era—they are now bigger, cleaner and smoother, especially when it comes to logos.

Can you imagine Techcrunch’s logo looking like this? It’s all dependent on font choice. (in case you were wondering BTW, Twitter’s font is mostly Pico created by Maniackers Design)

Regardless of the fact that the web makes it easy for everyone to be more creative (i.e., logo above), it becomes a paradise for designers themselves who seek new tools & inspiration. So whether you’re a professional graphic designer, or an amateur web publisher this list of font tools might come in handy (eventually).

myFontbook is an online font viewer and manager based on the font available on your computer. It allows you to organize your font collection and gives you all the tools you need to do so. Once you open the demo, myFontbook will render all the fonts in your computer, and display them together in an easy to view mode. While all the files are actually open, it makes it easier to browse through them and see the fonts in several sizes. You can also make lists of fonts, tag & favorite the fonts that you like best. The font viewer renders your entire font library super fast. Just compare the rendering time to other font management tools. And there’s nothing to install—it works from your browser. If you want to save all your activities for later use, you’ll need to register. But don’t worry, it’s free.

With BetterFonts, an online font database, you can quickly preview and download thousands of fonts. Navigate the massive collection by alphabetic order or browse the fonts by their categories. You can change the preview text of your desirable font and instantly download it for free. Although the site provides an impressive list of fonts, for the quality ones you’ll need to pay. But they have a deal of a 500-font package for $2.77. Please note that there’s no preview of the font list in advance—which might be a risky deal if you want something in particular (but then again, it’s cheap).

Most of us usually use only one font (probably Arial), ’cause unless you’re a designer, you don’t give much thought to fonts. But hey, there’s a world of fonts out there that is just waiting for exploration, and FFonts is a good site to start with. FFonts has a huge font library and it allows you to navigate easily, and download any font for free. All the fonts on the site are listed on the left side menu for easy access, and clicking on a font gives you information plus a satisfying preview of the font. Overall, the site hosts more than 10,000 fonts!

If you don’t find anything you like, and are still looking for that special font to make an appearance, you are more than welcome to create it yourself with FontStruct. Sign into the service and with FontStruct’s font-building tool & editor, you’ll be able to create fonts constructed out of geometrical shapes, which are arranged in a grid pattern, like tiles or bricks. Once you’re done building, FontStruct generates high-quality TrueType fonts, ready to use in any Mac or Windows application.

You can share your creations with the world or save it for yourself, but FontStruct actually encourages you to share your fonts with others, this is why they’ve created a gallery where people can share and discuss fonts, and download them for free. A quick look at the community taught me there is a lot of going on there—definitely worth the visit if fonts interest to you.

Fawnt is also one of the largest free fonts archives on the web today. With a pleasant design and an easy to use navigator, you are one step away from finding the perfect font. Browse the fonts by category or alphabetically, or use the search function. All the fonts have large and customizable previews, and character maps. Be aware though that while all of the fonts in Fawnt are free, they might have some restrictions. Some may be free for personal use, others for commercial. When you visit a font link make sure to browse the page for any fine print or usage terms.

With 62,000 fonts, Myfonts has the world’s largest font database. Not only can you search for fonts, explore everything in their gallery, and download the fonts to your computer, you can also find fonts based on a picture with their service WhatTheFont. Simply upload a file, or specify a URL, and myFonts will find the font used in the picture you uploaded (or at least, give you some close alternatives to this font). If you’re a designer, I’m sure you can see how important a service like this can be to the industry.

myFonts recently released a great iPhone app that does the same thing and helps you find a font while on-the-go. You can snap a photo with the app, and save it to your gallery. For iPod users, you are asked to upload a file from your iPhone gallery, then myFonts will process and optimize the photos and provide you with the font’s details.

Finally, it allows you to receive or send the results by email. For a free & direct download click here.

Another free iPhone app is FontGenie – The app displays all available fonts on your iPhone and allows you to keep track of ever-changing font families and their font types.

A super cool idea is to actually create a font with your own handwriting, so you’ll be able to insert it wherever you need to place your signature on the web. Luckily, Fontcapture took the idea and made it possible, which means you can create your handwriting font right now if you want to, all you need is a printer and a scanner.

How it works: First, you need to download the font template, print it, fill it in with your own handwriting, scan it and upload it to the site. Then you’ll be able to preview and download the new font to your font library, located on your computer.

Abstract Fonts is not very different than the other font directories suggested here but it has a very convenient interface. Abstract Fonts lets you type in text to view font examples, opens a unique menu for each font which summarizes the information you need to know about that font, see the character map, and display users’ comments. Abstract also gives you the ability to see similar fonts, which I think is an absolutely brilliant addition.

Last but not least, here’s something to look for in the future:

Typekit, a new font editor will offer designers more control over fonts on the web.

Today, almost all Web fonts are protected by copyright, and very few of them allow for linking via CSS or redistribution on the web. Typekit has been working with foundries to develop a consistent web-only font linking license.

Typekit will give you access to their protected library of high-quality fonts. You’ll just need to add a line of JavaScript to your markup, tell Typekit what fonts you want to use, and then craft your pages the way you always have. Except now, you’ll be able to use real fonts.

There’s still not enough information about this new service but based on the above, Typekit might definitely change web design. Unfortunately, the site is in closed beta (invitation only) so designers make sure you sign up for an invite. Meanwhile, check out the full list of fonts already available at Typekit. Also, Typekit has some interesting investors: Evan Williams, Ron Conway, Caterina Fake and True Ventures.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Secrets Updates for Snow Leopard, Still Tweaks Every Dark Corner of OS X [Downloads]

Whitson Gordon — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:00:00 -0800

The loot from the recent MacHeist

Josh Carr — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:30:00 -0800

Microsoft To Offer Application Marketplace In Sharepoint 2010

Alex Williams — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 04:00:00 -0800

Mockingbird: Cappuccino-based visual mockup tool

Dion Almaer — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 03:19:07 -0800

Mockingbird is a nice Cappuccino based tool that lets you quickly mockup a wire-frame on the Web.

Fire it up, build out your "pages", drag and drop your UI, and then share it with your clients!

How to keep your stylesheets clean and organized using Rails (Tutorial)

(author unknown) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 03:01:48 -0800

AT&T looking to sell an 8GB iPhone 3GS?

Josh Carr — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:00:00 -0800

Bug tracking isn't a network-effect business

David — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:01:00 -0800

Microsoft Courier's Swipes, Snips and Scribbles: The Leaked Interface [Exclusive]

(author unknown) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:14:38 -0800

Shared by ppedrazzi
the battle for digital books is getting real.

We've seen slides and videos of Microsoft's Courier booklet in action, but nothing has quite explained how all of these things actually work. This document explains Courier's interface, gestures and features more in-depth than ever before.

Microsoft Courier's Swipes, Snips and Scribbles: The Leaked Interface [Exclusive]

The Paperboy — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:25:00 -0800

Google Friend Connect, now more personalized

joyce — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 07:30:00 -0800

(Cross-posted with the Official Google Blog)

On the subway, I bump elbows with a guy for 20 city blocks without exchanging a single word. Forty-five minutes later, I find the same guy at the local guitar shop, and we start to talk — turns out he plays a Gibson Les Paul just like I do. We may have been strangers on the train, but in the guitar shop, we discover our shared passion for guitars.

Often, the web can feel like that subway. There are probably people commuting to the places you regularly visit, but you don’t know who those people are, and your paths may never cross. With Google Friend Connect, we've been helping millions of website owners make their sites more like that guitar shop — a social place where visitors can get to know each other — and less like the anonymous subway ride.

With this in mind, we're thrilled to introduce a new set of Friend Connect features that let site owners help their visitors get to know each other and personalize their site's experience and content.

Break the ice

Visitors to your site can get to know each other better by sharing details about themselves that are relevant to the site they're on. As a site owner, you can help them do this by visiting the new "Interests" section of your Friend Connect account, where you can add site-relevant questions that people can answer when joining your website or via the poll gadget. For instance, if you have a music website, you might ask people to share their favorite bands, the last concert they attended, or where they discover new music. Or if you run a hiking site, you can ask them about a favorite hike or national park. The details people share are added to their Friend Connect public profiles for your site, which are seen by other site visitors. This way, your visitors can learn more about each other in the context of the interests that bring them to your website.

We've also added the ability for people to send private messages to each other. That way, when a user discovers someone who shares their interests, they can send a message to that person via their Friend Connect profile to start a dialogue.

And as with any data you collect on Friend Connect, you can use open export tools and APIs to integrate this information with any other systems you might use. The interests people share on your website are also made available in the new "Community data" section of your account in the form of easy-to-read charts.

Personalize your website experience

The ice-breaking isn't limited to your visitors; you'll learn more about them too. The interests people share make it possible for you to create a more personalized experience on your website in a number of ways:

Send custom newsletters: The new "Newsletter" section of your account lets you create, send and manage newsletters. And with the help of "Interests," you can either send out newsletters to all your subscribers, or send out custom newsletters to different segments of your subscribers, based on the interest responses they submit.
Personalized content gadget: This new Friend Connect gadget automatically presents a dynamic personalized set of links to your site's content that matches each visitor's specific interests. Is a visitor learning how to play swing music? Links to articles your site has published about playing swing are presented to him or her.
Google ads: For those of you who display ads on your website, your Friend Connect account now includes an "AdSense" section that lets you enable Google ad units that are matched both to your site's content and to the interests users publicly share on your website.

All these new features are easy to implement and require no coding whatsoever. Here's a quick tour of what Friend Connect now has to offer:

If you'd like to see the new features in action, check out some of our partners' sites, like sfstation.com, metrolyrics.com, and pachakam.com.

We're excited to see the web evolve into a place where visitors of all websites can get to know each other — to share and discuss the things they care about most. To get started with Friend Connect, visit www.google.com/friendconnect.

Update 11/15: Updated list of partners.

Posted by Mussie Shore, Product Manager, Google Friend Connect

ScribbleBot Makes You Feel Like You Know How To Draw [Concept]

Sean Fallon — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:00:00 -0800

Tools we use for running our startup

Peldi Guilizzoni — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 07:32:12 -0700

Hi there. I’ve been wanting to write this post for a long time, but things were still evolving too much for me to come up with a definite list.

Now that we’ve been in business for a whole 15 months, the dust has settled a bit on the tools we use in our day-to-day operations.

We’re pretty happy with our tool set so I thought we’d share it in hope it will be useful to some, and hopefully to get your feedback on it!

We are NOT affiliated with any of the companies that make the tools below, just happy customers.

I do know some of the companies below are Mockups users, which makes me SO proud. Come out in the comments if you are, it will be a big lovefest!

Also, apologies for the OS X-heavy list…perhaps someone has a Windows-heavy list of equivalent tools to share?

Internal tools

Apple laptops – our hardware of choice. Mariah and Valerie work off of their MacBook Air laptops and Marco and I each use a 17-inch Macbook Pro (with external 24-inch LED Cinema Displays). We also have a mac mini (our “cash register”), and we’ll probably get Valerie a new 27-inch iMac soon (the Air is awesome for traveling, but not the most powerful machine for work.)

The iPhone – the first thing you get when you join Balsamiq as an employee. Aside from being a great perk, it’s so useful in so many ways that I can’t imagine life without one. Also most of the tools mentioned below have an iPhone client, so it’s great for us to “carry the whole office” with us at all times with no extra effort. Last but not least, I find it a great source for UX inspiration.

Typinator – I cannot count how many hours this has saved Mariah, Valerie and me. If you use email for work, you need this. It’s a tiny little tool that listens to your keystrokes and expands what you type if it matches a certain shortcut you previously specified. Just like typing “lorem” in Mockups expands it to a full “lorem ipsum” paragraph. We have A TON of shortcuts (email replies, URLs…) saved up and we share our shortcuts via DropBox. I found this tool via a Guy Kawasaki tweet, and we now each have a license. Awesome.

DropBox – If you don’t use DropBox, I will shake my head at you in disapproval. It’s “shared network drives” taken into this millennium. Nothing to set up, works across firewalls, brilliantly easy to use, insanely cheap. If they go public one day, I’ll be buying stock. We use it for ALL of our internal files, from graphic assets to contracts, invoices, UI mockups, screenshots, and accounting data (we’re totally transparent internally, even more than externally). We even built a feature of Mockups that enables near-real-time collaboration by using DropBox!

Confluence Hosted – the other place where we keep our documents is an instance of Atlassian Confluence (hosted by Atlassian). It comes with Mockups for Confluence pre-installed, which is killer. It’s basically our Intranet (and our browsers’ home page). It has a list of links that we share, an RSS feeds for all the mentions of Balsamiq on the Internet, and most importantly meeting notes, documents we want to collaborate on (like drafts of new pages for the site or blog posts). Confluence is the best wiki software I know of, and every time I use it I wish I needed to use it more…I used to live in it when I was back at Adobe and I miss it! I’m serious. Good software has that effect on people.

Yammer – Yammer is like a “Twitter intranet”. We use it to share links and to help each other with internal issues. We also use it to tell everyone else what we’re working on, and to share an occasional viral Youtube video. Since our team is distributed, this is our water-cooler. Very effective and took no time to get adopted (even faster than Twitter itself). To give you an idea, if we didn’t have it we’d be looking for a replacement or try to build our own. We use the Gabble client (it’s native OSX, uses a ton less ram than their AIR client) and their own client on our iPhones.

Microsoft Excel – we use this for our “beans”, i.e. our big spreadsheet where we record all sales and expenses. We keep the file on Dropbox and update it daily (Val updates it with the help of a script Marco wrote and I double-check it). Excel has its quirks (1904 date format anyone?) but overall there’s no better tool to manage thousands of rows of data and make pretty charts out of it.

PivotalTracker – you probably heard me rave about it before. PivotalTracker is as simple as a TODO list you might write on paper, but online, shared and collaborative (try the real-time collaboration and be amazed). Every bug or feature request we get ends up on our pivotal list. Once in a while we go through and prioritize the next few weeks, but we’re not religious about following it (customer issues always take precedence for instance). We have 3 projects in Pivotal right now: one for Mockups as a whole, one for the web app and one for Valerie and mine’s shared TODO list, so that we always know what we’re working on. The only problem with PivotalTracker is that it’s free. I’d feel MUCH better if I was paying for it, I need them to stay in business forever!

Apple Preview (for PDFs) – I find that I use the Mac’s native PDF-handling abilities quite a bit. We print stuff ot PDF for our records, sometimes remove pages, sometimes merge two PDF files together (a simple drag and drop!)…it’s nice. If we were on Windows we’d probably be buying Acrobat Professional to do most of the same things.

Parallels – we use Parallels mostly for testing Mockups on different flavors of Windows and Linux (I have an Ubuntu Hardy image as well as an XP, Win 2000 Server and a Vista one, while Marco can run Vista , 2 flavors of XP, Ubuntu and soon Windows 7). The other reason is to run QuickBooks, but hopefully that will soon be a thing of the past (see below).

Writeroom – Writeroom is what I’m writing this post in and what I use any time I have anything to write (I usually end up copying and pasting the text into Confluence or Wordpress). It’s a wonderful piece of ZenWare and it inspired me to keep Mockups as clutter-free as possible. If you need to focus on your writing (and you should!), I highly recommend it.

Adobe Fireworks, Illustrator, Photoshop – Fireworks is my “go-to” graphics editor, I use it almost daily. It’s just fast and easy to use. Illustrator is what I use when I need to design something, though thankfully I am now able to outsource as much design work as possible (it’s better for everyone). Photoshop I can barely use any more, I learned it maybe 10 years ago and haven’t touched it much since, but that’s what designers use so I’m using it to interact with them, plus there are a few things that Fireworks just can’t do.

Skitch – if you need to put an annotated screenshot online, Skitch is the fastest, easiest and most fun way to do it. I just love tools like this: it doesn’t try to boil the ocean, it does one thing, does it well and makes it fun. Killer. Marco says he likes LittleSnapper as well.

Screenflow and Screenr – I use Screenflow to record all the screencast for the website. It’s very well done, very mac-like. Great UX. I usually record the video first, then record the audio and add it to the video track. Screenflow lets me do that easily without having to launch GarageBand or other audio-editing software (which is a software category that generally makes me queasy .) I also use Screenr if I need something quick to show a customer for instance. Also great UX, and cross-platform (it’s a Java applet). Awesome. Some people also use Jing for this stuff but somehow it never stuck with me (it used to crash quite a bit plus that little non-standard “yellow ball UI” never really sat well with me).

QuickSilver – I use this over the built-in Spotlight because I find it faster. It also has a ton of plugins and cool features. Thanks to Elliot Winard for showing this to me back in the day!

Last.fm – I used to be a Pandora enthusiast when I lived in the US, but alas, that’s not available here in Italy. Last.fm has proven itself to be even better, with the “social discovery” features helping me not get totally bored with my music all the time. It’s worth paying for an account just for the “only play my loved tracks” feature.

Tweetie and TweetDeck are the Twitter clients we use. I like how little memory Tweetie uses but it’s been a bit flaky lately (the search column doesn’t update any more?), so I’m back to Tweetdeck for now.

Google Reader – is what we use to read (and share internally) RSS feeds. I follow quite a bit of blogs (here’s an OPML file with a subset of them about startups), and Reader has the best UI. I used to use it as part of iGoogle but I have now come to love the full-screen UI of it.

Coding Tools: Adobe Flash Builder, Flash Authoring, Eclipse, NetBeans, Visual Studio Express. Mockups is a Flex app, so Flash Builder (I still call it Flex Builder, sorry) is our IDE. The UI controls in Mockups are hand-drawn by my wife Mariah, and taken into Adobe Flash authoring (via Fireworks) to turn them into something that Flex can use.

For our server-side coding, we use eclipse for java development (Mockups for Confluence, JIRA and XWiki), NetBeans for the web app (the back-end is in grails) and Visual Studio Express for C# development (Mockups for FogBugz). We also use Firebug to help us with jQuery development.

Charles – Charles is essential if you do anything client-server. It inspects requests/responses like nobody’s business. The problem with Charles is that I’ve been able to use the free demo for years, their limitations are too loose! I know tons of people that use it, but don’t know anyone who’s paid for it. I think I’ll go pay for it right now, it’s a really good piece of software.

Deployment tools: for source-code-repository, I used to use Perforce when I was alone but it’s too expensive for a small business like ours, so we switched to Subversion, mostly because it’s mature and has lots of 3rd party tools that support it (before you have a fit, we’ll be using git for sharing some open-source scripts soon). One such tool is Versions, an OS X native client for it with great usability. I still use the command-line interface for merging and other complex stuff, but for day-to-day coding Versions is quite nice.

For building our products we use a combination of Ant and Maven scripts, all continuously built (and deployed!) via CruiseControl. I know that CC is like living in the dark ages when it comes to CI servers, but I’m pretty happy with it, it’s very reliable. Plus it’s free. We might invest in something that lets us run parallel builds sometimes soon, as we have 8 different builds going off after every check-in right now, which takes about 10 minutes. We’ll be sharing some of our build scripts soon (see below).

We also just installed Atlassian FishEye. I was REALLY excited about it for about two days, but haven’t really looked at it since. I suspect that for a team of 2.5 developers like ours it might be overkill, but maybe I’m not using it right. I thought I’d mention it because it really seems like a very well-made and powerful product.

Slicehost – we chose to host our web app on Slicehost for 3 reasons: reasonable price, outstanding customer support and the best technical documentation I’ve ever seen (I might write a blog post about it one day..it’s concise, to the point, funny and makes you feel like a super-human). I hope Slicehost realizes how important PickledOnion’s articles are to their overall success and compensate him (her?) accordingly. A word of caution, Slicehost can get pretty pricey if you install memory-hogging apps like Tomcat on it. Still reasonable, but their cheapest option won’t make it.

Apple Keynote – I only just recently started using, for my WebExpo talk in Prague last week. All I gotta say is WOW. Keynote’s usability kicks the pants off of Powerpoint…it’s really a wonderfully designed piece of software. I was especially impressed with their progressively disclosed snap lines, which are SO MUCH BETTER than the ones we have in Mockups. It must be nice to be Apple and have tons of brilliant engineers and designers to help you, I’m jealous!

QuickBooks – oh, man. We use QuickBooks Assisted Payroll for Valerie’s payroll. It’s nice and automated, but still requires Val to launch Parallels in order to launch their Windows-only application, which is NOT the pinnacle of usability…we just asked our accountants if we could pay them a monthly fee to take this painful part of Valerie’s job away from us. There’s plenty of great software to replace QuickBooks (our friends at LessAccounting know a thing or two about it), but IMHO the best software to use for certain things is one that you don’t even use yourself! Much better to have professionals use whatever they like best.

Our own scripts – we wrote a bunch of little scripts to automate some of the most tedious tasks. We plan on sharing those as open-source soon, and we’re going to be hosting them on GitHub because that’s where all the cool kids are these days , and actually looks REALLY nice for open-source projects.

Customer Facing Tools

GMail – we use Google Apps for your Domain so all of our mail is handled by GMail. I actually end up forwarding all of my email (personal and for business) to balsamiq@gmail.com because the “consumer” version of GMail gets Google Labs features earlier than the other one. GMail’s search, threaded view and filters are absolute must-have for us, we couldn’t run our business without them. Also, the “Default to Reply All” feature in Labs is effectively replacing our need for a CRM tool (even though we looked into ZenDesk and it looked nice, especially since it integrates with GetSatisfaction).

Marco wanted me to mention that he’s a mac purist and uses Mail.app instead. Oh well. We also use Mail.app on our mac-mini to run the cash register…but that’s a subject for another post.

Skype – where to begin. Our phone number +1 (415) 367-3531 is a SykpeIn number, meaning that if you call it both Valerie’s computer in Foster City and mine in Italy will ring. When one of us answers, the other laptop will stop ringing. How cool is that? Valerie and I use Skype internally for our daily catch-up meetings…we use it as an instant messenger, we use Skype chats as “war room” for development, we use the new screen sharing feature all the time (which is a bit flaky but nicely integrated). I have been interviewed for a number of podcasts via Skype as well. If there was one piece of installed software in the last 7 years that changed the World we live in forever, Skype might be it. Can you believe Skype is only 7 years old? Can you remember life before it? I can’t.

Adium – for instant messaging. This stuff is boring by now, but Adium connects to everything and just works.

Freshbooks – when I first started Balsamiq I dealt with invoices and estimates by hand, I used one of the default templates that came with Microsoft Word. I am SO glad that we make enough money to be able to afford the (very affordable) Freshbooks. It has great usability, it’s very fast to use, it’s a web app so Val and I can access the account at any time, and most importantly it has APIs! I just spent a couple of days last week cooking up some PHP scripts that allow our customers to generate estimates (quotes) and invoices by themselves when they need them. This freed up an hour of Valerie’s time EVERY DAY, just like that. Better living through scripting! Freshbooks also has GREAT customer service, plus they seem to be really nice people overall. We’re happy to support them.

GetSatisfaction – you’ve probably heard me rave about GS before. I was lucky enough to be one of their first paying customers so I’ve seen it get better and better. I REALLY love what they stand for and how they put the customer and the company on the same level. They win on UX as well, with the smiley faces and the “gardening tools” being right there where you expect them to be. I hope they do well, I really do.

Payment Processors: Paypal, Google Checkout, E-Junkie and Spreedly – We use E-Junkie as a shopping cart. Their name is terrible, but their admin UI is pretty good and flexible enough for all the different things we need to do (generate keys based on the names, etc). It integrates nicely with both Paypal and Google Checkout, and I recommend using both since Paypal won’t accept as many credit cards in as many countries as Google Checkout does. We also decided to pay $30/month for Paypal’s Virtual Terminal (I think that’s what it’s called), which lets us take credit-card orders over the phone. Best $30/mo ever spent, I wish we had done it earlier. Pays for itself immediately.

We just recently started using Spreedly as a payment processor for our hosted offerings, and we’re very happy with them. The APIs are super-easy to pick up, they have good docs, accessible support and overall seem like good, trustworthy people. I like their administration’s UI as well. Thanks to Ryan Carson for recommending them in this talk.

Delicious – I think I’ll write a separate blog post about this, but I use delicious extensively. Want a few examples? Look at the balsamiq_press tag, or the balsamiq_reviews tag, or the balsamiq_love one. It’s SUPER useful, I’ll write more about it I promise.

Twitter – I wrote about Twitter before, and can’t wait to buy as much stock as I can afford in it when they go public.

Facebook – I admit that I never “got” Facebook much before Mariah and Valerie showed me the way. If Yammer is our internal water cooler, our Facebook page is our “community water cooler”. Valerie, who has effectively taken over our page there, says that it’s like this blog, but less formal (I know, can you be less formal than this? I didn’t think so either). I love it! The best part about it is that we can see actual FACES of our fans and customers, it’s so magical. We are not a company selling software to customers: we are people helping other people ridding the World of bad software, one wireframe at the time. Social media really brings this point home, I love it. I wouldn’t want to live in any other time in history actually.

For this website, we use Drupal for every page except for the blog section, for which we use Wordpress instead. I think I use about 10% of what Drupal can do, but it works well enough for me. Wordpress is Wordpress, there’s a reason it’s the standard.

Posterous – ah, another one of my favorite tools. SO simple. No, you don’t understand, it’s SO simple. We use it for MockupsToGo, our community site. Garry Tan and Sachin Agarwal are awesome and always put my own customer support response-times to shame. I swear they respond INSTANTLY! They also implemented a feature “just for me“, which makes me feel all nice and special. I heart them!

That’s it for now!

Ok so first of all, I have made a Twitter list of all the tools I mentioned above that I could find: http://twitter.com/balsamiq/essential-startup-tools.

Then, are you using these tools? Do you think we should swap out any of them for a better one? Note that what we care the most about are usability, customer service and the people behind the tool. Features come a distant 4th.

Note: I plan on deleting comments that are too “sales-y” or “pitch-y”. If you want to pimp your product, get someone else to do it. If it doesn’t strike me as a truthful endorsement, I’ll delete the comment for everyone’s sake. You have been warned.

Peldi

P.S.There are some interesting comments over at Hacker News about this post.

Facebook Rewrites Privacy Policy, Foreshadows Location Based Services

Jason Kincaid — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:35:17 -0700

Facebook’s VP of Communications and Public Policy Elliot Schrage has posted an update to the site’s blog outlining a major rewrite Facebook is proposing for its Privacy Policy. Schrage writes that the new version eliminates the legalese of the privacy policy the company has used up until now, spelling out what the site is doing with user data in more explicit terms. You can find the proposed document here and the current privacy policy here.

The new terms are certainly easier to read, and they also contain some significant changes (including a couple Schrage doesn’t point out). One of these seems to indicate that Facebook may well be releasing location-related features soon (this is the first time any language related to location has appeared in any of Facebook’s policy documents, Facebook has confirmed) :

“Location Information. When you share your location with others or add a location to something you post, we treat that like any other content you post (for example, it is subject to your privacy settings). If we offer a service that supports this type of location sharing we will present you with an opt-in choice of whether you want to participate.”

This is obviously a big step for Facebook, and one that many people have been expected for a long time. Twitter is moving into geolocation, and Facebook doesn’t want to be late to the game. Still, with all of Facebook’s privacy settings this will be a tricky dance for the world’s largest social network.

Also important to note is the section on the ‘Everyone’ setting, which talks about what happens when you share something that gets indexed by a search engine (you can’t remove it).

“Everyone” Privacy Setting. Information set to “everyone” is publicly available information, may be accessed by everyone on the Internet (including people not logged into Facebook), is subject to indexing by third party search engines, may be associated with you outside of Facebook (such as when you visit other sites on the internet), and may be imported and exported by us and others without privacy limitations. The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on Facebook is set to “everyone.” You can review and change the default settings in your privacy settings. If you delete “everyone” content that you posted on Facebook, we will remove it from your Facebook profile, but have no control over its use outside of Facebook.

Schrage also writes that the revision fulfills the company’s committment to Canada’s Privacy Commissioner, who has been investigating Facebook’s privacy policies and practices.

This brings the privacy policy in line with Facebook’s other core documents, which the site began revamping last February after a user uproar over some changes made to its Terms of Service. Facebook’s ‘governance’ system now invites users to submit their comments and vote on documents before they’re finalized.

Other documents that have been written and edited in this fashion include Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, Principles, and Payment Terms.

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

Speaker's Tip: Don't tell the audience you aren't prepared

Jason F. — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:41:00 -0700

Notes from Startup School 2009

Nivi — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:00:31 -0700

Mark Bao has posted his notes from this year’s Startup School. Here are my favorite parts (everything below is cut-and-pasted directly from his notes — read the full collection):

Mark Pincus, CEO, Zynga: My Startup Experience

what really matters is that YOU CONTROL YOUR BOARD. Mark Zuckerberg claps.

How? (1) Create a board that reflects the ownership of the company. (2) Make a new board seat for a new CEO, (3) Do a term sheet tune-up.

Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO, Facebook: Q&A with Jessica Livingston

he says he never pitched Facebook a lot. Just got introduced to people because already had x00,000 users

Traction solves every problem. Profit erases every sin.

cognizant of the fact that engineers tend to move around companies. Facebook is a place to learn; he’s cool with moves.

That’s a neat solution: retention is a problem — so we “don’t care” about retention. Jeffrey Pfeffer and Bob Sutton from Stanford offer other solutions for retaining employees.

Twitter Founders Biz Stone and Ev Williams: Q&A with Jessica Livingston

motivation behind Twitter: two week hackweek at Obvious. they built, used it over the weekend, and they were passionately engaged

Hackdays are a great way to boost morale, clear out the ideas you can’t stop thinking about, and build small, low-priority, high ROI features and products.

Tony Hsieh, CEO, Zappos: Delivering Happiness

Zappos’ Committable Core Values are grounds for hiring and firing, very serious about it

Greg McAdoo, Sequoia Capital

good recession-era startups “buy the cash register early,” — they execute their pay business model earlier to generate revenues earlier and bank earlier
enterprise sales tip: promote and talk about the HARD DOLLAR ROI. it’s the most important thing to talk about. make them scared to reject your product. make them think “if my boss ever found out we could have saved 50% on software X, he would be pissed.” make them fear that the competition get the product in their hands and beat you out.
startups that gain revenue early are disciplined earlier, and get used to being an actual business earlier, and generally are better and more recession-proof

Also see Fred Wilson’s post on Portfolio Screens.

Jason Fried, CEO, 37signals: Funding and Charging for Your Product

the difference between a boostrapped and funded company is easy to understand.
the bootstrapped company starts off thinking: we need to make money.
the funded company starts of thinking: we need to spend money. these investors have given us x million dollars—we should spend it!
funding is like crack. it’s an addiction with names like Series C. Don’t keep going back for more and more funding; it’ll make your addiction worse.
sorry, failure is not a rite of passage. you don’t have to fail. failing once doesn’t prevent another. Fried thinks the idea of “you have to fail once” and having to “learn about failure” is ridiculous.
learning a lesson from failure is learning what not to do. learning what to do is a lot better than learning what not to do.

Read all of Mark Bao’s notes.

Google Wave to have its own app store

Nilay Patel — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:34:00 -0700

What Startups Are Really Like

(author unknown) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:20:58 -0700

Mobile Social Network Wars: Loopt Acquires GraffitiGEO

Michael Arrington — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:57:47 -0700

Loopt, the New Enterprise Associates and Sequoia-backed mobile social network, has acquired a relative newcomer to the scene – Y Combinator startup GraffitiGEO. Multiple sources have confirmed the acquisition, although neither company is commenting.

GraffitiGEO, which launched just a couple of months ago, combines mobile social networking with reviews and games. It’s somewhat similar to the surging foursquare, which has stolen some of the oxygen from the first generation mobile social networks like Loopt.

GraffitiGEO is also preparing to launch an augmented reality application that we previewed in August and that we suspect will launch shortly. Both GraffitiGEO apps fill holes in Loopt’s product lineup, so the acquisition makes a lot of sense. Here’s the video of the application that we included in that post:

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

Church Sign Fail

Cheezburger Network — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 04:00:28 -0700

Picture by: dunno source Submitted by: JenA via Fail Uploader

Gyrowheel Eliminates Training Wheels in Kids' Bikes [Bikes]

Jesus Diaz — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 06:14:00 -0700

What I’ve Earned and Learned From Writing A Popular(ish) Ruby Book

Peter Cooper — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 06:14:44 -0700

A few days ago I received the latest in a long line of royalty statements for my book, Beginning Ruby (as published by Apress). Long time readers might recall that Ruby Inside was started principally to promote the book, but turned into so much more that the book took a back seat. Well, the whim came over me to share the murky details of being the author of such a book, including how the royalty statements work (or not), how much is earned, sales figures, and so forth.

So I wrote What I've Earned (And Learned) From Writing "Beginning Ruby" over at the new, official Beginning Ruby promotional site. I wasn't planning on mentioning it here, but the post became popular on Hacker News and Reddit to such an extent (almost 10,000 pageviews so far!) that it must be a story people want to read - so check it out.

For those who are interested, Beginning Ruby's 2nd edition was published just a couple of months ago with lots of updates, new sections, and two all-new chapters on Web application frameworks (Rails, Sinatra, and Ramaze) and GUI app development (using Shoes - erk). You can buy it at Amazon.com here or learn more at the official Beginning Ruby site. It's a great book for people who are new to Beginning Ruby (or programming generally, even) and you can see tons of reviews on Amazon's listing for the 1st edition (we're waiting for them to be merged into the 2nd edition's page!) or at the official site.

[ad] Jumpstart Lab is offering Rails Jumpstart, an introduction to Ruby on Rails, on 10/31-11/1 in Washington, DC. Save $30 with code "rubyrow"!

These Piano Stairs Will Motivate Even The Laziest of You [Image Cache]

Rosa Golijan — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 22:30:00 -0700

"I quit my job" applause

Matt — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:42:00 -0700

A Short Film with Saulo Ribeiro

Jason — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 01:01:00 -0700

Rick Ellis (a student of Roy Dean) made a short clip featuring a training session with Saulo Ribeiro and Roy Dean. (Ironically, Roy Dean made a little light fun of me a year ago when one of his former students moved to Iowa, took a free class at my academy, and wrote back to Roy about his experiences with me. Actually, Roy didn't make fun of me. He just made a light hearted comment about how hilarious the letter was and supplied the message board for the comment to be posted on the internet. The comment is still available here. It makes me laugh everytime I read it!)

The clip reminded me of how philosophical Saulo is about Jiu-Jitsu and how pursuing the art of Jiu-Jitsu is so much more to him/us than just learning a martial art or fighting style. Jiu-Jitsu is meant to change your life and make you a better person. Jiu-Jitsu brings out your true self.

I remember Saulo saying to us in class: "When I roll with person, then I will know the true them. Who they really are. You can not lie when you are rolling. You can not hide who you truly are."

What he meant by that is, just because the other person may be better than you means nothing. Saulo is a multi-time World Champion. The odds of somebody beating him are slim. So, it's not about whether his opponent can beat him or not during a roll session. It's how they handle themselves when faced with personal adversity. It is good to have a more skilled person push you and to test your resolve and skills. You must, under even the most extreme circumstances keep your cool. Stay calm and go about executing your game plan as best as you know how. If you lose, you lose. So what? Tap out and fight again. Never quit fighting and challenging yourself to improve. This is the core of this philosophy.

What he also meant by this philosophy was that there are a great many people who think they are tougher than they really are. If you talk or act tough, that means nothing. Let us roll and see how tough you really are. And by seeing how tough you are, it doesn't imply that if you lose you are not tough. That just means you lack some skills or made a mistake. What is more important is how you handle the process of losing. Do you realize the situation is lost and just give up? Or do fight to the bitter end in an attempt to survive? Once you lose is your resolve broken, or do your rebound back and give it your all for another match? Do you time and time again go into a match against an opponent that is much more skilled and still keep trying to win, or do you mentally quit before the match has begun?

I have personally seen Saulo and Xande roll against "tough guys" in the academy and make short work of them. The tough guys would realize in about 10 seconds of the match that they were outclassed. From then on their will was broken. Match after match, submission after submission. They would lose all hope and faith in themselves. Having been dominated in BJJ, they would scarcely ever return to the academy to participate in a class. They came in as tough guys, they left as little boys. They unfortunately took it too personal and forgot to leave their egos at the door.

Thanks to Rick Ellis for making this short film. I look to seeing more videos from him.

~J

My Journey to the Black Belt

(author unknown) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:29:36 -0700

Samsung's LED TV Couple packs a 7-inch tablet remote for streaming TV and so much more

Paul Miller — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 09:07:00 -0700

The Death of Auto-Tune? T-Pain’s Got an App for That

Christina Warren — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 09:51:50 -0700

It’s becoming clear that iPhone applications are a great promotional tool. Movie studios, websites (we have our own iPhone app!) and musicians are all using the App Store to offer up content to fans and promote their brands.

Because there are so many applications fighting for attention, the key to creating a good promotional application is to build in something special that gets people talking.

Yesterday, Smule launched its I Am T-Pain [iTunes link] application which promises to do just that. The application lets you sing along to tracks by hip-hop artist T-Pain, complete with Auto-Tune technology. But wait, I thought Jay-Z said Auto-Tune was D.O.A? Not on the iPhone.

Check out the app in action in the video below:

Seriously, how cool is that? Do you have any idea how many hours I could waste getting my mom to sing Auto-Tuned hip-hop? The best part is, after you record your songs (using built-in tunes or your own freestyle tracks), you can share them on Facebook or MySpace. Additional tracks will be available for purchase through the app in the future.

At $2.99, I Am T-Pain looks like it packs a lot of entertainment in a tiny package. You need an iPhone to use the app — there’s no iPod Touch support yet (which is a shame since the second generation iPod touch supports microphone input) — so keep that in mind before you buy.

Reviews: Facebook, MySpace

Tags: auto-tune, i am t-pain, iphone, t-pain

Diaper Seminar!

Rafael Lovato Jr. — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 22:20:00 -0700

No, your eyes are not fooling you, you read that right. This evening at the University of Jiu-Jitsu, there was a diaper seminar! Some of you may not know, but Xande Ribeiro will be a father very soon (within the next 6 weeks). So, this evening there was a special class at UNIJJ, where all the participants brought a package of diapers for the father to be. In return the participants were treated to instruction from Saulo & Xande Ribeiro (head instructors at UNIJJ), as well as myself and Rani Yahya. We each took turns demonstrating a position, breaking down all the fine details, and at the end of the night we enjoyed some Acai, Pao de Queijo, refreshments, and socializing. There was about 45 participants, so needless to say, there was a pretty good sized stack of diapers. Xande is stocked up, for his daughter Victoria, now he just needs to learn how to use them. There was a great vibe and energy there tonight. It was nice to put the gi on and kind of have a chill environment on the mat, instead of all the hardcore no-gi training we have been doing.

If you are ever in the San Diego area, I would highly recommend stopping by the University of Jiu-Jitsu. Not only do you get world class instruction from Saulo & Xande Ribeiro on a regular basis, but there are plenty of other high level competitors who get on the mat to teach and train with the students there. All the students are very cool and down to earth, and they all have solid bjj. The school has really started to come into its own and that will be shown next weekend at the Nationals.

For information about the University of Jiu-Jitsu, click here

The bar for success in our industry is too low

Jason F. — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:12:00 -0700

QUOTE: Sympathize. “I can understand why you are u

Matt — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 08:01:00 -0700