Netvibes Wants To Tap Into Other Social Networks

Not wanting to be left behind, Netvibes is adding a slew of social-networking features and integration with other social networks to its widget start page. Netvibes already supports a variety of desktop widget platforms, has its own Universal Widget API, and is part of Google’s OpenSocial movement. It is now combining all of these efforts, Tariq Krim announced today at a conference in Berlin (TechCrunch UK’s Mike Butcher has the details). NetVibes widgets will work with OpenSocial, Facebook, and desktop widget platforms on the PC and Mac.

The next version of Netvibes, codenamed Ginger, will also add a feeds feature called Flow, and a Friends tab so that you can follow your friends’ feeds and widgets as well. Krim explains in an e-mail from Berlin:

We are introducing social features . . . [so you] can share and follow widgets from your
friends or have a private flow to keep up a netvibes history.

We will extend netvibes widgets to run natively on opensocial and
facebook. (By the way we are part of opensocial but we will work with
everyone else)

We will launch a private beta for our developers in couple weeks.
It’s a big step as we have work to rebuild everything. It like our
leopard

Here is our earlier Netvibes coverage. Here is a demo video of what Ginger will look like:

netvibes

Loading information about netvibes…

cb_widget_report_widget(”cb_widget_1194372440″); cb_widget_report_element(”cb_widget_0_1194372440″,”netvibes”);

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Glide Crunch—Closing the Gap Between Online and Offline Spreadsheets

Web-based spreadsheets like Google’s are great for collaborating, but slow you down when it comes to clicking through cells quickly or creating really big spreadsheets. It doesn’t even have a search function other than what your browser can do on its own (try finding a name in a list of 500). Desktop-based spreadsheets like Microsoft’s Excel give you all the features and speed you want, but are not easy to share. (Yes, there is SharePoint, but most people resort to e-mailing the bulky files around, creating a version-control nightmare).

Tomorrow at noon, Transmedia, a New York City startup, will take a step towards bridging those online and offline worlds. It is adding a spreadsheet to its Glide service called Glide Crunch. (Good name!). So far, all of the apps on Glide—including a Word processor, presentation software, e-mail, calendar, contacts, and online photo, video, and music sharing—have been completely Web-based. But with Glide Crunch, the spreadsheet will operate as a local application on your desktop that is automatically synced to your Glide Webtop without you having to do anything special other than create a spreadsheet as you normally would.

Glide Crunch is not based on Adobe AIR or Google Gears, the two main platforms for creating offline, Web-like apps. Transmedia coded the application from scratch using C/C++. In contrast to something like Google Gears, Glide Crunch is not trying to download data into the browser. “We have left the browser,” says CEO Donald Leka. “The browser is limited. It can only hold so much data.” Google Spreadsheet, for instance, only supports 100,000 cells and up to 40 sheets, says Leka. Glide Crunch, in contrast, can support 16.7 million cells and an unlimited number of sheets in a single spreadsheet.

Glide Crunch also supports advanced formulas, pivot tables, various printing formats, and, yes, you can search within a spreadsheet. Leka is really going after Excel users with a powerful local spreadsheet that syncs automatically to the Web, where it is shareable with others. He thinks his new spreadsheet will meet the needs of 60 to 70 percent of the market. “Scientists and financial-modeling experts can continue to use Excel,” he allows. But Glide Crunch is robust enough for him to use to manage Transmedia’s P&L. “We use Glide for everything,” he says.

Glide, which is free for the first two gigabytes and $50 for 12 gigabytes, comes with all of the Web apps listed above and also works on the iPhone and other mobile devices. (it is great for showing PowerPoint slides on your iPhone, which you previously could not do). Later this month and next, Transmedia will be rolling out local versions of its other productivity apps, starting with Glide Write, then e-mail, and Glide Presenter. Glide may not have the user numbers of Google Docs (Glide has about 500,000 total users, 14 percent actually pay), but it is pushing the envelope in terms of functionality and in terns of fusing the Web and the desktop. The company’s revenues are closing in on $4 million a year, with no VC money. The $6.5 million it has raised has all been angel investors, including several ex-Wall Street analysts like Harold Vogel.

Here are some of the advanced functions and features Glide Crunch will support:

Function
Sin - sine function
Cos - cosine function
Tan - tangent function
Asin - arc sine function
Acos - arc cosine function
Atan - arc tangent function
Sinh - hyperbolic sine function
Cosh - hyperbolic cosine
Tanh - hyperbolic tangent function
Asinh - hyperbolic arc sine function
Acosh - hyperbolic arc tangent function
Atanh - hyperbolic arc tangent function
log2 - logarithm to the base 2
log10 - logarithm to the base 10
log - logarithm to the base 10
ln - logarithm to base e (2.71828…)
exp - e raised to the power of x
sqrt - square root of a value
sign - sign function -1 if x<0;>0
rint - round to nearest integer
abs - absolute value
if - if … then … else …
min - min of all arguments
max - max of all arguments
sum - sum of all arguments
avg - mean value of all arguments
and more…

Operator
and logical and
or logical or
x or logical xor

>= greater or equal
!= not equal
== Equal
> greater than

+ Addition
- Subtraction
* Multiplication
/ Division
^ raise x to the power of y
! factorial

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

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Source: TechCrunch

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Apple Working on Tablet?

One of Apple’s contract manufacturers, Asus, is working on a Mac tablet, according to the Crave blog. It is not clear if this is going to be a major product, when it will be available, or whether this is just a prototype for now.

I love the idea of a tablet computer, but the market has not been going crazy for Windows-based tablet PCs, which are pretty slick. It will remain a niche device, unless touch computing takes off. But touch computing is a compromise. It may work on small devices like iPods and iPhones. It is not clear you need it for larger machines.

God invented the keyboard for a reason. But all the graphic designers who use Macs will probably like it. Call it the iPod Large or the Biggie Touch. Just don’t call it a Newton.

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

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Source: TechCrunch

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MarkMail: Search and Analyze Email Traffic

Jason Hunter of MarkLogic has unveiled a new application that allows you to search and analyze email traffic. The service is called MarkMail, and you can check out the Apache instance to see it at work.

The application is written using MochiKit and wrappers for Canvas and such.

Jason gave us detailed information on the goals:

As you’ll see with the chart on the home page, one of our goals with the site has been to focus heavily on analytics. We have lots of graphs and counts, and you’re able to use them to watch Apache’s historical growth and each individual project’s growth. Every query you write gets its own histogram chart.

Another goal has been interactivity. Every search result screen gives you lots of ways to refine your search (by sender, list, attachment type, etc). Plus we did a lot with keyboard shortcuts. You can hit “n” and “p” to move to the next and previous result and “j” and “k” to move up and down the thread view. There’s a lot of little things like this. Plus if your result message includes Office or PDF files they’re in-line interactive too.

http://apache.markmail.org/search/ext:ppt+axis

Another goal has been to focus on community. We could have launched MarkMail with 50,000,000 emails from many sources but I think it’s better to start with focus. In fact, I’ll be at ApacheCon and the Hackathon next week, along with my co-developer Ryan Grimm, looking for people’s suggestions and maybe on the spot adding in a few of them. There’s also potential to explore some fun one-off analytics, too.

As part of the focus on communities, we setup MarkMail so it recognizes that Apache itself consists of many communities. If you go to http://apache.markmail.org you search all Apache emails, but if you go to http://struts.markmail.org then you’re auto-limited to just Struts lists. Same for tomcat, spamassassin, httpd, and so on. You can always limit your search using “list:struts” in your query, but using the domain handles that a bit more elegantly.

Notes on using the site:

• Search using keywords as well as from:, subject:, extension:, and list: constraints
• The GUI doesn’t yet expose it, but you can negate any search item, like -subject:jira.
• You can sort results by date by adding order:date-forward or order:date-backward to your query
• Remember to use “n” and “p” keyboard shortcuts to navigate the search results

Source: Ajaxian

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Google Code Revamps with jQuery

We have revamped Google Code, the site which is the home to developers, and open source hosting. A ton of work went into cleaning up the UI integrating and unifying content, and simplifying.

The site uses jQuery for a lot of its work, and also eats a lot of dogfood. The video below goes through some of the high lights, but DeWitt Clinton said it well:

One of the most exciting things about the redesign is that everything you see here was built using technology and APIs that are available to everyone. The pages we’re serving don’t rely on any secret back-end tricks; the site is built on plain HTML, JavaScript and CSS, each using our public APIs. In fact, all of the techniques used on Google Code can be duplicated on your own site.

For example, the search results pages use a combination of the AJAX Search API and Custom Search Engines. The homepage gadgets use the AJAX Feed API and Google Reader feeds. The videos are powered by the YouTube API, the blogs by the Blogger API, the events powered by the Google Calendar API, the metrics by Google Analytics, the forums by Google Groups, etc., etc..

Stay tuned — over the upcoming weeks we’ll offer detailed articles and tutorials about how we built the various parts of Google Code using open technologies.

This is just the beginning of a slew of updates that we are making to the site. I can’t wait to roll out some of the items that really match our vision of what a developer community can really be!

Source: Ajaxian

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Meet Potential Lovers Over a Drink with CrazyBlindDate

Sex and spontaneity are the two magic ingredients for a new startup called CrazyBlindDate, which launches today in Boston, New York City, and San Francisco after beta testing in Austin, Texas for over a month.

The idea behind CrazyBlindDate is to bring the scheme of blind dating to the web. Sign up, answer some personal questions (age, height, body type, what type of date you’re looking for, etc.), and indicate the times and neighborhoods you are available to go on a quick date, even if its on very short notice. The site will then use its algorithm to match you up with someone in your area who is available during one of your time slots. Both single and double date arrangements can be made, and you can bring a friend, too, if you’re overly nervous about meeting strangers on your own.

CrazyBlindDate is a dating site that cuts straight to the chase. Don’t expect to spend endless amounts of time filling out personality quizzes or browsing the profiles of potential mates. You won’t have much of a clue about how they look until you see them in person (although you can try your best at determining how attractive they are in an very blurred copy of the portrait they have uploaded). This business strategy is a gamble - it has to be seen whether many singles will be comfortable meeting up total strangers before knowing any more than their basic vital stats. CEO Sam Yagan admits that CrazyBlindDate could either become a runaway success or a dud depending on how adventurous people turn out to be.

The company behind CrazyBlindDate, which is also responsible for the free dating site OkCupid, has designed their new venture with safety and privacy in mind. The site will only put you on dates in public places like bars and cafes, so you won’t find yourself in any particularly dangerous situations. While the site’s notification and confirmation system is cell phone-based, it won’t needlessly give your number to strangers. When the site finds a match for you, it will ask you via SMS whether you want to confirm. Once you and the other person commit yourself to a date, you will only be able to contact each other 30 minutes prior to the date by texting a dedicated CrazyBlindDate number (CUPID, or 28743) that will then route your messages appropriately.

In an attempt to prevent tardiness and no-shows, the website incorporates a feedback system that allows users to report bad dates. Blow off your date or drag your feet and it’ll go on your record. Also, the feedback your date gives about you will help CrazyBlindDate determine who they should pair you up with next, so the system isn’t completely random.

See our coverage of SpeedDate.com and WooMe to learn how these other companies are bringing another dating method, the speed date, online.

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

Source: TechCrunch

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NY Times Headline Says It All: “More Readers Trading Newspapers for Web Sites”

Readership of newspapers has continued to decline in the United States as more readers turn to online sources for news, according to the NY Times.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations figures show that newspaper readership dropped 3% compared with the year before.

Some newspapers fared better than others, with the US Today recording a 1% increase in circulation, along with the LA Times 0.5% and the Philadelphia Enquirer at 2.5%.

We’ve written about the decline in print media many times before. Most recently I noted that 2008 may well be the year we see big shut downs in magazines, and rightfully so: tech magazines in particular compete with online publications that print news when it happens, as opposed to 6-8 weeks later. However newspapers aren’t quite as doomed as some may suggest, with the World Association of Newspapers reporting that to February 2007 global newspaper circulation was up 9.95 percent over five years and 2.36 percent over twelve months.

The decline of print media isn’t an international story, it’s one that’s very much focused on the United States, and to a lesser extent the English speaking world. The problem today with print media in the United States is that it has yet to have undergone a massive market restructuring that has occurred in other countries. In Australia in the 1980s, early 1990’s the number of daily newspapers shrunk massively in a major round of market restructuring lead by News Corp. My native New South Wales (pop 6.8m) went from four local daily newspapers to two, excluding the national papers but published in Sydney The Australian (think USA Today) and The Australian Financial Review (think WSJ). Four of the six states in Australia (Queensland (pop 4.3m), Tasmania (not a lot), Western Australia (pop 2.2m) and South Australia (1.5m)) were left with only one local daily newspaper. Compare this to some similar US states; Massachusetts (6.4m pop) has 31 daily newspapers according to Newspaperlinks.com. Nevada (2.4m), with a similar population to Western Australia has 6 daily newspapers. The problem with newspapers isn’t the web alone, its excessive choice in a declining market. Newsprint has a future, but not in a cut throat marketplace that provides more choice than the market can consume.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/180489513/

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