Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Thursday, June 28, 2007

FreshBooks Launches Open API

from TechCrunch by Duncan Riley

Online invoicing service FreshBooks has launched an open API.

Freshbooks sees the new API allowing application designers, businesses, services companies, and users to integrate FreshBooks’ billing platform into a new category of products, features, and solutions for enhancing and streamlining productivity, workflow, sales, CRM, project management, and invoicing.

Possible uses of the API including adding to existing products to extend functionality, including timers, project planners, and desktop widgets. Sites with an existing sales infrastructure can use the API to add a billing component.

There are a lot of possibilities here and Freshbooks really has nothing to lose by offering an open API service. The API is an open invitation to innovation and should keep Freshbooks in could stead against competition including BillMyClients and Blinksale.

Previous Freshbooks coverage on TechCrunch coverage here.

HotorNot Founder James Hong Talks About Past, Future

from TechCrunch by Michael Arrington

Read this excellent post by James Hong, co-founder of the nearly seven year-old startup HotorNot. He talks about the history of the startup, and touches on where it might be going in the future.

A lot of this I wrote about last month after interviewing Hong, but there’s lot of additional information that people will find fascinating. The company naver raised venture capital, and was throwing off a signficiant amount of cash early on. As free dating competitors emerged, however, the popularity of the site declined. They responded by going free as well (killing a $500,000/month revenue stream), and traffic has doubled to around 20 million daily page views.

HotorNot is now looking more like a a traditional startup - they’ve converted to a C corporation and are giving stock options to employees. That suggests a sale or venture financing might be coming up in the near future. Of course, the amount of fun that Hong and cofounder Jim Young are having.

My favorite stat about HotorNot: Up to ten marriages per day can be tracked to couples who originally met at the site.

Earthmine's photo-truck totally tries to one-up Google, Microsoft

from Engadget by Nilay Patel

Street level mapping services like Google's Street View and Microsoft's Live Local have gotten a lot of attention lately, but while the notion of pervasive map-linked photography is pretty impressive, the actual execution leaves something to be desired -- the images are occasionally of low quality, have stitching errors, and there are some lingering privacy concerns. A new company called Earthmine is out to solve all those problems, though, by providing high-quality, survey-accurate panoramic photography -- and has a truck or two with cameras towering tall to prove it. Unlike Google's video system, Earthmine plans to use laser range finders and high dynamic range still cameras mounted higher than usual to provide perspective-accurate images that preserve detail and resolution -- but automatically blur out faces and other identifying information, like license plates. Earthmine is planning on selling the service to businesses and governmental agencies, but a consumer version should launch at the end of the summer. We think they should watch out though, we hear the Street View and Live Local drivers have crazy road rage; we really wouldn't want to see anybody from Earthmine get caught up in some kind of weird, street level photography turf war. [Thanks, eggman]

A Beautiful Photo from our friends at LuckyOliver

purchased for use on blogs. This is an example of a 400x400 px image.

search for LuckyOliver images through the PictureSandbox interface - when you find an image you like, click the blue arrow to go to the LuckyOliver page

or go directly to LuckyOliver.com to search and buy there.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Full Screen Web Photo Browsing With PicLens

from TechCrunch by Duncan Riley

Firefox plugin PicLens from Cooliris provides full screen immersive picture browsing of Flickr and other web sites that support Media RSS.

To use PicLens, a user clicks a small translucent icon that appears atop the image of interest once the plugin is installed. The PicLens slideshow interface appears and the user can move from one photo to the next or press play and enjoy the show. A user can intuitively browse images within search results, photo albums, and Media RSS enabled websites.

Support is currently provided for Flickr, Facebook, Friendster, Picasa Web Album and image search results from Google and Yahoo. Site owners can add support to any site with photos by including Media RSS support.

The best way to describe PicLens is that it’s a like the slideshow feature in Picasa or a similar photo viewing tool, but applied to web pages. The full screen rendering does require a decent internet speed when displaying large photographs, but visually the results are stunning. This Firefox plugin is going to find a lot of fans very, very quickly.

(thanks to Ouriel Ohayon for the tip)

Slapvid: Peer to Peer Video in Your Browser

from TechCrunch by Nick Gonzalez

Video on the web is a killer app, but it’s also a bandwidth hog. Forbes estimated that content distribution networks like Akami or Limelight can charge distributors around a cent per minute, while larger distributors can get deals at around a half or tenth of a cent. Last year it was estimated that Youtube was spending over $1 million a month to stream more than 100 million videos a day. In response, video distributors looking to give higher quality video on the cheap are pushing the burden of bandwidth to users through peer to peer networking. So far this has widely focused around larger desktop players (Veoh, Joost, Babelgum). Video player startup Slapvid wants to do peer to peer in your browser.

Slapvid runs as a Java applet coupled with a Flash video player. Unfortunately this means users have to authorize the 300Kb applet to run the first time, but that still requires less initiative on the users behalf than a full blown browser plugin. The applet runs in the background, managing the delivery of video chunks to be displayed in the player.

When you first start a video, the player connects directly to their central video server to download enough of the beginning of the video as a buffer while the peer to peer kicks in. During this request, their server also sends you back a list of 3 to 5 peers playing the same video. The applet then seeks out peers further along in the video, getting sent bits of the video in 64KB chunks. If you don’t hear back from the peers, the video just streams from the central server.

To demonstrate the peering technology, they’ve developed their own flash player that shows the top Youtube videos in 5 minutes. The player mashes together short clips of each video. You can see the whole video by clicking the hand. However, because of bandwidth concerns on their central server, the peering technology is only turned on for a small sample of users. All other users will just see videos streamed from Youtube. To guarantee you get the peering applet, you can apply for one of 100 beta accounts for Techcrunch readers. You can see the video player after the jump.

Slapvid is a Y Combinator startup from 4 Carnegie Mellon grads.

Samsung's 64GB SSDs: ready to roll

from Engadget by Thomas Ricker

For all the 64GB SSDs announced, only one manufacturer has the skillz to bring them to market: Samsung. Starting today, Sammy is mass producing the world's first 64GB, 1.8-inch SSD. Right, the ideal size for UMPCs and super slim ultra-portables. No word on price but it's not like you'll find these up for retail anyway. We expect 'em to go OEM-only baby as $1,000 (at least) premiums inside your latest VAIO, Latitude, Lifebook, and Sammy's own Q40 and Q1 Ultra machines to name a few. Apple too, if there's any life to that ultra-portable rumor.

Fujitsu's 12.1-inch T8140 tablet with SSD: 3.3-pounds, 11.3-hours

from Engadget by Thomas Ricker

So you liked the looks of Fujitsu's tiny T4220 12.1-inch convertible tablet, right? Only that 3 hours off battery was a deal breaker. No worries, meet the smaller, lighter, and more efficient Lifebook T8140. We're talking an Intel 1.06GHz U7500 Core 2 Duo ULV processor and 32GB SSD (yes, Solid State Disk) packed into a chassis measuring 1.3-inches / 3.3-pounds and capable of operating at up to 11.3 hours off long-haul battery. Hell, it'll even go 7.2-hours off standard battery if weight is your biggest concern, sissy. All that and still packing a 12.1-inch, 1,280 x 800 resolution. Toss in Vista for suits and 1GB DDR2 memory and you're looking at ¥265,000 (about $2,650) when these pop in Japan sometime late July. [Via Impress]

Stalker remotely controls family cellphones, even when they're off

from Engadget by Conrad Quilty-Harper

To use a TV news cliche, it's like a horror movie come true: three families from Fircrest in Washington State are being harassed by a unknown individual, who somehow has the power to turn cellphones on, send messages, and change ringtones. Over the last few months, the families have had calls that threaten death and violence against them, calls that tell the people what they're doing at that time, and calls that originate from the cellphones of other members of the family. In one case, the stalker changed the ringtone of a phone to say "answer your phone." According to one James M. Atkinson, an apparent expert in these matters who used to provide the CIA with advice in counterintelligence, the technical profficiency to pull off this level of stalking isn't that high: if the FBI can do it, why not some anti-social kid, right?

Mitsubishi's laser TV coming to CES

from Engadget by Joshua Topolsky

Frank DeMartin, vice president for marketing and product development at Mitsubishi, casually mentioned in a recent NY Times article that the company will be showing off its large-screen laser TVs at the next CES (in January, put it in your calendar!). As we mentioned in 2006, the new tri-laser projectors are said to have higher picture quality and a larger range of color than LCD or plasma screens, making them a bit of a threat to the status quo -- although currently it looks like the TVs will be promoted to the "premium" end of the market, thus waylaying any direct competition (save for the videophile crowd). Then again, since we'll all be getting these under the tree this year anyway, we're not sure what the big deal is.

NEC develops 8MP CMOS sensor for cameraphones

from Engadget by Darren Murph

While LG's ambitious plans didn't exactly pan out in 2005, the idea of upping those megapixels in mainstream cameraphones sure is getting a lot of attention today. Shortly after Kodak announced its plan to unveil a five-megapixel iteration for future phones, NEC is hitting back with a development of its own. Apparently, the company is already shipping samples of a "system chip capable of processing cameraphone images at resolutions of up to eight-megapixels," which even includes "image stabilization circuitry as an option." Best of all, the CE131 sample device is priced at just ¥4,000 ($33), and hopefully that cost will diminish even further as mass production goes forward in October. [Warning: Read link requires subscription]

Corian Z. Island: taking kitchens to the year 3000

from Engadget by Joshua Topolsky

Corian is known for producing all types of wacky materials for your countertop, but the company has dashed straight into the 23rd century with its new "Z" kitchen island (and assorted accessories). The Zaha Hadid designed centerpiece boasts LED touch panels embedded in the table's surface, a mounted Mac for multimedia functions, and three very bizarre looking aroma "devices" which protrude from the island, and can be tweaked to produce various scents. The unit also controls a wall of abstract lighting fixtures, allowing you to alter their color and intensity. Basically, it's the perfect thing to own if James T. Kirk stops by wants you to heat up his coffee and make the room smell like rose petals. [Via chipchick]

Convert Images, Documents to Adobe PDF via EMail Attachments

from Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal

KoolWire is a new and wonderful email based file conversion service to help you convert your Microsoft Word (.doc), Powerpoint (.ppt), Excel Spreadsheets (.xls) or even pictures into Adobe PDF documents.

Just compose a new email message, attach document(s) that have to be converted into PDF and send the email to pdf@koolwire.com. The PDF file(s) should arrive in your inbox the next moment.

free_adobe_acrobat_conversion

The big advantage is that Koolwire PDF converter requires no software installation and, unlike Google Docs or PDFOnline, you don't have to upload documents to any webserver in order to print them as PDF - just send them across as email attachments. PDF creation couldn't be simpler.

Best of all, you can attach multiple documents / images to the same email message and Koolwire will batch convert them into PDF. Don't think any free PDF writer software offers such a convenient option to create multiple PDFs in one go.

koolwire.com/ | Developer Blog | PDF Presentation

Save time with an upload manager

Photographs selling their pictures on Micro Stock websites always have to cope with a cumbersome task: tagging their pictures and uplaoding them. The easier way si to use softwares like Photoshop to tag pictures and an ftp manager to upload them. But it still remains the boring part of the job. Creation is fun administration is not. Moreover moderation is sometimes erratic and a good picture that would sell might get rejected and the tagging and uploading time might just be a waste of time.

One software can rationalize those operations:prostock master. It manages very easily tagging and uploading on major microstock sites (8 of them so far). And because it uses Java it is Multi platform.

I wonder what will be the consequences if this kind of software get massively used. The market might be reshaped. Anyway this high growth market might still surprise us in many ways…

McDonald’s, Virgin Mobile, Part of Sweeps Scam, AG Warns

Jun 26, 2007 6:05 AM, PROMO Xtra, By Patricia Odell

The Nebraska Attorney General last week warned consumers about a fraudulent sweepstakes that appears to be sponsored by major companies including Virgin Mobile USA and McDonald’s.

AG Jon Bruning called the mailing “a new type of sweepstakes fraud that lists false sponsorships to deceive consumers into participating.”

In addition to McDonald’s and Virgin Mobile, the notices, which state that consumers have won tens of thousands of dollars, also appeared to be sponsored by Wal-Mart, Pizza Hut, Sears, Budget Rent-A-Car and Gap, the AG said.

However, an inquiry by the AG’s consumer protection division found that these businesses were not involved in the promotion, Bruning said.

The letter tells consumers that they must pay a “clearance fee” to receive the prize because the award money is bonded. A check from one of the “sponsors” is enclosed in the letter to cover the costs of the clearance fee. The consumer is instructed to deposit the check and send the money back to the sweepstakes organizers.

“The check is fraudulent, and consumers lose the money they send,” Bruning said in a statement.

One “sponsor” learned that checks for up to $4,720 were being written from one of its bank accounts and immediately closed it, Bruning said.

“If it seems too good to be true, it probably is,” he said. “Nebraskans work too hard for their money to lose it in a scam. Being skeptical and researching an opportunity is the best way to avoid falling victim.”

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