Dharmesh Shah and how not to give your software away for free

clipped from onstartups.com If you are a startup entrepreneur, at some point, you will need to make a decision regarding your business model. Many software startups have a strategy to build early market traction by giving away their offering for free with some plan to monetize at a later date. I'm not going to make a strong argument against this. So, for purposes of this article, lets assume for a moment that as a software startup, you actually *want* to charge money for your software someday. For some background on the issue of pricing models, I suggest my previous article: Startup Pricing Models: Free Forever, Freemium and Freedom To Pay

The new face of emoticons

http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/18438/

Computer scientists at the University of Pittsburgh have developed a way to make e-mails, instant messaging, and texts just a bit more personalized. Their software will allow people to use images of their own faces instead of the more traditional emoticons to communicate their mood. By automatically warping their facial features, people can use a photo to depict any one of a range of different animated emotional expressions, such as happy, sad, angry, or surprised.

All that is needed is a single photo of the person, preferably with a neutral expression, says Xin Li, who developed the system, called Face Alive Icons. "The user can upload the image from their camera phone," he says. Then, by keying in familiar text symbols, such as ":)" for a smile, the user automatically contorts the face to reflect his or her desired expression.

Useful Web Developers Bookmarks

http://antriksh.com/resources/

Will journalists be moving to India now?

clipped from www.freakonomics.com As this Forbes report makes clear, media revenues are way up in India and consumers at a variety of levels seem eager for more content: “Last year, Vogue announced it would start an Indian edition in 2007, and The Wall Street JournalThe Hindustan Times to launch a business newspaper, Mint, which debuted in February. India’s print media is estimated to reach over 220 million people, and has immense growth potential since close to 370 million literate Indians are believed to not be served by any publication.” The celebrity magazine Hello! has also just launched in India. (The Economist also has a good recent article on the Indian newspaper boom, but only the summary is online; it makes the point that many of the new publications are English-language, since English is not only the international business language, but the language of aspiration for the up-and-coming Indian.) entered into a partnership with

Java BlackBelt

clipped from www.javablackbelt.com JavaBlackBelt is a community for Java and related technologies certifications. Everybody is welcome to take existing exams and build new ones. Join this worldwide effort! Learn and certify your knowledge of the Java technology. We offer both mock and real exams that earn you knowledge points and enhance your java skills up to the Black Belt grade. 20+ successful exams on various topics such as Java 5, Java SE, Java EE, Spring, Hibernate are necessary to reach this goal and get your certificate. Start with our Java SE basic exam! You can take tests anonymously but register and become an active contributor ... author new questions on topics you like, moderate existing ones or comment on them, and pass real exams and rate their quality and pertinence.

Just for fun....

http://www.thecleverest.com/content/attractors.html

Try it!

New Yorker's Animated Cartoons

clipped from blog.wired.com The New Yorker is now animating their cartoons online. And if you thought a single panel with a terse 20 word caption wasn't enough to pad out an animated cartoon past the two second mark... you were right. It's truly pitiful stuff. Somehow, they make the New Yorker's Cartoons appear even more witless than they usually are. Here's one example: Satan and some sort of ghoul are sitting in an office in Hell. Satan says, "I'm looking for a new torturer. Do you know Powerpoint?" This joke isn't even funny in the one second it takes to scan your eyes across it... let alone being forced to sit through thirty seconds of blinking, nodding and long, pregnant pauses between sentences. Another involves one dog talking to another about his frustrations in hearing a very simplistic moral argument for the invasion of Iraq and only being able to reply "Woof!" On the off-chance that anyone's laughing at these jokes, congratulations! You're special.

Windows the most secure OS !

clipped from it.slashdot.org "According to a Symantec study reported by Information Week, Microsoft has the most secure operating system amongst its commercial competitors. The report only covered the last 6 months of vulnerabilities and patch releases, but the results place Microsoft operating systems above Mac OS X and Red Hat. According to the article, 'The report found that Microsoft Windows had the fewest number of patches and the shortest average patch development time of the five operating systems it monitored in the last six months of 2006.' The article continues to mention the metrics used in the study (quantity and severity of vulnerabilities as well as the amount of time one must wait for the patch to be released)."

Slideshare-Share your Power Point presentations

clipped from www.slideshare.net a neat way to share & discover slideshows. Upload your slides! Share with a link, embed in a blog. Discover interesting slideshows. Tag, comment & have fun. Judged by top presentation gurus Plus: People's choice winners picked by you!

Web meetings

clipped from meetmenow.webex.com

But does it work? Let's give it a try and see.......

Google Calendar-18 ways to rock

clipped from webworkerdaily.com Google Calendar doesn’t get much love or attention these days. Some users are wondering if Google’s forgotten about it. Still, it’s a pretty cool web app, especially if you learn the ins and outs and use it collaboratively with colleagues, friends, or family. If you’ve been using it since it was introduced last year, you may know how to do many of these things. Maybe you even have your own tips and tricks for making it really rock. If so, share them in the comments. 1. Add holidays, moon phases, sporting events, and other public calendars...

Dekoh Challenges Apollo As Desktop/Web Platform

clipped from www.readwriteweb.com After the tremendous build-up and response to Adobe's Apollo platform, which aims to integrate desktop apps with the Web, we must also remember there are other products trying for the same thing. Dekoh is one such competitor and, like Adobe's Apollo, it is in the business of bringing the browser to the desktop. While Apollo has the benefit of huge financial backing and pre-existing developer support, Dekoh is aiming to attract developers by providing more features. Which actually makes it hard to describe what Dekoh is in a sentence. When Ryan Stewart covered the private beta release of Dekoh, he implied it was like the WebOS products that we've profiled before on R/WW. Anyway here's a table showing the main differences between Dekoh and Apollo (courtesy of the Dekoh blog):

Slashdot, TechCrunch ... and now Stumble ?

clipped from www.computerworld.com I certainly didn't stumble upon Stumble. It's the first item listed in Peter Smith's 20 must-have Firefox extensions. I'm installing one per day. Stumble is a service that pulls up Web pages. Users submit pages and tag them according to topics. When I click the Stumble! button added to my toolbar -- more on this momentarily -- a Web page in one of my topic areas is presented. I can give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down, or I can just move along. Stumble claims, in my view correctly, that it "helps you discover great content you probably wouldn't find using a search engine." The likelihood of my trying to find these pages via search or surf is slim. I didn't even know I wanted to see them until they were there in front of me.

Adobe launches Apolla alpha

clipped from www.computerworld.com Adobe launches runtime to take rich Internet apps to desktop March 19, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Adobe Systems Inc. today released the first public alpha version of its cross-operating system application runtime designed to allow developers to build rich Internet applications for the desktop. Code-named Apollo, the runtime focuses on allowing Web developers to use their existing skills in HTML, JavaScript and AJAX to create desktop versions of rich Internet applications, Adobe said. "People are starting to push the limits of AJAX and what they are able to do in the browser," said Pam Deziel, director of product marketing for Adobe's platform business unit. "[Apollo] is a way to further enrich the experience we have in Web applications by taking advantage of some of the functionality of desktop apps like drag and drop." The first version of Apollo for developers includes a free software developer's kit with a set of command-line tools for developing and working with Apollo applications.

Jangl!

clipped from www.jangl.com Giving out your own personalized Jangl ID ratherthan your real phone number lets you control all incoming and outgoingcalls. If you want privacy, Jangl lets you be anonymous. If you want control, Jangl lets you decide when and if you want to talk. Privacy • Control • Simplicity Jangl Me... it's the best way to give out your number, online and offline. Jangl - It's the new way to talk.

The Pulver 100

clipped from www.pulver.com The Pulver 100 is the first and foremost listing of privately held growth companies that represent the future of IP communications. Originally introduced in 2002, the pulver 100 recognizes companies that have substantial real-world deployments and enjoy significant growth rates. The pulver 100 has become an indicator of the leading edge in IP communications, and the companies named to the 2007 Pulver 100 represent the future of the IP communications industry.

Wikia, Wikipedia ....

clipped from www.wikia.com Wikia opens new "magazine rack" websites WIKIA LAUNCHES NEW COMMUNITY WEB SITES, ADDS HIGHLY INTERACTIVE FEATURES IN ON-GOING QUEST FOR COLLABORATION ( http://entertainment.wikia.com ), ( http://local.wikia.com ), ( http://politics.wikia.com ), (http://www.wikia.com ) Following its acquisition of the popular online sports community, ArmchairGM ( http://www.armchairgm.com ) last year, Wikia began working to create fan-driven communities that incorporate the same interactive features of the ArmchairGM site, including democratic sorting of content, blogging, commenting and more. http://music.wikia.com http://marveldatabase.wikia.com Music Wikia at http://music.wikia.com , the Marvel Comics Wikia at http://marveldatabase.wikia.com , and the online travel guide, World Wikia at http://world.wikia.com .

Brilliant!- Finally only one phone number!

clipped from www.nytimes.com A new service called GrandCentral, now in its final weeks of public beta testing, solves all of these problems. It’s a rather brilliant melding of cellphone and the Internet. Its motto, “One number for life,” pretty much says it all. At GrandCentral.com, you choose a new, single, unified phone number (more on this in a moment). You hand it out to everyone you know, instructing them to delete all your old numbers from their Rolodexes. From now on, whenever somebody dials your new uninumber, all of your phones ring simultaneously, like something out of “The Lawnmower Man.” No longer will anyone have to track you down by dialing each of your numbers in turn. No longer does it matter if you’re home, at work or on the road. Your new GrandCentral phone number will find you.

Let's start exercising ...

clipped from www.cnn.com WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Exercise boosts brainpower by building new brain cells in a brain region linked with memory and memory loss, U.S. researchers reported Monday. Exercise generated blood flow to the dentate gyrus of the people, and the more fit a person got, the more blood flow the MRI detected, the researchers found. "The remarkable similarities between the exercise-induced cerebral blood volume changes in the hippocampal formation of mice and humans suggest that the effect is mediated by similar mechanisms," they wrote. "Our next step is to identify the exercise regimen that is most beneficial to improve cognition and reduce normal memory loss, so that physicians may be able to prescribe specific types of exercise to improve memory," Small said.

sxip: Identity Management Startup Company

clipped from www.sxip.com Sxip pronounced \skip\ Sxip Identity is the market leader in Identity 2.0, an internet-scale approach to identity and access management that is simple, secure and open. What Sxip Identity Does Sxip Access: On-Demand Identity Management Easily provision and manage user access to Google Apps, Salesforce and other software-as-a-service solutions with Sxip Access' seamless integration with existing corporate directories, providing secured single sign-on, enterprise grade control and security, and increased productivity.

Senertec Dachs: A 90% Efficient Power Plant for Your Home

clipped from www.treehugger.com Many scenario planners suggest that, in the future, technologies such as fuel cells will change power generation from the steam-belching centralized model which typified the industrial revolution to a decentralized network, with each household generating power and feeding what they don't need back into the system--earning money for the efficient households. What if that technology were already available today? Guess what: it is. And it is called micro-CHP (for combined heat and power). Micro-CHP adopts the concept of co-generation, which is when heat is simultaneously collected and distributed from a generator used to produce electricity. Systems powered by natural gas or heating oil have been available on the market in "micro" models suitable for single households for some years now (see Whisper Gen for example). But what if these systems could use renewable fuels? At the Heating Industry Convention (ISH) in Frankfurt this week, the company Senertec introduced a

Sitepal-Animated Avatars for your Website

clipped from www.sitepal.com

Allows you to design speaking animated characters that can be embedded into your website for a more personal approach and to increase sales (so they say, what do you think?)

South by Southwest conference in Austin

http://2007.sxsw.com/
South by Southwest conference-looks great!

http://www.howdoisaythis.com/
Online video collaboration for common issues

http://www.talkshoe.com

A new way to create Interactive Podcasts and talk with interesting people with similar interests around the world.

Simplifying ruby on rails

clipped from www.digital-web.com Ruby on Rails for the Rest of Us What Is Ruby On Rails? You’ve probably heard of Ruby on Rails, which has been generating noise in the web development field over the past year. While buzz and hype are nothing new to our industry, it’s always beneficial to cut through that hype and the jargon to understand what a new technology really is about. Ruby on Rails is an open-source web development framework that allows you to rapidly develop data-driven applications using the Ruby programming language. By applications I don’t mean software applications such as Photoshop that run on your desktop. Instead, I am referring to web applications such as Basecamp and Flickr. Like a desktop app, a web application solves a problem. For example, Basecamp lets you manage your client projects easily via the web, and Flickr lets you share photos with friends and family effortlessly.

Tool for brainstorming

clipped from bubbl.us brainstorming made simple What is it? The simplest way to brainstorm online. Why bubbl.us? It's extremely easy to use and has almost no learning curve. Our intuitive user interface lets anyone brainstorm and organize ideas without getting in the way. Features Share and work together with your friends. Brainstorm without touching the mouse. Display your ideas online or through email. Print your work.

BZ Media Webinars

clipped from bzmedia.com http://bzmedia.com/webseminar/ BZ Media LLC is a high-tech media company that combines the best of print and Web-based publishing with industry-leading technical conferences and expositions. BZ Media's flagship publication is SD Times®, the newspaper of record for software development managers. The latest issue of SD Times is available at www.SDTimes.com. You can read many of its stories online, or download the entire issue in Adobe's Acrobat (PDF) format for FREE right from the Web site.