Ajax Blog

Mario Heiderich has released qUIpt, a library that uses the window.name property to store away useful data, in this case JavaScript.

How does it work?

• It checks for the contents of window.name while your page is being loaded.
• If there’s nothing inside the window.name cache the JS files defined by you are fetched via XHR
• The same happens if the users enters your site for the first time of his current browser session or if document.referrer is off-domain or empty
• After that the contents of window.name are being evaluated
• If the user requests the next page on your domain the JS files are directly taken from window.name - no more requests necessary

You can check out an example of it at work

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/326662324/quipt-caching-js-in-windowname

Microsoft has come out with a road map for the Ajax side of ASP.NET, which has been simplified to be just: Framework and tools in one versioned package; Ajax components will be released separately on Codeplex.

There is a bold goal at the beginning of the document (why is the doc a PDF/.doc and not just HTML!!!):

Make ASP.NET Ajax the first-class choice for all Web 2.0 developers

They are going to be catching up with richer CSS selection and DOM manipulation:

We have got some animation going on:

What else?

• Accessibility
• Drag & Drop
• Client-side Controls and Behavior
• Interoperability: OpenAjax hub support
• Tooling, tooling, tooling

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/326624146/microsoft-aspnet-ajax-road-map

What does your CEO do? Paul Colton, CEO of Aptana, gets his fingers dirty. He just wrote a post about accessing COM objects from JavaScript with Jaxer.

This is possible as the JavaScript is running on the server, and this server is running on Windows. You can download the source code to check it all out.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/326599893/talking-to-net-on-the-server-with-jaxer

What if you could encode a Jar file as an image and trick the browser to run it? This is what Ben Lorica reported from a black hat briefing webinar:

During a recent webinar to promote the upcoming Black Hat briefings in Las Vegas, a group of hackers announced the creation of a hybrid file that can potentially bypass a browser’s same origin policy. They created a GIF file that also happens to be a JAR file ( a “GIFAR” file). Once uploaded onto a web site, and assuming the web server runs a JVM, it allows one to run a malicious java applet on someone else’s web server.

Details were not provided, since the hackers claim that Sun is still working on a patch. For more on hybrid (image) files as attack vectors, go to minute 41:23 of the webinar.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/326396803/evil-gifs-hiding-java-in-your-image

Google has just released a lengthy blog post to announce that it has finally put its privacy policy on its homepage. The search giant has been repeatedly questioned over the last few months over its lack of a readily available privacy policy, which until now has been buried in the “About Google” section of the site. The explanation has always been vague (and ridiculous), with Google repeatedly appealing to its desire to keep the home page as pristine as possible.

Google hasn’t said why it finally gave in, but it’s likely that it has been facing pressure from the government to make the privacy policy more available - a post by Saul Hansell points out that the lack of a visible policy may have actually been illegal under California law.

The announcement was accompanied by a lighthearted description of Google’s “homepage weight” - the number of words visible on the page at one time. Apparently the magic number is 28 words, and the company was forced to drop a word from its copyright disclaimer in order to make room for the new link.

It’s an interesting little story, but the tone of it is sort of strange. Privacy is a big deal at Google, so why the levity? We’ve had some recent concerns over where Google is getting its website usage data from, nevermind the fact that it may soon hand over all YouTube user data by court order. It would be nice if they were a little more forthcoming, even if it’s at the cost of a whimsical story.

Despite these concerns, we should give Google some credit for a hosting a pretty comprehensive privacy portal (even if it was difficult to find before). Here’s their captivating introduction to cookies:

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/326210537/

Here are some of the jobs listed on CrunchBoard over the last week:

• Fulltime Senior AJAX/PHP Web Developer
  DriverSide - San Francisco, CA
• QA Engineer
  Gx5 - Anywhere
• Software Support Specialist
  K&L Wine Merchants - Redwood City, CA
• GoodBarry .NET Web Development Ninja
  GoodBarry - San Francisco, CA
• Head of Web Design & Front-End Development
  Global Campus - London, UK
• Quality Assurance Cowboy
  Janus Health - San Diego, CA
• Web Developer
  Wall Street On Demand - Boulder, CO
• Operations Support Engineer
  LiveOffice - Torrance, CA
• Technical Architect
  Frog Design - Milan, IT
• Ruby Developer
  TechCrunch - Atherton, CA

International readers can check out our British and French job boards as well.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/326252038/

The recent court order directing Google to hand over data to Viacom about every YouTube video ever watched strikes many people as an absurd overreach of the law into the privacy of anyone who has ever used YouTube (i.e., almost everyone on the Internet). Google should definitely keep fighting the ruling if it can.

But if it can’t, perhaps it should comply with it in a creative way. The data in question are data logs containing the records of every video watched on YouTube, by whom, and at what times. The court is also ordering that Google hand over all videos that have ever been taken down for any reason. The logs alone take up 12 terabytes. Google should print them out and deliver them on paper.

It would literally fill up the Library of Congress. That is roughly the equivalent of all the printed books in the Library of Congress (by one estimate, others put it at 20 terabytes—either way, it’s a lot of paper). The court order never states what form, the data must be delivered in.

(Photo via, appropriately enough, the Library of Congress And hat tip to reader Paul Christiansen for the original suggestion).

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/326147633/

We’ve seen a number of music sites like Seeqpod and Grooveshark that leverage user-uploaded music scattered across the web to offer free, on-demand jukeboxes. These services manage to skirt legal repercussions by only serving content that is hosted on other sites, which makes them harder to sue (though some have tried).

Streamzy, a media search startup that launched earlier this year, has taken this approach one step further. Instead of trying to index user-generated content, Streamzy uses Seeqpod’s database as a content source, which it further refines by weeding out broken links. The site, which used to only support audio, has just introduced video playback as well.

Streamzy offers a streamlined (and much improved) interface for Seeqpod’s content, sporting a minimalist player that neatly labels each song by title and artist name. Beyond basic media playback, Streamzy also offers an intuitive drag-and-drop playlist maker that users can save for future reference. In the future the company plans to allow for users to embed playlists on their blogs and social network profiles.

Streamzy isn’t much more than a resigned interface for Seeqpod, but it’s a redesign that was badly needed. And while it will have a hard time differentiating itself from the likes of Jogli, Songza, Soundflavor and a number of others, it’s a good place to start for music on demand.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/326097651/

While at Dyson HQ, I had the pleasure, once again, of interviewing the man himself. I had to ask what his thoughts were on the iPhone, and James’ answers were both entertaining and interesting.

I have an iPhone and a BlackBerry. And I have to confess that I use the BlackBerry more. But I really wanted to like the iPhone because it’s thin—one of the clever things about it—thinner than any other phone, and fits easily in your pocket. I find that a nuisance if you’re going to a function or whatever it is. I really like that about it.

I hate the touchscreen. That’s my biggest complaint. I love the weather, really good. Maps are brilliant. The way you are supposed to use it, I really like. I’m not sure about having to slide that thing across every time you answer a phone call. As a way of locking the screen, I accept that because it’s important.

Read the rest of the interview at CrunchGear

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/326069827/

Even back in January when Microsoft agreed to pay $1.2 billion for enterprise search company Fast Search & Transfer, it was mired in an accounting scandal and trading in its stock had been suspended. Its aggressive accounting for phantom deals that never materialized earned it the moniker the “Enron of Norway.” But more sordid details keep coming out from some tenacious reporting by the Norwegian press.

The latest account comes in the June 28 issue of the Norwegian magazine Dagens Næringsliv. In an article (in Norwegian) by Trond Sundnes, Dagens Næringsliv, Gøran Skaalmo, the magazine details how the Norwegian company booked free software trials as revenues, and how its executives set up shell corporations for allegedly self-dealing purposes. A translated version of the article (embedded below) is making the rounds among Fast’s competitors and inside Microsoft itself.

The problems at Fast were financial in nature and tied to an overly aggressive sales culture, which arguably Microsoft can fix. But it does point to a certain blindness on the part of Microsoft, or at least a willingness to look the other way, in its obsessive quest to become a player in search (see Yahoo and Powerset). It also raises questions about Fast’s underlying search technology. If Fast was having trouble closing deals for its products, how good can its technology really be?

According to the article, Fast had booked $50 million in fake revenue, $20 million in fictional contracts, and former top executives closely linked to CEO Markus Lervik siphoned off $6 million to shell companies they controlled. Lervik continues to lead the business and is currently the vice president for enterprise search at Microsoft.

Some of the details from the article include:

—The company had an aggressive practice of giving enterprise customers free trial periods and marking them down as tentative deals.

—One of these was a large $18 million deal with Australian Telecom company Telstra that the company recognized as revenues in late 2006. But the deal then failed to materialize.

—A second deal for which Fast never got paid was with Accoona, another shady search company.

—An audit uncovered unauthorized payments to a shell company in Fort Myers, Florida called Archtech that is owned by a former Fast VP, Peter Bauert and Fasts’s former CFO Ali Riaz (through yet another company he controls called Bluebird Collabo). That’s Riaz in the Audi pictured above.

Lervik never responded to repeated requests for comment, but Microsoft did. It sent adjusted annual reports for 2006 and 2007 which noted that over 30 million Norwegian Kroner ($6 million) was “irregularly” paid and “wrongly approved” to:

. . . companies owned or controlled by persons who at the time of the transactions were closely related parties.

That is an apparent reference to Archtech and other shell companies that were supposedly reselling Fast software. The problem, according to the the documents Microsoft provided, was that these related companies “purchased” $3.5 million worth of software licenses for which Fast was never actually paid.

I always wondered what the “transfer” part of Fast Search & Transfer referred to.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/326053235/