Archive for May, 2008
« Previous Entries@role values for SVG
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008Something which was part of the early design concepts from the XHTML Role Attribute Module, which has got a little lost, is that elements from any language can provide a handy source of role values too.
To reconstruct the logic:
A role value is simply a URI, or resource. The reason for this is so that the extensibility hook that we’re creating puts us straight into the world of RDF.
Now, some values of @role will need to be invented. This might be because they simply don’t exist, or because we want the values to be ‘cross-cutting’, and apply to many different mark-up languages.
But there are many values that already exist, that are suitable for use in a variety of situations. For example, XForms has a hint element, that can apply to its form controls:
<xf:input ref="surname"> <xf:label>Surname:</xf:label> <xf:hint>Please enter your surname or family name</xf:hint></xf:input>
The semantics of ‘XForms hint’ and pretty well defined, so it should be straightforward to apply them to other situations. For example, an Ajax library could pick up a hint and do something with it in an (X)HTML document, even without XForms:
<input name="surname" /><div role=”xf:hint”> Please enter your name</div>
SVG
This whole topic came up recently because someone asked whether it would be possible to add some new values for role which would identify paragraphs, sections, headers, and so on, and that could e used in languages like SVG; but the answer is that if we use the XHTML p, section, h1, h2, etc., values then we don’t need to invent new roles:
<svg:text role="xh:h1">Metadata</svg:text><svg:text role=”xh:p”> Metadata is data about data…which is also data…kind of turtles all the way down…</svg:text>
As you can see, a role-aware voice system would be able to provide feedback to a user in any mark-up language, simply by knowing XHTML role values.
Originally
from XForms and Internet Applications
by
reBlogged
Turning Content into Cash - Getting the Advertisers’ Attention
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008STRATEGY SERIES EVENT May 21st
LAST 3 EVENTS SOLD OUT!
May 21, 2008 | 6:30pm 8:30pm
Manatt, Phelps & Phillips | San Francisco, CA
Ad-based business models aren’t revolutionary - it’s the heartbeat of nearly every successful media company. However, the playing field is much more confusing - and crowded - than ever before. Frankly, there’s only so many ad dollars and eyeballs to go around. If companies like YouTube and MySpace are having trouble monetizing, how does a startup even get a foot in the door?
To grow your business in a competitive landscape, you’ll need to know:
→ Is advertising a viable business model for startups?
→ Which metrics are advertisers looking for today?
→ What are the most effective ways to get advertisers’ attention?
→ How effective are ad networks?
→ At what point should you decide to hire an internal sales team?
Moderator:
Hale Boggs, Partner, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips
Panelists:
Brad Murphy, VP - Ad Sales, Revision3
Amir Ashkenazi, CEO & Co-Founder, Adap.tv
Keith Richman, CEO, Break Media
Originally
from Under the Radar Blog
by
reBlogged
on May 14, 2008, 12:55AM
The Jack LaLanne Guide to Talking About Your Startup
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008Jack LaLanne, the 92-year-old fitness guru, on public speaking: “If you believe in something, you can talk about it. To get in front of a crowd drives me nuts, but I have a message to deliver.”
As you may or may not know we do quite a bit of preparation with our Under the Radar presenting companies. We go over pitches and decks and talk about technology, business models, market shares and CEO pedigrees. It’s almost always a great conversation for everyone on the calls - even the most experienced talkers get some insight into what they want to say up on stage.
I’ve come across a few great articles about giving presentations and pitches on Forbes.com that I wanted to get up on our site - my favorite excerpts are here and links to the entire articles below.
DONT’S:
- “All business ideas have inherent risks. Don’t ignore them and don’t pretend they aren’t there… Instead, identify the risks and explain how you plan to deal with them, and perhaps even turn them to your advantage some day.”
- “Make sure your story tracks the market and the numbers you present; investors don’t want to work with a management team that doesn’t have a firm grip on reality.”
- “Don’t spend your entire presentation explaining every esoteric detail of your software. Each feature you share should serve to demonstrate–clearly and quickly–the company’s money-making potential.”
DO’S:
- Focus hard on your company’s core value proposition. Your presentation needs a clear, consistent theme. If you don’t know it, the audience won’t either
- Focus on the overall market and your company’s prospects within it.
- Always, always prepare. Never wing it. (Trust me on this one).
Here’s another useful concept for you serial entrepreneurs who are too uncomfortable bragging about your accomplishments (or do it way too much):
“I’ve found that when speakers talk about what they know, it’s arrogant. When they talk about what they’ve learned, it’s humble and a format of great storytelling.”
This is actually relevant for everyone - what taught you what you know and how does what you’ve learned guarantee your success now? This reminder to stay humble comes from an ad guy - Roy Spence, founder and president of GSD&M advertising, part of Omnicom Group.
Ten Ways to F* Up Your Pitch (I’m paraphrasing the title, of course) - Forbes.com
Top Tips For Nailing That Speech - Forbes.com
Originally
from Under the Radar Blog
by
reBlogged
on May 15, 2008, 12:52AM
Volunteers Wanted at Under the Radar - June 3rd
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008Volunteers Wanted - Under the Radar!
We’re looking for a few volunteers for Under the Radar on June 3rd. You’ll have a chance to attend sessions and join in on the event meals and the reception - A great networking opportunity!
Below are the details. If you’re interested, please email giselle at dealmakermedia dot com.
Volunteer positions:
1. Registration: 7:15AM - 12:15PM OR 12:15PM - 5:15PM
- Materials organization/set-up in a.m.
- Assist at the reg desk, checking in attendees and handing out badges.
2. Speaker greeting: 7:30AM - 4:30PM
- Work with registration desk to find out when speakers arrive and take them to their rooms and introduce them to the room monitors and the Moderators.
3. General Session assistance: 7:30AM - 4:30PM
- Provide microphone assistance for the question and answer (Q/A) session at the end of the panel discussion.
- Provide support to the room monitor
EVENT INFORMATION:
Date: Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Time: 8:00am - 6:30pm
Location: Microsoft | 1065 La Avenida, Mountain View, CA 94043
More details at our website: http://undertheradarblog.com
Originally
from Under the Radar Blog
by
reBlogged
on May 15, 2008, 6:18PM
The Mailroom Fund’s 1st Investment - a UTR Company
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008Sometrics, a startup that’s presenting at the next Under the Radar: Social Media & Entertainment on June 3rd, just received a seed round from the newly created Mailroom Fund, the venture love-child of William Morris, Accel Partners, Venrock & AT&T.
Lewis Henderson, SVP of digital platforms at William Morris, will be a judge at Under the Radar, though he won’t be judging Sometrics of course 
Check-out the line-up and you’ll notice that Lewis isn’t the only Hollywood shot-caller on the list. Expect to see tinseltown making a ot more trips to Silicon Valley over the coming months…this space is heating up and there’s no shorting of funds and startups.
Originally
from Under the Radar Blog
by
reBlogged
on May 15, 2008, 8:29PM
intermediads - a new take on button ads that takes the pain out of clicking
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008
Intermediads is a new service just launched in closed beta. Developed by serial entreprenuer Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, it’s based around the idea of 125×125 advertising buttons. So that’s it? Not quite. These small rectangles give readers and advertisers very little information. They are basically pretty useless. So the idea is you hover over the ad and a small grey border appears, just like on a Flickr profile. If you then click on the border a small layer comes up with a few options. Check out The Next Web blog and hover over the ads for a live demo. After testing they hope to open the service up for other blogs to use, suggesting this could be a new type of ad network.
I don’t believe the idea is original - but since many blogs run this size of button ad and ads generally are annoying because you have to click away, and ad network based soley on this format could well appeal to blog readers and publishers. If I didn’t have to click away to a new page I might be more inclined to see what an advertiser was about. In fact, I wouldn’t mind advertising nearly so much.
Originally
from TechCrunch UK
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reBlogged
on May 13, 2008, 4:01PM
Upcoming events of interest
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008
May 15: next08, Hamburg
next08 is on May 15, 2008 at the Prototyp museum in Hamburg. The main theme will be “get realtime”, taking care of the challenge that customers are communicating in real-time but companies do not. Together with DLD in Munich it has become Germany’s most important New Media event. Confirmed speakers as include Anil Hansjee (Google), JP Rangaswami (British Telecom) and Lisa Sounio (Dopplr).
May 21st: Startup 2.0, Barcelona
StartUp2.0 is a competition of European web 2.0 sites whose objectives are to promote and reward the European startups that work in the field of “2.0″ technologies.
21-23 May: Thinking Digital
The Thinking Digital conference will take on an eclectic range of technology-based topics that have (or soon will have) a profound effect upon the way we work and live: from the future of media and making far better use of technology, to our obsession with happiness and creating a cure for ageing.
Jun 10: Being-Digital
Being-Digital is a UK event, in London for UK entrepreneurs, executives, and investors. A number of startups will be pitching on the day (interest declared: I’ll be introducing them). The bulk of the speakers, demo companies etc. are UK based, such as Brent Hoberman of mydeco, but will also feature Loïc Le Meur, founder of Seesmic. The interesting thing about the pitches is that they will be filmed, and made available afterwards, with the winning company announced on June 19th.
Also of note:
Jun 11: Berlin TechCrunch Meetup
Jun 12: TMT.communities’08, Warsaw
Creating products and services around internet & mobile communities
Other events:
May 19: GeekUp Preston
May 20: NESTA: The Innovation Edge Conference 2008
May 22: GeekUp Leeds
May 24: BarCamp NorthEast
May 26: London Web Week Opening Party
May 27: NMK Beers & Innovation: Coming of Age
May 29: @media 2008 (London)
May 31: BarCamp London 4
June 6th: Seedcamp Paris
Jun 10: GeekUp Manchester
Jun 13: Fuel
Jun 21: Mashed
Jul 2: GeekUp Sheffield
Jul 16: (Irish) Open Coffee BBQ
Originally
from TechCrunch UK
by
reBlogged
on May 13, 2008, 11:35PM
TechCrunch events in Europe and the UK
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008
As I wrote over on TechCrunch.com, I’ll be heading out to the rest of Europe over the next few weeks, looking for and writing about the startups I meet along the way. Not quite Down and Out in Paris and London, but it should certainly be interesting. But I don’t want to forget my home turf! So if you are interested in helping me co-organise a TechCrunch meetup event in the UK (with sponsors of course), then get in contact. Here’s what we are doing in Berlin, for example, with the help of a partner who arranged the venue and wrangled sponsors.
Originally
from TechCrunch UK
by
reBlogged
on May 14, 2008, 12:52PM
Glubble secures second $3m Angel round
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008
UK-based Glubble, a free parental-control add-on for Firefox, has secured a $3 million funding round from existing angel investors to continue the development of its product, which also allows a family circle to link up via Firefox to decide what they can see online. Morten Lund, one of the first investors in Skype, is one of those existing angels. Founded in 2006 by Ian Hayward, Glubble had early support from Firefox users keen to have some kind of parental control on the open-source browser. The full software suite has been downloaded about 100,000 times. A premium service which will be available later in the year.
Originally
from TechCrunch UK
by
reBlogged
on May 16, 2008, 7:53PM
Qype launches iPhone version, but it needs more
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008
Qype, the European reviews and ratings network in the UK, France and Germany, has launched an iPhone version unoriginally called “iQype”. If you’re reading this on a iPhone or iPod Touch it’s here.
Now, iPhone users can browse the 6,000 cities Qype has listed and the 200,000 user-generated reviews of bars, restaurants, cafes etc. That’s nice. But this is a startup with significant inventment from VC houses Advent Venture Partners and Partech International. Little old Trusted Paces in the UK, launched their iPhone version in November last year.
What would be more interesting would be to leverage Qype’s social network on the iPhone. They tell me messaging internally between Qype users will be added at some point and also the ability to send places to your friends via email, and possibly sms. There is limited profile support now. But why they didn’t go for broke on this now I don’t know because last time I looked there were few social networks spread across Europe in quite the same way. This is a great opportunity for Qype but the functionality is not there yet. Admittedly, TrustedPlaces has not done any more with their iPhone app either.
Secondly, Qype needs to make it more location aware about users. You can type where you are, like TottenhamCourt Road or you can use the iPhone’s location-finding ability to plot a route to the listed venue. That’s almost close to what a mobile social app might do - but perhaps they might be able to add a status bar to people’s profiles allowing them to set their location. That would create a mobile social network for the iPhone much closer to the ideal that Techcrunch has been talking about for a while.
Originally
from TechCrunch UK
by
reBlogged
on May 17, 2008, 11:13PM