Entries from February 2008 ↓

If you’ve just updated your iPhone to the 1.1.4 firmware and have been awaiting an easy jailbreak and unlock process, iNdependence v1.4 beta 5 is out and brings “jailbreak, activation, SSH installation and ringtone/wallpaper/application.” The Mac-only software is still beta and as it goes with any iPhone hacking, you must use caution, especially with the SDK coming next week. [iNdependence]

Crowdsourcing firm Kluster officially launched yesterday at the TED conference, which is underway this week in Monterey, California. Founder Ben Kaufman, who bankrolled the company in part with money from the sale of his last company Mophie, has organized a gimmick over the course of the TED conference he hopes will prove Kluster’s worth. Kaufman intends to let TED attendees — and users from around the world — design a completely new product over the course of 72 hours.

The idea behind Kluster is that a group of passionate people working together can come up with better solutions for any decision-making problem than a single person. Whether that is planning an event, designing a new logo, or creating a new product, Kluster believes their system can work.

Kaufman got the idea after the Bevy, one of Mophie’s most popular products, was designed by the crowd at Macworld using sketch pads and a precursor to the system that evolved into Kluster. The keychain/bottler opener/iPod shuffle case was one of Mophie’s best selling products, and it was designed in just 72 hours by a crowd, and launched as a product just 2 months later. Kaufman realized he was potentially onto something.

The Kluster system works by breaking down products into manageable chunks. For each chunk (or “phase”), people submit what are called “sparks.” Sparks are proposed solutions for that phase. For each spark, other participants can submit “amps” — which are improvements to that idea. Users also assign “watts” to sparks and amps they like. Watts work kind of like investments. You accrue points based on participation and other factors, and can invest those points (watts) in ideas you like.

Then an algorithm that takes into account “each user’s successes, failures, reputation, areas of expertise, and overall history” goes to work to determine which sparks are the best. Companies interested in using the Kluster system, put up cash prizes that are doled out along the way (at the completion of each phase).

The whole concept is similar to the one behind Derek Powazek’s new site, Pixish (our coverage). The main difference is that where Pixish is strictly for design related tasks, Kluster is for anything suited to crowd creation. And at Kluster, the crowd is also being relied upon to pick the best result.

During the TED conference, Kluster is hoping to use their system to create a new product in 72 hours. It will be unveiled on the last day of the conference, March 1 at 8am. Unfortunately, the Kluster site has been having a lot of problems, so getting in to participate might be easier said than done. There are $15,000 in phase prizes up for grabs.

Can lightning strike twice? Or was the Bevy a fluke? Kaufman admitted earlier this month that right now most companies see participation in Kluster as a means of viral marketing to connect with their die hard fans. It will take a few hit products to come out of the Kluster process to prove that it is a viable way for companies to conduct their R&D. Do you think it will work? Let us know in the comments below.

Venture capital is a complicated and sometimes intimidating subject, especially for the first-time entrepreneur. Sure, you can learn a bit about it from blogs, but with these types of subject it’s good to read a proper book or two. These ebooks and white papers should help get you started down the road to VC funding! (more…)

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Checkser is a service that allows people to create public checklists, whatever the subject. Founder Marijn Deurloo came up with the idea during his brainstorm with his mentor, only a few weeks ago, and started to develop it right-a-way. The result is a very simple and clean-looking site.

You can look up checklists by browsing through the tags, user history pages or using the search engine. Some useful checklists I have found: a fishing trip list, Bottle soccer, Financial Management and a Web standards checklist.

KillerStartups reviewed the service as well, and they were pretty enthusiastic about it. Yet they did miss something: ‘Some more web 2.0 features would also be nice, such as user profiles’. I’ve emailed Deurloo to find out if he will add features like that. He replied: “Checkser is currently linked to the openID-initiative for linking to profiles, so authors can make themselves known by entering their openID-id. A link to their openID profile is then added to the “history”-page of a checklist. In the future, more social features like ratings will be added.”

I hope he will, since the anonymous approach might actually threaten the quality of the content. Especially since the checklists have a ‘read more’ link that the creator of the list can use to link to his own page. Deurloo deliberately added that function so that checklists can be used as teasers for companies. Yet it could be too tempting for gambling sites and other infamous low quality content sites to use it as an extra ad space.

So I’ve asked Deurloo how he will make sure that the quality of the checklist will remain good. Deurloo: “I’m hoping that the same mechanism that works well for Wikipedia will also work for checklists. Users help keeping the quality up, by being able to revert to previous versions of checklists and branching off those.” The self-control approach doesn’t really work yet, since the tag ‘test‘ contains 34 test checklists. More traffic and users might end this problem.

Unlike Wikipedia, Checkser does have a business model. It’s not much yet, Deurloo uses the Amazon affiliate program. “By suggesting relevant books to the checklists, I hope a little money can be made.” Makes sense, since he attracts a Getting Things Done crowd, and they’re generally eager to buy books.

But Deurloo has more good plans for the future: “As several businesses have already asked me, I will be creating a “pro”-version with company-private checklists for use on intranets for a small subscription fee. Kind of like the Basecamp and Backpack websites do.” So Deurloo can soon mark the ‘create pro version’ point on the ‘How to run a successful Internet service’.

Make3D takes a two-dimensional image and creates a three-dimensional fly around model that includes depth and a range views. Photos can be uploaded directly or pulled into the site from Flickr.

The service is based on an algorithm created by Stanford students Andrew Ng, Ashutosh Saxena and Min Sun that won the best paper award at the 3D recognition and reconstruction workshop at the International Conference on Computer Vision in Rio de Janeiro in October 2007.

A January Stanford News Service piece explains it some more:

…the algorithm breaks the image up into tiny planes called “superpixels,” which are within the image and have very uniform color, brightness and other attributes. By looking at a superpixel in concert with its neighbors, analyzing changes such as gradations of texture, the algorithm makes a judgment about how far it is from the viewer and what its orientation in space is. Unlike some previous algorithms, the Stanford one can account for planes at any angle, not just horizontal or vertical. This allows it to create models for scenes that have planes at many orientations, such as the curved branches of trees or the slopes of mountains.

The service is in the same space as Microsoft Photosynth, but unlike Microsoft’s more extensive product that meshes many images together to create 3D models, Make3D is a one image only service. If you like, Make3D is Photosynth for the common man, quick, simple, and although the results don’t come close to Photosynth, they are still very impressive. A full gallery of Make3D renders can be found here.

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

Apple has released the 1.1.4 software update for the iPhone, listing “bug fixes” in the change notes. Surprisingly, one bug it neglected to fix is the ability to Jailbreak the iPhone. Jailbreaking is the name of a hack to allow access to the iPhone and iPod Touch file systems, essential for installing third party applications.

Reports across the net say that, unlike previous software updates, 1.1.4 doesn’t require any extra hacking: The methods for the previous 1.1.3 software will still work, including ZiPhone, a command line back end for the Mac application iJailBreak. The iPhone cannot be unlocked to run on unofficial networks though, so if you are happy Canadian running an iPhone on Rogers, for example, don’t update.

The update also fixes some Bluetooth compatibility problems introduced by 1.1.3, an ongoing problem with SMS messages arriving out of order, and some users report a boost in cell signal strength.

iPhone 1.1.4 can still be jailbroken; cannot be unofficially activated [iPhone Atlas]

Edit In Place functionality with Ajax using prototype.js library and php as back end.

Implement a horizontal menu Flickr-like using CSS and js to show/hide sub-menu.

Implement a simple vertical menu digg-like using CSS and js to show/hide sub-menu.

Creates an accordion menu with nested lists, definition lists, or just nested divs.