Tampa Bay Times from St. Petersburg, Florida • 39

5D MONDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2005 TIMES PERSONAL TECH ebEsased software Juices up process speeds Ajax, a set of Web development tools, speeds up Web applications by summoning snippets of data as needed instead of pulling entire Web pages over and over. Associated Press t-TlMmil--'l1llllllllllllllllMIIIMIiiini Ill Hillltl "TV JfL.iA AP in the late 1990s and has used it for years to power an online version of its popular Outlook e-mail program. Ajax's resurgence in recent months is partly because of its innovative use by Google Inc. to fundamentally change online mapping. Before, maps were static: Click on a left arrow, wait a few.

seconds as the Web page reloads and see the map shift slightly to the left. Repeat. Repeat again. "It's slow. It's frustrating," said frequent map user Fred Wagner, a petroleum engineer in Houston.

"We're all getting spoiled with wanting things to happen." So he sticks with Google Maps these days. There, he can drag the map over any which way and watch new areas fill in instantly. He can zoom in quickly using an Ajax slider. No more World Wide Wait. "Everybody went, 'Ooh, how did they do said Steve Yen, who runs a company developing an Ajax spreadsheet called Num Sum.

"It turns out the technology's been there for a while." Jesse James Garrett, an Adaptive Path LLC usability strategist who publicly coined the term "Ajax" 10 days after Google Maps launched in February, said such examples "convinced a lot of Web designers to take another look at something they may have previously dismissed as experimental." Also contributing are faster Internet connections, more powerful computers and better browsers able to handle Ajax, which is short for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. Consider e-mail. Until recently, Web mail meant sending forms back and forth online. Check an item to delete and hit a but- mapping products. "Web applications have a way to go." Other limitations are intentional.

For security reasons, a browser cannot seamlessly access files or other programs on a computer. And, of course, Web applications require a persistent Internet connection, making work difficult on airplanes. Usability expert Jakob Nielsen also worries that loss of productivity a minute here, a minute there, multiplied by thousands of employees will offset any savings in installation costs. "When you do a lot of transactions, you want something that's optimized for the transaction, not something optimized for information browsing," he said. Among other criticisms, developer tools for Ajax aren't as mature as those for one of its chief rivals, Macromedia Flash.

And many Ajax programs don't work well beyond Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox browsers. Yet Web -based applications are increasingly appealing at a time when separate computers for home, work and travel are common and people get used to sharing calendars and other data with friends and relatives. Ajax can make those experiences richer. "There's a lot of power sitting on that Web browser that people are just tapping into," said White of eBusiness Applications. Web developers "are beginning to push its limits in terms of creative uses and new applications." MarketWatch's chief technology officer.

"Your computer would just be hung." Microsoft, which uses Ajax in a new map offering and an upcoming Hotmail upgrade, is starting to build new tools to promote Ajax development even as it pushes a next-generation alternative. The alternative technology, known as XAML, will permit even richer applications over browsers. Alas, unlike Ajax, it will run only on Microsoft's Windows computers no Macs, no Linux. Startups, meantime, are embracing Ajax for Office-like tools. Such applications won't replace Office but could find a niche: Parents collaborating in a soccer league could jointly update a Num Sum spreadsheet with scores, while users too poor to buy Office or students always on the go could compose a letter from anywhere using Writely word processor.

Scott Guthrie, who oversees the Microsoft Ajax tools called Atlas, thinks Ajax has a future, but not one at odds with Microsoft's. "Ultimately when you want to write a word processing document or manage a large spreadsheet, you are going to want the capabilities that are very difficult to provide on the Web today," Guthrie said. Computer-intensive applications like Adobe Systems Inc's Photoshop image editor and high-end games won't come to browsers any time soon. Even Google had to create desktop mapping software, called Google Earth, and requiring a download, to permit 3-D and advanced features. "Ajax cannot do everything," said Bret Taylor, who oversees Google's Fred Wagner, a petroleum engineer in Houston, uses Google Maps to drag a map over any which way and watch new areas fill in instantly.

He can zoom in quickly using an Ajax slider. NEW YORK A quiet revolution is transforming life on the Internet: New, agile software now lets people quickly check flight options, see stock prices fluctuate and better manage their online photos and e-mail. Such tools make computing less of a chore because they sit on distant Web servers and run over standard browsers. Users thus don't have to worry about installing software or moving data when they switch computers. And that could bode ill for Microsoft Corp.

and its flagship Office suite, which packs together word processing, spreadsheets and other applications. The threat comes in large part from Ajax, a set of Web development tools that speeds up Web applications by summoning snippets of data as needed instead of pulling entire Web pages over and over. "It definitely supports a Microsoft exit strategy," said Alexei White, a product manager at Ajax developer eBusiness Applications Ltd. "I don't think it can be a full replacement, but you could provide scaled-down alternatives to most Office products that will be sufficient for some users." Ironically, Microsoft invented Ajax tool that instantly updates flight options as travelers narrow their choices of airports, airlines and travel times. This summer, Time Warner America Online Inc.

started using Ajax to let users rearrange, display and switch photo albums with fewer clicks. And last month, Dow Jones MarketWatch began embedding news articles with stock quotes updated several times a second, blinking green and red as prices fluctuate. "A Web page takes longer to load than that," said Jamie Thingelstad, ton. A remote mail server receives instructions and responds with an entirely new page, which is missing only the one deleted item. Enter Yahoo Inc.

and an interface it is testing using technology from an Ajax pioneer it bought, Oddpost. Delete an item this time, and Ajax reconfigures the page immediately without waiting for a response. Open a message to read, and the browser fetches only the message's body it already has the subject line and other header information and doesn't have to waste time duplicating that data. Yahoo also is developing an Ajax Ads become part of online game landscape To reach mainly young men, online game provider Shockwave.com has begun offering advertisers a way to insert ads within games. Tr it) Associated Presa jMWwtw.i...w.

i VIDEO GAMES STAR WARS: BATTLEFRONT II Company: LucasArts System: Windows Price: $49.99 Rating: Grade: A I know the original Battlefront was the bestselling Star Wars game ever, but this game is the one the first one should have been. All the things that bugged me about the first game were fixed. The game play has hardly changed at all. Some of the same maps that were in the first are in the second. Most of the different soldier types are the same, with a few additions.

All your old strategies? Yeah, they work in this one, too. The differences? Huge. The crowd pleaser? You can be a Jedi. It isn't easy, and you aren't the immortal Sith killer you'd think you could be, but it's a huge step. In the first one, Jedis just appeared in the game and you couldn't do anything but watch them aimlessly wander the battlefield, killing the first enemy they came upon.

There's a single-player campaign, something startling? lacking from the first. It's not much of a single-player campaign you can play it through in one sitting but it's entertaining nonetheless. The galactic conquest game actually has some game to it. There's strategy and a purpose, and it makes sense. The first Battlefront's conquest was was I still don't know what it was.

It wasn't good, and this one is. The other big difference: space battles. Unlike the first one, there are several space combat settings, where you hop into an X-Wing, TIE Fighter or one of the new ships from the new trilogy and go out into space and shoot it out. The controls are a little hard at first, but the action is good. Even the instant-action setting the most mundane part of any game, if you ask me is vastly improved.

Got a Star Warsgame freak on your shopping list? You can't go wrong here. MATTHEW WAITE, Times staff writer Shockwave.com hosts more than 200 games and claims its 20-million visitors to the site last month played more than 25-million game sessions. The advertising network launched last week allows marketers to insert their images or brand names inside the games. They'll be able to track the "impressions" or viewing times each ad gets a key advertising metric as well as tailor their ads to geographic markets. SBC Communications Sprint Nextel Corp.

and Sony Sony Pictures are among the first companies planning to use Shockwave.com's new advertising feature. Shockwave.com plans to start ad insertions with action games, where the landscape, say of a racing game, or sport, lends itself to billboardlike advertisements. For instance, in the game called SWITCH Wakeboarding, players will see bright yellow Sprint Nextel ads interspersed on ramps as they buzz around the lake doing tricks. In the game, which usually lasts about 15 minutes, a player might see ads as many as 25 times, Williams said. Ad images generally will last three to seven seconds in action games, and perhaps longer in other games where an ad can be displayed, say, on a hood of car, instead of a passing object, Williams said.

Shockwave.com plans to introduce ads in mind and puzzle games, too, but only if they could somehow be incorporated into the design without interfering with the game play. Players should never see an ad that will pop up and block their views as they're maneuvering their marbles, tiles or jewels in a puzzle game, Williams said. "Consumers are not screaming for more ads," he said. "And we want to make sure that as we roll this out that the places where you'll see the ads will be where you would expect to see them in the real world, as well." SAN JOSE, Calif. Here you are, one of the millions of Americans who like to play casual games on the Internet, ready to log on for some fun.

So you go to a gaming Web site and try to ignore the ads on the page. Then you wait as the game loads and a 10-second advertisement covers your computer screen. Ah, the start button. Now you can play, but don't expect the virtual escape to guarantee relief from marketers' attempts to get in front of your eyes. Last week, online game provider Shockwave.com began offering advertisers a way to insert ads within the games themselves.

While it is thought to be the first such invasion in Web-based games, it's only one of a growing number of venues advertisers are using to reach its shifting and fleeting audiences. The traditional pillars of advertising in print and television media have eroded in recent years as people especially the elusive demographic of young men have instead spent more time on video games and on the Internet Hence, the ad creep, whether loudly from the walls of sports fields, subtly from the strategic product placements within films, or annoyingly from the pop-up ads all over the Internet. There's no respite even when people use their TiVo digital video recorders to skip TV commercials: Earlier this year, bannerlike ads started appearing during fast forwarding. Ads also are showing up in console video AP An advertisement for Sprint Nextel appears on the launch ramp in the online game SWITCH Wakeboarding. Shockwave.com wants to capitalize on the growing migration of advertising dollars to the Internet.

games. It was only a matter of time then that in-game advertisements would arrive in the world of casual Web-based games. The often addictive genre of action, puzzle and card games attracted nearly 56-million unique visitors in September, according to comScore Media Metrix, a research firm. Already, advertising revenue from online games, including the more hard-core multiplayer games, is projected to grow to by 2008, up from $450-million to $550-million last year, according to the Yankee Group research firm. Shockwave.com, a division of San Francisco's AtomShockwave wants to capitalize on the growing migration of advertising dollars to the Internet.

"There's such a huge demand right now from brand advertisers," said Dave Williams, chief marketing officer at AtomShockwave. "And this is a huge audience, and an engaged audience." Normapilar Diaz International Sales Manager Diwi Corporation UM MBA st-4 v. s- i GROUPS THAT ACCEPT DONATED CELL PHONES i I Before she developed market penetration strategies for Latin America I And before she began training recruits in international trade and market research 1illtnimH.ii-l.'Mil'rlil.nniii nir.iMi rail' Ml JMM HI II III ai II I She earned an MBA from the University of Miami. Earn a UM MBA Degree in Tampa Classes are held in a high-tech, state of the art facility in Tampa on Saturdays from to University of Miami's world-renowned faculty travel to Tampa to teach classes. Program is identical to our high-quality MBA program on the Coral Gables campus.

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E-mail: fiaupjuno.com Web: www.fiaup.org Accepts: Working cell phones with chargers What it does with donations: Phones are distributed to the area elderly. ST. CECELIA SCHOOL John Turcotte, computer instructor Address: 400 Hillcrest Ave. Clearwater, FL 33756 Phone: (727) 461-1200 E-mail: Accepts: Working cell phones What it does with donations: Ships phones to company that gives it credit toward purchase of technology products. WOMEN ON THE WAY CENTER, ST.

PETERSBURG COLLEGE Sharon Coil, director Address: 2465 Drew St. Social Science Building, Room SS210 Clearwater, FL 33765 Phone: (727)791-2634 Web: spcollege edu Accepts: Any used cell phones What it does with donations: Phones are recycled; proceeds help purchase textbooks for needy students. Address: 8927 SR 52 Hudson, FL Phone: (727)861-0768 Web: www.cellphonesforsoldiers.com Accepts: Any used phones What it does with donations: Phones are recycled, with proceeds buying 100-minute phone cards for troops serving abroad. COMMUNITY ACTION STOPS ABUSE Linda Osmundson, executive director Address: 1011 First Ave. St.

Petersburg, FL 33701 Phone: (727) 895-4912 Web: www.casa-stpete.org Accepts: Any used cell phones. What it does with donations: Working models are given to women and children for emergency use. Others are recycled, with proceeds helping fund the agency's operations. FAITH IN ACTION OF UPPER PINELLAS Joe Sutsko, director Address: 455 Scotland St. Dunedin, FL 34698 Phone: (727) 738-4307 Accepts: Working and non-working cell phones What it does with donations: Proceeds support field trips, leadership symposiums, uniform accoutrements, camping trips, and other logistical support for cadets.

CARTRIDGES FOR KIDS (EASTER SEALS) Julie Roithmeier, sales manager Century 21 Alliance Realty collection sites Addresses: 3441 Deltona Spring Hill, FL 34606 11046 Spring Hill Drive, Spring Hill, FL 34606 5455 Spring Hill Drive, Spring Hill, FL 34608 7141 Mariner Spring Hill, FL 34608 Phone: (352) 683-6901 Web: www.c21alliancerealty.com Accepts: Any used cell phones What it does with donations: All cell phones and ink cartridges sent to Cartridges For Kids, a fundraising program to support Easter Seals. CELL PHONES FOR SOLDIERS Kathie Melanson, office manager Liberty Tax Service dropoff box This is a list of local organizations that accept donations of used cell phones. Other nonprofit groups in Citrus, Hernando, Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas counties that accept similar donations can submit their information to personaltechsptimes.com in this format. Cell phone companies also have dropoff boxes at their stores and kiosks for recycling. AREA AGENCY ON AGING OF PASCO-PINELLAS INC.

Gay Wiechec, victim advocate Address: 9887 Fourth St. Suite 100 St. Petersburg, FL 33702 Phone: (727) 570-9696, ext. 279 E-mail: wiechecgelderaffairs.org Web: www.AgingCareFL.org Accepts: Any used cell phones What it does with donations: Working phones are given to seniors in Pinellas and Pasco counties for use as emergency-only cell phones. Nonworking phones are recycled.

BOCA CIEGA HIGH SCHOOL U.S. ARMY JR. ROTC Wayne A. McGlamry, senior Army instructor Address: 924 58th St. Phone: (727) 893-2780, ext.

179 E-mail: jrotc160473yahoo.com Miami Program Begins in Tampa MH.A Pr'jgntms fnr Ettrutifes and Pri tfetsftiaii .1. tftuM jm WlialyajRliaa Mr la WilftV.