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Ross Miller

Welcome to FriendFeed - http://www.youtube.com/watch...

July 7, 2009 from YouTube - Comment - Like - Share

Ed, Daniel Rowley, Kol Tregaskes and 26 other people liked this

Great video for beginners - K.D.

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Thanks K.D.! - Ross Miller

This is like making a film, right? There are director and actors?:))) - K.D.

Ana is an great actress and Ross is a great director/producer/etc! - Rachel Lea Fox

Rachel is an amazing photographer [ http://gallery.phoenixfeather.net/ ] and has the cutest kitty in the world [ http://www.flickr.com/photos... ]!!! Thanks for the compliments, Rachel. - Ross Miller

Friendfeed: We hope you like it. - April Buchheit

If we could please have something like this as a Flash anim when a new user has completed registration I think this would be great. But I'd like to have this live and interactive, for example, to demonstrate posting a 'Hello I've just joined FriendFeed' entry and comment. - Kol Tregaskes

Wonderful video (saw this on Vimeo) you should continue and make tutorials for newbies. - Matt Ruiz

Jose Leiva

@fusildechispas@agilenature @betobeto nunca dijo que no hay que tener modelo negocio, ni dijo como monetizar, mas bien dijo que no sabia

June 5, 2009 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Alberto Gonzalez and David Alfaro liked this

A mi me parece que para tener el chispazo casi siempre uno no toma en cuenta la monetizacion, pero no puedes pasar del chispazo sin una forma de hacer plata - David Alfaro

30 more comments

es cierto, yo creo que lo ideal es contar con alguien a podás recurrir que te ayude a resolver esa parte. al menos en mi caso, claramente los negocios no son mi fuerte. pero no por ello se puede descuidar ese factor. no tiene ningún sentido. - cristian cambronero

Claro, por eso necesitas desde una idea de negocio hasta un equipo de trabajo, siempre es necesaria la inversión inicial, tener un modelo y valorar factores como TIR, VAN, etc - Jose Leiva

Social Media no es Rocket Science, pero si necesita de quie gente que sepa al respecto yu pueda explicar con autoridad el tema. Pero proclamarse experto es raro. Es como proclamarse experto en Confites. Aunque debo reconocer que al unico que es alguien con bastante autoridad en el tema es Chris Brogan - David Alfaro from twhirl

Asckeck toco un buen punto, como te podes llamar a vos mismo experto en algo que no tiene ni 5 años, pero claro, hay gente que propone y lidera, como Brogan o Godin - Jose Leiva

Definitivamente depende, como decia Cristian en twitter. Por ejemplo, vean esta comunidad que primero empezo con los servicios gratis de Ning http://tudiabetes.com/ Inicio con el unico de conectar a afectados y depuyes lo monetizaron con ads - David Alfaro from twhirl

Ads en general, o Adsense? poque basar un negocio solo en AdSense es como que demasiado riesgoso. - Jose Leiva

Es obvio que la pregunta que todos se estan haciendo ahora para hacer cualquier cosa en Internet es "Y como le saco plata a esto?" Porque asi por amor a la camiseta es muy dificil persistir por mucho tiempo. Pero quizas la clave para eso sea empezar a explotar un nicho que sea de alta demanda en nuestra zona y MUY enfocado, eso mismo se discutio en el Wordcamp. Y persistir. No hay una formula instantánea y rápida para convertir un sitio web en un caso de exito overnight... - Alberto Gonzalez

Yo no creo mucho en los ingresos por Adsense. Por experiencia de amigos en otros paises, realmente necesitas MILLONES de visitas para ganar un ingreso medianamente decente con eso. - Alberto Gonzalez

yo creo que una cosa son los casos casuales de ideas que revientan casi solas, sin que nadie se lo propusiera, y otra cosa muy distinta es un emprendimiento para el que existe una inversión, costos, riezgos, etc. - cristian cambronero

Precisamente porque es muy riesgoso solo las comunidades que no tienen un modelo de negocios apuntan a los ads para hacer platilla - David Alfaro

@betobeto yo soy creyente de temas de interes localizados, mira el extio de NPR http://mashable.com/2009... - David Alfaro

saben que creo que es otro problema: justamente que no se abordan estos temas a partir del emprendimiento per se. es decir, todas estas conferencias, foros y eventos, venden puro empaque de la 2.0 (sirven para evangelizar, como me dicen por allá) pero quién nos enseña a hacer negocios, a hacer un modelo de negocios, a lidiar con contadores y administradores, y un largo etc. me explico? no les parece como que existe un vacío enorme en ese tema? - cristian cambronero

Xtian vos decis algo asi como un "Emprendimiento web para dummies"? Sí creo que ahí hay un gran vacio por llenar... - Alberto Gonzalez

En America Latina así es, somos "criados" con la mentalidad de rogar porque exista un servicio/producto y resignarse si no lo hay. Falta, por eso me gusta mucho escuchar el podcast The Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders de Stanford http://ecorner.stanford.edu/podcast... Es lo mejor que hay en el tema, inspira mucho - David Alfaro

Si, pero integrado en este tipo de eventos. Osea, a mi me hubiera encantado ir a Tegucigalpa, se me cayó el viaje a última hora, pero francamente ahora creo que me habría dolido haber ido. Aunque el networking podría valer la pena, es el mismo discurso una y otra vez, de todo lo que ya sabemos. Pero de lo que no sabemos, no se habla! - cristian cambronero

Pero sabes cual es el problema Cristian, que cuando hacen algo asi en CR solo lo hacen en el contexto de agricultura y a lo mucho en biotecnologia, nada Tech related - David Alfaro

@cristian es que eso tiene precio, y realmente va a costar encontrar una conferencia donde te enseñen, porque de lo que hablas es de acompañamiento durante el proceso del desarrollo de la idea, se supone que la gente de Parquetec te ayuda con eso - Jose Leiva

si. podemos armar algo. acabo de tener una idea, de cómo se podría hacer. al menos una buena sesión de una tarde de training en emprendimiento para proyectos online. - cristian cambronero

Como te decia Xtian, tenemos la oportunidad del barcamp (por ejemplo, igual puede ser otro formato) para explotar ese angulo. Creeme a mi tampoco me interesa reciclar lo que otros han dicho ni tampoco contar cuentos de hadas. Aqui tenemos algo muy importante entre manos. - Alberto Gonzalez

@jose no, no necesariamente el acompañamiento. algo tan simple como que en este tipo de encuentros, tengan mas protagonismo los emprendedores, que los "gurús", ya sería ganancia. - cristian cambronero

@cristian escuchar de la boca de ellos las duras y las maduras seria un éxito, y eso si agrega valor - Jose Leiva

Lo que hace falta es hacerlo aca y hacerlo bien, aqui en costa rica ya tenemos varias comunidades y experiencia, porque no? - David Alfaro

Otro punto importante es que los "angel investors" quieren oir de números, de estudios de demanda, de proyecciones... obvio, si a mí me proponen algo para meter plata lo que me interesa es ver cómo recupero esa plata ¿Cómo demostrar esas cosas con una aplicación o servicio web que aun no se ha consolidado? No basta con "construirlo y que vengan".... - Alberto Gonzalez

@betobeto diste en el clavo! La primer pregunta de los VC o angels es "How do you make money out of this?" Es mas, te piden que tengas unos cuantos clientes ya pagandote por el servicio/producto sobre todo esta economia tan endeble - David Alfaro

el problema es que uno no se mueve, yo en lo personal no me considero en la posición de enseñar a otros, pero en CR hay gente buena, y mucha de ella con la disposición de ayudarte si les pedís ayuda, y lo mismo pasa con organizar un buen evento en CR, nadie se mueve (y lo digo en buena nota) y todos esperamos que se haga - Jose Leiva

Me reconecto en dos horas para seguir la conversacion, ta buenisima, podemos llegar a algo muy cool - David Alfaro

bueno admito que muchas veces el brete y otras cosas lo absorben full a uno y por eso a veces es muy dificil organizar algo... pero cuando colectivamente hay un grupo donde unos se "arrean" a otros hasta que salgan las varas, ahi empiezan a surgir cosas buenas - Alberto Gonzalez

Bueno los dejo por ahora, la verdad es que esta idea de David puede que sea el inicio de algo muy importante para la web en CR :) - Alberto Gonzalez

Me puse a seguir toda la conversación y me gustó ver hacia donde están apuntando y las carencias que ven. Hablaba con Jose de que el discurso en los eventos siempre es motivador precisamente porque falta mover a gente y para definir temas más específicamente siempre se pueden crear otros canales o eventos. Ya que hablan de lo que se ve en iniciativas como el BarCamp, les diría que vean lo que tiene StartupWeekend e iWeekend de España. - Christian Van Der Henst

Hacer un StartupWeekend en Latinoamérica sería genial y es precisamente para que se mate la gente haciendo cosas de verdad analizando todo. Desde el modelo de negocio, como registrar la empresa, ver los temas legales, contables, etc.. Y calcular la inversión por completa. Yo les confiezo que en los proyectos nuevos en los que intento trabajar estoy haciendo un plan de negocios de fondo, aunque en la práctica quiero creer que será por el amor a la camiseta que va a salir adelante. - Christian Van Der Henst

a ver muchachos cuando le ponemos fecha a la sesión de tarde de training de @cambronero, desde ahí podemos empezar a ver que se hace para llegar a la sugerencia de @cvander - Jose Leiva

Steve Rubel

Fortune: "Time spent on Facebook, Twitter grows by leaps and bounds since last year." - http://money.cnn.com/2009...

June 2, 2009 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Daniel Rowley, Chris Rossini, Thomas Power and 11 other people liked this

So can we divide 13.9E9 by 200E6 to get about 70min/user in April for FB? Compare that with Nielsen's data from Q32008 of 142 hours of TV/month. - Matsis

Louis Gray

How To Find Your Audience On FriendFeed - http://ourdoings.com/ourdoin...

May 26, 2009 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

Gail Gardner, Kol Tregaskes, stanjourdan and 9 other people liked this

Steven Perez

grinding.be » Blog Archive » seed bombs - delivering life from above - http://grinding.be/2009...

May 25, 2009 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Ho John Lee, Iphigenie, David Alfaro and 10 other people liked this

"Doomsday devices they are not - these seed-sowing plant bombs are one design team’s weapon of choice in the fight against global desertification. Consisting of a biodegradable shell loaded with a potent payload of plant capsules and nutrient-rich artificial soil, Seedbombs are designed to be dropped out of planes to help slow the spread of desert regions that are growing due to deforestation and other man-made causes." - Steven Perez from Bookmarklet

4 more comments

That's freakin' awesome. - Derrick

wow! - Anne Bouey

This is 'da bomb. - Rishabh Mishra (p248)

Seems like overkill. using seedballs scattered by hand seems much more sustainable: http://seedball.com/ - Michael R. Bernstein

Pfft! Use an ICBM. Only way to be sure. - Andrew C (✓)

arnaldostream to arnaldostream's feed, All Things Google, Appetite

OffiSync - Integrate Google Docs with Microsoft Office - http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009...

May 19, 2009 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

HealingBrush, Amin, Daniel Rowley and 30 other people liked this

"OffiSync is a plug-in for Microsoft Office 2003/2007 that integrates the office suite with Google Docs. You can open documents, spreadsheets and presentations already saved in Google Docs, edit them in Microsoft Office and save the files in Google Docs. The add-on creates a new revision of the document when you save it, but there's no option to automatically save the document periodically." - arnaldostream from Bookmarklet

8 more comments

Can I like this twice please? - Pete Gilbert

Indeed, this plugin is _very_ useful, it's a shame it's not available to OS X. - arnaldostream

Cool! - Kol Tregaskes

They just released their first public version today morning! No need to wait for them to accept your registration anymore. You can download directly from the site. - Hasitha

Still, I want it for OS X. - arnaldostream

It looks interesting, but I wish their technical page had a bit more information. It would be nice to have, but I don't want Google's desktop search installed on my machine - and since they reference search a couple of times, I get the impression that's part of the deal. - Jennifer Dittrich

Office Live Workspaces is a free option, too... - Jemm

Jemm: does that integrates with google docs? - arnaldostream

@Arnaldo: No. It let's you collaborate _without_ Google Docs and it integrates with the Office 2007, too. - Jemm

Louis Gray

Microsoft officially gives up on Vista - http://www.9to5mac.com/Vista-b...

May 18, 2009 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

J.D. Deutschendorf, Laurentiu, Dobromir Hadzhiev and 25 other people liked this

Hhhahahahahhahaha! Sorry I laughed out loud. - Mona Nomura

10 more comments

My Vista works great - do I get a refund since they're telling me not to use it now? - Jesse Stay

"In the history of software, has anything ever bombed this badly?" They should ask Bob. - Kevin Fox

How much does truly change between one version to the next? Since they have so many products to work with at each new version. Sure things have improved since 3.1 but has it really? - Yann Ropars

Bob got kicked to the curb as soon as Bill put a ring on Melinda's finger - SCANDAL. - Mona Nomura

Did they also forget about Windows ME? - Alan Le

They denied ever knowing the evil that is Windows ME - Roberto Bonini

Windows ME LOL LOL LOLOLOL Hhahahahahhaha! I don't know why that makes me laugh but Windows ME - just the sound of it, makes me LOL - Mona Nomura

Yeah, no one should make that naming mistake again... Wait, what's this? Apple has Mobile Me? Sigh.... - Ken Gidley

Don't use Vista but agree with Mona, nothing could have been worse than Win ME. - Rick Bucich

Oh Vista is heads and shoulders above ME. I have enjoyed my Vista experience compared to my ME experience (which I ended up downgrading from while waiting for XP...). If anything, Vista is just a good lesson in poor decision-making. If your shit ain't ready to do what you said it would, don't put it out! - SOMEBODY!

ME was born of a tumultuous time inside Microsoft's OS groups, when they were struggling with unifying the Windows NT and DOS lines. Powerful camps were fighting over the franchise, so the decision making and communication wasn't really optimal for the company. It finally became clear that Windows 2K wasn't going to work for consumers (it couldn't run DOS games reliably, among other things) so they had to rush out a consumer Windows version to maintain parity and keep the upgrade treadmill going. - ⓞnor

Robert Scoble

Do you Poken? Click here to see a Poken in action and learn more about how business cards might go away:

May 17, 2009 - Comment - Like - Share

LonelyBob, Daniel Rowley, sofarsoShawn <right here> and 68 other people liked this

http://wwww.doyoupoken.com is what you're looking at. Here the founder, Stephane Doutriaux is demonstrating them. - Robert Scoble

71 more comments

My Poken is the pink one. You hold it against his. They automatically have "poken sex" and trade your information, which you can then see up on the DoYouPoken website. Very cute and would have saved me a lot of money in scanning business cards in. - Robert Scoble

That is, if everyone had them. Right now they are too expensive to go really viral, though. - Robert Scoble

Most stupidest thing ever IMHO. - Peter Kruit

Robert, I have one. I agree with You, too expensive (15 euro each one) - Luca Conti

12 of them costs about $189, which is way too much. If they can get the cost down to $1 or $2 a piece, then I could see them taking off. Until then, they are fun game if you get one for free at a conference or something like that. - Robert Scoble

in italy poken is amazing and overbooked !!!! - michele ficara 

This is hilarious! Poken sex is better than no sex! I actually heard something about the iphone app that sort of does this by exchanging info as you get close to another iphone user who also has the app. I do think physical cards will go away. - Sheryl

I would get one seems like fun - Matt Bebich

probably wont catch on here in the states, but cool idea - sean percival

It's a cool technology, though, and lots of fun to do at a conference if everyone has them (they are building them into badge holders, too). - Robert Scoble

Way too expensive, and would you really ask a client "Do you Poken"? - Bruce Fraser

They need to make one of those with "The Big Blue Monster" from GapingVoid on them :) - Sean Kearney

If I asked questions like that in some of the pubs I go to it would be the last question I asked :-) - Gordon Wheeler

What happens if someone just walks by and they have one do they automatically get your information - Matt Bebich

Gordon: I wouldn't advise using that as a pickup line! :-) - Robert Scoble

Matt: no. They have to touch to exchange information. - Robert Scoble

I have one but at the moment not so many people have a Poken! - Michela Cimnaghi /cimny

Oh, and they have "executive" versions coming out that don't look cartoonish. - Robert Scoble

embed this tech into a mobile and you have a winner - Richard Spalding

I just checked them out... The price for one isn't ridiculous. Under $20. I've spent more on memory keys and Walkie Talkies in the past. :) - Sean Kearney

Consider the cost of a box of business cards before saying these are too expensive. Richard +1 - Justin Hopkins

Business cards can be used with everyone, these things can't (yet) Cards are still king. - Bruce Fraser

I like the idea. It's definitely neat. I would pay for a "Poken" with a custom logo on it. It definitely is unique. - Sean Kearney

FireBox sell then here in the U.K. - Bruce Fraser

This won't even last as long as sending vcards via IR. - Hartley Spurlock

Would love to have one but can imagine me never encountering anyone to Poken in my world. At least not in the near future. - suecosby

We do Poken Robert! And we also organized a Poken Party for the launch of the new FIAT 500 Cabrio in Milan: http://www.flickr.com/photos... - Marco Massarotto

If they are going to replace business card maybe they should not make them look like something that comes with a Happy Meal. - Brendan Clancy

Maybe they should give them away with Happy Meals, then we'd all have one... - Bruce Fraser

There are new models coming that look very "executive." - Robert Scoble

And if they really went viral, and someone Pokened profligately and started spreading PSTDs that ruined your Poken's ability to replicate... - a runcible MiniMage

Scoble: $1 or $2? $10 seems worth it, the savings in business cards alone could justify the expense. executive would be a plus... (i'm picturing a monkey in a suit.) - Marco

Saw these about six months ago and thought it was a fart in the wind. Can't believe this is still around. - Chris Menning

I'm all for adding a bit of fun to productivity. We take ourselves so freaking seriously all the time. This seems like a useful step away from somber zombiefication. Now for the corporate types who want faceless uniformity, surely custom Poken with suitably unremarkable appearances and all the functionality could become reality. Am I FFing myself out of my next job? Maybe I should go for a ride. - a runcible MiniMage

Robert -- i've got a cute little Geisha girl one. They're up to cool stuff. The cool thing is, the info isn't stored so if you lose it, you don't give up info. It's just an exchange of ID's. I love them. Ok, i'm partial. Had dinner with Renate and she rocks. Don't write cuteness off just yet guys. They're up to stuff. :) - Christine Lu

I have one, KPMG gave some Poken at a professional forum for my school. I think, there are two problems. First it really doesn't look business, but as you said, a business version is coming. And, it only works with another poken, it should works with Iphone or blackberry using the bluetooth and a free application we can download for Iphone or Blackberry. - tristan

I still have a few Pokens that I'm willing to give away... Read: http://www.aadjemonkeyrock.com/2009... - Aad 't Hart

Yeah, I still remember when Palm's IR beaming was going to kill business cards... - Joel Bennett

This is the most bizarre idea I have ever heard of, but I like it. I doubt this will ever catch on though, unless it becomes cheaper and more "professional". I can't see cute little avatars being taken seriously in real world business. - Angus Burton

they could be free and then it would be possibile to buy and exchange virtual goods. I do not see any future for business card: it is something that you can do with your mobile phone and I wonder why it is not yet implemented in the address book. - Nicola Mattina

you can get them in States at www.startpoken.com - Roger Huitt

I really think that business card will go digital. - Keven

I do poken. It's been a while :-) - Paul Papadimitriou

If u meet a sexy babe in a club, a sure way to turn her off is to pull out your poken. - Tokyo Dan

I met a girl. I gave her a good poken. It was her first poken. Now she gives every man a good poken. - Tokyo Dan

If you want to get arrested in Japan, walk into a police box and pull out your poken. - Tokyo Dan

Need a design that more effectively accommodates the Japanese meishi-kokan culture. - Daniel Fath

I like this. Even tried to buy a 12-pack. Link is broken. This does not bode well for this company. - Leo Laporte

Once they get Poken with a bigger size limit (I think you can only store the contact information of 12 contacts at one time), maybe add a few more useful features in there as well, then we'll have a good product. Make them look like real high-tech business cards and THEN it will really catch on. - Malcolm Bastien

Cute and all but seriously, no businessman outside silicon valley is going to carry one of these things around. - David Jacobs

Good point tristan: "it should works with Iphone or blackberry using the bluetooth and a free application we can download for Iphone or Blackberry". - Jadito

Reminds me of that line from Singles when that once character is trying to convince everyone that they will want to ride the train but everyone answers, "but i love my car". People love business cards for better or worse, it's a way to be a designer without being one. - adolfo foronda

You can store 64 identities on the current model. Once you reach that limit, it erases the first one. The device signals you at 60. I have three poken, just in case, but most of the time, I don't reach that limit. As soon as I go to my Mac and connect with doyoupoken.com, contacts are saved. - Paul Papadimitriou

Note: beware of putting multiple pokens in one pocket: they talk to each other ;-) - Paul Papadimitriou

I love the idea/bought 12 and have tried to push them a bit with my networking group however the lack of effort on the companies part to promote them in the US is really slowing things down. Adoption will not come with out some serious evangelism and seeding on the companies part. - Joel Ordesky

Poken are doing great here in Japan. I helped the launch at a blogger event a couple of months back and there's been steady progress since then. I'm helping evangelize Poken here. The company has really done a lot of thinking in order to make Poken a success. Will definitely be interested to see whether they can get to a critical mass. I certainly hope so as they are are a huge time and cost saver. (If you think of the cost of one business card, one unit will pay for itself in a short amount of time). - Andrew Shuttleworth

Always happy to pimp a good thing :-) - Andrew Shuttleworth

The Poken are clearly conspiring against me :-) Hey, I'm the official evangelist along with Andrew, so I had to test things out for you all ^^ - Paul Papadimitriou

Had a nice chat with Robert Scoble a few weeks back where I offered him a Poken by mail. He didn't know what I was talking about at first but then realized he had forgotten he had received one at SXSW. I mentioned how popular and relevant they were becoming and didn't receive a response. Wondering: what has changed to make them interesting now? - Robert Sanzalone

Poken hype or no hype ? In the Netherlands it's a great success and Belgium is following. - Mike Verdugt

robert do you remember when i first showed you that at last LeWeb08 in Paris in the cab? - Ouriel Ohayon

No I don't (yet), what about you? - Gianluigi Cuccureddu

I have one but I haven't met anyone else with one yet in the UK. Think it's a great idea and reckon it won't be long before businesses are using them. - Lindsay Davies

what do they say about a fool and their money? - Gee Ranasinha

Why can't this just be on a phone, seems like a waste of money to have a separate piece of hardware - Ben

Complete waste of space. Buy a Poken but nobody has one. Pointless. Should be a phone as everyone else says. It's been said over and over with this product, why don't they just patent the technology and sell it to a mobile phone maker? Job done. Tired of these bullshit Web 2.0 gimmicks... - Andrew Eglinton

Cucat, anyone? - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... - John Craft

I actually think http://www.mynameise.com will appeal much more to people actually using business cards. The connector is coming and brings much more than people giving each other an online card to look at. They did not win The Next Web Award for nothing :) - Ruud van Wijngaarden

There's a free app on the IPhone called 'Bump' that does the same thing as far as I can see. - Rob Bell

They have been available in the United States for 2 months at www.startpoken.com - Roger Huitt

Cool! Poken are available in Japan too, at http://poken.jp/en/ . Buy one and get poken! - Rick Cogley

They are here in NZ but I don't know anyone who has one and it's all about mass adoption - I prefer the snapdat iphone app - you can get someone to download it on the spot and bam - you got their details. - James Stewart

Mark Traphagen

Thinking if I read only Read-Write-Web, Louis Gray, Seth Godin & Rob Scoble I'd be pretty set on social media.

May 18, 2009 - Comment - Like - Share

Hutch Carpenter, Steve Rubel, Svetlana Gladkova and 25 other people liked this

Who am I missing on an essentials list? - Mark Traphagen

18 more comments

Lots of tier 2 and tier 3, plus some larger groups, Kyle Lacy, Chris Brogan, few dozen others. But Louis, Seth and Robert will link off to them. Plus Louis often has guest bloggers. You also might want to pick up Profy.com Svetlana sometimes writes awesome material on the social space and puts a great international spin on things. My 2 cents, for what it is worth. - Dan owns Comicsforge.com

Scary. I always thought the echo was too much to get through, but now it turns out there are simply very few knowledgeable social media experts - Alexander van Elsas

So basically you just read RWW, techcrunch, mashable, Scoble's and Brogan's blogs and you are all set :D - Sasha Kovaliov

Depends what you're looking for. Louis covers the real time web better than anyone. Seth doesn't cover social media at all. He writes about innovative marketing. Robert covers the geek's eye view (very well!). ReadWriteWeb.com, for Marshall Kirkpatrick is missing. ConversationAgent.com for Valeria, and TwistImage.com/blog for an International view. Forget Brogan. : ) - Chris Brogan

@Chris - not likely you are a hard person to forget - I saw you speak in seattle a month/few months back. :-) - Dan owns Comicsforge.com

Yeah, probably shouldn't include Seth in a social media essentials list. He's just so good, I tend to throw him in any mix! - Mark Traphagen

And Chris, where do you write? - Mark Traphagen

After recommendations from several friends and perusing his site, I think I would add Chris Brogan to my social media essential reads list. Deal clencher: his "about" page includes full disclosures of all his social media-related paid relationships http://www.chrisbrogan.com/about... - Mark Traphagen

Mark: Chris is my favorite social media expert. Love his email newsletter, too, which is really his blog. - Robert Scoble

OK....that was just deal clencher++ Thanks, Robert. - Mark Traphagen

Alexander: I wouldn't say it's a matter of "very few knowledgeable social media experts", it's just that a few people are aggregators/collectors and if you follow them you'll see 80%+ of the "important" stuff. They watch the rest so we don't (necessarily) have to. :-) - Ken Sheppardson

Ken, that is really the problem with this whole approach. Why stop at what everyone else knows too (the 80%). That's a lot of echo. The interesting stuff needs digging and you will find that in the last 20% imo. - Alexander van Elsas

Alexander: I read tens of thousands of items a day. I think it's funny that you say there's interesting stuff out there not getting found. If you simply clicked "like" on it, we'd see it and I'm far more likely to reshare things that get your like on them anyway. But, to get to the point, I really disagree that there's a lot of good things out there not being found. I have not found that to be the case at all. - Robert Scoble

That's why I add the "(necessarily)" condition. I think this ties in with the stream vs. queue debate (e.g. http://friendfeed.com/dgentry...). Very few people can read *EVERYTHING*, so if you treat what the collectors/aggregators pick up as a queue and read all of it--via email, RSS, IM notification...whatever--you can just treat the rest like a stream and let it flow over you. - Ken Sheppardson

Robert, you do not miss a thing on Friendfeed, that is for sure. I would never be able to (or want to) compete with that. I was actually more thinking about the world outside Friendfeed (which is a lot bigger). You (and the rest of us) meet hundreds of interesting people that do not have their content on Friendfeed, I'm sure. - Alexander van Elsas

Robert: I'd suggest the the stuff that gets missed isn't fact or reportage... that all gets echoed and repackaged and amplified just fine. What gets missed is the analysis and opinion from the people sitting in the corner at the party. They may not speak up that often, don't yell anybody down, but just say really, really smart things every once in a while. If you're not listening for it, it's easy to miss. - Ken Sheppardson

@Ken, agreed ;-) - Alexander van Elsas

That would be a start. And if this doesn't cover it, I'll find the rest on Google Reader, and share to FriendFeed. - Louis Gray

Recent blog post by @Brad_King at www.themodernjournalist.com does a fantastic job shedding light on social media. Even a SM bumbler like me can grasp bits and pieces through his explanation. Good luck! - Becky Middleton

Leo Laporte

I want - http://fit-pc2.com/wiki...

May 10, 2009 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

onurc, Tyler Ham, Ben and 143 other people liked this

"Introducing fit-PC2 CompuLab introduces fit-PC2 – the smallest, most power-efficient Intel Atom PC to date. fit-PC2 architecture is what sets it apart from other nettop PCs - fit-PC2 is designed around the Intel Atom Z530 1.6GHz and the ultra low power Intel US15W system controller hub, rather than the Atom N270 and 945G used in other nettop-PCs, thereby reducing power consumption by more than two thirds. US15W incorporates hardware video acceleration. This allows fit-PC2 to run Windows XP or Ubuntu Linux at just 6W and to play full HD 1080p H.264 video using less than 7W." - Leo Laporte from Bookmarklet

24 more comments

some limitations of the fit2pc: no n wifi, only 1gb ram & is soldered, reader is not sdhc, no wol, hdmi still needs sep audio line. if it could remedy those, then it would be more awesome than i originally thought it was. still cool idea. (edited to add: forums say hdmi does not support hdcp. boy, lots of surprises in what it *can't* do. almost a parody of an 'efficient' device.) - sɹǝɥʇɐǝɟʞɔɐןq

Got error when clicked the link. Actually I thought I could show the screenshot, but ff can not add images to comments. - ThinkEzy

Where and when can we buy this ?? - @LarsenTweet

Very nice - Amit Morson

as sweet as a purring kitten - Willem (@wim66) ☠

awesome. when do they start production? - Chris Rutili from BuddyFeed

I hope it is a cheap as a laptop or even cheaper!! ;) that would be a great deal!! - Paul from twhirl

And here I was waiting for netbooks to get better performance and instead we see the same low performance spreading from the mobile world, where it made sense, to our desks. Crud. It's nice that it's got low power requirements, but that seems to be it. - Henrik

When do they start building the computer into the keyboard? - Brian Sieker

I need a small, very low power consumption system with two ethernet ports to replace a home server. The fit-PC2 is so tantalizingly close; I'd have to add a USB ethernet dongle, and those are teh suck. - DGentry

"Want" is a serious understatement. I could do some evil, evil things with that! - ax0n

Very sexy! I can imagine having three or four of these with SSDs around my house. - Barry Biddlecomb from twhirl

For the right (low) price, even with it's flaws it could be a great little media server. And here I was wishing upon an eee-box-star. - thepete

sɹǝɥʇɐǝɟʞɔɐןq: Thanks for those helpful pieces of info. Please consider using punctuation and capitalization in the future. I know it's not cool, but it serves a purpose (e.g. it helps knowledge transfer, the supposed reason for commenting in the first place) :P. - coldbrew

I want this as well. - Doug Slater

Ooh, I like this! I want! Me! Pick me! - Daan Berg from twhirl

I doubt that 1080p H.264. is watchable. Need some proof. It would be a key factor for me. - Dmitriy B

I want one of these. - Robert Gregory Browne

The newer boards use a dual-core Atom and NVidia 9400M chipset. Even has CUDA support. I believe it could decode 1080p. http://mini-itx.com/2009... - Rodfather

Looks great. I want also. I'll wait for Windows 7. - Scott Kraatz

Smaller than a MacMini. I'll wait for Windows 7 too. - Randy Caldwell

I'd love to attach this to the back of a monitor and hang it on a wall - Camden

Brian Sieker: Asus already started stuffing the whole pc inside a (nice looking) keyboard, take a look at the Eee Keyboard http://gizmodo.com/5124985... - Rui Pires

I wonder how well this will run Boxee.. Is it the perfect boxee box? - raf

I'm always skeptical about the 1080P claims for nettops. - Ryan Whitwam

Evan Williams

Reading people's thoughts on the replies issue. We're considering alternatives. Thanks for your feedback.

May 12, 2009 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Peter Efland, Marko Saric, Guillaume Foutry and 154 other people liked this

We would be happy to provide feedback in advance next time. - Louis Gray

92 more comments

Thank goodness you responded when you did - the frothy mob outside was about finished building the gallows! - Brett Kelly

at the rate that #fixreplies tweets are coming down the pipe they'd be nuts to not re-think their decision and/or explanation - Chris Heath

Nice to know you're listening! - Michael Fidler

You should ask for people's thoughts first. - Michael McKean

I reckon removing the feature was a good things. Has left holes though, that probably shoulda been filled first. - Tim

Louis: sorry, until Twitter fixes how it treats early adopters I'm not giving Twitter free consulting. Only suckers would do that. We helped build Twitter and then it stabs us in the back. That's not making me willing to provide free consulting. Don't know why you'd do that. - Robert Scoble

I volunteer to be your community manager for a month free. If I'm effective at communicating ahead of swarms like this, you can hire me and pay me retroactively. Because seriously? You really need someone to communicate with your users in real time. - Karoli

I hope "considering alternatives" is a euphemism for "we'll have it back right stat, sorry!" - Jandy

@scobleizer; "stabs us in the back" A bit over the top perhaps? - Jordan Brock

Jordon: it absolutely is NOT over the top. When they recommend someone who has only been on Twitter a week or two as a recommended follower they are stabbing users who put a lot more time into the service directly in the back. I have about 1,000 days on Twitter and have put thousands of hours into the service. The way Twitter treats its users is deplorable. - Robert Scoble

Jordan, Mr. Scoble has a propensity for the dramatic. :) - Brett Kelly

Well since it was just a "small setting update" the simplest alternative should be to just undo the change, right? - Ken Sheppardson

Brett: when you put thousands of hours into something and you get stabbed in the back by the owners of that thing you see how it feels. - Robert Scoble

In the meantime, Twitter can get the celebrities to help out with its community problems. I'm not working for free and anyone who does for a company that stabs its users in the back is a sucker. - Robert Scoble

Robert, I can offer my services for free all day to Twitter. I know they won't take me up on it as they aren't interested in what I have to say and their track record proves that. - Louis Gray

I'm really curious to know what kind of stats that were tracked to make this decision. Both @al3x and @dougw are hinting that there wasn't a significant number of people "using this feature", which I am extremely skeptical of. Would tracking the number of times I click out to a profile that I'm not following be enough? It is impossible for them to track whether I personally received value from a tweet even if I didn't click through, right? - Lee Adkins

"The way Twitter treats its users is deplorable" What other instances justify this statement? - Angus Burton

@ev Don't you have more important things to focus on? ie., affiliate marketers who don't disclose what they're doing, follow bots, and all of the spam and manipulation that's ruining twitter?. - Michael Fidler

Louis, I think @ev is listening to you and other Internet celebs, but not nobodies like me. - Vinko

Vinko, I'm no Internet celebrity, and I don't believe I've been addressed by him ever, so he has an odd way of "listening". - Louis Gray

It's an echo chamber - dedlam

You can't go asking your customers about every checkbox and option. Knowing which is what makes a good decision maker. - Ryan Stanley

Sure you can, when it's a feature change that enough users expect to have. It's not disabling a checkbox, it's disabling community discovery. - Karoli

Karoli, here here!! - Vinko

Twitter is clearly listening, and responding quickly and in public. Now, they need to roll back the change - Bob Morris (polizeros)

Twitter knows all the geeks moved to FF. I doubt Oprah considers it a feature change. - Ryan Stanley

wow what a conversation. - Dustin

+1 to dedlam :) - Jordan Brock

Twitter will "consider alternatives" until #fixreplies starts trending back down, which will happen over the next 24 hrs or so. Then they'll look to see if there's any dip in the user number or sign-up rates. There won't be, as nobody's actually willing to leave Twitter over this and new users who've accepted the default setting don't know this option was there, so this will be the last word on the subject you'll see from ev. - Ken Sheppardson

Ken, that's true today and not true in the future. Twitter's continued decision to ignore user feedback and input and make arbitrary decisions will ultimately result in someone creating the next shiny thing. It happened with other services/sites and it will again. - Karoli

Karoli: That'll happen either way. - Ken Sheppardson

There must be a strategy around this, right? They wouldn't just arbitrarily do this. What would be the next feature they implement to make this redundant? - Gregg Scott

Hmm. So, Ev is "Reading people's thoughts." wouldn't it be better if he talked and listened. - Michael Markman

Michael: Thought reading must be something they're testing internally. Probably part of Twitter Pro. - Ken Sheppardson

Could be the move that pushes more people over the FF wall. I've not considered this move until now, but now..... - Debi Jones

@scobleizer, i thought the point of using twitter was because you want to not because you want fame and a pat on the back from evan for "helping". shame on you, that's the biggest douchery i've heard in quite some time. - Snipergirl

Leather is an astute reader! :-) - Robert Scoble

Snipergirl: that's BS. If you are in the media business the size of your audience allows you to build a business. Before the recommended follower list Mashable, GigaOm, and TechCrunch had smaller audiences than I did on Twitter. Now they have far bigger ones and people who don't do many tweets at all are rewarded while the rest of us suckers are left in the back of the bus. If I just... more... - Robert Scoble

The simple alternative is to make is a user preference. Even better would be groups, and then to apply said preference to groups. - Barney Craggs

@scobleizer if it's a business to you then vote with your feet and go to a different service and stop whining about evan not paying you enough attention! - Snipergirl

Snipergirl: that's exactly what I've done. But, sorry, I've put thousands of hours in and 904 days into Twitter. When a service treats someone who has put far less work into it better than me, I deserve to whine a little bit and anyone who says I don't isn't worth listening to. Let's put it this way. I see on LinkedIn that you are a hospital worker. What if you put in the time, do a... more... - Robert Scoble

Not entirely sure I agree with Robert, but I'll say this: it is incredibly frustrating when sites you use as intensely as Facebook and Twitter ignore the intelligent users. I won't say intelligent = early adopters, and I won't even say that it precludes the celebrities, but it is extremely tiring offering "feedback" when you're treated as just one voice. Clearly, CEO's are out of touch and don't understand us; yet, running a [sufficiently large] site by total democracy trends towards the stupid. #fixreplies - tollie williams

Matt: I get what you're trying to say, but, here's another way to look at it. Twitter has signaled to the world that there's no way you'll ever been seen as a "top tier" person. Take me out of it. No matter how many hours you spend, no matter how popular you'll get, you won't be treated the same way as one of their personal friends and/or celebrities that they want to feature. To me that sucks. It is not a meritocracy. It's a closed society and that's everything I work against. - Robert Scoble

The real problem is like this: Twitter was made for broadcasting and was never meant to be a convesational platform. Even friendfeed does the comments half baked. There are no comments for comments. - ThinkEzy

The only feedback users contribute (that matters) is what they buy or use. If you don't like Twitter, leave. - Jason Nunnelley

@Gattoo seriously, wouldn't this conversation be a LOT easier with threading and a respond feature? - Jason Nunnelley

I don't know about meritocracies or closed societies, but i do know that the main way I find new people to follow on twitter is by seeing who the people I already follow are talking to...and if they say something of interest to me in a reply to them, I want to check that person out. If all I see are replies to people I already follow, I won't find anyone knew unless I pay much closer... more... - Shawna Benson

Gattoo: I disagree with that at least in part. The thing that always excited me about this media is that it's two way. You talk, I respond. But Twitter has biased its business toward the serving of celebrities who mostly use Twitter to broadcast and less to those who try to use it to have conversations with people. That's their right. It's my right to whine about it, though. :-) - Robert Scoble

Shawna: yup. I think Twitter wants to push people like you to use search instead of the "@ replies" tab. - Robert Scoble

Robert: that's a problem -- why would I search on something I don't even know to search for unless someone mentions it? Let's say person A tells person B something about daffodils and I find that interesting enough to go check out person B and start following them based on who they are, who they talk to, etc. Now, 'daffodils' aren't normally something I go randomly searching for info... more... - Shawna Benson

@scobleizer It's possible you give them far too much credit. I doubt they've any plan beyond limiting feed size. - Jason Nunnelley

Shawna: I mean you can search for someone who uses your name. I do that on Seesmic Desktop and here on friendfeed and it regularly catches people who both use @scobleizer as well as people who just say "scoble" etc. Then I can go off and check them out, just the same as if I used the @mentions page. - Robert Scoble

Jason: you're right. Twitter's team sure seems like they don't think things out and take the easy road most times. The recommended follower list is just one example of that. They could have done something really magical, but instead they did something half assed. They should have just hired Guy Kawasaki to do an AllTop page for it. That would have been better than what we got. - Robert Scoble

"we've learned most people want to see when someone they follow replies to another person they follow [...] [h]owever, receiving one-sided fragments via replies sent to folks you don't follow in your timeline is undesirable" so despite what we apparently learned that people want we've decided to scrap it anyway. Interesting use of the word "learned" there. - Mark H

Twitter made a mistake by removing this option whatsoever and they have to revert back. We have brains to decide what we do when we have an option! - Jacque from twhirl

The simple way of looking at it for me seems to be- when they say it's what most people are telling them to do, it's actually them telling most people what to do. - Iain Baker

Scoble: You deserve a couple hundred thousand followers, for sure. I joined Twitter bc I read a post you wrote in '07. I hadn't looked at your follower count in a while; figured for sure you had at least been rotated in Suggest Users by now. That just makes me dislike the Suggested Users crap even more. ... The question here, I guess, is: did you do something so bad that Twitter/Ev/Jack/Biz can not forgive you? - john erik metcalf

Scoble: Actually, even if you did, it would still be bullshit. What is this, Texas politics? Good ol' boy system. They need to figure out a better way, obviously things are getting very unequal. - john erik metcalf

I don't know, Scoble, I'm going to take a different angle. Did Ev ever ask you to spend "thousands of hours" and 900+ days on Twitter? If so, then I'd say you've got a gripe. Otherwise, you did it voluntarily for your benefit, and frankly, Ev doesn't owe you anything; he provided a service for free, you used the hell out of it (profiting along the way, I don't doubt). It sounds like... more... - Bob M. Montgomery

I already miss what my followees are saying to other people. I've been using Tweetree for awhile now, because it would display the tweet to which my followee is replying (unless it was a protected tweet). With the new change, that aspect doesn't work, and Tweetree's entire platform is practically destroyed... - Qrystal MqKenzie

If there's one good thing about this, it's that I can probably follow more people: I used to not follow someone if all they do is reply to people without giving context of what they're talking about. Maybe they'll make it so the visibility of @replies to people I'm not following is set on a per-user basis... which would be great, because some of my followees were SO GOOD at giving context, it's a major loss to no longer be able to see their @replies to people I don't follow! - Qrystal MqKenzie

Qrystal: I feel the same way, except now it's a huge hassle for me to actually find all the people I should be following. - Guan Yang

Bryan, this is about a setting being removed that was not the default setting. If you had changed the default setting to this setting you would see every tweet by the people you were following (the default was and still is to hide the @'s to people you're not following). The change is now there is no choice that setting has been removed and anyone who set that setting is now back to the default (which it seems you've always been on). - Chris Heath

I don't want to have to follow a bunch of people just so I can follow a topic to it's close. Am hoping this was more about saving downtime. This is how Plurk etc will find it's market. Maybe this will clear the chaff and all the real people can take the reins again! - Elia Penn from Nambu

@scobleizer please clarify: are you saying that "stab in the back" = "not being on the recommended list"? - Michael Markman

I'm still trying to figure out why Scoble is so upset. While it's noble for him to have helped pioneer the service and offer input on making it better, I don't see how that equates to Twitter somehow owing him any type of allegiance. Also, people seem to have forgotten that Twitter is an independent entity, responsible only to its investors (ultimately) and, as such, they are free to... more... - Brett Kelly

@Brett your suggestion that people go elsewhere to find a similar Twitter service is what makes the free market so interesting and exciting. While Twitter cannot be everything to everyone, every decision Twitter makes affects their future success. Look at what happened to MySpace and the rise of Facebook or Ford compared to Honda. If Twitter leaves enough room, someone else will come... more... - Damond Nollan from email

Michael: no. He's said in the past that he would asked to be removed if he was placed on the list. Thought I can see Scoble's frustration, I agree with Brett on this one. - Angus Burton

I haven't read this thread in its entirety, so I apologize in advance if I repeat anyone else's position. Two thoughts: 1) If the powers that be at Twitter were simply concerned with reducing the noise in our streams, why not simply change the default setting of the @ replies to not show all, while keeping the option available? Instead, they change the default behavior and remove the... more... - Phil Essing

I wonder if Ev has made it over to friendfeed to read this. I can see Robert's points. It would have been cool if more 'meritorious' tweeps were added to the recommendeds. But when the average non-techie person signs up to Twitter they probably find it more attractive to follow P-Diddy and Ellen than to follow someone they've never heard of, regardless of how much valuable content they've added to the service. That being said, Twitter needs to adjust they're listening ears. - Jesse Newhart

Phil: that was the setting. It used to be an option to turn on all replies from friends, now there are not at reply options at all. If you had made the settings change, you're back to the default. - Chris Heath

Jesse: I have to suggest that the average person would probably prefer to follow someone that actually shares their interests, and beliefs, likes and dislikes. Thus the whole recommended users list on any site is bullshit, and completely worthless. In the absence of a personally worthwhile recommendation, the average non-tech would probably prefer to follow typical pop stars (Brittney,... more... - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Phil: The network I've built since 2007 was largely built exactly with the optional feature that they just removed. I don't mean to sound hysterical or overly dramatic, but the change eliminated something that was fundamental to how I used twitter. It is a free service, they can do as they see fit, it's just a less useful free service to me than it once was. - motownmutt

All the discussion here on FF is neat... but should it be over here too/instead? http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter... (personally, I won't be asking for the 'replies' to come back but... to each their own) - Jay Cuthrell

Jay: I find that Getsatisfaction.com never lives up to its name. I can't think of an issue I've posted or looked into where the company in question posted something. I've found several companies who reirect all their support questions to there, apparently as a convenient black hole. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Brett: Twitter being a free service and held by private investors do not make it immune to the desires of its user base which are the source of its (theoretical) future earnings potential. The less it chooses to work with its user base, and the more it makes decisions that alienate them, the more likely it it that they bail (as HUGE numbers already do withing 30,60,90days of account... more... - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Rob: There are 11 members of Twitter on GetSatisfaction and < 60,000 customers in the system. So, not perfect but it is a trending area and support does read things there. As a side note, that area has over 10,000 support topics... imagine the insanity of a phone support IVR menu that would take 12 hours to delineate all those "issues" :-) - Jay Cuthrell

Jay: No one from twitter support supports a damn thing, unless you're oprah, or brittney or aplusk. Not on getsatisfaction and not anywhere. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Jay: I have never seen anyone from any company answer any question about anything on getsatisfaction.com. This includes WAY more companies that I've looked into than twitter. I never expected anyone from twitter to answer, but I've sure as hell expected someone from ping.fm to answer when that's where their support link took me, - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Update from Twitter - "...we're making a change such that any updates beginning with @username (that are not explicitly created by clicking on the reply icon) will be seen by everyone following that account. This will bring back some serendipity and discovery and we can do this very soon" And they've started designing a new feature which will "give folks far more control over what they... more... - Sharon McPherson

Rob: I'm not trying to change your mind... just to give you an idea of the scope of what "support" would entail. Of the 11 Twitter employees on GetSatisfaction they have collectively produced 1045 responses as of the count today on their staff page. - Jay Cuthrell

When I last looked their last response had been over three months prior to the date i was looking. I would welcome my mind being changed, but you're trying to change it on two subjects I don't have much faith in a) twitter support in general, and b) getsatisfaction's overall effectiveness. Links may change my mind. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Chris Heath: It seems I wrongly assumed that the @ replies were set to all by default, likely because I chose that setting a long time ago. Thanks. However, that truly begs the question as to why the folks at Twitter decided to remove the option. - Phil Essing

motownmutt: Like I said, I do understand the frustration caused by this feature removal, a frustration which I share. That being said, I'm not going to lose any sleep as a result. - Phil Essing

i'm going to say this fully knowing the fan boy charges i will open myself up to - u can see how concerned i am about that possibility (yawn) - from my perspective scoble has a valid point (Louis is also welcome to offer help to a service he values btw) - about this time last year a myriad of similar conversations were taking place here as twitter crashed MULTIPLE times a day - i cant... more... - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

I am actually fine with the change because one can always go the persons page to find who he/she has replied to and it makes your page less cluttered. There is always some trade off but i am fine. I am waiting for more options from twitter in the future. - Ashish

Funny take on this - http://cli.gs/dumb - Brian Kelley

I love the twitter product, but am growing more disgusted by the twitter management team. There is zero user input solicitation and this latest event #fixreplies is a classic mistake of product mgrs who fail to engage their customer base to get valuable feedback on the design prior to go live; instead, twitter mgmt is releasing features that are not vetting by their user base - huge... more... - Susan Beebe

waves at Evan Williams. Hey Ev! - Thomas Hawk

Evan, perhaps with the next major functional change you might consider inviting ideas of your users; a good example of how this can work is presented by SalesForce.com: 'Idea Exchange' http://ideas.salesforce.com/ (no suprise SalesForce.com is good in gathering and using feedback from their customers; being a CRM company ;-) ) - Jeroen De Miranda

Scoble, you are a follow-blocker, and as such, you laid the groundwork for the devs putting in this nerf. There are quite a few thin-skinned A-listers who hate seeing back-talk in the @ tabs. this accommodated their wailing. It's wrong and should be put back. People who are vain enough to want to broadcast to followers have to accept that they will hear from the public, and often critically. Otherwise, go on a private AIM or FB chat. - Prokofy Neva

Prokofy: bullshit. If you are a jerk you don't deserve to mess up my experience. You can keep commenting on your own place and I'll still see it anyway. Everyone I know searches on their last name. But I absolutely won't back down from your bullying and change my opinions. I will keep blocking people who are jerks and who are spammers. That's the only way we can keep our community from destroying itself over time. You are NOT entitled to get in my face, sorry. - Robert Scoble

well, this whole conversation could never have happened on Twitter. I do appreciate the attention and awareness of the entire Friendfeed team, but for me the essential feature is the threaded comments. - Peter Efland

Ryan Block

So Apple (finally!) responded directly to Microsoft's Laptop Hunters commercials. This is getting good! http://movies.apple.com/media...

May 12, 2009 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Cem Ozkaynak, Paul Stamatiou, Brian Milby and 55 other people liked this

oh snap - Jay

17 more comments

can Apple really advertise "no crashes"? Microsoft's ads are leading too but damn - Richard Lawler

She's cute - Rodfather

Richard, the only things that ever crash on my Mac are Microsoft's office products. - David Eedle

and my pc never crashes, we can all play this game. crashes and lockups happen all the time, on all different platforms. I just want to know who will have my refund when a kernel panic happens. If they said "less" it would be one thing, but they didn't. - Richard Lawler

Yeah, I've managed to lock up my Mac Pro a few times. Not very often, but it's possible. - Tom Harrison

I agree with Richard. I really honestly just don't understand the Mac vs. PC debate anymore. They're essentially the same thing now, you just get things done a little differently. - Tyler Hayes

I'm a Megan - Johnny

Tyler: it's not a Mac vs PC thing anymore it's Mac vs Windows (which can be reduced to Mac vs PC) but at it's core, it's apple vs microsoft ... plus the mac is a Personal Computer, but since Microsoft has given PCs a bad name they tried to brand the Mac as not a PC as to not muddle their brand's image. - Chris Heath

Great commercial - it's that simple! - Medical Alarm Concepts

That was great - Abbas Haider Ali

I love it. I'm a PC ... but I want a Mac. - Angela Schelden

the posted link is never working for me...Nevermind, found it on youtube. - JoEllen

Dear Apple, I have a PC that also does not crash, doesn't have viruses, and is not a headache to deal with. It's called, Linux. Thank you, and I am a PC running Linux. - Wizetux

Dear Apple, I have a PC that also does not crash (as long as I keep it free of dustbunnies), doesn't have viruses and is not a headache to deal with...It's called Windows XP. I'm a PC. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

This is funny, but continuing the same campaign isn't a big enough response. They need to come up with a campaign that resonates as well as the Laptop Hunters series. - Stephen Mack

I'm a PC. I like having that $1300 in my bank account instead of Apple's. - Piaw Na

this is a pretty good response to the MS ads - Jamie

MS cant compete with hardware or commercials. Apple always ups them. - wowfreeze.blogspot.com

Peter Svensson

Is IE6 Dead Yet? - http://www.dzone.com/links...

May 13, 2009 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

Markus Kobler, Paul Kinlan, David Alfaro and 2 other people liked this

I would be suprised. I used to work for Experian and when we developed software we had to target IE5.5sp1 a lot of large banks would not upgrade. - Paul Kinlan

our logs show about 50% of our browser base is still IE6 <sigh> - MikeAmundsen

I do work for a company that is IE only, and refuses to make any changes or move forward with technology. - Paul W. Swansen

Robert Scoble

I wish friendfeed had its own version of "@" -- instead if I want to send you to Doc Searls I have to paste his URL in: http://friendfeed.com/dsearls -- he has a house in Santa Barbara and is doing some great coverage of the fires there.

May 7, 2009 - Comment - Like - Share

Alistair (alpinefolk), hollyrae, Mike Reynolds and 56 other people liked this

I also wish that friendfeed would take the "@" character and point it at the same person's friendfeed account, if one exists. That's a tough problem to do, though. - Robert Scoble

66 more comments

Since FF is suppose to be more conversational, one would think an @user or similar would be a given. - Brian

They could make it so that clicking on an @name would get you a popup menu with a variety of choices. It could know that I am "davew" on Friendfeed and "davewiner" on Twitter and "dave" on identi.ca and "scriptingnews" on Flickr. - Dave Winer

Problem with doing that is people will mistakenly @ the display name rather than the username (what's in the URL). Honestly, I couldn't tell you the actual username for a lot of people I interact with on FF. - FFing Enigma

Brian: one reason I think friendfeed is resisting doing that is because they don't want to piss off Twitter (Twitter gives them a real time firehose feed and if it gets cut off friendfeed will dramatically change). Another reason? They are very heavy on ex-Google superstars and they know that by putting URLs (and forcing the same) they help the Google page rank of the whole system. Already I'm seeing some of my friendfeed items show up higher on Google than similar Tweets. - Robert Scoble

I know if you click,drag and drop from a person's name (anywhere) to the comment box you get their FF url dropped. Not sure if that helps or not in this situation? - Brian Sullivan

However it can be done it would be nice to have the ability to 'reply' to a user. Then those 'replies' could be on a separate page and we wouldn't need these not-so-perfect vanity searches maybe? :-) - Kol Tregaskes

Brian: that's cool, I didn't know you could do that. - Robert Scoble

Brian, I didn't know that. Very cool! :-) - Kol Tregaskes

Robert: interesting, good points. Didn't think about that. Maybe FF will come up with an easy way to autocomplete our friend/subscriber list in a "To: user" box, and shorten the link. - Brian

Brian http://friendfeed.com/briansu...: nice find! That is a good solution for now. - Brian

Hmm and you are able to search by URL too, very interesting. :-) - Kol Tregaskes

Mark: yes, that is what I would like to see as well. - Brian

As there is no 140 character limit to posts here a drag'n'drop url solution that is only slightly worse that the hyperlink solution, could be the ff.im/username format instead. - René Clausen Nielsen

that seems to be a firefox thing, it's not working in IE8 for me. - Ben Reierson

If FF could tidy up the user URLs in some way to make it a little more presentable then that's a pretty good solution. - Kol Tregaskes

René, yes definitely. - Kol Tregaskes

Ben - I am using Chrome. - Brian Sullivan

It works in Chrome. - Kol Tregaskes

Working a bit in FF3.1 - Roberto Bonini

Robert, surely the best way of doing this is just to use the FF share function from the post in question? FF will then put the links in for you. I do agree with Dave though about some form of display on the username. - Keith Bennett from Nambu

Another thing -- we really do need one place -- each of us -- where we want to be seen and contacted at. I have a single address in the physical world. I have a bunch of email addresses, but one "main" one. Twitter is becoming that, unfortunately -- because who wants a company to own us. I don't. And I think eventually that has to blow apart. I dread the day. It would be great to have a... more... - Dave Winer

I agree, I think it's necessary to allow people to easily refer to their or other user accounts - Jan Ole Peek

I agree something like that is needed... I always cringe when @ is overused though...seems so Twitterish - Bwana ☠

I 27th that movement. - Malcolm Bastien

make it so - andy brudtkuhl

That would be really helpful, I have been wondering how to track and continue friendfeed conversations off-site and that would make life a little easier. - Abhimanyu Chirimar

I 28th it. - Varun Mahajan

I like René's idea that it should use the ff.im but the display text should be the user's name to make it look tidy. So you drag the user's username into the comment, it links to your profile page and displays as your name (e.g. "Kol Tregaskes" instead of "koltregaskes"). #betakoltag-sg-postscomments - Kol Tregaskes

Actually I'd just might prefer ff.im/shevy over a hyperlinked René Clausen Nielsen. A hyperlinked René Clausen Nielsen should preferably point to my home (ie. my personal blog). THAT is me. ff.im/shevy is my ff home. Just as @shevy is my Twitter home. I like the easily distinguishable pointers. - René Clausen Nielsen

I'd say it should definitely link to your FF user page. - Kol Tregaskes

Dave: for most people Facebook is that place. I have been spending more time over there and it has more things that will keep pulling you back in. For many people it is their rolodex now. It's amazing the quality of people over there and what they put into their profiles. - Robert Scoble

why not take back the "!" that Pownce has now given up? - clarke thomas

Whatever the ff version of @ will be; yes it should definitely point to the ff user page. No doubt. I'm just saying that in the great big web pond I'd like a hyperlinked my name to point to my web home as often as possible. And I like it when every service has it's own self-referencing standard. - René Clausen Nielsen

Matthew: I said that about the # sign, but there are some use cases for that, even if technically we don't need it anymore to group things together. The @ sign, though? Nope, I didn't see someone say that. - Robert Scoble

Matthew, yep Robert mentioned the # symbol only. - Kol Tregaskes

this is my fundamental problem with FF - the lack of @ means within one conversation tracking who is responding to me requires me to scan the whole lot - that frankly sucks. - Nick Halstead

Nick, yep. We rely on everyone using our names or usernames so we can track 'replies' with our vanity searches but it's wholly unreliable of course. - Kol Tregaskes

Nick: agreed. We are all self interested and need much better alerting when someone talks about us. We already have that in "Direct messages." I hope they rethink this for something like "Discussions about me." - Robert Scoble

Kol: and it sucks that I can't join vanity searches for my name on friendfeed with those that I do outside of friendfeed too. That's pretty lame. - Robert Scoble

If FF added anchors to comments and perhaps a DM/CC for comments that might be interesting, though perhaps complicated and untidy? - Kol Tregaskes

Robert, also, vanity searches only really work well if you have a unique-ish name (thank you Mum! ;-)). - Kol Tregaskes

Matthew: I agree. Can't wait to see how they add new features. Kol: true, but I can see a world where you could filter based on your friends. "Find items written by Joe Smith, but only display those about the Joe Smith who is friends with Louis Gray and Robert Scoble." - Robert Scoble

Man that would be sweet. - Drew Lucas

Robert, yep. - Kol Tregaskes

Why not add the person you're mentioning in the "To" field? Pings the person just like an @ mention and it adds a link to the person you're talking about so we can all check out the person, too. - Mark Trapp

Dear Friendfeed, please copy the @replize feature as implemented by SocialMedian last year: http://mashable.com/2008... XOXO, Daniel - Daniel J. Pritchett

Socialtext/'s Signals app has a type-ahead find in its @reply feature. They use an AIR client though. - Daniel J. Pritchett from IM

I think FriendFeed should implement something far more intelligent than simple @-username. It could scan for the mention of a name of a person you are subscribed to anywhere in a message, then make a hyperlink of it. I think I'd rather type someone's name in full than be forever stuk with @username. Also, I think name resolution within comments should be local to the conversation. In... more... - Meryn Stol

Meryn: good idea but what about if someone mentions Martin Bryant, the infamous 1996 Australian mass murderer? It'd link to my profile! - Martin Bryant

Martin, good point. I had not thought about that. Indeed there are situations when people want to talk other people with the same name as a person they are subscribed too. Maybe very hard to make a good UI for this. Local name resolution within comment threads is more realistic: You just make a hard rule that when someone mentions a first name, he is assumed to be referencing a previous participant in the conversation. - Meryn Stol

I really like Kol's idea: "it should use the ff.im but the display text should be the user's name to make it look tidy. So you drag the user's username into the comment, it links to your profile page and displays as your name (e.g. "Kol Tregaskes" instead of "koltregaskes")." so http://friendfeed.com/meryn would be replaced by "Meryn Stol", linking to my profile. This combined with a fast way to look up these urls ("find as you type") would greatly improve over the current situation. - Meryn Stol

OTOH, @meryn could be replaced with "Meryn Stol" as well. I just don't like seeing these @'s displayed. - Meryn Stol

Nick makes a good point that it's irritating that you don't know when anyone mentions your name inside conversations you participated in. I wish I'd be notified if anyone use my first name inside a thread that I have commented on earlier. - Meryn Stol

this is a time for the tricky higher ascii characters. ƒ (mac, option-f) is one possible way... &fnof; ƒ ƒ are other ways to write the character, according to this page of glyphs http://www.ebyte.it/library... (1st under Symbols and Greek letters). So I guess the proper use for it would be ƒsusankitchens or ƒscobleizer - Susan A. Kitchens

Meryn, it was really taking from René's point but yes sounds good. Once you drag and drop the username into the comment, it changes to a hyperlink displaying the user's name. Not sure how technically possible that is though? - Kol Tregaskes

Meryn, yep I don't like @s either, name of the user (not the username) please. :-) I know user's by their names not their usernames. - Kol Tregaskes

Isn't this just the classic namespace problem? Kol et.al. have it right - FF should simply be it's own namespace, and figure a simple way to refer to users. Then display the user's display name with an href to their FF page. No need to point to whatever your *real* homepage is, cause why wouldn't FF want to continue capturing stuff? 8-) But better linking to FF users would be key, as would threaded comments. (Heck, I'd rather have threaded comments and let some client-side apps do the live streaming...) - Shane Curcuru

I would be very happy if there was some common, linked way of identifying my FriendFeed identity in a conversation. Ideally, it would happen automatically somehow, but this is certainly problematic. One way might be to pick a special character (easily typed) and have FF drop down a list of commenters in the thread. Then it would be easy to identify even in the case of multiple Robs... more... - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

but the click and drag thing is cool. I think it should come up with my hyperlinked display name (not my URL) I find that I can drag another person's name from another conversation into the coments from another post as well. If that just caused me to be notified of a mention it would be cool (BUT training ALL of the FF users to do this might be a challenge) - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Agreed. @ = "at". That's always driven me crazy about Twitter. Makes some sense with email if you think of a domain as a physical location, but you're not talking "at" someone - you're talking "to" them or "about" them. I always thought ">Mike" would work better as a way of expressing that a message was directed at me. Maybe ":Mike" or "~Mike" if someone was just referring to me... - Mike Hartman

But don't you like the slang "yo, at me later - I'll be online" lol! - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

I had to read that a couple times before my brain could parse it into a thought. - Mike Hartman

how about using another character rather then @ could that work? - (jeff)isageek

me too - that would be really useful - Sharon Hurley Hall

I'm pretty sure the @ functionality needs to just to be standardized across the web at this point - Zaki Manian

friendfeed should just copy socialmedian's @reply feature. go for it. take it. seriously. you need it. we'd all love it. - Jason Goldberg

Brad Williamson to Brad's feed, TheNextWeb Forum

Connie Culp, Nation's First Face Transplant Patient, Emerges (PHOTOS, VIDEO) - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009...

May 5, 2009 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Mike, Kim, guruvan (Rob Nelson) and 41 other people liked this

"Five years ago, a shotgun blast left a ghastly hole where the middle of her face had been. Five months ago, she received a new face from a dead woman. Connie Culp stepped forward Tuesday to show off the results of the nation's first face transplant, and her new look was a far cry from the puckered, noseless sight that made children run away in horror." - Brad Williamson from Bookmarklet

13 more comments

Amazing - Sameer

That's awesome. - Derrick

must feel like being reborn. - Capn' One Eye - adrift

WOW. This is incredible. You go girl... - Brad Williamson

I admire her spirit when she was faced with innocent child ridicule. What a journey she has experienced. - Janet

oh wow! this is outstanding! - vijay

wow - Alfredo 亜瑠布れっど

We have come so far. Good for her and congrats to those doctors! - Mike Lewis

Anytime I think I have something to complain about I'll pull up this entry. Amazing work and kudos to her for sharing. - Robert Scoble

Good for her and medical innovation. - Guias Local

Wow, unbelievable. - Carol Levesque

Connie Culp rocks. In a situation where many people would have lost hope, she was brave, stepped forward, and came through alright. She's an incredible person and a true inspiration. - Anthony Papillion

what a great time to be alive - Alana Coble

They did such an amazing job! And she's really a trooper. I'm just in awe. - *Tiffany Diamond*

Kasper Sorensen to Kasper's feed, ScobleRoom, The Bloggers Discussions, FriendFeed Feedback, Danske twittere, Twitter

To all friendfeed users: Please update your friendfeed bio so we know who you are (please RT) (via http://friendfeed.com/kasperb...)

May 6, 2009 - Comment - Like - Share

Daniel Rowley, Laurentiu, TheHenry and 11 other people liked this

It just fits... - Ton Zijp

Veronica

Kids Singing Evanescence "Bring Me To Life" - http://www.youtube.com/watch...

May 5, 2009 from YouTube favorites - Comment - Like - Share

Sylvain Nadeau, Nesta Campbell, Alan Le and 30 other people liked this

that is beyond cuteness - Fee501st

10 more comments

Cute alert! - Robert Scoble

hahaha danger! extreme cuteness! - David Alfaro from twhirl

Why would you subject your children to that horrible music? - Fleagle

That's too cute. :) - Tom Small

the editing on that video was great, too! - Veronica

Even Simon would have to love that :-) - Todd Hoff

There's something especially touching given the words of the song to hear it sung by kids with their whole lives ahead of them. Hopefully they won't need to sing it later. - Todd Hoff

The little guy in the back seat busts me up. - mrsha

that was fantastic. i laughed from start to finish! - Alejandro

Laughing out loud at 0:57. that kids face is priceless. - Aaron Bronander

Cutebomb has been dropped! *KABOOM* :) - Burak "cyrus" Bayburtlu

Shey

LivePipe™ : User Interface Components for Prototype - http://livepipe.net/

May 6, 2009 from delicious - Comment - Like - Share

David Alfaro liked this

mathew ingram

Twitter Connect for WordPress | Shannon Whitley [feedly] - http://www.voiceoftech.com/swhitle...

May 5, 2009 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

Jaap Stronks, Pat Graham Block, Daniel Rowley and 13 other people liked this

The latest version of Twit Connect allows any blog owner to self-host the entire oAuth connection process. The plugin now works just like Facebook Connect. - mathew ingram

2 more comments

Great progress! - Edwin Khodabakchian

the OAuth really is starting to drive a new wave of integrations for twitter - Nick Halstead

thanks for the heads-up - courtney benson

Robert Scoble

“The Mojave Experiment:” Bad Science, Bad Marketing - http://wilshipley.com/blog...

July 31, 2008 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

David Alfaro, Sam Levine, Warner Crocker and 8 other people liked this

Installed Vista on my sister HP laptop to find out it was incompatible with a little program they used to authorize the computer on her school's wireless network, thus downgrade top even though I know vista is more secure and has a much improved u.i. Coming from a Mac users that means alot lol. Vista just has too many issues with drivers and old software, kind of reminds me on Windows More Errors Awesome article Scoble.. - Sebastiaan van den Akker

16 more comments

Vista with current apps and hardware is perfectly fine - Roberto Bonini

Yup, with curent apps and hardware, but people needs backwards compatability with older systems, especially in case of universities and companies who running software compatible mostly with xp... your out of luck.. this means for home user vista is the best choice, but once your have connect with business or university networks with specialized software, you need xp. again... - Sebastiaan van den Akker

Its a chicken and egg problem: to get business to adopt vista, they need vista compat apps. To get vista compat apps, there needs to be a sizable market for them. - Roberto Bonini

I started to read your post and had to stop when I read: "if you read this blog, you know I pretty much hate Microsoft, because of their incredibly shady business practices...." To me this eliminate you as a trustworthy critic of Microsoft. Yes, there where problems with Vista when it was released. Just as there were problems with Apple's Leopard, IPhone 3G, and MobileMe. The Enterprise will adopt Vista in due course — where else will they go? - archaictree from twhirl

@Otis I agree with you that the enterprise will adopt vista, they have when Ms drops support for Xp. But that does not explain why the "enterprise" and MS do not work together to make sure that software and networks remain compatible without having to worry about what ms windows X version your using.. otherwise, the entriprise might as wel switch to mac, if compatibility cannot be assured... - Sebastiaan van den Akker

Microsoft Hate is so corny. - Sprague D

@Otis If you ignore that comment, he actually makes some good points regarding the 'experiment'. - Paul Grav

thanks Paul, its better comment than "MS hate is so corny"... I believe you should expect some quality from a product that ms has taken 3-4 years to develop. I also know its a huge amount of code and remains human work.. so of course it will have bugs, but vista's been out for almost 2 years... now.. and it's had sp 1 as wel.. but company adaption still is mininal.... - Sebastiaan van den Akker

What Otis said. "You know how much I incredibly hate X, so here's why X sucks" - Yuvi

this site cracks me up. Vista is a great demo product. That I not the problem. Living with it is the problem. - gfurry

@Sebastiaan I work in IT at our local University, so I know the software compatibility problems with Vista and how it caused use not to move quickly to Vista. It has only been in the last few month that most of the software we use, such as Novell, SAP, and Cisco, have produced compatible versions of their software for Vista. Is that Microsoft's fault or the software vendor's fault? Part... more... - archaictree from twhirl

Some people may never like OS x, that their problem, but is funny to see the ms with 90% of OS market share in there hands can't even get there most loyal users to upgade, becuase if they do, there software won't work anymore... Apple take advantage of this, getting more poeple to switch to Leopard.. good for them.. - Sebastiaan van den Akker

@Otis. You're right. It's not all Microsofts fault, but it doesn't matter. If a user's experience of Vista is that their printer didn't work, or their VPN software didn't work, then that user isn't going to blame the printer manufacturer or the VPN software manufacture, they'll blame MS. Especially when such devices, drivers or software worked perfectly fine under XP. Personally, I don't have any sympathy at all for their plight. - Paul Grav

@Otis it still leaves the customer hanging in the middle because MS and a software vendor can't get their act together. So, in about year or 2, more companies will switch to vista, and the whole process repeats itself when the new version of windows hits the shelves.. - Sebastiaan van den Akker

@Sebastiaan I agree with you that the marketing problem is Microsoft's. They released Vista too soon. But, the criticism of Vista as an OS by the tech media is out of proportion to reality. - archaictree from twhirl

Well, not all the Tech media is really negative about Vista, the security, U.I and stability is much better than xp... just software compatibility is not up 2 par.. one of the USP (Unique selling points i.e. comparing it to Mac OS X or Linux or other OS) of vista... - Sebastiaan van den Akker

I guess because they have too... When you are mac user in windows world everyone use ms office, and if you need 100% compatibility you need office for mac 2008... - Sebastiaan van den Akker

Jeremiah Owyang

Overheard during vendor briefing: "Opinions are like *ssholes, everyone has one and they all stink" I lol'd

July 30, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Steven Perez, Ha3rvey (heavy duty), David Alfaro and 8 other people liked this

Wow, that's pretty darn accurate! ha, ha!! - Susan Beebe

8 more comments

But that's usually true - Dennis Howlett from twhirl

I personally prefer "...and I don't want to hear yours" - Chris Selland

Yaw, but what if the opinion was from an *asshole who thinks their sh*t don't stink? - Scot Duke

Just his opinion though - Brian Sullivan

I have to say that I'd be pretty embarrassed to have said that in a professional setting. - Christopher Butler

Christopher Butler, it was a young startup aimed at MySpace demographic, and they knew I'm cool with it (they interact with me around here) - Jeremiah Owyang

@Christopher - it's a pretty common saying (especially in marketing!) - Jeremy Toeman

Yeah, I get it... I'm a prude ;-) - Christopher Butler

You aren't being a prude - iIt *is* crass and unpleasant. - Robert W. Anderson from twhirl

Robert Scoble

13 Apps to Turn Your iPhone into a Blogging Machine - http://mashable.com/2008...

July 24, 2008 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

Steve Garfield, Tim Aldiss, Daniel Woolstencroft and 6 other people liked this

Brian Henderson

On an agile Road (map) the volume of ashvault per unit time is fix... so to go faster the road must get narrower (less lanes).

July 17, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

David Alfaro liked this

Nice metaphor! - David Alfaro

David Alfaro › Likes