When you see the mistakes Friendster, MySpace, Friends Reunited (UK) made that led to their irrelevance, it makes sense to keep pushing the art forward. I believe Facebook realise that and thus keep taking the best aspects of Twitter/FF etc. However they still need to retain their innovative edge, which I believe they have kind of lost over the past year.
- Jamie
Golden rule in software: you can't satisfy all your customers all of the time. So, in order to improve there is no way around pissing users off.
- Rene Wirtz
stealing this idea: "Every night, when I read to my twins as they settle to bed, I am not picking up Dr. Seuss or Goodnight Moon. I have been reading to Matthew and Sarah from the insightful book, Inside Steve's Brain."
- metalerik
Metalerik, it's true though. Not kidding. It's a great book, and Matthew and Sarah deserve to hear it. :)
- Louis Gray
dude, I'm not kidding either :) I'm always looking for new things to show her
- metalerik
that's awesome...but i did have to laugh out loud when the host claimed the debate between twitter and facebook is "an age old question"...um, yeah, i tend to side with aristotle over plato on that one...
- Trent Olson
1UP for saying "meatspace" I wonder if the general public knows what that means :p
- Zulema ◕ ◡ ◕
The three of you did very well, and I think that what you said was accessible enough so that a non-tech audience could get it also. I forget which one of you said that 40% of ALL conversation is babble; good line...
- John E. Bredehoft
So today, my mom and I went to the local dollar store and bought a crapload of school supplies, which we are boxing up and sending to an inner city first grade class. We are going to keep them in supplies this year. You don't need a fancy organized charity or even a Twitter drive to make a difference. Just Do It.
Great idea. Although it could be a fun thing to organize and do with friends - but definitely bypass "the system." Sending email to "book club" now.
- Amy℠
Thanks guys. It felt totally great to do!
- Martha
AWESOME. Wish I could like this post 10,000 times!
- Trish R
Dave and I had a blast buying school supplies last year: we got all the stuff we wanted and couldn't afford when we were kids...
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
School supplies for Zambian children: http://cecilysfund.org/ (Sorry, but I felt this was a good post to promote it.)
- Eivind
Elvind - promote it away! Another thing my mom has been doing for years is making quilts, toys, handcrafts and sending them to an AIDs orphanage in South Africa. She and five of her friends send them to the kids and have sold the stuff stateside and have raised around $25,000 all on their own to send to the orphanages to help the kids. I am not that crafty, but I help with legal, graphic design and the selling of the stuff at their sales. Another thing she just does. There is so much that you can Just Do.
- Martha
Great idea and my congrats. You are making a difference! Good show! :-)
- Mathew A. Koeneker
Seriously. Would you people stop liking/commenting on this? It keeps popping up to the top of my stream and I have to stare at it again.
- Akiva Moskovitz
I have seen this a million times on myspace for years... we all have I'm sure. it is just great to comment here because then we can snag new people that are stupid enough to comment. ....you were the one who posted it Akiva. Fresh Fish for the TROLLS... hey Igor... 86 likes here means the bounty is ours. mo ha ha ha ah Fresh fish were looking at the stupid cat.
- Noah David Simon
I've got one thing you'll understand (Dr. Feelgood)/ he's not what you'd call a glamorous man (Dr. Feelgood)/ Got one thing that's easily understood (Dr. Fee lgood)/ He's the one they call Dr. Feelgood
- Christopher Harley
I've said it before and I'll say it again: if I want animation on my desktop, I'll grab a window and then whip it around the screen with my mouse.
- Akiva Moskovitz
It seems to be the only animated gif that doesn't crash my browser, too. COINCIDENCE?!
- joey
I'm down. *looks for a modem on laptop*
- Rodfather
Real-time feed over dial-up ftw!
- Jemm
from fftogo
My wife's already running one via telnet with multi-line teleconference and a few games, including a totally hex-hax0r'd MajorMUD. Yes, my wife is a true hacker chick. telnet://forgottenages.no-ip.org:2300
- ax0n
Don't make me get my TRS-80 out of storage! I upgraded that mofo to 64k RAM and replaced the cassette drive with a 5 1/4 floppy. *oozes real time*
- Brian Daniel Eisenberg
No, I don't regret unfollowing and turning off the autofollower. My main goal is engagement, not fake followers.
- Robert Scoble
Agreed. However in Twitter, I wonder if these people also are RTers or just add no value besides a mutual number on the counters.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
Holden: not true. I watched Loic's and Calacanis numbers flatten out when he turned off autofollower. Yes, mine will go up, but slowly, and maybe slower than yours did. Why? People are still unfollowing me because I unfollowed them.
- Robert Scoble
Mark: exactly. I'm still following new people, but only those who demonstrate that they are geeks, know me, or are bringing something else to the table I want to listen to.
- Robert Scoble
auto following is not a bad thing per se but it does allow lots of spam to get in
- Seth Goldstein
Robert, how come you're not following me..I know I'm not a geek but you know me and I have great posts :)))) I'm playing, you do know.
- Myrna
Exactly I don't follow anyone from Blogcatalog or Mybloglog here at Friendfeed. With all that drama over there, I needed to separate from that smut. I simply wanted a place where there was more quality content. There comes a time when you have to make a quiet exit.
- Jeunelle Foster
My God Scobe, setting a standard or something? Good to see someone from the IT geekdom say "you know what, I/we need connection here". That desire is what has gotten web 2.0 where it is. IMHO these internet marketers, etc are putting these tools (Twitter) at risk of abandonment by fostering the creation of a hollow shell with their focus on numbers (followers) without meaningful connection.
- Chad Gesser
from BuddyFeed
Auto following caused a lot of automatic retweeting and this spam filled up the twitter board, hiding the quality content away from us, lot's of people got pissed and it caused breaches in password security. Some of these auto follow tools were automatically retweeting every friggin 10-15 mintues without your permission and linking back to your twitter account, a great way to lose your good friends. Quality is where I'm going, not Quantity.
- Jeunelle Foster
if you want followers, provide something of value to them. Then focus on the value you can get from those you follow. Aside from the stray person who just wants one more "guaranteed" re-follow, mass following people is actually a disservice to those who rely on you for up-to-date information or opinions since the signal:noise ratio sucks so badly.
- ax0n
I posted this a week or so ago but got limited opinion. But as Scoble just said, if I follow someone on Friendfeed (that links Twitter and is active), is there a value in following on Twitter as well? Seems like it's just an echo.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
While I'm not one that agrees with autofollows, do you think you would have near as may followers now if you only followed those 1,800 from the start? Or do you even care?
- Adam Reyher
from Alert Thingy
I want genuine followers, you know those super dedicated folks that are satisfied only when your community comes to life.
- Mark Essel
Ahhh.. but now you are followed by those who love you as opposed to those who just wanted a followback from Scoble! :-D Love is better!
- Amy Flynn
Adam: I'm sure that some of those that I now have as followers wouldn't have followed me if I hadn't autofollowed. True. But then if I really worried about such things I'd be begging @ev to add me to the suggested follower list. That's the REAL way to get followers you don't earn by doing great content.
- Robert Scoble
I still believe engaging and quality followers is better then Quanity
- Rob Cairns
ahhhh, see the future passionate ones integration of depth associated with conversation and content (FF) coupled with the ability to integrate personality and personal history (Fb) ..or something like that
- Chad Gesser
from BuddyFeed
Great way to get rid of all that SPAM. Good for you. I'm doing the same.
- Jonathan.Rivera
"Toshiba has announced it will be launching a 64GB SDXC card, which they claim will be the world's fastest and largest SD card. The card boasts write speeds of 32MB per second and read speeds of 60MB per second, and is compliant with the latest SD memory standard. In addition to the 64GB SDXC, Toshiba also announced they would be releasing two more storage cards: a 32GB SDHC card and a 16GB SDHC card – and importantly, both offer the same speeds as the 64GB SDXC."
- LANjackal
from Bookmarklet
Un;less i start taking 100meg shots , 64Gb is Waaayyyyyy too much
- Roberto Bonini
What about HD video cameras that record to SD? :P
- LANjackal
from IM
Or backing up my 60GB PS3 :) As long as reliability is the same or better, then bigger is almost always better... you'll always have a bigger backup on your card of stuff you've already offloaded.
- LogEx
That's right. You should, instead, tweet it or share on gReader or tumblr or blog about it or Facebook it.... It's interesting that email seems to have moved up a notch on the privacy hierarchy.
- The Letter M
Oh, and note that I'm not trying to be snarky in that comment. Most of the stuff I love seeing on friendfeed would irritate the crap out of me in my inbox, even though I'm myself not certain what the difference it.
- The Letter M
You should get the Qore game programmers to put you into one of those mini-games!
- Jason Wong
Whenever I see the thumbnail of the picture of you with the wrestling belt on, in thumbnail size it looks like a bare midriff, with a HUGE hairy belly button, and my subconscious that completes the image revolts me for a second, forcing me to us the conscious mind to click on it, blow it up to full size and calm my subconscious down, else the subconscious will not let me go on with my day.
- Matthew DeVries
Dang!!! That's a big gun for such a small lady(LOL)
- YoYo_P
"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
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.
- Nitin Nanivadekar
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
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
Sorry you feel you have to make a buck and reck such a cool site as FriendFeed.
- Frank Sant'Agata
I only ask you to stop spamming, I never lowered myself by calling you names.
- Frank Sant'Agata
you are harassing me...for nothing! and that IS LOWERING YOURSELF !
- Aline Ohannessian
I'm sorry you have decided to take it that way. Have a wonderful day!
- Frank Sant'Agata
@Frank: Although the topic of the post isn't personally of interest to me, I have a hard time seeing how it's spamming. It's appropriate for every group it's been submitted to IMO.
- LANjackal
@Frank: you are obviously uneducated in the field of internet marketing, not to be able to recognize the difference between an affiliate and straight forward recommendation/Sharing information. You should do YOUr research before making comments that are accusatory in nature!
- Aline Ohannessian
Internet marketing is a big negitive for the FriendFeed user. We want unaffiliate infomation. Frank must of hit a nerve with you and uncovered some truth here.
- Joe Gata
@Joe Gata: yes i may have reacted emotionally, caught off guard in the moment, as i do take spamming seriously, therefore to me this was an Unjust continued accusation on my lazy sunday afternoon - thanks for your input.
- Aline Ohannessian
I looked into your feeds and it is obvious you are doing advertising. I'm sure you do take spamming seriously thats how you make money, per click right? I like how you even tried to market yourself as a victim in your comment
- Joe Gata
okay my LOVElies, it is very obvious that some of us are clearly more informed regarding links, internet use, social media, the purpose of such than others.....
- Roni Lipstein
The purpose of social media is to SHARE information.......
- Roni Lipstein
SPAM is sending people to junk sites, it is leading them astray.......
- Roni Lipstein
EVEN IF someone were to advertise as opposed to merely RECOMMENDING or SHARING information, {if one DID have an affiliate link- we can get into what that means as some clearly do not know}, which CLEARLY is NOT the case here with ArtWave, so long as that which they were "advertising" was upfront- no-one is "misdirecting" YOU, if they show you a pic of a new item and take u to the item's...
more...
- Roni Lipstein
furthermore, BEfore any comment on another taking specific action in any public forum, it is allways highly recommended to DO your research FIRST.
- Roni Lipstein
@Kelly W - Kelly, I think you may have read incorrectly.....ArtWave is NOT SELLING ANYTHING.............someone who is unaware of and uneducated regarding links made a FALSE ACCUSATION......ArtWave happens to BE amongst the foremost individuals whom offers FREE TIPS to GREAT Products, Information and Resources for ALL of WE at ABSOLUTELY NO PROFIT to herSELF........she's just AMAZING like that......you may want to investigate her feeds YOUr SELF to see what I am speaking to.
- Roni Lipstein
Got it-sorry about the misunderstanding. I was responding from my iphone and not able to read further. Comment deleted. :)
- Kelly W.
Well, REAL FriendFeed users such as Mitch Wagner wouldn't share things from InformationWeek in FriendFeed, and REAL FriendFeed users such as Robert Scoble wouldn't set up a Building 43 room in FriendFeed...what? Seriously, the logic that refers to this item as spam completely escapes me. I'm subscribed to Aline now...
- John E. Bredehoft
from fftogo
The only thing is that I'd be worried about storing things like database credentials in my PHP code, as well as my FTP login information "in the cloud". Other than that, it looks pretty slick.
- ax0n
Wow @Frank, someone pissed in your coffee this morning. How about you just go away, since you are coming off like a lousy troll? Maybe he's already gone, since he hasn't commented in a while. Thanks @Aline for the great link. Don't get frazzled by idiots.
- Fleagle
Nice link and interesting webapp, but I think I will stay with vim/emacs/Sublime/jEdit.
- Artem Daniliants
The power of a thank you: a United Airlines employee personally thanked me and another guy I was sitting next to for being loyal customers. We both looked at each other in amazement. Gives me some ideas for my own career. I don't say thank you enough.
Robert, thank you for that free consulting the other day. I've already implemented some of it.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
Sincere thanks shows empathy and respect. Even thanks by protocol (less sincere) _can_ be good, and potentially leads to the real thing - even better. Great thought to share, Robert.
- Micah Wittman
Did the United Airlines employee thank you for your friendfeeds?
- Charbax
Starting at home, too. Maryam does a lot for me and I don't say thank you enough to her.
- Robert Scoble
It's too easy to take things for granted.
- Michael McKean
Robert, thank you for improving yourself by thanking others more often. ;)
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
Saying "please" and "thank you" is always welcome, thanks, Robert. ;-)
- Kol Tregaskes
A great reminder. Another thing I'm learning is to be more gracious when others say 'thank you' and to say 'you're welcome.' Often, I say 'no problem,' which is kind of self-diminishing and also doesn't convey that they are worth doing a favor for. I don't know if this makes any sense, but I'm trying to train myself.
- joey
One airline used to say "Welcome Mr. xyz as soon as you were on your first class seat and asked what you wanted for a drink ... they have the list of passengers with the frequent flier level. Basic customer service.
- Julio F ~ @SocialJulio
I worked for some folks as a horseback trail guide when I was a kid. Everyday, no matter what, they thanks me for coming in and doing my job. Taught me the power of a thank you from a group that normally takes you for granted (your employer) - the same holds true for thanking customers.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Julio: I have flown 300,000+ miles and hearing thank you is a rare enough occurence that it is notable when it happens.
- Robert Scoble
Wouldn't it be great if @ev said thanks to some of the early adopters who tirelessly promoted Twitter? It struck me when he tweeted from the Time awards dinner thanking his employees. He doesn't get how hard we work, for free, to make him successful.
- Dave Winer
@Dave - do you want some stock or something? If you feel like you need to be recognized and aren't, use another service
- Dave Hodson
"Thank you" is something you don't notice unless it's missing. My previous job I got very few "thank yous" from the management, it was a little upsetting. I still did the work of course but it would have been very nice if people simply replied to mails, for example, with a thank you. It seemed there that that was wasting an email. No it's not! :-(
- Kol Tregaskes
What does being a "loyal customer" mean? I have loyalty to ideals, to my country, to my family ... not so much to companies. There are exceptions, but I don't think any airline would apply ...
- John Koetsier
John: I did 120,000 miles with United last year. That is loyalty.
- Robert Scoble
I had a patient carry business type cards with a lovely verse about how little the world recognizes good service, kind nature and such. I truly was taken for a pause when she gave me one.
- Janet
Just give thanks that you actually have a career as many do not right now in this country.
- Steve
One of my friends trains dentists and their staffs how to boom their new patient numbers through word-of-mouth referrals without ever saying the "r-word". It's basically done through very well-worded thank you messages. Extremely powerful and the staff absolutely love doing it.
- Hans Eisenman
I agree and the power simple gestures have always amazes me.
- Craig Mische
Funny. My boss's birthday was today. We have to give words of wisdom on our birthday's at work. He told us a story about the importance of thanking and acknowledging.
- amarquart
I think it is easy to forget the times we get good service, because the bad service sticks out so much more. But it is a worthy note to take, pay it forward.
- Patrick Boegel
Steve: I'm always thankful for that. Not to mention that about half the world's people live on $2 a day. I thank my dad for being the first to go to college in our family, get a PHD, and moving me to Silicon Valley. Of course if we had stayed in Jersey maybe I would be working with Gary Vaynerchuk now. That would be fun too!
- Robert Scoble
Awesome! Amazing how something so small can be so big
- Andy A.
Amazing how a simple "Thank You" goes a very long way..
- Ricardo Bueno
Look at all of the positive press UA is getting from this and it didn't cost them a cent! Just good policy and good employees.
- Jeff P. Henderson
When said honestly and properly, thank you can be very powerful. We all should use it more.
- arik
I like to ask speak to the manager of anyone who has been very helpful to me so that I can request that it be noted how great he or she was.
- metalerik
I had a very positive experience the other day after being delayed for five hours and being stranded overnight in Denver (United put me up for the night). About 20 minutes after landing at SFO, I got an apology email with a $250 credit for future travel. http://bit.ly/AMEH4
- Rocky
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.
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
Since FF is suppose to be more conversational, one would think an @user or similar would be a given.
- Brian
Do you mean for it to cc: that person's twitter account?
- Jason
from BuddyFeed
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 (aka Tina)
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
the URL referencing a user looks strange, I'd think they could hyperlink the user's name so it looks better
- Mark Bockenstedt
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
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 ☠
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 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
Robert - Didn't one of the more known tech names, may have been Loic, or someone post a friendfeed thread last month telling people to stop using @ and # on Twitter, because it wasn't needed any more for some reason?
- Matthew DeVries
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
Ok, well, this (for me anyway) came after that thread where I saw it, the # is nice for me, because I have a facebook app that hooks off the # fb hashtag and puts that post on facebook for me. I like that a lot, but I'm pretty sure that didn't exist at the time that thread happened.
- Matthew DeVries
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
I see this as a matter of infancy, not of policy, I don't think it something Paul et al are keeping from us by design, it's just something they haven't gotten to yet.
- Matthew DeVries
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
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
Mark - that's fine for posts, but they're talkng about in threads.
- Matthew DeVries
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... ƒ 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
Susan - those things are IMPOSSIBLE to type with a notebook, cause you need a number pad to pull them off. Was most infuriating when WoW people use them.
- Matthew DeVries
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)
Since @ is more appropriate for location than person, I'm glad they don't use it.
- Cristo
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
"I'll create a GUI interface using Visual Basic - see if I can track an IP address." [K, you do that. Sure hope your criminalistics are better than your infotech skills]
- Anthony Citrano
Oh man, that's going to have me smiling all morning. Thanks Anthony!
- Raoul Pop
@Raoul - glad to oblige. ;) I was watching "Without A Trace" tonight on CBS and the infotech elements in the story were just excruciatingly bad. It reminded me of this CSI episode from last season so I dug it up.
- Anthony Citrano
Slaps forehead in dismay.... would be much better if they just didn't try, wouldn't it?
- Bob Walder
Solid gold. I wonder how long it took her to learn that line, to make it sound like it's coming from a pro.
- Yuval Atzmon
Give it another 20 years or so; maybe then Hollywood will start to get it.
- Anthony Citrano
Whois and tracert will get you 90% of the way there.
- Alex Scoble
@Alex - I suggest you, Eric, and torque make your own CSI scene.
- Anthony Citrano
Her first mistake was "GUI interface". It was all downhill from there.
- Ken Sheppardson
"First let me run out to the ATM machine, stop at my car and write down my VIN number, then I'll come back and get started on that GUI interface..."
- Ken Sheppardson
Ken, be sure not to forget your PIN number.
- Michael McKean
You know, there's probably some dedicated device she could use instead. Something that recorded the data stream off the LAN network onto DAT tape. Maybe with an LCD display. It'll need a battery or she'll have to run it off AC current. Then she can generate graphs of the traffic in GIF format... and we can all make fun of her here in FF's approximation of IRC chat.
- Ken Sheppardson
It's not just TV. I can't remember the last time I saw a movie that something computer related that was reasonable. For years I've thought about forming a company that would specialize in tech-related script reviews for Hollywood. I don't know how much of a market there is for it, but there *should* be quite a big one.
- Joey Gibson
Anthony: I think Michael was talking about my struggle with RAS syndrome. :-)
- Ken Sheppardson
@Joey - I have a couple friends who write for TV. Not terribly close friends, but guys I've known a while. I've asked them about this issue, even offered to assist if they need. Their teams didn't seem particularly receptive. It's part of a broader problem - infotech, particularly online tech, is still seen as an abstract fad by much of Hollywood, believe it or not. I do like your idea, though. A small consultancy might do well, so long as no one was planning to make a living from it.
- Anthony Citrano
This actually worries me quite a bit - and it seems to have got worse if anything. It's basically misinforming the general public about something that's central to our lives these days. Doesn't it border on immoral or propagandist? Imagine they did the same thing with medicine?
- Robin Barooah
You guys remind me of my daughter. She passed the Bar last year and now she drives me crazy if we watch a police or law show together, she gets so annoyed by and *vocal about at length* all the unrealistic stuff that happens. :)
- Dawn
"Imagine they did the same thing with medicine" -- don't they?
- Ken Sheppardson
...Oh! And then there was my late husband (a nuclear reactor operator for the Navy for 8 years) who couldn't watch a movie that had to do with nuclear power. I remember one where all the workers were freaking out and one fearful guy says "The reactor is going critical!" Even I knew that reactors *operate* at critical. That's the norm!
- Dawn
As Joey and I discuss above, it's an easy problem to solve (legal, infotech, medical, even nuclear) if they shed the arrogance.
- Anthony Citrano
from BuddyFeed
"We need to write a believable Hollywood script, stat!" ... "Right. I'll get our dialog coach to pitch a green light at the directory of photography. Give me 2 days" ... "I need it 5. Minutes." ... "You got it!"
- Micah Wittman
I for one welcome our new GUI interface Overlords.
- Matthew
One of my favorite moments was on "Eleventh Hour" when special science consultant Jacob Hood explained to an FBI agent what DARPA was.
- Sue Radd
The worst show for these types of comments is "Numbers". In one episode they went into a small computer repair shop to pick up their mainframe. In another Charlie began expounding on how he would use a pagerank algorithm to determine something in game theory.. It's painful.
- Bill Rawlinson
As an ex-scientist, I can say that the science on the crime shows is equally bad. I'm sure my wife is sick of me yelling at the TV when we watch CSI.
- Dave Roth
Can any show top 24 for repeated and ridiculous misuse of computer terminology? "Refresh the drives" and "Open a socket" are two of my favorites.
- Kevin Pedraja
A federal agent I once knew said "don't get me started on 'the computer' in 24 - IF ONLY we had the computer". He said the rest of it was ludicrous too, but mostly in scale, whereas 'the computer' was about as realistic as them having teleporters.
- Robin Barooah
Back when I was a scientist, I would think 'popular media can't get chemistry right to save it's life'; now I'm thinking it's not just chemistry.
- Robert Hafer
Dear Oracle: I regret to inform you that the chance to win a 2 GB flash drive is not enough to entice me to attend your virtual seminar. I mean really, 2 GB? And don't you think I have enough flash drives already? Now, a free hour with a competent Ora DBA would have been another story altogether...
Agreed... give me someone that is serious in their tech-fu for a brain picking session that just so happens to sign the NoComp docs.. then I'd be all over a sign up sheet for your particular product/service/application.
- Uncle CW™
A *CHANCE* to win a 2GB flash drive? Holy hell. Go to any convention and you get half a dozen of these for free. I would settle for a 2TB flash drive, though. And at least they didn't use the most annoying portmanteau ever... "Webinar"
- ax0n
Apparently there's one iPod Nano being given away as well. I'd get more use outta the flash drive =/ Still holding out for the free hour with a DBA giveaway....
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Seriously, it's usually pretty easy to go home from any conference with a pile of 512mg flash drives - which sit on my desk and do nothing. A 2gig one is not an enticement for anything.
- Elizabeth Parmeter
Would like to see it compared to a US supercarrier or one of the latest oil tankers.
- Alex Scoble
Sorry QM1 is three stack ship. Not four.
- Uncle CW™
And yes, this is a great graphic...but expand it out. This is the sort of thing that requires cool software where you can zoom it in or out at will.
- Alex Scoble
Alex, that would be cool. Don't know ath the ship inside is. :-(
- Kol Tregaskes
I didn't say they'd still be the same size, I just said they'd still be big. I speak from experience here. Most people assume, my weight is why my breasts are the size they are. Even when I was a size 8, I was still in a G/H cup. I have another friend who had the added problem of being 4'11 and petite. She gained weight on purpose so people would stop gawking at her boobs. The upside is both of us have great self-esteem, so we never felt the need to dress like that and/or take photos of our boobs.
- Admiral Anika