I wonder what order markov chain this is........prob just first order but some of the phrases actually make sense :) - goutham
With a limited corpus, you'll end up regurtitating a lot of the original phrases even if you have a low-order model, because certain words only occur in a limited number of contexts. - ⓞnor
@nor is that a reference to the text generated by computer, or a swipe at Jim Davis? ;-) - Karim
“One feature request that doesn't yet exist: Notification when users isn't running app - Apple wants to solve this problem. Wrong solution: background processes...”
This is the reason I'm still using Exchange - somebody has to come up with a server that gets the same job done (ie pervasive push over air, no manual syncing required) - Aydin Senkut
@Hutch: This comes from crunchgear: iphone 2.0 launches today - Andre Heinrichs
Surely this will include the iLife apps via .Mac for home users? Guess we'll see - Jason Kaneshiro
" On Microsoft’s side, Twitter needs to end the rivalry between Exchange and SQL Server on the delivery side, and (to be blunt about it) put Office and Windows in their place down the stack." Can someone explain what this sentence means? - Mark Trapp
Someone needs to by him ADD medication. This jumps so all over the place I was lost 3 paragraphs in. Steve needs to remember that not everyone knows what he's talking about and link more to context it...and actually keep on track. I still don't know how Microsoft and Twitter are related..indeed he just seems to switch from Microsoft to Twitter mid stream. "If that sounds like Twitter".....um no, Google and Microsoft and mesh cloud computing doesn't sound like twitter, or did I miss something??? :-) - Duncan Riley
A Steve Gillmor post :-)..."Well I saw a car crash today and this woman was screaming. FriendFeed is leaching off Twitter. Oh and the sky was blue outside Seattle today, does that sound like Microsoft? Blue sky is Plan B. Michael Arringtons house has grass" - Duncan Riley
You forgot to mention the terms "track," "stack," "space," and "toolset." - Mark Trapp
Maybe we should have asked him to post it in 140 chars or less. :) - Bwana McCall
@Duncan: Is Gillmor channeling Burroughs? Like reading Nova Express or anything in the cut-up genre. - AJ Kohn
After reading this two more times, I think I get it: he's making some sort of case about how Microsoft forced lots of people to figure out ways to abstract what they do to the point that they didn't need specific tools to do it, in the same way, everyone needs to figure out ways to abstract what they like about twitter to make it easy to transition to a new service should one arise. My question is: how many people really use Twitter in the way that Gillmor uses it? - Mark Trapp
+2 Duncan. Me? I'd like to see a panel discussion with Zuckerberg moderating Gillmor & Paula Abdul. I'll bring the popcorn. - Cyndy
Comment 5 on this post when someone suggests that the post doesn't make sense: Steve writes "It’s just you, Bob." - Duncan Riley
I saw that. But Michael follows on with "me too". How do you interpret "me too"? - Louis Gray
@Cyndy: LOL. Toss Sharon Stone in for a little more fun. - AJ Kohn
If only Hunter S Thompson was alive, he'd complete the panel. - Mark Trapp
@Mark You could always use Johnny Depp as a stand-in if he stays in character. Maybe some Gary Busey/Nick Nolte as well? - Cyndy
@louis funnier still is Bob's response "Okay Steve, thanks for clearing that up for me, then." - Duncan Riley
You can't plan for this kind of comedy - Bwana McCall
these just make my weekend. the word that comes to mind is flabbergast. - MG Siegler
Comment 21: He got Hillary involved again. Brilliant. - Alejandro S.
Does Gillmor have a background in the technologies he talks about? It seems like he latches onto technologies he gets 5% of, then attaches buzzwords, and gets his feathers ruffled when people don't know what he's talking about, much less do anything close to what he wants. It's not very clear from what he writes or says that even he knows what he wants, much less how to achieve it in a practical manner. - Mark Trapp
lol - i usually hide arrington related stuff in ff but the "babelfish fired up" by sprague really got me laughing, very funny - as for mark's question, yes steve has a background as a technology journalist of course but no he is not a practitioner of these technologies (mostly) vs someone like david berlind or john udell who both have practitioner backgrounds and tend to really understand of which they speak - i know all three and tend towards paying attention to david and john - mike "glemak" dunn
I could not make out what this article was trying to say - Andrew Smith
I think he's saying something like this: he likes to use Twitter, but he gets frustrated when it's down. So he wants someone (maybe Microsoft) to make a better one. That, and he needs an editor. - Charles Yang
Don't do it because... 1) You'll be uninformed and out of touch. 2) You'll be missed. - Louis Gray
I'm going to interpret Louis' cryptic remark as meaning that if you do it, you might like it. And we can't have that! - J. Phil
right there with ya, Susan... I may do the same this week... - Shawn L. Morrissey
Question: Why? If you feel overwhelmed, spend only 30 min or an hour or so. So much cool information comes out of the web daily that I'd hate to miss it. Block out the noise, and you truly can see some neat things every day. - Bartek Gniado
Awww how nice!! You guys would miss me (teary eyed smile!)... and YES way un-informed... Heck FriendFeed could go from ROOMs, to HOTELS to CITIES in only 3 days! yikes ...i'd have a gazillion posts, likes and comments to catchup on! impossible! - Susan Beebe
We're going camping tomorrow so won't be online hardly at all until Friday. Good job there's slandr and FFtogo ;) - Colin Walker
And I should point out I had my response up before Susan had hers. No points for speed? - Louis Gray
@Louis - your comment was up there like lightening... for a second there i thought my internet connx was slow or something...but you my dear LIVE in FF and are ON top of everything! super fast wow! - Susan Beebe
Once again, another instance where I like the question but think that I am in fact relaxing whilst leisurely surfing thru the noise of Friend Feed. I all ready found out two really cool things. In any case, enjoy the long weekend! - Mathew A. Koeneker via fftogo
OMG you guys know me too well already!! LOL this is funny! ok, maybe 3 hours instead of 3 days? huh? thoughts? - Susan Beebe
You can do it Susan! Just pretend that when you're not using the internet, no one else is either! Works for me, hehe ;P - Alana Taylor
@Alana - smart... just pretend...sorta like pretend when twitter is down...can't post anyway, right?! - Susan Beebe
Come on people, we have to stop once in a while!! :-) - Mary Anne Davis
NO! You'll be so disconnected! Just think of the unread items you'll have when returning. - Brandon Titus
laughing at all these comments and replies...there's a mixed feeling here; some say DO IT others say NO. And Phil Glockner has an excellent point, I "might like it"! - Susan Beebe
I went cold turkey for one day on Twitter. I think you should do it. It'll be a great experience to blog about. - Corvida
@Cordiva - what did you learn while off of twitter 1 full day? - Susan Beebe
Coming back to Google Reader after a weekend away is a daunting task. - Kevin Bondelli
I went cold turkey on my RSS reader for 30 days. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be. - Daniel Rothamel
I'm so used to my current Hyper-connected lifestyle that when I go to work and do without for half a day - I don't feel I can work to my fullest (despite doing more than most around me) - Jake Fudge via twhirl
wow, 3 weeks offline?! gotta check that out... - Susan Beebe
Cm'on people. I don't understand the comments of not being on. - Dave Ploch via twhirl
When folks talk like this, it sure sounds like an addiction. Of COURSE you can live without being hyperconnected. You can even live without RSS feeds, email, and even a phone. A long time ago, we used to call that a vacation - 2WheelTech via twhirl
To be HYPER-CONNECTED or NOT to be? hmmm... that's the question of the day. And yea, "vacation" sorta does come to mind.... I remember that word! - Susan Beebe
I'm not sure how I'd handle a holiday as it's been years since the last. I think this XKCD comic pretty much sums it up: http://xkcd.com/77/ :D - Jake Fudge
What is your take on efforts such as infochimps.org, theinfo.org and freebase? - Aviv
I had never seen the first two. They look interesting. How are the data sets edited and updated? Freebase doesn't interest me from what I can tell. They seem more focused on the relationships between data items than the data itself because of all the "semantic web" stuff, and most of it seems to be relatively uninteresting data from IMDB and other existing web sources. - Bret Taylor
Unfortunately they rarely get updated and most data sets cannot really be used reliably. theinfo.org is essentially an indie scraper's paradise and the intended use is controlled lab experiments. Perhaps a fresh, well-publicized effort will stand better chance. - Aviv
Google already has access to at least 5 of the data sets you listed... sure, licensed and all, but at the end of the day shouldn't face great difficulties bending arcane usage restrictions. Let developers play with the data inside the cloud... - Aviv
Right. The big obstacle would still be the whole issue of usage restrictions and copyrights, and as you said in your last point, it won't work without the backing of big companies. Developers can have access to such valuable data sets today - simply by scraping. It's far from ideal, but it works, and it can be kept up-to-date with extra effort. But then how do we go about using the data - and actually telling people about it? :) - Aviv
@Bret you should talk to Freebase. This is precisely what they're trying to do. It may not look how you want it to now, but I think a conversation between the two companies makes a whole lot of sense. - Carla Thompson
"The most important part of an environment that encourages innovation is low barriers to entry. The moment a contract and lawyers are involved, you inherently restrict the set of people who can work on a problem to well-funded companies with a profitable product. Likewise, companies that sell data have to protect their investments, so permitted uses for the data are almost always explicitly enumerated in contracts." -what memories ;) - David
"Perhaps the only thing that can destroy the ecosystem here is the U.S. government going out of its way to mess everything up. In particular I’ve been concerned about H1B visa quotas that severely limit the number of foreign workers that can come here legally." - Clare Dibble
The little voice in my head laughs when it hears about illegal immigration because my experience is with talented people taking great pains to be here legally and the government not making it easy. - Clare Dibble
"The reason you need to care is that gap in the middle. Every day, millions of businesses get stuck in that gap. They either move to the right in search of the masses or move to the left in search of authenticity, but they compromise. And they get stuck with neither.... A delta blues guy who plays for tiny audiences in Memphis is in the sweet spot of the passionate. John Mayer is in the sweet spot of pop. Both are great guitarists, neither is too edgy or too trite. Both made a choice. But there are a thousand guitarists who are neither. They're afraid to embrace one curve or the other and end up with neither." - Bret Taylor
Pound for pound, Seth is the smartest guy on the Internet and a great guy, too. Even though he doesn't allow comments on his blog, he is actually ALL about the conversation... - Robert Seidman
Same could be said about Green Day, I read an article about them in NME and they constantly look for the authenticity. Searching for the passion, the sound that gives them the authenticity. Yes they have their loyal fan base that will buy two million but in going back to rediscover themselves with side projects and groups they come forward with popular sound that appeals to the masses! - Joe Dawson
"The price of major appliances has been flat over the last year. Furniture is 1 percent less expensive. A decade ago, a basic four-door Toyota Corolla LE cost $16,018, according to the company. The 2009 basic model costs $16,650, and it’s a safer, more powerful, more fuel-efficient car than its predecessor... To top it all off, most people don’t buy any of these items very often. “People tend to remember things they do frequently,” says Stephen Cecchetti, an economist at Brandeis University who studies inflation. “And what do you buy more frequently than gas and food?”" - Bret Taylor
I had a long discussion with the TA of an econ class in college about how CPI actually overstated inflation (because consumers would adjust their basket of goods to favor cheaper items). I remember this mainly because I had a crush on her -- really smart, and hot too! If you're reading this, Miss TA, email me! I'll buy you a basket of goods! - Jim Norris
Jim: A basket of the quality goods, or the cheaper items? - Kevin Fox
"Britain’s biggest commercial television business — the original “license to print money” — is about to be overtaken by an American upstart which only arrived in the UK in 2001.
That should be no surprise. As best as I can tell, Google sells more advertising than any company in the world. This year Morgan Stanley estimates Google’s total advertising revenue will be $21.9 billion." - Paul Buchheit
Can you actually consider what Scoble does a job? Hmm. ;) - Philip Evans
I have given Robert a lot of grief over his overly long and badly (or un-) edited videos in the past, but this one was very interesting to watch and really well done. - Frederic
Working at Xbox is the coolest job in the world - Ryan
"Jay-Z plans to depart his longtime record label, Def Jam, for a roughly $150 million package with the concert giant Live Nation that includes financing for his own entertainment venture, in addition to recordings and tours for the next decade. The pact, expected to be finalized this week, is the most expansive deal yet from Live Nation, which has angled to compete directly with the industry’s established music labels in a scrum over the rights to distribute recordings, sell concert tickets, market merchandise and control other aspects of artists’ careers." - Bret Taylor
You might have seen my feelings on this stuff when they announced the U2 deal. I love it, if they can start owning tix. Otherwise, their margins are shite. - Sacca
The beginning of the end for LiveNation - if these are retainer agreements what's the incentive to tour or endorse. Mark my words this will not fly in 5 years. - Wayne Schulz
When I talked to Bret today he mentioned that they want to see what outside developers will do with the API - I don't think FF will develop its own desktop apps - Frederic
I fully expect Adobe Air apps to come out of these APIs, and all kinds of crazy widgets. - Adam Posey
If I hadn't decided to quit doing dev I would be following this news very closely - ah well will just have to wait for a good non AIR Windows app come out for it - Steven Hodson
+1 for wanting a FF AIR app that can just hang out on my desktop and keep me up-to-date. - Charles Hudson
Unlike Twitter, which has very simple text messages, FF has rich messages with photos, videos, links, comments, etc. You'd have to replicate large parts of a browser to make a standalone app. So maybe Mozilla Prism is the way to go. - Amit Patel
Founders will soon be household names at current growth rate. Scoble is everywhere (in the forefront of developing tech news). - Alex Hammer
http://blog.programmableweb.co... "This service is available for use only by individuals and non-commercial organizations that use the service in ways consistent with the historic Christian understanding of doctrine and the Bible, as summarized in the following foundational doctrines..." - Alex Gawley
I resisted until I saw your post, Mike. Now w/ search + friends + ease-of-commenting, looks like friendfeed is turning out to be "twitter+facebook on steroids"! - Mario Sundar
They are so elegant and friendly to add new features. - Martin Añazco
I discovered this last night. I am slowly moving my Google Reader feeds here. - Russellreno
too bad discussions can not be centralized - poorbird
man how opposite can a review and attitude be from Duncan's offering. - Steven Hodson
I thought I don't need any more 'connect app' - but this is awesome! Loving it - Anol
The real power to friendfeed is that people can define their "web footprint" as folks add and remove services you don't need to signup and friend them on a service you might not be interested in using. - Sean Reiser
Certainly for me, FriendFeed has been a destination site for several weeks already. What I like about it is that I can now aggregate the digital lifestream of several people from whom I get my latest news on the web. - Christopher Yeo
Hey Bret, I'm Cathy B at Seesmic. Would love to talk with you about partnership. You can find me at cathy@seesmic.com, I'm cathybrooks on Twitter or the old fashioned way at 415-250-2382. Hope to hear from you! - Cathy Brooks
Cathy: will give you a call later today. - Bret Taylor
Internationalization is still one of the most painful phases of every product I've worked on. Timezones, doublebytes, RTL, all those things remind me of unpleasant times. - Rose
Drupal 6 has some amazing localization features that make going international a much less painful process for communities using that platform. - Rob Safuto
Wow, have to say I'm surprised at all the negativity....how could someone *not* like friendfeed? - Benjamin Golub
Don't sweat Duncan Riley. He's like Mikey from the old life cereal commercial. He hates everything. In any case, I don't utilize services just cause the cool kids are there. I utilize them because they are useful. And FriendFeed is a useful tool for keeping track of 'people' as opposed to just subscribing to a blog. More at http://blog.awakenedvoice.com/.... - Rob Safuto
"As the chart I pulled from FriendFeed demonstrates, nearly half of all entries from my friends come from Twitter." Truth be told if half the entries I'd see here were from Twitter I wouldn't like Friendfeed either. So I guess it depends on your subscriptions (though of course it will be improved once the global-mutings-of-a-type-of-feed are implemented on the user settings page). - Philipp Lenssen
I like FriendFeed for the fact that it is introducing me to more people with the "friend of" feature. It's extending the conversation to a wider group of people. - Steven Melfi
I voted Yes, Friendfeed wins hands down on coverage of services, UI, and performance and most of all the private commenting community is rich, you are really on to something here, all the inane YouTube style comments are gone from here because you actually know the people or have few degrees of separation - this is a great product - Aneto
Duncan Riley signed up for one day. It takes more than a few minutes to get FriendFeed. But he's TC's resident grump. - Louis Gray
Can we impose a rule that you can't review services like FriendFeed unless you've been using the service for at least a week? Duncan brings up a few decent points but it reminds me of all of those MSM journalists who reviewed Twitter based on a quick glance at the Twitter home page. - Mike Doeff
I have a truly marvelous point-by-point debunking of this post which this margin is too narrow to contain. - j1m
"Can we impose a rule that you can't review services like FriendFeed unless you've been using the service for at least a week?" I think that's hardly feasible for a blog with multiple posts per day... imagine the blogger having to use dozens of crappy services throughout the week (we know FF isn't crappy, but some other services may be)! Of course, even if you use something just for a day you should follow your instinct if you think the tool needs longer evaluation, and disclose that in the post. Otherwise, I think what's more feasible is to write a follow-up once you used a service longer, and/ or integrate comments into the post from people who used it for longer already. (Some blogs don't update their post with comment feedback though, which I think is unfortunate.) - Philipp Lenssen
PS: On the other hand, there may well be a blogging niche for someone only actually doing a couple of used-for-a-week reviews per week. It would not be a news blog but a review blog. Hmm. It's easier if you are a niche blog focusing only on one company, I guess, because then you can take the time to use the company's tool for much longer stretches of time. - Philipp Lenssen
The poll's a little disappointing. The choices equate to 'I haven't heard of FriendFeed' 'I like FriendFeed' and 'I might try FriendFeed' but the results are framed as 'FriendFeed is not good, good, or undecided'. Sigh. - Kevin Fox
Still, it's an honest comment. Taking the devil's advocate stance can force people to view their choices in a different light. However, putting the survey at the end of such a blatantly negative article is definitely going to bias the outcome... if you could ever consider the survey "valid" in the first place. - Steve Lynch
Eh, you win some you lose some. You guys are lucky we covered you twice. I'm sure nobody here would be complaining if I had put that poll at the end of my post:http://www.techcrunch.com/2008... - Erick Schonfeld
In other words, take both posts together, and there's your balance. Anyway, blogs are not about balance. they are about strongly held convictions. And Duncan keeps us honest at TC with his. - Erick Schonfeld
"You guys are lucky we covered you twice" What stones you have! Are you so deluded that you think TechCrunch can make or break a company with a blog post? - Rob Safuto
I'm not complaining; I just care deeply about quantitative research methodologies. Anyway, one post was "FriendFeed News, here's an analysis" and the other was "FriendFeed sucks, I'm trying to stir up controversy." - Steve Lynch
Duncan's post actually reminded me of a Paul Saffo Long Now lecture on predictions: it's always a safe bet to take the other side when people are proclaiming the Next Big Thing. Look how it's driving traffic to his article. - Steve Lynch
I know I'm probably in the minority, but I actually like using FriendFeed by itself. I just like posting things from the web and discussing it with comments. - Chris White
When people start complaining about you, think you have arrived - Varun Mahajan
I think friendfeed is great for sharing, but it's also a good way of reliving your web history. I like going back and seeing the links I have posted, especially where they have images. - David Tapper
my tiny little gift for FF - bookmarklet in Java, put into your browser bookmarks and use for sharing, tetsed on FireFox, it works! javascript:location.href='http://friendfeed.com/share?ur...) - silpol
