Seriously considering building one of these, but I suspect I should add some kind of guards behind the blades. I'm a little clumsy to ride that as-is. - Harvey Simmons
I think that's a great idea. It doesn't look like it would be very difficult to build. - Corie Allison
Looks like it has a functioning brake and derailleur as well - no reverse though -- maybe a big negative - Brian Sullivan
On further examination -- no cable to the derailleur - Brian Sullivan
love it! i'd totally take it on some sweet jumps - benton yetman
I'm pretty sure I could get the same results by putting my foot in the garbage disposal whilst balancing a sledgehammer on my chin. I gotta get one of those! - XDpaul
I totally want one! Be green *and* exercise, what's not to like! - zoblue
Nice find Corie! I was on vacation from FriendFeed when this came out... - Mitchell Tsai
Google Calendar + Remember the Milk + ActiveDesktop = geektastic awesomeness - Derrick Burns
great ideas I never thought of doing that before might be cool to mix and match a pretty picture and one of these other alternitives - Charles Rice via twhirl
I'll stick with your nightime shot of the Whitehouse (currently parked on the big design display) and the Ester Dyson shot (on the MBPro). Thanks btw for open sourcing your photos! :) - Gerald Buckley
Great find... just got started on the GTD path, so this + your last WorkTV segment were very timely. THX again - Jericho
Active Desktop FTW. I've put myself together a tabbed page via Yahoo! UI tab view library, with things like Airset, remember the milk, various igoogle gadgets inc password generator, a tab with another set of tabs inside it for webmin for various servers, a tab for phpMyAdmin, one for site company wiki, one for company trac server, one for a tiddlywiki 'scratchpad'. All of this accessible with just two keys (WIN + D) = productivity++. - Mat
I'm not a fan of wallpapers. I generally have black or some cool nasa image, currently of a hurricane from the space station. I do like to use an app called sideslide on the pc, for most of the same reason people put icons on their desktop. - shawn
Finally proper use of the desktop! yeah...cool idea - Susan Beebe
That was my reaction too - and I am genuinely surprised, because I was under the impression that a great majority of Google developers use Macs. Perhaps they are all running XP in Parallels? - Jonathan Beckett
So...Google made a Second life? PS Home? Er.... Hmmm..... - Bwana McCall
Ok, judging by the avatars available...I'm not welcome unless I have an afro :/ - Bwana McCall
I still can't resist trying it on a PC, but do get a Mac version soon Google Lively! - Sudha Jamthe
Anyone figure out how to get it to work with Parallels? - Mark McKay
@jonathan beckett: If this were true, why isn't there not even a official tool for simply syncing iCal with Gcal ? I don't think so. And the mac devs only write programs to make money. That's the way i see it, and the reason why i switched back to win. Sorry. - Ryo
Ryo, I know you're subscribed to me, but... that was a grossly inaccurate statement you might want to retract or back up with solid facts. I have hundreds of free (and open source) Mac apps on my system. They didn't get developed out of thin air. - l0ckergn0me
@l0ckergn0me: The fact is i was looking for a functioning free tool for syncing iCal to gcal... nothing. I was looking for a free alternative to textexpander...nothing. I found that instantly for Win. (google free download, and Texter at lifehacker). There is a lack of free (and especially open source) Software on Mac. Just look at the software directorys. I had a mac (and still have) for many years, so it's simply experience. Maybe you are looking for other software than me, but I saw no code. - Ryo
Ryo - Plaxo. Which, for whatever it's worth, is available for OS X and Windows. Can't get much more free than that - with options to spare. There are plenty of alternatives to Textexpander - I've seen 'em, and I've recommended 'em. I just stuck with Textexpander because I got 'er on a discount in one of those bundle deals. Lack of free software?! Are you *REALLY* going to go down that path with me, Ryo? :) Really? REALLY!? - l0ckergn0me
Luckly for Mac users,Google lively sucks! - Chris Qie via twhirl
I view this as a feature, not an oversight. - Chris Baskind
@l0ckergn0me: I tried Plaxo. It's terrible for only syncing a calender. And it's no app, it's an online service. Host my personal data on a 3rd server only for syncing? no way... There are NO free alternatives to Textexpander. I did go that way, bought an Alienware, and now I have plenty of OSS and free software. Don't try to tell me about that. Not even GIMP is running native by now. Only X11-Version. But you can BUY one for 30 Bucks. what a shame... - Ryo
Welcome to the Mac. Other things that won't work here include many government websites and that shiny shelf of games at Best Buy. - David Chartier
Waiting for countless Moby Dick references. Go. - Shawn Farner
@rahsheen - agreed. switched it to "Twitter draws closer to harpooning the Fail Whale" - MG Siegler
i've definitely enjoyed the increased uptime. but they shouldn't even announce progress until we can reliably go back say ten pages into older tweets. I'm also frustrated by the never ending error messages from my twitter clients (twhirl on my pc and twitterific on my mac) saying i've exceeded 70 requests per hour. nevertheless, i am a bit excited that constant downtime may be a thing of the past. - mike
@mike - yeah i thought it was a bit early to trumpet a success at first too (mission: accomplished anyone?) but then again those are some pretty solid numbers and twitter did kick ass yesterday with its 30 minute maintenance in a two hour window. - MG Siegler
All they need to do is move their offices to Nantucket. - Jonathan Beckett
Great title! Twitter does need to stop blowing so badly. - wrecks
Does this improvement correlate to the addition of Pivotal Labs to the Twitter team? - AJ Kohn
Tell me that headline is suppose to be ironic:-) What happens when you fill the blowhole on a whale?...think about it - Duncan Riley
This will be a photograph in the top 10 of many future lists. - Andrew Baron
Explanation: "In January 2007, people from Perth, Australia gathered on a local beach to watch a sky light up with delights near and far. Nearby, fireworks exploded as part of Australia Day celebrations. On the far right, lightning from a thunderstorm flashed in the distance. Near the image center, though, seen through clouds, was the most unusual sight of all: Comet McNaught. The photogenic comet was so bright that it even remained visible though the din of Earthly flashes. Comet McNaught has now returned to the outer Solar System and is now only visible with a large telescope. The above image is actually a three photograph panorama digitally processed to reduce red reflections from the exploding firework." - Andrew Baron
Wow, 153 people 'liked this" so far and almost 30 comments. - Andrew Baron
Absolutely incredible shot! Then again some of the best shots on the web come from NASA, National Geographic, Discovery and, of course, Hawk :) - Charlie Anzman
Not to be too cynical but that shot seems to good to be true -- I wonder if there is more processing going on than the text seems to admit. - Brian Sullivan
I'm going to side with Brian here. What is right: Comet McNaught was that bright in WA (I use to live there), but I checked my attempted pics, they predate this by over a week. I'm sure the comet was only that bright for less than a week. Second, the main Australia Day fireworks occur in Perth City...which isn't near a beach . Maybe it's Leighton Beach with Fremantle to the left...but it doesn't seem right. I did check the weather records though, there was a storm that night, and it's in the right direction - Duncan Riley
I do hope it is real though...and I forgot how wonderful the environment there is - Duncan Riley
Duncan, last year both Fremantle and I believe Hillarys held their own fireworks for Australia Day. I myself was trying to guess the location this morning. Being a regular on Leighton beach though it doesn't look familiar so I was thinking it may have been taken to the north of Hillarys. It also made me very nostalgic for Perth :) - Penny
At 302 likes, the #1 most liked post of all time on FriendFeed. Antti Kemppainen Photography - Here's Antti's original picture http://jkemppainen.com/antti/i... Antti's e-mail is kemppaisantti@gmail.com, and you can scroll through Antti's other photos. - Mitchell Tsai
how about IM for brainstorming? I think it works.
Also, IM=instant notifications.
And what about SMS? some people broke up or got fired via SMS ;-) - Davide D'Incau via fftogo
I think this is also why it's not an either/or proposition between Twitter and FriendFeed. Twitter imo will have broader appeal as a simple way to send one to many messages. FF appeals (perhaps with deeper engagement levels) to those who want to easily carry the conversation/discussion further. Both are great for personal branding -- hence their adoption by the technorati. - Jason Goldberg
That's what I've been trying to say (not that it's anyone's fault though) -- that TM is what it is, and its strong point is not speed. It might never catch identi.ca as a top story, but if it got acquired by Microsoft or Google or TechCrunch, it would zoom right to the top and stay there. It's the nature of news, it starts out small and as it grows it settles on a few stories and repeats them over and over until something new starts, and we start over again. - Dave Winer
That's why I started TechJunk after doing the same thing for political news. Not to strangle the market (which is what TM/TC does, again no one's fault) but to act as a pied piper. As with blogging the way to get around group think is with individual judgment. Pretty soon the flaming will start, btw. :-) - Dave Winer
This is what I mean when I say that TechMeme has changed. Gabe is chasing Google News with TechMeme now, not covering what regular people care about. Although the YouTube story that's on top right now is pretty important for us to know about and care about too. I think this is why I look at FriendFeed AND Techmeme. If you do that you get a good view of all stories. - Robert Scoble
Why do you need to write about Identi.ca on Twitter and not the other way around? - paul mooney
i didnt see it hit my google reader feed at all, only on friendfeed. @scobleizer "regular people" don't care about it at all. - Jeremy Toeman
Dave's comment on speed and TM seems spot on -- I just looked at TM for the first time in week -- all the top stories are old (to the extent that they have been talked about on FF and maybe Twitter if it were ever running for hours and sometimes days) - Brian Sullivan
Scoble, maybe its conscious on Gabe's part or maybe the algorithm now does what all human beings do when put in the same position. It happened in the 90s when the computer press only reported three stories: Apple is dead, Microsoft is evil and Java is the future. If you tried to say blogging is the future and Windows is dead, and there is new Mac software, and Java makes lousy UIs and will be used server-side only, and check out Flash, no one would have written it up. - Dave Winer
You can fill in the blanks on what the big stories are in the late part of this decade (oy it's already the late part of the decade). When you look back ten years from now, it will be clear (probably) that Google has already peaked, and what was Viacom again? Scoble will be the new Master of the Universe, and TechCrunch will be about as interesting as News.com and Wired are today. - Dave Winer
Now will Twitter be the main pillar of the new Internet, or will something like Apache be that? People like me believe it's the Apache model that's likely to galvanize this. Twitter needs to fade into the background the same way Apache did and the same way blogging software did. But Twitter is doing everything they can to be sure they are front and center, which creates this conflict. In March they *were* starting to fade into the background, and great new things were happening there, esp in politics. - Dave Winer
Maybe it is because it is so slow and this morning I can't log in. - Warner Crocker
Early yesterday I was getting a downloadable file rather than the site and couldn't register until later in the afternoon. I couldn't even go to profiles without being asked to download a file. Very strange. This morning I stopped using it because the site was too slow. - LPH
identica.ca seems to be a direct clone of twitter - even down to the preformance issues... - Tom Quinn
There is no doubt that a new site like identi.ca will suffer growing pains and performance problems. The big question in my mind is whether or not the community will contribute something to this open source project and try to make it better or just piss and moan about it. - Mike Doeff
They have a weird bug - their page redirects to a sub domain of their company, where the Identi.ca-code, but the links go back to Identi.ca, but form data isn't sent back to the company-sub-domain when they redirect you back. If you change the form-actions with Firebug, everything works. - sebmos
Techmeme should start linking FF discussion threads as "official" links on stories. They are frequently more interesting than what the other bloggers have to say about the same story. Not sure exactly how to do this but Gabe's pretty smart and I'm sure could figure out a way to do it. - Thomas Hawk
@Thomas...ahhhhhhhhh..brilliant idea !! Thats extacly what techmeme s/do and not only with FF butt other forum driven sites too - Peter Dawson
because techmeme are facists.. only a little though - Tyler Gillies
thats a great idea thomas - take away more from the people who create the content - love it! - Allen Stern
Oh my Godwin! I've been waiting nearly three years for someone to make such a comparison. Thank you Tyler! - Gabe Rivera
who is godwin, i dont see his or her comment? - Allen Stern
We all create the content Allen. Techmeme already links digg submissions to stories sometimes. I find the conversations at FF more interesting and mature frequently than the conversations at digg. It would seem a good fit to me. I'm sure Gabe could figure it out if he thought it added value. - Thomas Hawk
Ok Thomas thanks for your clarification. I am just hoping I get a lead sometime this week. - Allen Stern
Thomas: agreed FF threads tend to be be better than corresponding digg threads. But the problem with FF is the commentary around a post is typically scattered over multiple threads and often tricky to associate by machine (note Duncan's tweet above lacks a link). It's a partially solvable problem, but probably not worth it just to get FF comments right now. - Gabe Rivera
I never figured out what identi.ca was (Twitter clone? something else?) - but I made an account. :) - Don MacAskill
Funny.I got info about Identi.ca from Techmeme.You? - Igor Poltavskiy
Even I'VE never referred to Techmeme as "fascists." @Allen, I'm assuming Seth Godwin? may have been on his blog. - Cyndy
cyndy isnt that seth godin? im confused now - Allen Stern
Cyndy, read what Gabe wrote again. Gabe is talking to Tyler, who compared Techmeme to fascism. - Dan Kaplan
That's what I meant, Allen. Never mind. I'm confusing myself just replying. :) - Cyndy
Oh how I love FriendFeed! I've really really enjoyed reading this thread. I will now post a summary of what we've seen so far. - Gabe Rivera
SYNOPSIS: identi.ca, which almost topped Techmeme, should have topped Techmeme, because it's open source and therefore not just another buggy Twitter clone. This illustrates the problem with Techmeme, which TechJunk will help fix, and site owner Dave Winer should know because he knew 10 years ago what would be true and important today in tech. "Regular people" don't care about what's on Techmeme, but do, and should. (That last point was argued by the same person.) Techmeme may or may not be analogous to the Third Reich. Mike Godwin may or may not be Seth Godin. - Gabe Rivera
If it didn't sting so much that Synopsis would be hilarious - Nathan Eckenrode
Identi.ca is cool - but the GPL 3.0 license dramatically limits its usefulness as a base for other services to build from. - Soulhuntre via twhirl
this thread should've ended with the synopsis. nothing else will possibly add further value. including this comment. - Jeremy Toeman
@gaberivera's synopsis just gave me my first actual belly laugh of the day; and still giggling a little. Thanks, Gabe. - Merredith Branscombe
Gabe, I love the synopsis. So, you were comparing Seth Godin to the Third Reich right? ;) - Jackson Miller
Jackson, no -- not a fair comparison because people are still allowed to *comment* on the Third Reich. - Merredith Branscombe
oh if there is reference to Godwins law - then who are the Nazi's and who is Hitler on this thread ?? :)- - Peter Dawson
I think in this case TechMeme = Fascists = Nazis, which would make Gabe Hitler. (Disclaimer: This comment in no way, shape or form refelcts the opinion of the commenter and is simply a point of clarification.) - Ken Sheppardson
Why is this supposedly a big story? Someone whips together a PHP app backed by a database and open sources it... woo hoo... How many people commenting on this or claiming it's a big deal have contributed to an open soure project? How many have run one that's gotten any traction? I've done and continue to do both. I think you all wet yourselves over the term without understanding when it is and isn't valuable. Tell me what value open source has in a web service? None. Gimme a break... this is rightly a non-story. - Jason Carreira via twhirl
This FF made me laugh. I'm glad I advertised on TechMeme. Everyone is looking at TechMeme to try to figure out the algorithm and whether or not Gabe is evil. :-) - Robert Scoble
Why built another website? There already is Pownce, Jaiku, and Plurk. - Andrew Bashore via twhirl
How long before @SteveRubel declares FF dead and identi.ca the new google? ;D - Gez
I'm just curious how the distributed part works, how do I connect my install of laconica with yours? So that I can see your feed on the friends timeline of my install. Or is that not how it is supposed to work? - Frans
This is the spec for OpenMicroBlogging: http://openmicroblogging.org/ I don't think it works like that, Frans. The idea behind it, as far as my understanding goes, is that there's a protocol to allow you to write to identi.ca's data store, and eventually identi.ca will support other microblogging services that use the OMB protocol, but it's not federation. - Mark Trapp
I'm pretty sure everyone's wishing, out of thin air, something that identi.ca is not. All it's really doing is implementing a standard like REST, JSON, or whatever; it's just standardizing the fields so you don't have to guess or rely on a specific API for each microblogging service. I guess you could federate based off of it being interoperable, but it's nowhere near that. For one, identi.ca is the first service that I know of that even implements OMB. - Mark Trapp
Bwana - You do a good job explaining the potential on your blog. Thanks - Charlie Anzman
Suppose you have an account on server A and you want to follow somebody who created an account on server B. You can subscribe to the remote user, and your server (A) will contact server B to set up a remote sub. After that when the user on server B posts an item, it's also posted back to your server. Sync/decentralization is handled on a user-by-user basis. - Ken Sheppardson
I'm sure Laconica looks very much like Twitter did two years ago when it was just starting out. Simple SQL tables on the back end, basic UI functionality, no API, etc. Twitter's had two years to work on this full time, and they haven't been worried at all about building a distributed network. I'm all for open source, but I'm skeptical. It's not obvious to me that a community-based effort can catch and pass a venture-funded, full-time team with two years of operational experience. - Ken Sheppardson
Ken, you highlight two huge misconceptions of this hype: 1) it's not federated yet. It's not even close to federated. and 2) it's not a community project. To make changes you either a) have to get identi.ca to buy into it and push it to http://identi.ca, or b) fork the project and run your own instance. This isn't the power of the internet working against the machine. This is a locked-in cathedral style development. Only one party has access to the final release (the server on which identi.ca resides) - Mark Trapp
Yay Mark! Yes, yes, yes. While anyone can GET the source code, any major changes have to come from a main hub for separate instances to work together. There's always this misconception of Open Source that it's this completely democratic process and anyone can just do whatever they want. - Cyndy
Exactly, Cyndy! You have a huge problem open sourcing a software-as-a-service, especially one that needs to interact with all other copies of itself: there is no way to run a bazaar style development without compromising the security of the main distribution points. It REQUIRES a single development team controlling the project scope and direction. Maybe the guys that run identi.ca are the next Linus Torvalds or the next rms or esr, but the law of very large numbers suggests they probably aren't. - Mark Trapp
What does that mean for everyone else? The exact same scenario as Twitter. One development team who contributes the vast bulk of the code that makes it into the final release. You're still at the mercy of the design decisions they make, and the preliminary reports about the nature of the code does not bode well. - Mark Trapp
I definatly think that Identi.ca is extremely slow in loading - Chacha via twhirl
AKA this is not a big deal :) This is the argument I was trying to make earlier but couldn't. This isn't a revolution, it's just a company using everyone else to try and improve their Twitter clone. - Shawn Farner via twhirl
After the server move (if your DNS has caught up), the speeds have improved. It's day 2. I'm treating it as such. - Bwana McCall
I'm confused. Where in my article or in these comments is anyone calling this the next big thing? Why are there so many quick to shoot it down? Seems like a lot of assumptions are being made. - Bwana McCall
i'm not a fan of being forced to accept creative commons licensing where my content is concerned. - Wolfsbayne
Mark, I give you a +10. I felt like I was spitting into the wind on this one. - Cyndy
Bwana, I'm quick to shoot it down because a PHP app with a database back-end is going to end up as the same mess as Twitter. Adding the shiny "open source" tag doesn't make it any cooler OR more stable. It just makes Dave Winer happy to jump on the bus. - Cyndy
@wolfsbayne you aren't being forced- you don't _have_ to use the service, CC is part of the feature set of the service- some people prefer freedom of content- and as always you still have the freedom of choice. - Nathan Eckenrode
You're assuming way too much. My article's tone was simply to watch it because it's the first major effort that I know of that's open sourced and is testing the waters of OpenMicroBlogging. The point is not whether it'll fail or not, the point is that is taking a different direction. I stated many times that I don't believe open source or federation will automatically equal success. It's ok to use it and not be gung ho that it's going to kill anything. - Bwana McCall
And yes if Dave Winer is happy, it'll get attention. Whether that's right or wrong is irrelevant to my point. - Bwana McCall
@nathan i think it was implied by my post that i wasn't going to use it because of CC. thanks for telling me i don't have to use it. lol! - Wolfsbayne
I think the "Replies" feature is out now. Time to update your article. :) - Shivanand Velmurugan
Wasn't sinclair 1st out the gate with a hand calculatorusing ? - Dennis Howlett via twhirl
showmoney: yeah, this is Bill and Dave's offices in Palo Alto, CA (HP's headquarters). They've kept the offices just as they were when Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard occupied them. - Robert Scoble
Isn't it a bit creepy that these offices are kept like shrines? - Frank McPherson
Frank: no. They are historical offices. If they could be moved they'd be sitting in the Smithsonian. - Robert Scoble
"The telco says a no-commitment version of the phone will be available for $599 and $699, though it looks like that will come after the initial launch" [I'm surprised they even are allowing a no commitment version of the iPhone. I'm happy that they are and the price range sounds around the same as unlocked Nokias I bought from overseas (without a commitment)] - Bwana McCall via Bookmarklet
As an existing AT&T customer, I'm happy to be getting any break at all. They could very easily told us "non-eligable" people to pay up if we wanted the new iPhone. - Ben Vaughan via twhirl
How are they defining "early upgrader" and why is the pricing 399/499 for them? - Mike Doeff
wow. nearly $100 bucks a month.. the whole bs of paying $15 for text messages is just that..data is data - Got80s
I've done this on my windows pc with shoutcast, it gets boring when you have no music to play. :P - Eddie Ringle
I think this is a good idea and I suggested it to my brother who runs a niche magazine to have an online radio station attached to his website. Reinforces his brand. - Andrea Baker
Patrick, my son, told the commissioner that if he tries to censor the Internet it'll make him just want to seek it out even more. I shared with him how smart the kids are and how they will get around any blocks you try to put in place. Patrick told him he turned on all of his own parental controls just to see what they did on his Mac. He said they made his computer unusable. I love that Patrick was able to stick up for his ideas with the FCC Commissioner. Afterwards Patrick said to me "I hate it when people try to censor what I see." - Robert Scoble
Putting this in my "Unexpected sentence of the day" file. - John Craft
Wonder how the commissioner reacted... :) - Vinodh
The commissioner is trying to protect kids from porn. I told him that Patrick and a group of kids visited whitehouse.com (back then it was a porn site) because a teacher told them not to (that was when he was seven years old). I told him that wasn't the surprising part, but that one of the kids knew how to delete the cookies and history in the browser so that the parents wouldn't be able to see that they had visited that site. - Robert Scoble
Vinodh: when my son said you won't be able to stop it, the commissioner said "we've got to try." - Robert Scoble
Thank you Scobleson, it may get though their thick skulls one day! - Dave Pook
We are smarter than you realize. Wonder why Patrick ain't on Twitter/FF? - Yuvi
When will they ever explain WHY they've got to try, especially with a living, breathing example of why it won't work right in front of them? - Rick Powell
I am a firm believer in getting the government out of the censorship biz, so don't take this wrong. Generalizing this to everything is flawed, however. It is true that kids are more than smart enough to find ways to do all sorts of things we probably should discourage them from doing - so just because controlling something is hard does not ALWAYS mean we should give up trying. - Soulhuntre
why does the govt think it needs to take the place of good parenting, before the internet kids found their parents playboys - what's the govt suggestion that? - clarke thomas
I don't mean answering these questions in terms of feasibility or technology. I mean asking the basic question as to why regulating content for particular users or any user is the government's business at all? And sorry, asking that question is what a conservative would do. A fundamentalist would not see the point of asking that question at all, and so to answer your implied question, that's the reason why he would never give up trying. - Rick Powell
@Soulhuntre - I agree - there are areas where I think censorship is good. But porn didn't do any harm to anybody, so why censor? The best thing to fight negative consequences of porn shown to children (like thinking that sex is, well, like in porn movies) is to tell them about it. Censorship won't change anything, it makes it much more interesting. (I like Austria's law that punishes denial of the holocaust, on the other hand. We are able to control Neo-Nazis violence pretty well through that.) - sebmos
And yes I think that fundamentalists are currently in charge of this administration. - Rick Powell
