Ok, now I'm paranoid that there is a giant Eddie Murphy body somewhere, awaiting only its head before it rises up and crushes Manhattan. - Bruce Williams
what? no more unicorns and children's dreams...? - Kirk Skodis via twhirl
Yeah, I had to reduce the children's dreams and unicorns rating on this one. - Steve Isaacs
Are you sure that's what's happening? Twitterific for the iPhone seems by default to display a person's real name rather than his Twitter nickname. At first I was seeing a bunch of names in my list I didn't recognize, but that's only because I was used to seeing nicknames there and didn't know my contacts by their real names. - Chris Johnson
I double clicked unfamiliar names and it brought up their Twitter page with the "follow" button live. Weird. - Steve Isaacs
No, wait. That's not right either. That's a completely different set. Not sure what happened to the one you posted. Guess it got deleted? - Mark Douglass
hmmm lemme check my history update: i keep getting houston, even from my history. i was JUST looking at it earlier. bizarre.... regardless his site and his Flickr site is amazing - Mona N
"In several lengthy interviews, Mr. Batebi provided an unusual window on Iran under its ruling clerics. His alienation began at age 9, when he witnessed a deadly stoning. He rose to fame in 1999, appearing on the cover of The Economist magazine holding the bloody T-shirt of a fellow student demonstrator — an image he first saw when a judge slapped it before him and declared, “You have signed your own death sentence.” Finally, after a decade of political combat, he reluctantly decided to abandon Iran for an uncertain exile." - Bret Taylor via Bookmarklet
Iran's tank man - I can't believe he survived and is here now. Considering my own father was arrested, imprisoned and then escaped from his home country only to never go back, I have nothing but extreme empathy for the people of Iran and what they have had to experience not just since the revolution, but with the Shah and beforehand. So much misunderstanding in the west, as we dont realize that the large majority of the world dont live with the same freedoms we enjoy and instead we demonize them as groups - Nik Cubrilovic
I wish you hadn't posted this. I installed Shazam and have been obsessed with it for hours. I'm sitting in Starbucks right now having Shazam identify one song after another. It does a good job, even when there's a lot of background noise. - Chris Johnson
Have you tried Modomi yet? The humming/singing recognition is incredible. - Brandon Titus
@Naor my W810i has it, launched Q4 2006, so at least since then. Cingular/AT&T has also had an app store since ~2004. Apple hasn't done anything new on those two, just integrated them better. - xero
I bet you can turn that off if you go Premium. Frigging annoying. - Kirk Skodis via twhirl
I have premium. No setting I can see. - Steve Isaacs
Mine (premium) asked me the first time, but it's never asked again. I don't think it's necessarily the program asking you; I think it might be the OS asking if that program can use your location. - Chris Johnson
Then the OS needs to shut the hell up EVERY time I open Twitterific, then once again about 10 seconds after opening. EVERY TIME. - Steve Isaacs
And unicorns and butterflies in a field of daisies? - ::Kristen::
naw, isaacs is holding back there. they really thought stuff out like the tweet icon toggle. improves on the twitter experience (not hard to do, I know) but this makes thwirl feel clunky - Kirk Skodis via twhirl
I forgot unicorns. Definitely some unicorns up in there. - Steve Isaacs
I like that it can update your location on Twitter. But it seems that only Twitterific on the iPhone can make sense of the location that gets updated. On the Twitter web page it's just a set of latitude/longitude coordinates, which you have to copy and paste into Google Maps to make sense of. - Chris Johnson
You'll be paying someone for a cellular radio (assuming you have a cell phone). How much more is the $1700 than what you're going to spend anyway? - Chris Johnson
In my case it is about the same as my current data plan. But then my current data plan isn't with at&t, and it isn't under contract. - DeWitt Clinton
Nope. Apple store employees have already told me they will have an oversupply of 3G phones. So, no need to wait in line. We'll be there early in the morning tomorrow, though, just to join the fun. - Robert Scoble
Robert: Are they saying that is the case across the US or just out on the West side? - Mathew A. Koeneker
plus it's dangerous to breathe the air in the valley today and feels like 10,000 degrees outside. - Doug Brooks
Do you mean a literal tent, or are you referring to the expression about what happens in your khakis when you're really excited about something? - Chris Johnson
O2 have made it clear in the UK that they don't have enough iPhones to meet demand - a few dozen for each high street store - could you ship some of the spare ones over? ;-) - Ben
Check this out http://tinyurl.com/ypamjs - the BB 8830 is available for a 100 bucks and does everything iPhone does and more. Plus, you can get a lot of applications to work on this - Garmin has a great GPS - no monthly fee. - Sanjay Kalra
how many people will be calling me by accident from their new IPHONES - if I hear another IPHONE BOUNCING AROUND A PURSE I WILL DIE - Luke Jeffrey Smith via twhirl
Wow, that guy seems a bit the jackass. Correction: that guy is a jackass. Also could benefit from using spellcheck, or at least a browser that has it by default. - Steve Isaacs
Howard's reasons are,. "1. DUMB.
2. Almost Useless!
3. Bad Interface." - Mike Fruchter
He must of spent a total of 3 minutes on the site. - Mike Fruchter
he didn't explain at all, just listed 3 things and said he is sticking to twitter. shouldn't be a blog post, more like a forum reply. - Chris Harris
I don't know who Howard Lindzon is, but it seems clear from that post that he's a dumb guy. Was there a point hidden in the gibberish, other than that for unspecified reasons he doesn't care for FriendFeed? - Chris Johnson
"Oh man are the nerds just about done." Really? And here I thought we were just getting started ... - Wes Justice
This is the same guy who started off hating Twitter (when he started he only tweeted about when / where he was going to the bathroom). Over time he has become an active Twitter user --> http://twitter.com/howardlindz... Over time I'll bet he comes around to FF. Also, this is they guy who started WallStrip and sold it to CBS, so he is no dummy. - Mike Doeff
He's got Disqus installed on his blog, and loves Twitter. Buddy, you ain't that far off from nerd-dom. - Hutch Carpenter
I hope he really didn't ban the guy who said he actually liked FriendFeed. - Shey
Hutch, you're having a forest/trees issue. For the masses, Howard is absolutely right across the board. For everyone else, he's probably right about all but the first one. As a mainstream service that will make a lot of money? Not right now, not with this interface and if you have to spend an hour and a half on customizing hide...it's almost useless. Except for the nerds. :-) - Robert Seidman
Remind me to block him if he ever shows up. - Harvey Simmons
I've met Howard and he seems like a good guy, but he is full of wrong about FriendFeed. - Andy Roth
Robert - you're right. No suggestion regarding the timing for FriendFeed to make it into mainstream. More just a statement about Howard's nerd sensibilities. - Hutch Carpenter
I still maintain that he's a dumb guy. The first two points in his analysis are "DUMB" and "Almost Useless" (complete with gratuitous capitalization), these in a post the title of which is "FriendFeed.com…Let Me Explain." "DUMB" doesn't exactly constitute an explanation. His comments after the post don't do anything to raise his intellectual stock. - Chris Johnson
Oh, that's just tremendous analysis! Seriously ... monkeys > typewriters > better. What informs your opinion? I believe FF will surpass Twitter because is actually has a far superior interface and solves the problem of not having enough 'friends' to make the service interesting. - AJ Kohn
Mitch, that might be the saddest Tweet I've ever seen. Put Steely Dan with the Who and the Doors as baby boomer bands I don't care if I never hear again in my life. - Dave Slusher
“Before subscribing to anyone, I've started to make sure that they make FriendFeed native postings. Don't wanna add anyone that might get me commenting on the ghost of their Twitter stream.”
I also tend to *not* subscribe to people that don't have a LinkedIn profile that I can check out. Not entirely sure why. - Paul Reynolds
I like to check their Flickr account. - Russellreno
They're the only postings that I make. I don't even hit up Twitter anymore. You can do the same exact thing here, and this place is waaayyy more exciting. - ::Kristen::
I tend to look at their previous FF posts and Flickr or LinkedIn. There are scary pics on Flickr. :) - Harvey Simmons
This seems a little misguided. If something appears here because someone shared something on Google Reader rather than posting it directly to FriendFeed, the only thing that's different from your point of view is the little icon that appears by the post. If you're looking for an indication that someone is actively participating here rather than just dumping his various feeds here and forgetting about them, why not just check to see if he's liking and commenting? - Chris Johnson
@Chris Johnson, I think ultimately Steve means he won't follow those people that pretty much have nothing more than their Twitter service on their FF. - Paul Reynolds
i do similar to that already stated above, one thing to add - a level of ff involvement can be easily seen by mouseover the user name which will show number of comments and likes - one more way to judge whether to sub or not... - mike "glemak" dunn
So much for change.....MD80s are HUGE polluters that are riddled with maintnenance issues, So much for him being a "green" candidate. - Steve Gillette via twhirl
@Ryan I don't think there's any basis for saying it was the "same problem" that brought down the Alaska Airlines plane. It could have been any of a zillion things. - Chris Johnson
@Ryan re: "dude, do a search on MD-80 and Alaska Airlines" Bingo! You win a free set of steak knives with that 'Jack Screw' - Johnny R
According to the AP, it was the Emergency Slide in the tail that deployed in flight. - Steve Gillette via twhirl
side effect of asking lots of tough questions, you start to get some answers that make sense. - Nathan Eckenrode
As a fellow geek we better be sure we're right, because if we are wrong it's gonna be bad. - Blackopsmanners
Blackopsmanners: my idea of hell is being forced to sit next to Jesse Helms for eternity. Of course HIS idea of hell is probably sitting next to me. So, who is in hell? - Robert Scoble
Geeks are generally tech freaks and when you see item after item made by man changing the way your life is lived then it becomes pretty easy to accept that man invented god not the other way around. - Jeff Jones
Geeks are more educated and the more education a person has, the more likely they are to look at our world logically, and choose atheism. - Granteezy via fftogo
I think it has a lot to do with rarely humbling oneself enough to admit that they don't, "know it all" or "have all the answers". It's generally about humility, which geeks tend to have very little of. - Trevor Carpenter
I cannot disagree more Trevor. Atheists are the ones saying "we don't have all the answers". Deity based religions certainly claim to do so. - Jeff Jones
Trevor: Jeff is right. I used to be very religious. I found that most of the people who were religious were not humble at all and weren't able to look at the world without having any answers. Our minds are very strong pattern recognizers. It takes a lot of humility to turn off the pattern recognizer and just accept you don't have the answers. But, this is why I call myself an agnostic. I'm not certain there is not a God. Just like I'm not certain there is one, either. - Robert Scoble
To Jeff and Robert. I certainly can understand what you are saying. However, I separate out the religious from the genuine Christian. The majority of the "religious", including many who clam Christianity, are far from humble. They are generally far from God too. I would not say that those who are legitamately close to God claim to to know it all. In fact, they would say that God knows it all, and we can't know it all. My statement about geeks not being humble is more poking fun than anything else. - Trevor Carpenter
I'm a card-carrying member of a deity based religion as Jeff calls it. Christian is what I am and I certainly don't claim to have all the answers. In fact, I have very few. That's why I need/desire the deity. Right? Sadly, there is an unfortunate number of folks on both (many?) sides of this argument who give their own group a bad rap. I'm just trying to not be one of them. The way I see it, God is the one who created the patterns we're recognizing so I'll accept that He has the answers I need. - Lisa L. Seifert
Trevor: I was in a church of people all of whom considered themselves as "genuine Christian." Part of the problem is that religious people assume they really know what makes someone a "real believer." - Robert Scoble
Lisa: the thing is, anyone who professes to "believe" has already put something in their pattern recognizer that simply isn't there. Or, have you really seen God? But I'm going to beg out of this. I learned in the 1990s that these conversations never convince anyone and just piss people off. So, "Hide" is earned, have fun. - Robert Scoble
Robert. Sure, I know what you're saying. No belief system is worth anything if it in fact doesn't claim to be the "right" way. Without taking this too far...I'm coming from a traditionally reformed, Bible believing worldview. All that to say, Lisa is right. Even those on my team have harmed your view of true Christianity. - Trevor Carpenter
just think of a computer software program that has a certain set of rules....if then statements, etc....then think of DNA and explain...then who set the rules? randomly appeared? - Pokai
You're welcome, Trevor. (For what?) Robert: I'm sad that you're hiding the conversation. Nobody's pissed off. (Yet??) And I'm certainly not reading that anyone is trying to convince anyone of anything. I'm simply seeing different opinions here. And I like that. As far as seeing God: not in the way I'm assuming you mean. But I see the God-Effect everywhere, not to be confused with the Scoble Effect. ;-) Ocean, Wind, my own body-muscles, bones, blood, organs, blah, blah, blah. Standard argument. :-) - Lisa L. Seifert
I'm with Scoble on this one, hide earned! - Granteezy
thanks lisa, I think we should whip Scoble into the posted 60 foot monster wave (by Mitchell Tsai) and see what happens to his belief system....then he can tell us what happened to George Carlin :) - Pokai
Because few deities are open source. - Craig Thomler
I am of the view that historically and currently that Established Religions are a cause of a lot of Evil in the world and that has always been a major switch off for me about any Church. - David W
pokai, i know you ended with a set of rhetorical questions but what i'm inferring from your tone is that you're drawing a tangent that can't be supported. no one necessarily had to set rules for DNA for them to assemble randomly based upon thermodynamic stability. and then for them to interact with other molecules... - Kambiz Kamrani
because they don't like the fact that there is something they cannot explain? or maybe because they don't like the fact that there is something that is (could be) controlling them? - Timo Zimmermann via twhirl
@ Robert, I think it's unfair to paint whole groups of people as one things or another: muslims, Christians, Jews, Atheists, Agnostics, et. al which is probably what bothers me most about these discussions. Not the facts of what's right or wrong, but rather the debate normally centers around painting a wide brush across an over-generalized groups of people. see "why are geeks often atheist?" I know a lot of smart people who believe a lot of different things ... - David Adewumi
I think the questions of humility/uncertainty vs. "we know whats best" views of religion can correspond well to the tech world...there are entrepreneurs looking for what has been the missing, the algebraic X, the unknown that hasnt been built yet or thought of (think of major advances like RSS or SNs a la twitter or friend feed...and then there was the aol way of thinking where they thought they could comprehend entirely the social aspects of the web in a closed platform...geek doesnt always = athiest - joshuabacker
One reason the I am turned off by religion is that each one tends to believe that their version is the only version. Some even to the point of professing to kill others that do not believe the way they do. There is very little tolerance of other points of view. Most Christian religions profess tolerance of others and I'm sure their are some groups that do practice this, but I find significant hypocrisy with most religious institutions between what they preach and how the really act. - Jeff P. Henderson
ok kambiz, interesting, but what makes the same genetic material become a frog, dog or human? - Pokai
Lisa, I was simply thankful for your comments. They were spot on. - Trevor Carpenter
I really loved this part of the article:The absence of proof does not mean there is no proof at all; but it does give a strong reason to doubt if there is any. Geeks have conditioned themselves to think logically, just as the religious have been conditioned to replace logic with trust in what they are told. What can be extracted from this is that geeks are not atheists simply because they may know "more" but also because they choose to think differently (whether or not they think superiorly is a question for another debate). - Lisa L. Seifert
I agree david. I wonder why intelligence is their defense. - Pokai
pokai, Jeff nails it. but let me clarify one thing -- the same genetic material doesn't necessarily exist in a frog, dog, or human. a frog has a different genome (set of genes) from a dog and a human. these different genes arose through mutations during various biological processes like DNA replication, and gamete production. they are continually evolving by way of natural selection. the frog, dog, human, share a common vertebrate ancestor but they all have diverged from that point into separate species. - Kambiz Kamrani
Continued from previous post: I liked that part for the reminder to keep thinking. I don't ever want to be conditioned to think one thing only whether I'm wearing my Christian hat, my geek hat, my caretaker hat, etc. I don't think we can generalize either way. I agree with David - and with Jeff regarding hypocrisy. It's one reason I hesitate to enter into discussion of beliefs. I know I'm being lumped right now by some of you; but I'd rather try to state my own point of view than sit back and be lumped. - Lisa L. Seifert
I unhid this for a second just to see what direction it went in. I'm hiding again. Some things haven't changed in 10 years, I see. Sigh. See, I used to participate in every religious thread in Visual Basic Programmer's Journal's CompuServe forum (after moving them to that magazine's "OffRamp" which is where we moved stuff that went off topic). The conversations always degenerated just like this one has into calling the other side names. No one ever learns anything. So, Lisa, sorry. I'm getting older I guess - Robert Scoble
than you kamrani and jeff for your clarification, - Pokai
Bye, Robert... Does this mean you won't come to the parties I host at the Ritz once I move to HMB?? ;-) I'm sure I'll get the chance to discuss greater issues such as religion with you at some time when there will be no name-calling. :-) - Lisa L. Seifert
i think scoble just faked hiding, but he is still reading...funny how scoble made the first comment on this post... - Pokai
Oh, no. Do not doubt. Scoble is THE hider. :-) Eventually, he may look back, but he is the best of the hiders. I hide because he has inspired me to do so... Seriously. I always forget about it until he evangelizes it. Then I hide again. - Lisa L. Seifert
@Jeff "One reason the I am turned off by religion is that each one tends to believe that their version is the only version. Some even to the point of professing to kill others that do not believe the way they do." Now replace 'religion' with (culture, style of government, monetary system, nation, state, language, et. al) and you will see this is not an effective argument. See current war in Iraq/Afghanistan for an example. Is that really about religion? - David Adewumi
Up to this point, I can't find one person, on either side of the discussion calling anyone a name. Where are the name-callers? (excluding Lisa's, "Scoble is THE hider.") - Trevor Carpenter
