You can now get a daily or weekly email digest for anybody's feed on FriendFeed. You'll get a daily or weekly email with the most popular posts from that person's feed. To get the email, click the "Email/IM" link at the top of anyone's feed, and select the "Best of day" or "Best of week" email option.
Thanks to Kevin for doing a great design for what turned out to be a more complex set of UI options than we had originally anticipated, and thanks to Tudor for implementing the email backend.
- Bret Taylor
I now get the FriendFeed Feedback posts as a Best of Day email so it doesn't fill up my feed, but I don't miss feedback. I also set up a "Best of Day" email for my "Technology people" friend list so I get a pretty good overview of tech news every day via email.
- Bret Taylor
This is a really cool idea Bret, I wish you can make that an RSS feed option as well. I'd be much more likely to read summaries in RSS than in email.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
Casey: Thanks for the tip. What's the 7 before the "?" mean in the URL? The number of likes or replies needed to be included?
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
this is killer, the random influx of email during the day was kinda getting fail-ish. I love the daily digest.
- Drew Lucas
Very cool! Any way to get archives of previous months? (especially helpful for those of us who leave the internet for weeks at a time...)
- Mitchell Tsai
Ahsan: it is somewhat random right now when the emails are sent, but we built in the backend capability to control what time they are sent, and we plan on exposing that control to users in the future. Right now, it is kind of random - sorry!
- Bret Taylor
Cool! can i get a daily or weekly email digest for the "Saved searches"?
- 0M0M
from email
This will be incredibly useful. Thanks to all involved in the design and execution.
- Kathy Fitch
But what exactly is "Best"? Is it anything that has a certain number of likes/comments?
- Laura Norvig
@Bret LOL THAT WAS MY PROJECT! I will release it tomorrow. But you've also did it and killed my friendfeed application **sigh** But mine has multi-reporting weekly-daily-monthly at the same time and adjustable entry count!
- Alp
@Bret please consolidate me or I won't code new apps with you api! :-)
- Alp
Alp: we were not trying to withhold data. Later today the documentation will be updated to reflect the ability to obtain "Best of" for users. The feed id will be USERNAME/summary/N (similar to "Best of" for lists)
- Benjamin Golub
Hi Ben, that is pretty funny, I tried that URL earlier today to see if it has been secretly released :)
- Paul Kinlan
Bret: While Twitter struggle to keep their fail whale under control, you guys are developing stuff like this. Amazing - Thanks!
- Jim Connolly
awesome feature, this will be highly useful for my corporate group ideas / content sharing; projects, etc.... THANK YOU :)
- Susan Beebe
Great work. I especially like that it works on lists too.
- Meryn Stol
my inbox might say different, but I like that :-)
- Dobromir Hadzhiev
Wow, this is really neat! And it links into the idea I expressed earlier, re: reducing signup friction / enabling limited guest privileges. Imagine if I could embed one of my FF rooms on my personal web site, and enable people to subscribe to that feed by e-mail with just a couple of clicks... rather than saying "you can get e-mail notifications but you have to sign up for Friendfeed first." "sign up" -- though admirably lightweight on FF -- is still a huge barrier.
- Adam Lasnik
is there a love button cause I dont like this option I LOVE this option..great work guys
- (jeff)isageek
Three options I would like (1) Can I select "top 100" instead of "top 30"? (2) Could I select both "best of day" and "best of week"? (3) How about older timeperiods? I'd love to get an e-mail with stuff from last week or Mar 2009? Start & end dates? Anything to help me read FriendFeed off-line would be great since I spend long periods off-line at festivals (especially during summer time) or overseas. - Awesome job guys!
- Mitchell Tsai
So this works on groups too, cool! But we still cannot see Best of for groups on the site on friends lists. :-( I have several friends lists that include just groups and when I select to view the best of the page it's empty (even though if I got to the individual best of for those groups there are entries there).
- Kol Tregaskes
does anyone know of a web service that can do this? (I'm thinking weekly email updates of my favorite feeds/people) I don't think there's anything like friendfeed ..
- Franc, a rememberer
This morning we changed the format of FriendFeed subscription email messages to include more information about people who subscribe to you. Please let us know if you see any problems, and keep an eye out for more email improvements in the future.
I'm all for improving the format of notifications, but wonder (aloud) if it is such a smart move to include the Approve/Reject link right at the top (unless it only appears in private feeds to which someone has requested access). Right now we have the option of blocking/ rejecting a subscriber at any time but presumably not at the very outset. This may lead to more of a walled gardens' mentality, already very prevalent at FF.
- ianf ⌘
ianf: approve/reject is only for private feeds. Public feeds just have a link to subscribe back :)
- Benjamin Golub
I noticed this one! Such informations about people who subscribe to me on FriendFeed are useful, and makes it easy to quickly get in the conversation. Thanks for the good job!
- Thierry R. Andriamirado
Gmail automatically showed me the images in a subscription email, even though I never told it to (you know how gmail has the 'display images below' option). further, it doesn't give me the option to hide the images. not that I'd want to, but how are you bypassing gmail's security feature to hide the images?
- chrisofspades
Chris, we don't do anything special. I'm not sure how gmail decides what images to show, you'd have to contact them or check the gmail help.
- Casey Muller
Casey, you sure FriendFeed's founders didn't use some of their "we created Gmail" mojo? ;)
- chrisofspades
Chris, the "show images" only applies to external images hosted on other sites. Gmail doesn't show those by default because doing so would allow people to "bug" email. We include the images with the email so that they can be displayed immediately.
- Paul Buchheit
Hippie Herb 'pot pourrie' (euphemism for smoking mix that you're not really 'supposed' to smoke in joints)! Smells good, tastes alright, most importantly gets you wrecked.
- Casey Muller
Now that everything else seems to be working on FriendFeed, can anyone from FF please help me with the Notifier? It's still floating up the screen. :-(
- Kol Tregaskes
And can you please remove the spam from the FF=Feedback group?
- Kol Tregaskes
Kol, did you upgrade Air to the new beta? It did the same to me when I updated some time ago, and also Seesmic had a weird graphic. I uninstalled it and went back to the previous version and everything is ok. So it's an Adobe issue, not FF :)
- Flavio
Nope, never installed Air beta. I let it update itself.
- Kol Tregaskes
I noticed my FFHound Friendfeed client erred out consistently trying to connect at least 4 hours ago. Thanks for elaborating on this Andy. Now we need help from the inside.
- Micah
We should be back in business now, please let me know if there are further problems. We'll put better monitoring in place, sorry for the trouble!
- Casey Muller
"In other jurisdictions, the philosophy of the law holds that it is human nature to want to escape. In Mexico, for instance, escapees who do not break any other laws are not charged for anything and no extra time is added to their sentence;"
- bob
from Bookmarklet
It's also human nature to want to take things.
- Paul Buchheit
Reading first comment: "Sounds reasonable." Second comment: "Huh, good point."
- Kevin Fox
Bob, I can't believe you left out the rest of the last sentence: "...no extra time is added to their sentence; however, officers are allowed to shoot prisoners attempting to escape."
- Casey Muller
I seem to recall hearing that the Geneva convention essentially says that it's the duty of POWs to try to escape.
- Gabe
So long as there's a risk involved in trying to escape. If they kill someone trying to escape, how do they message that to the other inmates? Gotta use it as a deterrent, right?
- Kevin Fox
"The season finale of the popular TV show House, which will air on May 17th, was filmed entirely with the Canon 5D Mark II."
- Casey Muller
from Bookmarklet
Overly simplistic policies focused on near term reductions in consumption OR population growth are likely to fail. Each requires a long term strategy acknowledging the slow pace of various forms of change. What’s more, successful policy interventions may not be direct.
- Ryan
from Bookmarklet
Sounds like an interesting book. Are there any non-simplistic policies that he suggested might work?
- Casey Muller
I don't think Cohen points to any particular policy intervention because he is looking at population with a global perspective, and it's not really realistic to implement anything at that level which would have important impacts at a local level. For limiting population growth, Cohen seems to advocate education above all else. In particular, education for girls in poor countries. Doing...
more...
- Ryan
from email
Yeah their transcriptions are atrocious
- LANjackal
I've found them to be just awful or spot-on. Then again, I've seen the same with Gmail's spam filter. Some accounts are terrific at blocking spam and others are pretty bad.
- Kevin Fox
It's fascinating what comes out of statistical learning when something goes wrong. I just got a transcription that said "Hi. See you later." The audio was just a couple of clicks. But those phrases make sense statistically, if you assume the caller must have said *something*. The good news is that it will most likely get a *lot* better over time, as more training data becomes available.
- Joel Webber
Joel: sounds like a pretty accurate translation to me.
- Jim Norris
Don't forget to donate bad voicemail transcriptions: http://googlevoiceblog.blogspot.com/2009... Given that Google Voice respects your privacy, providing voicemails as training data has to be an opt-in decision.
- Matt Cutts
Maybe they're going to randomly swap all the RFIDs.
- Casey Muller
Slippy, come on, she was being ironic by not being ironic ;)
- Tinfoil 2.0
+1 LogEx. 'Isn't it Ironic' is an excellent title because 'it' is a self-reference to the song's title which refers to a song which is not at all ironic. Which is therefore ironic.
- Kevin Fox
Can someone explain to me why Buffett has kept BRK.A so expensive and not split it? What does Berkshire Hathaway have to gain from it? - http://www.google.com/finance...
It also keeps trading down - which apparently has kept Berkshire Hathaway from entering the S&P 500 because there is a minimum trading threshold. I can't really think of a negative to being in the S&P 500. There are probably some short turn positives though (any index fund tracking it would have to start purchasing BRK and drive up the price a bit)
- Benjamin Golub
“Were we to split the stock or take other actions focusing on stock price rather than business value, we would attract an entering class of buyers inferior to the existing class of sellers,” Buffett wrote in his 1983 annual report, when the Class A shares traded for about $1,300. “Would a potential one- share purchaser be better off if we split 100-for-1 so he could buy 100 shares?...
more...
- Ken Sheppardson
...based on what I've read and seen, I think your first impression is right: it's about keeping out the smaller "inferior" investors. i don't think he's exactly a man of the people. two uninformed cents.
- .LAG liked that
Yeah I read that too (which is where I got the "inferior" in quotes from). I think at some point you just can't ignore that ridiculous price though. (and I think that point has come and gone long ago :P)
- Benjamin Golub
"Buffett has long been opposed to stock splits for Berkshire’s class A shares...Buffett’s opposition to the move stems from his theory that investors should think of themselves as partners in a company and not short-term traders" from http://blogs.wsj.com/marketb...
- Shea
Well, keeping the price high keeps volume a whole lot lower and probably dampens out a lot of volatility that really doesn't have any benefit to the company. It's really more of a "private" company with an open pool of investors than a "public" company.
- Ken Sheppardson
If I owned a single share I wouldn't feel like a partner. I'd feel like a prisoner.
- Benjamin Golub
I'll bet if you owned a share you'd probably have enough money that you'd never actually think about it. ;-)
- Ken Sheppardson
...ha! One share, at $100K+ ...yeah, that would make you feel like barging into a board meeting and demanding changes... I mean, the $100K part. And then, you realize: you only hold ONE share. jeez!
- .LAG liked that
Holding a BRKA also grants you admission to the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting, which is supposed to be awesome. If you want to buy less, there are brokers that let you buy fractional shares, like sharebuilder, and mutual funds that hold a lot of BRK, for example BTF: http://www.boulderfunds.net/BTF%20H...
- Casey Muller
Casey, what's supposed to be awesome about the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting?
- Dan Hsiao
IMHO, the liquidity advantages of B shares are a selling point.
- Sean O'Connor
Sergey Brin: "As much as some people mentioned that it appears unattractive to investors, it appears it benefits us marketing-wise for our end-consumers to see the financial success of the company by virtue of a higher stock price (...) Google won't rule out a split in the future" http://www.bloomberg.com/apps...
- Jérôme
Dan, I've heard it called the woodstock of investing, that kind of thing. And all of the BRK subsidiaries have a big fair with discounts for shareholders.
- Casey Muller
Oops! Since my Canon S90 order at Amazon was backordered, I placed one at J&R Music where they claimed it was in stock, planning to cancel Amazon if J&R came through. Today within 10 minutes of each other I got shipment notifications for both. Anyone local want to buy one new in box for cost?
It wouldn't surprise me if Amazon just gave you pre-paid return label for it if you explain what happened to them.
- Ken Sheppardson
Or just refuse shipment on the Amazon one. I did that once. Got a refund in about 2 weeks no problem. But you have to be at home (or have someone at home) ready to refuse the shipment.
- Benjamin Golub
Actually I think you can just leave a note saying you refuse the shipment.
- Casey Muller
I think if you're not home and they leave an InfoNotice, you can just call in and have them return the item to the shipper.
- Ken Sheppardson
Yep. Can even do it through ups.com... "If you have received a UPS InfoNotice after one delivery attempt has been made, you can change your delivery options on ups.com. Your options are ... Return to Sender: Return the shipment to the shipper" -- http://www.ups.com/content...
- Ken Sheppardson
Having just biked all the way to Best Buy, who claimed to have them in stock but did not, I hereby bid cost plus lunch at the establishment of your choice next week. :-)
- Trisha
Amazing! He tried one like that at Match point in the fourth set of the 2005 Australian Open final against Safin - it didn't work, and he went on to lose the match in the fifth set...
- Michael Nielsen
I only saw it because I tuned in for 60 Minutes early. Not really a tennis fan, but I can certainly appreciate that shot.
- Tom Landini
awesome match. I've seen federer put a few of these winners in before, so awesome.
- Art
Email posting is back up, the bug has been fixed.
- Tudor Bosman
Good to know the FF team is still there to fix the bug! Thanks guys. I really hope Facebook does something useful with the platform so all is not lost.
- Kris
I wonder what the engineering decision was to not use a WSGI interface.
- mikepk
mikepk: it supports WSGI, but it is not WSGI by default because WSGI does not support non-blocking I/O for things like hanging connections. See http://www.tornadoweb.org/documen....
- Bret Taylor
This actually is a very good piece of code! Thanks folks!
- directeur
cool, Bret, thanks :) I was just heading through the docs now.
- mikepk
Thanks for doing this, Bret! That's some pretty cool stuff.
- Keith Bourgoin
oh man, this is so awesome, thanks guys!
- Charles Ying
I'm hacking my own python web framework at the moment, so now the choice on whether I want to switch gears to this or not. I'm liking what I see so far.
- mikepk
Nice new title Brett.."Facebook Director of Products".. a good sign of things to come!
- Chris Myles
very very glad to hear this bit: "Tornado is a core piece of infrastructure that powers FriendFeed's real-time functionality, which we plan to actively maintain."
- Chris Heath
A very good project!...you know if will be possibile to use Tornado with other technogies except Python (such as JEE, Ruby On Rails, etc.)?
- Nicola Junior Vitto
Cristo: we tried to use the official Python coding conventions, though we may have inadvertently strayed. Those conventions are: ClassNames, method_names, variable_names
- Bret Taylor
Brilliant! I hope you can provide very valuable input for the next round of #python WSGI, which desperately needs a next round ;)
- Uche Ogbuji
thx Mike, but this is a kind of eventmachine (that sounds good) for Ruby, not a Tornado client or wrapper...isn't it?
- Nicola Junior Vitto
Excellent! Thank you. Was eagerly waiting for the day to come after looking this just 1 month ago; "changeset: 5afb8a445cad / date: 2009-08-11 16:34:48 / description: Initial open source packages" http://changelog.friendfeed.com/2009...
- NaHi
from m.ctor.org
Ohhh, ummm, btw, your underhanded behind the scenes sell out still rankles my human decency, & a lot of others too, as should yours...thumbs down/dislike x 47.5 million dollars, however not being bitter of course, keep ignorance & bliss
- sofarsoShawn
that's the sound of I believe 100000000? or so hands clapping...& giving you the BOOOO-URNS if I'm not mistaken...
- sofarsoShawn
oh you sonsabitchez this fscking rules! why so badass, ff? thank. you. :)
- mike
So, can we say; Python is the future?
- Özkan Altuner
Nice code. Started to look at it today. Thanks for doing this. Now to start testing this on some projects I had been working on.
- Altan Khendup
@bret just out of curiosity - what would necessitate usage of such an engine for a *personal* project? :)
- Michael Bravo
Michael: it is a nice framework to use for any project in my opinion (though I am clearly biased). If you are doing anything real-time like the chat demo, something like Tornado is certainly necessary/useful regardless of the size of the project.
- Bret Taylor
from email
@bret and for little-sized hardware? should have try it on Maemo based :)))
- A. T.
@silpol I kinda fail to see Maemo devices being used for servers (unless it's some kind of satellite-based or other covert server maybe :) )
- Michael Bravo
from IM
@mbravo you never know... there are some unusual (and cool) apps for web servers, granted you abstain (on purpose) from classical models, e.g.server farm somewhere there and herds of clients connecting to it...
- A. T.
I think this is the best answer for the ultimate question: "Does python needs yet another web framework?" While most of us would say why, when one come across this, a real world proven technology, serving zillions of pages a day, one would say, well, why not. actually, why not even take it an try to integrate out next web app with it? great job! seems like joining FB won't do you any harm ;-)
- Tzury Bar Yochay
Sorry everybody, for a brief period this afternoon we were sending out duplicate emails. The problem should have been fixed, please let us know if you received any duplicates after 3pm Pacific.
- Casey Muller