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You heard it here on FriendFeed first: Announcing SmugVault - Store everything for next to nothing. - http://blogs.smugmug.com/don...

June 23, 2008 - Comment - Like - Share

Nikpay, J.D. Deutschendorf, denise and 76 other people liked this

This is brilliant! I've been waiting for a service exactly like this. - Chris Nixon

78 more comments

had a feeling this is what the announcement was when I noticed a SmugVault entry in the gallery drop down. Think I need to see which is cheaper to do direct S3 storage or using this. - dbcohen

So, anything? If I wanted to run my DMG archive off of Smug Vault, I'd be okay? - Mark Trapp

@Dave Cohen: S3 is cheaper (not much!), but you lose the integration and visual browsing interface of SmugMug. We're certainly not an S3 competitor here. If S3 works for you, awesome. :) - Don MacAskill

Awesome Don, nice one! Let's make a loud sound with this one! - Larry Kless from twhirl

@Mark Trapp: Yep, anything, including DMG or whatever. Currently it's 512MB/file max, but I'm working on making it 5GB per file. - Don MacAskill

Been waiting for something like this ever since I started shooting RAW! - Benjamin Golub

Awesome, thanks Don. This could be nifty for my design firm's off-site archive, especially if we can preview the good bulk of the files. - Mark Trapp

Argh! I just starting shooting RAW!! Must have!!! - Bwana ☠

hmmmm... store *everything*, next to *nothing*. Not sure I agree with that. Under this new service my 2TB archive would cost me $600 one time fee + $440 every single month, plus more for getting the images back. Seems like a few drobos are a better deal, no? I can't imagine paying over $5,000 a year for offsite storage. Of course this sort of service is probably not aimed at someone like me. - Thomas Hawk

@Thomas Hawk: Compared to competing photo sharing services with RAW support, and other pay-for-storage-in-the-cloud offerings, this is a very compelling price point. It's certainly not as cheap as a handful of Drobos - but then you have to do all the IT, deal with fire/earthquakes/etc. If you're cool with that, great. But many aren't. - Don MacAskill

@Thomas Hawk: There are two components for any really solid archive storage: Local, fast, always available storage and something offsite. That can be drives stored at a bank, tapes at an archival facility, or something like SmugVault. We view ourselves as the offsite component, not the replacement for the RAID at your house. - Don MacAskill

@Don, I'm just saying $600 upfront and $440 per month in my case certainly would not qualify as storing "everything for next to nothing." It would cost me more per month to store my archive than to lease a car. And my archive is only going to get bigger. - Thomas Hawk

Can I get access outwith the web interface? e.g. ftp or sync software - Chris Nixon

Already climbing the charts of rssmeme: http://www.rssmeme.com/story... - Benjamin Golub

I don't think storage in the cloud is yet economical for most heavy photographers. Even someone with only 500GB of images would still have to pay $110 per month which is an expensive cost. Better (and faster) to back up your images yourself on drives and give them to a friend to hold for you offsite. You can also remotely network drobos now to have one at your home, one at an offsite location and sync them for much, much, less money. - Thomas Hawk

I don't get why I'd use this over my $5/m Mozy account? - Phill Price

@Thomas Hawk: Remotely networking drobos? Makes me want to get them even more... Wish they weren't so expensive! @Phill Price: Yeah, I don't see how SmugMug's service beats the pants off of Mozy, except that I don't think Mozy has a Web-based file browser. Am I wrong about that? - Voyagerfan5761

@Thomas Hawk: We have Pros who charge $10-20K for a single wedding that generates a few GB of photos. This is very economical for money-making Pros. And we have tens of thousands of them. :) - Don MacAskill

I haven't remotely networked drobo's yet but Alex Lindesy said that he's doing this with his on the This Week in Photography (TWIP) podcast. Synching two drobos would not be cheap Voyagerfan, but certainly cheaper than paying $440 per month. I do have my archive backed up on cheap external USB drives though and offsite at my parent's house. Most of my finished JPG photos are online as well on photosharing sites which are sort of a secondary backup. - Thomas Hawk

@Voyagerfan5761 it does - and its automatic - Phill Price

@Phill Price: This offering is geared towards people for whom SmugMug is a vital part of their workflow. They've told us they want the archives stored alongside the photos, so their normal workflow is enhanced rather than disrupted. Absolutely using something like Mozy or S3 or whatever is cheaper - but for some, time and/or effort is more valuable than money. SmugMug isn't in the business of being the cheapest solution for anything we offer - we're a premium service. - Don MacAskill

The other thing I don't like about this service is that it has a built in cost increase. The more you shoot the more you store, the more you store, the more you pay ongoing. You pay *more* in the future not less, even though storage gets cheaper. I'd rather have an "all you can eat" sort of plan that controlled future price increases. Still, for the casual photographer with less than 50GB of files, this might be worth looking at. Although even 50GB is $22 a month, a far cry from "next to nothing." - Thomas Hawk

@Thomas Hawk: Actually, that's not true. As Amazon lowers their prices (which they've done twice in two years already, and I expect another one "soon"), we'll lower ours the corresponding amount. Your storage will get cheaper. - Don MacAskill

@Thomas Hawk: While I appreciate the feedback, you're not really comparing apples to apples here. Go find me a photo sharing site that accepts and stores RAW/PSD/etc for less than ours as part of their workflow. We will *definitely* not be as cheap as local storage, that's a given. The question is how we compare to other similar offerings. And in that regard, we're much cheaper and (more importantly) much better. - Don MacAskill

Bear in mind that this is an offering our customers have been *begging* for at a price point *lower* than they said they'd pay. My customers are likely very different from you - but that doesn't mean it's not a valid, useful, game-changing offering. - Don MacAskill

@Don, I might not be comparing apples to apples, but I'd still never pay $440 a month for a service like this. The "store everything for next to nothing," was the part I thought was a bit misleading. The service is actually quite a bit more expensive than someone simply copying their files to an external drive and giving it to a friend to hold offsite for them, without reoccuring monthly fees. - Thomas Hawk

saying the Oakland Mercedes Benz dealer is cheaper than the Beverly Hills Mercedes Benz dealer doesn't mean that you still can't find a cheaper car somewhere else -- or take the bus or bike for that matter. You get to the same place no matter if you drive a Mercedes, a Prius, take BART or bike. Some ways just cost more than others. - Thomas Hawk

I am a pro photographer. I shoot less than ThomasHawk but have my fair share of events. I would like to just see a storage through online means regardless of file type such as Xdrive. But at larger increments such as 1GB at a time not 1MB. Any thoughts Don? - Photo Larry from twhirl

"next to nothing" refers to some of our (to remain unnamed) competitors. And it jives with what our paying customers have told us they'd pay for this service. We could have gouged them and charged the $1/GB or whatever they said they'd pay (or that they pay elsewhere now) - but we chose not to. Apologies if it doesn't fit your world view. :) - Don MacAskill

Yes, but the Oakland Benz dealer will sell you the same Benz that Beverly Hills will. A Drobo and SmugVault aren't even remotely the same. So again, you're comparing apples to apples in your analogy, but not the actual product comparison. It's fine, I get it - you won't use it. But that doesn't mean it's not a good product. - Don MacAskill

@Photo Larry: You can store 1MB, 1GB, 1PB with this. Whatever you want. So you're not limited to 1MB. If I somehow gave that impression, I apologize. SmugVault is unlimited and pay-by-the-drink. Only pay for what you use - no commitments. - Don MacAskill

Don, I'm an edge case. I'm sure this offering is just right for many of your customers. Some people like to drive Mercedes and don't mind paying -- it's a huge market. I just like to take the BART, that way it costs less and I can process photos to and from work. :) - Thomas Hawk

This may be the clincher for me. I've been thinking about using SmugMug for a while. They already allow users to sell photos -- which is something I've wanted from other photo sharing sites for a while -- they offer good prints as well, and now they have this. Very nice. - Raoul Pop

@Thomas Hawk: Everything we do at SmugMug is more BMW than Toyota, let alone BART, that's for sure. :) - Don MacAskill

Having read the blog post, I can see the potential of it. Never mind the price, which is way too high for my taste at the moment (and Thomas is right to criticize your headline). But prices will come down. I like the concept of having a photo library somewhere up in the cloud that contains all master files "behind" the one final image on display. With a good UI and a Photoshop plugin that allowed direct editing from and saving to the cloud, this could completely replace apps like Lightroom in the future. - Ole Begemann

Don: Wow. I like this thread esp. for the comments. I withdraw my request for a smugmug invite. That is a pretty elitist view of things. I will just wait until I fill my free off-site storage and then pay an "economy" photo hosting service. - Mathew A. Koeneker

This just hit TechMeme http://tinyurl.com/6sxlsp Hey Gabe Rivera - how about including this thread on TechMeme? - Mike Doeff

mike it hit because i linked to don :) - Allen Stern

Brilliant! I love betting on the right horse. You go Smugmug! - Leo Laporte

It would be awesome if Techmeme could include FF conversations! Seems like a natural fit, but the problem would be how could Techmeme know *which* of the conversations to append to the article. Sometimes the biggest conversation around an item will happen in the oddest place. Hard for Techmeme to know which is *officially* the related or best conversation. - Thomas Hawk

I'm assuming you have to have a SmugMug account to use this in the first place? For someone like me with about 10GB of archives, the price would be good, but having to pay to join another photo site just for backup would deter me. - Matt

Allen, Gabe recently mentioned that he was starting to look at FriendFeed as another source for discussion (see http://snurl.com/2nnk6 - Gabe's last comment). I think this is a case where it would make sense for Gabe's algorithm to include this in the discussion. - Mike Doeff

@Thomas - here's one approach to your question about how Techmeme would "know" which conversations were best: http://bhc3.wordpress.com/2008... - Hutch Carpenter

@Mathew A. Koeneker: SmugMug invite? We don't require invites. We've been in production for more than 5 years - no invites required. Just a credit card. :) I'm not sure how I (we?) are being elitist, though - we're offering something both better and cheaper than anyone else. How is that elitist? Am I missing something? - Don MacAskill

@Matt: You do need a SmugMug account, yes. They start at $40/year (unlimited JPEG/GIF/PNG storage), or roughly a latte a month. :) - Don MacAskill

Is anyone else not surprised that Thomas Hawk is trying to crap on a thread about a competitor's product? A quick browse on his blog shows crapping on competition all over the place, while his own pet project flounders in obscurity. - Jim

Hutch, great blog post, interesting method -- using activity by authoritative FF folk to determine which post to link right? Would love to see FF conversations on Techmeme as they definitely provide valuable commentary on the story. - Thomas Hawk

@Don, I sent a Tweet about this about two hours ago but never got a chance to get back gere until now. Looks like a lot great discussion has been going on. - Larry Kless from twhirl

Jim, I don't view SmugMug as a competing product *at all.* I doubt Don does either, but maybe I'm wrong. Two very different markets and services. I actually like SmugMug as an service alot, and especially the people that work there, their high service and community engagement. I just wouldn't pay $440 a month for something like this. I call it like I see it. BART is not a competitor to BMW, even though both get you where you want to go. - Thomas Hawk

@ Don: I was being a tad ironic as well as perhaps I misunderstood the post "@Thomas Hawk: Everything we do at SmugMug is more BMW than Toyota, let alone BART, that's for sure. :) - Don MacAskill" I like being frugal and wish that we had better public transportation in StL. I am OK if that is your target demographic (ie. BMW) but it seemed like a slam on those that are not. - Mathew A. Koeneker

@Thomas - and yet you keep arguing a red herring. There is a huge difference between local storage and off-site storage. In order to replicate the security of storage in the clouds, you have to set up multiple synced off-site storage locations. There is a reason that lot of top photographers store their photos in banks and other secure vaults. - Jim

@Thomas - that's right. Techmeme has a heavy bias for those who have been on Techmeme previously. Leverage that to identify conversational hot points. - Hutch Carpenter

@Thomas - a perfect example is world famous photographer Jacques Lowe who stored 40,000 negatives of the Kennedy family in the safest location he could find. He stored them in a bank vault, and 11 years later they were all completely destroyed when 2 planes hit the World Trade Center, right next door. Off-site + redundancy is extremely important to a lot of photographers. - Jim

Jim, I'm not arguing a red herring at all. $440 per month to store my archive is *not* "next to nothing." It's a perfectly valid point to make in light of the headline of the post. The fact that I can archive cheaper other ways is another point entirely -- but worth mentioning given that people might be looking for other cheaper alternatives. Maybe $440 per month is "next to nothing" for a rich guy like you, but it's not for me. Do you work for SmugMug? - Thomas Hawk

@Mathew A. Koeneker: Oh, no, that wasn't a slam at all. I have a BMW, but I love BART too. But when we chose to build a business, we intentionally chose the premium space. Not only am I more interested in it, but the free / freemium / economy space is crowded and a rough business to be in. I built this business with an awful lot of sweat - I didn't want to get into a brawl with companies like Yahoo and Kodak, too. - Don MacAskill

@Thomas - sorry, I was referring the ongoing Drobo discussion. Sticking right to the cost, I guess it is a matter of perspective. You are a prolific shooter, and have a sizable collection, so it will indeed cost you more. The question is how much the absolute security of those files are to you. It varies dramatically from photographer to photographer. For hobbyists with a big collection, I suppose the price would be a bigger deal. (continued, sorry... got too wordy) - Jim

@Thomas - but imagine you are make your living from your photos, and you can virtually guarantee the safety of your life's work for $440 a month. I am definitely a hobbyist, but there are definitely some files I want to make 100% sure I never lose. So I am probably somewhere in between, and part of my library will find its way online. - Jim

@Jim, $440 a month is *alot* of money Pal. Certainly not "next to nothing." You could by three drobos. Stick one at your mom's house in Florida and give another to your friend in Germany and network them all together -- and this would still be cheaper than buying this service, at least for me. I'm not sure the incremental "safety" of cloud storage over multiple location backups is worth it to me. - Thomas Hawk

and you still haven't answered the question whether or not you work for SmugMug. You have a private FF account and are only known as "Jim." As far as I'm concerned you may as well be an anonymous shill. - Thomas Hawk

Nice idea, but I'm not sold on the idea of cloud storage. Having multiple physical backups in different locations is very cost effective these days, and in the event of a catastrophic failure, restoring from the cloud is a time-consuming prospect. If you have enough data, shipping one of your other backups would be cheaper -- and faster -- than restoring TB's of data from the cloud. - Jeremy Brooks

is it insured? - Noah David Simon

I might as well be an anonymous shill, I am not a blogging/social sort of person. I registered just to post in this thread because your attitude bugs me. I used to subscribe to your blog because I love your photography, but got sick of your ranting and raving about everything. Unfortunately, I have now contributed to the crapfest this thread is... I'm out. - Jim

I think the main thing going for a service like this is the simplicity of it, which may be worth the cost for some people. - Jeremy Brooks

By the way, I'm not saying that this is a *bad* service. I'm sure that there are many customers at SmugMug who want this and at this price point. Otherwise they wouldn't be offering it. And I'm sure it's a good business for SmugMug as they probably make a differential between what they pay Amazon and what they charge their customers. Win-Win. I'm just saying it's not right for me is all. - Thomas Hawk

I'm with Thomas here. All he took exception to was the headline "for next to nothing" and he's right on that. - Ole Begemann

So Jim, you are posting here anonymously and only signed up for FF to post to *this specific* conversation about SmugMug, and yet you've been asked three times whether or not you work for SmugMug and you avoid answering the question every time. Okie dokie Pal, gotcha loud and clear. I'm sorry if my saying $440 per month doesn't sound like "next to nothing" to me hurts your feelings. - Thomas Hawk

okay, I lied... I didn't quite leave yet. :( I am not from SmugMug. I just don't want to get into personal details, I am a private person. really out now, just didn't want to leave that hanging. - Jim

...and this is pretty much what I was afraid would happen to FriendFeed eventually. I was just hoping for a bit more time. @Don, good luck on the launch. I always love to see other small businesses succeed, so I hope you guys make a bajillion dollars. - jakebf

@Thomas, for the record, Don is subscribed to the feeds of all SmugMug employees that have FF accounts. - David Parry

Personally, i travel like crazy for work. So having a drobo at home would be like cloud storage, but slower. I just wish this wasn't announced 2 days after i bought the program jungledisk for direct amazon storage. - InsaneNinja

Wow, I go get some lunch and the thread devolves into trolling. Can has moderation? Let's get back to talking about the product, mmkay? - Don MacAskill

@Don, Say you run Lightroom, and convert to DNG on import. You do your little changes to the DNG, which saves them as internal data. And then you upload the DNG file to SmugMug. ....Does SM show the resulting file in multiple sizes? Or should you also upload an LR-exported jpg for results/quality? I'm asking if you can skip the jpg step entirely. - InsaneNinja

@InsaneNinja: You cannot skip the JPEG step entirely if you want to see all your edits, no. We just generate non-edited proofs. I'm hopeful that someday we can offer something even better, but for now, export both the JPEG and the DNG. - Don MacAskill

And I envision a Lightroom like interface to the vault so you can browse and search the vault like you would your local albums, select the photo(s) you want to work on and put your work back when you're done, somewhere safe. Which I'm giddy about to build, you know, when they invent 30hr days.... Also, for me this is going to be for the images that are very valuable to me either emotionally or monitarily, not everything, which solves the 'where will my important photos be in 15 years' problem. - Sam

@Don: That makes sound business sense on a lot of levels. )BTW, I think that this is the first time I saw what would appear to be troll induced flickers of flame.) - Mathew A. Koeneker

I wouldnt say its trolling on the program, as much as it is Thomas having a problem specifically with the slogan "everything for nothing," due to his immense collection. As for me personally, i've created 30 gigs this month and i consider it slacking. - InsaneNinja

Well, if nothing else this string has forced me to think more seriously about improving my current backup solution of copying to an external hard drive. - Matt

Oh, I wasn't referring to Thomas. ;) - Mathew A. Koeneker

Two questions: One, how on earth is uploading my entire archive going to happen ( I've got 50+ GB and rising fast- my upload speed is terrible even with broadband in the UK - talk about progress and being a First World Country) and Two is there API support for this??? - Roberto Bonini

Aldon Hynes

Adding Friend Feed comments to Drupal: Last night, Bill Anderson added a Friend Feed comment on my Feed g.. http://www.orient-lodge.com/node...

June 22, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Naor Mark, Benjamin Kudria, Chris Lewis and 2 other people liked this

Thomas Hawk

Bad Moon Rising on Flickr - Photo Sharing! - http://www.flickr.com/photos...

June 20, 2008 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Aditya Banerjee, Carlin, Nikos Anagnostou and 27 other people liked this

Love Dave Winer's comment on this photo: "Isn't it amazing what great pictures a cheap Canon camera can take. Wait a minute -- this isn't a cheap Canon camera! What gives? I thought the SD1100 was the killer app, just like FriendFeed. Please explain. " - Thomas Hawk from Bookmarklet

16 more comments

Is there something a $1500 Canon EOS can do that an $150 SD1100 can't? Why carry around the extra bulk? (And why am I up at 7AM programming an RSS app if FF does everything anyone could ever want to do with RSS?) - Dave Winer

Yes, in addition to having a full frame sensor the EOS can take Canon L series glass which is vastly superior glass to the SD1100 allowing greater technical flexibility in creating imagery. I'm not saying FF does everything anyone could *ever* want to do with RSS, I'm saying it's better at delivering RSS than anything I've ever seen due to social filtering. Most certainly better technology will come along though, maybe even created by you. - Thomas Hawk

But, if there are better RSS readers that produce a better news consumption experience than FF that you are aware of *today* I'd be willing to give them a spin, so far Newsgator, Bloglines, Google Reader and half a dozen others or so I've tried don't make the grade for me though. - Thomas Hawk

Great -- now we're getting somewhere. BTW, the stuff I'm working on probably wouldn't interest you, it's very specialized stuff, what's running behind NewsJunk.com. The analogy is very complete -- as a guy who takes snapshots with my SD1100 -- which I love because of it's automatic operation, size, ease of use, I'm sure an artist like yourself would find limiting (although you might use it from time to time, and certainly would appreciate that it popularizes the art you love). I feel the same way about FF. - Dave Winer

to equate FF with the Canon SD1100, when clearly at market, accessible better digital photography technology exists, would lead me to believe that you feel that there are better at market news consumption services, maybe even RSS readers, than FF. - Thomas Hawk

BTW, as an RSS "artist," it really pains me that FF ignores RSS descriptions. To see the effect of this -- look at the FF presence for NewsJunk. http://friendfeed.com/newsjunk And then look at the http://newsjunk.com home page. I think it would be so much better if they didn't ignore the descriptions. Now of course I get they can't include all descriptions, but they can include some. This would be a good place to start. (Actually a better place to start would be joining the conversation.) - Dave Winer

The biggest limitations I see between by $500 S80 and DSLRs is a) depth of field b) image stabilzation. c) zoom. - Shey, Jamaican of FF

Ok, news junk looks interesting and looks like it is for mainstream consumption -- if you care about Presidential politics. But the problem with it for me is that I could care less about Presidential politics now that my candidate Mike Gravel is out of the picture and I'm not sure simple view counts are the best way to sort social relevance. What else *besides* newsjunk should I be looking at? - Thomas Hawk

agreed that newsjunk looks a lot better on newsjunk than on FF. - Thomas Hawk

@Shey In general, I don't agree with that (although it may be the case with the specific model you quoted). I feel the biggest difference is in the sensor quality on the camera (and the noise that goes with it) and the difference in lens quality (hard to match the built in lenses on the P&S with the L Canon lenses). A lot of P&S cameras can match depth of field/have IS / and have equivalent zoom. - Chris Lewis

I am liking this mostly for the Winer/Hawk discussion - Brian Sullivan

Thomas you keep missing the point -- I'm not going to sell you an upscale camera when all you need is right here. You were making much broader claims about FF "killing" everything else in RSS and that's ridiculous, as ridiculous as saying that a low-end easy to use consumer camera is going to fit every possible picture-taking situation even though it can take movies, etc. That's it -- that's all I've been trying to say. You keep broadening it as if I were trying to sell you on something else. I am not. - Dave Winer

We poss for this commercial break. - Russellreno

Dave, but you are missing my point. What I am suggesting is that socially filtering content is a superior method of delivering interesting relevant content than the way that 99% of people consume RSS today, typically in readers. I'm saying that attention is a zero sum game and that where I used to use RSS readers now these are dead to me, as is Twitter, as are a lot of other things. In this sense FF killed them, at least for me and I suspect many, many more people in the days, weeks, months ahead. - Thomas Hawk

You are saying that FF is but one flavor of RSS, right for some, not right for others, like digital cameras. I'm suggesting that the implementation of social filtering is a much bigger deal than that and is a substantive jump in the technological advancement of content consumption that will make different "flavors" of RSS as we know them today largely irrelevant. More like digital made film irrelevant. It's a strong claim, I know, and maybe it's too early to make it, but it's how I see it playing out. - Thomas Hawk

@Chris Yes those are notable differences as well. But I find the three things I listed are limitations I run into on shots without ideal environments and on a regular basis. Any digital camera takes decent shots in perfect lighting. DSLRs give you the capability to bring out good shots in not so great conditions and amazing shots in good conditions. - Shey, Jamaican of FF

is this thread really bubbling up on me because of the ff/rss/other discussion? - Ruben Llibre

Raoul Pop

Bowled over by how much more convenient it is to check email, check a site quickly, or look at a map on an iPod Touch than it is on a computer. These are the real "mini-laptops". Minuscule power consumption and incredible convenience.

June 19, 2008 - Comment - Like - Share

Susan Beebe, John Frenette, Mike Reynolds and 12 other people liked this

As energy becomes more expensive, the use of these mini-devices will increase, and computers as we know them will only get used for the heavy lifting. - Raoul Pop

14 more comments

I'm still waiting on the iPod touch price drop. - cecily

It's expensive, I know, but once you use it for a day or two, the value becomes readily apparent. - Raoul Pop

I have been contemplating buying either a touch or a smart phone. I have been leaning toward the touch as I don't want (or need) the added cost of a full data plan for the phone. I mainly just need the wifi access and portability. I am just not sure I can get over the touch keyboard. :-P - cmiper

Couldn't agree more, know many people with the iPhone but I'm leaning more towards the iPod Touch as it does everything I need and already have a phone.I plan getting one in July after the new iPhone is launched as I'm sure there will be a software upgrade :) - Russell G

I thought it was annoying when I tried it out at the store. But it grows on you over time. It's very sensitive and quite accurate. Can't do speed-typing, but you can do 15-20 words a minute with it. And when you switch languages, you get the keys you need with that language. That's awesome. - Raoul Pop

Russ, I agree there. I didn't want to get stuck with a 2-year contract on the iPhone. Plus I have Wifi at home and at work, and I can probably find a WiFi spot in town if I look hard enough. I think this is going to be my next phone: http://friendfeed.com/e.... - Raoul Pop

Russ, same here. AT&T is out of the question for me here, their service is spotty (they were only CellOne/Cingular in this area before) and also the long term cost of the jump in plan. The touch does what I need it to, I am just hoping that the price adjusts when the cheaper iPhones come out. - cmiper

Raoul, yeah with WiFi in most major places now such as work, home and big public areas the cost of having the ability to make calls and being able to surf out of WiFi range don't really add up, but just my opinion! - Russell G

I got rid of my motorola Q, picked up an enV2 and a Touch and couldn't be happier. I don't have the expensive data plan anymore, but I still have the access to my calendar, email, and can watch videos (which I do a lot) on the Touch, while still having my phone to text and call. I wouldn't do an iPhone because AT&T really is bad in this area, plus all of the people I call are on one service, so we stay with that. - Dawn M. Armfield

The other one I have been mulling over is the Nokia N810 (not a phone), but I need to find someone who's used one and can give me some feedback on it that isn't just a fanboy. ;-) https://www.nokiausa.com/A462605... - cmiper

I thought I was alone in wanting an iPod Touch and not an iPhone. I'd really rather not have to switch back to AT&T. I'll keep my BlackBerry on T-Mobile for now, but I WANT an iPod Touch. - ha3rvey (needs soup)

Looks like a lot of people are thinking the same thing iPod Touch and separate phone. It may mean carrying the two around rather than one, but seems to be the cheaper if less convenient option. - Russell G

Not alone Harvey, from the day the iPhone came out, I thought that if they made one without the phone part it would be great and they would sweep both smart phone and portable multimedia markets. - cmiper

I guess it is the same principal with my N800. I have started to do a lot of my casual browsing (that doesn't involve typing) on it instead of a laptop or desktop. - Jake (aka Jawee)

Jake, talk to me about the N800. ;-) - cmiper

Pat Hawks

FriendFeed Comments in Blogger - http://feeds.pathawks.com/~r...

June 11, 2008 from Pat Hawks - Comment - Like - Share

Jick Nan, Franklin Pettit, Ashton and 22 other people liked this

You can now import all your FriendFeed comments into your Blogger posts. You're welcome. - Pat Hawks

17 more comments

you're close but there are still a couple things throwing errors from what i can gather - first is those ampersands. - MG Siegler

I added this to my template, but don't see anything. Could it be because I'm running Disqus? - Louis Gray

it didn't throw XML errors for you Louis? - MG Siegler

I haven't seen any. I'm posting again. - Louis Gray

It works! See it here: http://www.louisgray.com/live... - Louis Gray

ooh very cool louis, not sure why i'm still getting XML errors, i'll keep plugging away at it later - MG Siegler

silly me, it was the greater than and less than signs, duh. anyways still not quite there with it working yet, but no more errors :) - MG Siegler

OK, I'm convinced ... trying it in an hour - Charlie Anzman

boom. got it. i'll post on the fix later on. check it out. http://www.parislemon.com/2008... - MG Siegler

Friday Tips #5: Bringing Comments Back to Your Blog http://www.louisgray.com/live... - Louis Gray

i am still seeing a conflict with linkbacks i'll work more on it later - MG Siegler

hmmm expanded the widgets and all and I didn't find any of these lines, I think I've just got some many tweaks to the base code - BCK

pretty sure a limitation here is that they have to be recent comments on friendfeed (so they're in your feed), is that that same with the wordpress plug-in? - MG Siegler

Didn't realize that this would work, even if you have Disqus. Will have to try it out. - Ontario Emperor from fftogo

Yeah - the RSS and JSON has a history limitation, which is why I'm trying to work on a server side solution. It's a bit of a pain, because it means stuff has to get imported to a database. I'd much rather be able to make queries to FF's db thru the api (by the muid?), because I really don't want to maintain another database that mirrors theirs. Seems sorta silly. Not to mention I'm not as good at creating good DBs as them. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

@Rizzn - For sure, the best solution would be if FriendFeed did this themselves... - Pat Hawks

Still, great job on this Pat. Looks great on my site. - MG Siegler

@MG Siegler - You're right, there is a history limitation. This will only find comments on your last 90 blog posts. - Pat Hawks

Raoul Pop

June 12, 2008 from Flickr - Comment - Like - Share

Ligia Pop, Graham Garland, Chris Farrugia and 4 other people liked this

Thomas Hawk

How to Better Manage FriendFeed for Relevance - http://thomashawk.com/2008...

June 11, 2008 from Thomas Hawk's Digital... - Comment - Like - Share

Edd McArdle, Dan Byler, RyanEs and 64 other people liked this

really like the idea of being able to rank friends so that you don't miss out on stuff from less 'popular' users - Frederic

58 more comments

Interesting thought Thomas. So maybe the ranking you apply to a user could be a multiplier against the FriendFeed algorithm that determines the "best of" sequence. Higher rankings will drive these users higher on your "best of" pages. - Hutch Carpenter

that's it exactly Hutch. It would be pretty simple to do (I think) and I'd be surprised if the FF folks haven't already thought of this. Ranking users on a scale from 1 to 100 would be your own subjective filter into their "best of" system that would result in a far more engaging and engrossing "best of" discovery page. - Thomas Hawk

similar attention profiles? http://friendfeed.com/e... - Erhan Erdogan

When you apply it to search it becomes the most powerful of all. It's going to take FF a few years to really index the web through their social filter in a meaningful way, but in the end FF could be far more powerful as a search engine than a social network or social media aggregator. - Thomas Hawk

Erhan, APML focuses on topics, not people. What Thomas is suggesting is that a person, regardless of their content, could be ranked higher than another person. It's up to you, as a subscriber, to determine how interesting that person is. - Mark Trapp

I read a comment on a previous post here on FriendFeed mentioning that more than a third of discussions on FriendFeed probrably are _about_ FriendFeed... Most of the items where there are a lot of replies have something to do with FF. I wonder if this service is going to become way less interesting when people finally get bored of talking about the service. What happens when you run out of "nothings" to say? - Jonathan Sterling

Yes, right! IMHO APML is by far more interesting than "ranking" people with notions like karma or such. I'm on the Internet because I want/like/hate/need stuff and it's about these stuff, it's about me first. Then may come other things like friendship and sociability. I'm not against teh "Social" word, of course. I'm for the "me" word that tends to disapear a little bit... :) - directeur

Jonathan, you're following the wrong people (as curt as that sounds). If you expand who you follow to people outside the social media echochamber, you find a lot of posts about a wide range of topics. - Mark Trapp

directeur, we all have relationships with people, not topics. Dehumanizing social media doesn't solve the issue. - Mark Trapp

@Thomas: Interesting. Sounds a bit like a souped up StumbleUpon or Del.icio.us. Different ways at attacking the question of how to bubble up the best of a topic. The time element is the bit that always makes it difficult IMO. - AJ Kohn

Mark: I'm with you, I really do. But what defines "friendship" is our common interests, don't you think? I'm not about dehumanizing the web :) - directeur

Jonathan that's the thing though. Those are the most popular discussions based on likes comments etc. but not the most relevant. Allowing people to rank users would filter more of the most popular out and bring more of the most relevant in. I might not care what 99% of my contacts had for lunch today. But I might care about what my wife did even though it's not popular or more broadly generally interesting. - Thomas Hawk

Directeur, Interests are what might lead to a friendship, but friendship is not completely defined by one's interests. I might meet a friend at a great italian deli, and we hit it off. A few years down the road, he tells me, "Man, I'm tired of italian food." He doesn't suddenly stop being my friend. There's a link between us, after the friendship has been established, that transcends any list of interests. - Mark Trapp

Do you propose this simply for the "best of" or for your actual feed as well? - Frankie Warren

@Mark,@Thomas I don't think like you. I said similar content followers/like'rs/commenters are owners of your best points in Thomas's idea. This will be possible with creating real attention profiles with all your interests in FF. - Erhan Erdogan

Frankie, it would be the algorithm's job to sort out ranking and relevance. But your subjective rank for a person would be a very significant component that went into the algorithm. Think about it this way. Your brother twits, "I just bought a new car." Most people are not interested in this but you probably are. Even more than the 18 popular posts about twitter, google, apple and FF. By letting you rank your brother 100, you ensure that you see that ahead of the other stuff. - Thomas Hawk

Mark, yes that's true, but it's only because you have other "interests" that keep your friendship alive. The day where you don't have no, and I mean NO interest that connects you, that day will be the end of your friendship. Moreover, online friendship and real-life one are a little bit different. We may define those interests, maybe we just can't express them, but they still are here - directeur

Erhan, APML does not solve a very real problem people have: they have a bunch of friends and people they find interesting they want to follow, and are inundated by an inability to say "I like this person more" or "this person is more important to me." If you look at MySpace or Facebook: who are most people following? Their friends. That's what people care about. I think Thomas's suggestion happens to be a good one to help solve that problem on Friendfeed. - Mark Trapp

I have a kind of "manual" friend ranking system. I subscribe to the ones whose posts I most often click through, like or comment. Other users I find interesting but who I don't want in my main feed get their feeds subscribed to with Google Reader. On top of that, I have a few folders on my bookmarks toolbar, each containing a list of links to friendfeeders' feeds pertaining to a field of interest or set of relationships. I call it efficient stream absorbtion - Slippy "WildBeard" Lane

directeur, I don't know what to tell you. A friendship on that superficial level isn't a real friendship. I'm not interested in dehumanizing people into a list of interests: people are ends in and of themselves, not means for me to extract information. - Mark Trapp

Some good ideas in there. It would be nice to have a hand in "what is relevant to me". - Joel Gray

Mark: Maybe ULML (http://userlabor.org) may do this, but for interests -the things that mostly gather us- nothing equals APML I think. - directeur

APML does not solve the filtering problem: people don't reduce everything into a list of interests. It's a square peg trying to fit in a round hole. - Mark Trapp

Mark: i'm speaking about the programs, the software we use... I think you got me wrong. In real life I don't rank my friends, I even have friends that don't share any interests with me. I'm talking about programs, about apps like FF or other social web apps. these apps need a formal way to know who you are, and who I am, because, for that app, I should be what I like/hate - directeur

@Mark : ) I really don't care about contents are my friends' or not. And don't want to share with my all other followers. For this focus should be content. I think you need a niche FriendFeed like BestFriendFeed.com ;-) - Erhan Erdogan

Mark: me I do, If my best friend *here* talks about Britney Spears, I won't like to comment, click, or "Like" it. I just don't care. Period. But if an unknown person talks about Coltrane, or Dizzy, I'm here to say loudly that I LOVE them :) - directeur

When you are online or offline, you're dealing with human beings. That fact doesn't simply just become irrelevant when you use software. When I hang out with my friends at a bar or whatever, they are the same people there as they are when they message me on Facebook or Twitter or Friendfeed. I want to know what they are up to, moreso than what you're doing or what Robert Scoble's doing or anyone else, even if they are talking about the same thing your'e talking about. What they say has more value to me. - Mark Trapp

Mark: we're a little bit different. That's not to say that I don't have friends or that I don't care about them... No, but I'm a coder (just like you I guess) and whatever we say, we always need formal ways to (re)define things that we borrow to the real life. - directeur

directeur, you could still rank non friend people of interest highly. It would be entirely customizeable. If a stranger consistently blogged about things of interest, you could always rank them 100 too. It would be up to you to apply ratings as your relevance filter. I'd be very interested, for instance, in a pro photographer if they posted lots about photography even though they were not my best friend. - Thomas Hawk

Thomas think this is a great idea although "technically: I can't contribute to the conversation. Blindly hoping algorithms are my friend :D - Mark Forman

Thomas: Exactly, that's a big advantage of attention profiling. I'm a jazz lover, So I'm very likely to be a friend for other jazz lovers, and filters like these will help me find such "interesting" people. Not that others are not worth my consideration, but we may exchange a lot more when we have the same interests - directeur

APML is like discovery for interesting information: like Thomas, he's got an APML profile which weighs pro photography very high. Feeds it into a service and it tells him a bunch of people who he might match (like Toluu, for people). He says "man, John Doe is really cool. I'm going to subscribe to him." That's where APML leaves off. John Doe isn't merely defined by pro photography, but that's what got Thomas interested in him. But now that he's interested in him, he wants to know more about John Doe. - Mark Trapp

This is a brilliant idea -- personally weighted "best of" summaries. - Dewald Pretorius

So APML's solution is to say "forget everything about all my friends other than my interests:" It's not that simple. I hate car talk, so I'd rate the keyword car really low. My friend just got a new car: I want to know about that, but I won't because my interest in cars is low. It doesn't solve my original filtering problem. - Mark Trapp

Yes Mark, we agree on this, and that's what I just said too... BUT we discover future online-friends through the _content_ they share/publish or are interested in. - directeur

If you agree with me, I don't understand why you and your feedego team try to push APML every time filtering comes up. It doesn't help filtering subscriptions _I already have._ - Mark Trapp

Wouldn't it be possible to get around all this and create a personalized list of items that are personalized according to a ranking system. But at the same time keep a river of news view. That way we keep our subscriptions while allowing a second view of the same information through the prisim of our ranks. FF already does some of this through their best of sections and their rooms. So... more... - Roberto Bonini

My interest in new cars are very low as well. In fact I could care less if someone got a new car. But if my *brother* bought a new car I'd be interested, even if mildly. But in general we are more interested in some people than others for a myriad of reasons, family, friend, common photography passion, romantic involvement, whatever. The point is by ranking them you could better assist an algorithm in discovering and searching that content. - Thomas Hawk

Fun! I will create a new google docs file :p We must go on there - because we want to draw something and write a little longer :-) - Erhan Erdogan

Mark: Feedego is NOT a social thing. It's really about ego. There's no friendship in feedego. I agree with you on the fact that APML helps you *discover* interesting future friends. I advocate APML in general because I do belive in it, and filtering IMO is a concrete example on what APML may serve. Don't you think? - directeur

Roberto, exactly, "best of" by relevance would not *replace* the current "best of" river by sheer popularity. It would just be another optional view. Same goes with search. But i think it would likely be more interesting and relevant than the current best of. - Thomas Hawk

Directeur: No, it's not! You yourself agreed: APML solves filtering in the discovery phase, it does NOTHING for the content I'm already getting. Take the car example: how does APML not fail, spectacularly, when handling that? - Mark Trapp

P.S. I'm the only feedego guy on Friendfeed btw :) People talking about APML aren't members of feedego, they just like APML, like I do :) - directeur

I'm in directeur :( So bad - hearing such a thng like this from you :-) - Erhan Erdogan

Mark: I've never said " it does NOTHING for the content I'm already getting" ! I told you That ME "directeur" am not like you "Mark" and I won't care about anything about "Britney Spears" be it a content submitted, loved or whatever by my best friend. We're different on this Mark - directeur

At this point, I'd love to have an APML profile just to block every time someone mentions APML. - Mark Trapp

Erhan: I meant you aren't in the feedego staff :) - directeur

Mark: Ah! see? - directeur

@All :-)) Thanks for discussion. But this is end of our comment limits ;-) @Mark all of the things would be together ;-) - Erhan Erdogan

Mark: sorry to annoy you, I really didn't meant that. But a last example for the road: See? Me and you have had many misunderstandings in others discussions... That's it... wer'e human... But the next time I'll see you talking about APML I'll be interested, because you have an objective point of view, maybe different than mine, but I'll be interested in what you'll have to say. - directeur

You could achieve the same by collecting and analyzing a person's clickstream data without asking that persons's personal ratings for his/her topics of interest. My guess is that that is what Google is trying to do with the clickstream data of its users who opt for the option of complete Google "personal history" record. It is a scary thought to let Google know about every click one... more... - Javed Alam

Big point Javed and yes APML supports this already, that's called "implicit concepts", the others are "explicit" ones. And yes, an application may smartly create a profile from your behavior, but implicit concepts can't be really reliable without something explicitely given by the user. - directeur

@Javed That's all good for conjunction between APML and Thomas's point alg. ;-) But as you said we should see datas after researches ;-) - Erhan Erdogan

I like this notion of relevance. I imagine the "best of" stream could also be re-ranked based on your personal stats of who you find interesting, negating the work of manually ranking your relationships. - Andrew Smith

Mark: take it easy man! I didn't started the thing with APML, Erhan did :) And I'm not shoving APML down everyone's throats. You still say "we", "everyone". You're free to do this of course, but I personally never use "we" online. That's maybe the main difference between us, and that's indeed what separates our points of views, but still, I never see you as a woe... You're a guy who has his own opinions, I have mine and it's okay. (Even when you delete the comment to which this one is a reply) - directeur

@directeur Okayyy. I'm boomer ;-) Heheh! You're funny ; ) I subscribed to Mark - see you in his new comments - we will always punish you ;-) - Erhan Erdogan

Great idea Thomas. It reminds me a bit of how I started to organize my RSS feeds into categories based on levels of interest rather than topics. That way, I could do a better job of keeping up on the blogs that were important to me. - Jeff Smith

Great idea. I study within artificial intelligence and I can definitely say scoring and quantifying this data is the way to a more effective and efficient network. Another question though, do you find it depressing that you're blog has no comments - but FF has over 53? - CannonGod

Great post. Also see an earlier thread I started discussing more or less the same concept - http://friendfeed.com/e... - Aviv

Beebo Wallace

way cool: http://www.papervision3d.org/demos...

June 10, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Edward Zwart, John Cooper, Robin Whitson and 8 other people liked this

Wow. That is an awesome rendering. The detail is beautiful. - Dawn M. Armfield

3 more comments

That is very cool. - J. McConnell

I can't believe that didn't make me dizzy. Great work! - Andrew

Wow, I'm jealous. I want to do that. - Jordan Hofker

This is an amazing experience. - Robin Whitson

Drupal: Stephen Gornick

WordPress and Drupal Compared - http://performancing.com/wordpre...

June 10, 2008 - Comment - Like - Share

Chris Lewis liked this

Drupal is a CMS and Wordpress is a blog. - Czar

I don't see Drupal theming as a con. There are a wide variety of themes and some new theme developers doing nice work. I summarized my thoughts on Drupal and Wordpress themes in the following post. http://blog.awakenedvoice.com/2008... - Rob Safuto

Anthony Citrano

Hacking Japan: Inside Tokyo for Less than New York | The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss - http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog...

June 8, 2008 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Sean Oliver, Chris Lewis, Benjamin Kohler and 6 other people liked this

Really want to spend some time in Tokyo, someday. - Anthony Citrano

4 more comments

I'd love to go back one day. Izu Peninsula too - Michael W. May

Great article! I've actually started reading Tim's book recently but stopped, I should get back into it... And that makes me feel even more like visiting Japan, which has been my top destination in mind for a while now. For some reason I'm just fascinated by Japanese culture. - Vincent X

Look me up if you make it over here. :-) - Ray Grieselhuber

Tim will be on WorkFast.TV on FastCompany.tv next month. Can't wait! - Robert Scoble

@Scoble - cool, I will be sure to catch it. - Anthony Citrano

Loic Le Meur

Twitter deactivates replies and archive tabs and API request to 10 per hour... I think I am going to hang out on Friendfeed for the time being... - http://status.twitter.com/

June 9, 2008 from twhirl - Comment - Like - Share

Zulu, Grant Bierman, Rich and 16 other people liked this

http://friendfeed.com/rooms... - Hutch Carpenter

10 more comments

FriendFeed's where it's at! - Akiva Moskovitz

Twitter is such a dissapointment. FriendFeed I love you ;) - David Jacobs from twhirl

I am mourning Twitter today - Rafe Needleman

twitter=lame - Morgan

Following my Twitter friends to Friendfeed. Twitter is becoming a case history in how not to succeed. - Howard Rheingold

Seems like FriendFeed is going be the killer app today - Christian Van Der Henst from twhirl

Twhirl is the killer app ! - Adrian from twhirl

s well be getting the we're down page. - Jim Graham from twhirl

why not just shutdown the service.Everything it's used for is being taken away. - Tim Hoeck

Ys, less and less useful every single day - Douglas E. Welch from twhirl

lame lame lame. twitter without replies is like sex without the toe curl! ACK! who needs it?!? - sean808080

Scott Beale

Woman Thought She Won a Toyota, Not a Toy Yoda - http://laughingsquid.com/woman-t...

June 9, 2008 from Laughing Squid - Comment - Like - Share

RAPatton, edythe, Barry Owens and 17 other people liked this

holy sheep sh!t http://www.usatoday.com/news... this is from 2002! - acedanger

5 more comments

wow - Shey, Jamaican of FF

I worked with a woman once (late 80s) whose Megabucks numbers won in a neighboring state. she thought she won for several hours. NFC. - Anthony Citrano

"oh, what a feeling, you'll have..." - Andy Sternberg

Anthony, that's just sad - Shey, Jamaican of FF

@acedanger thanks for pointing that out, I've updated the post - Scott Beale

@Shey, yeah, it'd almost have been funny if it wasn't so heartbreaking. - Anthony Citrano

Bret Taylor

FriendFeed adds personalized recommendations - http://blog.friendfeed.com/2008...

June 5, 2008 from FriendFeed Blog - Comment - Like - Share

Nicholas James, Kol Tregaskes, oliver gassner and 215 other people liked this

Totally cool! This is exactly what I wanted! Thank you! Will give feedback on it after I have a few day's experience with it. - Robert Scoble

59 more comments

Love it. I'd also love to be able to see only the items added since I last checked Friendfeed. - Ranjit Mathoda

cool beans. - Anthony Citrano

Helps a lot. Thanks. Easier to keep updated on the stuff that matters to me. - Alex Williams

Very cool Bret. - Hutch Carpenter

Very nice. - Atul Arora

Very nice, indeed - Michael W. May

Thanks. - Amund Tveit

Very nice addition. Keep em coming. - Tsega Dinka

We definitely want feedback. I literally had six versions of the algorithm running in parallel, and this is the best one according to our qualitative assessment, but we need more data to really improve it. Let me know if you see too much of something or missed something you think is important - it will help me debug quality issues. - Bret Taylor

@scobleizer: It also does a bit of what you want for individual services as well. Here are the best Twitters from the past day: http://friendfeed.com/summary.... Click the service icons to restrict the "best of" view to a single service. It doesn't let you send the link out to anyone since it is entirely personalized, nor is it the generalized search interface you described, but it is a step in that direction. - Bret Taylor

Also looks like the date can go from 1 thru 30. greater than 30 reverts to 30 - Atul Arora

Bret: that's very cool. It's amazing how few things I actually have missed. But, this will be useful to check in on. One thing I do wish it had was "big things since last time you were here." - Robert Scoble

Next? I'd love to have a way to see a true reverse-chronological view of the "Everyone" feed, but let me filter by "n" Likes and "n" Comments. - Robert Scoble

How about, do a time stamp of the last time Robert logged in, and every hour afterward, do a screen capture of every single update from everybody he follows, save it as a massive PDF file, and send it to him via e-mail attachment. Repeat every 60 minutes. - Louis Gray

@Louis Gray: That'll make FF go twitter! - Yuvi

interesting idea - Steven Hodson

uh-oh.. going 'twitter' is launching as an idiom.. - sedgewick

Awesome idea Bret. Hey, we'd be honored if you could speak at FOWA this year (http://futureofwebapps.com). Interested? - Ryan Carson

perfect! now i only need to convince most of my friends to update their webbrowse behavior. most of them still didnt make the jump too rss and sharing is done mostly by skype :( - Chris Hofmann

Great addition. I'd also like to see it applicable at the individual user level. - Mark Krynsky

Been really looking forward to this since seeing it mentioned on "The Dan Farber Show"! In typical FF style, great feature with simple, clear implementation. Yummy! - Matt Harwood

This is very cool. As soon as they provide an Atom feed of this, it'll be the most kickass service ever. - Eric Florenzano

hmmm, this is my top post. Nice one - Andrew Smith

This is a great addition, shows that they are listening to what people want! - Joe Dawson

Oh, now see, this is just awesome. - Vince DeGeorge

Can we get a favorite button for stuff like this :) - Rob Diana

They should call it A-list juice - Jamie

Thanks, I appreciate this feature. - Daniel Backhaus

I want a feed for this feature! - Marcus

Very nice feature, for me, given the addiction, I suspect the "day" one will be the most used to make sure I didn't miss anything good. :) - felix

Bret: Yeah!! Great feature!! I've been waiting for this one! woo hoo! :) - Susan Beebe

Feedback: 1-day, 3-day, and 7-day look pretty good. 14-day and 30-day summaries seem swamped by the last 7 days (Maybe searches in 10-30-days should have older items weighted heavier than in 1-3-7 day summaries). Awesome! This really helps with the "Page 11" (Search past #300-399 fails design). My Friends feed (of 149 people) only goes back about 4 hrs. Everything past that is lost... Wish my regular Friends feed would save 24+ hrs. Nice job Bret! - Mitchell Tsai

Thanks, Bret! That's why we love friendfeed :) - Kenichi Matsumoto

ooh, what's this? ok, same thing I already talked about. awesome! - Kamilah Gill

Bret, you are an absolute genius. Every time I hear you speak (or write) I am just more and more impressed. - Alex Hammer

Search by service for Top 100 YouTube pictures, Blog articles, Google Reader/Del.icio.us articles, Last.fm songs... We can search for "&service=picasa&num=100", "&service=flickr", "&service=blog", "&service=googlereader","&service=delicious" See http://friendfeed.com/e... for multiple Top 100 searches from the past 1-2-3-7-14-30 days. - Mitchell Tsai

Search for best 100 articles from past day with "&num=100" See http://friendfeed.com/e... - Mitchell Tsai

Thank you! Arigatou gozaimasu! - Mike Reynolds

Well, I must say it works! I've already found three things I had missed this week and really interest me. - Andrés David Aparicio

wow, that's actually kinda...useful! - Sarah Perez

This could prove beneficial, what is the algorithm they are using? - Chris Miller

My guess would be comments and likes - Bwana ☠

Hmm.. And this is the first item in my personalized recommendations? I guess it works :) - Dimitri Glazkov

What's very VERY cool is that service filters work with this as well http://friendfeed.com/e.... EDIT: I just saw Mitchell already posted this feature. I should have known, he's always on top of these things :) - Bwana ☠

Awesome! - Daniel Spradau

Nice, that was the thing to do. I hope to get something like that for Twitter and I think it's still possible to make. - fbrunel

I bet FF hires Mitchell to code up queries!! LOL good stuff here Bret & Mitchell!! - Susan Beebe

@Bret: I'm sad you don't support APML. - directeur

Susan: I'm just too lazy (and retired May 2007). Now I code in Excel & FriendFeed (rather than Fortran 66 & Cobol). I just bookmark my own FriendFeed posts in Safari & Firefox rather than make too many Safari bookmark-sub-menus. Getting too lazy to write HTML or LAMP. ;-) Headed to Yosemite in a few days after the Harmony Festival this weekend - Robert Scoble's Ansel Adams visit was too tempting :0) - Mitchell Tsai

Awaiting for more kick-ass features from FF! Great work! - Winston Teo

This is great Bret. FF keeps getting better. - Michael Carter

great addition to the functionality! - Jeroen De Miranda

Hmmm. If the list of most popular posts contains only posts which I have liked, commented on or clicked through, does that make me the most popular friendfeeder ever? ;-) - Slippy "WildBeard" Lane

Are there plans to extend "best of" to FF rooms? Depending on the number of members and activity, that could be really interesting. - Tom Landini

This is so incredibly awesome. FriendFeed just returned to the same level of utility (for my usage patterns) as before the launch / noise onslaught. :-) - Kevin Scott

awesome, thats useful! now i need direct messages, go one - Alexander Oelling

Bret Taylor is amazing! - Alex Hammer

I find it interesting on how this feature is at the top of "best of the month." Seems kinda pointless. - Rishabh Mishra (p248)

Finally back on a full computer after a nearly two-week absence (no, I didn't go to Peru, I went to Alabama). Looks nice. - Ontario Emperor

Great addition! Next feature request: let me filter by people I really know vs. people I just like to follow so I can see what my "real" friends are doing at a glance. - Dave Hanson

Robert Scoble

Tease for our new photography show, PhotoCycle, starting later this month: http://scobleizer.smugmug.com/gallery... with @thomashawk and @marcsilber

June 5, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Gustav Holmström, Kreg Steppe, Chris Nixon and 30 other people liked this

great project! is marc really on a mountain? :) - Anthony Farrior

32 more comments

Heh, thanks. It's going to be a lot of fun. Thanks to Rocky Barbanica for editing and producing it, too. By the way, SmugMug's video is quite nice, very impressed. - Robert Scoble

Looks like it will be a pretty good show. I'm looking forward to it. - Jeremy Kunz from Alert Thingy

Color me excited! - Andy Roth

Looking forward to PhtotCycle! - Mitchell Tsai

Great teaser. Looking forward to it. I like the use of SmugMug for the HQ video. - Jeremy Hall

It's not pn smugmug- it's on my personal site. - Rocky Barbanica

Looking forward to this - Andrew Smith

yep that's really Half Dome behind me, no blue screen! check it here http://www.silberstudios.com/blog... - Marc Silber

Rocky: actually I moved it over to SmugMug. - Robert Scoble

cool idea for a show - chartreuse

Wow ! seems great, can't wait to see it ! (definitely Half Dome, great climbing spot too!) - Heimana

Looks like a great project; the backdrop is ridiculous. - Blake N. Cooper

was that a real view on the background? (amazing) - Orli Yakuel

Nice teaser. The show looks like something I'd really enjoy. What's the best way to keep tabs on when the first videos start coming out. Subscribing to the feed on that video page? - Dylan Parker

Dang, can't seem to view it in FF3 RC1 or RC2. :( Plz don't make me use IE...w.ahhhh!!! - Joel Gray from bTT

I'd try Opera before using IE - Shey, Jamaican of FF

I suppose I should break down and install Opera at some point...sheesh, how many browsers does one need these days! :D - Joel Gray

It works in Firefox 3.0 RC1 here. Not sure why it's not working for you. Do you have the latest Flash plugin? - Robert Scoble

@Joel Gray - We haven't tested with FF3rc1/rc2 yet, but I'll see if we can give it a shake today. Can't imagine why it wouldn't work. Mac or Windows? - Don MacAskill

Hopefully already obvious, but click the "Share" button to get an embeddable player. - Don MacAskill

I'll dobule check that after WorkFast.TV - Joel Gray from bTT

Don, where is the "share" button. I can't find it anywhere on the page and want to embed the video on my blog? - Thomas Hawk

@DonMacAskill Windows Vista SP1. Haven't had any problems with YouTube or other videos that use the player. Just sits there saying "Buffereing" connection seems good to everything else. - Joel Gray

Really looking forwared to this!. - ha3rvey (needs soup)

@Thomas Hawk - Looks like Scoble has some interesting customization, blowing away our normal buttons. Go here http://scobleizer.smugmug.com/gallery... and click 'share photo'. Use the 'Get a link' tab. - Don MacAskill

@Joel Gray - Can you tell me which version of Flash this page says you have? http://kb.adobe.com/selfser... - Don MacAskill

@DonMacAskill WIN 9,0,115,0 OS Windows Vista - Video Cap: Yes - Audio Cap: Yes - Local File I/O: Yes - Joel Gray

Awesome, can't wait for it. Where will we be able to view this show? - Cade Brown

it will be on http;//www.fastcompany.tv - Robert Scoble

@Joel Gray - There are some bugs in 9,0,115 that are fixed in 9,0,124, so you could try updating. I'm installing FF3rc2 on my Vista SP1 VM right now, so we'll see how that goes. - Don MacAskill

@Joel Gray - Hmm, fresh FF3rc2 install on my Vista SP1 machine w/Flash 9,0,115 and it plays fine for me. Dang. I'm stumped. I'll keep looking, though. - Don MacAskill

Look froward to seeing that! - Kreg Steppe

It is now up at http://www.fastcompany.tv/photocy... - Robert Scoble

Louis Gray

Turn FriendFeed Into Your Start Page With These Greasemonkey Scripts - http://www.inquisitr.com/820...

June 5, 2008 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

Paul Buchheit, Chris Lewis, Jeff Quinton and 5 other people liked this

over-reaching on that Louis. - Dennis Howlett from twhirl

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It's not my script, Dennis. Duncan Riley is the author and did a great job. I've had FriendFeed as my browser home page, without those tabs, for months now. - Louis Gray

Now if only Greasemonkey would come back to FF3... - elroy from twhirl

elroy: the article Duncan wrote says he tested these on FF3... there are a couple different ways you can turn off the compatibility checking, but I always use the Nightly Tester Tools add-on, available from the Mozilla site. - Kenneth LeFebvre

I'm not sure I see any benefit to doing this, than just creating separate browser tabs for each of those services. What am I missing? - Kenneth LeFebvre

I'm scared of the Nightly Tester. I have it installed. I used it early on with a few add-ons and FF3 started to constantly crash. Kinda annoying. - elroy from twhirl

Thomas Hawk

Teaser for our New PhotoCycle Video Show - http://thomashawk.com/2008...

June 5, 2008 from Thomas Hawk's Digital... - Comment - Like - Share

Chris Farrugia, J. McConnell, Dawn M. Armfield and 2 other people liked this

I think this show is gonna be great! Can't wait to see what you guys cook up. - Don MacAskill

Thomas Hawk

@kveton Great conversation. I shoot 100% in RAW. Every argument I've heard for shooting JPG above doesn't hold water in my opinion. Y ...

May 16, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Eric Johnson, Michael Carter, Mitchell Tsai and 11 other people liked this

I wish Twitter linked to the FF conversation instead of truncating FF posts. - Thomas Hawk

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There are reasons to shoot in JPG, but not for everyone. Typically, event shooters (Weddings, Sports) like JPG for speed and file size. Who wants to miss a shot while waiting on the buffer to write to the card? - William Beem

Canon took RAW away from the Powershot S80, booo - Shey, Jamaican of FF

@Thomas and yes I wish it did too - Shey, Jamaican of FF

hmmm.. not sure why the other FF conversation didn't bump. - Thomas Hawk

William, I disagree. While many event shooters shoot in JPG I think it's a bad way to go. Buffer writing is not an issue with most high end DSLRs these days. File size doesn't really matter because cards and storage are cheap. I've got 6 TBs of drives (4TB replicated). At min. event shooters should shoot JPG+RAW. They can still quickly get their JPGs off and will have the RAW there if they do get a very special shot that needs to be fixed. - Thomas Hawk

yeah that's weird, if I had seen it first, I would have commented over there instead - Shey, Jamaican of FF

William, the only reason I've seen for file size is people who want to do quick previews at the event, and in that case, you can always do RAW + Small JPG. Best of both worlds. Any recent camera + decent memory card should have no issue with buffer speed.... - Chris Lewis from Alert Thingy

by the way, the original FF conversation that I commented on about this is not bumping for some reason. It's a much longer conversation than this one. http://friendfeed.com/e... - Thomas Hawk

I use an 8GB card that can hold over 600 RAW shots, so I have very little reason to use jpeg. I did shoot in jpeg at one event when I used continuous shooting mode to capture martial arts action shots. - Mike Hussein Cohen

Mike, I use two 8GB cards and swap them out. Two 8GB cards will hold about 900 photos on a 5D in RAW. I can't imagine why anyone really would shoot JPG alone anymore unless they simply haven't experienced what can be done in post production with RAW. - Thomas Hawk

I've been shooting 100% RAW for well over a year and love it. The only reason I can see you'd not want to is of you don't have the right software to make it easy. - TranceMist

I've occasionally run into the buffer write problem at some runway shoots, but I typically don't do many events. The thing to remember is that RAW is a file format, not a religion. Some people choose to shoot JPG and that works for them. Personally, I also prefer RAW. - William Beem

Hmm, the other thread seems to have disappeared. @Thomas - Do you have an example of comparisons between "just-taken" and post-production RAW shots? Also, what format generally works better for photos you're not really going to process after-the-fact? - Jordan Hofker

The white balance adjustments that can be made with RAW in post production make it worth my while alone. - Matt from twhirl

my wife swears by RAW won't shoot in anything else - i trust her judgement in these matters! - Morgan from twhirl

I shoot mostly sports (well baseball) and almost always shoot RAW any time I've shot JPEG I've had shots that I could've saved if I had the raw data - Bastard Operator From FF

Scott Kveton

@ahockley do you shoot things in RAW? or does it depend on the mood? how do you store it all? plz answer in 140 chars ... :-)

May 15, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Tsega Dinka, Michael Randall, JA Castillo and 15 other people liked this

Any serious photographer ALWAYS shoots in RAW. When I meet people who say they don't know what RAW is or who do, and decide to do only JPEG I just shake my head and feel sorry for them. It's like throwing away your original slides or negatives. Makes me sad. - Robert Scoble

51 more comments

Ok. I am one of those JPEG photographers. I just got a new DLSR and don't know anything about RAW. Any good links on taking RAW photos and how to process them? Also, what do you use to manage your files? - Michael Carter

Michael: get Adobe Lightroom http://www.adobe.com/product... -- if you save in RAW you'll be able to much more widely manipulate your images, saving color temperature and exposure problems, among other things. Plus you'll get sharper images and know that you've actually saved all the data coming off of your DSLR's sensor. It takes more memory space, though. Need more hard drives and bigger memory cards, etc. - Robert Scoble

Thanks Robert! - Michael Carter

Michael: Aperture is a great option if you are on a Mac. It's absolutely brilliant for organization. Google This Week In Photography -- it's a great podcast about all things photography related. - Jeremy Brooks

Now storage is cheap, there's not much reason not to use RAW. - Rich

Generalizations like this don't make for a good argument, Robert. Most serious photographers do indeed shoot raw and I agree for most it is the way to go. But there are indeed good reasons for shooting JPEG. It all depends on the circumstances. News photographers who have to get their stuff out as quickly as possible are one example. Plus, DSLRs have become much better at in-camera JPEG processing. The newest Nikons produce exceptionally good JPEGs in most situations. - Ole Begemann

Ole: there's no reason anymore. Why? Pro DSLRs like my Canon 5D and the Nikon D3 I borrowed for a month shoot in BOTH RAW and JPEG so you get the benefits of each. News photographers should keep a historical record in as high a quality as they can. Also, RAW can actually be much easier to process and get a good professional image from. - Robert Scoble

What about sports photography where speed is necessary. You are wrong scoble for dissing on JPEG like that. Raw is great, but JPEG has its own needs and uses - Varun "Maverick" Pitale

I tested out the Nikon D3 and have the Canon 5D. I don't see any real-world speed difference between shooting both RAW and JPEG and JPEG only. Most sports photogs I know shoot RAW because they want the processing capabilities that come with RAW. Most sports photogs I know use many cameras anyway and use the most expensive equipment. - Robert Scoble

But, that's missing the point anyway. I don't mind a professional making a conscious choice. But most people don't really know what RAW does for them and they really are limiting themselves and their photography because of their lack of knowledge. - Robert Scoble

RAW images are not always noticably better in a side-by-side, unprocessed comparison. However, they have major advantages when you're doing a lot of correction afterwards, particularly to bad white balances. If you shoot hundreds of images a day, RAW is not a practical choice. - Ian Betteridge

Ian: that's bull. Thomas Hawk shoots hundreds of images a day and shoots in RAW. I'm shooting tons of pictures every day in both RAW and JPEG and I can see the difference. I upload my JPEG's to Flickr for speed's sake, though, but I wouldn't consider making an image without keeping the RAW around. - Robert Scoble

Robert, your point about "historical record" highlights the BIG issue with RAW: it's not a standard format as such, but simply the raw sensor data. This means that there are lots of kinds of RAW, and no future-proofing. A Nikon NEF which is supported today might not be supported in 10 years time. Keeping your archives as RAW files is basically gambling that the (proprietary) format will still be supported in ten years time, something that you're not doing with JPG. - Ian Betteridge

Oh, and not all RAW is created equal: some types use lossy compression anyway, so you might as well shoot in JPG. - Ian Betteridge

Ian ALL professional cameras shoot in both JPG and RAW. In fact, the Nikon D3 has two Compact Flash card slots. You can set the camera to shoot in RAW on one card and JPEG on the other. That way you have both formats to work with. Even if I shot in RAW only, though, I'd convert my photos to JPEG that I wanted to save and I keep both the RAW format and the JPEG. - Robert Scoble

Scoble, I agree with all the points you make, but I still would argue that if you need speed, JPEG beats RAW. Even the D3 takes RAW at only 2.5 fps - Varun "Maverick" Pitale

Robert, does Thomas shoot hundreds of images a day without access to a laptop? How long, exactly, does he spend processing afterwards? If all he's doing is shooting raw and creating JPGs, he's wasting his time. What's more, if you're really seeing a big difference between raw and JPG, then the issue is your camera's JPG compression algorithms, not the efficiency of RAW. - Ian Betteridge

And, of course, if all Thomas is doing is using RAW as an archive format, then he's gambling that his particular kind of RAW will be supported in ten, twenty years time. That's a big gamble to take if archive photos are important to you. - Ian Betteridge

Varun: the D3 sure seemed to take a lot faster photos than that. I'll have to look into that. Ian: yes. He carries many gigabyte cards. He spends hours processing images. We'll cover this topic a lot more in depth on our new PhotoCycle show that'll start in mid-June. - Robert Scoble

Always RAW. It's amazing how much more data you can get out of a RAW image; highlights/shadows especially. - Benjamin Golub

Robert, I know that all pro cameras shoot in both. However, the way you're talking about RAW here is as if you can just dispense with JPG - ie "news photographers should keep a historical record in as high a quality as they can." Well sorry, but as an archive format RAW is just not a good choice. - Ian Betteridge

Robert, your example of how Thomas works makes the point very well that RAW doesn't work for all. Could a news photographer afford to stop mid-shoot and change a card? - Ian Betteridge

Ian: have you ever watched a news journalist work? They change cards all the time. I'll tell you what, I'll interview some news journalists about this topic and we'll come back to it. Most of the ones I know shoot in RAW because they want the absolute best image to work with as possible. Most news photographers (I watched quite a few work right next to me at Davos) carry three to five bodies and a crapload of memory cards so switching isn't that big a deal for them. - Robert Scoble

It is extremely rare that anyone needs to shoot for an extended length of time without taking a breath. In such situations anyway the best photographers have assistants who rotate cameras in with fresh cards. I watched Sports Illustrated work a World Series game and that's just what they did. The assistant was taking images off of the cards, processing them, and uploading them while the action was going on on the field. - Robert Scoble

"If you shoot hundreds of images a day, RAW is not a practical choice." Sure it is. In Aperture I set the correct white balance for 1 RAW image and batch apply it to all othe others in the same photo shoot. Most of the time this doesn't need to change at all. You can even batch apply sharpening/noise reduction/anything else. RAW does not slow me down; it makes my photos the best they can be. - Benjamin Golub

Some links. Thomas Hawk on Adobe Bridge: http://thomashawk.com/2006... - Robert Scoble

Part I of Photoshop Lessons from Jan Kabili, where she talks about how to process RAW and other things that are important to making great images: http://www.podtech.net/scobles... - Robert Scoble

Part II of Photoshop Lessons from Jan Kabili: http://www.podtech.net/scobles... - Robert Scoble

Inside Photoshop CS3 with John Nack: http://www.podtech.net/scobles... - Robert Scoble

Robert, I used to be a news journalist - and I think you mean news photographer :) And yes, they change cards (and cameras) a lot. They'll be doing it a whole lot more if they shoot in RAW. Approximately 3-6x as often, in fact. That means you're much more likely to miss getting the best shot in busy circumstances. Don't get me wrong - RAW is great if the important thing is maximising your ability to post-process - but in some circumstances that's not what you're most interested in. - Ian Betteridge

I shot in RAW and do my post processing in Adobe Lightroom. Pics are saved on 2 external HDDs. - Marcel Janus

I shoot in RAW when I think post-processing of the image will improve it a lot. But the jpg's my DLSR creates are enough for me in 50-70% of the situations. This does depend on how much of a photoshopper you are. :) It helps if you know the limits of your camera. - roel

I just want to say that I love FriendFeed. This whole discussion started from a Tweet from a person that I don't follow. Now there are all these people adding to a new conversation on FF. This is good stuff. - Michael Carter

Great conversation. I shoot 100% in RAW. Every argument I've heard for shooting JPG above doesn't hold water in my opinion. You can fit hundreds of photos shot in RAW on an 8GB card -- even more on a 16GB. Swapping cards is no problem -- it can be done in seconds. I shoot 200-400 shots in a typical day. If I'm on an actual shoot typically over 1,000. Storage is cheap. You lose so much of your photo by shooting in JPG. There is no reason to only shoot in JPG for serious photographers. - Thomas Hawk

As soon as I get a RAW capable camera, I'm all over it. I'm waiting until CHDK supports my camera (SD 750) or I get a new one altogether. - ha3rvey (needs soup)

Canon took RAW away from the Powershot S80, booo - Shey, Jamaican of FF

Mac OS X supports most Canon & Nikon RAW formats natively so you can preview RAW images in the finder or use QuickLook, so it isn't any more difficult to work with than JPEG. The difference is most obvious when you open a RAW file in Aperture, since it gives you more adjustment options. - Mike Hussein Cohen

Not sure why everyone moved away from this thread. What I'm wondering, is when I'm at the point where I'll be buying a DSLR, what do I get? Is there a current "king" of the DSLRs? - Jordan Hofker

Jordan, best advice is to try out a lot of different ones. Also depends on your price range. My own thoughts are to seriously consider both Canon and Nikon due to the extensive line up of fine lenses that both offer. Canon should be coming out with a new 5D shortly. That will be a hot DSLR and probably run about $3,500. the Nikon D3 runs about $5,000. You don't need to spend this much though and there are many seriously good cheaper models from both Canon and Nikon. - Thomas Hawk

Jordan, I'm about to retire my first DSLR (a Canon 20D) and am looking at replacing it with the Canon 450D... it's a step down in the Canon product line, but feature-by-feature is actually an upgrade for me... :) and, it's squarely within my hobbyist's budget at around $800... - Kenneth LeFebvre

Jordan, one thing to keep in mind that is just as important to get good lenses/glass as it is to get a good body! So save some money in your budget for some quality starter lenses (you can get some good prime lenses) - Chris Lewis from Alert Thingy

I'm late to the party, I seem to get more noise/grain from RAW than from JPG - in Adobe RAW and Aperture 2. Not enough to make me go back though. - Avelino Maestas

I sure wish I knew why this conversation is not being bumped up in FriendFeed when people post to it. Annoying. - Thomas Hawk

testing bump. - Thomas Hawk

I'm testing the bump also (with a like and a comment), but I have a question - what is the shelf life of a typical RAW image? Certainly you have more processing capabilities in the short term, but what about 5-10 years from now? I grant that JPEG won't be supported forever either, but if you're thinking long-term preservation, I would think that JPEG would offer a longer life. - Ontario Emperor

Testing bump Sat 3:10 AM JST (Fri 11:10 AM PDT). This article bumps in my "Comments" and "See both" pages, but is invisible in my "Friends" and "Likes" pages. - Mitchell Tsai

Ontario Emperor: That's precisely the impetus behind Adobe's DNG standard. It will provide a standard RAW format that will be more likely to last longer than individual manufacturer's formats... - Kenneth LeFebvre

I tried bumping another thread from Wednesday (Scott Kveton's Russian coke can from 2 days ago) with "no comments" and it wouldn't appear in my "Friends" page either. http://friendfeed.com/e... So it's not just looong threads. Maybe a FriendFeed algorithm/cache/etc... issue. - Mitchell Tsai

I'd have to say that it all boils down to what you're going to use it for, which is part of the visualization process that Ansel Adams so heavily stresses. I look at the final use of the photo and make all of my decisions based on that, just like in the darkroom days. - Marc Silber

...love the flexibility of RAW to save your bacon when you forget a WB setting or the like. A sharper image is generally available to you as well. - JA Castillo

100% RAW. Why is this even a question? - TranceMist

I shoot RAW only and it is a noticeable difference (for me) between shooting JPG and RAW. However, I'm not too keen on the current crop of RAW processors. I am still a big fan of RawShooter which unfortunately does not handle UTF8 or GPS EXIF. - Jauder Ho

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