Dual monitor people, do you have one monitor as 'primary' and directly in front of you with your secondary monitor on the side or do you have both monitors side-by-side with the 'seam' between them directly in front of you?
I have three, the one in the the middle is the primary, Email on the left, Emacs on the right
- Jorge Escobar
I use three as well, but my "main" monitor is right in front of me. Web/Twitter/OneNote/Bugs/Source control on the left, email on the right.
- Jordan Hofker
No multi monitors, but i do keep my laptop on the desk. Laptop runs tweetdeck and any other extraneous programs, WhateverI'm working on is on the main monitor.
- Roberto Bonini
Here's mine - http://www.deskography.org/people... The big screen is set to primary. It's as seemless as different sized screens can be for me, same here at work i have a similar problem. 1 x 24" and 1x17"
- Simon Wicks
I've tried it both ways; right now I have one monitor directly in front of me as primary and another to the right of it and at an angle because I have an awkward desk configuration. I find that it works okay but I'm not sure that I'm using my extra screen space to its full advantage.
- joey
This is why you always need an odd number of columns of monitors.
- LogEx
I actually do have three monitors: my laptop on the left, a monitor in the center, and another monitor on the right. The two monitors are hooked to my Mac Pro which I also use to control MacBook Pro via Synergy. There's a fairly significant gap between the two monitors, however, to make room for my desktop speakers and the volume control. Maybe getting rid of that gap will help.
- Akiva Moskovitz
I always keep the biggest one as primary in front of me, and the rest arranged wherever the heck they fit on the desk. Then I adjust the computer accordingly, to know where they are and to make dragging things intuitive. Haphazard, but it works. Most I've done this way is four, and I didn't bother with a rectangular configuration.
- Otto
I prefer having a seam in front of me, and two monitors tilted slightly inward as if to hug me in their warm digital embrace.
- Sparky
Primary in front, secondary on the right, iMac on the left.
- Beau Liening
from iPhone
I have a main monitor directly in front of me and the second monitor to the left of it (and desperately wanting a third so I can balance this setup out!) I actually prefer it that way, because having the seam in the middle felt so freakish to me. :)
- tinypants - Hagitha of FF
I had one in front directly, well about 80% directly and then the second to the side. #3 was off way to the side and was used only for cron jobs and scripts and stuff (like tweetdeck) where constant attention was not needed. One of the reasons is that I run the Mac 'Dock' on the right hand side of the screen, so I wanted it on the monitor directly in front and all the way on the right....
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- Andrew Leyden
I have two at work and two (monitor and laptop screen) at home. At work I generally have the left one as my "main" one but they are both kind of small so i'm about the same distance away from either one. At home both of them are bigger... I have my laptop (which is actually a bigger screen than my monitor) on the right. I flip flop between which one is my "main" depending on the task....
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- Fa La La La Lindsay
At work, the former (because one screen is a laptop and the other is a 21" LCD, so there's a natural size imbalance). At home, the latter because both are 21" LCDs.
- Chieze Okoye
One big monitor directly in front of me. Laptop/netbook to the side where ever it can fit.
- Rodfather
Side-by-side w/ the seam in front of me.
- JA Castillo
Chalk me up as another side by side person -- at least for desktop machines. For laptops, when I occasionally hook them up to an external monitor, you don't have much choice but to be main screen and a side screen.
- Christopher A. Wichura
I prefer the 3 monitor set up... but right now we're moving around a lot... so I use a large monitor that sits right above my laptop screen. I like the vertical nature of it... seems to work ergonomically speaking. And seems intuitive for scrolling etc.... If I want I can see FF cascading down nearly 26" of vertical monitor space. :)
- SAM
my second monitor is a window, and i keep the seam about in the middle, :/
- chaz2b
I have a monitor in front of me that I use most, with my second monitor right next to it to the right which has the pop=ups, Gtalk, FF and calendar/reminder (basically all sorts of small things).
- Kol Tregaskes
I take it that means SpinRite wasn't able to rescue the drive? If you put it in another machine, can you mount it read-only to get your critical documents off it?
- Christopher A. Wichura
Skype adding in-client adverts is the best way for them to kill off their business and drive users elsewhere. When will companies learn that advertising is BAD and just annoys users?
- Christopher A. Wichura
"There are, of course, honorable mentions — and reasons they were excluded. EMMA FROST: The former White Queen. Sure, she’s got sex appeal — and blue lipstick with barely any clothing. Emma’s never looked as good as when she was bundled up as Headmistress of Generation X. POWERGIRL: Google her. I dare you. There’s nothing hot about a woman with a chest that could flatten Superman....
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- RAPatton
I was taken aback to see Halleberry's pic. :D
- vijay
Of that list, like Paul Dini, I am all about #8
- RAPatton
LOL @ Halle Berry. I love my marvel and dc chicks...but none can hold a candle to my girl Druuna. (NOTE: Careful if you look her up, most of Mr. Serpieri's work is NSFW).
- Carlos Ayala
and seriously M? Who the hell is M? And how does she rank over characters people have actually heard of?
- Andrew C
M was introduced in Generation X like 10 years ago. She's one of those characters that has gone through a bunch of transformations. I haven't followed it. The male version of this is even worse.
- Andrizzle Gizzle
10 hottest in superhero comics, more like.
- Spidra Webster
Sorry, but that article is fail. The US superhero comic women don't have nuttin' on Japanesse Manga/Anime...
- Christopher A. Wichura
@Andrea - OK, but I still think the list could have been filled out without having to dip into third-tier comics. =P
- Andrew C
I prefer Jakita Wagner to these choices myself.
- Rob Haas
What event were you shooting? The most annoying thing about working with superteles is all the annoying remarks people make while I am trying to focus on shooting.
- Christopher A. Wichura
"F1 now restricts you to nothing more powerful than 200mm".. really??!?
- Cristian Conti
You have now been promoted to 'Super-Turbo-Awesome-Dude' status. I'm not worthy to comment in your cyber-presence...I will now take my leave, Your Excellency.....*bows and backs out of the room slowly*
- Morgan Haley
Nice glass. Very nice glass. Color me jealous. On a stick!
- Morgan Haley
Cristian: Last year's Singapore F1 that I went to had the 200mm restriction. And I saw them hassling people with stuff that looked even remotely larger than a point-and-shoot.
- Christopher A. Wichura
Morgan: it's rented from Keeble and Shuchat Photography in Palo Alto. You know the store is good. Google's CEO shops there too (I met Eric in there one day).
- Robert Scoble
Ladybug: I have three boys so I'm not compensating for THAT! :-) But all the geeks are jealous of the photos I'm able to take with it, though. Later this weekend you'll see why.
- Robert Scoble
It's the same one you were using in the Nimitz, right Sigma 1000mm?
- Marco Massarotto
Well, still....You hold the title until you return the rental. Enjoy shooting with that bad-mo'fo!
- Morgan Haley
Marco: yes, same lens I had on Nimitz. Canon 600 mm F4.0.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
The Canon 600mm is a really nice lens, and works well with their 1.4xII TC. The 800mm is even better, but harder to use with the 1.4x due to center-point-only focus.
- Christopher A. Wichura
Question/Rant: AT&T says it must prohibit Skype & other VOIP services over 3G on iPhone b/c it's too much for it's network to handle. Putting that being BS aside, does anyone know the logic behind them allowing Skype over 3G if your using a laptop with an AT&T 3G wireless card. I'm not following AT&T's logic except that they can extort more $
Does there need to be any other reason? I doubt there is one. This is one of the companies, after all, that charges basic SMS at the rate of about $1,000,000,000 for a terabyte, while the same volume of data can be FedEx'ed on a new hard disk for $100.
- LogEx
I believe if you look at the TOS, you are in breach of contract to use VoIP apps even on a laptop using a WWAN broadband modem from them. That said, I suspect many people do. After all, I run Skype all the time as much for IM as I do for VoIP. This is purely a case of them trying to protect old business models. Running VoIP over data is probably the same or less over-the-air data as an...
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- Christopher A. Wichura
The reason? Phone companies don't need a reason.
- Brome
It's just a shame for consumers b/c if there wasn't a barrier to entry with the infrastructure costs etc... a company like AT&T trying to save their dying business model would have died away years ago. But because their government subsidized and their are barriers to entry - consumers get the shaft as we wait for AT&T to screw us as they die a slow but certain death. They have to realize that their destiny is to be a non-consumer facing datapipe - like the public water company.
- Mike Bracco
Well, I think it's not just cost ... look at how many of the devices there are. Ask anyone who has an iPhone whether AT&T's network can handle all their users using VOIP and video streaming apps ;-)
- Joel Bennett
Clark: Ok I get that but it's not really a cost issue I don't think. If it was, then they would offer iPhone users a $60 data plan that allowed the Skype app to use 3G - But they don't. They are just protecting their old business model.
- Mike Bracco
If the issue is that the network would die if every iPhone user used VOIP then fine - limit access by just making it really expensive - but they don't even do that.
- Mike Bracco
If the AT&T network can't 'handle it,' then why not let us have choices for other providers? (I thought if they're giving stupid answers, I'll ask a stupid question.)
- Trish R
from iPhone
Smart move. Page is the future as far as interaction with a community goes, even if it's not yet there. Profiles are fun but become overwhelming when too many people. No real connections being made.
- Paul Papadimitriou
from iPhone
What is your reason for deleting these "friends" in Facebook? Performance, noise, usability?
- Flynn (Michael A. Volz)
from BuddyFeed
Delete Your Facebook Page is the new Kill Your Television. RT @CourtneyReimer
- A Mitchell
Is this like how you cleaned up your Twitter account Robert?
- Rob Cairns
My reason? Noise. It is different than my Twitter cleanup because I don't need to delete everyone first.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Doesn't Facebook have the ability to move all your friends over to your "page"? (If you contact their support desk, that is.) Then you'd just have to add back the people that are actually your real-live friends.
- Christopher A. Wichura
Does this mean I actually get to be Robert Scoble's friend on Facebook now? ;-)
- Jesse Stay
There doesn't seem to be any way to move friends to your fan page which would be ideal. I really hate the idea of deleting 5000 fans. There are some advantages to friends, too. For example, I know the birthdays of my 5000 "friends" and can wish them a happy birthday.
- Leo Laporte
That's why I only have my personal friends over there ;)
- Nicholas James
Well this Gran is seriously thinking about leaving Facebook, I am fed up of all those updates from folks about the blasted app games! That's all you get on there now! :(
- Sandra Large
I have one of the MIMO displays. It's not the specific one linked here, but it's a 7" display with video camera and touchscreen, powered and driven entirely by USB. Much as I wanted to like it, I just can't recommend it to anyone. There are a couple problems with it. First, the display itself is pretty bad. I suspect this is a result of the very low power that USB allows. It flickers...
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- Christopher A. Wichura
I think your comment got truncated, or BuddyFeed isn't showing me all of it.
- Cheryl Jones
from BuddyFeed
Finally saw your full comment on FriendFeed proper. Anyway, you could use it to show a mobile version of your choice of social network... Pity it isn't a more proper monitor.
- Cheryl Jones
Want? Yes. Do you need would be the better question. =)
- ronin
Depends on what you are doing with it. we had the older version of this lens. it was rather heavy and we rarely took in anywhere. Se sold it and got a 70 - 300 4.5-5.6f. Its lighter and I use it a lot more now. Still has VR and while not quite as fast, it totally fulfills most of my needs.
- Rachel Lea Fox
I still say you should get a 105mm prime for macro work.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Akiva, it's on my list because I definitely want to be able to do macro photography; I miss it tremendously. I often work in small spaces, I guess. But this lens has been offered to us at a very good price and I'm just not sure if it's something I should even be interested in. I'm clueless.
- joey
Okay, I suppose I should also ask why I should want one!
- joey
Yeah, I remember discussing it on Saturday. If the fact that it's a very good price is the only real reason why you're considering it, then I say pass on it. If there's more to it than that, the first thing I'd find out is if has AF and if it's compatible with your body. The second thing I'd find out is if it has any kind of image stabilization built in. If not, you'll most likely need a mono- or tripod to use this lens effectively.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Thanks, I'll ask about those. I haven't really considered many lenses at all because I just don't know enough about the uses/benefits of different lenses yet and because I'd probably want too many.
- joey
I generally prefer prime lenses, but the 70-200 f2.8 is one zoom I have on my wish list. ^^
- David C. Cooper
Honestly, though, while I do use the 18-200, I much prefer my 50mm for the kinds of things I really like to photograph.
- joey
I have a 70-200 f/4 and I love it. I'd also love a 2.8, but consider that they're a bit heavier. If you need a great telephoto lens, this is your best bet. You'll also enjoy the portraits you can take with it, but you'll need to be a little farther away from your subject. :-)
- Jordan Hofker
Although, Nikon just updated this lens to include VRII. So, you're probably getting a deal on the older VRI version which is still a great lens.
- David C. Cooper
David, correct. My almost-father-in-law is upgrading.
- joey
FWIW, my 70-200 f/2.8 L IS is one of the lenses that is ALWAYS in my camera bag. That and the old 28-70 f/2.8 L are my main workhorses. But in the end, you haven't said what you want to use this for. And what lenses do you currently have that this is filling a hole for?
- Christopher A. Wichura
If you need the reach of 200mm, there are also the 70-200 f/4 models. Those are considerably lighter, and if you are going to use this in mainly brightly lit situations then the loss of light won't be a huge problem. The image stabilization on the 2.8 is handy, though.
- Christopher A. Wichura
If you don't need 200mm reach, then the 28-135 might be a better choice as a "walkabout" lens, as it is MUCH smaller and lighter. Having a great lens does no good if you never take it with you due to its size & weight...
- Christopher A. Wichura
Thanks, Christopher and David. I do have an 18-200 and I like how versatile it is.
- joey
What you want depends on what you've already got.
- Brian Johns
Only if there isn't an option of something longer/brighter..;)
- Scott Small
joey, I also love my 50mm for most things. That and my 105mm plus my wide angle are what I keep with me. For certain things I will bring the 70-300... before we got the 70-300, when we had the 70-200 2.8f with VR, I ended up taking it with me twice (had it for years). It really is just too heavy both in the camera bag and on the camera for a walk about. it is great for sports, nature...
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- Rachel Lea Fox
Joey, your 18-200 might be all you really need. The only reason to step up to the quality, weight and speed of something like this is for professional applications where you want the really shallow depth of field, better low light performance and quality of the glass. Otherwise, the less expensive zooms are great and not so heavy.
- David C. Cooper
Thanks, David. I do prefer shallow depth of field and my 18-200 is nice but it's just not very sharp. Maybe I'll try out the 70-200 and see if it makes a large enough difference to me.
- joey
Just because Facebook bought Friendfeed, doesn't necessarily mean they will do anything with the service. At least maybe not right away. People need to chill out.
- Alex Knight
hope it doesn't mess w/ twitter integration
- Ken Seto
makes a lot of sense - f.b. now has a power house of real-time all-stars. fixes many of the feature 'wish' lists for f.b. - actually a major positive sign for innovation. congrats to the F.F. team.
- michael sean wright
This will probably be bad. like all purchases, it will be an "afterthought" and never be fully allowed to develop and flourish.
- Ryan Jones
Man this is really SUCKS!! :((( we all know Facebook strategies on the web :(( Whey will drive FriendFeed to the helll and I'm pretty sure of this :((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((( BAD SUCKS SAD :(((
- FFTornado
Funny thing is, if you posted about this on Facebook, 99.9999% of it's users would go "huh, what's FriendFeed anyway?"
- Richard Matthias
It almost seemed inevitable since Facebook has been copying so much of Friendfeed in recent months. It's good for the founders of FF and may benefit those of us who use both on a regular basis. Maybe they'll just leave FF alone?
- Kenley Neufeld
someone tell me what they will do with it? Nothing maybe? Kill it, maybe?
- Francine Hardaway
Wonder how they'll integrate, separate services with more interaction or FF swallowed by Facebook.
- Steven Cains
Buy as is use it's IP and close it down or run as separate business? Either way, didn't see that coming.
- Keith Bennett
from BuddyFeed
It was bound to go down. Like we used to say on the block shootin' dice "Big Bank Take Little Bank"
- professor daddyo
I do, however, wish tha tmore sites would implement this commenting engine.
- Ryan Jones
Fotis: haha, wait too long, and you'll never be able to close your FF account ;)
- Jason Hargrove
not believing it until another source confirms...
- Benton
Congrats to the friendfeed team. Worried about the future though.
- Andy Roth
It looks like a defensive move. I think it's better fro FB to acquire FF than incorporating twitter functionalities in their status feature.
- Pablo Paniagua
Congrats to ff team...but how does this work? I have 2 different accounts...and I like it that way...I don't want to share/spam my friends on facebook with what I have here...
- brainno722 (Peter)
Originally posted this to your other FF/FB post before you astarted this one: I don't see the point of Facebook acquiring FriendFeed. They are pretty much identical services (well, FF represents just the News Feed portion of Facebook) I don't see how they can incorporate FriendFeed into Facebook. If they really did buy it, then I see this as them going for programming talent more so...
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- Christopher A. Wichura
Bad bad bad bad bad bad ::runs screaming down the hall::
- Kandeezie
from fftogo
I think this is more of a "send the friendfeed traffic to facebook" than any kind of technical leverage. My biggest concern here: in order to exchange dialogue with people on facebook I need to be friends with them vs. being able to do it on friendfeed without having to friend them up. I find this valuable as there may be a topic or 5 that I want to engage with user "X" on, but I don't...
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- Erik Boles
I am disappointed by this news... I don't like Facebook at all... And I'm afraid they will just kill FriendFeed with their awful cluttered interface...
- Fa La La La Lindsay
It depends on how they integrate it. Did they buy it for the search engine, or did they buy it as a potential for extending the reach of Facebook into real time conversations? It's all about the life stream now right? So probably Facebook's attempt to stake a claim there.
- Tony "Frosty" Welch
First of all, I love the name "Facefeed." ROFL Second, this is business boys. Happens all the time. Why do you think innovation keeps happening. FB will integrate or kill off FF, and something else will happen. It's a natural cycle.
- Francine Hardaway
wondering if i should continue aggregating all my online activity in frienfeed now that facebook owns it!!
- Gtp19
I can't begin to process this right now. Too much work to focus on. Later when I read this 10,000 mile long thread and have a glass of Cab in hand.
- Michele Lorito-Chase
Not feeling real good about this, hope fully Facebook will do right by the FF community, but I'm not holding my breath. Glad for the FF team though
- Kim Landwehr
if you look closely at FF the large majority of FF posts are twitter posts, so there was not that much original content on FF in the first place...
- Ingmar
So FB failed to buy Twitter, - so they buy FF which is just a UI for twitter..
- Nick Halstead
Makes a lot of sense for Facebook. And we find this very healthy ^^
- twitscoop
People need to stop freaking out. The Facebook/Friendfeed buy out was just announced. Wait for details people.
- Alex Knight
It could be bad, it could be good. As long as Facebook doesn't try to port their functionality over, I'm fine with it being a financial acquisition.
- Adam Reyher
Great, why did I bother creating an account here? I could have held out.
- desinole
if this is true, for the love of god, please don't Facebook go and mess up FriendFeed as they have their own system, Facebook is a mess these days, Friendfeed is one of the 2.0 sites that actually has concentrated on doing a few things well, complete opposite to Facebook.
- Carl Grint
I suppose Friendfeed was considerably lacking in LOLcats.
- Ian Tindale
Cuz we all know that facebook doesn't respect user's privacy and you've got basically everything on ff, youtube, twitter, digg whatever you do
- Fotis Alexandrou
Smart for Facebook but I prefer Friendfeed the way it is.What, we'll be throwing rabbits next?
- Janet Fouts
FriendFeed listens to the community. Facebook doesn't. Not to mention they're ENTIRELY different communities.
- Adam Reyher
If they keep FriendFeed as a separate site, and still upgrade regularly, this is fine. If FriendFeed winds up in the dead pool, then it sucks.
- Steve Sill
Maybe I should rediscover my Orkut account.
- Ian Tindale
I was just thinking how Friendfeed had stayed out of recent takeovers, mergers and hence cyber attacks. Will Friendfeed now be taken over by celebs and spammers too?
- Nils Geylen
Not sure why this news makes me nervous. Please tell me it's going to be ok Scoble...
- Lucas
FF has been FB's incubator for awhile.
- Peter Warnock
Facebook has ZERO respect for users' wishes... Friendfeed is incompatible with that. Friendfeed will be going away. :( Their blog post says as much: "FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally **for the time being**. We're still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product"
- tollie williams
Ideally, FB will leave FF to do the sweet innovating they are doing and just take the awesome features and put them into FB
- Ryan
This is the first time I've used Friendfeed in a year. Good move on their part.
- chantelle
FriendFeed functionality on Facebook would be nice. The reverse, not so much. They're trying to address two entirely separate purposes and as such, need to remain completely separate.
- Adam Reyher
Stay here until FB does something dumb with FF
- Ryan
The rhetoric seems a bit too "Facebook will do what they want with us" and not "we will remain FF and continue forward". Seems as if FB went for the tech and we could lose FF as a seperate entity. Boo.
- Derek Shanahan
confirmed by facebook press release.
- Zac Bowling
Love 'em or hate 'em....Facebook made a phenomenal purchase.
- Kevin Pruett
I see a ton of Wall Spam. Facebook users just don't get it when you port your twitter updates over. There is too much for them to wrap their heads around. This will be a hard transition.
- Ryan Cummins
And I was REALLY getting fond of FriendFeed. From now on only downhill applicationwise?
- Bart
Not happy about this. I use Facebook, but don't like it. It reminds me of AOL from 10 years ago.
- David Sharpe
I agree that I don't want FB to mess up FF, but this will also give FF a higher profile and bring in many more users...which we may or may not like, judging by what happened on Twitter. I hope FF doesn't die off like Jaiku because I really think FF offers a more valuable and useful interface.
- Cathryn Hrudicka
One thing to consider is this: If we have "trusted" the FriendFeed people not to screw things up, hopefully we can trust them to make sure they're still in control in the terms of the acquisition.
- Adam Reyher
What's it going to be called? Failbook?
- Ian Tindale
I hope this is a joke.. Damn it, I dont like Facebook now there is nowhere to go... F***
- Jacque
I am trying to imagine how this will be a good thing for existing FF users. It feels so right and so wrong all at once!...Maybe at least my kids and wife will finally get what I've been ignoring them for over the past year.
- Thom Kennon
Is that means we're going to see more extremist groups around, now that FB has acquired FF?
- Nir Ben Yona
so where do all the cool kids go now? we need another startup, stat!
- h1ro
I am afraid... what johnny2009 have said can really be the future... soon friendfeed will = Jaiku
- Ahmed Mubbashir Khan
Damn,I've just"got friendfeed,and i love it.I definately don't like facebook.What does it mean for twitter?
- Paul Downing
Any investors want to predict the buyout price?
- Kevin Pruett
am gonna wait for google wave... coz in facebook, i cant access the complete stream for a month ago, the site goes down very often while browsing, and privacy issues galore!! congratulations for friendfeed but its jus me!!!
- Gtp19
Maybe we´re seeing here one of FriendFeeds biggest discusions ever. I´m sceptic about the future of FF as a standlone service...
- Torsten Eckert
What concerns me most is what happens to my friends here (and that I have to interact with my friends THERE). Will we have to be friends to interact in the same way we have the last couple of years?
- jcunwired
This is very good for FriendFeed as long as Facebook doesn't corrupt them. I would have preferred to see Google buy FF but I know with their focus on Wave I don't think it would have been a good fit. I like the Facebook platform, but they have done too many shady things in the past for me to trust them.
- Adam Teece
all of the conversation is happening on FriendFeed and Twitter - nothing on Facebook. Think we'd scare away Facebook if everyone starts having lots of conversations there - like on Scoble's fan page?
- Stuart Miniman
They can or don't have to fix FF's FB app now.
- ydfeed
All I can think of is now a lot of people can feel the pain the dedicated Pownce community felt, but at least you're not getting shut down, just yet.
- Mike Lewis
I'm not a big facebook user, but my gut feeling is that like twitter buying summize, it will mark the end of major innovations. I hope I'm wrong. But they should totally go with the facefeed mashup name.
- motownmutt
I dont see any potential for competition with twitter FB and Twitter serve different purposes as does FriendFeed
- iluvblackwomen
Sorry but renaming Facebook to 'Facefeed' is utterly stupid.
- Alex Knight
does making google reader more social has anything to do with this buyout??!
- Gtp19
yeah this was good for facebook. bad for anyone who liked friendfeed.
- Liz
FriendFeed is very good, a better way to use Twitter & etc. Knowing this, I still rarely use FF. Not going to start using Facebook more.
- Nicole
Actually, this could be death for Twitter when you think about it. The people I know who are in FB are not likely to add TWO more nets to their lifestream. FriendFeed makes more sense for them. Maybe Twitter just stays as the dumb pipe it's become for many of us here.
- Thom Kennon
Echoing what others have said - My guess: Facebook will get better, Friendfeed will get worse, Twitter will matter a lot less.
- Matthew Blaisdell
Good for FB UI and search, questionable for the FF community and its independent spirit ...
- Bo Stern
The main reason why I came to FF was because when I tried to treat FB the same as FF, i was talking to a wall. At least people interact here. At FB, it's all about the cheesy games/apps.
- Matthew Horton
from iPhone
Just like most acquisitions, it could be good and it could be bad. I trust that FriendFeed will live on as FriendFeed, only sharing their tech with Facebook. Possibly more integration between the two sites. If you were FF/FB, what would you do?
- Nick Humphries
Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook are three entirely different animals. Facebook eats Friendfeed and poops out little bits of content that once belonged to us. Twitter continues to thrive as the broadcast conversation-wannabe that it always was.
- jcunwired
Nick - think again. Its going to go away - read the tea leaves in this statement: "Your data will not go away any time in the near term future - we are committed to our users" - Bret Taylor in this post https://friendfeed.com/friendf...
- jcunwired
Facebook must want real time soc-net search badly...
- martin smith
The biggest thing here, at least within the Twitter context, is that this merger will combine 'verified' identity (in terms of Facebook user ID being slightly more 'real' than Twitter) with real time status updates.
- Dan Patterson
I'm looking forward to what this brings to Facebook. I have enjoyed both networks but wondered when FriendFeed/Facebook would face-off and/or be absorbed by the other. I think FriendFeed's tech will improve the Facebook experience.
- Jacob Sloan
FriendFeed + Twitter = disruptive. FriendFeed + Facebook = one more app for FB . Facebookers dont know the power of FriendFeed. I agree with : "" So FB failed to buy Twitter, - so they buy FF which is just a UI for twitter.. - Nick Halstead ""
- Rocky
Most likely scenario is Facebook assimilates the FriendFeed guys, has them work on improving Facebook newsfeed/realtime/status, and lets FriendFeed die a slow unmaintained death.
- Richard Akerman
Well, my friends on FB doesn't give a damn about sharing links, news, pics, vids etc. So I'm not sure how I will use FB+FF now. I don't think FriendFeed will exist, just implemented in Facebook. The name FriendFeed will die. And: on FB you don't want the whole world to see everything you're doing, just your friends. And it will stay this way. So the question is: Who will build the new FriendFeed?
- Patrik Johansson
Do this mean, by the way, that we (the FriendFeed users) should start to connect with each other on FB? How will they like that? People who get's 2-3 maybe 4000 connections?
- Patrik Johansson
Robert, it means all the time you invested building friends lists and updates there will go to Facebook :-)
- Loic Le Meur
could someone start to develop a Frienfeed clon , please ? ASAP !
- Rocky
Seems bloody terrible from this users perspective. Good for Friendfeed the company though.
- Quasar
Given Facebook's past, this could be really bad. Given FriendFeed's past, this could be really good. No real way to speculate without talking to the FF crew.
- xero
+3273 Quasar! (one for each of my Likes, already on a death march)
- jcunwired
Robert, do you know if Facebook is going to put on limits here at FF??? Oh crikey... so much for our citizen journalism here.... Admittedly I am bummed. Uber bummed.
- Arleen Anderson
your blog is the most important thing you can own on the web. these sites can come and go. it's a great social point but true friends you've made here you talk outside of ff, right?
- Terry O'Fee
from BuddyFeed
It's a good time to sell to Facebook, cause Google Wave is imminent and is going to destroy all of Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed. I think FriendFeed employees might even go back to Google eventually as soon as their contracts with Facebook are up.
- Charbax
Robert - wow. just wow I am stunned. Sorta sad actually. I love FF innovation and don't want to see that stop !!!!!
- Susan Beebe
(RE: Your tweet earlier) When you say the minor league team going to the majors, I don't always feel that this is a positive thing. As in this case, it's like Ferrari being acquired by Ford. I don't think I like this acquisition.
- Richard Merritt
the free ride couldn't last forever. I know it sucks that things will change, but they've got a lot more sense than Twitter has about these things..
- Terry O'Fee
from BuddyFeed
You must all assimilate to the new FaceFeed
- Jonathan.Rivera
From what I'm gathering, this acquisition is more about FB acquiring the talented engineers of FF than it is about the FF software itself. A smart play by FB. Unfortunate for us that value FF. I personally feel that FB is just slowly becoming the new Myspace. Which I don't think I need to explain how lame that is.
- Richard Merritt
If you ignore all the crappy apps and just comment and post photos, your main feed on Facebook is fundamentally a pretty similar experience to FriendFeed - people post stuff, people comment on it. That is, at-least, the way my network tends to use Facebook. The main difference is that Facebook defaults to being very closed and private while FriendFeed defaults to being very open and...
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- Edward Coffey
edward - pretty much. it's FF for the layman. remember back in the day they used to have forums too?
- Terry O'Fee
friendfeed is very cliquey. you have your group of people who usually gather round for conversations. now imagine some of this friendfeed stuff in facebook. done right it will help them a lot.
- Terry O'Fee
from BuddyFeed
I don't think I am liking this but FB does need to add the "edit" feature like on here.
- Marika Dye
FF acquisition is expected. But, as a user, I would be bumned, if FF would become a feature of FB. As, I tend to use Twitter as my social network and not FB.
- Vasu Srinivasan
It doesn't make much sense talking about 'Facefeed" and 'Friendbook'... Facebook simply bought a cool 12-people company called Friendfeed for its great search technology paying 15M plus some shares, which is really very cheap in this context, given the value of FF's technology (as it is perceived by us). They are also hiring the talented FF team, which makes the deal even more interesting for FB. Probably there are also some deeper hidden motives and implications that I am not able to get.
- Liviu Barbat
I would love it if Facebook integrated the FriendFeed features. I would love it if Facebook had FriendFeed's flexibility with Facebook's privacy control. It sucks that the world may lose FriendFeed, but it is great the Facebook will likely get better.
- Andrew
Andrew, Facebook will get better - over time. There won't be any Vulcan website meld of FB and FF overnight.
- Bill Sodeman
thank god someone understands that, andrew. it's like "i liked this band better before they went to a major label!" ;)
- Terry O'Fee
Bill - But we can dream, can't we? :) I mean, what I love about Facebook is that I'm interacting with my friends as my friends, not as usernames and avatars. But I hate their bookmarklet, the weird delays when I post anything, the comment system, and I hate the Photo gallery tech. I love the FriendFeed community, but would love bringing the FriendFeed technology over to Facebook even more. If only Facebook could buy Flickr next...
- Andrew
as long as fb start thinking in creative commons terms... one day ..
- Terry O'Fee
they are both great services I think will be a good thing
- Logan Lindquist
oh NO! I don't spend much time at FB (everybody there's too busy playing stupid games, at least in my little network), and besides it's more private unlike FF. And now they've gone and bought FF? And I just joined! I guess I won't be around here for long, since FF won't...
- Dennis Jernberg
No mention of Yahoo. Totally irrelevant these days. Sad.
- Scott Schnaars
This deal makes sense! Now fb developers do not need to figure out how ff does it because they can just ask!
- Garin Kilpatrick
One of my facebook accounts got closed up. Into this account I fed my friendfeed. And into friendfeed I fed for example my socialmedian shares, diggs, stumbles etc.
- Wilhelm Bauer
Time for the next generation app. *Taps foot impatiently for Google Wave*
- Karen Masullo
I don't think it's about getting Friendfeed it's self; but having the developers and the information about real-time search.
- Chris Martin
I honestly think FF is going to go the way of Jaiku when Google purchased them. They won't shut it down, but they will leave it to wallow and die on its own by abandoning all new development efforts as they re-assign the dev team to work on Facebook.
- Christopher A. Wichura
LOL! I'm not planning on leaving till someone is super-poking me and throwing zombies at me...
- Fa La La La Lindsay
However FB don't have such a 'live' and now systems as FF. Not sure exactly where FB will take this. Need to wait and read the insights..
- Mark Aitken
I can see worlds of ways that FF can improve FB, but nothing that FB can offer FF. That's what makes me scared for FF.
- Fa La La La Lindsay
I agree with Lindsey that there's no reason to jump ship until the bad shit from FB makes its way onto FF, or FF starts to hemorrhage.
- Joey Gibson
I think it was about buying the talent at FF. That should be a good thing for FB.
- Gus
My immediate reaction was Facebook will push ads onto their users. I think FriendFeed could be seriously screwed up with live moving ads, so that's hopefully out of the picture from a purely usability view. Friendfeed is all about realtime web information. I then wonder how in that case will the monetise the relationship. My guess? Facebook will show live conversations and hopefully they will rip out the poor IM implementation in Facebook. The purchase may be nothing more sinister, I hope...
- Mark Aitken
@Gus - if I were a FB fan then I would care what is good for FB, but I'm not... I just care what's good for FF, and I don't think FB is.
- Fa La La La Lindsay
Facebook is good. But, it can't do what Friendfeed does. And to be honest, my real friends on Facebook suck when it comes to sharing. Unlike my Friendfeed friends.
- Mathew™ one of a kind
1 second that. keep them seperate. (still is not cool being owned by or hanging out with all those facebook drones :P
- echostreamer
How can you think it won't be dragged down or left on the side of the internet highway to rot and rust?
- Santa CW™
Sigh and I just recently discovered the awesome FriendFeed. I sure hope this site stays and they go copy whatever code they want for Facebook. If it's true I still need to congratulate the staff at FF, you certainly deserved it.
- Patrik Arwengrim
I don't see the point of Facebook acquiring FriendFeed. They are pretty much identical services (well, FF represents just the News Feed portion of Facebook) I don't see how they can incorporate FriendFeed into Facebook. If they really did buy it, then I see this as them going for programming talent more so than the IP and will leave FriendFeed to wallow and die off. Much like Google did with Jaiku when they bought them for the human talent at Jaiku.
- Christopher A. Wichura
These are very well done. And they also point out just how much gaming has become mainstream when it is used to advertise a non-gaming sale.
- Christopher A. Wichura
aye Chris. Gaming is big; everyone has a comp or a handheld these days. And people see how much entertainment a game can pack in compared to a movie. That, ofcourse, comes with its own set of pitfalls though =P
- vijay
Clever how they added the guys in the last one to slip past the possible "omg! sexist!" angle :D
- vijay
So... I got a Google Voice invite today but haven't set it up yet. I don't really talk much on my phone, nor do I have multiple lines that need to be buzzed right now (we don't use a landline, and I don't have a work ph #). So what cool features of GV can I take advantage of?
Being able to have it play the "this number has been disconnected" message for anybody that has called you once is worth the price of admission if you ask me.
- Brett Kelly
from iPhone
@Brett: I agree. However at the moment, since I haven't given out my number that much, I'm lucky that I don't really get many repeat unwanted callers.
- Cheryl Jones
I'm going to read up on GV some more, but if anyone has any features that they really love, or tips, or anything, please post here. Also, does anyone know if number portability is available yet? Although it would be cool to get a vanity number, it would be easier to use GV if I don't have to tell everyone I know that I switched numbers.
- Cheryl Jones
I would use it as your "give out when you don't want to give out your number" number. E.g., for foursquare. Or for utility companies, car repair dealership, etc. The screening options of Google Voice are excellent. I have configured mine so that if the number is not recognized as one of my contacts in a whitelisted group, it never even rings any of my phones -- it just punts the caller...
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- Christopher A. Wichura
There's also the (admittedly ostensible) benefit of never having to change your public-facing phone number again, even if your cell or home number changes.
- Brett Kelly
from iPhone
Number ports are not available yet. I am waiting on that as well to get rid of my legacy home POTS line. Which is my "spam" number that has an answering machine on it, but no phone/ringer. So for me, it will work quite well for screening. Yet by putting friends/family etc into one of my whitelist groups, they'd have one number to call me and it would get me on my mobile, Skype, or work deskphone.
- Christopher A. Wichura
@CAW: Yeah, I did get a recommendation from a friend (before I even signed up for an invite) to use a GV number on my resume. So I'd probably at least use it where stores ask for my number, etc. as you mentioned. And yes, now I can put a real number on Foursquare (I guess). :)
- Cheryl Jones
@Brett: good point re: never needing to change public-facing number again.
- Cheryl Jones
I am also someone that virtually never gives out my mobile number. So once I get my old POTS number ported to GV, I can actually give that out.
- Christopher A. Wichura
The number port issue is what's holding me up from giving out my current GV number. I have no interest in retaining/using this number; it's going to get replaced once we can port numbers in. So until they get number ports working, my GV account is going to be basically unused except for random testing. I did use it as my foursquare number, though...
- Christopher A. Wichura
I'm a geek an a Google fanatic, so I'll use anything they put out. As far as cool features? I like the call screening and voicemail transcribing. Plus my number ended up spelling Beef-Poo without the area code.
- Matthew Horton
from iPhone
Mine is set up to call my Gizmo5 account and, barring that, go straight to voicemail. Since this is purely my "not sure I really want to talk to you" number, and not one I necessarily want my nearest and dearest to use, it isn't a pain to take it on. On the other hand, all the different businesses that want a number to contact me so they can ask me, about a week later, if I was pleased with their service, etc, can now speak to my voicemail.
- Miss Elle
Yeah, I think for now I'll just give it out when I'm at stores or don't really want to give out my real number. And yeah, sending free texts would be useful since I don't pay for a texting plan. Now to memorize the number... :)
- Cheryl Jones
It's to see the funny speech-to-text translations of voice mails :)]
- Rodfather
I've been debating whether or not to post my number here. I want to try out some of the features, but by the same token, it goes against my general philosophy of not giving out personal info online willy-nilly. I guess it would be a true test of GV's call-filtering abilities, though. :)
- Cheryl Jones
Kinda glad you mentioned that Outsanity because I enjoy using GV for SMS. Basically turns it into an IM client at that point.
- Matthew Horton
You could DM someone your number for testing purposes. :)
- JA Castillo
I used to talk about Twitter every day to my blog readers back in 2007 (and Facebook too). That's what I do. I tell you what the best new stuff in my life is, and I get passionate about it. Today FriendFeed's technology is WAY better than Twitter's for a whole lot of reasons. So, I will talk about it now and I really don't care that you don't like it.
- Robert Scoble
Where's Dvorak lol don't mention Twitter around him
- Robert Burgin
Tomorrow if something else even better comes out, I will talk about that as well, to the chagrin of my FriendFeed followers who will quickly get sick of hearing about it thanks to the aggregating feature here.
- Robert Scoble
It's the cycle of life. I always push the best of breed. If you can't handle the best of breed, don't follow me. It'll just frustrate you.
- Robert Scoble
I learned how to post to my feed and groups and cc Twitter recently. I think Im posting 90% of the time here instead of Twitter now.
- beersage
Selling my i phone 3gs Just send me a e mail at thorntec@gmail.com
- Aaron Thorn
but I like just arguing about your latest fad with you!!!!
- Rachel Clarke
Aaron: you've been warned. If you post off topic in my items again you'll get blocked.
- Robert Scoble
Rachel: yes, well, arguing is fun! It's how people figure out the truth.
- Robert Scoble
Scobes: how do we get more people onto Friendfeed then? I wanted to share a wine article but couldn't find a decent active wine group on here. Need more people to FF to flourish.
- beersage
beersage: yeah, that takes time. Build a room. Bring good wine content into it, and slowly the people will show up. I still need to get GaryVee into here. Getting people to change behavior is VERY difficult. That's why I think Facebook is going to win this battle.
- Robert Scoble
At least until FriendFeed finds a way to change the game in a way that Facebook isn't willing to replicate.
- Robert Scoble
I can't see Gary not trying this he is so pumped to try new things to drive his business
- Robert Burgin
Do you think friendfeed will overtake twitter and then facebook? My money is on friendfeed!
- Craig Shipp
Craig: nope, not with its current form. They need to do some serious stuff that's different than Facebook and Twitter. I think the themes are a very serious hint of what's to come.
- Robert Scoble
I resisted using twitter for a year before I finally succumbed - because of its 'silly' name - I was lost for three weeks when I first signed up nearly two years ago - now one of my twitter accounts is taking over my life - and it's all your fault Robert Scoble.
- Chris Loft
I am a media nobody but managed to drive comments on guardian.co.uk and their twitter-story. Guardian-Readers complaining about the Guradian's coverage of Twitter. Funny old people;)
- Alex 'BuckyBit' Covic
I see Twitter's popularity increasing based on Mobile exposure .,, recently kevin spacey on Letterman pulls out the BB and sends a Tweet . I think Friendfeed needs to make its Mobile experience easier to understand/use for the everyday joe ...
- johnpiercy
johnpiercy: that's what I've said many times here. The FriendFeed mobile experience is non-existent. I know Robert likes their iPhone mobile web page. But I'm sorry, when you're used to superior custom apps for Twitter and then you look at that joke of a mobile web page, no wonder people walk away. Now, this is a bit of a chicken & egg situation. Getting developers to make a kick-arse...
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- Christopher A. Wichura
Now, as to FriendFeed taking on Twitter and Facebook. Facebook is really a very different beast than FriendFeed. I don't see that happening. Twitter, on the other hand, is ripe to be destroyed. It's overrun by spambots these days. It's extremely frustrating to actually converse with people there due to the 140 character limit and lack of proper conversation flows. And it just overall...
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- Christopher A. Wichura
HAR! Too much deep-fried journeybread, methinks.
- Spidra Webster
That is one of the (many) things that ultimately turned me off from WoW. While the environments look good, your (meaning the collective you, not you specifically) actual character looks atrocious. And it's hard to play a game when you want to puke every time you look at your in-game persona. The best game for character customization and just plain character appearance is still, without...
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- Christopher A. Wichura
Damn, FF, still isn't growing, still 1m uniques. Why? This is the coolest app on the internet
- Stephen Pickering
Joe please censor yourself. This needs to be handle in a respectful manner.
- Jimminy Fuller
7. One difference between Twitter and FriendFeed. Here a block is complete. On Twitter you will see blocked content in search and other places.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Prolific: If all you can see is Lego's, you know you've been blocked.
- Nick in Manila
-1. If you get confused by seeing a only part of a conversation you can ask for a link to the persons profile so you can unblock them.
- Jimminy Fuller
Deakins: yeah, Holden didn't want me to interfere with his FriendFeed experience anymore.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Hahhahahahhahahh. Hey I thought Arrington was going to re instate his FF account. It looks like it still belongs to someone else. I guess it doesn't matter, the guy their feeds TC articles.
- Stephen Pickering
a 17 year old kid who said he feels odd being a republican on friendfeed, then got blown up for being a republican on friendfeed. :)
- Bren -- feeling merry
Stephen: yeah it wasn't like Arrington came here anyway very often.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Bren: anyone who says they don't care when someone else is talking about them is lying.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
He already knew he was blocked before Scoble posted this thread.
- Jimminy Fuller
I'm not sure that is true, but I take your point. I think it depends on who is doing the talking whether I care or not ;)
- Bren -- feeling merry
I can see Steve Gillmor's comments but when I click to subscribe to his feed it says Error. Does that mean he blocked me or does it mean he is invite-only?
- Mark
Mark: I don't know. If he blocked you you wouldn't see anything by him.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
If someone block you you continue to see his comments and he doesn't see yours. You don't see only his 3d.
- wolly
Scoble - I'd care more if they stopped talking about me. ;-)
- Mark Davidson
from BuddyFeed
I'm a huge fan of the block feature. A bunch of people on here say "I never block anyone" and to me that's like opening up your front door and letting asshats, anyone and everyone come into your living room and interact with you and waste your time as they at will.
- Jannifer @wordsforliving
Thanks to this thread, I just finally put two and two together and discovered that Dave Winer has blocked me! Thanks Robert.
- Edward Zwart
I suppose another one to add: you can't see someone's comments when you are signed in, but if you sign out, you can. (Since I doubt FF's block check is doing anything with IP lookups and rather just checking who you are signed in as.)
- Christopher A. Wichura
Scoble: With all due respect, you came out of nowhere and called Holden stupid for being a Republican. Now I am neither since I don't even live in your country, yet I find that calling someone stupid for their beliefs is just out of question. If he wants to block you then so be it, but then you making a post about, calling him out and blocking him yourself is WAYYY MATURE. I expected more from a guy so many look up to in Friendfeed.
- Manuel Mas
interesting. This thread shows up in my vanity search but I don't see my name mentioned. Thin that means FF search still finds blocked content.
- Steve Gillmor
"I can see Steve Gillmor's comments but when I click to subscribe to his feed it says Error. Does that mean he blocked me or does it mean he is invite-only? - Mark"
- Matthew DeVries
Blockies can see the persons comments on another thread, but the Blocker can't see the comments of the persons they blocked. Blockies can not see the threads/posts created by the blockers. Unless they have a private feed you can tell your blocked by copying the blocker's feed URL and then logging out of FF and pasting the link. If you can see their feed while not logged into your...
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- Santa CW™
WHAT??? Is that a Mk II? Rutger, I am so HAPPY for you! I guess we won't be buying the 60D/7D together. LOL! I'm looking forward to your breathtaking photos AND video!
- Robin Birkel
James: Lenses? Really? Where do I buy those? ;-)
- Rutger Blom
Lenses are where the money is really sunk. The camera bodies are chump change in comparison by the time you have your lens collection filled out... :)
- Christopher A. Wichura
Not for me yet :) - I think this has a lot to do with the people who read lifehacker and the type of user they likely are. I am very much a geek but have stuck with Apple's mail b/c I use the same machine all the time (work+personal) so it's less of an issue.
- Mike Bracco
I use outlook for my Y! and gmail accounts.
- David Cook
from fftogo
Not surprising especially considering Lifehacker's audience. To be fair GMail accounts for just over 10% of webmail users. Yahoo is still the king of webmail. http://weblogs.hitwise.com/us-heat...
- Adi
I only use gmail via my cellphone since it has push, otherwise, thunderbird on the desktop, tho, when I need to find an old email, it's right back to gmail for search.
- Richard Lawler
I've been using Gmail since it came out and never looked back. I'm just so sore we can't have our work email online. Flacid #NHS data security FTL :(
- CannonGod
No way. I'm a mail hog and will always want to be able to access/review mail even when I'm offline. Hate the delay scrolling mail when I want to get to something a couple of months ago
- Rick Emery
from twhirl
@Rick scrolling mail? But with gmal there's no need for that - a quick search and you're there
- Zee.
Yup, I would NEVER switch but as IT guy I keep walking into people who have never used a desktop mail client... times are changing!
- Gerard van Schip
Gerard, u would never change from desktop?
- Zee.
from iPhone
I use Outlook (full version) at work to access our Exchange-based E-mail. It blows away any webmail experience I've tried. My personal E-mail is GMail, which has a not-so-hot IMAP interface, so I don't try to use a desktop client for GMail. However, my GMail needs are like 1% of my work needs when it comes to E-mail, since personal is much more things like IM these days rather than E-mail.
- Christopher A. Wichura
I use Outlook at work (desktop) because they force us to. We have the web version of Outlook, but to get the optimal experience I have to use IE (blech) or IE tab (also blech). For personal mail, it's all Gmail, all the time for me.
- cecily
I still use a desktop client. I work mainly on my laptop and it's very important to have offline access to email. I don't have access to wifi everywhere I might need to get into my email.
- Vaughn
If I could get all my old mail [lots of mail] out of entourage into my recent gmail apps account then I would exclusively use the gmail apps. When I think about it, I'm rarely offline. Horses for courses I guess.
- 1x29
You can connect to gmail with IMAP. Create another account in Entourage and drag all the email over from one account to the other. That's what I did in Thunderbird to copy stuff from my IMAP server. I tried doing this in Evolution, but Evolution blows any kind of mass email management.
- Andy Bakun
At home I stopped using Thunderbird about 5 months ago and never looked back. At work I use outlook, but also use NEO Pro to make it "usable"... http://www.caelo.com/
- Vince DeGeorge
Outlook is horrible, Gmail runs circles around it, it is a crime that Microsoft actually charges money for Outlook.
- Kelly Johns
google fails miserably on a coupe of fronts... good examples? contact management and calendars, for starters. I use it for personal mail but I really don't see it supplanting outlook in businesses who actually use outlook for its strengths until stuff like that is improved drastically. I still hate troutlook though :)
- mjc
Personal preferences cannot be “confirmed,” and needs vary among users. I swap between desktop and web email when the time calls for it. Web is certainly convenient, but desktop is quite a bit more powerful. I cannot easily select 20 random photos from iPhoto or Windows Explorer and have web-friendly copies automatically created and attached to a Gmail message. But I *can* do that with...
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- David Chartier
I'm a programmer, a sysadmin, and an office IT guy, and I switched my domain over to gmail a few months ago. As for off-line access, gmail can go off-line if you install Google Gears.
- Andy Bakun
83% of statistics are made up on the spot
- Bwana ☠
I use Apple's Mail client for most of my mail purposes, but I will go to my browser as well. Though, in all honesty, my primary means of handling email are through my iPhone.
- Mike Nayyar
Attention grabbing headline for sure, but LH readers are not your average Joe. Nevertheless, the shift to web-based email among non-enterprise users is quite apparent, if you see how Thunderbird has lost its shine!
- Mahendra (SkepticGeek)
I agree totally. In the past year I have switched entirely to web based. Love it.
- Drew Lucas
I used to use a desktop client on my junkbox, a few years ago, and ended up removing about 300MB of mail from my GMail account since I'd configured GMail to automatically remove stuff after retrieving it via POP3. Now, I just use the GMail web UI, for what it's worth. Sadly I've lost all that mail, after reinstalling numerous OSes on the said machine, but it's not a big deal. :(
- Tyson Key
I use Mailplane so which one am I? Desktop or web?
- Parvez Halim
The reason for this is portability and flexibility. Personally I use both but the big reason I use a desktop client is to offload mail I want to keep on to my pc.
- Rob Cairns
From reading through this thread and personal experience, one of the main reasons users are still attached to their desktop clients is for offline access. But, as many of the more knowledgeable readers know, Google, Yahoo!, and others are looking to make this offline access possible from your web browser. Google has implemented and tested Gears with several products including Gmail....
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- Kevin Mohr
I recently switched over to Gmail's web-based email and I'm not looking back. Webmail FTW!
- Amir
I would use gmail...but I run many different web sites from which I need to email customers/site visitors. Gmail won't allow me to send email from a POP3 account without saying "on behalf of <my gmail account name>" in the from field. This isn't acceptable for how I run my different businesses and websites. Anyone know when Google is going to fix this?
- Justin
Justin: I got over this by managing my email with google apps. I'm not suggesting its working out perfectly but it does operate my emails as per the domain not 'on behalf of'.
- 1x29
@Adrian, thanks for the tip. Haven't done anything with google apps to date. Will look into it.
- Justin
I've recently made the switch to Gmail too. Really enjoying the filters and labels, and built in Google Talk. Not looking back yet :-)
- Jalada
"google fails miserably on a coupe of fronts... contact management and calendars, for starters." - Exactly. If "Outlook" = "Email and nothing else," you don't need Outlook. Comparing GMail to Outlook is incorrect - compare Outlook to Gmail, Gmail Contacts, GMail tasks, Google Calendar, etc. I use Outlook on my Google Apps domain email, but Gmail's Contacts leave a lot to be desired.
- John Craft
I still use Windows Mail at the moment only because I have it set up exactly how I want it - this could change in the future
- outofmyarse
Okay, but I still prefer a dedicated IMAP server. 'Control', less bandwith usage.. and it's IMAP ;)
- Thierry R. Andriamirado
@hannah: You can route multiple email addresses through Gmail.
- CannonGod
I think Gmail only supports retrieval of other addresses via POP
- Jalada
from IM
Yes, even Hotmail. I use it for that, as a matter of fact
- LANjackal
from IM
How many people do you actually share your Google Lattitude with, Robert? Vs. just publish it to your website and let people anonymously stalk you that way?
- Christopher A. Wichura
Jason: Latitude and Brightkite/Foursquare/etc are really very different products. Latitude (assuming you're not using an iCrippledPhone) will constantly transmit your position all the time, without you having to do anything. The other services only post location updates when people explicitly publish an update to their location.
- Christopher A. Wichura
Christopher... I have an iPhone, so I don't get the automated location updates as an Android and others would get. Latitude vs. Brightkite on the iPhone isn't that different.
- Jason Hansen
To be honest, voicemail needs to die, anyway. It is antiquated and inefficient. It is much better to send an E-mail/IM/SMS than leave a voicemail.
- Christopher A. Wichura
It's about two miles off right now. As I drove home I saw it all over the place. The GPS in my iPhone is very accurate. Why is Latitude not showing exact location? Is it trying to keep me safe from my stalkers?
- Robert Scoble
You think that's bad? I have Google Latitude on my Blackberry & it's been listing me literally in the middle of the bay or even in the ocean when I'm going around the city. I'm a bit perturbed...
- Kenneth
Yeah I'm with Kenneth. My Curve has no idea where I am
- Chris Brakebill
from iPod
@Michael Perhaps your phone has been to Japan without you knowing. Mine takes trips to Argentina to hook up with a laptop that lives in Buenos Aires.
- Dan Glass
from iPhone
I should mention that my phone is not an iPhone. It's an HTC Touch Pro on Verizon. Verizon disables the GPS, so Latitude uses other methods to determine location. It doesn't work very well. :)
- Michael Hocter
Mine seems to be working fine. It's scary accurate.
- Hunt
from BuddyFeed
In this form, Latitude for iPhone does not look very usable...
- Alpay Erturkmen
Just out of curiosity, how accurate is the W3C Geolocation API on your computers (i.e. and not on your GPS-enabled phones)? Try it out at http://maps.google.com with Firefox 3.5+, Chrome 2.0+ or any browser with Gears.
- Leo Dias
Here the precision is impressive (Budapest, Hungary). Using nothing but nearby wifi spots for triangulation, it pinpoints my location within a 10~30 meter range. Still amazed at this.
- Leo Dias
RWW wrote quite the negative review of Latitude on the iPhone. Too lazy to link
- LANjackal
Why would you buy an HTC Touch Pro with GPS if your carrier disables it?? This whole aspect of branded/locked/crippled phones is crazy.
- Nils Sandin
mine is really accurate. we do have strong signal here
- Susan Beebe
from BuddyFeed
Michael: Install a CE registry editor, and search for HTC Touch Pro GPS. Telus pulled a similar trick with my classic Touch, but a little bit of registry elbow grease gets things working nicely so long as your provider supports AGPS. (BTW, your phone should always be able to do unassisted GPS, technically, but HTC's hardware isn't the best at picking up the satellites without help.)
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
Nils: Why do Canadians like me use mobile technology at all when our service providers are all out to screw us as hard as they can? We'd love to deal with Verizon's crap up here, because they aren't nearly as evil as Bell, Telus, or Rogers.
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
Hacking the heads off of innocent civilians = evil. Using women and children as human shields = evil. Cell providers over-charging for their services = frustrating.
- Phil Essing
Robert: Not sure you're right about Nokia E71 choking with Latitude and 30 friends. We actually have 250-350 using Nerd Vittles most of the time, and everybody gets the Latitude display without the E71 croaking. http://whos.amung.us/pro... I may be confused, but I thought the phone interface to Latitude merely reported your 10-20 to Google which took it from there. Every...
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- Ward Mundy
It is much more accurate on Nokia, I'm not sure why it is inaccurate on iPhone. And Liza no I don't really have stalkers, I just have 400 friends who follow me around.
- Robert Scoble
Heh, Latitude on my iPod thinks I'm in Maryland when I'm really in Florida. I think it's a problem with skyhook though.
- Tomy Thomson
Seems quite accurate on my iPhone Robert so far (though I have only been using it a few hours)
- Tom Raftery
Google Maps' location feature thinks I'm 9h north of my current city in Fx 3.5.1. If they can't simple geolocation right I'm not surprised Latitude on the iPhone is crap
- LANjackal
from IM
Google Lattitude needs to add a Glympse-like function for allowing people to track you temporarily, without giving them continuing access to where you are. Glympse's web interface for tracking a user is extremely mobile unfriendly, whereas Google has already solved that with their Google Maps/Lattitude application for all the major platforms. (Never mind that the Glympse broadcasting client is still only available for the least-used mobile OS platform...)
- Christopher A. Wichura
The reason is that Google's geolocation API has not been optimized for the iPhone. Latitude basically takes the first reading it gets from one of several possibles and assumes it's right, instead of waiting for the most accurate reading (your GPS).
- Otto
You might have luck with this method to trick it: a) Open up Latitude in Safari. b) exit safari, leaving latitude there, and go to Google Maps. c) Wait in maps until it gets a good GPS lock on your location, then close Maps and fire up Safari again real quick, loading Latitude (the last thing available). Your location should be more or less accurate now, because the GPS already had a lock and didn't have to relock.
- Otto
Hey guys I just bought a 16GB iphone - my first one. Boy am i excited!!!
- Mark
Is it better on the battery to use Wifi over 3g when its available?
- Mark
Mark: Yes, the WiFi radio uses much less power than the 3G radio.
- Christopher A. Wichura
thx! But I have to wait for a credit check so I won't likely get it whilst next week. Didn't want to buy it in person in the O2 shop in case I failed the credit check for some reason. Bought online. I imagine going from a $30 piece of crap to a third generation iphone will be quite a shock to the system :D :D :D
- Mark
Having a tough time deciding what number to get for my kid on GoogleVoice. There's nothing available in our area code that's REALLY cool... but there's some words that are moderately so. But there are some number combination that would be easier to remember. He'll have this number (hopefully) for a LONG TIME so I need to make a good choice!!!
Should I go with a pattern of doubles (559.9442) or a sequence (252.4232) or a word (252.WOOT or 252.DONA) which have harder numbers to remember? Decisions, decisions!!
- Fa La La La Lindsay
A word, but WOOT is cooler than DONA. :)
- Rochelle
The problem with words is that if you're dialing on a mobile they're worthless... :S Edit: dialing on a mobile with a keyboard instead of a numberpad (which has been my last 2 phones).
- Fa La La La Lindsay
Ignore words. They are not how people remember numbers. You want a phone number that is easily chunkable. Strings of repeating patterns would be easiest. 111-2222 would be ideal, but not likely to be available. 101-1010 next after that, etc.
- Christopher A. Wichura
Christopher, it's how I remember numbers!
- Rochelle
I kind of agree, Christopher, which is why I was looking at those patterns above. 55-99-44-2 (559 is one of the few prefixes I can choose from... adding the other 9 and 44 (9 minus 5) and putting a 2 at the end (42 is a favorite number in the family). The other one is a sequence with 2 as the delimiter 5-4-3 2524232. Since you'll really have to remember both the word and numbers anyway, might as well just not worry about the word and make the numbers easy, huh?
- Fa La La La Lindsay
My assumption is that the area code will be less and less important over time. I'd focus on the other digits.
- Herb Hernandez
Another thing about words -- "WOOT" might seem fun now, but regrettable as your son gets older...
- Christopher A. Wichura
There's no 4242 (that was one of the first ones I tried). I had also tried repeating the last two of the first 3 as you suggested for the 5 prefixes that I have to choose from with no success. I just talked with son and told him the ones I was considering over the phone to see which were easiest to convey. 2524232 was too hard... but it was really easy to say 5599442 so I think that's what we'll go with.
- Fa La La La Lindsay
Maybe 314-1593? You never forget your first Pi...
- Andy Bold
@Andy LOL - wish I had more options for the first 3... unfortunately 314 was not one of them!
- Fa La La La Lindsay
I went for easy to remember numbers over words. I have 4 consecutive zeros in my GVoice phone number, and only 4 different numbers all together.
- Bryan Zirkel
#EvernoteTip Traveling? Take a photo of your passport and send it to EN. If it's lost or stolen you can still show the embassy your info. - http://twitter.com/deveril...
Maybe I've missed it, but you can't encrypt images in Evernote -- only text. Until I can encrypt the image of my passport, this simply isn't going to happen. For now, I have a copy of it stored up on Amazon S3 encrypted via JungleDisk, and a copy of it in a TrueCrypt container on the USB flashdrive on my keychain.
- Christopher A. Wichura
How about uploading a Blowfish encrypted image file into Evernote?
- Bill Sodeman
Well, I think the point of this tip was that you'd have the image easily available to display on a mobile device -- rather than needed computer access with a bunch of (3rd party) encryption software. Evernote already does encryption, it just seems to only do it for text -- no any other object types. So if you could encrypt the JPG of it in Evernote, you could easily display it on your mobile while at the embassy.
- Christopher A. Wichura
Agreed, Chris. I hope EN gets image encryption soon.
- Bill Sodeman
Chris, Do you have a dark cloud floating over your head all the time? Why are you so paranoid? There are so many notes stored at EN why do you think someone would get the picture of your passport? And what would they do with it? But your right, plus the embassy will not recognize/accept a picture of a passport as anything legit. Buy a rabbit's foot man!
- GMar
You can only do encryption of text in EN on PC (and I think Mac) at this point. The website doesn't support it and I don't believe it works on the mobile platforms either (please correct me someone with the iPhone app if it does). Christopher is right about it not encrypting images. I thing Greg is right about them not accepting an image as your official passport but it might help if it...
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- Fa La La La Lindsay
Now comes word that AT&T will be the one providing so-called "connectitivty" for Barnes & Noble's new ebook reader coming out next year. The result: more congestion for every AT&T customer.
- Gilbert Harding
from Bookmarklet
In all honesty, this is nothing but link baiting. The data used by eBook readers is insignificant. I'd argue it falls into the "statistical noise" category. An eBook is generally around 500k. One worthless blogger's webpage overloaded with adverts is often that much these days. And people hit many webpages in the course of browsing even within a half hour period. Whereas that eBook...
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- Christopher A. Wichura