But by carefully conserving water with the specially designed low-impact toilet I had installed, I can take comfort in the knowledge that I did what I could do to delay this inevitable global death-age by as many as several nanoseconds.
Together, we can make an unbelievably negligible difference. - bob
I am still following the "golden" rule of flushing. When it's yellow, let it mellow. When it's brown, flush it down. Also, purchased a front loading set (washer & dryer) from Samsung last year. Uses considerably less water and electricity than conventional laundry sets. Have had no problems up to now (knock on particle board). - Les
What happens to all the water you don't use? It just runs down the river back into the ocean. - Amit Patel
Aside from the (theoretical) SEO bump and Seesmic support, any other compelling reason to switch to the API plugin if the JS version is working OK? - J. Phil
J. Phil, no, not really. I just like having comments seen by Google, means I can search for them as well via Google as well (I used site:url.com a lot) + Seesmic of course - Duncan Riley
great news! thanks for installing Seesmic comments Duncan. As always, please let me have any suggestion you may have. You should also try the threaded player too in a post or another, basically we try all formats to see which ones will get the most popular. Oh and threaded player on Friendfeed soon too! - Loic Le Meur
Loic, the threaded player on FF would be a great value add, or even the ability to record, blog style, videos in response within the FF thread. I'm seeing more and more Seesmic posts on FF now, seems natural if we could interact with them locally - Duncan Riley
How about a plain ol' audio comment, video isnt really needed, it's nice but in this case, a lil bit of overkill for FF... maybe just an audio/video option before you record. - Tony C.
Photos are the biggest thing. Facebook is to a large extent a photo sharing site, but their TOS prohibit you from doing anything interesting with the photos -- they're trapped inside FB. - Paul Buchheit
Yes, Mr. Morin. Tear. Down. This. Wall. - MG Siegler
I also want photos to flow into Facebook from other repositories. Display my Flickr photos in Facebook and let people tag them please. - Benjamin Golub
Man with all the hypocrisy, it really stinks in here. - Gavin
does not gov have the same exact motivation for not opening up as facebook? - Fred Grott
@sacca's point is fun, but it's a fact that the gov's data is ours, and debatable that FB's is. Both would be great, but the Gov's should happen yesterday. - Nate Koechley
First, government data is created through taxpayer dollars and since we all kinda have an ownership stake in the gov, we should have access to its data. FB data is FB's, per their TOS. Second, FB has data that is more valuable than other services -- it's a big business decision for them to be more open or not, and imho it's not clear if being more open is worth it to them at this point. Update: I see Nate already said basically the same thing. Anyway..... - Eric Eldon
Unfortunately most government organizations get the lowest-bidding contractors to build their content which usually means lock-in to proprietary data and clunky 'net applications. Just check out some of their intranets. IE6-only VBscript running on 10-year old proprietary multimillion dollar software - Glenn Batuyong via twhirl
I've seen a lot of agencies just mirror "what works at other government offices" which tends to perpetuate this cycle of technical stagnation. Some orgs do get the message and it's usually because of some introduction of Web 2.0 technology into certain facets. However, it needs to be internally evangelized and pushed up the ladder to the decision-making personnel (who usually don't understand the need). - Glenn Batuyong via twhirl
Bumping my follow up Twitter comment to FriendFeed comments: Back to my comment on the government. Wouldn't it be awesome to get updates on new laws and programs through the various social feeds? My thoughts on this come from the new cellular phone law in California. I think many people are probably finding out about this for the first time by seeing the blinking signs above the highway. It would be amazing if a notification for a new law came in through twitter, or friendfeed, or facebook (or all of them). - Dave Morin
Yes but Dave you missed everyone's point the value proposition is not in opening up as you would hoped but holding back. Politicians hide info to keep power, corps hide information to keep customers locked in..when users finally have away to route around than that info-lock in has NO POWER..that day is coming Dave very soon - Fred Grott
My comment was intended as a prod between pals. I make it a habit to tease Dave and other friends at FB about the relatively closed nature of some of their platform. I was by no means attempting to jump into the fray regarding OpenSocial/FriendConnect.
That said, as a FB user, while I was thrilled to see them start passing full text emails to me, it does bum me out that I can't reply back to the thread from my regular email inbox. It is an annoyance, and Dave has heard this from me before. This seemed like a fun opportunity to remind him of my #1 feature request.
More importantly, for the record, I am particularly impressed by Dave Morin when I see him participate candidly in public discussions regarding issues like these despite his high profile. Having been in a big company and knowing the effort that it takes to manage internal PR in parallel with community expectations, my hat goes off to him. It is very clear that Dave cares deeply about users and works hard to make them happy. - Sacca
@fred gott. i'm sure dave would like to know how soon that day is, since you seem to have such a clear idea. - Eric Eldon
WRT the lowest bidding contractor theory, hows about some of the more financially comfortable devs offer up their services in the form of govt contracts with outrageously low bids. Put your money where your mouth is so to speak. - Erica Baker
@eric listen to Gillmor Gang its closer than u think - Fred Grott
@Fred we agree on a lot of this. i was put off, however, by your antagonistic language towards dave, who has been at the forefront of opening up social network data to third parties for quite some time now. - Eric Eldon
@eric users wanting their data as free as possible has none of the tone you subscribe to me - Fred Grott
@Fred how many Facebook users want their data free right now? - Eric Eldon
Better if govs give access to the raw data. In my experience, trying to get a decent api from a gov department is kind of tricky. If you get the raw data there are plenty of companies & non-profits who are willing & able to build decent APIs around it. - Nick Lothian
@eric its not free part as u imply we want useful data that can only come about by full data-portability no user will ask for free or data portability because they do not know it as that. - Fred Grott
@fred i fundamentally agree with you. i just think facebook gets too much shit for "not going far enough" even though it has been the (social networking) industry leader in data-sharing. just look at how myspace was treating third party developers in previous years. this is a process. - Eric Eldon
This is what will happen more often with FriendFeed - items that appear and are discussed here will become news more and more. Expect this to happen more often. - Ben Parr
Mark: "It's on a Mommy!" The Grand Prize Game -- bucket number 6 was the highest form of consciousness ... - Jay Tannenbaum
This is too bad. I remember him from when I was a child. - kre8 via twhirl
It's hard to think of Bozo as not being alive on TV. Do you think he has a memorial stone with an epitaph to "Bozo the Clown?" Maybe a picture or engraving with a clown nose and that wild red hair? :-) - Cathryn Hrudicka
Yeah, there are so many little things. It's great to find new features every day. - Aaron Myers
@Akiva: just move your mouse a touch and the tooltip will disappear (at least it does on Flock) - Craig Eddy
Craig, I'm American. You ask too much of me. - Akiva Moskovitz
Time doesn't update if you've edited the comment... :-( - Mitchell Tsai
Great addition to the site! @Mitchell I agree although how would they work it? Maybe replacing the comment time with the word edited as well with the new time! - Joe Dawson
Still actually cheaper than my current plan and am using v1 iPhone. I will make the switch, if only for the MobileMe push stuff. - Sean Kelly
Pretty disgraceful, really. I'm on Optus BlackBerry unlimited plan you mention and its pretty good (albeit a bit pricey imho, but it still craps on Telstra's BB plans). Hoped that Optus would have lifted its game for the iPhone though. With what will no doubt be stiff competition on price from Voda and Telstra, they'll probably have to revise their plans. - Seth Yates
Seth, they still haven't disclosed the data plans though, and that's the key - Duncan Riley
My theory is that corporations wont pick up iPhones as a work tool due to its current limitations and so the Blackberry is being left competitively priced data wise for them... - Allison
Sean: MobileMe will also work with a first gen iPhone. - Ole Begemann
himm, where did he get that impression? the comments on challenge page don't imply any flamewar, and they give lots of implementations which are good to think about. and as usual, mauricio nailed it: http://eigenclass.org/hiki/ord... - Selem
@Selem There's been some discussion on twitter at least. - Mustafa K. Isik
me tooo!! OMG I am trying to ignore those as I am working...hehehe! - Susan Beebe
Steven - In this case, you're right. You can't turn it off - Charlie Anzman
Is it worth starting your "friend" list again?? Will the people who care what you're doing even follow you to *another* site? Since there's no direct feed to FF, is it even worth being an early adopter on this site? - David Cook
David - Let me be crystal clear here. Friendfeed is my 'communication home' ... period. No ifs, ands or buts. Thought it was utterly amazing how many people jumped on a 'virtual unknown' and still are. - Charlie Anzman
@Charlie - is it just LOL ... I joined just to secure my id cuase I do think this could have legs as long as Twitter remains having problems. If they really do a push and get things working then this will be just an interesting experiment - Steven Hodson
Steven - Yep, looks like someone got Scoble's. Wonder if he'll get it back like he did with Plurk? :) - Charlie Anzman
@Charlie I think you could take bets on that he will :) - Steven Hodson
Man - Robert's getting almost as fast on the trigger finger as Louis ... Ugh ... Where is Louis ?? - Charlie Anzman
Louis is focusing on his two beautiful babies!!!!! Yeah for Louis and Kristine!! :-) - Susan Beebe
this is what filters are for.. subject:(has-added a-friend) - those together should be auto-archived lol - InsaneNinja
I've already set up a rule and dedicated mailbox in Mac Mail for mine :-) - Duncan Riley
same here its a mess, and their site is already down for me - shoemoney
Pretty much was going to take the same screenshot. - Aaron Brazell
Don't use a "home page" anymore, but I open up my browser and FF is my first click, and always in a tab. - (steve isaacs)
@LPH I never turn mine off but it's a big debate among my friends - Michelle Miller
FF has been my hompy for over a month now.. its gmail and FF tabs that are constant facts of life for me :)- - Peter Dawson
made it my home page a few days ago myself . . . - Metin
FriendFeed is slowly turning into Google Reader for me - Chacha via twhirl
makes sense to me. then again i rarely click on the home button. but i do have a FriendFeed bookmark on my Firefox tool bar. same banana :) - ~C4Chaos
I have Fast Dial as my home page, but FriendFeed is always what I click on first. - possible248 via NoiseRiver
If you're on a Mac use Fluid www.fluidapp.com to create a single session browser app. - John Samuelson
My daily ritual starts with Gmail (getting work email via POP as well), Y!Mail, then FriendFeed...and I always turn off the PC if I know I'm going to be away for at least 15-20 minutes, though! I appreciate electric power a lot more here in India than when I was in the USA, and don't ever take it for granted! "Don't waste electricity! There's kids out there reading in candle-light in rural India"! - Siddharth Deb
One can always have a few homepages ... and as Duncan suggests, those greasemonkey scripts are awesome - Mrinal Desai
friendfeed is one of my 4 starting tabs in FF (gmail, gcal, NYT, FriendFeed) - Morgan via twhirl
Next to my Gmail, Google Reader link is FF. By the way, you don't have to be a Geek to use FriendFeed. It's so dumb-proof, it made me switch. ;-) - AJ Batac
You did predict you'd make this move by the end of summer, so you're right on target! - Bryan Person
Awesome. I would suggest more books by Frank Herbert, he was an absolute genious. Especially – since it is almost no longer sci-fi – I would suggest "The white plague". And also the last books in the Dune saga (by Brain Herbert and Kevin J Anderson) are nice, but not necessary. - dekay
I'd recommend Samuel R. Delany - "Dhalgren", "Babel 17", or "Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand" are three of my favourites. - Bob Kingsley
One I'd recommend is "The Mote in Gods Eye" by Niven and Pournelle - about the best book on first contact I've ever read. - Colin Walker
Colin - but stay away from "Footfall" that book stank. - J. Phil
I would recommend "Blood Music" by Greg Bear, and "The 5th Column" by Robert Heinlein. And how about some Larry Niven love.. ah you have ringworld. Yes, good choice. - J. Phil
Agree with Colin on "The Mote In God's Eye" - I'd forgotten about that one! I recall now that it was, indeed, a terrific read. - Bob Kingsley via twhirl
Most of the books on the list cant find it on my mother tongue - George The Writer
Yea I put in Ringworld. Thanks for all the suggestions folks. You've given me a ton of new books to read. - Steve Spalding
It's amazing the way that most probably know the majority of these stories by watching the films but NOT by reading the book. Occasionally a film will do the book justice (Animal Farm was a great adaptation and had a huge effect on me as a kid watching it at school) but not often. - Colin Walker via fftogo
One other book that I've always liked: "Wave without a shore" by C.J. Cherryh - an interesting look at perception and willpower and how they shape our "reality". - Colin Walker via fftogo
Yeah, you should really check out Jeff Noon, he's buzzing :) - HollowMarkeD
will adobe reader be even slower now? i hope foxit will still work with the flash-enabled pdfs. - mike
mike: the new Adobe Reader coming out is dramatically faster. - Robert Scoble
robert: phew! maybe i can venture back to using it after my tryst with foxit. - mike
this has *nothing* to do with Microsoft... And this isn't really "news", it's just the ISO officialization of what we already knew since December: http://arstechnica.com/news.ar... - Marcos Marado
It's a great document format, even though their own reader sucks, thank god for Apple's Preview. - Gerard van Schip
Finally. The whole industry-standard status was kind of weird since everyone treated it like a standard for years now anyway - Horst Gutmann
Dave, why not skip Twitter entirely. With FriendFeed you can choose a cool graphic to go with your link. You can't do that with Twitter. Really FF is a superior platform. - Thomas Hawk
I actually prefer to post links on Friendfeed. On Friendfeed, I don't have to use a URL shortener. - Morton Fox
jump to the end: post to FF first. these days it seems you'd be right more often than you are not... - Russell Holliman
Thomas it's the people. There are a lot of people who use Twitter who don't use FF. It's only geeks here near as I can tell. I don't think the people here are all that interested in some of the things I'm interested in. And there are a lot more idiot Republicans here. I like intelligent people and there aren't too many smart folk who are willing to admit to being Republican these days. So you're pretty much left with the slimedogs. Present company excepted of course. :-) - Dave Winer
I'd go FF first. Most conversations of value based on the link will happen here anyway. - Duncan Riley
I'm using FF differently than Twitter. I follow many fewer here and am being followed by many fewer. I like the intimacy, talking mostly with people I actually know in most cases. At Twitter I have many followers and use it to get more viewership of a new blog post. - shelisrael1
You can always post on twitter first, and import it in ff. - Jacob
why would you want to post to twitter directly? - Sean Savage
Duncan and Thomas have it right. You always have the option of using Twitter but participating in Friendfeed returns more. I use both as many do (but hide and just occasionally look at the Twitter posts to avoid overload). It's getting better each week. Simply a matter of how YOU choose to set it up. - Charlie Anzman
I have advanced degrees and an IQ of 135; I've been a highly successful educator at both the secondary and collegiate levels. But because I identify with the Republican party, I'm an idiot according to Dave Winer. - Gregory Pittman via fftogo
Gregory... That extra 4 points I have on you in the IQ stakes must be the part that accounts for sarcasm, humor and the ability to know that generalisations are rarely accurate... - John Worthington
@John - or the part that does reading comprehension, since Gregory obviously failed to parse "a lot more", "not too many", and "pretty much". - Jeremy Raines
watch out, this policy made me fell in-love with FriendFeed... - Orli Yakuel
Cool. That way Twitter can stay up. ;-) - Vic Podcaster
idiot republicans? slimedogs? Even though I'm a democrat I find broad sweeping statements like that to be problematic. I'd like to think that I'm more open minded than that. I also think that politics are not the only thing to talk about in the world and think that gauging someone's intelligence or the value of their conversation by their political party affiliation is, well, pretty idiotic. - Thomas Hawk
Getting back to the subject, why not start posting here first anyway? - David Weiner
Thomas is one of an ever-decreasing number of people from all points of the political spectrum for whom disagreement on issues doesn't degrade to personal attacks. Thomas and I might disagree on what the problems are and what the solutions to those problems are, but we would be able to have a valuable conversation. I appreciate that very much. - Gregory Pittman
it's funny how Americans can feel in their stomach being part of Rep or Dems, when the whole world knows deep in their stomach that there is not a glinch that diferentiate both parties a part from the color of the tie, i'm not saying we are better in Europe or elsewhere, i'm saying we're all screwed, - Ben Borges
@Ben yeah democracy sucks that way... naturally breeds moderate points of view - Rubin
Good policy! I'm starting to followthat too. - Shannon Low via twhirl
is it still democracy ? i'v seen bush with a "christian cruz" on his back while speaking on tv, (terrorist) for me it's middle age democracy. - Ben Borges
I am trying to do this too, but my friends aren't actively using FF yet. - Michelle Lentz
Starting on FriendFeed today. Put me down as an AFTU (Another Frustrated Twitter User). - Michael E. Rubin
that's been my policy of late...i can't even follow ppl on twitter today - Sarah Perez
I actually prefer to use Twitter for less important messages and FriendFeed for stuff when I want to generate conversation. The idea behind my logic is that some people, to reduce the noise, block all tweets, as they consider tweets less important. I agree with these folk, so I use Twitter for stuff that they're probably not interested in. - possible248 via NoiseRiver
You Twitter from Twhirl and reply from FriendFeed . Duh! - Candace Holly
Twhirl runs on my left side monitor, friendfeed on my main screen. I hold a special place for Twitter, in my heart (no, really...but it's a long story) but that doesn't fix the usability issues. - Spinn via twhirl
PicLens doesn't work for me in FF, but it does in Flickr (hangs when no larger sizes are available). I'm on OS X 10.5.2 & Safari 3.0.4. What are you guys using? - Mitchell Tsai
PicLens is pretty awesome. Now if only they allowed cmd-click to open a photo in a background tab to interact with it after you were done using PicLens. - Thomas Hawk
+1 Thomas Hawk - now that would be Jim Dandy! - JA Castillo
Thomas: Big, big agreement... although the "jump back to PicLens" button is a decent attempt at addressing the issue. - Roger Benningfield
Too bad we don't have Peets in Maryland - Aaron Brazell
There go 600 free iPhone hot spots (with a Starbucks card of course) - Steve Pribut
I don't really see that as a problem. I'm surprised they aren't closing more. I like their coffee, but there are just too many of their stores. - Eric Truman
Love Peets. There are 2 Starbucks in my town within 5 blocks. Overkill. - Chris
I've always thought Starbuck's coffee tastes cheap and over-roasted. A couple months back, they began retraining their baristas and upgrading their quality across the board. That's probably the right move. They're being flanked on all sides and can't become a discount brand. - Chris Baskind
+23 for Peet's. Major Dickason addiction. - AJ Kohn
I've always preferred Seattle Drip to Starbucks. (no idea how widespred "the drip" is.) - Tim via Alert Thingy
i wonder if i should apply to a starbucks... maybe not... - Justin
I'm not a fan of their over-burnt beans but I've been forced to consume their version of coffee since they crushed all of my local independent coffee houses. Crazy, there are four Starbucks locations within an eighth mile of each other a few blocks from my house. - Glenn Batuyong
the only thing I drink at Starbucks is the Chai Tea Latte. That's it. - Chris Cavs
Hmmm, Starbucks makes the best coffee in Australia. Maybe Peet's should consider coming here! - Toastpaint
The really, really, really awesome part about Friendfeed is that there are dozens of ways to use it. Not everyone is using Friendfeed to replace twitter as a bandstand to opine about social media. - Mark Trapp
Your point is well taken, though. Handing out likes to run up your stats or get attention runs counter to FF's potential as a smart content filter. - Chris Baskind
I can't resist good irony. (Pointedly, however, I agree. Though if it's ONLY media, it's still instructive ... We just need a Jaanix-like feature extractor to figure out which people we most agree in likes with. Then if someone who likes every bit of media on FF and, say, me, who only likes a few wouldn't be too tightly considered for mutual recommendation.) - Alexander Williams
Hey Alexander, Hutch Carpenter started a movement to figure that out, called the likes compatibility index. Check it out here: http://friendfeed.com/e/f41a03... Lots of interesting analyses generated off of it from Yuvi, too. - Mark Trapp
@alexander I think the new Digg recommendation system does exactly what you're desiring and could be applied to FF in simpler terms - Julian Baldwin
There are lots of systems which are trying to use expressed preferences, keywords and/or tags to try and figure out recommendation dynamics. I'm for it! I just mentioned Jaanix as the one I use most often. I think we'll see them moving into a lot of other spaces because they "just work." No need to give them lists of keywords, or people, or anything except say, "Yup" or "no," which is about the level of interaction I like. - Alexander Williams
@j. phil you're fine, it's certain others who may as well be unconscious at the mouse from time to time and I lose respect for their credibility until they wake up - Julian Baldwin
I like the way you phrased the statement here.. so when people say "there is no wrong way to use friendfeed" you can say "I'm not saying you are using friendfeed wrong, I'm saying you aren't worth watching" ... I like it! - J. Phil
@mike lol, you've coined this one correctly @j. phil exactly - Julian Baldwin
but what if we really like a lot of stuff? ;) - Sarah Perez
@sarah that happens to all of us, but sometimes you know damn well someone is only hitting like to appear present - Julian Baldwin
That kind of defeats the purpose of the "like" link, doesn't it? - Lucretia Pruitt
@lucretia yes, liking everything on the screen defeats the purpose - Julian Baldwin
I would really like 1-5 star type liking. Also, perhaps a "private-like" which allows me to save stuff for my own viewing without contaminating the main feed. If FriendFeed would add "themed"/keyword liking, then it would be easy to exclude topics/pics/songs/videos you weren't interested in... It would be really nice to see FriendFeed with/without the tech articles... Some people like RAPatton have only subscribed to 20 people, but are very active. - Mitchell Tsai
P.S. If you see the speed of the Everyone feed, no one here even likes 1% of the media which flows into FriendFeed. I doubt that Polly, RAPatton, and I combined are even tapping 0.1% of the incoming picture flow... - Mitchell Tsai
haha, I'm happy you like that! I wouldn't be happy if you liked that and ALL items before it - Julian Baldwin
I 'liked' this but not for ironies sake. Well said Julian. - Steve Spalding
I suppose it depends, if it's a prolific news day there can be a lot going on. I am kidding, liking a story for the sake of it has no benefit. I post more than I like as it adds more and shows that you are reading and participating!! - Joe Dawson
!["Boeing B-47B rocket assisted takeoff, April 1954" [hungryghost, Pixdaus]](http://pixdaus.com/pics/1215154144pBQyMmW.jpg "\"Boeing B-47B rocket assisted takeoff, April 1954\" [hungryghost, Pixdaus]")
