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dannysullivan › Likes
My wife sees this Facebook ad every time she logs in now. I set it so only people that match her profile will see it. :-)
Denise Howell, David Cook, Mark Douglass and 39 other people liked this
You can do the same for your spouse this Valentines by just clicking "Advertising" at the bottom of Facebook and picking attributes that you know will only apply to their profile.
- Jesse Stay
brilliant!
- David Knight
Good to know.
- Vezquex
Hey Jesse, why am I seeing this ad too?
- Louis Gray
thats awesome jesse
- Allen Stern
You're a super sappy geeky husband!
- Trish Haley
@Louis G, it's a lil wink & a nudge :)
- sofarsoShawn
Louis, maybe I intended it to go to you, too ;-)
- Jesse Stay
#keyswap
- sofarsoShawn
This is absolutely brilliant.
- DGentry
will you post how much this costs jesse?
- Chris Heath
Chris, it's free if she never clicks on it. If she clicks on it, it depends how much you bid the cost per click as. I set mine high so it would guarantee it always wins over the other ads. I'm okay paying it (although I warned her not to after she saw it).
- Jesse Stay
Thanks Jesse. I was wondering how that worked.
- Chris Heath
from email
Sweet new search engine: http://www.google.com/ - found out about them on a Super Bowl Commercial. Looks VERY promising.
TradersLog, Kol Tregaskes, Thomas Hawk and 35 other people liked this
Might finally switch from AltaVista.
- Ⓒⓗⓡⓘⓢ Ⓟⓘⓡⓘⓛⓛⓞ
akebono.stanford.edu
- Josh Haley
from iPhone
Dude, but Altavista is still best viewed with Netscape Navigator! Silly Mr Bleeding Edge Early Adopter.
- Micah
Lycos, Infoseek, Excite ...
- Laura Norvig
They're going to need something pretty compelling given all the established players. And that homepage looks really amateurish. Needs a Flash intro or something.
- Bruce Lewis
Nah, looks too gimmicky to me. Dogpile FTW!
- Joe "Funkasaurus" Pierce
hard to beat email to archie (pre-web) though - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
- Amund Tveit
@Bruce: Flash won't run on my Palm VII.
- Ⓒⓗⓡⓘⓢ Ⓟⓘⓡⓘⓛⓛⓞ
Google is such a stupid sounding name. It'll never catch on.
- Jack&Cleo
flying toasters? Flying toilets is where it's at.
- Joe "Funkasaurus" Pierce
15"?! Lucky. Interlaced or non-interlaced?
- Ⓒⓗⓡⓘⓢ Ⓟⓘⓡⓘⓛⓛⓞ
RGB or Monochrome?
- Jesse Stay
Wonder if it works in Lynx?
- Computerwhiz1
Apple 13" hi-res RGB FTW!
- Mark Davidson
from BuddyFeed
I'm not going to buy any computer that Jeff Goldblum pitches. Sorry. Not going to happen. And while I'm on the subject, WTF is up with IBM using Paul Reiser's floating head in their latest commercial?! http://www.youtube.com/watch...
- Ⓒⓗⓡⓘⓢ Ⓟⓘⓡⓘⓛⓛⓞ
HotBot is where it's at!
- Richard E. Ochoa
Their logo is totally amateurish. They must have used one of those $99 logo web sites. They could probably get better work from a bunch of school kids.
- maczter
The site is pretty boring looking.
- Kevin (aka ThreadKilla)
try search3.com :)
- h011yw00ddigi741
Hilarious :) especially the Alta Vista follow up LOL
- Kevin Cimring
I'll stick with Altavista: this new one, Google (?), will reject Mozilla browser and Linux OS soon ;)
- Thierry R. Andriamirado
LOL
- dannysullivan
That's what I thought, but th@&( !()&(*$(@$_!*(@$&^&*(! NO CARRIER
- Ⓒⓗⓡⓘⓢ Ⓟⓘⓡⓘⓛⓛⓞ
Chris, cool - I can see each letter as you type
- Jesse Stay
So help me, Jesse... if you're bragging about your effin' 2400bps modem again, I'm gonna come over there and shove that PS/2 cable where the sun don't shine.
- Ⓒⓗⓡⓘⓢ Ⓟⓘⓡⓘⓛⓛⓞ
Depends. Are you using the Parallel drive, Johnny?
- Ⓒⓗⓡⓘⓢ Ⓟⓘⓡⓘⓛⓛⓞ
Not if I block it with my 5 1/2 inch floppy drive. I'll then fling all my Windows 3.1 floppy disks at you.
- Jesse Stay
Real men use OS/2. I guess that means Dvorak is a real man, after all?
- Ⓒⓗⓡⓘⓢ Ⓟⓘⓡⓘⓛⓛⓞ
I thought the cool OS was SGI
- Jesse Stay
Of course, Google could have done it better if they did it all in VRML
- Jesse Stay
VRML? Hell no. They should have partnered with Microsoft and made an IE4 Channel.
- Ⓒⓗⓡⓘⓢ Ⓟⓘⓡⓘⓛⓛⓞ
Dude - that would be the bomb
- Jesse Stay
Somebody set up us the bomb.
- Ⓒⓗⓡⓘⓢ Ⓟⓘⓡⓘⓛⓛⓞ
I can't see it taking off, I mean we have newspapers, books and videos these days -besides how are they ever going to finance it.
- Andrew Bleakley
I usually use Bing.. maybe I should give this "Google" a try?
- Jemm
Dogpile is still the bestest meta search engine of choice. It even understands boolean!
- Courtney Engle
Leapfish.com is the best!
- Cathleen Mann
Who needs search engines? People should just learn to remember the websites - I only visit 5 or 10 a week anyway. This concept will never get popular.
- James Kuypers
World's most effective URL shortener: http://to./ doesn't look like a valid link but OMG TRY IT. /via @dweekly added: it works for me http://to./gcx or http://img.skitch.com/2010020...
Mitchell Tsai, Trish Haley, John Wang and 8 other people liked this
Thanks for the find, Mona. I will give it a try
- Melanie Reed
The interface is really ugly but it works. And it's SHORT.
- Mona Nomura
Doesn't work for me. Probably the DNS cache on my router being buggy though.
- Matt M (inactive)
"DNS error - cannot find server"
- chrisofspades
Works for me http://img.skitch.com/2010020...
- Mona Nomura
Works for me but the request was a little long.
- Melanie Reed
Bizarre - it's the fastest for me.
- Mona Nomura
Does anyone know how this works?
- Mona Nomura
It's a top-level domain, but each segment of a domain can have its own address entry. Top-level segments don't normally have addresses associated with them (probably because they don't work reliably, like on my home network). The trailing dot just tells the thing looking up the address that it's the end of the address (try hitting http://google.com./ - it's the same as google.com)
- Matt M (inactive)
works for me now. but not from my office. they should get bitly to power the shortener to make it a better service.
- chrisofspades
Matt - thanks so much for explaining. :)
- Mona Nomura
I can /get/ to it -- I get a www.to page (top of the page says "www.to where to?" but the shorteners just don't work for me. EDIT: ah, their system works with short.to or to., but not www.to. =P
- Andrew C (✓)
San Francisco’s Answer to Westboro Baptist Church - http://laughingsquid.com/san-fra...
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Aaron Draczynski, Kelly W. Peavey, Michael R. Bernstein and 97 other people liked this
"Westboro Baptist Church showed up to protest in front of Twitter’s San Francisco office on Thursday, but found themselves severely outnumbered by a crowd of absurdist pranksters, including guest blogger EDW Lynch above. WBC’s hate-promoting signs were answered by multiple signs of randomness, nonsensical yelling, and even a unicorn. A portable stereo blared Lady GaGa, while press and people passing by ignored the WBC signs and took pictures and videos of the more entertaining signs. I was also there and turned on the video camera while holding my sign."
- April Buchheit
from Bookmarklet
This is a total WIN!
- Mathew™ aka Youngblood
a unicorn :)
- ۳۰ مرغ Loves Y'ALLLLL
The best way to counter protests (KKK, Neonazis, WBC, etc.) is with absurdity, because it turns the issue into a joke.
- Gabe
What Gabe said.
- Ken Morley
The "I'm Tired" sign kills me.
- Ayşe E.
That's why the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is so awesome. When school boards start talking about teaching creationism in schools, you can bet some Pirate are gonna show up and demand that THEIR creation myths are given equal time. :)
- iTad
Hahaha, damn
- Mo Kargas
I ❤ my crazy surreal WBC-disarming bay area neighbors.
- Wirehead
Love it. I think I'd go with "GOD HATES PANTS" if they came to my town.
- bevedog
haha "i like a sign" !
- dominic
ROFL!!!! Love it!!! "God hates flags" and "God hates kittens" And the RickRoll!
- rowlikeagirl
excellent!
- Jim
That's just beautiful. I don't even know what the hell Westboro was protesting, and that's exactly the way I like it!
- Joel Webber
This is absolutely brilliant.
- DAMMIT, MR. NOODLE
I WAS PROMISED DONUTS
- Otto
They needed a "Down With This Sort of Thing" sign though. Every silly protest needs one of those.
- Otto
"Sporks are Evil" :)
- Eivind
oh man i love these ppl
- Felicia Yue
'Gays Too Precious To Risk In Combat,' Says General | The Onion - America's Finest News Source http://www.theonion.com/content...
dannysullivan liked this
Imagine if instead of a blue lego, iPhone/Pad users saw a button to email the site asking for a non-flash alternative?
Hutch Carpenter, Siddharth Deb, Jimminy and 12 other people liked this
Apple already strictly controls what apps can run on these devices. I'm no fan of Flash, but does Apple really need to have their users bully the web into doing their bidding as well? Let's make a deal: they can do this if they also open app development for the iP* devices.
- Laurence Gonsalves
Totally agree that the iPhone / iPad fail helps highlight an overuse of Flash that often is a bad user experience. Just wish it had more to do with Apple actually wanting to improve things for users rather than just being their own little closed world.
- dannysullivan
Apple not supporting Flash is like Mozilla not supporting h.264. ;-(
- Amit Patel
I would end up blocking my site to Safari Mobile users. And I own an iPhone.
- Rob H.
Amit: I haven't really been following the h.264 debate, but Mozilla's reasons for not supporting it seem to be almost a direct opposite of Apple's reason for not supporting Flash.
- Laurence Gonsalves
Well, I don't mean the reasons, but the structure: company A provides product P to end users and favors technology Z, end users want P to support Y because content producers B are using Y, company A doesn't like Y for {insert reason here}, so they make it difficult or impossible for P to support Y. Normally the content producers and end users would pick whether they like Y or Z better. But company A is using their market position to push Z over Y. Okay maybe that's too abstract. Nevermind :)
- Amit Patel
Firefox is a bit inconsistent though. It doesn't support h.264 in <video> but it has no problem deferring to plug-ins for Flash, h.264, and other non-native formats in a page or iframe.
- Tinfoil 2.0
Audiences experience 'Avatar' blues - CNN.com - http://www.cnn.com/2010...
dannysullivan, Morgan and Josh Haley liked this
"A user named Mike wrote on the fan Web site "Naviblue" that he contemplated suicide after seeing the movie. "Ever since I went to see 'Avatar' I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na'vi made me want to be one of them. I can't stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it," Mike posted. "I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and the everything is the same as in 'Avatar.' " Other fans have expressed feelings of disgust with the human race and disengagement with reality."
- April Buchheit
from Bookmarklet
You could say the same thing after seeing Dude, Where's My Car?
- Josh Haley
and then?
- Joe "Funkasaurus" Pierce
Dude! Sweet! Dude! Sweet!
- Morgan
Meanwhile, MMORPG enrollment skyrockets
- Josh Haley
LOL Josh
- Jenthemum
Dude, "Dude, Where's My Car?" was sweet!
- Paul Buchheit
;)
- Josh Haley
I lament for our future.
- Arlan K.
Watching "Dude, Where's My Car?" changed my life!
- Gabe
Thought this was from The Onion. CNN!?
- Richard Chen
Reader Responses to Review of Google’s Nexus One - Pogue’s Posts Blog - http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2010...
Mona Nomura, vovasty, Nick Mutton and 13 other people liked this
"I think I may have accidentally unearthed a whole new untapped population online: the Android Army. Reader feedback about my review of Google’s new cellphone yesterday was unusually voluminous and, in some sectors, vitriolic. Where I had written, “The Nexus One is an excellent app phone, fast and powerful but marred by some glitches,” some readers seemed to read, “You are a pathetic loser, your religion is bogus and your mother wears Army boots.”"
- Dan Hsiao
from Bookmarklet
"See, veteran tech columnists know one thing very well indeed: If you write anything positive about an Apple product or negative about a Microsoft product, you get buried by hate mail and personal attacks. The only worse result is if you say something negative about an Apple product or positive about a Microsoft product, in which case you get exposed to the true ugliness of the human spirit (and sometimes, in fact, physical threats)."
- Tudor Bosman
Microsoft and Apple are both irrelevant ;)
- Paul Buchheit
Paul, you should have left out the smiley :)
- Tudor Bosman
I like how the first comment to the post is vitriolic. Very apropos.
- Mark Trapp
I don't have the time right now Tudor :)
- Paul Buchheit
Well that means that Android is also irrelevant, but that's a different thread.
- Hayes Haugen
Tudor: smilies are irrelevant.
- Gabe
"Sorry, but Microsoft Silverlight doesn’t work with this web browser."
J. J. Zepfanman.com, John Wang, rowlikeagirl and 23 other people liked this
Sigh. :)
- Matt Cutts
Which one? Works in Chrome Windows.
- Hayes Haugen
It definitely does not work with Chrome on Ubuntu.
- imabonehead
STOP USING THE BETA!
- Andy Bakun
Guess you don't get to check it out.
- Hayes Haugen
I'm using Chrome on Ubuntu.
- Matt Cutts
Be a man. Get IE8 :)
- dannysullivan
Danny, what would I run IE8 on? I don't have any Microsoft OS software any more. :)
- Matt Cutts
I find it informative to use my competitor's products.
- Hayes Haugen
I keep trying, Hayes, but when AdCenter rolled out, it wouldn't even work on Firefox.
- Matt Cutts
The Web wins again. :)
- Ray Cromwell
Does this mean you've broken your "stop using Microsoft OS/software" challenge? Or are Microsoft websites excluded?
- Tony Ruscoe
who gives a tard about Chrome :) Grow up Cutts!
- Jose Fajardo
Silverlight used to work with the Chrome Dev beta. Not sure what changed....
- Roberto Bonini
Tony: Microsoft websites are excluded from my challenge. :)
- Matt Cutts
Two strings walk into a bar.
"What'll it be, fellas?" the Bartender asks.
"I'll have a beer" the first string replies.
"Same for me.0gh8lujhil%" says the second string.
"What was that?" asks the bartender.
The first replies "Pardon my friend, he's not null terminated"
Charles Nadeau, Count Caturday, Andy Bakun and 17 other people liked this
LOL!
- Rahsheen
too much geekness
- Tzury Bar Yochay
Visual evidence that you live in a bubble.
ŁoſĐ ҒarhaÐ, Kol Tregaskes, Jimminy and 38 other people liked this
From 4 minutes ago. :)
- Louis Gray
HAHAHA!
- Sheryl
I thought for SURE I was the first to notice... :)
- Seth Gray
lol
- Anika
I seriously hope this guy was being sarcastic...
- Joshua Schnell
He just doesn't live in _the_ bubble.
- Micah
<twitter>Facepalm</twitter> Wonders why people think the universe revolves around Twitter. Anyone would think the world had suddenly stopped spinning. FF has kept me amused and informed to a degree that I was only peripherally aware that the whale had failed again - Steve
- CdL Creative
what else is news?
- Houseofmax
This is crap. I demand a full 15 minutes of fame.
- Carter Shanklin
15 whole minutes! It's been 2 hours already. :)
- Louis Gray
awesome. little known fact. i can't believe i'm the first person to notice the sun comes up each day. never seen anyone talk about that, either
- dannysullivan
I twittered my rat's ass over 2.5 hours ago! Didn't anyone get it?
- ‘-.-’ Tutivillus Grift
Bonus Points for the subject of the post joining FF just to have his say. Gotta love it.
- Kamilah Reed (K. Gill)
I'm sure that is not only visual, but could also be read in Braille. More bonus points.
- Red Label
"Liked" for Carter's comment and what Kamilah said.
- Micah
SFPD Officer Threatens to Break Skater's Arm "Like a Twig" - http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news...
Anthony Citrano, Jeff P. Henderson, dannysullivan and 2 other people liked this
Youtube video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch...
- Thomas Hawk
Cristo, indeed, the kid was an idiot for calling the cop that. But being an idiot isn't against the law and as the one with the gun and badge and obligation to protect and serve, the cop acted poorly. If you are going to be given the privilege of a gun and badge in society you can't break down simply because someone is disrespectful to you. Being disrespectful is not a crime.
- Thomas Hawk
MVB, violating the law should not result in that kind of police harassment. Skateboarding is largely a victimless crime, like jaywalking. Not allowing skateboarding in SF by the way is an idiotic law.
- Thomas Hawk
"while also claiming that at no point did he threaten anyone." Um.
- Andrew C (✓)
MVB, the thing is that we have laws though and disrespecting a cop isn't one of them. Even then though threatening to break a citizen's arm is uncalled for. Cops need to have level heads. This guy does not have one.
- Thomas Hawk
"not perfectly fine" != "deserves threats of violence from authority figures".
- Andrew C (✓)
and "valid arrest" != "comes with a side of threats".
- Andrew C (✓)
MVB, I think everyone here would agree the kid was disrespectful and broke the law.
- Kenton
MVB, I don't think disrespect is fine at all. The kid was in the wrong for calling the cop what he did. But disrespecting the police is permitted via the 1st Amendment and until that's repealed I'm not sure it will ever be considered illegal. An unlawful use of force is in fact illegal though, and although the officer did not actually follow through on his threat, threatening an...
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- Thomas Hawk
No he did not. He deserved to be cited for the crime of skateboarding and released on site. It's a stupid victimless crime, like jaywalking. Question. Do you think this *very public* video builds cooperation, support and partnership between the SFPD and the community?
- Thomas Hawk
Insulting a cop is not a crime. Yet.
- Andrew C (✓)
Speeding?
- Kenton
Infractions != misdemeanors != felonies. however, committing an infraction, then acting like a moron can instantly get someone into "disturbing the peace" - a misdemeanor... and incidentally, while i think the cop stepped over the line, i have no idea what it's like to be one and i have absolutely no interest in creating some new set of rules that they all of a sudden need to be super-polite either.
- Jeremy Toeman
"politically correct"? Perhaps you mean _legally_ correct.
- Andrew C (✓)
MVB, it's a crime to park at an expired meter. Do you want to be arrested for that? There's a big difference between crimes that actually require someone to be arrested for public safety reason (say a murder, a flight risk) and a crime that's minor (as a traffic infraction). Should he have called the officer a dick? No, even if he has a protected right to, it's not wise. It just pissed...
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- dannysullivan
@Jeremy - my problem is people inventing "new set of rules" that ordinary civilians basically have to kowtow to police.
- Andrew C (✓)
Apparently, it might not be illegal, either http://sf.metblogs.com/2009...
- dannysullivan
dannysullivan++
- Andrew C (✓)
@Andrew since when does "being polite to those who risk their lives for us" (and yes, they do - not every day/all the time, but that *IS* their job) == "kowtow"? again, why is anyone defending this punk kid's actions? do you think cops should have to be treated this way while doing their jobs?
- Jeremy Toeman
We're not defending his actions. We're upset that a police officer threatened to break his arm. Mouthing off does not = I'll break your arm. He's a minor, right? Give him a ticket. No ID, arrest him to issue the citation, hey, that's fine too. But no, I don't think we need police officers venting their frustration that people might assume they're assholes by acting like them. He gives...
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- dannysullivan
@Jeremy - no, police shouldn't be treated that way. But, yeah, what dannysullivan said. The appropriate response to rudeness to cops is not police violence, nor a threat of it. I could turn it around on y'all - why is anyone defending this cop?
- Andrew C (✓)
See, if the kid had just yelled "you lie," that would have been much better. Imagine the campaign contributions! C'mon, gotta lighten it up a bit around here :)
- dannysullivan
Are all streets in San Francisco considered to be in a "business district?"
- Bill Slawski
I ask because SEC. 7.2.13. NON-MOTORIZED USER-PROPELLED VEHICLES (NUV) (as amended in 2008) of the San Francisco Municipal Code would appear to allow skateboarding on city streets that aren't in a business district. Has the law changed, and the online version of the municipal code not been changed? Or did this arrest happen in a business district?
- Bill Slawski
RT @BenParr Twitter to Launch User Created Follow Lists - http://mashable.com/2009... also known as "shut up @scobleizer" feature :)
Matt Ellsworth, dannysullivan, Gordon Saunders and 2 other people liked this
BTW @scobleizer, what's next for you now that the whole "rule Friendfeed, rule the internet, profit" didn't work out?
John E. Bredehoft, TheHenry, Daniel J. Pritchett and 3 other people liked this
*grabs popcorn*
- Susan Beebe
*sets up lemonade and souvenirs stand*
- Jay Cuthrell
ponders crowd control
- dannysullivan
I answered him something like "it's working out just fine, Facebook has a lot more users than TechMeme." :-)
- Robert Scoble
Hahhahahah Robert! *breaks ice for more laughter to ensue* #SenseOfHumorFTW #IrrelevantHashTagsAreTheNewDisclaimers :)
- Mona Nomura
[school yard chorus] Ooooooooh.... [/school yard chorus]
- Jay Cuthrell
Cat fight. Meoow! To Robert's credit though, it's probably that kind of forward thinking and social engagement that enabled him to land a gig w/ Seagate and then Rackspace.
- beersage
Breaking Up a Traffic Jam! MUST SEE - http://www.metacafe.com/watch...
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BRҰANSAҰS, Shey, Vezquex and 76 other people liked this
"Sometimes a single driver can vastly improve traffic."
- AJ Batac
from Bookmarklet
I think I'll do this from now on
- AJ Batac
I had heard about something like this a while back. I try to do it as much as I can but jackalopes are always cutting in the space. Oh well.
- Curtis (a) Jackson
Continue what you are doing Curtis. Don't mind those jackalopeseses
- AJ Batac
This philosophy collapses when you have real gridlock though; if all the lanes are clogged with stopped (or very slow moving) traffic and you try to employ this technique, you just end up pissing off the cars trapped behind you because you are going 5mph while everyone else is going 10.
- Phil Glockner
It's simply courteous and defensive driving. There should be space between cars for safety. And there's no reason to close ranks to not allow others in. We're all going in the same direction with the same goal. If you'd like others to be courteous, always be courteous yourself.
- ·[▪_▪]·
Living in LA has totally colored how I drive now. I remember going back home to SD to see my folks and I was agog at how much more aggressive I'd become. :(
- Derrick
It's not cheating, it's just optimal timing :-)
- Todd Hoff
It's the rocket scientist like this that causes wrecks behind him and road rage. Slower traffic keep right is the law (for good reason). He demonstrates why he should stay in the far right lane, go about his business, and stop trying to "fix all of the traffic around him". What an ego.
- Robert Kenney
the most important part is really the end, where he says how this style of driving is actually calming and altruistic instead of infuriating and selfish.... geez, if everything felt that way we'd have less problems once people got out of their car, all frustrated and pissy.
- Nicķ
Simple math.
- Mike Reynolds
This is absolutely brilliant. I think I just found a pick of the week and it's only Tuesday.
- Josh Haley
This is the dude who did the zero cost steadycam using a tripod. Good stuff.
- Rodfather
I gotta check that out, Rodfather. I could put a steadycam to work. http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to...
- Josh Haley
I received a 404 error. There seems to be a traffic jam on the server as well.
- Louis Trapani
from iPhone
It's kind of obvious.. stop and go causes problems (and wrecks), even if it does take you longer, it doesn't FEEL longer because you aren't gas/break/gas/break, so less stressful drive. On the flip side, you think this guy driving slow (and not keeping the traffic pace) will cause someone else to slam him in the rear?
- Tim Hoeck
It might cause more disruption with cars behind him moving into the other lane to pass him. Honestly, I can't stand drivers who leave a huge gap in front during a traffic jam. Josh, it's basically just extending a tripod and holding it in the middle :) http://www.youtube.com/watch...
- Rodfather
Interesting: "Governor Bush vetoed 2005 SB732, which would have reserved the left lane for passing, saying that drivers blocking the left lane are 'cautious and careful.'" - from "State keep right laws" http://www.mit.edu/~jfc...
- Micah
So, his basic tactic, albeit in a single lane, is similar to what I see highway patrol officers do when they want to SLOW DOWN traffic -- the highway patrol car swerves back and forth from fast to left to right lane and back and forth, lights ablazing, effectively doing two things -- creating a BIG GAP between the cop car and the rest of the traffic in front of him, and second SLOWS...
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- Pete D
A few people already mentioned it above, but let me also say that this technique will not work in heavily trafficked roads. I've spent time in cities like Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Bangkok and you just can't leave a large gap between you and the car in front of you. First they will get filled by other cars really really quickly, and second you will just piss off the cars behind you.
- Andre P. Siregar
My wife and I debate this, because I sometimes do this myself. Stop and go traffic seems silly, when throughput would be higher if people left enough space between cars to absorb some of the braking. The website at http://trafficwaves.org/ is interesting, especially the link to http://www.ur.umich.edu/0304... that claims single-lane jams would be radically reduced if >=20% of cars had adaptive cruise control.
- Matt Cutts
Meh. I just do whatever gets me to my destination fastest #aggressivedriver
- LANjackal
kinda like why people are requested to exit in an orderly fashion during a fire. The only hindrance to this is getting over the feeling of being taken advantage of by the jackasses who ignore the order. But no pain no gain and you have to live with that for the greater good.
- vijay
I practice a type-A version of this in non-stop-and-go traffic, I'd call "driving Parkour", basically, I tend to drive over the speed limit, but I leave large gaps, and when I need to slow down, I avoid hitting my brakes and try to led friction/drag slow my car down before I have to hit my breaks. I look far ahead and try to plot out if I need to switch lanes in order to maintain speed...
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- Ray Cromwell
Clarkson eluded to this in his unique crass manner, don't brake and drive clever. Save everyone money.
- Toby Graham
the biggest cause of traffic jams are the idiots who don't get in lane and bimble along in the middle lane without any plan to actually overtake anyone. I've seen people when there has been nothing on the inside lane and yet they won't pull into it as they should. This is even more obvious when you consider that articulated lorries aren't allowed to drive in the outside lane, meaning...
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- alphaxion
( ++ alphaxion for 'bimble'. Loving that :D )
- vijay
The roads imho would be better if more drove this way. I was, however, waiting for some kind of shocking thing to happen in the video.
- Rob Schieber
I agree ashish. I "liked" this just so I could watch it later on my laptop. shouldn't have to do that.
- Jen (SquirrelGirl)
This is actually an impressive use of game theory/backward induction to determine an optimal strategy. If this guy isn't a mathematician or work for the highway department, he should be.
- Mark Trapp
i do the same here in Rome/Italy since 1998
- FullSite
Great to see this taken up again - I've been doing this since I first read his site years ago...
- Kevin Marks
I always keep lot of room in front of my car for my safety but I think it takes lot of room and creates longer line.
- Ashish
While the line may be longer the actual distance you travel isn't any greater; you use less gas; your breaks will last longer; you're less likely to be involved in a crash and in fact it has an almost negligible affect on your travel time. Yes it is "slower" but on my 50 mile commute the difference is maybe a couple of minutes.
- Eoghann Irving
I agree Eoghann Irving. Wish everybody thought like this.
- Ashish
+1 Pete Delucchi. I do agree it's probably better for your mental health to drive this way. Assuming you don't mind the "insult" of everybody cutting into to your lane.
- Matsis
Drivers behind me may get annoyed but there is always room at the front ;)
- Ashish
I used to drive like this, until my commute changed to one that had more traffic lights. Then I realized that letting cars in front of me didn't make 1 second per car difference, it could make 10's of minutes, because I'd often miss traffic light cycles. I wish it wasn't the case - I guess it's going to depends on your commute.
- Nick Lothian
Has anyone seen their tweets being removed from Twitter Search? Someone just called me and showed me her tweets are. Anti-spam measures?
polymath22, Svartling, Sidharth Dassani and 9 other people liked this
Maybe, I have not noticed it.
- Adam
Oh yes. And it's not anti-spam. See my post here http://www.drumsnwhistles.com/2009...
- Karoli
Probably, I think the people @ Twitter are working real hard on getting rid of all the spam, that's why we are seeing a decrease in the number of followers/removed tweets from Twitter Search
- Ahmed
it's an arbitrary removal from search based upon subjective criteria which may or may not be true.
- Karoli
Haven't seen this yet. Though I would be interesting. Currently working on a Drupal site that filters local tweets since we've been invaded by Gurus and Social Marketing twits.
- Dean Clark
the one common thread I've been able to find in the ones I know of is that they all tweeted with regard to the #iranelection with that tag.
- Karoli
I've searched for tweets which I specifically remember based on memorable keywords, only to find them missing from Twitter search. It's been happening for months.
- Jackie Danicki
Yap ,,, mine as well are not in the search...you can find them in FF but not there
- Johni Fisher
Ya, I only have 3.25 pages showing up yet I have 300+ tweets.... It could also be blamed on a "hardware issue" or a "process saver".
- Adam
Most of my twitpic tweets are missing. Not that I think it's necessarily a big deal, but it is a little odd.
- malackey
Jackie, some people's entire streams are removed. If you do a from: search on them you will get no result
- Karoli
Also, many of the people removed from search entirely are engaged, legit long-term Twitterzens.
- Karoli
Robert, this has been going on for months. I had to write a post that has fixed dozens of accounts in the past week alone. Tweet >> Have *YOU* been "FILTERED OUT" of Twitter's Search feature? Many have been. Get the test & FIX here: http://bit.ly/ShoqTips
- Shoq
I'm still bummed Summize doesn't index every tweet >:[ Twitter is setting itself too much stock that new tweets are more relevant than older ones...
- CannonGod
There are several manifestations. Even though my account is fixed, many tweets simply vanish into an index wormhole. They can be found in my updates, but NOT by search.
- Shoq
and then there is the problem of having accounts restored, only to discover that any tweets prior to restoration are never, ever available in search again.
- Karoli
i guess @ev is banned. do from:ev, you get nothing. now do http://bit.ly/RvKNZ & you'll see his tweets. i suspect from:TWITTERNAME does indicated a filter in many cases but not necessarily in them all. Twitter search has been losing posts for months, especially if you do advanced searches http://bit.ly/Imtq1 but stuff from @shoq @karoli is really helpful -- hopefully Twitter will get their act together more & make things clearer
- dannysullivan
Its not just loosing ,they have some words that you cant find at all or cant find after a date ,,,this problem is from the first days of June
- Johni Fisher
thanks, danny. don't know about @ev, but if you look at @delbius' stream, you'll see how many replies are terse "you may have posted a malware link", or something similar. No pointer, no warning, no nothing to tell you why you're removed. But she makes it clear that people *were* removed.
- Karoli
I am not a spamer and never posted a malware link, but they took out our company name from the search ,,,,,simple as that ,if they are happy I am happy for them too
- Johni Fisher
I do see where ev's account was hacked. perhaps he decided to keep it offline and out of search.
- Karoli
Yes - i blogged about it and then followed twitter folks around until they released me from twitter purgatory - someone tweeted about this earlier - I will have to dig it up. It takes time, dedication, and persistence to get back into the steam...
- bev
When I post in reply within trends, I cannot see my tweets within the stream. I contacted Twitter and they said they knew it was an ongoing issue and instead of correct it... closed my ticket.
- Nile Flores
Nile, Shoq has written a FAQ for dealing with this stuff. http://bit.ly/ShoqTips
- Karoli
Earlier, all results for the search "textPlus" - GOGII's iPhone app were missing, but now they're back.
- drew olanoff
I was filtered for some time -- don't know the start because I didn't know to look.Restored for 4 hours then filtered again for about 20 hours, now back to full feed. I have no idea why I was filtered. I did use tweetlater.com to announce a friend's non-profit petiiton (about 12 tweets over 48 hours, not much variation). All my tweets from before filtering are gone from search. Not a big issue for me as I don't rely on, but could be very hard for a tweeple for business.
- Liz
Twitter hates you :)
- Jason Nunnelley
Every time you post "FriendFeed" a sparrow dies.
- Alan Chamberlain
Mine are and I contacted Crystal. It's not personal. It's a known issue.
- Mark Davidson
from BuddyFeed
@salspizza This discovery by @scobleizer affects you, even though you don't sell pizza.
- Bernie Goldbach
I usually notice the opposite, that deleting a tweet has little value because it still appears in the search DB
- Keith Barrett
I hate Twitter's unpolicy on pretty much everything.
- Jason Nunnelley
A Little Taste of Independence « 17 and Baking - http://17andbaking.wordpress.com/2009...
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magali, Dobromir Hadzhiev, Muge Ozden and 19 other people liked this
"While I wish I could claim credit for it, the idea of a flag cake was completely my father’s. It was all a bit of an experiment and when I finally cut the cake open, revealing the familiar red white and blue, I was so surprised to see that it worked. Besides that, I was floored by how beautifully colored all the layers were, and how much it really resembled a flag! It might be one of the coolest cakes I’ve ever made! I used a white cake flavored with coconut milk. I wrapped the cakes and left them overnight and in the morning, was disappointed because they had dried out. I made a simple syrup with lime and tried to revive the layers, but the cake was still dry and I’m not sharing the recipe. However, the cake came together well and you can use any recipe for a three layer white cake. I wanted the cake to be completely white on the outside, keeping the richly colored layers hidden. I also didn’t want to mess around with blueberries and strawberries on the top, which I think are...
more...
- RAPatton
this is pretty awesome
- Chieze Okoye
Awesome cake!
- rowlikeagirl
that is really cool.
- anna sauce
I think it is pretty cool too, anna
- RAPatton
I love the white icing with no hint of what's inside.
- anna sauce
really great idea
- dannysullivan
Wow, I replied to enough tweets just now (~60) that Twitter won't let me send any more tweets. It's an uncomfortable reminder that Twitter != the open web.
Sebastian, Philip Lei, Jonathan Hardesty and 19 other people liked this
so you decided to continue on friendfeed?
- Mike Dammann
Not sure why you bother with Twitter myself. I just have FF push my comments through to Twitter and never go to it anymore. I have added all of the people I follow on twitter as Imaginary Friends here (really there are not many ;)) and use FF as my sole interface now.
- travispuk
denied! they probably were searching on google, got one of those "we think you aren't human" message and decided to get even, matt. but just think, now you can be all scobleish over here.
- dannysullivan
"Twitter != Open web" - Reminds me of Gmail that has a sending limit as well http://www.labnol.org/interne...
- Amit Agarwal
Spammer :P ... I kid I kid!
- Tony Adam
Amit, but it's pretty darn hard to hit Gmail's sending limits (500 people at a time) if you're just sitting and doing normal work. And I can still send email in other ways because email is an open/federated standard. With Twitter, the whole ecosystem is theirs, so if they don't like how many people you reply to, tough luck.
- Matt Cutts
Matt, we use GApps here at work and I think we are just under the limit on sending. The issue we have is that we have a couple of accounts that are used on the Apps account for announcing to our clients new versions of software and critical issues etc. We are only lucky that at the moment our client base is under the limit... to be clear though these are our actual clients who we provide support services to, not a mailing list of 'potential' clients.
- travispuk
There are Twitter accounts that regurgitate the same messages over and over. I'm happy with limits on those, which are a nuisance. But many times people are just communicating a lot with unique messages and I can't see stifling those.
- Alan Eggleston
ff is much better for rapid fire conv anyway
- mike "glemak" dunn
~60 @replies? You must be some kind of spammer.
- Christian Burns
Matt, it all boils down to network effect otherwise there are feasible alternatives to Twitter when it comes to Microblogging like identi.ca, jaiku and many more. Imagine how cool it would be if all these were federated and we could cross communicate (ala Google wave).
- Abhishek Sharma
In the absence of significant competition or people like RMS (who put their philosophical beliefs ahead of convenience or utility) what motivation does the owner of a walled garden (with many tenants) have to open up or federate?
- Adewale Oshineye
The #twitterjail limits were apparently decreased in the last week or so. I've seen a HUGE upsurge in the number of people complaining about this, and/or establishing secondary sending accounts for when they're rate limited. Strangely enough, it seems that smaller accounts are rate limited at smaller numbers than large accounts. So any claim from Twitter that this is architecturally related is hogwash
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Note that Laconi.ca based services like Identi.ca *are* federated. An Identi.ca user can subscribe to and dent @ an army.twit.tv user.
- Michael R. Bernstein
The big problem, is that they keep them a secret (until you exceed them) and they do not apply them in equal or equivalent fashions.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Okay FriendFeed friends: a little url shortener mystery for you. I'm finding that the "number who clicked" figures that I got on http://bit.ly/go when http://jay.40twits.com/ (which uses http://tr.im) was down is... 3-4 times higher for some reason. Got any theories?
Kawika Holbrook, Daniel Rowley, Jennifer Berk and 17 other people liked this
The first five bit.ly items I Tweeted today would rank 2, 2, 3, 3 and 3 on http://jay.40twits.com/ Now either they all took off like a shot, consecutively, one Wednesday morning, or there is something I am not getting, or....or what?
- Jay Rosen
And now that http://jay.40twits.com is back up again, I just Tweeted a typical @jayrosen_nyu link and the normal numbers for tr.im are seen, about 3 x lower than the bit.ly rate for number who clicked on it.
- Jay Rosen
Okay, some numbers, this latest link http://twitter.com/jayrose... is at no. 30 on the top 40 chart, with 137 clicks on the tr.im system. This is normal for an item like that on http://jay.40twits.com/. A comparable item like http://twitter.com/jayrose... is now at 587 clicks on bit.ly, which would rank no. 2 on the chart. See what I'm saying?
- Jay Rosen
I would suggest you put Google analytics on the target page and find out the REAL metrics
- Ric Johnson
Bit.ly also counts other shortlink versions of the same URL. Perhaps people are re-tweeting you link, but only after they visit the page, and using another url shortener? Google analyticsmay help sort this all out, but you're still not going to know the origin of the traffic since most twitter traffic comes from third party clients.
- Mr. Gunn
Bit.ly separates the clicks off my link from the total clicks off that url from bit.ly users. At least it says it does.
- Jay Rosen
I'm with Ric. Real metrics answers your question authoritatively, and that's good info to have. But, I'm not sure I see the whole picture clearly. It doesn't sound like apples and apples. Doing a blind test is difficult if you're relying on a single source. Doing multisourced links is only meaningful if you can provide impression stats. I'm pretty sure you can't do that with Twitter (unless you know someone or something I don't).
- Jason Nunnelley
Have you checked the referrer stats via bit.ly to see what it looks like? Maybe some site is picking up your bit.ly tweets.
- Jeremy Felt
I don't get how Google analytics helps me. I must be missing what you are saying. I am not trying to find out how many people came to a given page, I am trying to track how many people USED (clicked) the link that I selected an sent out to them. Because of Re-Tweeting and switched url shorteners, this is not exact, but both tr.im and bit.ly claim to measure the number who clicked the unique URL created for me and my Twitter feed, and if that url was Re-tweeted, those clicks are counted too.
- Jay Rosen
I'd agree with the other folks on here...it's probably somehow not an apples to apples comparison. The other option (oh, I see Jeremy just mentioned a form of this) is that bit.ly links are being "watched" more closely by some site/service/tool.
- Ken Kennedy
In this example http://twitter.com/jayrose... the unique url is http://tr.im/o2in which is currently no. 24 at http://jay.40twits.com/. I guarantee you, if I used bit.ky it would tell me that three times as many clicked on MY link. And what I am asking you is: why? You're answer seems to be: apples to oranges. I say: it's apples to apples for the user. Both services claim to do the same thing. I think...
- Jay Rosen
I'd say that their claims, while sounding identical, are probably somehow not, Jay. One could be stripping out multiple clicks per IP address w/in a short timeframe or something, for example. (intended to prevent double click counts, but would also hide multiple users behind a NAT, for example).
- Ken Kennedy
Ken is almost certainly right. tr.im isn't counting some traffic that bit.ly is counting. I'd bet on tr.im's number being the better reflection of actual interest in the link, based on other data I'm seeing, like hit counts on blog posts linked to from my twitter feed, or flickr pics. their counters usually pretty closely track tr.im's.
- Dave Winer
BTW, this is great stuff. I wanted Jay to lead a technical investigation to give him an idea how we do it in developer land. I expect this will be discussed on a future Rebooting The News podcast.
- Dave Winer
Hmmmm. Okay, so when you say apples to oranges the referent for that statement is the counting mechanism several layers underneath what the site says to users? As a user, "apples to oranges" means: "Jay, you're reading the claims of the two services wrong....." But I say I'm not. It's only apples to oranges for the coders, right?
- Jay Rosen
Good data, Dave. That'd be a decent way to check...choose two links that you can see the backend data on (ie, flickr photos where you can see how many times it was viewed, or two blogposts at PressThink, where you can see the server logs.) Then tweet one w/ a tr.im link, and the other with a bit.ly link. Then compare what your server logs say, hit-wise, to what tr.im and bit.ly say. The difference in magnitude of these numbers (3x-ish) should make the "correct" data fall out pretty easily.
- Ken Kennedy
Yes, Jay...the "apples to oranges" comparison was in reference to the claim that the claims are identical, if you see what I'm saying. I'm saying I bet they aren't. They're counting different things, but the difference is subtle enough (technically) that when they reword their claims into "non-techie", they say statements that sound identical. Did that make more sense, or was it still unclear?
- Ken Kennedy
Funny observation. I (with barely any followers) posted one Trim link and one Bitly link seconds apart to the same URL with the same description. Trim climbed to 12 hits immediately, bitly stayed at 4. I think Ken/Dave are right. Jay needs to post a url through both services to something where the real data can be watched. Either lots of Jay's followers dislike Trim and refuse to click links, or something is being piped out or counted multiple times somewhere.
- Jeremy Felt
IN-teresting, Jeremy. Interesting.
- Ken Kennedy
Aha, so I do have a mystery of my hands, eh? Ken: I get the oranges now. Thanks.
- Jay Rosen
I'm just a "dumber" user; I don't know how any of these things work inside. But I can't post a link to the same Joe Klein post at Swampland, through two different urls; the first one uses up many of the people who would click on the second! A second pass through the same people isn't a valid measure. Followers don't want the same thing twice. So I don't get why that would help.
- Jay Rosen
Two different posts, not one. What you're comparing isn't tr.im to bit.ly, you're comparing tr.im to a known value (the server logs) and bit.ly to another known value (the server logs for a different post). One is probably very close to the log values, and one isn't.
- Ken Kennedy
There do appear to be differences in bit.ly and tr.im if "a user is not logged in" (which I take to mean if a shortened url is generated by an non-logged in user, not if it's clicked on by one). tr.im says they generate unique tr.im urls for EVERY person who creates one; two different non-logged in users generating a tr.im of the same url get different tr.ims. Bit.ly apparently generates the same bit.ly url for all non-logged in users. Let me try something...
- Ken Kennedy
I am accessing tr.im through Dave's app. http://jay.40twits.com/ in m toolbar. But I am logged into bit.ly. So I am supposed to be logged in all the time to tr.im? It's generating a unique url for me, Jay Rosen, it says, and Dave turns that into http://jay.40twits.com/ Maybe I have to stay logged in to tr-im all the time...
- Jay Rosen
OK...I take your bit.ly example url from the tweet you mention above (tweet: http://twitter.com/jayrose... - bit.ly url: http://bit.ly/vYfRX ). Clicking on that link takes me to the Friendman article http://www.marketwatch.com/story... So far, so good...
- Ken Kennedy
When you use my bookmarklet you are logged into tr.im. My app is logged in on your behalf. You do not have to be logged into tr.im.
- Dave Winer
I open Chrome (separate browser, separate cookies, etc.) and go to bit.ly; not logged in (I don't even think I have an account). It gives me an url: http://bit.ly/DjpLP That's good, it's different than yours. It DOES give me a way non-zero click number, though...730 at time I created it (2 minutes ago). What number do you see in bit.ly for that Friedman link right now?
- Ken Kennedy
OK, fascinating. If I read the bit.ly site right (http://bit.ly/info/DjpLP), there are (currently) 743 "aggregate clicks" to the destination URL (at marketwatch) that have gone through bit.ly in total. Your specific version of that link accounts for 643 of them (http://bit.ly/info/vYfRX). So there does appear to be a difference between the "not logged in" and "logged in" accounting.
- Ken Kennedy
back to apples to apples then because I WAS logged in at bit.ly and Dave says I AM logged in on tr.im What I said earlier was: since I am using Dave's app in the toolbar I didn't know for sure whether I was logged in at tr.im, but I know I was logged at the bit.ly site.
- Jay Rosen
But it only shows 10 clicks in the past hour-ish (there's a couple of time errors, but I think they're just typos; it says 12:51am, and means 12:51pm, and it's EDT, not EST. I don't think either of them are any problem.) You posted that link around 4 hours ago, right, Jay? That indicates something HUGE happened very early on. I wish we could see detail click info further back than the "Now" tab shows in the info screen...I wonder if there's an API way to go back further.
- Ken Kennedy
re: apples to apples. Not necessarily. *grin* There are lots of apples to apples going on here. We just got rid of one; the logged in issue. That's good! But if tr.im is not counting individually counting multiple clicks from same IP address w/in a short time, for example, then you've got an issue. Welcome to bug squashing, tech style. *grin*
- Ken Kennedy
Funny you say that: because I notice that the "immediate" rush from bit.ly was much huger. But it takes 5 mins or so for the first readings to show at http://jay.40twits.com/ so I don't know....I have not been using bit.ly since 40twits came back online, so it would not show much now. Besides: which count is right? what I really want to know is: is this a quality bug or some garden variety thing?
- Jay Rosen
Ok, I poked the bit.ly API (which is kind of cool) with a stick. According to it, your current data is as follows (I'm cleaning up a a bit, but I'll be happy to send you how I got this: userClicks: 646, userHash: "vYfRX", userReferrers: { direct: 591, friendfeed.com: {"/": 1}, partners.bit.ly: { /sd: 3, /td: 15}, powertwitter.me: {"/": 2}, twitter.com: {"/": 24, "/home": 3, "jayrosen_nyu": 4, /jayrosen_nyu/status/2103086825": 1}, "www.google.ca": {"/reader/view/": 1}, "www.netvibes.com": {"/": 1} }
- Ken Kennedy
The important point there is that of 646 clicks, 591 of them are "direct". What is direct, I'm wondering? That link isn't on http://jay.40twits.com/ , correct?
- Ken Kennedy
From the FAQ: What does the "Direct" traffic in Traffic Sources mean? Direct Traffic includes people clicking a bit.ly link from: * Desktop email clients like Microsoft Outlook or Apple mail * AIR applications like Tweetdeck or Twirhl * Mobile apps like Twitterific or Blackberry Mail * Chat apps like AIM * SMS/MMS messages * It also includes people who typed a bit.ly link directly into their browser
- Ken Kennedy
Yeah, that one was a bit.ly only link I sent out to my Twitter feed from Marketwatch. bit.ly tells me 632 out of 722 people total were mine.
- Jay Rosen
That's what I thought.
- Ken Kennedy
I don't know what that means, in the larger sense; the assertion appears to be that they're all real clicks, though. With the number being so much higher than tr.im, the next thing I'd think to look at is whether or not tr.im is not counting links somehow, or aggregating things up in some subtle way.
- Ken Kennedy
On second thought, I wonder if it's possible that some mobile/AIR apps (like Twirl) try to do some sort of resolution against the URL that is incorrectly "counted" as a click. You have 21,000ish followers...it doesn't seem unlikely that a certain number in the low hundreds could be online at any particular time, using Twirl or other AIR clients. That might explain a bunch of fast "clicks" as the link flowed through. (Note: this is a complete hypothetical, though I'd think it's possible to test.)
- Ken Kennedy
OK, I think we're onto something. I just pushed a non-shortened url from my blog (about 10 hits/day normally. LOL) into my FF stream (which pushes to Twitter) while watching my logs...a FF hit, and a GoogleBot hit right away, but that's pretty much it. Then I bit.ly'd another url, and pushed it in, and an immediate stream of hits to my server log; already 30 in about 5 minutes....
more...
- Ken Kennedy
It was the "immediate rush" that surprised me, Ken. But then maybe it's really a delayed rush from tr.im that should not be there.
- Jay Rosen
bit.ly appears to be lagging a bit, but it's numbers for that shortened url (bit.ly/MXEMo) currently show 6, all "direct". Still rising. Will watch. Setting up tr.im url now.
- Ken Kennedy
Zoom! tr.im going strong as well. Very interesting. I note that trim stats do try to guess what's a bot, but that's pretty iffy. They count 30 visits in last couple of minutes (hm...very similar to bit.ly number), but then break that into 17 humans and 13 bots. That being said, I'd be VERY surprised if 17 people have already looked at that.
- Ken Kennedy
Oops...the 30 I mentioned is NOT similar to bit.ly number, but is close to actual server log hits.
- Ken Kennedy
Jay (or Dave...whomever tr.im account it is)...login to tr.im and check the stats directly for one of the top40 tr.ims (this link will work if you're logged in... http://tr.im/statistics/nK3P). How does the number at top40 site compare to the stats #s. Is it the "human" number, or the "total visits" number?
- Ken Kennedy
One question, one note: 1) Has anyone asked bit.ly about this? http://twitter.com/bitly would be one easy way. 2) Twitter switched to bit.ly for default URL shortening recently -- I imagine that caused in increase in bot traffic to index bit.ly links, although I don't have a better explanation than that.
- Ryan Sholin
Asking bit.ly is good, certainly...but nothing wrong w/ having raw data to inform discussion. I don't think there's any sense that they're doing anything "wrong"...it's just the metrics seem to be different.
- Ken Kennedy
I'm out for a bit, but I'll bundle up the data I've gotten for a bit later.
- Ken Kennedy
Ken - the tr.im api that dave is using returns total visits. I haven't found a way to split out the bot numbers in the response.
- Jeremy Felt
Interesting! I wouldn't have guessed that.
- Ken Kennedy
Okay, someone is going to summarise and blog this for us, right? Bit.ly went kapluey (a tech term) y'day for a while but I always find that the numbers are about 3 to 5x higher than visitor numbers measured through google analytics or elsewhere.
- WoH: Professor MOTHRA
Ken: I'm logged into tr.im but the only data I can access at the web portal is old urls I created by hand through the web interface. And the link you gave me above gives me an error message when I click it.
- Jay Rosen
Jay: I'm guessing this means that Dave is having you use a separate login for Tr.im through his application than the one you used to use.
- Jeremy Felt
I'm guessing the URLs are being generated by a different account then, Jay.
- Ken Kennedy
Gotcha, Eric...thanks! This is interesting stuff. Yep, wrt bit.ly we're looking (at least right now) at userClicks for a specific hash.
- Ken Kennedy
Okay I have an account Dave created for me with a different log-in and I guess I have been logged into that. Clicking on the link Ken gave me, I find 885 total. Humans: 402. Bots: 283.
- Jay Rosen
That's probably it, Jay.
- Ken Kennedy
Eric - Does tr.im group clicks by IP in a certain time frame at all or does it report only raw click numbers?
- Jeremy Felt
To confirm, I did create a separate account for the bookmarklet. Jay was the second user after me, so I did it by hand. Later in the process the tr.im folk gave me access to an internal API for creating accounts so it's automated. I sent Jay the credentials for his account via email.
- Dave Winer
Eric/tr.im folk (I like that)...so the way I'm reading the statistics page, I should "expect" (I realize these numbers aren't perfect) the "total visits" metric for a given link to be potentially higher than the actual hits in my server log. Your guess for the "bots" number are those services you know only want to unpack the url, etc. The "human" number should be closer to the "correct" value. Is that a fair (albeit jumbled *grin*) statement?
- Ken Kennedy
Ah, HEAD requests...good point! Anyone know if bit.ly counts HEAD requests? (that's the very definition of an apple/orange technical comparison, Jay. I would hope they wouldn't, but if they did, there's no comparison).
- Ken Kennedy
Correct, Bit.ly says they stopped reporting HEAD requests back in March. http://blog.bit.ly/post...
- Jeremy Felt
Gotcha.
- Ken Kennedy
I have a real jayrosen_nyu post ready to Tweet, should I do a bit.ly url?
- Jay Rosen
Just update on my tr.im hits (which have died off, unsurprisingly): 37 total visits, 21 marked human, 16 marked bot. I have 25 actual hits in my server logs on that page since I posted the link.
- Ken Kennedy
Sure!
- Ken Kennedy
Okay its.... Coral Reef journalism: to a "sunken" structure tiny facts attach. The wikipedia stub: got an equivalent in news? Listen: http://bit.ly/sJiBz Tweeted: http://twitter.com/jayrose...
- Jay Rosen
Okay the bit.ly "initial surge" count is 168 clicks, that's about three times more than an item would debut at at 40twits (tr.im) Typical debut count is 60 to 70. Initial count of 100 indicates an exceptionally fast link at http://jay.40twits.com/.
- Jay Rosen
You can see the "surge" at the info page. http://bit.ly/info/sJiBz
- Ken Kennedy
Good link for example, too...b/c according to the API, you currently have all the clicks for it ("clicks": 341, "userClicks": 341, "userHash": "sJiBz"). So the "total" clicks equal your userClicks...there's no other bit.ly url for this that's been clicked on. (yet). Of 341, direct is 331, FF 1, partners.bit.ly 4, powertwitter.me 1, twitter.com 4.
- Ken Kennedy
Minute by minute hits, first few minutes (this'll fall off the graph at bit.ly eventually): 1, 62, 81, 65 55, 35, 24, 18, 3, 4, 5, 7, 2. I don't think that's people, you know?
- Ken Kennedy
Oh, I hear what you're saying, Eric. And really, that ratio doesn't even matter for purposes of what Jay's trying to determine...why the bit.ly numbers and the tr.im ones are so different. But your comment about people processing urls is a good point: it may be that some tools looking at twitter are only processing some shortener namespaces, but not others. That would explain a lot.
- Ken Kennedy
Okay, so what do we know as a result of these investigations?
- Jay Rosen
For click data, unless you have your own service and can see the whole picture, use 1 tool to gauge the popularity of clicks on a pure trends basis alone, not by numbers.
- Jeremy Felt
Gotcha, anything else?
- Jay Rosen
I'd say that it's interesting to note that the "initial surge" should probably be completely discounted in terms of interest...I assert that in the vast majority of cases, it's basically all automated stuff. That being said, good stories still "rise to the top"...the clicks over time add up. Having two services with different "initial surges" makes comparison difficult (impossible, really), as Jeremy noted.
- Ken Kennedy
My gut also tells me that we've learned that there are tiers of shorteners...I think some get more attention paid to them by the automated tools than others. bit.ly's initial surge is larger because it (like Twitter in the "what are you doing" space) gets more attention from the people making tools to analyze the data. Not a super surprising piece of info, but worth thinking about.
- Ken Kennedy
And also, those numbers have only a tenuous relationship to actual web hits to the page. At this point, my story I pushed through bit.ly has 9 bit.ly hits (though I know I did a couple of those myself accidentally), and 18 page hits (since I pushed out the link). My tr.im url has 37 total visits, 21 of which are deemed to be "human" by tr.im. The page has 25 hits (since I pushed out the link).
- Ken Kennedy
And of the 25 page hits on the story linked to by tr.im, I can tell several of them are bots by the user agent (Googlebot, TweetmeBot, etc.) Has ANYONE actually read that story? I'll try to determine that (based on other GETs in logs around the hits), but I'd honestly be surprised.
- Ken Kennedy
Okay, so... it seems the little url shortener mystery was isolated to some kind of auto-counting by services that have targeted some url shorteners but not others, and that the critical piece of evidence is the "rush" in the first few moments, and so the "number clicked" meter is only good for trends over time. This is all based on what we can know without further digging or information from the firms. Best practice: adopt one shortener; stick with it, watch for updates on the issue. Does that capture?
- Jay Rosen
Sounds right to me. Trends, not numbers. :)
- Jeremy Felt
Exit question: why did 12 people tag this as one of their likes on FF?
- Jay Rosen
1) contains useful information, 2) a fascinating example of the worth of social networking
- Bora Zivkovic
Does Bit.ly subtract bots automagically?
- Kathy E Gill
Yep, sounds right to me, Jay. As for liking it, my interest is obvious, but I totally agree w/ Bora; in general, it has useful info ("liking" is often like bookmarking for me...I can search and easily find it again with that hint), and it was also a great discussion/example of why FF is so interesting.
- Ken Kennedy
continuing Bora and Ken's answers to exit question: 3) to make it easier to find in future (search by likes) 4) to publish it to likes page (like retweeting except by reference instead of by value/copying) 5) to send Jay some love/goodwill
- carl morris
Well, I should definitely add: thanks, everyone, particularly Ken and Jeremy and Eric for stopping in. Thanks for your kind assistance.
- Jay Rosen
I read the whole thread and "liked" it because 1) it was started by someone with a sound reputation and a history of investigation, 2) the interaction of journalist and geek was interesting, and 3) the issue of what data can we trust in Twitter-land is important (especially with the growth of URL shorteners). Thanks to all who contributed.
- Chip Roberson
I read the whole thread and "liked" it because I have clients who are starting to ask for some ROI with their Twitter usage. The see numbers and want them bigger. I want to be able to give them perspective.
- Kawika Holbrook
Some of my clients like the tr.im stats page because it's easy, fast, and separates humans from bots. Others like bit.ly stats page because it includes comments from the page itself as well as Twitter and Friendfeed comments. What they really want is one tool to see at a glance what's popular, where the conversations are happening, and who/what carries the most Google juice.
- Kawika Holbrook
My clients wouldn't care about this discussion, but I do because it helps me make a recommendation based on facts, not guesses. I would hope Twitter's use of bit.ly as the default shortener doesn't ultimately swamp all others, if only to ensure continued innovation.
- Kawika Holbrook
I actually noticed this problem a few months back when rolling up aggregate statistics for the @nytimes account. I contacted Bitly to ask them (kinda surprised nobody else has, pretty easy to do). Upshot is bitly counts expansions of the URL, not clickthroughs. So, my twitter client autoexpands bitly links and that counts for a hit, even if I don't click it. They filter out bots and such, but plugins like that are still hits.
- Jacob Harris
Of course, any redirection service that counted only hits could still encounter situations where the redirect is not followed (and they don't really have any way to know that), so there will always be some overcounting. And of course, most web analytics is based on Javascript on the page which might not be executed, so there might also be some undercounting. But bitly was giving me spikes of 4-5x my web analytics totals from WebTrends.
- Jacob Harris
Here is the last message I received from Bitly asking when I noticed a decline in the numbers:
- Jacob Harris
Bit.ly is still counting decodes and not necessarily only actual human clickthroughs. We are not counting: - decodes that we identify as bots based on their user-agent strings, and we are working on more advanced techniques for bot identification. - HTTP HEAD requests, which some third-party tools use to get meta-information (such as the destination link) without fetching the entire...
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- Jacob Harris
It seems like the general problem is there are 2 ways you can expand a link via bitly. One of which is to do a GET request and get the redirect (that is what a user would do and should be counted for them, but it's a problem when bots do it). Apps should be using the separate expansion API that doesn't count that as a hit, but the problem seems to be that many programs and plugins are still doing a GET on the short URL to expand (and being counted).
- Jacob Harris
Essentially, ALL URL shorteners have this problem, but Bitly is probably exaggerated because it is so prominent in usage compared to the rest. I apologize for not blogging about this (I did tweet about it at a few points), but bitly support (that contact link on the bottom) has been very helpful in explaining the issue.
- Jacob Harris
I'm reading this article and getting deja vu: http://community.seattletimes.... "Microsoft's MSN division unveiled the final version of its search engine last night and is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to advertise the service as the place to find precise answers quickly. Starting today, the company said, it will launch a campaign to market MSN...
Bret Taylor, Manu, Marcel Weiß and 20 other people liked this
This article is from 2005 and includes quotes like "Moving this category from links to answers is the thing we are going to be laser-focused on," said Christopher Payne, a corporate vice president of MSN."
- Matt Cutts
Old tech news is much more interesting :).
- Paul Buchheit
and yahoo's more than a search engine again. to everything, turn, turn, turn...
- dannysullivan
I love hilarious phrases like "laser-focused" and "military precision".
- Gabe
It occurs to me watching all the C-SPAN clips on the daily show how often they use poster board for presentations in the House and Senate. I don't think I have made something on poster board since junior high school science fair, yet there are Ivy League-educated staffers using construction paper and glue sticks every day to run this country.
Tom Stocky, Louis Gray, Michael Lehman and 36 other people liked this
Is there a projector in Congress? Like a DVI-cable-for-PowerPoint-style projector? Do they do things like that in Congress?
- Bret Taylor
Bret: they didn't let me use my laptop in the Senate Chambers. They have signs that say to leave your electronic devices outside. The rules in Congress are asinine.
- Robert Scoble
It is kind of amazing that they drafting important legislation like TARP, and to get it to pass, someone has to spend time pasting pictures and construction paper on poster board to make it happen. "The Senator says it needs more glitter, and he perfers Comic Sans for the title."
- Bret Taylor
On the other hand, they do use Wordpress in the Speaker of the House's office: http://www.flickr.com/photos...
- Robert Scoble
And Congressman John Culbertson uses Qik and Twitter: http://www.flickr.com/photos...
- Robert Scoble
I think there's some benefit to keeping PowerPoint out of government hearings. They're bad enough already.
- Jim Norris
Jim: There are a lot of benefits though. They are electronic and contain indexable text, and since congressional hearing are (or after some number of years become) part of the public record, PPT or equivalent would mean you could publicly archive presentations much more effectively than videos of poster board.
- Bret Taylor
I love talking with Katie Jacobs Stanton about her experience going from Google (arguably one of the most connected, high tech places on earth) to the White House (arguably, well ... not). They're changing things over there, though. The question is, how can we get more people like us -- career technologists and inventors -- to spend more time over there.
- DeWitt Clinton
Perhaps it has to do more with not wanting to sit in a dark room and also letting the TV cameras see what is being presented?
- John Cooper
No electronic devices does seem crazy. Instead of sleeping, the representatives and senators could be googling all sorts of stuff to see if what their colleagues are saying is actually true.
- Robert Felty
Robert: I think that rule was just for the press, though. Congresscritters carry a Blackberry or two and John Culberson was trying to Tweet and Qik from the House floor.
- Robert Scoble
It might have something to do with security (or the theatre of security). Working in DC now, I have to register my laptop to enter federal buildings and sign it out when I leave. Mostly theatre - they know I have a laptop when I get there because they scan my bag, but they don't check if I have the same laptop, or a laptop at all when I leave.
- Sarah Miller
Tweet I saw the other day from @webb: "in DC, we need people who can translate geek into wonk." missed speaker name #tsp09
- Laura Norvig
Wait, there's a job translating geek to wonk? I've missed my calling!!!
- FFing Enigma
Isn't it amazing how backward our leaders are, not that I endorse a crackberry using Prez.
- Jason Nunnelley
PowerPoint is a bad way to communicate and a horrible way to deliberate. Courtrooms tend to use poster boards and other low tech presentation techniques as well (though they will show videos and the like as necessary). It's somewhat more work for the presenter, but I don't think it's really all that awful, and it forces people to pay attention to content rather than whizzy tricks.
- ⓞnor
It explains a lot. Everyone in DC is high on Sharpie ink.
- SteVe C
@FFing: By the time you get from thinkin' Geek to walkin' Wonk to actin' Hack the signal loss approacheth five 9's, no matter the presentation media.
- michael silverton
Fills you with confidence, don't it. :(
- Robert Hafer
It's as if our method of government -- as opposed to system -- is still operated by Pony Express, so that we can communicate with and aggregate the Will of the People in every covered wagon on every homestead settlement. Granted, there are a handful of moderns who have reluctantly adopted the automobile and who haltingly realize that "As goes GM, so goes the nation." I once heard Senator Conan say that, "In the year 2000, we'll have Digital Direct Democracy," but what of the Tyranny of the Majority? ;-)
- michael silverton
I think part of the issue is that the House and Senate chambers weren't built with the use of projectors and screens in mind. Just looking at pictures of the rooms, I can't really figure out a good place to put a projector without having to kick Senators/Reps out of their seats to clear a spot for the projector and a path for the projection. And with the presiding officers sitting smack...
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- Brian Chang
Yeah. we would like to reduce the number of UK MP's and would happily replace them with projectors (or maybe just lamps).
- pazzer1
Most hearing rooms don't work well for A/V. During the August recess, we used to watch a movie every Friday afternoon in the main hearing room. It never worked well. The windows are big, the lighting is a zoo (they have several sets of lights for TV, etc) and the members' seats are on a stairs that folks were tripping over. We ended up aiming the movie on the side wall as it was the only one big enough without paintings or other things. Poster boards are just the easiest way to do it.
- Andrew Leyden
Someone probably told the Congressional aide, "just make sure you don't buy the Monster cable", and he bailed on the projector idea altogether :)
- Ana
Like how @pogue sez "we'll always need nyt, wsj b/c bloggers wont ask the hard questions" then uses biz insider blog's story w/o attribution
Sameer, dannysullivan, We Live in Public and 2 other people liked this
i'm getting tired of bloggers being bloggers first, then thought of as journalists second. and thinking about leading a charge against that.
- dannysullivan
Honestly the one people concerned with the distinction between bloggers & journalists are... journalists
- anna sauce
Never did find my wallet. So improvising with an empty pack of Orbit Mint Mojito gum: http://twitpic.com/5b8jj
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Raffy Banks, Bill, Rebecca Murphey and 4 other people liked this
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