http://www.scripting.com/daven... - Dave Winer

sam, I think the point is that if Twitter et al implement Open Microblogging, importing won't be necessary - klecu

It needs some "recommended friends" to avoid looking really lame to newbies. - Robert Scoble

Robert, you just want to get recommended there too. Come on, admit it. - klecu

klecu: nice try, but I've been talking about this before I was on recommended systems here: http://thenextweb.org/2008/04/... - Robert Scoble

I'm still trying to figure out a reason to use identi.ca. Playing around with it. We'll see. - Dennis Jackson

I don't understand why it was launched WITHOUT a Replies tab in the first place... - Mark Douglass

I agree with Dennis Jackson, minus the "playing around with it" part. - ChaCha Fance

Yes, it lacks some basic features, especially if people are looking at it who are coming from twitter. Not having replies really annoys me, enough not to use it. - jjprojects

GOOD, that is an essential feature... neat to see it growing so quickly - not only with users, but also features - Susan Beebe

big feature - Dobromir Hadzhiev

Yep - looks like identi.ca has been built correctly so far too. It *appears* to be scaleing up nicely after a few slow days early on. - Jonathan Beckett

@critics: Identi.ca is worth supporting, because it is open source. The very reason means that it has the potential of attracting third-party developers that create plug-ins, improve the platform or simply host their own Identi.ca-installations. That's a huge thing. Think about Firefox: It is based on Mozilla/Netscape's code, which was created. AOL didn't do anything with it, but others came and created Firefox (and Flock, Sunbird, Songbird, etc.) because it is open. That's Identi.ca's biggest feature. - sebmos

Next step must be API. - Sergey Petrenko

sebmos: I'm still learning about Identi.ca. Your comment kind of pushed me back on the site to research it a bit. I can see this going somewhere. :) - Dennis Jackson

Replies tab on Indenti.ca is big. I'd also like to be able to export my subscription lists. Edit/delete would be nice too. - Jeff Evans

Nice to see this feature already. I was talking to the dev yesterday and was asking if I can jump in and provide a solution for it. Cool to see that the guy already did it himself :-). - Alex Popescu via feedalizr

Mark Douglass - Twitter launched without a replies function as well, you know. And it took a lot longer than a few days for it to arrive. - Earle Martin

So if we wildly extrapolate identi.ca's usability increase, it could potentially surpass Twitter in 3 months and Friendfeed in 6. The question then is: will users migrate and become critical mass on the new service? By now we know that critical mass is more important than QoS, as evidenced by the bird and the whale. - µnauta

http://identi.ca/your_nickname... --- for output of your identi.ca subscriptions -- thanks evan - Jeff Evans

this is so effing awesome! - Sarah Perez

(s_dance) - Hao Chen

identi.ca is irrelevant. It's a step backwards from FriendFeed. - Thomas Hawk

Whoa, that must of been some seriously shitty software before now, but still shitty I see? - Andrew Baron

This still is not the distributed version you wanted Dave. And I -with all the respect I owe to its makers- don't think that it will success if all the twitter crowd come in. I hope I'm wrong - directeur via NoiseRiver

I think Replies is a setup in the right direction. In fact. it might be the main step. Awesome. - Andrew Ruess via twhirl

For me, it's still just idont.ca.re - Alan Le

Agree with Alan Le. identi.ca doesn't seem like much of an upgrade. It's a distraction from a better solution - getting everyone over to FriendFeed. - Jon Galloway

Next: car mounted version - Ken Sheppardson

Awesome flamethrower! - Mitchell Tsai

Somebody is gonna put an eye out with that thing. - Chris Baskind

Got to love diy flame throwers - Czar Derek Peterman

Directuer, this is part of urban warfare and survival tactics training. Maybe this kid got his hands /idea from the some army guy or he just did it for kicks :)- - Peter Dawson

Somehow, I'm reminded of this joke: What does a redneck say before he dies? "Hey y'all watch this!" - Hutch Carpenter

That's hot! - Adam Lasnik

Hutch, you had me chuckling out loud there. ;) - Mathew A. Koeneker

the words homemade and flamethrower don't fare well in my prognosticating abilities - Cee Bee

me and the ground hog would get along great w/ that. - clarke thomas

Need one of these for weeds. - Larry Huffman

Great addition to one's zombie defense arsenal, that's for sure. - Ken Sheppardson

w o w - JA Castillo

please be careful man - Jason Calacanis

that's like a... real life rocketeer. RAD - Mona N

s'mores? - Frankie Warren

@Blackopsmanners have to totally awesome and speed up darwinism just a bit - Justin Yost

OMG.. what's the opposite of a Fireman? heh - Daynah

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... - Sean-Michael Robinson

I love it! - Michael J Cohen

OMG.... Will come in handy for when those flesh-eating zombies try to take over... - Yule Heibel

My brother used to use hairspray and a lighter ...don't show him this!! hehehe! (LOL @ Hutch's comment above - awesome!!) - Susan Beebe

Oh boy! - Nicholas Kreidberg

OMG I must have that. - Jason Runyan

Perfect gift for the troll who has everything. - Dave Winer

And if this guy blows himself up, we can all pay for his lifelong medical rehabilitation via insurance premiums. - Sal Distefano

My sister's boyfriend would LOVE this. He's just the type of guy who likes to build crazy, stupid things - David Adam

I know I'd let *my* kid play with a flamethrower in the backyard. Sureyoubet. - Chris Baskind

amazon, sell this now. haha. - Michael J Cohen via Alert Thingy

You can take my flamethrower when you pry it from my hot, dead hands. - Jim Norris

I live in Northern Cal, we have enough fire thank you very much! - Barb Gonzalez

There is a much simpler and cheaper way of making a flamethrower: http://youtube.com/watch?v=6yF... - Thai Tran

Cool toy! But be careful man. - Jeff P. Henderson

exactly who needs a homemade flamethrower? - Paul Moss via Alert Thingy

Whoa. Judging from the aim on the second pic, those tree's probably are toast by now. - Franklin Naval

Of course I might be wrong. And I just said Patrick Ruffini is one of the best political bloggers out there even though he and I disagree about almost everything, because he never makes it personal, and always has something intelligent to say. There are two sides to almost everything. But if someone wants to make it personal, then I'm not available for that. They can still say it, and if someone wants to listen, more power to them. But I don't want to, and that's what blocking is for. - Dave Winer

Dave - like your Identi.ca avatar. Turn the default gray no-smile face into the bright smile. Nice. - Hutch Carpenter

I will defend your right to disagree with me to the death... but if you do it in a disrespectful & insulting manner? You'll lose my respect. And if there's a block feature? You'll probably lose my willingness to hear/read/listen to you. - Lucretia Pruitt

Lucretia: Exactly! - Dave Winer

That's the problem today. Most people, when presented with an opposing opinion, take it personally. - Slobokan

It takes a lot to swallow pride, to yield on points where you fear you may be wrong, to respectfully advance -- i.e., without hammering -- points where you think the other may be wrong. Sometimes it turns into a sporting event where one feels they must win at all costs, and win big. - Kirk Kittell

Dave: you're right. There's a big difference between a good disagreement, and nastiness. One I'll welcome in my livingroom. The other will get evicted. I'm not going to put up with jerks anymore. That's what Valleywag is for, or their own blogs. - Robert Scoble

Honestly there is nothing wrong with blocking a follower, but I personally do not advice it for Brand Management! If someone wants to get to you, they will do it if you block them or not. By not blocking a user you engage them in a dialog and resolve your deferences what ever they maybe! Do not stick your head in the sand! Another thing, when you block a user, do not make it a public thread that you have blocked that user. That is called Outing Out and Flames the situation. - Igor The Troll

Not only you tell the Social Media network community that this person is bad but you also tell Google and other search engines that that user is bad. Would you want people to find your name as blocked by a power user on a particular SM network to show up in Google? Please respect the Netetiquettes to avoid Flame Wars! - Igor The Troll

Personally I'd rather know what people are saying, even if it's nasty. It just takes self control to not let yourself get pulled into and inflame the argument. Like Sun Tzu said, "keep your friends close and your enemies closer." - Ken Sheppardson

Sometime's it's worth talking to the person before you block them. I recently was a little negative about someone on Twitter and when he contacted me I apologized privately and publicly because I had never meant to be hurtful. It's so easy to say something wrong online. Now having the graciousness to respond when someone does (try to) rectify a situation is also helpful. - Chris White

Some good advice here! - Igor The Troll

Ken: I agree with you a little bit. But let's say you are over my house for dinner and we have a little disagreement. That's one thing. But if you keep coming over and all you do are negative and a jerk, that's another thing altogether. I am choosing to get rid of the negative jerks. There are just so many other great people that I should spend my time on. So, I choose to use block and hide frequently here. I guess this comes from just looking at this as my living room. - Robert Scoble

Scoble, this is not your living room! I do not know why you keep referring to this as your living room? Do you live in Friend Feed? LOL Maybe this is your style because you have 15k followers, and you do not have time to talk to people and find out what is the problem. So you just select to leave dead corpses in your campaign on the side of the road as you advance to Shangrila! - Igor The Troll

Should we call it acceptable collateral damage? - Igor The Troll

Robert: I hear you, but the living room analogy only goes so far. For one thing, it's really more like being in a public square than your living room. Also, when you're online nobody's physically in your face/space, you aren't forced to listen to anything, and all you have to do once you notice someone is off on a personal attack or tangent is move your line of sight half an inch or press a key. - Ken Sheppardson

...but really... I don't fault people for blocking, particularly once it becomes apparent that there's basically no "content" whatsoever in somebody's comments. I just think of it as a last resort, and don't tend to do it myself. - Ken Sheppardson

I like the face/space analogy! I wonder if it is relevant to the naming of Face Book? Or is it just accidental? - Igor The Troll

Ken, then it's fair to assume you don't have any spam filters either? After all your mailbox is a public square. And nobody's physically in your face/space. You aren't forced to listen to anything. Get some VIAGERRA NOW!! EnLARG3 Y0UR P3NLS! - Dave Winer

definitely a head in the sand outlook. - Andrew Badera

Dave Dude, are you on Viagra overdose today? Spam is Spam! Discussion is Discussion! - Igor The Troll

workin for mr - Joe via twhirl

Working for me - Marcello Del Bono

No problem here either - Horst Gutmann

Working for me, had a short period of trouble with it yesterday. - Thomas Frütel

Working here... - Royce Mathew

Puppet's back up tho. Weak. - Jay Tannenbaum

Thanks, I'm getting through now. Whew. Scary!! - Dave Winer

this whole internet is not working good... - Orli Yakuel

Been working fine here, but I use POP access. - James Mowery via twhirl

Working here! - Steve Rubel

Dave, you should sync with IMAP if you're not already - then you will have the master database wherever. - Steve Rubel

Working fine here - Dave Martin

Works for me via webmail interface. - David Molnar via twhirl

yeah I noticed that yesterday - Bjorn Tipling

just created a tinyURL to my blog - http://tinyurl.com/jeroendemir... - does not make it much shorter, though! - Jeroen De Miranda

@ Adewale - Neither of them are what I would call exciting. Maggie did have a bigger pair of balls than Tony though. - Toby Graham

When I said 'exciting' I was referring to the wars (Falklands, Iraq) and the rapid transition from hope to bitter disappointment. - Adewale Oshineye

"A humbled Obama is worse than a proud McCain"? I can't imagine disagreeing more with a statement. Isn't the desire for Strong Leadership regardless of actual agenda what gives us Bush type people in the first place? - ⓞnor

You're interpreting it the way you want to and that's fine, but that's not what I meant. Read the rest of the piece. (And believe me I don't think a proud McC is very likely.) - Dave Winer

Nice call on Aaron Brown. I liked him as an anchor on CNN. Never understand why they ditched him. Happy 4th everyone. Let's celebrate CHANGE and a new direction today. PS - if you are in Seattle, you should stop by our 4th of July party. - Brian Daniel Eisenberg

Oh, I read it. Part 1: Bush sucks (no argument here!). Part 2: Obama's recent "centering" is disappointing (ditto!). Part 3 is the part I apparently misunderstand, probably something about how you're using "proud" and "humbled"? But it's hard for me to see how McCain could be better than Obama for someone who expressed the first two sentiments, no matter how proud or humble. - ⓞnor

CNN replaced Aaron Brown because they thought Anderson Cooper was Da Man after Katrina. - K Welch

Nor, glad we got back in synch on that. I still have hope. But I also now have doubt where I didn't before. - Dave Winer

Dave & Nor---I too disagree w/recent Obama positions. However, I never expected perfection or 100% agreement w/any man so I think people are coming back to earth a bit. I appreciated his post acknowledging those who disagree w/his position on FISA and not trying to browbeat them into agreeing with his position. - Ruth Ferguson

Obama figures 'You're all gonna vote for me anyway - I'll just move to the center to get some more swing votes.' - Andy Wibbels

I had a feeling they might be like facebook groups. - jjprojects

I don' - Dave Winer

They were a novelty at first but they have their uses. I'm going to use a FriendFeed Room so friends and family can follow my adventures in Japan in a few weeks' time. It might make a few of them stick around here too. http://14sandwiches.com/2008/0... - Martin Bryant

The identi.ca room's pretty busy :) - Charlie Anzman

Haven't really used rooms much after the initial launch experimenting. But I think that's just because I don't need this feature at the moment and there may be many use cases for others for this. I guess Friendfeed has the real usage stats on their server... hey FF, care to share? :) - Philipp Lenssen

I've found that rooms are not that useful - but what would be really useful for me would be to be able to assign different people to different groups (or rooms) so I could separate social from business topic from political, etc. Then being able to watch three or four feeds side-by-side rather than have to choose between tabs. - Craig Thomler

Of course every user could choose to group people together in the way that made sense to them - which makes these groups fundamentally different to rooms - which are the same for everyone in them :) - Craig Thomler

rooms may be better suited to private use. i know small groups using them for work collaboration - rob zand

I've only just started to use rooms, so I'm not sure whether they've got staying power. It seems one subscribes to people for themselves but rooms for topics, and that seems like a useful distinction to me. - Michael C. Harris

Yeah, they jumped it. Same syndrome as creating too many subforums on a bulletin board. Fragments the conversation. FF'll need Rooms when the rest of the world turns up here later. - laurence timms

Rooms are a weird concept for subscribed content. If I go to a bar with only people I know and like, why would I put some of them in a room? Why not just stay in the bar? - Cait

Cait, I see it as the difference between going to a bar with people you like - you'll have a good time even if the bar is crap - and going to a bar you like on your own - you might meet some like-minded folk. - Michael C. Harris

No, they've just finally dropped to normal levels of a post-launch. Just like every other product. Now you weed out the bad room and keep the good ones. - Ben Parr

I think the real problem is lack of (easy)discoverability for public rooms - Brian Sullivan

I periodically step through the rooms I am subscribed to and leave the ones that look dead. - J. Phil

I think notifications would help, or some way to integrate new items into or beside your regular feed. That way people would see when new items were posted and jump in. That and some sort of rooms directory. - Josh Lowensohn

I think the rooms are pretty useful for "private" groups where you're focused on collaboration but maybe not so much for general use. The public ones are good for discussion of new stuff (Identi.ca) or for sharing (the Invites group) but it's easier just to post to your main feed for other stuff, IMO. - Lindsay Donaghe

Rooms have some really good use cases for business (lightweight collaboration) and special events (Apple conferences). As specialized discussion places, their usefulness is decreased a bit due to the nature of FriendFeed: your subscriptions determine the content you see. People that would really be into say, knitting, don't need a room. They just do their normal thing here and others decide whether to subscribe to them or not. - Hutch Carpenter

I left a bunch of rooms because they were just spammed. The rooms I moderate are slow but steady (I need to import some feeds). Even FF itself recognizes that they need to do a lot with rooms to make the more usable so I'm sure we'll see improvements soon. - Jennifer Leggio

I grabbed a couple of rooms and haven't yet set them up ... lots of potential, just no time. - AJ Kohn

Most of the rooms that I am subscribed to or moderating are pretty slow. I still think they have huge potential. I think part of the problem is FF doesn't currently offer an easy way to discover these rooms. Some room directories (not hosted by FF) have popped up but these haven't gained much traction as far as I can tell. - Mike Doeff

I'm in a ton of rooms but I just haven't gotten into them yet. I think I need to get rid of 99% of the rooms I'm in and focus on one or two rooms. Bootstrapping community is very tough work. The only way these things will get popular is for one person to really care about a room and tend to it daily. That's the kind of work that I just don't have time to do anymore. - Robert Scoble

That's not what "jumped the shark" means - Bjorn Tipling

yup - Gary Dobkin

Bjorn, "jumped the shark" in the context of past its peak. Happy Days reference. Mind you, they may still come back again. - Duncan Riley

I have not even looked at rooms, I just don't see the point. - Cait

Duncan, it requires some ridiculous event like Fonz jumping over a shark, that signifies desperation. Something past its peak might never have jumped the shark. - Bjorn Tipling

Great, now I'm getting room spam... and I can't report it... rooms doomed to fail - Cait