"Like any expectant mother, Panang the elephant wants the very best for her baby, which is evident as she carefully performs her maternity exercises. Guided by her minder Andi Fries, the 20-year-old elephant did a series of stretches in her pen at the Tierpark Hellabrunn Zoo in Munich. Panang, who is nearing the end of her two-year gestation period, is due to give birth this month or next."
- RAPatton
from Bookmarklet
Joe Biden and Michelle Obama in the back set - very funny. Go, go, go, America. :)
- jan geronimo
I don't think Clinton is in the front seat with Obama. More like he's got her tied up in the trunk. But this is cute.
- Dawn
I saw this done with Arsenal players a little over a year ago. Exact same scene, just different heads (Wenger, Fabregas, Adebayor and RvP, IIRC).
- Uche Ogbuji
Yes. And that is a good thing, America is not the boss of the world who can bully other nations and than coercing other nations to support them.
- Rene Wirtz
Tell me about it, Rene. I can't tell you the weeping cries of disappointment I'm seeing from the freepers on Twitter who would think otherwise. BAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
- Helen Sventitsky
Thanks for writing about this, Louis. I sometimes face unique challenges writing articles from India, meant primarily for US readers.
- Mahendra (SkepticGeek)
I don't think we can expect a UN for the web anytime soon. We can barely agree in each individual country what WE want, let alone expect to come to any agreement with all the rest of the world. It would be lovely if we could access all the things we are used to when abroad, and it would be fabulous to access all the cool things other countries have. When you find the web nirvana, do share. :)
- Sheryl
I only want to comment about the UN thought. The CCITT was a working body under the auspices of the UN. It took a mere ten years in that mindset to achieve standards for ISDN telephony. The UN approach isn't for the good of people, it's to maintain the power base and status quo of countries. To attempt such a program with technology standards of this sort would, in my mind, slow the rate of innovation and encourage mediocrity.
- Ken Camp
The Hive takes care of this problem. If I upload one of my cartoons, for example, and my friend in India takes it to share with his network, his ads will be placed on it and we share the revenue. No matter where the content comes or goes in the world, the Hive will monetize it. This will allow poor countries without physical resources to use their "talent capital" and make money selling "cultural goods" that don't require raping and polluting the environment. Your content will be completely transportable.
- Dawn
All right, normally I am fiercely opposed to people putting words on photos of Audrey but dammit if this didn't make me smile. You get a free pass this time, Huebel. But don't press your luck, fella!
- Akiva Moskovitz
from iPhone
LOL, I appreciate that. :-) This was just too cute to pass up, though.
- Jason Huebel
I see I can learn a thing or two from Miss Audrey. My response would have been like, "duh. Of course you do. I'm the cutest! Thanks!" Humility, I do it wrong. ;-) But seriously, she's so adorable it's hard to not smile when you're presented with a photo of her.
- pea
This baby is too perfect. Is it a 3D rendering? ;)
- Jorge Escobar
Special effects! It's all special effects!
- Akiva Moskovitz
Those of us who don't have a cute baby girl have to live vicariously through the photos you post. :-) We've adopted her.
- Jason Huebel
It's really, really, really hard to be upset with her about anything because she's so damned cute. If I make a mean face toward her, she just starts grinning at me and I start laughing. She's already won the battle!
- Akiva Moskovitz
Wow, women learn that trick at an early age, don't they? How many times does she have you wrapped around her little finger? ;-)
- Jason Huebel
Hah, it's hard to tell as she hasn't really gotten to that stage of manipulation yet. At this point, she just wants to get our attention so she has her fake cough, she makes certain noises, etc. But, man, I can already see this as being an uphill battle.
- Akiva Moskovitz
well played. Audrey is ridiculous cute.
- Josh Haley
from iPhone
I want more video of her screaming at Akiva
- Matthew DeVries
Akiva, how does she sound when she screams? Video of audrey when she starts eating broccoli with her own hands..get your video ready! Very funny scene in my home on that day.
- Myrna
Myrna, she just screeches in this really funny way (Rochelle had posted a video awhile back but I can't find it via the search anymore). I wish we had our video camera on the other day when we tried to feed her peaches. She made the funniest noise and face we've yet seen.
- Akiva Moskovitz
That was seriously cute. I miss those days.
- Jason Huebel
I love that you both are enjoying these days with her. Somehow when I think back to those days..its fuzzy but now I have a great friend and peer(my son).
- Myrna
Duuuuude. It just hit me that if FF goes away, that means no more Audrey pictures (or other cute FF babies). Whoa. Ok. NOW I'm upset. Stupid FB!!!!!!!
- pea
Because just like in high school, sometimes the sweaty jock who doesn't wash his hands after using the john still gets the best girl - while those of us who carried her books and wrote her poetic love letters and timed our walking to go by her locker at just the right time find ourselves on the outside looking in again." You nailed it Louis!
- Steve
Nice post, Louis. Was waiting to see what you'd write. :)
- Kali
My immediate reaction was Facebook will push ads onto their users. I think FriendFeed could be seriously screwed up with live moving ads, so that's hopefully out of the picture from a purely usability view. Friendfeed is all about realtime web information. I then wonder how in that case will the monetise the relationship. My guess? Facebook will show live conversations and hopefully they will rip out the poor IM implementation in Facebook. The purchase may be nothing more sinister, I hope...
- Mark Aitken
Well said Louis. This is the big question.
- Mark Krynsky
Okay, so now I'm ready to cry. Excellent post, Louis. Thank you!
- Ladybug Heather
Excellent, you've captured my sentiment very well. Mark - I disagree. FF is an excellent platform for floating ads based upon our behavior, and it is just about the only platform in existence where the algorithms for ad placement could have been done right - and welcomed.
- jcunwired
Louis's reaction is the one I most wanted to see. Thanks for not disappointing us, man!
- Daniel J. Pritchett
"FriendFeed is the one that has a 4.0 GPA and had big dreams of an Ivy League diploma. And yet, she ends up with you - the Silicon Valley equivalent of your local state school. When you come rolling in with your heavy car, big wheels and pumping bass, we don't care how much money you say you're worth - we still don't trust your grin when you open the door and say "hop in"."
- anna sauce
I'm *loving* the high school stereotypes as metaphor, btw.
- anna sauce
jcunwired - I hope it's unobtrusive, don't mind people making money, but lets hope it's sensible. My worst fear is FF is seen as a threat and silenced, but I'd doubt Zuckerberg would be so brash..
- Mark Aitken
Brilliantly said. Don't think it could have been said better!
- Matthew Horton
from iPhone
I just learned about this minutes ago. Louis it's not 4 big companies. there will only be three after Microsoft merges/acquires Facebook and Google buys Twitter. This move makes perfect sense for Facebook and it's what their SocialTV initiative needed to really work. I see big things for it in Facebook's future. I don't know how I feel about it though!
- Michael Fidler
Somebody wrote that this is just about getting FF's tech talent. Don't you love how all these social networks conveniently forget who it is who makes them valuable?
- Dawn
"Me? I'm dishonest. And a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly, it's the honest ones you want to watch out for, because you can never predict when they're going to do something incredibly... stupid." – Captain Jack Sparrow
- Matthew DeVries
That was a very enjoyable read :) And the point about bright startups having dim perspectives at the end is alas the truth at the moment: you have to be able to bootstrap your finance, have revenue from the start (membership, affiliates, whatever) that funds your growth. Or find a way to get sold to the big boys (although there are big boys outside the immediate industry that might...
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- Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)
Good post and commented on your blog. I need to get back into that habit. :-)
- Mathew A. Koeneker
yes, your comments are treasured on my blog, they will not be sold :)
- Valeria Maltoni
Really great post, Louis.. We all will be watching to see what happens. Interesting if it goes the same way google's acquisitions all have. Seems like when they started buying up apps, they killed them. And so it goes....
- Sheryl
I agree with Sheryl. We'll be watching. In my very quick Tweet earlier, I said this really narrows the choices and flings the door wide open for disruptive competition. In many ways, I see this as proof positive that the winner in the battle royale for microblogging (orwhatever we choose to call this services) is Company X, as yet a sleeper who will disrupt the landscape significantly.I don't think it will be a known player. At least not one known in this space.
- Ken Camp
Louis - that post is awesome... I just laughed out load with that one... nice!!!
- Susan Beebe
I had suggested facebook to buy friendfeed in one my blog post.
- Madhav Tripathi
Terrific article Louis, best I have read on this deal so far.
- Nicholas Kreidberg
Life streaming via Friendfeed I always felt like a kind of a partner investing something of me in something greater... Now I discover that this investment counts for nothing. No one was or is committed to keep the style and special features that made Friendfeed attractive in the first place. No one is committed or loyal to the user base and the investment of life talent and prestige...
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- Spaceweaver
Haha...Awesome...and very refreshing. Glad Louis is bringing us his emotional take on today's events because I'm already sick of all the business analysis. Longtime users that have grown to love the service I'm sure don't particularly care about that right now.
- Mark Krynsky
"SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea on Tuesday released two jailed American journalists after a visit from former U.S. President Bill Clinton in the highest-level U.S. contact with North Korea since Clinton was president nearly a decade ago. North Korea's KCNA news agency said North Korean leader Kim Jong-il had issued a special pardon to the two journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling of U.S. media outlet Current TV, which was co-founded by Clinton's vice president Al Gore."
- Melissa
from Bookmarklet
Thank for sharing this, Louis. I heard from a friend in the newspaper world that it's causing a bit of a stir in his circles this morning. YEAH! ;)
- Dawn
I've always expected that impetus for the Hive is going to have to come from outside the tech world. Still, we'll need geeks to develop it. Hopefully, there are some good ones out there who will appreciate the vision and not spurn it.
- Dawn
Interesting, although confusing at times (e.g. point n. 3: retreating from the Web might be difficult, IMHO.)
- Rubin Sfadj
I don't know, David...conflicting ideologies, distrust, potential mutual annihilation...grin. ;) Rubin, many newspapers and the wire services are already using Attributor to monitor where their content goes. All they'd have to do is submit takedown notices. Of course, many websites won't abide by them, but the major search engines would have to, so the content would essentially become invisible. The technology that Attributor uses is only going to get better and better.
- Dawn
So, under what circumstances would a person ever turn off the comments? Seems like it has all sorts of "take my ball and go home" implications. Of course, folks could already just delete, soooo. What does this add?
Driving traffic to the fed site rather than having comments in Ff. Like say a memorial website for someone who passed, and you want all the comments in one place.
- Matthew DeVries
If you have multi-fed a single post (Twitter, Facebook, and a direct Ff Post), you can leave a comment that comments are on one of the 3 threads and then lock it down, driving everyone to the one space.
- Matthew DeVries
If you reshare a thread to a room, but you don't want comments happening in the reshared thread, but want the original threads author to get the comments, you get to leave a note saying to comment in the original and lock the thread.
- Matthew DeVries
If Ninja monkees are threatening to rape and kill your mother if you can't make a thread that remains uncommented in for 2 hours.
- Matthew DeVries
If you posted a thread that you wanted to be around for the duration of and you had to go to the bathroom, or to work.
- Matthew DeVries
Okay, I'm a fan of Matthew's ninja monkeys application.
- Kathy Fitch
i would def b the stuff at the beach pimp'n one of these..
- chaz2b
the videos make this thing look amazing - if I win big in the lottery this week, maybe I will pick a couple of them up for my wife and I!
- Dean "Karnatos" Michaud
From the video, it doesn't look like it can go underwater much. And it doesn't look like you can see all that well when you're partially submerged. But it still looks like a lot of fun!
- Joel Webber