Dennis - Comments

not even a fair poll... FriendFeed is open to the public, SocialThing is in private beta... until SocialThing is comfortable enough with their application to actually let people in to give it a fair shake then it really doesn't deserve to be compared to anything. (SocialThing looks prettier from the picture I've seen though.) - Matt Shaulis

29 more comments

Heck no. And tell Corvida she is cheating! Twitter by proxy!! - Sarah Perez

Sarah, that's what I said ;) - Colin Walker

I don't. I liked it at first but friendfeed is more useful to me now. - Phil G from Alert Thingy

No, I use FriendFeed 99.99% of the time. - Mike Reynolds

50/50 Socialthing for posting and FF for reading. i don't exactly know why. - Oldengrey (Jay)

FriendFeed wins out.. SocialThing has yet to catch up on services supported and I love the ability to follow ppl not using FF! - Dorian |_|)

SocialThing will catch up very quickly with their deduplication system that is soon to come. - Chris Wallace from Alert Thingy

No - Hutch Carpenter

FriendFeed wins in my book. - Robert Scoble

I used to prefer Social Thing but FF's won me over. - Akiva Moskovitz from Alert Thingy

FriendFeed - Sally Church from Alert Thingy

FriendFeed, hands down. - Brad Stevens from twhirl

FF, but I can use ST to easily watch all my Flickr contacts. - Russellreno

FriendFeed because of their first mover status, they're not 'private beta', 'founded by ex-Googleers' gives reassurance that my minor time investment was wise - Pat from Alert Thingy

socialthing has a slightly different approach to social aggregation. SocialThing acts as more of a tool to aggregate all of your social networks, while FF is about picking John and Jane Doe and watching *everything* they do. - Jake Russo

social thing didn't work for me (literally seemed broken) and I haven't been back lately.now I am wondering if it is time to check it out. Oh, and twittering by proxy is still twittering. - Seek Ground

Friendfeed wins hands down. SocialThing is broken. - Shannon from Alert Thingy

Friendfeed wins, period - Dennis

freidnfeed is better , forget social thing - Mila Frerichs from Alert Thingy

I have to say that I use FF more than Socialthing, but the latter is a MUCH cooler tool. - Tamar Weinberg

friendfeed became much much more valuable when it became an alert thingy air stream, so when will they acquire it, they have the dough, they need the technology ala seesmic/twhirl air.lifestream arms race! - ben barren from Alert Thingy

Absolutely FriendFeed - Roozbeh

I use both FF and ST. And what I really want is actually a combination of both. - Araceli

Social Thing doesn't have any advantages that are helpful over FF - and it is all about the social graph - more people are here... - Tony from Alert Thingy

Agreed with Sarah Perez. No twitter means no twitter! And no, I don't use socialthing as much as FriendFeed, by a long shot. But I don't think the two services have the same goals, either. - Phil G

by far FF - julian_marain from twhirl

lol, that proves that SocialThing is an old news - Dobromir Hadzhiev

FriendFeed, but then again, I never signed up for Socialthing - Shey, Jamaican of FF

I signed up for SocialThing, but it didn't do anything for. I use FriendFeed regularly. - Daniel Shaw

no - i just use friendfeed - i don´t get warm with socialthing (but like their logo though) - Dieter Schwarz

Shey, Jamaican of FF

Who is at the top of your "People you find interesting" list? - https://friendfeed.com/account...

May 15, 2008 - Comment - Like - Share

Kol Tregaskes, Kyle Weller, RAPatton and 26 other people liked this

1) Robert Scoble 2) Corvida 3) Louis Gray - Shey, Jamaican of FF

58 more comments

1) Louis Gray, 2) Robert Scoble, 3) Scott Beale - Mark Trapp

1. Louis Gray, 2. Robert Scoble, 3. Colin Walker - Rob Diana

Louis, Corvida, Steven Hodson - Colin Walker

Louis Gray, Robert Scoble, Corvida - Hutch Carpenter

1) Paul Buchheit 2) Robert Scoble 3) Steven Hodson - Louis Gray

Benjamin Golub , niniane - Mick

1) Louis Gray 2) Hutch Carpenter 3)Steve Hodson - Mike Fruchter

1) Robert Scoble 2) Thomas Hawk 3) Brian Auer - Chris Nixon from twhirl

1) Robert Scoble 2) Louis Gray 3) Corvida 4) Michael Arrington 5) Hutch Carpenter - Mitchell Tsai

1) Paul Buchheit 2) Louis Gray 3) Bret Taylor - Benjamin Golub

1) Fred Wilson 2) Thomas Hawk 3) Loic Le Meur - Eric Johnson

Louis Gray, Robert Scoble, Fred Wilson - Andy Davies

1) michael arrington, 2) David Cohn, 3) Jason Shellen, 4) Paul Buchheit - susan mernit

find interesting or people most likely to tell you what you should find interesting - Dan Rockwell from twhirl

1) Scoble 2) Louis Gray 3) Stowe Boyd 4) Arrington - Ron Emrick

interesting? 1) Robert Scoble 2) Louis Gray 3) michael arrington - Anthony Farrior

1) Scoble 2) Winer 3) Kevin Fox (that's actually kind of a surprising order) :) - Nathaniel Payne

@Dan I meant based on your FriendFeed stats: http://friendfeed.com/setting... - Shey, Jamaican of FF

1) Scobel 2) Ginger Makela 3)Bwana McCall - Vince DeGeorge

1) cmiper 2) Rick Klau 3) Thomas Hawk - Raoul Pop

1) Robert Scoble 2) Louis Gray 3) Dave Winer - Michael Koby

fascinating to observe the new tech celebrities. sort of like the tiger woods of our field. - Jason Goldberg

hmm... my wife is sandwiched between louis and scoble... http://tinyurl.com/6zvg3u - Jeremiah Palmer

would not want to be sandwiched between Scoble and anyone - Noah David Simon from twhirl

Louis Gray, Sarah Perez, Ontario Emperor, Hutch Carpenter, Anthony Farrior - NOT in any specific order :) - Paula Hawk

1) Louis Gray 2) Corvida 3) Robert Scoble - Franklin Pettit

Louis Gray, Robert Scoble - Evgeni Leshtanski

1) Andy Geers http://friendfeed.com/andygee..., 2) Scoble, 3) Arrington - Samuel Bostock

1) Robert Scoble 2) Thomas Hawk 3) Michael Arrington - Dennis

1) Louis Gray 2) Robert Scoble - Chris Rossini

I always have to be different. : ) 1) Shellee O'Brien 2) Corvida 3) Chris Reed - Carla Thompson

1) Benjamin Golub, 2) Thomas Brox Røst, 3) Paul Bucheit - hm, high Python + django factor I believe :) - Amund Tveit

Clearly Scoble and Louis Gray win this round - Shey, Jamaican of FF

Louis Gray, Corvida, Paul Buchheit, Bret Taylor, Seek Ground - Ashton

1)Robert Scoble 2) Dave Winer 3) Mike Arrington - Adnan

1) Robert Scoble 2) Juan Fernando Zuluaga 3) Marshall Kirkpatrick - Andrés David Aparicio from twhirl

1) Corvida 2) Robert Scoble 3) Louis Gray 4) Benjamin Golub - Phil G

1. Robert Scoble 2. Thomas Hawk 3. richrecruiter - Morton Fox

Goro Miyazaki, Gret Glyer, Robert Scoble - Brent Newhall from twhirl

1) Robert Scoble 2) Paul Buchheit 3) Ionut - Jez Arnold

Louis Gray, Robert Scoble, Corvida, Thomas Hawk, Scott Beale, Cyvros/fyc, Dave Winer, Steven Hodson, Jason Calacanis, Paul Buchheit. - Alejandro

engtech, Fred Wilson, Louis Gray - Baxter Tocher

Thomas Hawk, Brian Auer, Louis Gray, Robert Scoble, Charlie Anzman, Corvida, Benjamin Golub, Paul Buchheit, Darren Rowse, Steven Hodson - Michael Hocter

Wow, I'm very honored and will try to keep up a good stream of noise, not news. :-) - Robert Scoble

1) Robert Scoble 2) Louis Gray 3) Mike Arrington - jcunwired

1) Warren Buffett 2) Benjamin Franklin 3) Abraham Lincoln. Oh wait, was this limited to Friendfeed? - Ranjit Mathoda

Robert Scoble, Louis Gray, Raoul Pop, Jeremiah Owyang, Jim Goldstein,cmiper, Chris Nixon, Russellreno, Michael Gartenberg, Steve Rubel. I just wish the list went to 100 instead of 10, and especially went to 100 for those finding me interesting. That to me is the more interesting resource to find people to add. - Thomas Hawk

1. Robert Scoble, 2. Louis Gray, 3. Paul Buchheit - sebmos

Robert Scoble, Lucretia Pruitt and Thomas Hawk. Errrrrm there are many more people I find interesting, but I've seen a lot from the people I mentioned. - Rosana Kooymans

1) Corvida 2) Louis Gray 3) Robert Scoble - Sarah Perez

Wow. Those stats are very telling! - TranceMist

My Wife, My Children, My Mom, My Old Army Buddies, Select Coworkers, and, oh yes, scoblearingtondhhwinercorvida - Capn' One Eye - adrift

Tie: Bwana McCall, Jeremiah Owyang - Kevin Bondelli

FF needs a better recommendation capability. GReader's method is a pretty good model to follow. The current system is a self-licking ice cream cone. - Chris Stevenson

1) michael arrington 2) Louis Gray 3) Robert Scoble 4) Mihai Parparita - Tanath

From someone outside the echo chamber...1. Carla Thompson, 2. Kelly Fox, and 3. would have to be a position shared by Chris Reed, Matt Harwood, and several of their friends with whom I've now swapped subscriptions. - Shellee

1) RAPatton 2) Kevin D. White 3) Ginger Makela 4) Michael W. May - edythe

Baratunde Thurston, edythe, Karoli, Corvida, Michelle Martinez - Michael W. May

edythe, george kelly, michelle jones, cecily walker, eric rice - Jason Toney

Robert Scoble

I heard I can invite 249 of my closest friends to try Viewzi. http://corp.viewzi.com/ Refferal Code: scoble

April 24, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

titaniar, Crystal Clear, Alvin Ashcraft and 19 other people liked this

Got one. Thanks - Michael VanDervort from Alert Thingy

47 more comments

got it, looks cool - Leo Koivulehto from Alert Thingy

looks interesting. thanks - Ow Choong Seong from Alert Thingy

Got it, looks awsome, tnkx - Robbie van der Blom from twhirl

Wow, nice presentation. - Joel Yen from twhirl

thanks it looks great - tintin from twhirl

;) - Lizunlong from twhirl

thanks for that.. - Uway from Alert Thingy

Wow...Viewzi is definitely VISUAL, but how the hell do you figure out what you have re: information? - Michael VanDervort from Alert Thingy

Thank you! Namaste... - Kamath (नमः)

playing with Viewzi right now, it looks good (thanks for the code) - Andrés David Aparicio

thanks for the Viewzi invite - julian_marain

Thanks for the code, I like it better that some of the other recent visual search tools - Luis from Alert Thingy

Got one; thanks! "Scoble" brings up a shirtless photo...intentional? http://tinyurl.com/572mrh - Paul Arterburn

Thanks for the invite,Viewzi looks good,working more with it - Omar Vasquez Lima from Alert Thingy

Can't really get into viewzi. It's a great start though - HokieGeek from Alert Thingy

Cheers, couldn't sign up in Firefox, I had to change the tab to ie ;-) ...via AlertThingy - Stephen B

Liked the image and video search views. They make searching them a pleasure. - Vinuth M. Madinur from twhirl

FF2.0 worked for me. - Paul Arterburn

thanks for the invite! love the video view. celebrity photo view would be awesome if you could stack the shuffled pics in a corner, then search on, shuffle some more, thus creating a collection for later reference - Gaby K. Slezák

worked thank you scoble! - Timo Heuer from twhirl

The interface is very easy to use and the results aggreation works well. It's now installed in my search bar and I will be using it quite a lot. - Andrés David Aparicio

Thanks for the invite Scoble! :) (note: it only worked when I used capital S: "Scoble"... not "scoble" :o) - Levi Figueira from twhirl

Got one, thanks! - Arturo Servin

I guess I was too late. I keep getting Invalid refferal code:( - Tekla

Thanks. I was late, but they're putting me on their list. - Mitchell Tsai

Worked for me...Thanks. - Franklin Pettit

Nice find Scoble! Relevant...and very pretty result being displayed for me on viewzi - Shay Frendt

Thanx ;) - dreamside

Got one. - Russellreno

I got one as well. Thanks Robert! - John Rubier from twhirl

Thanks for the invite. :) Didn't like it though.. :/ - Peter

Got one too, thanks Robert. - Sally Church from Alert Thingy

Thanks. I'm trying it out! ...via AlertThingy - Mike Butler

Thanks! Registered and will try soon! - pg holmlov from Alert Thingy

wow, now this is really useful....Bob, i don't care what others say, you can come through with the goods :) - David Blumenstein from twhirl

Tried viewzi. Found some of my photos, but cannot leave Viewzi. - Russellreno

thanks got one as well #viewzi - DC Crowley

Thanks ;-) http://twitter.com/myriam... - Myriam

danke - Torsten Eckert from twhirl

Thanks, Robert. Got one... I'll check 'em out. - Alvin Ashcraft

Thanks, Robert! - Chris Weige from Alert Thingy

Surprised there were some left when I clicked it. Very cool interface - Chris Gerling from Alert Thingy

Tried it. Like web screenshot view. Confused by 4 Sources view. Photo View algorithm has many dups & too much junk. TechCrunch? - Mitchell Tsai

Thanks. But it seems doesn't support unicode... - Dennis

thanks for the invite! Probably not their demographic but then again maybe I am! - Crystal Clear from Alert Thingy

Thanks Scoble. I like the service.. Cheers for the invite - Roger Kondrat from Alert Thingy

Already love it!! Found a bunch of new content easily in a topic am very familiar with. That speaks a lot for the kind of non-obvious content this approach brings up - Mahesh CR

thanks for the invite! - Hannes BrandstätterMüller from twhirl

Thomas Hawk

Wow, I just realized I hadn't been to Facebook in over a week. It sure is seeming easy to forget about that place.

April 24, 2008 - Comment - Like - Share

www.MarketSaw.com, Brad Weller, Dennis and 3 other people liked this

The bloom is off the rose. - Russellreno

4 more comments

Me too. Facebook seems like a dim and distant memory. - Nick Reynolds from Alert Thingy

yeah, I've never been big into facebook. it's basically where my friends who use facebook and not twitter can follow my tweets - C. K. Sample III from Alert Thingy

yeah, I can't see the advantage of Facebook - Dennis

Facebook is nearly as irritating as MySpace. I get an email if somebody sends me a message there; otherwise, I don't really keep up with it. - Jeremy Brooks

Facebook just seems agonizingly slow to me now as I am used to Twitter and MySocial 24x7. I might log in once a week now... - www.MarketSaw.com

Bret Taylor

Adobe AIR Desktop App For FriendFeed Coming - http://www.techcrunch.com/2008...

March 29, 2008 - Comment - Like - Share

Javid★, Jeroen De Miranda, Elliott Ng and 81 other people liked this

"We just heard that Howard/Baines will be releasing an Adobe AIR application for FriendFeed in the next week or so. So far all we have is the screen shot and a confirmation from Baines that his team is working on it. The application will be called Alert Thingy." I like the name :) - Bret Taylor

85 more comments

Now if someone could just combine a FF / Twitter Adobe AIR app -- making sure that tweets weren't duplicated -- that'd be super! Otherwise, it's annoying to feel compelled to run both (and no, I cannot convince all my friends on Twitter to sign up for FF, nor do I feel like creating Imaginary Friends for all of them). - Adam Lasnik

Thing is, I love the simple web-based FF interface. Too slick to make the switch. FF + Fluid + Fluid plug-ins = winner - Aviv

I don't feel the need to abandon the FF interface. In fact, I see myself doing other activities from within FF - http://ffapps.com/tabs/ - Aviv

Can't wait for this! It's going to be awesome. - Brandon Titus

Its about frackin' time. What took so long? :) - Tony Hung

Yes! My continuous partial attention does a little jig! - Ashton

I don't like the msgs popping up... - terababy

I sure hope it runs better then TWIRL - Noah David Simon

@Noah: Better than twhirl? I've never had issues with it. - Voyagerfan5761

Twirl has not has issues, it just happens to rely on the twitter api being up, which is the unreliable part. As long as the FF API can keep up with demand an Adobe Air app that works as good as twirl would be sweet. - Christian Burns

I'll wait for a non AIR app thank you :) - Steven Hodson

An iGoogle gadget would do me fine :)) - ceebee

THX 4 invitatiojn- guess my computerallergy holds me away from all this kind of internet friendship thing. Somehow too much letters...u know what I mean? Maybe it takes some time to come into that stuff. Virtual??? Prefer real air, trees and touch...talk soon NOAH. - Natascha Engelmann

Ceberius: http://www.google.com/ig... - Philipp Lenssen

@Philipp : oh wow! thanks! - ceebee

I'll be happy once Adobe AIR comes out for Linux. - Rishabh Mishra (p248)

@possible248 labs.adobe.com/downloads/air_linux.html btw ive been running adobe air through wine for over a month here is how you install it with wine www.ubuntu-unleashed.com/2008/03/howto-adobe-air-and-xdrive-desktop-lite.html - Kyle Weller

@defcon: I'll bet he'll like that link. I pointed it out over Twitter, but you never know; twhirl supposedly has some issues on Linux platforms that aren't fixed yet. Wine might take care of the problems. And BTW, links are automatically, er, linked if you start them off with http:// - Voyagerfan5761

I much prefer my online services to stay in browser windows - it's too confusing for my poor british brain otherwise! - Slappy Line

@Slippy: I used to think that about Twitter, until I discovered twhirl... But don't let me influence your decision. ;-) - Voyagerfan5761

Just in case anyone wanted an updated screen shot to watch while they are waiting - http://screencast.com/t... (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

@Jeremy: Sweet program! At least, the looks are good and it appears to have all the functionality of the site. I won't pry for a release date. :-) - Voyagerfan5761

Just got drag and drop image uploading on share... getting real close!! (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

You coders just constantly amaze me with your ability to whip this stuff up! - Phil Ashman

can't wait to see the final product - you don't need some more beta testers by any chance, Jeremy? :) - Frederic

@Frederic: I considered asking, but figured the answer was obvious. @Jeremy: So, do you? :D - Voyagerfan5761

Those lucky enough to be at the adobe AIR Tour - London yesterday would have seen a demo of the app plus a demo of a couple of bugs we need to fix :). The launch is currently being held up by thawte who we are waiting on to issue our digital certificate! Once that is done we are good to go. Thanks for all the offers, we have enough beta testers on windows and mac for now, but would be interested in anyone running AIR on linux! (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

...and if you want to follow me and the kinds of apps we build then please subscribe to me or follow me on twitter (jeremybaines) (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

@Jeremy: Will all comments posted via Alert Thingy have that tagline? Oh, and I believe @possible248 on Twitter (and here) is running AIR on Linux. - Voyagerfan5761

@Voyagerfan5761 yes they will. We think it's ok to ask for a bit of PR if we are giving you an app free. What do you think? It would be nice if there was a proper place to put the "via...." link, like on twitter, but the guys at FriendFeed have not provided anything like that for us yet! Bret.. are you listening??? (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

I would prefer to have the "via Alert Thingy"-tagline independent from the comment itself. I second that request. - sebmos

Ok that is 2 of us - Is that enough to change the API Bret? How many votes do I need? :) - Jeremy Baines

Of course, some of us might feel that reading a few words of advertising along with each comment is, you know, not exciting. - j1m

Adding the source to entries and comments from the API makes a lot of sense. I will think about it and take a look at what Twitter does, and come back with something. - Bret Taylor

@Jeremy - would be happy to try it out on Linux :) - Frederic

I'm so ready for this app, it hurts - Bwana ☠

@bret How are you getting along with the beta we sent you yesterday? (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

WANT. drool... - Phil G

I seriously seriously want this! but agree w/Adam - combo app would ROCK - Sarah Perez

Regarding the attribution for comments, how about adding a conditional "from %APPNAME%" tag wrapped in <small> tags after the name? It would be displayed only if there was a valid source for that comment. Thumbs-up? -down? - Voyagerfan5761

Get your copy of v1.0 - http://alertthingy.com/ (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

Its up now :) (via Alert Thingy) - Tony Hung

Nice. I have it up and running (via Alert Thingy) - Bwana ☠

If you like it so far so us your digg love - http://digg.com/softwar... (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

sounds cool - Shandiz

Just installed! Could do with customizable opacity, but otherwise it's just figuring out how to use it right now. w00t! (And making Enter save the comment...) (via Alert Thingy) - Voyagerfan5761

Is there a central location for feedback/suggestions? (via Alert Thingy) - Bwana ☠

you can send us email - help@alertthingy.com (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

Yeah, seriously way too transparent with no settings control. Other than that looks great. - Marston Alfred

Shameless blog comment fishing: http://voyagerfan5761.blogspot.com/2008... I figured this was an appropriate venue for that link. :-) - Voyagerfan5761

preeeeeeetty good (via Alert Thingy) - zeroinfluencer

I like it! (via Alert Thingy) - Tibor Paulsch

AT works okay but needs user prefs editable. Opacity is a must. (via Alert Thingy) - Jay Gilmore

It's great! (via Alert Thingy) - Dennis

We hear you on the opacity thing. Good point about scroling up when writing a comment (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

Anybody for marking items as seen, a la twhirl? It seems that would be useful for keeping one's place. - Voyagerfan5761

tried it out; seems just like a web browser... NEEEEDS functionality for me to re-consider using it - The Product Guy

It is cool. But: turned off sounds and they are back. Window scales, but not the text size. very small! oh, and while I was writing a comment in a tiny box an update came in and my comment so far just vanished... (via Alert Thingy) - Alex von Halem

@ Alex von Halem thanks I have added those to my list :) (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

@Jeremy Baines thanx. restarting stopped the sounds (perhaps just a note, that saving settings is not enough). Liking it more and more. Just a wee thing: when you hit the "comment" button: shouldn't your cursor start flashing in that field instead of having to click into it as well? Keep it up, it's going to be a winner! (via Alert Thingy) - Alex von Halem

Also good! they make the list ;) - not actually sure when we will have time to finish everything on the list! but nice to have one so we know what needs doing ;) (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

nice! - sandosh vasudevan

Just installed it. I don't like it (alert thingy)... much prefer the FF interface. But kudos to you on the "remote key" -- solid idea. - Michael Leggett

I don't think it hides the entries set to be hidden on FF. Anyone else can confirm this? - Turker Keskinpala

@Turker: I wrote about that this morning, so yeah, I can confirm. It's still showing my hidden stuff as I type this. I think the fault lies with the FriendFeed API, though. So far as I know, there's no indication of hiding status available. - Voyagerfan5761

Turkey and Voyagerfan5761: I will work on this today. We are not passing the "hidden" bit through to the API properly. - Bret Taylor

@Bret - can you look at the hide issue.. we are getting the hidden stuff showing in the API - Jeremy Baines

Thanks Bret. FF web interface is so fast and usable that it is not easy to switch to a desktop application. Nevertheless, good work Jeremy Baines. - Turker Keskinpala

It really is a nice piece of work, but I find the whole dark/translucent thing too hard to read. I also miss the collapsing of long comment threads (like this one). In fact, I didn't realize how nice a feature that was until I didn't have it and had to scroll and scroll to get to a new comment. - Chris Johnson

Can someone explain to me, in 42 words or less, why an app like this is better than just accessing FF over the web? Color me seriously confused. I'd try it myself, but I get an error anytime I try to download it (and yes, I have Air installed). - Adam Lasnik

@Adam Lasnik - Firefox can't handle a lot of tabs (non beta) and I'd rather use Alert Thingy or bTittleTattle then leave FriendFeed open in Firefox. (via Alert Thingy) - Corvida

@corvida ahh but, FF3 beta is solid and handles a wealth of tabs with great aplomb. :) I've got my eye on AT, but for now it taketh more functionality than it giveth. I suspect with all this attention, though, it will soon giveth a lot more! - felix

Corvida, or you could do what I do when I want to keep one or two tabs open persistently and easy-to-switch-to (e.g., Pandora): open them in Internet Exploder. What I was hoping to hear was that this Air app offered intriguing / helpful "extras" that one doesn't innately get in the web version. For instance, I use Twhirl because it aurally alerts me to direct messages AND displays all messages to me in chron order on one scrolling page -- something not offered on the Twitter web page. - Adam Lasnik

@Felix I FF Betas crash on me way more than FF2 and that's more important to me. @Lasnik I don't have IE installed =P Don't want to keep 2 browsers open anways, it's defeating the point in a way. I'm still wasting resources, though I think Alert Thingy is less of a waste. - Corvida

Okay, just tried it on another computer. Not for me. I find it much harder to read/scan stuff on it vs. the web page. - Adam Lasnik

Restart your copies of AlertThingy v1.1 is here! ...via AlertThingy - Jeremy Baines

search not working for unicode content? o_O ...via AlertThingy - minus-one

Nice, but my hidden stuff's showing up in Friendfeed so all the duplicate twitter action is annoying me. ...via AlertThingy - brad sucks

Yup! that is anoying! But a FreindFeed API issue not AT ...via AlertThingy - Jeremy Baines

i love this application and can't live without it. ...via AlertThingy - Kevin

Alertthingy's coming along nicely! I'll post a couple of suggestions on your site. ...via AlertThingy - Phil Ashman

http://shegeeks.net/feedali... - John Kotsaftis

Thwirl now offering FF integration on AIR - Steaprok

Just installed Twhirl 0.7.9 with FF support. Anyone care to tell me why AlertThingy is better? I'm kinda Twitter centric which is why I choose Twhirl. - Elliott Ng

Personally My social i am finding great on my laptop just having it all there in front of my and not haing to swap spaces to see what Alert thingy is doin ...via AlertThingy - John Spencer

I moved onto alerthingy from friend feed, stricly based on aesthetics. ...via AlertThingy - Osize Om

Thomas Hawk

@Scobleizer I never spend time on Twitter, I'm spending time on FriendFeed every day.

April 21, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Jeff, Dennis, Beau Liening and Russellreno liked this

I've been spending more time on Friend Feed as well. Especially since Twitter has been having issues. ...via AlertThingy - Beau Liening

6 more comments

Yeah its true I am really starting to like friendfeed. It makes everything a lot easier. - Alex Carpenter

Friend feed is FAR more interesting than twitter. - Andrew Lighten

No, we just need our wearables with contact lens displays so FF could float over reality all the time... - Jeremy Brooks

Contact lense displays would ROCK!!! =) ...via AlertThingy - Beau Liening

If I could easily migrate my Twitter people (the ones I follow) into FF easily, I'd use it exclusively. Otherwise I miss too many interesting people to give up twitter yet. ...via twhirl - Jay Gilmore

Think the Pownce, Friendfeed combo is going to gain speed here - Charlie Anzman

If Pownce support international characters, it is definitly better than Twitter - Dennis

Jeremy Baines

Restart your copies of AlertThingy people to get v1.1!!!!!!

April 14, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Jack Baty, Voyagerfan5761, Kenichi Matsumoto and Chris Nixon liked this

It seems to have hung...or is it downloading an update straining the server. Eeep! - Chris Nixon

6 more comments

Nice! Can you put up a summary of changes? I'm not at my main desktop will update later. :) - felix

Ignore me...I'm back in the room TVM! ...via AlertThingy - Chris Nixon

In the next update, can I open the program window by double-clicking the icon in notification area? ...via AlertThingy - Dennis

@ Dennis - we would love to fix that, but there appears to be an issue with Adobe AIR! - We have told them. ...via AlertThingy - Jeremy Baines

Much better without the transparency! Do all Air apps do this when you click the title bar?... http://screencast.com/t.... Same thing happens with Twhirl for me. Latest Air on Leopard. - Jack Baty

nice update. 2 things: can AIR detect if a full screen app is running (like a game) and disable the popups/sound? also, i think the logic in the opaque setting is backwards. when the setting is checked, the window is transparent :P ...via AlertThingy - keith thornhill

@Keith: I saw that, too, with the checkbox. The full-screen thing doesn't really bug me -- it's just a bit of flickering for a few seconds -- but then I'm not much of a gamer. - Voyagerfan5761

Paul Buchheit

Which are better, tags, or labels?

April 1, 2008 - Comment - Like - Share

Brian Sloane, sandosh vasudevan, Andrew Badera and 21 other people liked this

tags - Steven Hodson

68 more comments

labels are for jars - MG Siegler

Tags. Search is empowered by tags. - Jack (a.k.a. Jeber)

"It depends" - Kevin Fox

Tags, but instead of labels, i prefer folders to store specific group of feeds - Ben Borges

Aren't they the same thing? - Steve Lacey

Tags are for clouds. - Jim Norris

Tagging and foldering are both representations of organizational calculus. I believe that tagging has several important signatures: 1) you can create new ones at the time of organization, 2) you are presented with the full set of tags that you use. Foldering also allows for folders to be treated the same as the documents being foldered (you can put a folder in the same place an item might go.) I'm not sure what the differences labels have from those two. [engtech - i disagree; tags are fine for single use] - joshua schachter

Tags - David Peacock

tags - Louis Gray

As long as the functionality is the same, I don't care what you call them; either label (no pun intended) will suffice. Just don't call them folders like Google Docs does... - Voyagerfan5761

In my mind, labels = tags for personal use. Tags works for both public & private use and are generally well understood, so I'd say tags. - Jess Lee

tags - Greenish

I'm impartial and I agree with Voyagerfan, Google "folders" is a ridiculous hoax. I'd pick labels if only because tagging might be misunderstood to be graffiti if you're not in the 'net mindset. - Mitch

Tags for geeks, labels for mainstream, IMO. My choice is tags. - Turker Keskinpala

tags - Leon Ridge-Cooke

Automated keywords derived from existing content, or folders when it comes to stuff like Gmail or Google Docs. On the other hand, tags often give incentive to come up with more descriptive words if the title etc. doesn't suffice. Still think it's bad for e.g. YouTube to make providing tags mandatory. Shouldn't you offer the laziest options for users? - Philipp Lenssen

tags! labels give me the impression I should only use one. "tag" probably also sounds better in more languages. - Mario Romero

When you label something you are defining that something, when you tag something, you are attaching/categorizing that something. Tags are better for categorizing topics on social networking sites like this one, labels are good for email and sorting. The creator of gmail's labels/filters is a perfect implementation of labels and filters - Kyle Weller

Paul, a great idea for friendfeed would be to have a filter/label feature like gmail with friendfeed alerts. What does everyone think? - Kyle Weller

tags, undoubtedly - Rohit Srivastwa

Depends - Ian

tags - Paresh Jain

Aren't they the same thing? - Benjamin Golub

Tags - Ginger Makela Riker

Tags - Franklin Pettit

Tags, better for seo - Anthony Farrior

tags - Shey, Jamaican of FF

Tags :) - Paula Hawk

Don't most sites use tags? Why confuse people? - Devin Anderson

tags. because "tags" has a few equally plausible meanings the first time a user encounters it, it is initially disorienting. "Labels" has one more prominent meaning, so it isn't disorienting. unfortunately, that prominent meaning doesn't connect very meaningfully to its function in this case. it in fact HIDES some of the functions of tags/labels. only reason to go with "labels" would be to avoid being accused of being too techie. - ryan

Tags. - Mike Reynolds

sometimes tags,sometimes labels - Igor Poltavskiy

I thought it was just a terminology thing, don't they both serve the same purpose? In any case, I prefer the term, tags. - Bwana ☠

#Tags are better then just plain tags.I see it as a cloud above a tag cloud - Peter Dawson

i think as terminology they frame the way users understand their function. labels, as someone before said, sounds like a one-to-one relationship a bit. - ryan

Tags. - Daniel Spradau

Folders. Duh. - Andrew Bonventre

Tags. FYI, tagging only works well if multiple people are tagging the same item to build up a taxonomy. So many sites don't go the extra step of aggregating tags around an item, which makes it much less valuable. I find it very hard to consistently tag items the same way all the time, but if you look at the aggregate of many people tagging the same item then you start to get into the wisdom of the crowd sweet spot. A lot of people get tags and categories confused, categories are for me and tags are for us. - engtech

Hit the comment size limit. More of my thoughts about categories vs tags here: http://internetducttape.com/2007... - engtech

Index! We had the same internal debate, we ended up using labels since the non-techcrunch crowd would have an easier time understanding that. - Andreas Schobel

tags pls - pankaj

Surprise us - Varun Mahajan

Tags !! anyway isn't another way of saying to-MAH-to or to-MAY-to ?? - Jez Arnold

If you mean "what should I call this tagging feature" then labels are good - Neil Kandalgaonkar

Looks like the vote's for tags then - and I hope you're not just teasing us poor users! - Slappy Line

Tags are better because they are entered at capture time. Labels are only useful when applied automatically e.g. filters in gmail triggering off name+labelname@gmail.com. Therefore, remove the distinction and empower tags to do everything labels do, and we can eliminate the distinction from name to the way they are used. - Mark Norman

fact: labels can leave sticky residue on the screen - Slappy Line

is the distinction just the name? - joshua schachter

In my mind, “tagging” is something you do to other people's stuff (graffiti), whereas “labeling” is something to do to your own stuff. - Amit Patel

I could kiss you, Amit. Except, um, I won't. - Kevin Fox

@Kevin: /me whistles, trying to pretend not to notice the awkward moment - Voyagerfan5761

Tag. But for FF, topic would a better option i think. ?! - Erhan Erdogan

tags - Bill Bittner

tags - Yuvi

yay tags - zeroinfluencer

tags! I never understood why Google went with labels. Someone tried to explain it once, but it was just semantics :) - Clint

labels are so 90s. Late 90s. Make that early 00s. Is that how you say 2000s? Whatever....Tags for me. - shaun mclane

Tags. I'm with Siegler about labels. - Corvida

What's the difference between the two? - darnell

@darnell it's little different like train and metro : ) funny ; ) - Erhan Erdogan

@Kevin Fox: I'll come by FF headquarters sometime… - Amit Patel

tags - JP Moore

Wow, amazing how much of a response this drew! Personally, I couldn't care less what you call 'em, as long as you do it consistently. - Adam Lasnik

Polls are better than hundred comments :) - Igor Sereda

I also prefer Tags (via Alert Thingy) - Joel Yen

I prefer tags (via Alert Thingy) - akihito

Tags, sure (via Alert Thingy) - Dennis

Tags are tops in my book. (via Alert Thingy) - Rick Mahn

Tags, definitely. Nobody but Google uses "labels", and that's pretty dumb. Even non-tech-savvy-people increasingly know what tags are. - sebmos

Jeremy Baines

Running AlertThing v1.1 on my computer ;)

April 14, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

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Can't wait for it! (via Alert Thingy) - Dennis

Send out the change log! :) - felix

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