the most handy teleportation device i've ever seen in a sci-fi series so far is the aschen one in stargate sg1 (season 4, ep. 16). they would be quite useful in istanbul. http://img690.yfrog.com/img690...
- satine
no need for teleportation, if you've got the right connected androids acting on your behalf, this is far sufficient ;-) When Google should begin to build these cheap Androids ? ;-)
- Thierry Lhôte
Satine, I guess so! I'll invent one for Izmir too! ;) @Thierry, why not? if they implement that kind of EPR telepathic quantum thingy ;)
- directeur
The lyrics, the music... I mean, you have feel and live the words in this song...
- directeur
I have a very simple idea for the FriendFeed team (if they still work on it): While parsing an entry's title for hashtags, check if you find #NSFW and automatically hide (or not) by looking at a user's settings variable (filter/or not)
they could let us type in the tags we don't want to see, and it would be heaven. well, not heaven, since I have doubts about the hiding system now and then, but really close to heaven.
- Doğaç Yavuz
Doğaç, what you're talking about is actually a feature I implemented in NoiseRiver back in June 2008 :)
- directeur
I knew I should've already started using it :(
- Doğaç Yavuz
No worries :) It's an old app already... yet some people use it when FF is blocked at work...
- directeur
If you're into Mesha anime, Giant Robots, Lazers, Glalactic Fights then "Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann" is definitely for you! :)
- directeur
from NoiseRiver Extra!
GAAAAAAAAAH! ANIKIIIIIIIIIIIIII!! flashback!!! I used to study this shit in college! (I'm an electrical engineer) :D
- vijay
Well. I don't come to FriendFeed to deal with work-related stuff. MOAR KITTEH PIX PLZ.
- ha3rvey (doink doink)
Sorry, Harvey. Next time, I'll post an electrocarbonized kitteh :p — @Vijay: ah! cool! Now I know who will help me convert an old PIII to a small lowpower embedded pc :)
- directeur
My nightly rant: If you think that a web standard should be a list of compromises to make companies happy, then you failed. You're not making a better web, you're supporting and adding some more mess to the mess. We need some kind of tech "manliness". Create things because they're the right way to do it and don't try to please everyone.
Brian, probably so.. but "atomicity" is not. And I said "companies", real standards imho shouldn't be adopted without the help of universities
- directeur
Are you naming names on which standards in particular were the trigger here or is it just the whole mess :) I'm guessing HTML/5 video.
- Ed Millard
Academics are involved in the creation of many standards. But academics carry their own baggage and getting academics to agree on anything is worse than competing commercial entities.
- Brian Sullivan
What I mean simply is this: You want to create, say a new XML format, there are ways to create easy to use, simple, abstracted formats. Don't make that format a collection of items to satisfy FB, twitter, plaxo, and whatnot. Create your simple and efficient format and prove that it's the best.
- directeur
Standards have to be agreed upon -- else they will not be adopted and by definition will not be standards.
- Brian Sullivan
Standards are more easily adopted when they are successful first.
- Cristo
True! Yet, bringing everyone's sauce to the idea doesn't fix problems. It supports those problems
- directeur
Here's another eg. rsscloud vs. pshb. It's clear which one wins. everyone knows it. BUT if you try to satisfy say wordpress.com you've got to make things messier.
- directeur
Creation of standards are true business problems -- the time to create them is limited and consensus is required to execute the actions required to solve them. Business problems don't exist in a vacuum and don't have an absolute right solution.
- Brian Sullivan
The solution is dependent on the players involved and the point in time the problem is tackled. Technologists, engineers, scientists and mathematicians are notoriously bad at accepting this fact -- and are therefore notoriously bad at business.
- Brian Sullivan
Brian, I agree. I mean that a standard that is created to satisfy everyone is NOT the right way to do things. If X company is not satisfied, do not sacrify beauty and validity to make them happy
- directeur
As I said there is no "right" way to do things and consensus is required to move forward.
- Brian Sullivan
Brian, there is a kind of mathematically true, beautiful and right way. That's exactly what I'm talking about.
- directeur
OK -- I guess you aren't listening to me.
- Brian Sullivan
Brian, I do. But I don't think that "right" is that subjective. There are cases where compromises help improve things and make progress. And I know that business is about "time" (and money of course) But I won't accept the fact that I should sacrify the obvious, right and nice solution to satisfy a given business. — I think that we agree, actually, it's just a matter of a bad formulation (by me) I think
- directeur
directeur, if the 'right' way isn't the one most likely to gather consensus, implementations, and user acceptance (all of which are very contingent on external factors) than what exactly is 'right' about it? Purity? Beauty? Both of those qualities have their place, but a spec that only has those going for it simply isn't ever going to be widely enough deployed to be considered a 'standard'.
- Michael R. Bernstein
Rarely have I worked for a company that gave me the luxury to fully do things the "right" way. Most of the time I have to fight with them to even attempt it, and it results in more overtime on my part because I can't stand not doing it at least 50% right (which is about all the padding I am usually able to negotiate). Most companies are about getting it done and out the door and focused...
more...
- Her Lindsay-ness
Brian, Cristo, Michael: Mea culpa. This world will always be the same. You are right. (I'm not being sarcastic) — Lindsay, yes, very true!
- directeur
"One thing we have got to change in our strategy - allowing Office documents to be rendered very well by other peoples browsers is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company."
- directeur
from Bookmarklet
A neutron walks into a bar and says: "I’d like a beer, please." After the bartender gives him one, he asks: "How much will that be?" —"For you?", says the bartender, "No charge."
A bartender gives the tachyon his scotch. The tachyon says make it a double. The tachyon orders a scotch. A tachyon walks into a bar.
- teh Dork Knight
from fftogo
two atoms walk into the bar, one says "I think I lost an electron outside somewhere." "are you sure?" the other asks. "yep, I'm positive!"
- Bren, Photophobe
Newness is NOT innovation. You're trying to be an "online journalist", you use journalistic jargon, you write like tabloids do. Real geeks, btw, are those who care about simplicity! Talk to the chimpanzee brain in me. Thanks!
- directeur
Which is why I asked Scoble what's really "geek". It's the newest fad to him.
- Maxamad (Amazigh)
@Mehmet: Geeks for Scoble are often CEOs. :-)
- directeur
EVERYDAY, I see dozens of posts about worthless stuff. I know, I know, you'd say that "value" is a personal and subjective thing, I know. But honnestly, guys, it's so easy to spot the rush to scoops, any scoop. It's so easy to understand that a given blog post was written for page views and ads revenue. Again, talk to my chimpanzee's brain, but keep in mind that I'm smart.
- directeur
Yes, worthless, this is the word directeur, completely worthless. I have noticed for instance in France, how not a single commentator told after the announce of Google Wave, that the set of protocols behind authorized distribution and version concurrency on the fly. Only a smart tech could have noticed that, but not the vast majority of the tech bloggers who only tried to relay the information with their sauce. "mail", "instant messaging", "collaborative edition", blah blah blah
- Thierry Lhôte
I believe you can make contact with far more brilliant people by playing World of Warcraft on line, instead of hanging around with social web commentators. At least the former are making things happen in their daily work, so they need to relax when at home... In a way, MMORPG is the way of the future... haha :-)
- Thierry Lhôte
:D Pas mal, Thierry! What's funny and sad at the same time is exactly what you said. IMVHO a "tech" blogger should get his feet wet! Do it, baby! Do it, don't pretend! You blog about something techy? Allright, but do it and don't try to trick me with your blah-blah journalistic jargon. I can talk about some tech stuff, not because I'm smart, no (or probably a little bit ;-) No, it's...
more...
- directeur
To tell you the truth, most people don't need much more at all. I would be fine with this + some space (external HDDs -usb3.0 support would be desirable) and a better processor possibly. Otherwise, beautiful.
- Maxamad (Amazigh)
@Mehmet, very true! And even with a processor like this one there is a lot of stuff to do! @ovigia: Yep, I saw that "Marvel". Really über cool! :)
- directeur
"What DeWitt said! You can search by time intervals. Moreover, IMVHO, very often relevancy is *better* than newness. I want a smart search engine that answers my questions not a hype/trend thing. I'd rather read an article from the 60's on some specific stuff than a tweet by an A-list socialmedia matador. YMMV"
- directeur
Will code til the daylight! I want to finish this client's project ASAP!
Not a bad idea, imabonehead! I'm not very fluent with haskell yet, though :( I'll start hacking it with python first and probably port it to haskell
- directeur
I'm surprised that no-one's written one in x86 Assembler, or built a basic device that is only capable of participating on Twitter.
- Tyson Key
Are you still considering doing this? If so, I might have some feature requests for a specific purpose. I'd like to help out Archive Team with archiving the Twitter top 100 for posterity. Being able to log tweets of everyone I am following to dated logs, one for each user, one for each day, would really help. Since the archiving project could grow to be quite large as the top 100...
more...
- April Russo (app103)
That's very doable, April! A python script with sqlite should do it! Now, I actually am busy with a project for a client (business matters after all, and bills don't pay themselves :p) But I'm definitely considering that! I just need some time to do it. Thanks for your idea! :)
- directeur
Just figured out that I actually can say many things in at least 7 languages! Phew! :)
The lyrics are just DELICIOUS! A very nice "French" poem, the violin is so "doleful", when you think that it's the max it can do, there is actually more. The oud is GREAT. And there's a chinese touch in it. This piece is a beautiful :)
- directeur
@directeur. Have you listened the whole album yet ?
- Ozgur Demir
Ozgur, not yet, alas :( Just discovered him some months ago in "Crossing The Bridge - The Sound of Istanbul" — I was like Woha!! That doc. is a masterpiece!
- directeur
İstersen edinmene yardımcı olabilirim :) (yasadışı işler bunlar, aman diyeyim! :D)
- Barış (beyn.org)
There's a genius mix of oriental, chinese, and modern musics, and the french poem in the background makes the whole thing so delicious, SO DELICIOUS!
- directeur
I love the way the girl says "le ciel est privé de nuages, je *plane*" (the sky is prived of clouds, I fly)
- directeur
Wow! I really dig this music. Seriously LOVING it.
- directeur
wow, this is another cool tune. thx for finding new source.
- browneyes
PREDICTION: The problem FriendFeed will have is when it will be very popular (mainstream if you want), there will be so much content that you won't be able to see eevrything. A page refresh and tons of content is published. We will for sure miss tons of good stuff.
a page shows say, 30 entries, between two refreshes, say there's 2000 new entries by friends and friends of friends... you see what I mean?
- directeur
from NoiseRiver
We need some way to lens ACROSS content, to view things based on value / ranking / medium, etc. Already there's more content in even my shallow feed than I can comfortably follow, and few of my friends even use FF.
- Alexander Williams
from NoiseRiver
I expect we'll see more than you realize. Likes and Comments keep stuff bouncing to the top until you get a chance to see it.
- Hutch Carpenter
I'm liking and commenting just to bounce ya twice. ;)
- Internet's Tad
Best guess is that hyper growth is already being foreseen with numerous solutions. These guys are good!
- Charlie Anzman
only if you subscribe to everybody under the sun. I'm sure scoble aleady has that problem here and on twitter
- Brett Kelly
Block and Hide aren't nearly good enough for the things I want to do when updates hit several tens per second. I, really, want things like Boolean filters of near arbitrary complexity, feedback learning, and flexible presentation ranking, just to stay sane.
- Alexander Williams
from NoiseRiver
I'm telling you guys - Lindsay totally pegged it. FF is the site that just DEMANDS an Intelligent Agent to sift through the volcanic soil to expose the rough diamonds. If the FF devs have half a brain, they have a genius or two slaving away on that right now.
- Internet's Tad
I agree, lots of stuff falls through the cracks through out the day. I think the 'best of' was added for this reason. I haven't really used it that much though.
- Tsega Dinka
but all the good stuff is reshared... personally my eyes are trained to scan content quickly and efficiently. it weeds out what i'm interested in and not. if all else fails, there's always the "BLOCK" or "HIDE" options...
- Mona Nomura
Resharing is data-cluttering, as I see it. I want a system that unifies references to URLs, for one. It tells me where that reference is made from (Rooms, friends, likes, whatnot), but only gives me a single thing to look out for any given referent. The actual rest of info is just useful metadata for building lenses out of.
- Alexander Williams
from NoiseRiver
You ask the wrong question with your prediction my multi-lingual friend -- the question is not whether we will see too much, but whether we will see enough? FriendFeed (with or without NoiseRiver) is an extremely good model for seeing "enough". NoiseRiver will allow the "noise lovers" to see even more :-)
- Robert Seidman
As more people join, simply being good at managing who you follow will be more important and should keep the noise down.
- Martin Bryant
Surely people like Robert Scoble are already at that level, he manages fine!
- Joe Dawson
Especially if one uses small screens and apps like twhirl to view the feed...
- Henk de Kruyff
from twhirl
We'll just need a CloseFriendFinder app to sit on top of FriendFinder
- Craig Thomler
I don't see the problem if there is the right method to represent the contnet, in a away that the fruition of it by the user would be easier...
- Edoardo Piccolotto
from twhirl
Yes. There is the potential for much more clutter here than twitter, for example. FF needs enhanced filtering tools.
- Ian Fogg
It's already happening for me. Need tags. Plus likes and comments only go so far. What if I like stuff only a few others like? How do I find that?
- Larry Huffman
if more of my friends were on FF I wouldn't be subscribed to so many people I don't know
- Samuel Bostock
the average user isn't going to be subscribed to that many people. and the mainstream will be much less "active" in terms of generating content than the hardcore early adopters. In short, I don't buy the argument.
- Jamie
The average user doesn't use the majority of features present on mobile phones. In Portugal owning a expensive phone is a status statement, but most of them could use the cheapest mobile in term of features used. With software and web services it's the same, people use just a subset of the features, and they have to be in front of them. Power users and all it's likes and dislikes are useful to test the limits of a application, but besides that are not the voice of God.
- Mário Pires
This is where the top posts of the day/week/month will come into play. I sure that someone will comment or like a post before it flits away. It does bear consideration though, put some brakes on the speed of posting perhaps?
- Mathew A. Koeneker
from fftogo
Maybe a combo of FriendFeed and Digg? people could set to only receive posts with X number of likes/comments...or based on the rep of the person posting...
- Craig Thomler
If i could create "groups" of people by subjects relevant to me perhaps it would be more manageable.
- Mário Pires
so there will be meta services (think summize). Cool. no problemo.
- john conroy
Just look at the Everyone feed. Only imagine articles with 1,000 likes (ala Digg) and 500 comments (ala slashdot). Some people may want the raw feeds, we'll need new filters/views/trails/signposts/guides/topics etc...
- Mitchell Tsai
I have the feeling that the FF staff will roll with the punches. Scalability!
- Steve Isaacs
@Robert Scoble: you WON'T be able to manage that noise. It's simply a mathematical fact. Say, you see 30 post, and between two refreshes, 20.000 entries are posted. The next page will show the last 30 of these 20.000 new entries. You will miss the entries in between. Liking or commenting from FOAF won't help. Because the flow will run... fast.
- directeur
from NoiseRiver
Prescient in Twitter's case. For awhile it was so for FF too. I don't know about now however; things are slower.
- Maxamad (Amazigh)
Hi, mohomed! That's so old, how did you find it? :)
- directeur
I was looking for a post with an mp3 attached to it from awhile ago that I needed, but couldn't find it. It's some soft of new jazz from Turkey. A bald guy with blue was attached as an image holding some sort of instrument. But I stumbled across a bunch of good other old posts.
- Maxamad (Amazigh)
"This site is hosted on a small diskless embedded Linux system, running a 2.4 kernel, busybox and the boa webserver. No expensive fill-in-your-bosses-favorite-brand machines." — The Foxboard offers a serial console, two serial ports, a i2c-port, 2 USB-ports and comes with a configured system based (Linux 2.4 kernel and busybox, plus extras like a ssh-clone and a webserver). This little board requires only a 5 Volt 280 mW power-supply.
- directeur
from Bookmarklet
Hi guys, So I had this idea of building a 1) silent, 2) very cheap, 3) minimum power little computer with an old P3, and a 2GB flash disk (No hard disk). It'll run Linux. I'll access it mainly via ssh on my network... Anyone here did this before? Any recommendations?
I used an ancient laptop with a dire AMD CPU, and a defective keyboard, as well as rather low quality chipsets from VIA as an ersatz network-attached monitor for my desktop machine, using NX when the video cable connector broke on the old CRT-based monitor that I had, and an Apache/TomCat/MySQL and Samba server for a handful of machines, over a year ago. It seemed to work reasonably well, although performance was nothing to shout about...
- Tyson Key
Thanks for the reply, Tyson! Performance is not a concern for me (no, really :)) I want it to be extremely silent, but I guess that I still need to use a fan for the processor (say a celeron) :/ right?
- directeur
Still, it cost me nothing, since my brother recovered it from a skip after someone disposed of it, thanks to the keyboard issues, and used it with Ubuntu as a DVD player for a while, before giving me it. It worked reasonably well as an SSH gateway/bouncing-point (behind a generic ADSL router) to administer my desktop machine from the wider Internet, and at one stage, I also ran a streaming media server, and a Jabber server (with mediocre performance, thanks to the anaemic CPU, and limited amount of RAM).
- Tyson Key
Not sure about cooling, since I haven't built a low-powered box from scratch, although some older CPUs might just about cope with el-cheapo fans. (Although it won't exactly be silent, with that configuration).
- Tyson Key
Still, the hardware sounds sufficient for the task, given that people are running Linux on lower-powered, less-capable machines than that.
- Tyson Key
Do you have a USB 2.0 port on that P3? That's the only issue I see, if it were the slower USB.
- Mike Nencetti
Yeah! definitely, Tyson! (a P3 is more than a decent machine) - Mike, well, yeah, I guess, I'll need at least one port (2 would be nice)
- directeur
Ahh the EPIA, was looking at it for a simple but capable car entertainment system. Couldn't find them to buy locally though. It's a good, quiet, lowpower board.
- Mo Kargas
Oh yes, I'd love to have one like this too, Mo! (Funny: "Mo" is the japanese word for "too" :p)
- directeur
I think I have enough lying around to build a few computers. They'd just be sucking up power with not much purpose :p
- Rodfather
Mo, hai, hai watashi *mo* bikkuri desu! :p. (I'm surprised too!) — @Rodfather, do it for fun! That's actually why I wanted a lowpower thing :)
- directeur
That's what virtual machines are for :)
- Rodfather
I made one which cost me around 4800 rupees = $ 95-100. I used an old laptop screen which I got for around $20, 300MHz P3, got an old IBM motherboard for around $25 and keyboards and mouse for $4. I used a 6GB hard disk though. It worked very well, I used Win Me first then switched to XP. This was way back in 2001, I still have the thing in my store room
- Faraz Mullick
Great! Please post some pics of the beast, Faraz! :)
- directeur
I'll take it out and try to put a picture, it is without a screen now. It stopped working around 2 years ago, was too lazy to search for a new one.
- Faraz Mullick
*sigh* I wish I could "quantify" my thoughts, I blame myself for not coding while I actually do *real* design in my head. I use paper as a second step, and then code for real. So I usually spend days without coding or even writing down anything.
The problem is at the end of the day, I ask myself : "Ok, show me what you've done" - and I have nothing to show to myself. And I feel kinda guilty
- directeur
My pleasure, Aden! :) You can view the svg directly in Firefox/chrome/safari... it's svg (xml) :)
- directeur
CALL FOR CONTRIBUTION: First of all, sorry, guys, I know, I'm bugging you with my "distributed/decentralized social networks" posts. I know, and I'm sorry. I'm looking for someone who can help me promote this idea, work on it, get coders' attention. BECAUSE those who, historically, are known for their interest in this, don't seem interested at all
I'm a man, and honnestly, a passionate one. I'm not good at evangelizing. And above all, I'm nothing but a simple guy. So, please if you want to help, don't think about "me", for I'm nothing. Do it for the sake of the idea :)
- directeur
Sağol, Oğuz kardeşim! :) — Oh, and by "historically", I -of course- don't mean Jason, Kol, or AJ. I hope you all understood that :)
- directeur
I am willing to help evangelize and have actually shown www.socnode.org to a few of my friends and co-workers. I am however not a coder :)
- Eric Logan
Thanks, Eric! Any help is welcome, and actually we're living in ear where "marketing" often is more important than the product itself! So, thanks a lot! :)
- directeur
So, everyone; please if you have ideas on anything from the management of this idea to technical stuff, please join the openff group http://friendfeed.com/openff
- directeur
directeur, start blogging about socnode to get the word out. Let the search engines help you spread the word. Another thing is to move the "demo" link from under "code" into the main hyperlinks next to "code."
- imabonehead
dir, don't think I've given up -- real life has thrown some nasty curves I can't talk about (I will on Monday) and my own, very delayed project, has kept me abnormally busy. But I *promise* I will blog a full article about this and might even send you some questions for the article... Sorry I haven't been more involved!
- Jorge Escobar
I'm still behind my schedule to release sample implementation in Erlang ( http://github.com/kgbu... is still under construction). But, through the struggling (esp. with Salmon protocol related implementation), I've learned something to tell. So, I think that I'll be able to post more clear and concrete entry. Then, I'll start thinkng about Social/Economic/Privacy side of the socnode. And, still coding on socnode is fun for me.
- Kazutaka Ogaki
from f2p
@Kazutaka - you are working on the Salmon stuff? That'll be great if you can get that to work!
- Nick Lothian
Thank you, guys! :) Kazutaka, I'm eager to see that! Nick's right, it'll be great if we use salmon as the commenting sub-system of socnodes! Ganbatte kudasai ne! :)
- directeur
I wish could help but I'm no coder. :-(
- Kol Tregaskes
What is there to be done exactly directeur? Is there some sort of a road-map as to goals to be achieved in building these distributed networks? I'm kind of lost still to tell you the truth.
- Maxamad (Amazigh)
Mohomed, very good question! Well, we have to promote the idea, discuss some technical issues, get more coders and devs, as much as possible implementations in various languages, have blog posts and presentations on the subject... There's a lot of work actually. I'm a lazy dork, I confess, but again, I'm not a superman. I need people's help :-)
- directeur
Hurry up! Save what you like/can save. I'm shutting down the Internetsz.
Oh! So you think you're smart? all the Internets are connected between them sprirtually. You just don't know. (And I'm editing my post!! gah!)
- directeur
Well, I actually shut down just FriendFeed for about an hour. CONVINCED? HEH? CONVINCED!!? :)
- directeur
I used to say, to people asking me what's my job, that I sell "air". I write code that people don't touch, smell or eat, yet they gladly pay me. But, the more I think about it, the more I think I should stop saying this. People who sell air (or let's say it like it is: farts) really exist.