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Bret Taylor to Bret's feed, FriendFeed News

You can now get a daily or weekly email digest for anybody's feed on FriendFeed. You'll get a daily or weekly email with the most popular posts from that person's feed. To get the email, click the "Email/IM" link at the top of anyone's feed, and select the "Best of day" or "Best of week" email option.

August 6 - Comment - Like - Share

(1)Bebekvegebelik, kang, HealingBrush and 249 other people liked this

You can see all of your email settings at http://friendfeed.com/setting... - Bret Taylor

37 more comments

Thanks Bret! :) - Matt Ruiz

Thanks to Kevin for doing a great design for what turned out to be a more complex set of UI options than we had originally anticipated, and thanks to Tudor for implementing the email backend. - Bret Taylor

Great! Thanks! Love FF! - Scott Monaco

I now get the FriendFeed Feedback posts as a Best of Day email so it doesn't fill up my feed, but I don't miss feedback. I also set up a "Best of Day" email for my "Technology people" friend list so I get a pretty good overview of tech news every day via email. - Bret Taylor

This is a really cool idea Bret, I wish you can make that an RSS feed option as well. I'd be much more likely to read summaries in RSS than in email. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Neat feature, but it's more focus on big shiney new features, while ignoring the glaring issues in need of polish in the site we currently have. - Matthew DeVries

Mark: http://friendfeed.com/bret... - Casey Muller

Very cool. I like how you give us the OPTION rather than sending a daily/weekly digest like other sites *cough* LinkedIn/Facebook *cough* - Johnny

Lovely. Thanks guys. - Mitchell Tsai

Casey: Thanks for the tip. What's the 7 before the "?" mean in the URL? The number of likes or replies needed to be included? - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

this is killer, the random influx of email during the day was kinda getting fail-ish. I love the daily digest. - Drew Lucas

Very cool! Any way to get archives of previous months? (especially helpful for those of us who leave the internet for weeks at a time...) - Mitchell Tsai

WOW. that's really helpful！ - K.D.

Looks like a great addition for those who are not embedded on the site. Nice intro. - Louis Gray

Cool! - Josh Haley

Just curious - at what time of the day will we get these emails ? Midnight US-Time, or will it respect our timezones ? - Ahsan Ali aka. Slick

Ahsan: it is somewhat random right now when the emails are sent, but we built in the backend capability to control what time they are sent, and we plan on exposing that control to users in the future. Right now, it is kind of random - sorry! - Bret Taylor

Thanks Bret - Ahsan Ali aka. Slick

Cool! can i get a daily or weekly email digest for the "Saved searches"? - 0M0M from email

Cool - Nimaa

This will be incredibly useful. Thanks to all involved in the design and execution. - Kathy Fitch

Nice addition! - Michael Fidler

But what exactly is "Best"? Is it anything that has a certain number of likes/comments? - Laura Norvig

@Bret LOL THAT WAS MY PROJECT! I will release it tomorrow. But you've also did it and killed my friendfeed application **sigh** But mine has multi-reporting weekly-daily-monthly at the same time and adjustable entry count! - Alp

@Bret please consolidate me or I won't code new apps with you api! :-) - Alp

Alp: we were not trying to withhold data. Later today the documentation will be updated to reflect the ability to obtain "Best of" for users. The feed id will be USERNAME/summary/N (similar to "Best of" for lists) - Benjamin Golub

Hi Ben, that is pretty funny, I tried that URL earlier today to see if it has been secretly released :) - Paul Kinlan

Bret: While Twitter struggle to keep their fail whale under control, you guys are developing stuff like this. Amazing - Thanks! - Jim Connolly

awesome feature, this will be highly useful for my corporate group ideas / content sharing; projects, etc.... THANK YOU :) - Susan Beebe

Great work. I especially like that it works on lists too. - Meryn Stol

my inbox might say different, but I like that :-) - Dobromir Hadzhiev

Wow, this is really neat! And it links into the idea I expressed earlier, re: reducing signup friction / enabling limited guest privileges. Imagine if I could embed one of my FF rooms on my personal web site, and enable people to subscribe to that feed by e-mail with just a couple of clicks... rather than saying "you can get e-mail notifications but you have to sign up for Friendfeed first." "sign up" -- though admirably lightweight on FF -- is still a huge barrier. - Adam Lasnik

Love it. - Zachary TG

is there a love button cause I dont like this option I LOVE this option..great work guys - (jeff)isageek

Three options I would like (1) Can I select "top 100" instead of "top 30"? (2) Could I select both "best of day" and "best of week"? (3) How about older timeperiods? I'd love to get an e-mail with stuff from last week or Mar 2009? Start & end dates? Anything to help me read FriendFeed off-line would be great since I spend long periods off-line at festivals (especially during summer time) or overseas. - Awesome job guys! - Mitchell Tsai

Great way to keep up with those you're most interested in; things you don't want to miss. - Diego Barros 

So this works on groups too, cool! But we still cannot see Best of for groups on the site on friends lists. :-( I have several friends lists that include just groups and when I select to view the best of the page it's empty (even though if I got to the individual best of for those groups there are entries there). - Kol Tregaskes

does anyone know of a web service that can do this? (I'm thinking weekly email updates of my favorite feeds/people) I don't think there's anything like friendfeed .. - 'Like' robot (frɐnc)

Adewale Oshineye

Is a Perfect Storm Forming For Distributed Social Networking? - http://www.readwriteweb.com/archive...

August 11 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

Nick Mathew and Jason Dettbarn liked this

"But many of us may decide not to trust them anymore, and to use the tools that are becoming available to build and host our own systems of communication. People who control their own systems of communication can innovate on them outside the boundaries of the financial interests of big communication companies and we can all benefit from those innovations" - Adewale Oshineye

Alp

Pepsi vs Coca-Cola (via http://friendfeed.com/mohac...) #pepsi #cocacola

August 7 - Comment - Like - Share

Andre Pope, Tony Long, Tolga Aşk and 47 other people liked this

folks, it is obvious. - Alp

20 more comments

Coke had it right from the start, so why change? - Cathy Harrison

Suggest reading this as a follow-up :) http://www.underconsideration.com/brandne... - Mo Kargas

coke will never die - Rachael Depp

This is obviously a fake. The truth is : http://img196.imageshack.us/img196... - Pierre-Olivier Dybman

I agree with Pierre. Coke may have majority market share but Coke has definitely tried to change things up a few times - Johnny

I am amazed. I am so Diet Coke but i have noticed many of my favorite restaurants changing to Pepsi. Oh no! - Janaree Nore

Oh Pierre, thanks for letting us know the thruth. - Alp

so ... pepsi? lol. no seriously i like dr.pepper best - Logan Lindquist

Thanks Pierre, I was just about to mention the several Coke logo changes in my lifetime. - Admiral Anika

I agree with Pierre, I was trying to find something like that and you found it already. I remember they even had it in wiki but now when I went there I couldn't find it, maybe Coca-cola have started a new campaign. lol. - Mahmood Padura

The end logos say 2008, but the pepsi one at least didn't come out until only a couple months ago, so both are technically wrong. - Raymond

The only thing that Pepsi has ever made that was worth a damn was Mt Dew. The rest tasted like ass in can on a warm day :D - Tony C from fftogo

Pierre++ . And for Pepsi, I liked the 73-era logo the most. - Andrew C

There is a version far more better: Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi, Revised Edition - http://www.underconsideration.com/brandne... - Amílcar Tavares

Amilcar, Pierre linked that image above. - Admiral Anika

Pepsi'nin son logosu biraz itici geldi bana - Eray Alakese

Thanks Anika. My mistake. - Amílcar Tavares

+ Pepsi logo from 2015 http://bttf.wikia.com/wiki... - Florent

Bir tarafta ajda pekkan bir tarafta ananem:) - Umut ÜNLÜ

Maybe not 100% accurate, but the concept has validity. Nice post! - Tony Long

Tout change, tout évolue. Seuls les imbéciles ne changent pas. - Reloj

Robert Scoble

I am actually VERY excited about FriendFeed going to Facebook. This is a HUGE win for both companies! More later.

August 10 from iPhone - Comment - Like - Share

Nicholas James, Eric Standlee, Rene Silva and 73 other people liked this

+1 (without the more later ;) - Orli Yakuel

71 more comments

Big news. - phil baumann

Oh, I can't wait to hear how this shakes out... - Travis Tasset

With any luck FB will rework the UI to make it more friendly and it can gain some market - James

Absolutely. Great deal all around. Congrats to everyone involved. - Tom Guarriello

If Facebook uses the FriendFeed interface, then I would agree it is a great idea. - Rob Diana

I'm hoping for better, faster feature development. - Jeff Harbert

yes, definitely win-win - Wolfgang Heinrich

huge win for both companies ?? is it a win for the FF community ?? who comes first ?? the business or the users ?? I bet you within 6 months, I wont be using FF as much as I use it now !! - Peter Dawson

i agree - facebook has been getting on my good list this past year and I just love friendfeed. - Chris Jackson

Just as I re-dedicate myself to using FF, FB acquires them. If FB can integrate FF's deep feature set, it would be a win-win-win. - Jim Duncan

True or false: Facebook needs FriendFeed more than FriendFeed needs Facebook. - Joel Zehring

I'm excited too, but at the same time I'm afraid facebook may make some wrong moves with their acquisition. We've seen this happen before. - Steven (optionshiftk)

this is not a good day for Twitter.... - Giorgio

I fully expect to just see FriendFeed as a separate entity to go away with its technology being absorbed by Facebook. - Mike Flynn

Very True. - Steven (optionshiftk)

Joel: Absolutely true. - Adam Reyher

I caught Robert's reaction to the news on my iPhone: http://www.youtube.com/watch... - Robert J Taylor from iPhone

If this makes it so I have one LESS place to go to follow my social media, then it will be great. I already have too many different places with different people and different conversations for differ purposes that overlap and make it unnecessarily complicated. - David Rondeau

FF > FB? not great, actually. diversity is better than monopoly. and i'm concerned about aggregation features getting deprecated (in the name of progress and chrossing the chasm and all that jazz.. of course ;) - jacek

This is a IP, technology and talent grab.. I don't see the 2 sites being consolidated - Dave Senior

It may be a big win for both companies but is likely a big lose for FF users. - Brian Sullivan

FriendFeed functionality on Facebook would be nice. The reverse, not so much. They're trying to address two entirely separate purposes and as such, need to remain completely separate. - Adam Reyher

I hope Facebook turns into FriendFeed. That would be great! - Wo

I'd really love to see the real-time threaded conversation feature of friendfeed be adopted by facebook. - Steven (optionshiftk)

Looking forward to your analysis Robert - Ken Seto

I can see development of FF slowing down as the team brings the tech over to Facebook - Dave Senior

Indeed, Brian. FF devotees should be pissed over this. I can't believe Facebook will do anything but carve out a few choice pieces of FF meat - likely making them even more Twitterish - and dump the rest. FF will be gone within six months. - Shéa Bennett

This is a huge win for both companies, and a huge fail for every net surfer. - TiTi

yeah it may not be that bad. maybe i'm exaggerating. - Edgar Rodríguez

Well, I think the FF team can certainly help the Facebook UI. But, all I take away from this is FF going away. - Yolanda

One thing to consider is this: If we have "trusted" the FriendFeed people not to screw things up, hopefully we can trust them to make sure they're still in control in the terms of the acquisition. - Adam Reyher

Yes, Robert. Like TiTi said, huge win for both companies, huge fail for the people who like FriendFeed. "Welcome to FaceFeed! Would you like to take a quiz?" - Zach Flauaus

I think this is definitely a huge win for both but maybe not for the users. I think it could be good or bad for users but I hope that Facebook will allow FriendFeed to continue and push the envelope with emerging technologies. I imagine this is Facebook and FriendFeed teaming up against Twitter. - Brandon Titus

.-( Good for Friendfeed, but horrible for people that like friendfeed and hate facebook &their UI or where FB is blocked - Del_

may be - Ahmet Soyata

It's good timing. FF uniques fell almost 10% in July. - Shéa Bennett

this is bad news for twitter, me thinks. - Brian Ries

Absolutely, Robert. Its a very good tech acquisition for Facebook, they get a great team with a well developed technology stack. It lets the FriendFeed founders get a good, early exit. - DGentry

I hope so. I know my initial reaction was not as negative as most of the others I'm seeing in my stream. Maybe I'm just being naive. - Herb Hernandez

Hopefully this means the power of friendfeed will be utilized. Awesome news - Marcus

This is why I follow Mr. Scoble, yes that is Mr. Scoble :) always has his fingers in the breaking news. - dennis podgorski

I'm fired up about this union between FriendFeed and Facebook. With the exception of my social media group, I've used FriendFeed primarily as an aggregator--despite it's being my favorite GUI and functionality. I think this is going to bring the substance to FriendFeed that it's been missing. Very exciting! - Jim W

I have a hard time drawing my line of Public v Personal. I use Twitter & FriendFeed for public use and I use Facebook for private use. I have not even once made a status update on Facebook. I am not sure I want FriendFeed on Facebook. I am intrigued about the possibilities of integration but I am not sure I will adopt. - thestaticfrost

The power of FF will be used -- but it won't be pretty and won't be for good. - Brian Sullivan

I have to agree with Robert on this. I think this is likely to be a great deal moving forward. I'm excited about it, and happy for the FriendFeed crew. They've done an AWESOME job. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

I am not as excited about this. I don^t like Facebook as much - nchenga

i think this is going to add more value to Facebook - Lee Kent

concur robert - mike "glemak" dunn

It certainly makes sense, and I agree that it adds value to FF. I wonder how many of the 250 million users of FF will be using it in its current form. - courtney benson

Just surprised this didn't happen earlier. Facebook has been mimicking FriendFeed's functionality for a while now. Nice that FF is finally getting paid for their R&D efforts. - Aaron Strout

I think this will make me drop friendfeed or facebook - Nicolai Rygh

Please explain - this may be win for Friendfeed - but as far as us the users/fans... we're the big losers in this right? I really really can't stand Facebook :-( Help us have hope... - Jannifer @wordsforliving

ruination. - Joe Silence

I will wait and see approach @ all - polou/indigo_bow

here is the explanation, FF have t sell the soonerr, better then laterr, they choose the right momment, wave is there and it is a big promise - abdellah

when Google start wave, they surely shown their non desire to acquir FF it was implicite - abdellah

All Your Feeds Are Belong To Us - Ian Tindale

I'm hoping for the best. - Jim Connolly

The idea here is growing on me. I see the business case...I'm still not sure as to the impact on Twitter and different users who prefer one tool over another and/or use the two differently. - Derek Shanahan

I'm trying to defer my pessimism...but I feel an "I Want Sandy"-type fail in the wings. As for FF needing to sell, that wasn't the case; the founders had the money to keep it going for as long as they wanted, basically. We'll see, I suppose. We'll see. - Ken Kennedy

This is really interesting. This will bring a bigger pool of social media services to people. As it is now, regular folks don't venture further than Facebook, with this acquisition, many will realize that there is a plethora of great other services and social media websites that they can engage in. - Rami Taibah

Ya know when you get a bad feeling about something - I have one about this deal. Can't put my finger on it, but it don't feel right. - Jim Connolly

FriendFeed now to get BIGGER than Twitter? - Jim Connolly

"when Google start wave, they surely shown their non desire to acquir FF it was implicite" - I think that probably covers it. - John Craft

Isn't this the kind of daring move that Yahoo should have made? - Andrew Warner

Seems like a HUGE win for Facebook. Not so sure for the future of FF, though. - Chris Wood

is there a dislike button anywhere? I did exactly the opposite FB never appealed, FF rocked... - Valeria Maltoni

FriendFeed will not be the same place, in terms of the community, but this keeps friendfeed around for a while. Awesome! Where's Arrington? Did he reopen his account? - Benjamin Taylor

Whatever FB and FF does, don't tell Oprah... That's a sign it's over.. - Timothy Latz

FF isn't blocked at work, FB is. FF usefulness would nose-dive for me if blocked. - Brett Veenstra

Brett: this is likely to pave the way for more client applications for Facebook, which will not be blocked at work. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

vijay

Kevin Fox, if you're reading this ...

August 9 - Comment - Like - Share

'Like' robot (frɐnc), Alfredo, Peter Dawson and 59 other people liked this

the idiots in that thread are wrong. Their first FAIL is comparing FF and twitter; they are incapable of thinking things through. Their second FAIL is this "FF UI sux. I use only 10% of the features." uh? that's like me saying MS Excel sux cause I have no idea how to use auto-filters or VB macros or the gazillion other features I haven't run into yet. FAIL! I wouldn't be surprised if said people demanded their money back when they couldn't squeeze the last ounces of toothpaste from the tube. Third FAIL is stuff like this - "Did you know you can click it twice and get a popout menu?" Power users find it; casual users don't need it. End of Story. Fourth FAIL is this - " It violates all the rules of good design." GTFO. "good design" is subjective; there are no rules for it. Whatever works becomes good design. Take a look at your keyboard layout if you need confirmation of this. Keep pointless, meaningless and leads-nowhere comments like this to yourself. Thanks. What FF needs is, to do... more... - vijay

28 more comments

If FF made things more obvious or cluttered, everybody would start complaining about "complexity". There's so much to FF and so little space. I think they've done a _great_ Job. And for those who think they can do better, give it a shot - you've got the API ! - Ahsan Ali aka. Slick

++Ahsan. FF is like the MS Office of the web. 90% of the users only need to know open-copy-paste-save-print. FF is the same and does that well. The rest are power users and can figure things out. - vijay

Good counterpoint to the other thread. - Manuel Mas

I've just seen this again and again- people who don't know how to use FF writing bad reviews.When will the madness stop.... - anna sauce

Know what's funny? Most people in that other thread won't even see this because you're not Robert. - Admiral Anika

I completely agree with you vijay. It's always amusing to hear non-designers imperiously declare that designers with a decade or more of professional design experience from working on world class applications have violated all the rules of good design. People complained a lot about Gmail too. I love Kevin Fox UIs and I have a hunch he has a pretty thick skin and a tendency to believe his own eyes, experience and testing over unsubstantiated opinions. - Jason Wehmhoener

I don't really care if they notice this thread or not Anika. :D Like anna said, the level of shit being throw around in that thread drove me to rant. : ) - vijay

Will Scoble see this and will he respond is a question though. - Brian Sullivan

Scoble Schmoble. Noise and Fury. Blah blah blah. - Jason Wehmhoener

I must admit design issues/comments/biases aside -- Scoble seemed to have made an uncharacteristic and unwarranted personal attack on Kevin Fox in that post. - Brian Sullivan

It's definitely a case of Monday morning quarterbacking. Does Scoble have access to the data Kevin has access to? I think not. - Jason Wehmhoener

You know what? it doesn't matter if Scoble sees this or not. I don't know if Kevin Fox saw the other thread or not, and whether he answered or not, but I trust the good designer he is, to trust data from tests, statistics and overall use rather than an opinion made by a single user, be it Scoble. - directeur

Yes, that's exactly it directeur. - Jason Wehmhoener

Brian, it does sound odd that he just went out on the personal attack. Perhaps it's a raw point with him? Of anyone else I'd think they were being sensational to get follows. - anna sauce

hear hear - Thomas Power

Thanks for this post Vijay, and everyone else for the comments. The funny thing is that I haven't seen the conversation this one is referring to, but now I suppose I'd better go search for it. I'll put my thick skin on first. ;-) - Kevin Fox

Yeah, Kevin, your UI sucks...it can't tell the difference between base 10 gigabytes and base 8...Seriously though, I like what you and the rest of the friendfeed team have done, a lot. I have the highest praise for this product...although it would be nice if I could add an existing thread to any room without resharing it. I hope you are working on that. :) And don't mind my brother, he's a bit nutty. - Alex Scoble

I think Robert was just trying out a new word he learned to see how it worked. Kevin did a good job with the other end of that conversation. Too bad about all the stuff in between though. Public conversations can be educational for the crowd if carried out in a respectful manner, but the tone was set pretty low when he opened the thread and it devolved from there. - Jason Wehmhoener

I liked this thread because I want to see criticism and I also want my audience to see the other side too via Friend of a Friend. Plus, you all should see how Kevin Fox answered me. Class. All the way. - Robert Scoble

I still say hide needs to be more intuitive :) - Bwana ☠

my main thing is the position of the comment box (we've been over this I'm sure...) - Evan Travers

And it's ok to criticize a service and love it at the same time. </former QA tester> - Bwana ☠

nah, I'm not saying don't criticize, Bwana. I do that myself and anyone who's seen me around Google Wave threads knows that. I'm just saying, criticize for the right reasons. The post is a little on the "angry" side but that's cause you don't call some out and then offer or watch others offer lame reasons. There better be a good reason if you're going to nail someone to the cross. - vijay

And while people have been laying the blame on the Scoble (lol!), I'm actually pissed off more, at some of the commentors who came in from their high perch on twitter to offer their "pearls of wisdom". Comparing Twitter to FF itself is a fail; that's like comparing SMS with Conference Calls. Not the same. Pisses me off when I see that happen. - vijay

vijay: comparing twitter to FF has merit if you believe FF must expand user base to survive. Apples & oranges, but twitter has gained mass acceptance and the largest majority (21+%) of those users hit the web interface to tweet, according to the latest http://twitstat.com/ (more if you disregard twitterfeed's %). Sometimes we are quick to disregard the web interface because of the API, but joe user is more inclined to use the web. New users must find FF's UI to be sticky & instantly familiar. - Kevin Donahue

Kevin, you can compare apples and oranges all you want but you cannot get someone who wants an orange to eat an apple (nor use orange instead of apple in an apple pie). Both services do entirely different things. Like I said in my first comment, FB is comparable to FF. - vijay

I totally agree, Vijay. FF is one of my go-to places when I want an example of good UI design. Not really gorgeous in looks but great layered, user-centric design. - Vinay | विनय

Twitter is far from reaching mass acceptance. Facebook has mass acceptance, Twitter does not. And you want to talk about a UI mess? Facebook is it, yet it's extremely popular. - Alex Scoble

Furthermore, Twitter has fewer features than FF, and therefore it can stay simple (i.e stupid). FF has more features, and needs to make good use of the limited space it has. - Ahsan Ali aka. Slick from IM

Robert Scoble

Why FriendFeed's designer, Kevin Fox, is to blame for FriendFeed being too difficult to use: he f**ks with affordances. (UPDATE: he answers me toward the end of the comments with a GREAT set of answers).

August 9 - Comments disabled - Like - Share

29travels, Lucas, FFTornado and 138 other people liked this

Affordances. They are important. What does that mean? A door knob "affords" being turned. It almost demands it. Yet FriendFeed is screwing with things like links. Here, click on "hide." That should just hide one item, right? That's the affordance. Yet you'll soon find there's a whole world stuck under that little link. You can hide Tweets. You can hide me. You can hide all sorts of stuff. - Robert Scoble

324 more comments

Is it difficult to use? - Manuel Mas

Hmm.. is it difficult to use?! - Orli Yakuel

It's a peace of cake - Mark

i heard larry wall once say about perl "make simple things simple, and hard things possible"... the simple things are definitely *not* simple in ff, increasing the learning curve right at the start... i rekon if they fix that... they have it made! :) - simran

Ooooo. One does not often see Robert swear. He's really worked up about it. Care to respond Kevin?? - Roberto Bonini from iPhone

#2 Look at the time stamp. Did you know that's also a link? Where's the affordance? Not there. Yet did you know you can click that and that is your permalink? Many people have trouble figuring this out. But here's an ultra affordance killer. Did you know you can click it twice and get a popout menu? Not many people do. Kevin has overloaded links with too many features and he has broken the affordances of what links usually do. - Robert Scoble

Orli: actually, yes, it's difficult to use. - Robert Scoble

Scoble: You may be right now that I read what you had to say. I don't think there is a proper FAQ/guide for all the little details hidden in FF. - Manuel Mas

And noses were designed to support eye glasses. - Todd Hoff

well I just managed to wipe out my entire friend feed account when I was trying to add a new one for a different twitter account - NW Angel

I agree - too many possible results from a given action. Manuel, no one reads FAQs and if you need to, the app is DOA - Sameer

Well, I don't see it as difficult to use. Its more that there are many things in here hidden that would aid users if there were more upfront. - Manuel Mas

Most of us get basic functionality out of the site with how things are at the moment. - Manuel Mas

Look at this complaint too about FriendFeed being difficult to figure out: http://twitter.com/sethgol... Seth Goldstein runs a tech company. He's a geek. Adverse to more pain than a lot of us. Yet he can't figure out how to delete a list. He's not the only one to tell me that FriendFeed is too difficult to figure out. FriendFeed still needs a design rethink to make these issues go away. - Robert Scoble

Sameer: Agree. - Manuel Mas

Valid points, Robert, but a complex interface, once learned, becomes simple, too - although that's not the best design philosophy for a massively public website. - Aaman (Clone of FF)

Its the visual impact of seeing too many options even if you dont use them. V. overwhelming for the try and buy new comer - Sameer

I think it is one of the worst UIs on the web today. Which is why I hardly use it. It violates all the rules of good design. Stuff is not obvious, it is not easy and it is not even quickly learn-able. I've spent years in product management and really, this is one of the worst. - Shripriya

I think the issue here is Discoverability. There are a lot of little hidden secrets to FriendFeed that become obvious only after you've figured them out. They're not very obvious on their own. Personally, it doesn't bother me but that's because I know it. If I were a new user, I'd be at a loss as well. It seems to me that the primary design goal at FriendFeed is a minimal UI (perhaps at all costs). - Akiva Moskovitz

Roberto: I can't think of another web app that messes with link affordances the way that FriendFeed does. Can you think of one? - Robert Scoble

People who figure out how to use a system are often the last ones to recognize how difficult it is to use. It's a self selection thing. - Ken Sheppardson

But affordances are subjective and reliant on the end-user. Take the @ sign or hashtags for instance. Unless you're talking about Apple, it's hard to blame a designer for affordance rule enforcement. - Sam Harrelson

There is a balance with "affordances" though -- if you have a very complex set of features you could have a knob/button/link for every feature but that would not work either - Brian Sullivan

@Robert, do you think FF need More Icon? - abdellah

Sam: we've all clicked on hundreds of thousands of links. We all have an idea of what happens when you click a link. - Robert Scoble

Sam, the @sign in Twitter was emergent - something users created. - Sameer

Sure, but I've seen lots of platforms use the date function as a permalink enabler. - Sam Harrelson

Manuel, agree. Robert, I wouldn't say it's difficult, but confusing (or useless sometimes). I'm not sure it's a design problem though. - Orli Yakuel

abellah: an icon is probably better than a link, yes. I know that Kevin (from an interview I did with him more than a year ago) likes sparse UIs. He is of the school that you just watch where people trip over themselves and then build UI for that. I think that's smart, but I wish that FriendFeed would iterate its UI faster to pave paths where people are having troubles. - Robert Scoble

Robert, sorry, but you're late on this trend too :) First, being not to follow everyone on Twitter. FF ui has always been terrible. Most tech people I know don't understand how to use it. And I think I use less than 10% of the available features. - Shripriya

I like FriendFeed as it is. It's obviously a power users tool as is, but then I wouldn't want it stupid simple reminiscent of installing a Windows OS. There just needs to be a decent screencast on the home page explaining all the features. No one reads FAQs these days. Video Game designers just turn the first level into a tutorial for 99% who won't read the manual and I don't mind. Maybe FF needs a tutorial when you first sign up? - CannonGod

Think about the affordances of FF and compare them with Twitter. Then compare the relative effectiveness of desktop / mobile applications developed for both. There is not a one good app for FriendFeed. This is because of the MANY "extra shite" links and an overly complex API, not because of popularity differences in the services. - Michael Owens from iPhone

Holy shit this item is already in Google: http://www.google.com/search... -- Google is going real time! - Robert Scoble

Great designs shouldn't need tutorials. - Manuel Mas

@Sameer right, but we created the @ sign to do a certain feature. Folks on identi.ca have their own signifiers. That will inevitably happen here as well as folks grow comfortable with this platform. - Sam Harrelson

Shripriya - I think most people who come back dont find it confusion. Its the first timers that run away - and thats FFs biggest problem. - Sameer

Needless to say, we all love Friendfeed, but we also need a Greasemonkey script to learn which service was posting into the time-line, and the entire issue of groups/rooms really needs a rethink because it's so hard to find any, especially If you're a newcomer.. - Nir Ben Yona

Engagement is deep; Adoption is sparce. - Sameer

TV ads (at least in australia) are considered misleading if "a person of slightly less than average intelligence" misinterprets them... i think you will find that it takes "smart techies" a while to figure out the nuances of ff, not saying everything should be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator, but the defaults that way would give everyone a great start... especially when introducing innovative stuff (like "the live web") :) - simran

Scoble: That Google real time thing is even more impressive than this discussion! - Manuel Mas

Manuel - Yes. I like to say that if you need to write a manual for your product, it's too complicated. - Jeff Harbert

Shripriya: I've been complaining about this stuff both in public and in private for a long time. And I wasn't behind in following everyone on Twitter. Come and study how I use FriendFeed to follow small groups of people closely, especially for Twitter. - Robert Scoble

Wow, this did get into Google fast. - phil baumann

Robert: Holy shit, that's impressive - http://www.google.com/search... - sod Twitter I say, if you're in marketing then you need to get on FriendFeed for instant Google indexing of a subject! - CannonGod

@Manuel there will be always a need to manual and tutorial, people have to sell or to promote so event if you have to explain a basic evidence, write a document make it in pdf format, sell it or share it, but for the sake of simplicity please never ever do FB style document. - abdellah

UI design is a very difficult thing to do because so many people have different ways they use things. However, I do agree with you Robert that FF does need a redesign to make more of the feature more user-intuitive. - Jack Wilson, K4SAC

Sameer - I've been back many times, I still barely use it. All the stuff Robert mentions, I had no clue. And its not worth my the time investment. - Shripriya

i would expect to see the tweet before this one.. http://www.google.com/search... - Orli Yakuel

Robert - the twitter thing (ie. unsubscribing and not following everyone) was a bit of a joke. But on FF, you are the biggest proponent. If you can't get them to change, no one can. - Shripriya

Phil: THIS THREAD IS NOW ABOUT GOOGLE REAL-TIME INDEXING! XD - CannonGod

Agree Sam, but Twitter nor identi.ca expose a gazillion features in the core app.. Its about managing the "first impression is the lasting impression" thing - Sameer

Here's the interview I did with Kevin last year: http://qik.com/video/73962 Shripriya: yeah, I keep hearing that from other people I try to evangelize FriendFeed to. One guy, who is a tech advisor to celebrities in Hollywood told me they will never use it because it's too hard to figure out and because there aren't good mobile clients for it, like there are for Twitter. - Robert Scoble

Jake - :) - phil baumann

@Sameer That's true for a certain demographic, but I look at sites my 8th graders frequent often and I have no idea how they put up with the features. Or take an xBox 360 controller... lots of buttons that do way too many things for my old 30 year-old mind, but my students find it intuitive. - Sam Harrelson

http://scobleizer.com/2008... - 18 months ago you said their UI was brilliant :) - Mark

Shripriya- thats ok. Plenty of people I personally know that have signed up for Twitter and never come back because they couldn't find a use case. No app is for everyone. Its about appealing to a large number of folks that see relevance. - Sameer

Wow, not only is this indexed in Google, but the Likes are getting indexed as well. Don't see the comments indexed yet, tho. - Sam Harrelson

Maybe FF will always be the power aggregation tool online that only a few use. But is the "few" large enough? I wonder. - Shripriya

47 emails in my gmail inbox already from this thread (as i commented and said follow updates on twitter)... surely they can batch them at least by the minute... after all... email isn't realtime :) - simran

Search results for "I don't get FriendFeed" - http://friendfeed.com/search... - phil baumann

Mark: you took me out of context. I said it both sucks AND is brilliant. That is true. Even today. - Robert Scoble

@Robert, can I add that UI is so clean that functionality are just a part of the design, they need to make more light on them (hey they are all blue link the same sized blue link) :) - abdellah

The missing mobile client certainly is a downer. I love a lot about FriendFeed, but lack of a *good* mobile client, and other minor annoyances may keep me from staying here. Sure I know I will come back from time to time (and I haven't left yet), but not sure I can live here on a daily basis like I can with Twitter because of the great clients for my desktop and phone, like TweetDeck. - Timothy Federwitz

Sam, the feature laden apps you mention that your students use, have intent built in them. The purpose is known before you came. XBox = don't do homework. Hell, Id learn how to use very button too :) - Sameer

I think FF is a different beast altogether and not as easy to create a mobile app for, based solely on service functionality and what we actually do here. - Manuel Mas

Tim: that's why I like the IM integration wtih GTalk. Gets around the site UI and works great on the mobile as well. - Sam Harrelson from IM

Scoble: I think this was a pretty rude way of giving your feedback. Why are you being so provocative lately? - Eric Florenzano from iPhone

difficult for who? the basics are easy....getting the most out of all the tools available is a different story but at least the tools are there. Not so in twitter - Craig Shipp

Sameer: Yep, good point. Similarly, I see FriendFeed having a very useful apparatus in my work/personal flow as a news/twitter/info client. I mostly use it via IM but also find the site pretty intuitive for how I use it and prefer it over Twitter, etc. - Sam Harrelson from IM

Eric: because no one engages unless you make a strong point and I sure wish Kevin would fix this stuff so I can evangelize FriendFeed better. - Robert Scoble

Craig: I have shown FriendFeed to many hundreds of people over the past year and I keep getting this complaint over and over. - Robert Scoble

I disagree with that approach Robert. A strong point is not always necessary. Most times it's a turn off and sets the wrong tone. Sure you get a lively discussion, but half of it is trying to explain you're not reallllly upset about it. - Bwana ☠

It's fine to complain but I don't see any useful suggestions here from Robert or any other commenters. A problem without a proposed solution is essentially a whine. - Brian Sullivan

Bwana: we've been complaining about these issues for more than a year. And I am upset about it. It keeps me from having a good time evangelizing FriendFeed. Just search here for how many people don't get FriendFeed. And those are the ones who'll tell you in public. - Robert Scoble

Just reading this, I have learned 4 things I DID NOT KNOW about friendfeed functionality. - Liza

Back again, to say FF still isn't cool! - K.N. Ajit Narayan

Robert: I couldn't disagree more. Please don't fall into that Arrington/Loren Feldman trap. People engage in a more constructive way when the topic is interesting. Just look at Leo's shows for proof that I'm right. - Eric Florenzano from iPhone

I didn't say this wasn't a case for a strong point, I'm simply stating it's not always necessary per your statement "no one engages unless you make a strong point" - Bwana ☠

Liza: that's another reason I did it in a strong way. I knew it would get engagement. WHen you get engagement your item gets spread to more and more people and that helps out the community overall. - Robert Scoble

Timestamp? Click, double click? Permalink? I wish I knew all of this before. - Liza

Ultimately the best thing to happen to FriendFeed would be the mass proliferation of 3rd party apps that offer a better user experience overall. Let the market sort out best functional IxD. How many highly active Twitter users use Twitter.com regularly? Not many, because there are several Twitter apps that afford a more active Twitter experience. Without them, Twitter would be news from 2006. - Laura Scott (@lauras)

I disagree. I came here because I agree with the point (as I stated in another thread), not because of the strongness. You may attract certain types with that, but not moi. - Bwana ☠

I also show twitter and friendfeed to a lot of new Internet users and they get confused easily. I think the only solution is to show one simple process and then after they master that for a week or so then show them another feature. - Craig Shipp

The best level of engagement that I've seen regarding Leo Laporte is when Arrington called him out openly and there was the big fuss of him getting thrown off the show. Just saying. - Michael Owens from iPhone

Eric: OK, heard and understood. But name another designer who does stuff with links that Kevin does. That needs to be pointed out strongly, I think. But then I get crazy about design, especially when people keep telling me over and over that FriendFeed is too hard to use and figure out. Even Liza, who has been here a lot, didn't know all that stuff was "hidden" under the affordance of the link. - Robert Scoble

Robert - I appreciate your sharing this info, but it feels strange that all of this seems like a secret. Intention is bizarre. - Liza

So Robert, do you really think Kevin and FF are actively ignoring this issue? - Bwana ☠

Bwana: yes. Why? Because it's been like this for 18 months. - Robert Scoble

As a user, I do feel like it is intentionally hidden. - Liza

Interesting - Bwana ☠

It isn't about ignoring. It's about continuance. These affordances have been here since FF started. - Michael Owens from iPhone

Michael: and they f**k with the affordances that everyone has learned on EVERY OTHER WEB SITE. This is why I used strong language. - Robert Scoble

Oh, and the "new ui" upgrade that happened a while back did nothing but add to the hidden complexity - Michael Owens from iPhone

Robert, The UI's difficulty is best expressed in comment threads with a huge number of comments, such as yours - http://friendfeed.com/bitchfe... - Aaman (Clone of FF)

And I am tech savvy, not an idiot, but the argument is, oh, you just aren't enough of a techie to get it. - Liza

I think the beauty of friendfeed is the fact that it can be used as a very basic tool but also has the power to do much more in the right hands - Craig Shipp

Who are the right hands? - Liza

And once these get fixed, the real thing that people can't figure out is what is new. On every other website there's an affordance for that. Even in SimplyTweet new Tweets are green. Quick, figure out what is new here that you haven't seen from the last time you were here. You can't. - Robert Scoble

Robert speaks truth. - Bwana ☠

Craig: That's the biggest copout I've ever heard. Maybe Kevin needs to go bak and read "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug. - Michael Owens from iPhone

Liza: people like me who click on everything looking for secret features. :-) - Robert Scoble

Don't Make Me Think ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...) by Steve Krug may be the kind of design you are looking for. - Todd Hoff

@Todd: great minds think alike - Michael Owens from iPhone

Robert: but even Wordpress.com uses the date affordance as a permalink. http://bit.ly/Dwnm6 I understand the concerns about the mass of feature clarity here, but I don't see that particular date/link function as a standard bearer. - Sam Harrelson from IM

Scoble: OK point taken. So let's make this constructive: what should they do to fix it? For the timestamp, my suggestion is to make it bluer and underlined--which everyone associates with links. Do you agree? How can they fix the hide functionality, though? I'm struggling to think of a way. - Eric Florenzano from iPhone

Liza: I found a lot of bugs in WIndows 95 by unplugging my mouse and trying to use the entire UI via the keyboard. But then I'm weird. Most people will never try anything. In fact, Google's own research shows that fewer than 1% will click on "advanced search." These weird affordances are even harder than THAT to figure out. - Robert Scoble

So if this doesn't change, FF may not get as wide of an adoption that it deserves. Hide, permalinks, and little things make a huge difference. The technology is too good for this to be its downfall. - Bwana ☠

Not having older items shaded or otherwise marked as old does effectively contribute to noise. - phil baumann

I'm not saying friendfeed can't be made better. I'm just saying it can be used from a basic level with little training. - Craig Shipp

I was accused of working for Friendfeed at an event 2 nights ago, for being an evangelist, and I still know very little about the functionality. AND I do like to think, I do click on a lot, but I also appreciate the intention of inclusion. - Liza

Eric: I would NOT put two hidden features under one link. They need a tab of "customizations and secret features" and put all that stuff there. - Robert Scoble

I'm not sure it's ever going to change at this point... which is sad - Bwana ☠

Liza: everyone knows I'm so excited about FriendFeed that they whine when I don't bring it up. Seriously. It's funny. - Robert Scoble

Whoops sorry Michael, didn't see yours. But it is a good book. Affordances is a bit abstract. He does a good job making the idea concrete. - Todd Hoff

what social site is better? - Craig Shipp

Twitter made a big improvement with contextual menu, such may add a value in FF too. - abdellah

Craig: define better. Twitter is easier. Facebook has more hooks and more users. - Robert Scoble

Which social site has the better UI? - Bwana ☠

Bwana: which is why I used strong language. - Robert Scoble

Until FB and twitter update in real time they aren't even in the game as far as I'm concerned - Craig Shipp

Robert: Twitter has the best UI? - K.N. Ajit Narayan

better UI!! ask myspace ugly by purpose. - abdellah

The problem is w/o knowing the affordances, Newbies create too much noise, feel embarassed and retreat - felt that but did not retreat - Liza

Facebook used to have a great UI imho. It's changed so much, now I can't find anything - Bwana ☠

FF has the better UI would be my guess. But better is such a subjective word. - Brian Sullivan

K.N. define "best." It's certainly easier to understand than FriendFeed is. Especially if you use a great client like SimplyTweet on my iPhone or Seesmic on my desktop. - Robert Scoble

Scoble: I'm not sure about the tab idea. It would add a lot of visual load on ever pageview. Instead, I'm thinking maybe if hide was a hover dropdown. When you hover over it, it says "Hide just this item", and "Hide all items like these" so that you know what you're getting into. This could work just like the top subnavigation items in many websites, which people are familiar with. Thoughts? - Eric Florenzano

Agree Twitter's UI is great - was in a studygroup of power users - most of us use web interface with multiple browsers rather than Tweetdeck, b/c simplicity is preferred. - Liza

Eric: this is why I'm not a UI designer. I like your solution better. - Robert Scoble

Hover is an evil thing in a real-time interface - Bwana ☠

I may repeat it but contextuel menu, yes do it well, that all , FF have to do that , twitter have done it. - abdellah

i hate chasing links - Bwana ☠

Bwana: Ahh yeah, good point. Maybe it would have to pause realtime (considering you are actually doing an action) - Eric Florenzano

Robert: Was talking about Twitter, the site...It's really easy to work with, provided you are not following too many people.. - K.N. Ajit Narayan

On FF you can type in the box and hit enter. How difficult is that? - Craig Shipp

Yeah Eric, it would have to - Bwana ☠

Even this thread is hard to read. No ability to specifically reply etc. Another reason I rarely visit. - Shripriya

FF used to pause real time whenever you your cursor was over a posting or its comments-- somehow that feature got removed. - Brian Sullivan

Basically, Robert, you're saying that FF is too clever for its own good. - Mistletoe Glen

Shripiya: This conversation will definitely stink unless you find the hidden permalink - Bwana ☠

lisa, that's one thing and four words :) - Craig Shipp

Which supports Robert's argument - Bwana ☠

I don't know if I will be able to handle a better FF - Craig Shipp

I went to grab a glass of water, and have no clue what is going on now - see what I mean? - Liza

@Craig Oh for sure you can remember the alpha version and when beta come. - abdellah

Maybe using IM is best, don't know, but, for now, I find it labor intensive vs. Twitter. I like BOTH, and I will continue to use BOTH, but that does not mean there are not simple fixes to improve the UI. - Liza

@liza no you know for sure what is going on , you know that this thread is about "....", you remmeber what you have said before, you remember the person for whome you talked so for sure you know were you are at the discussion. - abdellah

It would be nice to see some of the FF team on this discussion, Kevin Fox in particular. - phil baumann

I want to reply to indiv comments, it is impossible unless I say @robert or HEY BWANA, that is silly, crappy design. Am I missing something? Plus, everyone calls me LISA not LIZA, so I can hardly answer the questions directed at me without looking for both. - Liza

Robert should have cc'd the FriendFeed feedback room - Bwana ☠

Phil: it is Sunday and they do need some time off of their work. Hopefully Kevin will show up tonight or tomorrow. - Robert Scoble

Liz: yep, I love FF's IM integration. I've got a popout window open on the side of my desktop and can keep up with things (from this thread and everything I monitor on FF) much more easily. - Sam Harrelson from IM

LIZA - not lisa or liz, ha ha - Liza

With that said, I love FriendFeed's comment UI. That's what hooked me to the service - Bwana ☠

After reading about affordances (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...), it appears the problem is that many of them are hidden when they should be perceptible. - Mistletoe Glen

Robert - I am clicking on everything in site, so if I blow up something, oops, sorry. - Liza

Liza apologies. multi-tasking fail. - Sam Harrelson from IM

Glen, yep, that's where discoverability comes in. Things should be easy to discover based on visual cues. It shouldn't be like playing a game of Myst. - Akiva Moskovitz

UNaffordances - Liza

Robert - yeah, even if they read this tomorrow, there's good stuff here that's important if the service it to grow in use. - phil baumann

Say it with me folks : User-friendly-ability. We HAZ NONE here. - Sean

Robert - now that you are here, I also think it is a mistake to expect users to choose FF or Twitter - recently you have backed off and choose to use both, BUT many of your "followers" are testy with those of us who use both. Until FF is easier to use, I will use both. That is my choice. Positioning FF as Twitter hating is bad move, ppl. - Liza

Who is positioning FF as a Twitter hater? Some people hate Twitter (I personally think Twitter is a waste of mindwidth). How does that have anything to do with FF other than the fact that they post on FF? - Brian Sullivan

Brian, do a search, you will find MANY ppl are positioning FF as anti-twitter, and I don't agree with the approach. I personally get a LOT of grief from both sides of the fence for using both, and I am not going to pick a side just b/c others tell me I should. - Liza

Annoyance: There's no comment, like, etc link at the bottom of the comments. So... I read 160+ comments and have to scroll back to the top to comment? WTF? - Kevin Donahue

Kevin - yes, that is a frustration. - phil baumann

Kevin, totally agreed with that comment, especially when using via the iPhone. It's nice to see comments per OP, but the UI for managing things is horrible and wastes a lot of time, denting my enthusiasm for more participation. - Sally Church

Officially PISSED OFF - using IM FAIL. Opens new page for every feed. Then I respond in Gtalk and get unknown command. F this. Time to breath deep and try not to explode. - Liza

Liza, type in "help" for the list of commands in IM or there's a list on the site. Not sure about the page thing... I don't get that in GTalk. - Sam Harrelson from IM

Liza: consistently when people meet me they ask "what is next after Twitter?" I don't answer FriendFeed, I wish I could. - Robert Scoble

I don't like help menus or reading instructions. I appreciate your efforts, but I am just pissed off in general b/c I like to figure things out on my own. I can't spend yrs clicking on FF for hidden treasures. - Liza

People always ask me why should they use FriendFeed over Twitter.... it gets old after a while - Bwana ☠

Robert - exactly, if we knew what was next, it would be dull. Beauty in playing, mashing, exploring. - Liza

Wow Robert, way throw out an HCI term! Are we going to discuss GOMS or Fitts' Law next? :-) - Bill Welense from iPhone

Bwana - I gave it a shot yesterday with some success in the last day. - http://ff.im/6kbAN - phil baumann

Robert - nice comment. Would love to tweet it to share, but don't know how to isolate it on this f-d up interface. - Liza

Liza - I'd like to be able to tweet comments they way Disqus allows it. - phil baumann

This is Liza frustrated and cranky, sorry for letting my evil twin out, but this feed triggered it. #blamescoble - Liza

I'm wondering if FriendFeed will remain the domain of us geeks. Is that a BIG enough market for their business model though? - Jim Connolly

I secretly hope so, Jim. Twitter was great in 2006 B.K. (Before Kutchner) when it was populated only by geeks :) - Sam Harrelson from IM

Holden: Well, I'm pretty sure someone hopes to make some money from FF. - Jim Connolly

Sam: I have to admit, I would hate to see FF flooded like Twitter is. - Jim Connolly

The fact is Robert that These problems have never crossed my mind. Actually, come to think of it. A unified settings page would be nice. However. Just becuae the UI is unconventional, going against the grain, does not mean it's a bad UI. I'd love to see a mockup of how you would do it better. - Roberto Bonini from iPhone

Holden: I didn't say it wasn't great. I still use and love Twitter. I just miss the good ole days. - Sam Harrelson from IM

Don't even get me started with a wish list of options. - Liza

CONFESSION: I did not know until now about double clicking on the time-link to get a pop-out window. - Jim Connolly

Holden: Twitter's a spam-filled hunk of crap. - Jim Connolly

Holden: You may not automatically see a business model, but they would have had to produce something to get $$$ funding. BTW: Twitter's got the audience, though. It's where the people are. Only reason I use it. - Jim Connolly

Friendfeed is not difficult to use. It is so intuitive. I love that I can easily block certain things, search for items that have a specific number of likes, see a user's likes, etc. It's wayyyyyyy easy. - Ben Hanten

Ben: A lot of new users tell me they can't figure it out. - Jim Connolly

they're not trying then, Jim - Chris Heath

If this was put up to a vote, I would vote to have a better FAQ, but I would definitely keep the design as free of extra buttons as possible. - Ben Hanten

Hmm, wow, lots of comments fast on this post. Too bad it's a Sunday, I imagine Kevin is up to other things right this second... - Jason Wehmhoener

Can someone help me find the link to create imaginary friend? - Krishnamoorthy

Holden, well that's their loss if they can't 'get it' - friendfeed is simple and IMHO if you can't 'get it' then that's your problem, not friendfeed's - Chris Heath

http://friendfeed.com/setting... - Chris Heath

Krishnamoorthy - http://friendfeed.com/setting... - phil baumann

the Imaginary Friend function is now a part of Groups. for example, I created a private "group" with my wife's name and brought in all of her feeds since she's not on FriendFeed. - Sam Harrelson from IM

Ok, the imaginary friend thing is a different story. Awesome concept; but way too much work to add a bunch of users. - Ben Hanten

I think a good start would be to have a totally different "entry point" for setting up hiding rules. Also, defaults might need to be reconsidered. Is it the best to always start off by showing everything from a user? FF already asks you to select your "top five" feeds you want to show off in your profile... Could it make sense to only show stuff from people's top five by default, so one needs to opt-in to get any more of their feeds? - Meryn Stol

Perhaps a big, dedicated "mute Twitter" (though I'd prefer "Kill Twitter" ;)) button would also make sense. After all, Twitter is in itself responsible for most items - and thus most potential "noise" - on FriendFeed. - Meryn Stol

you can still quickly create an imaginary friend (as Sam said it's part of groups now) but if you don't want to choose the private group setting yourself just go here http://friendfeed.com/setting... - Chris Heath

maybe i'm wrong and an imaginary friend is different than a private group, but the functionality seems the same - there was a discussion a few months ago about this: http://friendfeed.com/friendf... - Chris Heath

Chris, yep... good point. - Sam Harrelson from IM

Imaginary friends are easy to setup, but... you really should be able to do a whole batch of them. - Ben Hanten

Ben, it's rather janky, but my students have private Twitter accts for labs in my class that I read and interact with using the Imaginary Friends + private Groups feature. Plus, I have a nice archive of all student activity that I can search through. Not a great solution, but a good workaround for my extreme case. - Sam Harrelson from IM

there's a lot on the friendfeed roadmap, and i think that's one of the items... if you participate in the friendfeed feedback room you can get lots of answers to these types of questions http://friendfeed.com/friendf... - Chris Heath

You can search for the official FriendFeeders' feedback, as Chris suggested, with this saved search: https://friendfeed.com/ffss... - Ahsan Ali aka. Slick

Interesting topic. For me personally I use FF for reading rather than contributing or commenting, and via mobile more than the web, but I do agree the UI isn't the best. I would like a google reader or better still, a Feedly style interface. I want to know about what I haven't seen that's in my groups or feeds. And I want that simple and easy with no hidden features or maybe simple and expert interfaces. - Keith Bennett from BuddyFeed

You'r right Robert. - ALPER DURUKAN

It's not the UI that's keeping the mainstream from using the site. This is akin to asking why the mainstream has yet to discover the wonders of traditional message boards. Fact of the matter is most people don't have the desire (not to mention spare time) to continually engage with a stream full of random social media tidbits on a regular basis. But if that's your cup of tea, I think the UI is excellent for sharing, discovering, and keeping up with the real-time chatter. - Aviv

ANNOYANCE: Why is it so difficult to find a list of just my "likes"? I can't find it at all. I can only find my likes through the "My discussions" link. Ugh. - Kevin Donahue

Kevin, it's pretty simple to get to your likes. http://friendfeed.com/samharr... - Sam Harrelson from IM

Has Kevin Fox responded to this thread? - Manuel Mas

Not sure he should -- seems like Robert made vicious and personal attack -- and a lack of response might be appropriate and classy. - Brian Sullivan

I certainly wouldn't join into this pile-on if I were Kevin. "Oh hey, I noticed you all were kicking me while I was trying to have a weekend, here I am now, go ahead for another round!" - Jason Wehmhoener

On the bright side, you know your service is about to hit mainstream when your biggest cheerleader starts to hate it (see Twitter). - Aviv

Aviv: nah, that's not a good predictor. - Robert Scoble

Robert: Have you noticed that the time stamp behavior of acting like a permalink is pretty much the norm across many sites? Check facebook and twitter for example. - Tsega Dinka

One thing I would like to know is, where is the link in friendfeed to the application key? I always have to search it from google. - Ru Viljoen

it's unnecessary to be brutally rude RB but these comments are valuable, we are expecting alot from 12 FF supergeeks, they cannot be perfect but they are incredibly good already. - Thomas Power

I think "hide" was perfectly designed. The user doesn't get smacked in the face immediately upon loading a page in friendfeed that resembles the control panel of an old fashioned telephone switchboard. One simple hide link, that the user will click when they want to hide something, that then asks what you want to hide. It's called not overwhelming the user with too much info at once,... more... - April Russo (app103)

April: they can put a lot of functionality into "settings" that would also do the same thing as hide does today. Most people don't figure out that the hide link has extra functionality. - Robert Scoble

It's better than what facebook does, which is to hide their multi-function hide button, until you hover over the item. I'd rather have it the friendfeed way and at least know it's there by looking and not by having to play "find the invisible features" game by moving my mouse all over the page waiting for all the little facebook easter eggs to make themselves known. You have no idea how... more... - April Russo (app103)

I DON'T KNOW WHY WE'RE YELLING! I LOVE LAMP! - Mark "DerBingle" J

(I'm being facetious. Robert's STRONG points are still pretty tactfully expressed, IMHO.) - Mark "DerBingle" J

http://ff.im/6n4fT - hachure

And I don't understand how any twitter user could possibly not know that the timestamp is a permalink. Timestamps on twitter are permalinks too. Ok, the clicking again thing was a bit of an easter egg, but how else could you add a nifty little feature like that without adding any clutter? Even if you gave a full tutorial FAQ, how on earth could you present all these little extras in a way that doesn't overwhelm a newbie and make them run away without reading the huge FAQ? - April Russo (app103)

Missing the point, not about geeks vs non-geeks, even geeks disagree on UI issues,and it is dismissive and insulting to act as if mainstream is not geeky enough to understand crappy UI. My opinion matters, and it was not until a fellow geek, Scoble, brought it up that anyone acknowledged that there may be some UI issues. - Liza

So go back to using twitter. - jcunwired

I know of a site that has worse issues, for example, clicking the RSS icon on a page takes you to a forum thread with a gazillion posts explaining how to subscribe to the content you want, using all the custom crap they have. You basically have to learn how to build your own RSS url before you can subscribe. And don't click the "Mark" button on a forum thread there unless you want to... more... - April Russo (app103)

FF may be messing with affordances, but I don't see it as f*cling with them. I see it as an attempt to innovate. The 'nonintuitive' behavior is a bit of a PITA, but it adds richness to the app. It is also innovation in action. The most painful upshot of suck innovation ia the fet associated with playing with a UI's functionality - you might end up breaking something really important or... more... - Jason Miller from iPhone

JCUnwired That is not helpful or constructive. Stick to one-sided debates. - Liza

Funny thing is though... I have used Excel and Word without ever reading a manual. Now I'm pretty ninja at both but never had any formal training. Neither has about 95% of the people I know how use it, yet everyone I know has worked it out enough to use it well. See, they have these things up the top like File, Edit etc that hold the functions. Those things are not always required and... more... - Johnny Worthington

Well put johnny - Mark from iPhone

Which social app has the best interface? Easy Facebook. - John Hardy

As far as I can tell "affordance" and "discoverability" are different ways of looking at the same concept. And I've been complaining about the timestamp thing for a long time. - Karl Knechtel

I've been complaining about FF's ease of use since I started using it. I'm glad there's some traction on it. ridiculous that the time stamp is not displayed as a (permanent) link. - jbrotherlove

Never mind that the timestamp isn't displayed as a link. The problem is that it makes no sense for the timestamp to be the thing that is clicked. - Karl Knechtel

I like it, its a nice gate. It keeps FF tech based. It keeps things relevant. Its an Acid Test. There are plenty of alternatives. And those alternatives that cater to everyone, are full of Blither Blather. If you pass the gate, and pass the Acid Test, you learn about the community and the discussion. With a robust Community and Discussion, Self Policing and Spammers are annihilated. Self Healing Robust System. - Robert Higgins

Apostol Apostolov, Ana ( http://friendfeed.com/ana ) has confirmed that they're on the issue of adding recipients and groups after posting an item about a month ago - http://friendfeed.com/friendf... - Chris Heath

I totally agree with Robert HIggins & Johnny Worthington's recent comments - Chris Heath

Robert, thanks for your thoughts. Three quick responses: affordances aren't something that someone fucks with, they're something that a designer gives to a design and it's fine to say that you don't think I'm designing a product with proper affordances or strong enough affordances, but the implication that I fucked them up is that I took the gestalt natural affordances of something and... more... - Kevin Fox

The above distinction is important because the argument then becomes one of whether or not FriendFeed has been imbued with proper affordances or not. Now naturally the answer varies from person to person, as it does with any UI for any product. FriendFeed is trying to balance functionality with simplicity and, as is the case for any product with that task, any point on the spectrum could be criticized for either hiding too much of the complexity or showing too much, even at the same by different people. - Kevin Fox

So the strategy then becomes, as has been mentioned here, one of making the simple things easy and the complex things possible. The most common tactic to enable that strategy, and one we rely upon a lot at FriendFeed, is that of progressive disclosure. This works for some people and not for others, but it's usually an excellent way to make a UI that's not intimidating to a new user, and... more... - Kevin Fox

As for the timestamp also acting as the permalink: Well, you're absolutely right. This is a completely improper affordance that only makes sense if you happen to be familiar with blogs that use the same convention. Fixing this (with something less heavy-handed than a link that says 'link' or 'permalink' or (gasp) an icon of two links in a chain) is high on our list and I want to fold it... more... - Kevin Fox

When we get that worked out in a way we're happy with then we'll roll it out. Until then, it's also important to consider user confidence, and that tweaking a UI too often when trying to find the right answer makes users less comfortable with the design and their ability to manipulate it, even if they don't consciously notice any change. For this reason a few things stay rough a little longer until we have what we think is the right answer, not just a stopgap one. - Kevin Fox

As always, thanks for the feedback, and for trying to make FriendFeed a better place. - Kevin Fox

Wow - Bwana ☠

Wow. +500 xp to Kevin. - Sam Harrelson

Kevin I love you because you explain why you are messing with the affordances! :-) - Robert Scoble from iPhone

Doesn't sound like they're ignoring it to me, Robert :) - Bwana ☠

Bwana: me neither! Glad Kevin explained. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

I'm liking this article simply because of Kevin's explanation of why things are the way they are here on friendfeed. He knocked that one out of the park. - Alex Scoble

Kevins camp. In Japanese there is one word for beauty. Kirei. Actually, it is the same word for Clean Kirei. 奇麗 FF for me is clean and beautiful. "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" Leonardo daVinci - Robert Higgins

So if we're going to change the time stamp from being a permalink, can we use it to sort posts chronologically? That is the one affordance no one can discover. - Andrew Smith

I didn't read the full thread, but reading the top and (what is at this point) the bottom really helps me understand what the UI people do. Thanks Robert and Kevin! - Andrew

Big props to Kevin Fox. - Sameer

Kevin rocks. Even on a Sunday night. They pay me to say stuff like that at work. The thought of having to step up to the plate anytime 24/7 with that level of professionalism is daunting, to say the least. So yah, big props to Kevin Fox. - Jason Wehmhoener

I actually like the current UI. I like the feature set. I agree it DOES need a more intuitive and quicker way to know about and learn the deeper features. - George Hall (Australia)

There is something to be said for having the conversation first - then Kevin calmly explaining his pts. It gives others a chance to respond honestly, and then Kevin gets far more valuable feedback. Selifishly, I also like the fact that I can see others' views - many who did not address UI issues but showed a defensive sense of entitlement (see Louis's chart on new adopters)...Robert,... more... - Liza

Great responses Kevin. For the record, I'm a fan of the "progressive disclosure" approach. - Mike Doeff from iPhone

Really great points, Robert. I've learned some things because of this discussion. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. - Brian Adrian

One answer to Kevin. Blogs, since the beginning of when I started to use them used the "permalink" or "#" convention. I guess the thing is that in FriendFeed the CSS here is hiding the blue underline, so people don't know that the time stamp is a link. It's tough designing for the web, I know. That's why I don't do it. At least very often. :-) - Robert Scoble

Twitter uses a time stamp as a perma-link as well. </fuel to fire> - Bwana ☠

Yeah. I just tweeted about that myself. </more fuel to fire> - Dennis Jernberg

Fascinating. Didn't know about the timestamp as permalink, but I didn't suffer from unnatural affordance issues prior to reading this discussion either. Not an ubergeek, but I don't suffer. So, maybe FF is not "above the heads" of the average, but merely yields enough at any level to meet whatever the particular need might be, wacky affordances or not. And people who avoid it because it is "too hard" need to toughen up a bit. This is 2009 and the Internet, after all. - Martha

Also, the "Share" link exposes the permalink as well which I think was a great addition to alleviate the time stamp confusion. - Bwana ☠

Wow. How did Kevin get those 5 paragraphs contiguously posted? Copy-paste-post. Copy-paste-post? Or is there some other secret weapon not yet released? - Nick in Manila

Nick - I'd bet 1000 gil on Notepad/Textedit :) - Bwana ☠

I'm waiting for the twitter theme for friendfeed, to show people exactly how easy FF is to use considering its features and exactly how braindead twitter's UI is. - Andy Bakun

Nick & Bwana: Textedit and copy/paste/post. As I was c/p/p-ing I thought about how I could make a tool using the API to allow for this kind of thing, then envisioned how that would break FriendFeed and banished the thought. (and then I just commented about it anyhow. Oh what have I wrought? I am become death, destroyer of words.) - Kevin Fox

Bwana: hey, at least FriendFeed's designer listens and answers back. That might get more mud thrown his way, but a whole lot of love too. Personally Twitter's design isn't very good, but everyone thinks it is because it doesn't have many features so they perceive that as simplicity. I perceive it as inferior but that really pisses off the Twitter types and they start arguing with me about stuff like the above. - Robert Scoble

Robert - I was just thinking that. We would NEVER get this kind of interaction with a Twitter dev on a work day. - Bwana ☠

Part of me knew Kevin would address this at some point. It was merely a matter of when. - Bwana ☠

I hope this thread/conversation doesn't end any time soon, either here on this post or elsewhere. I want FF to be the best it can. - phil baumann

I think FF is waaaaaay easier to use than Twitter and recently started using FF to follow my twitter feeds. Images and videos are inline and comments are threaded (no silly @ replies). I only wish more of my friends were on it!! (also, it would be nice if comments were formatted with the commenters name first which seems to be the convention on most sites i.e. "May: blah blah blah"). - May

To go back to the top a little bit: does anyone think it ISN'T weird that not all the links on FF are blue? Not just the time stamp: the service your content was imported from, your name at the top of your profile, and the time stamp are all non-blue links. Is there a logical reason for those inconsistencies? I've never understood that. - Andrew

Awesome explanation by Kevin. I happen to love FF's progressive disclosure. I think the 'hide' feature is a great example of this. You could argue that they might make the second stage a bit more obvious, but it's still a lot better than a huge drop down menu at the start. - Ben Reierson

Even Twitter has a ramp up time. It took me about a month of working it to get comfortable with it. Only slightly longer than it took me with Twitter. And it is light years better in most every way. I agree with Robert's desire to enforce change through public criticism, but I think it important to keep it in perspective: FF is generally a better experience on all fronts. Kudos to Kevin Fox and the rest of the team. I feel confident they are more than capable of seeing issues and resolving them. - Martha

i never really had a problem with that Andrew, and I never had the problem with the permalink either... if your mouse changes from pointer to finger, then it's a link and you can see the destination in the status bar - Chris Heath

Andrew: I actually hate blue underlines. Designers have hated that affordance for years. They look ugly. They make text harder to read. I'm in Kevin Fox's camp on that one. Get rid of underlines! Just make affordances that people can figure out without being told about (like clicking twice on hide or clicking twice on the time stamps). - Robert Scoble

robert, i don't get your clicking twice on hide problem... hide seems fine, and while i don't use it much i don't recall clicking twice, like with the timestamp - Chris Heath

Chris: normal people don't mouse over every word in a UI to discover whether there is a secret link there. Also, explain how hovering over "hide" would tell a user that there's different functionality there if you click twice on that word? - Robert Scoble

Chris: if you click twice on the word "hide" you will get different UI that will give you different choices. If you click twice on the time stamp you will get a popout window. Not intuitive at all. - Robert Scoble

when i click hide i get an undo and hide options links, that seems the correct UI - i agree with you on the timestamp, but the hide thing isn't the same - Chris Heath

++Kevin - Cristo

Chris: Hide does act differently, I agree, but most people, in my experience, don't look at the second page because they don't expect to see more options. Remember 99% of people never click on Google's Advanced Options. Do you REALLY expect people to click twice on Hide? I don't. And even if they did, shouldn't those features be in settings too? Where people expect to find them? - Robert Scoble

i don't buy your beef w/ hide, but i agree on the timestamp - i also agree with you on not having to hover everything to see if it's click-able and also don't like underlining, so there needs to be some other visual cue of the link/feature - Chris Heath

sometimes features do need to be learned/taught and everything can't be intuitive... i think we might be overshooting our ideals for usability. remember the days of three ring binders and books and manuals for using any given system or software package? we've come a long way, but users do have to learn some things. i think friendfeed has done a good job of making the site usable for the... more... - Chris Heath

Given a top complaint about FriendFeed is too much noise, Hide needs to be more intuitive. - Bwana ☠

Since I still get the dumb blonde / not techie treatment from many, I am going to go w/ it and say that even I figured out hide early on. The timestamp stuff was news to me. - Liza

I'd wager at least half of FriendFeed doesn't know about the second page of hide options. I've had to explain it countless times and a ton of people didn't even know you could selectively hide services based on comment/like behavior, etc - Bwana ☠

Kevin, Thanks for listening and major props for taking your time to listen to constructive critisicm. - Jack Wilson, K4SAC

9/10 of the folks that use Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc don't know all the features and functions. Having every single function be completely intuitive and/or labeled is not needed for mainstream acceptance or usage if that's what we're all worried about here. - Sam Harrelson from IM

Every single function, I agree. Hide, needs to be more intuitive. - Bwana ☠

Bwana, I agree as a power-user, but how many folks would actually use "Hide"? It's an edge-case function that will/would never catch on with the mainstream. I just don't get these complaints. - Sam Harrelson from IM

Sam: you're right. But I didn't get this kind of pushback when I evangelized Twitter and Facebook had many more hooks to get people into their system than FriendFeed does (and keep them there) and even Facebook doesn't have a lot of the weird affordances that FriendFeed does even though it's more complex. The complaints I get consistently on FriendFeed (a lot of which have to do with... more... - Robert Scoble

Oh, and the number of comments here tells me a lot of people feel very passionately about FriendFeed and want it to be better, even if they are telling me I'm full of it. - Robert Scoble

The complaint is noise. There's too much. There's too many duplicates. I don't want to see "X". These are complaints I see and answer often. The solution is hide and they don't know about them. It's not a power user function imho. - Bwana ☠

FF lost a lot of users during the initial launch because people didn't know about or want to properly hide unwanted stuff. - Bwana ☠

"FriendFeed is full of baby photos" Classic complaint. Solved by hide. - Bwana ☠

It's always the user's fault. Always. - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

Robert, I got on Twitter around Thanksgiving of '06 b/c of your evangelicalism (thank you/curse you btw!). But the concept there was/is much more easy to grok. Of course folks are going to think FF is hard b/c it is hard. But to bastardize JFK, "we choose to go to the moon and do these other things in this decade not b/c they are easy but b/c they are hard!" - Sam Harrelson from IM

friendfeed isn't hard...unless you think a blank piece of paper is hard. - Alex Scoble

Depends on your definition of hard. Some people think complicated or inconvenient is hard. - Bwana ☠

Alex, have you ever written a book for a publisher that loaned you money and expects the money back? A blank piece of paper is incredibly hard! - Sam Harrelson

Look at lists. Very powerful tool of FriendFeed, but for some, it's too much work. Some may call it hard, some may call it.... too much work :) - Bwana ☠

Sam: but this blank piece of paper can write itself thanks to the integration with other sites :) - Andrew

I know in the apps I've tested, if the UI was difficult for the end user, they would avoid using it. - Bwana ☠

Andrew, you are completely right. Good point. I'm thinking from a contributing point of view (b/c I'm a teacher and I always want to influence, etc) but you're right. - Sam Harrelson

Alex: is blank paper sort of like a blank Wordpress entry screen? I get it then. - Robert Scoble

Seeing a real-time stream of the full conversation is highly desirable and one of the best features of the service. I design and use software all the time and didn't know about the time stamp link until someone told me about it. Robert is doing them (another) favor by using controversial language to bring attention to the issue. I bet we see an update in a week or two and the service will be better for it. - Chip Ramsey

I can see it now: if entry["from"]["id"] == "scobelizer": theme = "lots-o-links" - DGentry

either that, or entry["body"] = pigLatinize(entry["body"]) - DGentry

Wow ... Great dialog. Kudos to Kevin for his comments! I have demo'd Friendfeed for more people than I can count. Most of the issue has to do with people's time vs value (or just fun). Is it harder than Facebook? NO! Nobody says you have to use it all and 9 out of 10 people I've demo'd Facebook for have NO IDEA what a permission is (Think about that ... and the defaults?!). Twitter has... more... - Charlie Anzman

Then ... The Friendfeed Browser and OS! - Charlie Anzman

Robert, given Kevin's responses, you might want to edit/tweak the Original Post/headline. I wish there was a way to promote the comments so they were 'pinned' to the OP - Aaman (Clone of FF)

Aaman: what's an OP? The headline? - Robert Scoble

Oh, thank goodness. I was wondering what an OP was, and feeling dumb that I didn't know. I didn't want to have to read 328 comments to find out. - Mistletoe Glen

Yes, the Original Post - I wasn't familiar with the term myself, and saw it first on this very thread, then googled it. (It can also mean Original Poster) - Aaman (Clone of FF)

Glen: I'm not scared of feeling dumb. I feel dumb every day given the quality of the people I hang out with. - Robert Scoble

@Kevin: wondering if there could be a link that would take you to a page that would show what features have been added, disabled, or removed. - Harold

Robert, you should lock comments, so it's immortalized properly at Kevin's reply - Matthew DeVries

Matthew: you make sense. I've locked the comments here so you can see Kevin Fox's reply without digging back too far. - Robert Scoble

Gina

Whoah! This Week in Google is top tech podcast on iTunes right now! http://www.flickr.com/photos...

August 6 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Bob DeMarco, Louis, Anthony Pantekoek and 10 other people liked this

You deserve it Gina! - Eric Geller

2 more comments

Been meaning to download your podcast - thanks for reminding me! - Steve Rubel

I repeat myself: a great podcast w great people - very entertaining and insightful. Looking forward to Saturday:) - Alex 'BuckyBit' Covic

Looking forward to ep 2! - Warren Butler

Tudor Bosman

Psychologists Reject Gay 'Therapy' Treatment - SFist - http://sfist.com/2009...

August 6 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Hutch Carpenter, Thaths, Felicia Yue and 26 other people liked this

"On Wednesday, the American Psychological Association finally "declared that mental health professionals should not tell gay clients they can become straight through therapy or other treatments." Why? Because it's abusive, unethical, and doesn't work." - Tudor Bosman from Bookmarklet

13 more comments

I think I need to be careful not to be misunderstood here I think, but I while I agree with the specific assertion that a gay person cannot technically become straight through therapy or any other means, I do think any person (man or woman, gay or straight) can learn not to act on their primary sexual impulses, and I think it's quite likely that through a kind of positive reinforcement... more... - Meryn Stol

Meryn and I may be opening a can of worms here :) When discussing this topic, please keep in mind the difference between moral and social ethics ("should we try to change someone's sexual orientation? should people try to change their own sexual orientation"?) and science ("is it theoretically possible to change someone's sexual orientation through therapy or otherwise?") - Tudor Bosman

Well with regard to the social and moral ethics: I think we should support people to live the lives they want, even if this goes somewhat counter to their nature. Humans do a lot of "unnatural" things. - Meryn Stol

To be concrete, I have done some research on a quite famous "ex gay" therapist. He lived a "gay" lifestyle, but is now married to a woman, and - so far I know - not engaging in sexual acts with other people - not man or woman. He's just faithful to his wife. I don't think he really turned straight, but for all practical purposes, he's certainly living a "straight life". - Meryn Stol

The thing is, there haven't been any rigorous studies to test whether or not sexual reorientation/conversion therapy is actually effective. In light of the dearth of knowledge, even without considering the societal implications, is it even ethical to use a treatment modality that probably does more harm than good? - Victor Ganata

Victor, I think therapists should inform their clients as best as possible about the possible outcomes of therapy. Let them choose. I don't think a therapist can ever promise to cure some ill, or to change some (by the client's definition) unwanted behavior. Therapy and exercises *might* work, they may very well not. I'd leave it up to the client to decide. - Meryn Stol

On the other hand, I'd certainly respect a therapist choice not to help someone with a request to change his sexual response in particular situations. Just like I would respect a doctor not wanting to prescribe a particular medicine, if this doctor doesn't feel good about it. - Meryn Stol

True, every health care provider has to decide these things for themselves. But I'd certainly be hesitant to offer a treatment that had no solid evidence behind it. You can't guarantee any outcome for any intervention, but at least if there's real data, the patient can make an informed decision. - Victor Ganata

If I was a therapist, I would be hesitant to. In fact, I probably wouldn't go anywhere near it if I would not have studied the subject in and out. I could imagine someone seeing it as his or her "calling" to help people who are struggling with unwanted homosexual attractions. I think the choice of these therapists should be respected. I think it's also important to note that AFAIK most... more... - Meryn Stol

My training in evidence-based medicine makes me feel like it's condoning bad medicine to be OK with sexual reorientation/conversion therapists, but I guess, ultimately, it's the patient who needs to decide what kind of treatment they want. - Victor Ganata

Victor, I do think that different lines of reasoning could lead to different conclusions here. I think it's certainly a very tough moral problem, especially given the potential risks of involved in taking this route. BTW here's the link to the report pdf if anyone's interested: http://www.apa.org/pi... . It's about what the APA *does* consider appropriate responses, among which recommending living life in celibacy. - Meryn Stol

Thanks for the link, Meryn. It seems like their bottom line is that there isn't any sound scientific basis for the efficacy of sexual orientation change efforts, and that there may be evidence of harm. The techniques that were most beneficial to patients emphasized acceptance, support, and recognition of important values and concerns. Ultimately, I guess it really goes back to primum non nocere. - Victor Ganata

Victor, what's very important here is that APA in this report distinguishes between "sexual orientation" and "sexual orientation identity". They consider the first to be fixed, while the last can be subject to change. When one breaks it up like that (which is a good choice) I agree with this as well. But given this definition, we could see a homosexual person (that is, he has a... more... - Meryn Stol

Meryn, yeah, that's the theory, but the data they looked at shows that even changes in sexual orientation identity from sexual orientation change efforts are transient at best. - Victor Ganata

Robert Scoble

Very cool new forums are now being shown off @techstars thanks to Vanilla (version 2 rocks!) http://vanillaforums.org/

August 6 - Comment - Like - Share

Lizunlong, Laura Norvig, LouCypher and 11 other people liked this

anyone have a quick review of how this compares to/better than phpBB? - Justin Long

8 more comments

pretty site. I second Justin's question about phpBB comparison... anyone? thanks :) - t i n y m

Was actually gonna post Justin's question as well. - Manuel Mas

Sweet...Finally someone reboots/rethinks forums... phpBB is getting stale imho - Bwana ☠

I think I may set this up a bit later, good to see they're hosted on rackspace cloud - Bwana ☠

Agreed phpBB is getting stale but face it forums are web 1.0. The crazy thing is they work!! Anything that updates the web 1.0 forum is great in my book. - cheapsuits

They are stale but they still have their place, I think... esp. for long term moderated conversations?? - Justin Long

My big complaint is form conversations are siloed. The revamping of the forum since their inception is happening slooooowly. Why? - cheapsuits

Thanks for the tip. I have to check out this forum. I will suggest this to a client that is interested to start to participate in social media activities and an online conversation with their customers, business partners and others. But first we have to go through Forrester's "Social Technographics Profile" of their customers as described in the Groundswell book. - Martin Lindeskog

answer to the 'how are they different' question: cleaner, plug in friendly and open source. Simply beautiful. Built around discussions. Easily themeable. - Andrew Hyde

Marco(aureliusmaximus)

Does the AP and News Corp REALLY think that the content they provide digitally is so unique and irreplaceable that they can charge for it?

August 6 - Comment - Like - Share

Jason Dettbarn liked this

Obviously. But seriously, who are their free competitors? Who is willing to collect so much accurate information and NOT charge for it when they could be charging? - Kevin L

kevin - only referring to the AP right? - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

Gina

Google Voice Ubiquity Command - http://earth2marsh.com/ubiquit...

August 6 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

Matt Rise, Zachary TG, Jason Dettbarn and Deepak Singh liked this

Adds a "call" verb to Ubiquity; highlight a phone number on a web page and go. - Gina

RAPatton

Newsarama.com : Disney Joins Hulu.com - http://www.newsarama.com/comics...

April 30 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Michael W. May, Emma, Anna Haro and 7 other people liked this

"Hulu and The Walt Disney Company today announced that Disney, through a subsidiary of ABC Enterprises Inc., has agreed to join NBC Universal, News Corporation and Providence Equity Partners as a joint venture partner and equity owner of Hulu, a leading online aggregator of video content. Upon closing, the agreement will enhance Hulu’s programming lineup through the expanded online distribution of Disney’s most popular current and library primetime series and library feature films. In particular, full-length episodes of hit current and library programs like Lost, Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, Private Practice, Ugly Betty, Scrubs, Greek, Hope & Faith, Less than Perfect, Wizards of Waverly Place, Phineas and Ferb, Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, General Hospital, The View and The Secret Life of the American Teenager will soon be streamed on Hulu on an ad-supported basis." - RAPatton from Bookmarklet

"Following the closing, content available to Hulu users will include: • Full-length episodes of ABC primetime programs like Lost, Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, Ugly Betty, Samantha Who?, Scrubs, Private Practice and popular late night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live • Full-length episodes of hit ABC Family series like The Secret Life of the American Teenager and Greek • Popular... more... - RAPatton

Scrubs, that makes it all worthwhile for me. - Matthew Sauer

Robert Scoble

My son just got phished on Twitter. He got it through email. Didn't know about the scam.

January 4, 2009 - Comment - Like - Share

Xiaofeng, Rob Schieber, Duncan Riley and 26 other people liked this

I wonder what the phishers will do with an account they took control over. Would they send out commercial messages, or more phishing...? - Dennis Goedegebuure

25 more comments

More then likely, quickly change the password and e-mail so that the person is locked out of their account. - Matthew Arevalo

That is one reason why I turn off all email and SMS on all systems. - Robert Scoble

We realized it because Maryam got the message from him. - Robert Scoble

This is one of the reasons why I wont be clicking on any more shortened URLs through Twitter or any other service for a while. - Gaurav Patel

What can be done to put a stop to this, if anything? - Brandon Mendelson

maybe this could push for the short urls services to start showing the 'real' url they point to, as http://www.longurlplease.com/ do - Carl Grint

DM the person it came from and tell them to change their password... It will block access to the account by the Phisher... - Brian Roy

@Brandon nothing needs "to be done" - this is 100% attributable to user error. the phish attack happens from followers that people don't really know, and only when the user clicks on a link sent via email, and only when the user doesn't look at the link they are about to click on... - Jeremy Toeman

There was a warning posted when you logged into twitter just the other day warning about this exact thing. As much as sites like friend feed are great for the amalgamation of your social network streams you do loose valuable data like this when you don't log into the actual site. - Christopher Mercer

@Gaurav Why would short URLs be a problem? Just look at what the actual address is when you click through... - Matthew Arevalo

What needs to be done, is for the FBI, and their counterparts, to make a few examples with vicious prosecution. The sum total of loss because some scum bag(s) can't function within societal norms, is immeasurable. It's time. - Ed Shahzade /NextInstinct

@Jeremy I haven't found this to be true with the DM Phishes I have received (re: people you don't know). I agree with @Ed's statement that we can do something about this by prosecuting (if they are American, a big if) those responsible. It would be nice to see a service using the Twitter API to keep track of this. There sure was a fast enough reply to the idiotic authority-based Twitter search idea ... - Brandon Mendelson

I also got a DM from @pscoble with the link. I'm glad that FF has tinyURL mouseovers that reveal the actual link. I'm not clicking on any TinyURL links on Twitter for a while. - Brian Daniel Eisenberg

Agreed. Shortened URLs can be scary -- really have to trust the sender when the snipping service doesn't offer a preview feature such as http://preview.tinyurl.com ... there is a cookie setting available as well which will autopreview any TinyURL you try to goto. Incidentally TinyURL's Terms of Use states:"Using it for spamming or illegal purposes is forbidden and any such use will result in the TinyURL being disabled and you may be reported to all ISPs involved and to the proper governmental agencies." - RandaL Hicks

Now I think more people will understand why tinyurl was selected to be the default url shortener for twitter. Go to preview.tinyurl.com and turn it on. - April Russo (app103)

Cool! I did not know about the TinyURL preview feature. Just enabled it. Thanks for the tip RandaL. - Brian Daniel Eisenberg

Yeah, I just got a DM from Patrick Scoble at 1:37pm EST today... I ignored that... bummer - Susan Beebe

Here's what happened to me: http://friendfeed.com/e... - David Cook

i just got phished too, but firefox blocked it, so i believe i am safe for now... hard to tell though because it was from a twitter friend - Kevin Buckstiegel from twhirl

The US is the biggest for spam, not phishers. Phishers would be easily prosecutable even under existing laws. The Russians are believe to be responsible for 50% of phishing. - John Rubier from twhirl

@Matthew: I hear you, however if I see a link, I want to click on it - I don't want to check if it's safe, that takes too much time. Imagine doing that for every shortened URL you wanted to click on. Just look at first 10 Twitter posts by your friends, then imagine checking them all. - Gaurav Patel

What I would love to see happen is what RandaL Hicks mentioned, some kind of URL/site preview before being redirected by the shortened URL provider to the actual site. http://www.nsfw.in/ does this well and by default, TinyURL and others do not (afaik) by default, but you can provide a preview URL which is longer though and defeats the purpose. - Gaurav Patel

Looks like the tainted blog has been removed by the BlogSpot administrators, or at least one of them has (http://rosalierebyb.blogspot.com/). I happened to have got one of the DMs from orionstarr, and promptly deleted it, after informing him. - Tyson Key

I just sent a direct message to a friend letting him know that his account had been hacked and was sending out phishing links. The hacker responded to me "fixed it.. hehe here is that blog i wanted to show you: (another phishing link)" - LA Snark

@Jack at LA Snark - I got one of those "fixed it" DMs too, after Twittering with an @reply to the person who's account the 1st DM originated from. - Tyson Key

If you are a WOT user, you might want to put in your $0.02 here: http://www.mywot.com/en... - April Russo (app103)

newsjunk.com

[AP]: Paul Krugman wins Nobel Prize for economics - http://x.techwheat.com/2RS

October 13, 2008 - Comment - Like - Share

Michael Markman, Rob Haas, Adam Posey and 3 other people liked this

"American Paul Krugman won the Nobel economics prize on Monday for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity." - newsjunk.com

Paul Buchheit

Home! - http://camilla-april.blogspot.com/2008...

July 16, 2008 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

don loeb, Jeremy Campbell, Joseph Chen and 99 other people liked this

Congratulations!!! - Zee.

29 more comments

Congratulations to you, April and Camilla. - Louis Gray

Congrats! - sergiooo

How cute! - James Tenniswood

cute! i think friendfeed is all about baby photos, the rest of the web is all about cat photos - Allen Stern

so cute!! - Elettronica Open Source

great. - 9000

congratulations, adorable baby - acedanger from twhirl

Sweet picture! Congratulations Paul, April and Camila!! :-) - Susan Beebe

Simply adorable. Congrats! - Yung-Hui Lim

Really cute. Congrats to you and April! - Charlie Anzman

congrats! - Rob Reed

Congrats! - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

Did you find that baby in a crate and barrel catalog? Too perfect! - Phil G

So adorable! Congrats! How nice it is to have this picture as the first FF Best Of item. Nothing else matters. BabyFeed :) - Aviv

Yay! Definition of adorable, congrats to Paul, April and Camilla! - Jessica Guynn

Paul, that is a great shot -- congratulations - mathew ingram

Awwwwww... - Jim Norris

Cute! - Sally Church

Congratulations - Bob Gannon

Adorable! - Anne Bouey

YAY! - Cyndy

awwwwww to cute and btw FF needs a Baby room - seriosuly.. - Peter Dawson

awwww! how cute! - Sarah Perez

Congratulations... What's with all the cute baby pics today, my wife things I'm up to no good when I keep turning the monitor off. I've got 3, I can't let her get all broody - Chris Wright from twhirl

Sooooooooooo cute! - Dan V

Fantastic! - Mitchell Tsai

Up to now, 106 people like this, the most I have ever seen on FF. LOL - Joseph Chen

Joseph: Check out Andrew Baron's 306 likes http://friendfeed.com/e... NASA picture of Comet McNaught between Fireworks and Lightning - Antti Kemppainen. Large (1,744 x 600) http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod... Small (1,337 x 460) http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod... - Mitchell Tsai

Congrats Paul! - Carl Sjogreen

@Joseph, 147 here; http://friendfeed.com/e... - Louis Gray

Dave Winer

New Huffpost piece: "We won in Iraq, a long time ago." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-wi...

July 22, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Jason Dettbarn, Paul Haahr, Frank Paynter and 7 other people liked this

Dave - what's going on here: the neocons have long plotted to establish American military bases in the Mideast -- not just Iraq -- for virtually forever. They were never interested in merely winning a conventional victory in Iraq. Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are also on their target list. Their deceptive public rhetoric is completely disjunct from their internal writings, which expose the real agenda. - Sean McBride

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And: I've read a large mountain of their internal writings -- I think I have a handle on them. - Sean McBride

And: the target list of the neocons often seems to be unlimited, and includes China, Russia, Europe and traditional liberals and conservatives in the United States. We are looking here at a messianic and totalitarian cult, not a traditional American political movement of any kind. The cult dimension of neoconservatism explains why the neocons are so cozy with Christian Armageddonists like John Hagee. - Sean McBride

When the NYTimes rejected McCain's OpEd piece, one of the reasons they gave is that he wrote that the US needed to win, but never defined winning. The advocates of this war have been cagey, slippery, and ultimately deceptive about defining the win. Occasionally, it peeks through. For the neocons, winning is staying. For the rest of us winning is leaving. - Michael Markman

Michael: for the neocons, "winning" means crushing more than one billion Muslims worldwide -- it's a message that comes through loud and clear in their internal writings. Crushing Islam globally also means crushing any Europeans and Americans who get in the way of their holy crusade -- thus their perpetual barrage of hate speech against traditional liberals and conservatives in both... more... - Sean McBride

@Dave: Thought provoking but I don't think it's that simple. Blog response at http://tinyurl.com/5jw4zs - James Joyner

James Joyner relies on an official Bush speech to define the supposed and deceptive objectives of the Iraq War, rather than on the internal documents within the neoconservative community which define their real strategic plan and agenda. It barely scratches the surface of the issue. By the way, Iraq was not involved in 9/11 (as the neocons claimed), possessed no WMDs (as the neocons... more... - Sean McBride

On the real objectives of neocons in Iraq and the Mideast: Read the writings of Benjamin Netanyahu, Daniel Pipes, David Frum, David Horowitz, David Wurmser, Dore Gold, Douglas Feith, John Podhoretz, Joshua Muravchik, Mark Steyn, Michael Ledeen, Norman Podhoretz, Pamela Geller, Richard Perle, William Kristol, etc. Joyner referenced none of these authors in his analysis. They were the chief architects of the Iraq War. - Sean McBride

"There is no such thing as winning an occupation. You either continue to occupy or withdraw. It's semantic nonsense to apply the verb "win" to the noun "occupation."" exactly! now lets take this even further. how about holding the people responsible behind this unjust war? http://www.prosecutionofbush.com/ let's take the Iraq War debate back into first principles. - ~C4Chaos

Chaos: defenders of the war, because they are running a con game and are disingenous in their public statements about their real objectives, want to circumscribe and narrow our vision of the big picture in discussing the war -- that's how all con games work. There is no conceivable way we can "win" the war in Iraq, based on a rational cost/benefit analysis. We have already suffered an... more... - Sean McBride

@Sean McBride: "circumscribe and narrow our vision of the big picture in discussing the war -- that's how all con games work." exactly. the sad thing is that the mainstream media (or at least the powerful people that run them) seem to be heavily influenced by these con games too. that said, i hope Obama would stick it to Bush/McCain when it comes to debating the Iraq war by taking it back to first principles. Bugliosi is right. there are lots of talk but he's someone *doing* something about it. - ~C4Chaos

Corie

20 Baby Products Great For Traumatizing Infants - http://www.cracked.com/article...

July 16, 2008 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Chieze Okoye, Danielle, Akiva Moskovitz and 13 other people liked this

love these - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

5 more comments

It's hard to pack so much creepiness in such a small space. Great find. :) - Steve Spalding

that baby burger pic is just wrong - jason burton

lol - Alan Le

baby burgerrrrrs - Brian Ries

at every stage of our two boys lives my wife and i have commented "that'll be one for their therapist" whenever we've done something that tormented or traumatized them - usually its us embarrassing them in some way - nice to see that someone is helping this along w/ these cool products ;) - mike "glemak" dunn

i actually like the baby burger idea -- comfortable, secure, etc -- the third photo not so much.. - Cee Bee

MG Siegler

[POST]: Netflix comes to the Xbox 360. Did Microsoft just destroy the Apple TV? http://is.gd/TaH

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

John Sirman, Flickchart, Sarah Perez and 10 other people liked this

I'm guessing not - with two words "US" "only"... As I say, I'm guessing, but just take a look at the difference between what's available to US Xbox users on Video Marketplace vs. what UK/European users get. When iTunes started doing movie rentals in the UK, their catalogue blew the longer established XBVM away overnight. (I'm not aiming my criticism at MS or Netflix - I realise there... more... - Andrew Terry

good point andrew - MG Siegler

microsoft also enhanced the XBVM offerings in europe w/ constantin and mgm - Richard Lawler from twhirl

Patrick Berry

McCain slams Obama for missing a vote he also missed. - http://thinkprogress.org/2008...

July 11, 2008 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

Jason Dettbarn liked this

McCain's people think that a) nobody will bother to look this shit up or b) even if they do it will not backfire to essentially say McCain has become the kind of man he's always hated. Man, why would anyone want this job....oh, that's right...the power to destroy the earth. - Patrick Berry

Dave Winer

I'm an optimist. I expect Obama as his first act as president to put Bush in jail at Guantanamo. Habeas corpus? How old fashioned!

July 10, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Ro (Lilyhill), John Flinchbaugh, David Thomas and 14 other people liked this

Can I "double-like" this? Waterboarding anyone? 8-) - Charlie Nichols Browning

Save the waterboarding for Cheney, Woo, Rummy, etc. - Michael Markman

If we could still stone people to death, that would be better. - The Kid

Christopher Sacca

Not-your-average cows give dragnet the slip : Niagara County : The Buffalo News - http://www.buffalonews.com/cityreg...

July 10, 2008 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Crystal English, Victor Ryden, Jason Dettbarn and 2 other people liked this

"The truck driver told police they weren’t “dealing with normal cows.” They made their escape after pushing a release button.“He said that they were smart cows and they must have been planning this for a while,” Suitor said. The two cows remained on the lam late Wednesday night." -- Cheers to my Dad who sent me this breaking news from back home. - Christopher Sacca from Bookmarklet

Home of smart cows and Artpark - Ken Norton

Veronica

The 50 Most Influential Female Bloggers - http://northxeast.com/general...

July 10, 2008 from Digg - Comment - Like - Share

Anthony Stevens, Mitchell Tsai, Roman and 101 other people liked this

one day I'll get there... - Orli Yakuel

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50 bloggers X 10000 twitter following requests.. twitter will be down soon :):) - Naor Mark

Somebody make sure Playboy doesn't see that list. - Eric Schlissel from twhirl

Boo...No Sarah Perez or Corvida. But congrats to the ones I do follow: Veronica Belmont, Gina Trapani, Emily Chang, Leah Culver, & Justine Ezarik. - Mark Krynsky

There's always a few missing on these lists (especially niche bloggers including the above ... Ann Smarty, and Shana Albert) but this is an incredibly good list (with descriptions). Well worth exploring! - Charlie Anzman

Ditto Mark, plus congrats to our Tamar, and Amber MacArthur as well (fan of her stuff as well) - finally a list of females in tech and blogging that doesn't involve "sexiest" or "nakedest." - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

no Perez Hilton? - Jamie

LOL - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

I added my mom in the comments: http://mymomsblog.blogspot.com/ - Steve Garfield from twhirl

congrats veronica.... #33, 32.... top 10 soon? already topping twitter's right? - Pajama Domain

good list - sent to my blogger wife :) - mike "glemak" dunn

Could Perez Hilton handle all 140 characters? like, that's a lot! - Herb Myers

This was a great list. Added a few new blogs to Google Reader. - Sean Brady

What... no Cordiva? :-) - Andrew Dobrow

No Natali Del Conte either. Seems more like a "Female Bloggers Influential To Other Females" list. Not so much a list of bloggers that have appeal to men and women, except for some like Gina, Veronica, Cali, etc. - Jim Bergman

Well Female bloggers usually gets 'popularity' faster...but nice list. - Saad Kamal

I'm shallow… I only clicked on the hot ones. - Vincent van Wylick

hey where's SarahinTampa, Cordiva, Cyndy or Svetlana? - update list please! ;-) - Susan Beebe

I love your picture for this article. It looks fun. - tarraguna from twhirl

I'm just happy its up for discussion. - Erin @queenofspain

I barely knew anyone on that list. Gonna have to start reading more blogs... - Andy DeSoto

Only heard of 3-4 of them, Veronica included :D but if they are there, it means they deserve it - Dan V from twhirl

I knew about 3/4s of the list and they absolutely deserve it. These are all great bloggers, well worth checking out. - Robert Scoble

Only knew about 1/2 of the list but the ones i saw on that list are there because of merit. Great List...worth checking out. - Nicholas James

congrats Veronica! - Kevin Rose

This reminds me that had I not given up on the first blog I started back in 98, maybe I'd be on this list. But I don't have the drive and passion these very worthy women have! Congrats to you, Veronica and all on the list! More importantly, keep doing what you do, because it is important and valuable. - Shawna Benson

What an impressive list! Quite a few I follow already, but nice to have some more to check out. - Sally Church

ok which one s/we get Playboy to cover ? Remember TC's post of late ? - Peter Dawson

Why does there have to be a separate list for most influential male/female bloggers? Why not just a list for the 50 or 100 most influential bloggers? Why the gender distinction? - Michael Tefft

After posting about the bikinibloggers of Urlesque & the wish for naked bloggers of Playboy at http://www.aboutblank.nl it was worthwile to pay some attention to influential female bloggers. Really influential, I'm talking about. But why do all these American sites pay so much atttention female bloggers, I wonder. So sudden, I mean. - Ton Zijp

whole story is suspect due to claim that blogging pair coined term "fugly" - WTF! :-) - Deva Hazarika

What does it have to do with America, Ton Zijp? - Andy DeSoto

Andy, just that the attention is there so suddenly, in such a way that they all make a list (20 bloggers Urlesque wants to see in bikini, 9 Playboy wants to see naked, 50 really influential according to N x E). I follow news about weblogs worldwide, I publish about it daily, so for me it's really surprising that in just a few days all these sites are concentrating at female bloggers. I don't take conclusions on that, but it really surprises me. July = bikinimonth? Like Urlesque said? - Ton Zijp

I know a few, and have a few others in my rss reader. But this blog post is screaming for an OPML. - Laura Scott (@lauras) from Alert Thingy

nice resource, re: formatteddad's comment- as long as there is no bias or exclussion. anything that brings more voices to the conversation- the better! sometimes we need to identify the voices that might not be getting the BIG exposure. - michael sean wright

where's corvida? where's corvida? - Sarah Perez

Congratulations for making the list! - Jeff P. Henderson

@Sarah - I was looking for Corvida too! - Yolanda

Im not a big ijustine fan, but Im glad to see Gina T near the top. - Colby Olson

What about Paige and Gretchen from MommyCast? They deserve to be on the list. - Barry Reicherter from twhirl

You go girls!! But where are the AFRICAN AMERICAN & HISPANIC & INDIA, etc bloggers. A little discriminating, don't ya think? - ChaCha Fance

wait -- no Sarah Perez? or did I miss her? - Jorge Escobar

Dave Winer

Jesse Jackson said he wants to cut Obama's nuts off. So? I've had the same thought today after the FISA thing. Maybe more than his nuts.

July 9, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Mark Edwards, Brandon Wood, Stefan Hayden and 21 other people liked this

Makes me homesick for Chicago. - Oldengrey (Jay)

39 more comments

Lol, Jesse Jackson is one crazy ass mofo. - Andrew Fielding

Keith Olbermann had a good one on Obama and FISA. In case you missed it: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id... - Alexei Tolkachev

What's next on Obama's agenda over the next four or eight years, after the FISA thing -- inquiring minds want to know. - Sean McBride

Turley had some great words about it on MSNBC last night... in my recent feed. - Anthony Citrano

Jesse doesn't do cowering either. ;) - Oldengrey (Jay)

you're joking, of course - however don't be surprised if you're contacted by secret service for this "threat"... :-) - Andy Green

Anyone who has seen the content of the unwarranted wiretaps has fully supported them.... not saying that makes it right but it does make them necessary. - Aaron deMello

Aaron -- can you document your statement about the content of unwarranted wiretaps? - Sean McBride

Nothing makes them "necessary". What's happening now is exactly the type of oppression the sons of liberty revolted against. - Adam Turetzky

Even if _everyone_ "supported" the wiretaps based on the content, Aaron...the point is that it's not good enough. We have laws. - Ken Kennedy

@Sean McBride - the tricky part is getting into specifics, which I can't. I am in the surveillance biz (or was, rather) and the ugly aspect for law enforcement is that the 'bad guys' (for lack of a better term) are better armed - with PGP, HushMail, stenography, casual SecondLife or Habbo meetups, etc. Makes it almost impossible to trace their convos. For all the $ in the world I would not want the job of an analyst following up on a FISA warrant. - Aaron deMello

@Ken Kennedy - great name, btw - I agree in principle but data is like fishing - you catch it when its there in front of you, or you kiss it goodbye. The sons of liberty have a very hard time trying to find the balance between protecting our rights and exploiting technology for their goals - which protect our way of life. The FISA laws worked well in the past but today - rest assured that the guys we are looking for are far more adept at exploiting the tools than we allow our boys to be. - Aaron deMello

@Aaron...don't take this the wrong way, but spare me. If it's against the law, you kiss it goodbye. You and I both know that the FISA law as (it was at the time) written allows for "catching it when it's there"...it's just more of a pain. It's DESIGNED to be a pain. We're not /supposed/ to be spying on people without warrants. Once upon a time, we (rightly) condemned other countries for doing this. *sigh* - Ken Kennedy

And please, no movie plots. kthx. *grin* And thanks for chatting, btw. Seriously. We need to have these discussions out in the open; it's important for our society. - Ken Kennedy

@Ken Kennedy - sure, they are designed to be a pain. I just don't think its fair that we have to play the very same game under extremely different rules. Should our lofty ideals be preserved in the name of security? That is the question that will be debated for the next few generations but personally I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt to those charged with tackling the problem, rather than us - the peanut gallery. - Aaron deMello

@Aaron...you laid that out rather well, thanks. And we disagree (which is ok) on alot. *grin* Probably the most important difference to me is actually at the end there; the peanut gallery comment. We're not the peanut gallery, Aaron...we are where those "charged with tackling the problem" derive their power from. This is no divine right monarchy; we're a cantankerous republic where the people ultimately run the show. Good questions, though! - Ken Kennedy

OMG, what a dumb-ass thing to do for a seasoned media guy like Jesse. FAIL! - John McCrea

If it was a Republican folks woudl be screaming racism. Apparently Jesse gets a pass. - Soulhuntre from twhirl

Had a flash on Obama and FISA. When he's elected Pres he uses FISA authority to legally eavesdrop on George Dubya Bush without court oversight, Private Citizen and ex-president, and leaks the juiciest bits to Olbermann. Puts him on the terror watch list, and while you're at it puts him in Guantanamo. Gives paparzzi full access. - Dave Winer

@Ken Kennedy - agreed. I believe in the end, perhaps not the means. - Aaron deMello

Aaron: How many terrorists have been convicted of terrorist activities in the United States as the result of warrantless wiretapping? How many cases against alleged terrorists have fallen part? How many times have neoconservatives accused their political opponents of being "terrorists"? How many despotic and state terrorist regimes throughout history have used the threat of "terrorism" to acquire and protect their power? So many interesting questions on this issue. - Sean McBride

@Sean - all those are very interesting questions and there are many more. My sentiment is that we are severely outclassed in the war on terror given all the legal restrictions that are not shared by the enemy. Even the simple act of getting a warrant to expose the phone calls of a unidentified pre-paid SIM card can be a living nightmare. How can one get a warrant when you don't even know if the subscriber is a suspect? These and other complex issues are the ones facing the intelligence community today. - Aaron deMello

Dave, I owe you an apology. I was sure you had made up that comment about what Jesse Jackson said. I think Jesse just threw himself under the bus. When is the last time he was relevant? - ha3rvey (Ho)^3

I thought the fact that Obama voted for the FISA would be indicative that he was already neutered? - Vidar Andersen

Aaron: history proves that the most dangerous terrorists in the world are state terrorists, like the Nazi, Stalinist and Maoist regimes, which collectively murdered more than 100 million people in the 20th century. State terrorists typically define all their political opponents as "terrorists," and then proceed to spy on them, torture them and murder them without any legal restraints.... more... - Sean McBride

Aaron: If I don't break into your house to find the dismembered bodies, how can I prove that you're an axe murderer? - David Worrell

Aaron: focusing on the first question: to the best of my knowledge, no one has been convicted of being a terrorist or being involved in terrorist activities as a result of warrantless wiretapping. Do you agree? I don't think it's worth trashing the Constitution and Bill of Rights to promote police state methods that were pioneered by Stalin and Hitler and that have produced such meager results. - Sean McBride

Ron: Obama's position on FISA demonstrates that he is politically tone deaf and may well not get elected. What made him a viable candidate was the enthusiasm of his base, which he has now destroyed. Most Americans do not support the FISA bill -- it's not even a "center" issue. It's a hard right neoconservative issue. Check out the discussion of this controversy on On Point Radio today <http://tinyurl.com/6crxv6> and especially note the exchanges between Tom Ashbrook and Glenn Greenwald. - Sean McBride

Ron, respectfully: I don't think it's right to 'play politics' with a bill that undercuts the constitutional balance of power itself. I'll still vote for him. But this makes him just another 'lesser evil' to me. - Madsimian

Dave Winer makes an important point: once a police state machine and culture is installed in any government, it will be used by any political faction that acquires control of it to destroy the political opposition. The American Founding Fathers were acutely aware of this problem, and that is why they created the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. Bush 43 and the neocons are perhaps... more... - Sean McBride

Harvey, he's relevant to the companies he's shaken down for money and donations for percieved abuses. - Jason Shultz from twhirl

Sean: we will never know the answer to that question, which is the entire purpose of the warrant-less wire-tapping program. The results of the program were never going to be used as evidence, at least not in a public court. Like I said before, there are always challenges in a democracy where the need to balance public safety with personal privacy becomes a very gray area. As to the effectiveness of the program, this is something else we will never know, since we have no idea how many attacks were prevented. - Aaron deMello

Aaron: any totalitarian dictator anywhere in the world, following in the footsteps of Stalin, Hitler and Mao, could use some of the arguments we have seen here to construct a terrorist police state that is completely unaccountable. Neocons like John Yoo, David Addington and Alberto Gonzales really don't get America and the thinking of the American Founding Fathers, in my opinion. They are paranoid authoritarians by temperament who fear a free and open society which encourages political dissent. - Sean McBride

some say Jackson has a point?! not! http://www.slate.com/id... - ~C4Chaos

Sean: Paranoia does play a part in it, and some paranoia can be healthy. At the same time, I'd rather have hawks than doves protecting my freedoms, and will grant them the wiggle room necessary to do what they feel must be done. What did you think of the voting numbers? 69 to 28? - Aaron deMello

Aaron: any political movement which thinks nothing of trashing the Constitution, while labeling its mainstream American political opponents as "terrorists" and "traitors" (yes, the neocons have done this repeatedly -- check out the log of these events on Media Matters for America), is only interested in destroying our freedoms, not protecting them. The neocons are the last people in the... more... - Sean McBride

As has been pointed out to me, it's not the fault of the telcos that Bush and company failed to get the necessary warrants (which they can legally do after the fact). So there's good reason to protect the telcos from civil trials. Remember, it was Bush who broke the law. Don't make this about Obama. He didn't violate the 4th Amendment. That was the President, who's sworn to protect and uphold the Constitution. - phil.gs

Based on the FISA vote, there's nothing to cut. - Michael Markman

speaking of FISA, according to Lessig, "Obama has not shifted in his opposition to immunity for telcos" check it out http://lessig.org/blog... - ~C4Chaos

The main effect of Lessig's annoying taunt will be to further alienate what was once Obama's base. Lessig just doesn't get it. On the other hand, McCain is such a weak candidate that there is very little Obama could do at this point to lose the election. Word is that the McCain campaign is seriously demoralized. - Sean McBride

Dave Morin

The government should create open APIs for accessing all publically available government data. Then, let all of us create great UIs for it.

July 3, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Kevin Russell, Mario Nogueira Ramos, Enriqueta and 64 other people liked this

Why don't you guys show them how it's done by opening up Facebook mail? ;) - Christopher Sacca

31 more comments

Like Sacca :) - Paul Buchheit

Yeah, news feed too. Thanks. - Sam Pullara

Photos are the biggest thing. Facebook is to a large extent a photo sharing site, but their TOS prohibit you from doing anything interesting with the photos -- they're trapped inside FB. - Paul Buchheit

Yes, Mr. Morin. Tear. Down. This. Wall. - MG Siegler

I also want photos to flow into Facebook from other repositories. Display my Flickr photos in Facebook and let people tag them please. - Benjamin Golub

Man with all the hypocrisy, it really stinks in here. - Gavin

does not gov have the same exact motivation for not opening up as facebook? - Fred Grott

These guys are making headway: http://www.everyblock.com/ - Andy Wibbels

I agree.... Tear Down This Wall! - Stefan Hayden

@sacca's point is fun, but it's a fact that the gov's data is ours, and debatable that FB's is. Both would be great, but the Gov's should happen yesterday. - Nate Koechley

First, government data is created through taxpayer dollars and since we all kinda have an ownership stake in the gov, we should have access to its data. FB data is FB's, per their TOS. Second, FB has data that is more valuable than other services -- it's a big business decision for them to be more open or not, and imho it's not clear if being more open is worth it to them at this point. Update: I see Nate already said basically the same thing. Anyway..... - Eric Eldon

Unfortunately most government organizations get the lowest-bidding contractors to build their content which usually means lock-in to proprietary data and clunky 'net applications. Just check out some of their intranets. IE6-only VBscript running on 10-year old proprietary multimillion dollar software - Glenn Batuyong from twhirl

I've seen a lot of agencies just mirror "what works at other government offices" which tends to perpetuate this cycle of technical stagnation. Some orgs do get the message and it's usually because of some introduction of Web 2.0 technology into certain facets. However, it needs to be internally evangelized and pushed up the ladder to the decision-making personnel (who usually don't understand the need). - Glenn Batuyong from twhirl

oof, this discussion ended up a news item. http://venturebeat.com/2008... - David Weekly

Bumping my follow up Twitter comment to FriendFeed comments: Back to my comment on the government. Wouldn't it be awesome to get updates on new laws and programs through the various social feeds? My thoughts on this come from the new cellular phone law in California. I think many people are probably finding out about this for the first time by seeing the blinking signs above the highway. It would be amazing if a notification for a new law came in through twitter, or friendfeed, or facebook (or all of them). - Dave Morin

Yes but Dave you missed everyone's point the value proposition is not in opening up as you would hoped but holding back. Politicians hide info to keep power, corps hide information to keep customers locked in..when users finally have away to route around than that info-lock in has NO POWER..that day is coming Dave very soon - Fred Grott

My comment was intended as a prod between pals. I make it a habit to tease Dave and other friends at FB about the relatively closed nature of some of their platform. I was by no means attempting to jump into the fray regarding OpenSocial/FriendConnect. That said, as a FB user, while I was thrilled to see them start passing full text emails to me, it does bum me out that I can't reply... more... - Christopher Sacca

outstanding idea - john conroy

@fred gott. i'm sure dave would like to know how soon that day is, since you seem to have such a clear idea. - Eric Eldon

WRT the lowest bidding contractor theory, hows about some of the more financially comfortable devs offer up their services in the form of govt contracts with outrageously low bids. Put your money where your mouth is so to speak. - EricaJoy

@eric listen to Gillmor Gang its closer than u think - Fred Grott

@Fred we agree on a lot of this. i was put off, however, by your antagonistic language towards dave, who has been at the forefront of opening up social network data to third parties for quite some time now. - Eric Eldon

@eric users wanting their data as free as possible has none of the tone you subscribe to me - Fred Grott

@Fred how many Facebook users want their data free right now? - Eric Eldon

Better if govs give access to the raw data. In my experience, trying to get a decent api from a gov department is kind of tricky. If you get the raw data there are plenty of companies & non-profits who are willing & able to build decent APIs around it. - Nick Lothian

@eric its not free part as u imply we want useful data that can only come about by full data-portability no user will ask for free or data portability because they do not know it as that. - Fred Grott

have u seen http://opencongress.org ? it's pretty hot! - Marshall Kirkpatrick from fftogo

@fred i fundamentally agree with you. i just think facebook gets too much shit for "not going far enough" even though it has been the (social networking) industry leader in data-sharing. just look at how myspace was treating third party developers in previous years. this is a process. - Eric Eldon

Whoa! Hot guys are going even hotter ;) http://sexyseo.blogspot.com/2008... - Lora Lufark

This is what will happen more often with FriendFeed - items that appear and are discussed here will become news more and more. Expect this to happen more often. - Ben Parr

Folks, opening up government as Dave suggested is a core part of Obama's technology plan. See <http://tinyurl.com/2rmnkr>. - Kevin Werbach

agree with Eric Eldon's take on Dave's comment. facebook maybe deserves a little bit of shit for not always being transparent on the PR, but seriously they get waaaaaaay too much crap for being "proprietary" about their innovation & leadership. folks that really want new & cool stuff should also realize that there is a cost to risk-taking & research, and that is often recouped via proprietary measures. and if it ISN'T uniquely innovative, other competitors will take down their walls with better shit. - dave mcclure

Louis Gray

Double Your Pleasure, Double the Fun

June 22, 2008 from email - Comment - Like - Share

Gavin, Amir Beitollahi, Tina K.J and 87 other people liked this

Fitting the twin bill this evening, some pictures of both Matthew and Sarah together. Ignore that goofy-looking guy in the A's hat in two of the photos. He clearly needs to shave and get more sleep. (And Allen, your CN sticker request was denied by the photographer, due to "priorities". We'll retry tomorrow.) - Louis Gray from email

34 more comments

Congrats! I'm an uncle of twins. They are definitely double the fun! - Mike Lewis

The twins look very cute Louis. I can literally say that you have got both your hands full. - Vic Podcaster

You look a lot cleaner than I did when we had our son. Congratulations! you're in for one of the most amazing times of your life! Sure you're sleep deprived and it'll take a while before you stop wondering why they ever let you leave the hospital with them, but it's all wonderful! - David Knight

mazel tov! - Jeremy Toeman

Freaking awesome. Can't wait to meet these two. - Robert Scoble

Awwww... how adorable! Congrats!! - Daynah

10 bucks says this entry ends up as "best of the day" on FriendFeed! - Jeremy Toeman

so incredible - congrats - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

Proud papa! - Hutch Carpenter

congratulations! - Allison Kipta from twhirl

congratulations :) - Zahra HB

congrats. my twins are 7 years old now. - Tim Connors

congratulations :) my brothers like twin but they arent twin !! i love twin babies - αida®

Congratz from Germany! - Marco Sascha Sven Hoppe from twhirl

Congrayulations Poppa Louis! Now you have double the fun! Thanks for sharing! Now get back to work! ;) - Larry Kless

Congratulations to you and your wife, Louis! :-) - Cathryn Hrudicka

Congratulations!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - Joe Dawson

Yay! Pictures!! They're gorgeous, Louis!! Isn't it amazing how twins sleep touching each other?!?! I love it... :-) - Lisa L. Seifert

Congratulations to you all...best wishes for the future... - Chris Wright

Congratulations... - Atul Arora

Congratulations, they look great. I had the same excitement exactly 13 days ago albeit we didn't have twins :) - Turker Keskinpala

:) congrats! hope their mum is recovering well - DC Crowley from twhirl

Fantastic! Congrats! - Evgeni Leshtanski

wow, congratulations! hope you have a door you can close @ work so you can take naps during the day :) - acedanger from twhirl

Congrats, more then a handfull - Lantz from twhirl

Adorable. - Caleb Elston

That's a proud Daddy! double the pleasure. Again congrats Louis to you and mommy. Cute looking twins! Mazel Tov - Mike Fruchter

Congratulations! - Tim Chemacki

Louis, you have explained that, as Schwag Magnets, Schwag IS the priority, right? ADORABLE! All these babies are making me miss those days. I love newborns. - Cyndy

Congrats - Joshua Smith from twhirl

Many congrats to you and your wife Louis! - jcunwired

congrats Louis, really very much! - Luigi Centenaro

You look amazingly happy and proud - as you should be!! beautiful healthy babies!! - Susan Beebe

Beautiful! - Chris Reed

wow. so amazed. so daunting. so wonderful. - Micah Baldwin

Steve Rubel

Friendfeed Can Disrupt Search and Reshape Advertising - http://www.micropersuasion.com/2008...

June 11, 2008 from Micro Persuasion - Comment - Like - Share

phil baumann, Iain Baker, Mitchell Tsai and 43 other people liked this

Summary: The social networking and search mashup is big and extremely monetizable. It will create a business around social contextual advertising. Will Friendfeed be able to scale? Time will tell but someone will make this work - Friendfeed, Facebook or maybe even Google. - Steve Rubel

20 more comments

"complements aggregated content from friends" as in ranked by likes/ comments from friends? Or even by favorable or unfavorable comments? Interesting post. - Roberto Bonini

Steve Rubel's summary is precisely the kind of valuable comment I would like to like. - Sean McBride

Steve, you have hit the nail on the head. Watch how the "best of" feature of FF morphs into search over time. FF is essentially using social media to rank stories, articles, posts, etc. It's the social search promise that Yahoo never delieverd. The question in my mind ultimately be will Yahoo try and sue them over this. http://tinyurl.com/uljes - Thomas Hawk

social context and search definitely provides a different perspective than google. - Rob Diana

@Thomas Hawk - I can't belive they would patent "interestingness". Interest is subjective rather than objective. Now I havent read the full patent (its enough to give me a heachache just looking at it), but it seems to me that it is specifically talking about ranks, tags and other metadata associated with somthing. FF is, in this context, more of a discussion board. Digg, Technorati, geotagging photos, PageRank ,etc seem to fit the description of metadata more than FF. Anyone got a lawyers opinion on this?? - Roberto Bonini

@Roberto, you'd think. But the patent filed by Yahoo is amazingly broad covering not just photos but the broad category of "media," and FF is using comments, likes, etc. to gauge relevance, same as Flickr to rank media. Apply it to search and who knows. I've always wanted an attorney's opinion on this patent as I've always opposed its filing personally. - Thomas Hawk

it is already starting to reshape marketing. this is another beast out of the box that pr just can't contain or ignore. ;) - Rodney Rumford

Thomas Hawk: A really powerful signal in the noise -- could this patent be one? It bears close reading. One is always looking for the successor to Brin's and Page's "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine" http://tinyurl.com/y98mbt for world revolutionary potential. - Sean McBride

@SteveRubel your use of a summary is going into my FF best practices for blog posts on FF - Christian Anderson

@thomas hawk - except that "interestingness" is really just regurgitating the a-listers' content... i maintain that friendfeed has "potential" and thats about as far as I'll take it right now. - Jeremy Toeman

I disagree Jeremy. Interestingness done correctly is not at all about regurgitating a-lister's content. But to really do it right, FF should introduce a "ratings" option for users. A subjective score from 1-100 that you could enter for contacts to determine relevance. This way your brother or mom or best friend could get a 99 score while a casual acquaintance could get a 5. Relevance could then be reshuffled and presented in highlights, search, etc. highly personal and very powerful. - Thomas Hawk

Sean, that interestingness patent from Yahoo is the biggest BS ever to come out of that company. I'd be embarrassed to have my name associated with it. It's the patent definition of patent abuse. I wish I knew the status on its progress and would love to hear an attorney's opinion on it. - Thomas Hawk

@Thomas - I would avoid physical ratings at this point as it tends to lend itself to gaming. @Jeremy - FF is only as interesting as who you follow. If you follow mostly a-listers and like a-listers, then that is the content you find. If you follow a diverse set of people, you get a much different list. - Rob Diana

I haven't changed my list of followeds but today is more eclectic than any in the past. Not sure if it is the beginning of a trend or not. Hope so! - Brian Sullivan

I have to agree with @Rob Diana. The more people you subscribe to the more diverse you feed is going to be and the more intersting it gets. Not to mention the "Friend of a Friend" feaature that makes it even better. I don think we want to see FF adopting a Digg style ratings system. The fact that people post items ( by whatever means) in here is indicative enough of the items importance. - Roberto Bonini

@rob diana - thats missing the point. I am friends with Robert Scoble, so I follow him. BUT, due to the FF algorithm, his overwhelming popularity with *others* impacts his interestingness here above and beyond his interestingness to any one individual... - Jeremy Toeman

jeremy: Aren't you and Rob saying the same thing basically? If you follow a diverse group of interesting people (who are likely to have interesting "friends") you will get an interesting feed - Brian Sullivan

@brian - well, I follow >200 people, and my 'interesting' stuff today is from a very small group of them, and guess what, they all have the most followers. so i'm sure i could be wrong on this, but it appears that the algorithm takes into account the quantity of followers, regardless of discussion or "interestingness". - Jeremy Toeman

Steve, just read your post and it is a good one. Is it friendfeed that you think is the trend or the concept friendfeed of FF as a piece of software. Could facebook copy ff and put on the news feed? - Laurent Courtines from twhirl

Interesting stuff, particularly about the influence of peers: i've always thought of FF as a P2P network in the very truest sense.... - Iain Baker

FF is already changing things and fast. It would be nice if comments and FF could trackback to source docs & vice versa. Maybe Disquis for now. You're right on, FF can disrupt search & reshape advertising. Is this the point where semantic web really need to come in? Or are we going to just go insane? (I like the noise, but could use a melody now and again.) - phil baumann

Louis Gray

Our Twins' Countdown Enters 20 Day Window - http://www.louisgray.com/live...

June 12, 2008 from louisgray.com - Comment - Like - Share

BCK, Glenn Slaven, Jason Dettbarn and 26 other people liked this

You're home free at this point, for all intents and purposes. Most of the twins in my world - and for some reason there are several - were born from 32-34 weeks. And all are healthy and happy. So excited for you! Life is about to get very interesting for you guys. On that note, we should start a FF room for baby advice once they arrive. You may need a place to vent and ask opinions. - Carla Thompson

29 more comments

I almost forgot. Buy two of these posthaste. http://www.miracleblanket.com/ - Carla Thompson

I had to create it myself so that it would have the right name: http://friendfeed.com/rooms... - Cyndy

Nice! I'll add the first item to it as a christening. - Carla Thompson

Now the real question is, are we going to add the REAL parenting advice or just the stuff you tell first-time parents so as not to frighten them? - Cyndy

OMG, some of my favorite e-mails include Carla's "observations" after her first daughter was born. The room is a fantastic idea and you have to keep it "real." - Shellee

Shellee, in the interest of FriendFEED I think you should share them. Just for giggles. ;) - Cyndy

My general rule: before they're born, keep it polite and only share the nice stuff. After: all bets are off. It's honesty time. - Carla Thompson

You're about to witness a moment of happiness that is unmatched and indescribable. Think of winning the World Series, the lottery and Scrabble on Facebook all at the same time. ... That said, the best advice now is one word: Sleep. This weekend, no alarm clock - just sleep in. Spend the whole weekend in bed if need be. It will be ages before you do again. - Chris Reed

@Chris Please define "ages." Oldest is 8.5 and the only weekend I've spent in bed I was sicker than a dog and still had to drag boxes of cereal to the children. - Cyndy

@Carla and @Cyndy... bring it on. We can have fun with this. - Louis Gray

LOL Louis. I'm not sure... I've had friends tell me that conversations with me are effective birth control. - Cyndy

@Cyndy: Ages as in I think they have to age and leave the house, then you get to sleep again. - Chris Reed

That's what I was afraid. of. :( - Cyndy

Charlie makes a really good name - Boy or Girl ... :) - Charlie Anzman

Lots of twinnage here at FF!. Our boys were born @ 34 weeks, after 6 weeks of very scary hospital-based pre-term labor. Now they're almost 4 and I can't imagine life without them. To be honest, I remember about 8 minutes of their first 6 months. I agree with Chris Reed. Take a nap. Now. Not because you want to, but because you can. Once they arrive, try to eat right, because it will be very tempting not too, and you need a lot of resources to battle your imminent lack of sleep. - Erik Dafforn

I agree with the others here..take a nap. Right now. Once your twins arrive, you'll soon be posting on - 'What is this 'rest' you speak of?' :) - MiaD

hmm.. at present you've got 143 comments and 162 likes this week. my prediction is after 20 days from now you never hit these numbers again. :) - Jeremy Toeman

My wife is 30 weeks pregnant with twin girls so we're getting closer too. And we have a 13 month old daughter. Yes, we are crazy. - Jason Dettbarn

@Jason Yes, yes, you are. Certifiable even. Although I have maintained since #2 that if ANY of our kids had ever made it to 2 without me being pregnant again, we'd only have one child. ;) - Cyndy

The only things I tell myself (to stay sane) is: we get through the next year or two we'll be golden; after this we're done having kids, so why not get it over now?!; they'll all be great playmates in a short time so we won't have to entertain as much... ahh, heck, who am I kidding? We are crazy. - Jason Dettbarn

Well, golden until the teenage years. Then I'll be taking up the shooting range as a hobby to scare off the boys. - Jason Dettbarn

Before our first was born, my wife had this thing: It would be two kids or four, no odd numbers (could have been from my being a middle child for a while). So after our first son was born, she said "2!" and I knew exactly what she meant. - Chris Reed

@Jason Ohohohoho. Hee hee hee. hoo. Sorry... I laughed til I cried. Four kids here in 3.5 years. Sorry to burst your bubble, but no, sir, you will not be "golden" in a "year or two." I look back on those days with three in diapers where some stayed where they were put with great longing. - Cyndy

@Cyndy and Jason: As I sat there last night, taking my eyes off of my 1.5 year old son for only seconds to watch a small snippet of the basketball game, only to find him seconds later pouring yogurt and milk all over the coffee table, the remotes, my lap, his lap, and the floor, I also longed for the days of waking up every three hours in the middle of the night to feed the monster, change the monster, and put him down again. "Hulk Smash" has nothing on "Toddler Smash." Still, I love every minute. - Rob Reed

@Cyndy delusional? maybe. but it's all I got left. ;-) What I mean was more getting used to the routine and actually having 3 kids, without going insane and destroying our relationship first. I think if we survive the first year or two, we'll be able to handle it no problem. Thanks for the insight! - Jason Dettbarn

"getting used to the routine and actually having 3 kids" Darnit, that was another hysterical laughing fit. And I think you made me wake up the only child who is actually napping! - Cyndy

Well, I guess I'll stop commenting here... sorry to hijack your comments Louis. Obviously every family of 3+ is exactly the same, so I should stop pretending things *might* be OK. - Jason Dettbarn

Sorry, Jason. Mine isn't the only big family I know and we unanimously agree that we lost our sanity LONG ago. My kids have friends in another family with 4 and two with 6 kids each and "ain't none of us right." - Cyndy

Hijack all you want. The thread's yours for the taking. I don't "own" the comments. :-) - Louis Gray

Good luck, Louis! My nephew just arrived last night (about 2-3 weeks ahead of "schedule") -- a healthy baby! - Andy Sternberg

Scott Beale

I'm Voting Republican - http://www.youtube.com/watch...

June 11, 2008 from YouTube favorites - Comment - Like - Share

Sumit Chachra, Anthony, Lon and 19 other people liked this

NO vote Democrat. Why should you have a say? Trust someone else. Trust the government, why protect your family? - Noah David Simon

9 more comments

Trust the people who did none of things alluded to in this video... even thought they had the full control of all houses from 1992 to 1994 and did nothing. Trust the GOVERNMENT, because they make promises it can't keep. - Noah David Simon

I love the fact that the democrats allude that THEY are the ones who will respect the constitution. Neither major party has in the past, nor will they start any time soon. - Dave Roth

I'd be voting Republican (if I were a US citizen). - Robin Cannon from twhirl

I'm voting Republican, because, like, liberalz sukk! *pouts, folds arms and stamps foot* - Jason Menayan

I notice the postings kicking into simplistic bipolar mental models. If Republican stood for dog food and Democrat stood for cat food, which one would you be eating for breakfast tomorrow morning? - Kit Krash

this is the kind of patronizing democrat malaise that plagues the valley. - Kingsley Joseph from twhirl

yea but if your gung ho on either camp, I know a psychological strategy that will be having you eat either dog food or cat food by tomorrow morning. It's based on the principles of Aristotelian logic, consistency and memetic trojan horses. - Kit Krash

...Cookie? - Daniel Shaw

Basically, I'm voting Republican, because they're too cheap to take care of the people. Personally, I prefer the government to be cheap. - Bryan Clark

@Kingsley The opposite plagues most of the rest of the country and talk radio - Jason Menayan

Emily Miller

Coolness FAIL - http://failblog.org/2008...

June 3, 2008 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Jonathan Berger, Ken Norton, Jeremiah Palmer and 19 other people liked this

I was soooo close to sharing this earlier :-) - Ross Miller

9 more comments

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa - Amber

Oh I don't know. I'd argue that he's the only cool one in the photo. - EricaJoy

Yeah, looking back for a closer inspection, I'm thinking that pink sweatbands and giant pink panther shirts are not really all that cool. - Amber

Well he is the only one with a pop-able collar... - Ross Miller

But despite his pink panther shirt, his hat is sideways. That is WAY cool according to my cool score matrix. - Bret Taylor

Pop-able collars are key for coolness... - elroy from twhirl

Well, basically... I don't get the fail here. Serious - Yuvi

the white guy just dont get it.....he needs some flava if he wants to hang with the real OG's in the pick lol - Charles Rice from twhirl

The comments on that fail blog post are even more fail: "You write an entire paragraph ranting about people that say “First!”, and then tell them to get a life? Are you not spending your time viewing fail pix on the interwebz as well? What kind of life would you like THEM to lead, sir?" LOL - Tobias Boonstoppel

I don't know. Pink Panther PJs seem like a fail to me too. - AJ Kohn

Paul Buchheit

Why This 55 Year Old White Lifelong Republican Wants Obama To Win - http://reddit.com/goto...

June 5, 2008 from Reddit - Comment - Like - Share

Casey, zsafwan , Jason Dettbarn and 5 other people liked this

America needs more people who think like this. - Mohamed J

10 more comments

"Obama does not play on our fears" I think this was a pretty good statement and I wish many politicians (especially in Italy) would learn this from Obama. You need to show people the vision for a better future that is not about putting fears but life at the center. - Davide D'Incau

Doesn't it seem odd that McCain is up against him? Doesn't seem to be a fair fight for the presidency, what happened with the republican party? - Kyle Weller

McCain has the best chances against Obama. Who else should there be? Huckabee or Romney? You gotta be kidding! McCain is the Republican's best chance against Obama, but they have a serious personnel problem in general. Think about the people in the Republican party - there isn't one serious potential candidate in the Republican party for the future. - sebmos

I was a Ron Paul fan for a bit, it was funny how McCain reacted when questioned by Paul about numerous topics, he never knew how to answer his questions and always changed the subject. If this happens with Obama vs McCain it will be a joke. - Kyle Weller

I believe Obama will be the president, because McCain is a joke. I think Obama will make a fool out of him don't you? - Kyle Weller

"I think we all vote on an emotional level, whatever we say about our "reasons." " - Clare Dibble

Muzik - viki saigal

I am an Indian, living in Singapore and I think Obama rocks ! Need to get me a Yes we can tee - viki saigal

@Kyle: You don't think this country would elect a joke? - Amit Patel

I agree with sebmos, McCain was a surprisingly good choice for the Republican party. - Kevin D. White

A doctor I met today, an articulate, educated young black man born in Jamaica, mentioned in passing that he was politically conservative. I wanted to ask if he supported McCain or what, but, you know, there were other things to discuss. Anyway, if so, he would have been the perfect opposite. - ⓞnor

Jason Dettbarn › Likes