Twitter is just a few simple things away from running an open-standards based stack in parallel with their own stack. Neither is wrong, but there are merits to doing it over existing standards as well. Let's start a movement.
- DeWitt Clinton
A movement sounds great. I support you! :)
- Meryn Stol
As soon as Twitter opens up the firehose to everyone, someone can create a "mirror" of sorts that does all the right things PSHB-wise.
- Eric Florenzano
Eric, I don't think they'll provide the firehose for free anytime soon. I think that right now it's an important source of revenue for them.
- Meryn Stol
@Eric, are things like favorites in the firehose? What prompted this is that my favorites feed (http://twitter.com/favorit...) is still not updated on FriendFeed. All Twitter needs to do is stick a rel="hub" in there and run a hub (heck, they could use Superfeedr's or Google's) and sites like FriendFeed would get the fat pings instantly. A few hours of work and immediately the web would be better, faster, and more open.
- DeWitt Clinton
We can't... from the BirdDog content license - "5.ii.b - No Redistribution. Unless expressly authorized by Twitter, you may not distribute, sublicense, lease, rent or re-syndicate the Content or the Content Feed on a stand-alone basis, or display or perform the Content anywhere except on your Service." -- http://twitter.com/help...
- Ken Sheppardson
This has already been discussed on the Twitter dev list (between myself and John K.) - short answer was no. Looking for that discussion...
- Jesse Stay
Best solution right now is for us all to develop a standard that copies Twitter's, get that widely used and adopted with open source software that implements it, and then when Twitter is in the minority, tag on a real-time layer to it.
- Jesse Stay
We (Superfeedr) are indeed working on that... it's not quite ready, but hopefully I'll have good news for early next week :) As a matter of facts, it works wuit well with user feeds already :) Search feeds are a little bit harder.
- Julien
Julien, what are you guys doing about the terms of Service? I thought Twitter didn't allow that.
- Jesse Stay
Per my link above, from John Kaluci: "Technically, someone could build a service to consume from the Streaming API and push into PubSubHubBub. This would be against the EULA though. "
- Jesse Stay
"5.ii.b - No Redistribution. Unless expressly authorized by Twitter, you may not distribute, sublicense, lease, rent or re-syndicate the Content or the Content Feed on a stand-alone basis, or display or perform the Content anywhere except on your Service." -- http://twitter.com/help...
- Ken Sheppardson
@Jesse -- good read. Just to frame this, I'll be honest, I'm not all that interested an "OpenTwitter." (Though I am all for a more open Twitter, and have nothing against people that want to clone the Twitter API.) I think what they've done is neat, but it is only a small part of what can be done once we make the web itself better at low-latency distribution of content + federation of identity and social graphs.
- DeWitt Clinton
There's something much more powerful afoot than any single network or any single API. Think what could be enabled with Atom and RSS, PubSubHubbub (or rssCloud), Salmon, ActvityStreams, OAuth, OpenID, Webfinger, and Portable Contacts. That dwarfs any single thing we've seen thus far. In other words, don't think OpenTwitter; think bigger.
- DeWitt Clinton
Seems to me the real attraction of Twitter's API is as a *publishing* protocol, not necessarily as a way to consume streams. For that we have the collection/stack DeWitt mentioned. But allowing someone to push out what they're doing form their iPhone, Air app, etc., sure... OpenTwitter's a good option. And that's how the platforms like Wordpress, Tumblr, etc are implementing it, right?
- Ken Sheppardson
OpenTwitter could technically work on RSS. I'm thinking about a gateway of some sort that reads in RSS/RSSCloud/Atom/PSHB and publishes out in Twitter-compatible format so all the Twitter clients can understand it. I think it could actually work well with RSS, but for Twitter and others to adopt RSS, market forces are going to have to push them to do so. They're much more likely if we make it as easy as possible for the Twitter clients to do so.
- Jesse Stay
* rssCloud insufficient as a base for mublogging federation. * we'll support it for real time updates (as much as we can). * if there's more functionality added to rssCloud / and/or other protocols that we can use, we'll support and adapt to new protocols as they evolve. Regarding: xmpp pubsub * it's heavy (need server, etc.) * we'd like to have it, maybe we should implement, but not a high priority right now. http://status.net/wiki...
- A Mitchell
Thanks for the link to the OMB roadmap, A Mitchell. In general I like that direction -- identify and create the requisite underlying technologies, then build the special purpose (Twitter-like, microblogging, etc) services on top of them.
- DeWitt Clinton
Also, I should add that I'm only suggesting rel="hub" and PSHB support for the per-user feeds. The firehose is a different story -- I'm not asking for that -- it scales differently and has direct implications for Twitter's business model.
- DeWitt Clinton
DeWitt, I agree, but Twitter didn't make it sound like that was happening any time soon when I asked in that thread above. You should bring it up again on the dev list though - I'd love to see that, yes.
- Jesse Stay
Congratulations! "We are happy to announce that AppJet Inc. has been acquired by Google. The EtherPad team will continue its work on realtime collaboration by joining the Google Wave team."
- Paul Buchheit
from Bookmarklet
Even Wave's playback needs some Etherpad's time-slider sauce.
- Jérôme Flipo
if Google works as fast trying to figure out what to do with Etherpad as they did for Jotspot or Jaiku, just to name a few, one can say goodbye to Etherpad and stop using it. This is bad news actually.
- lelapin
SO this is like FF - another talent grab - Google's acquiring more smart talent
- Susan Beebe
I hope Google announces some way for us to create new pads, my online learning classroom will not be the same without etherpad :-(
- Shakeel Mahate
Oh noes! I'm with Shakeel...I need EtherPad for my high school Digital Media students. It's one of the few collaboration sites that isn't blocked at the district level.
- Shea
Shutting down etherpad is a travesty. Fucking Google, keep it open.
- Mitch
I had a feeling this would happen... Etherpad is basically a simplified proto-wave.
- Fa La La La Lindsay
I loved etherpad. Simple and great for code sharing. I don't think there is any other web service like etherpad out there. It will be missed.
- vivekian
During one of my phone screens, I was so frustrated with writely that I switched to etherpad.
- Piaw Na
Google MUST keep Etherpad open after March 31st. I fear that this will be the new JotSpot, and there's no simple alternative around.
- Jorge Martins Rosa
Adding new application interfaces like the EtherPad is the right next step for Wave. They need to move beyond the current Wave app interface towards multi-application document interoperability. Otherwise they will end up being categorized as just a really confusing chat services.
- David Lounsbury
Yet another example of why you shouldn't use the cloud for anything remotely important.
- Gabe
In abstract I would agree with you but there are previous examples, in the past, when Google acquired start-ups and literally did nothing with them. The ideal situation would have been acquiring Etherpad before Wave was created let alone released and build something with it as basis. Now what do you think is going to happen? Best scenario would be Etherpad's people being listened to and...
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- lelapin
from email
lelapin: Thing is, if they acquired Etherpad before Wave was created, Etherpad probably would have cost more to acquire. I'd say the long term potential of Wave having similar functionality, and more, devalued Etherpads product. In announcing that they will open source Etherpad, Google seems to be acknowledging this. Seems like a good outcome for everyone, Etherpad employees, Google and their users.
- Andrew Perry
Andrew: I'm just glad Etherpad (probably following the outcry that their earlier post provoked) made public pads possible again and is to be released as open source for anybody to grab the code and create something out of it. I'm not the slightest concerned about the price at which Etherpad would have been acquired had not Wave existed, it's Google we're talking about here.
- lelapin
/Disclosure: Stephen Mack liked this because I am a TiVo subscriber and Jesse Stay liked it because I advise SocialToo. (See what I mean?)
- Louis Gray
Exactly. Now we're all gonna overdisclose.
- Stephen Mack
he he... good points. I guess the idea is to make sure that you disclose content that you post that you get directly get paid for. Of course, no really good way to police this.
- Bindu Reddy
Louis, yes, you are an advisor to SocialToo, but I liked it because you are a friend and I like your content - no disclosure needed :-)
- Jesse Stay
/Disclosure: I recently had a meeting with Bindu where she bought me a free Diet Coke.
- Louis Gray
Jesse you could pass for an Englishman with a comment like that.
- Thomas Power
I liked this because Louis drops science in such an efficient manner...
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
/Disclosure: Thomas Power invited me to a paid speaking opportunity in London to Ecademy in September of 2009. I also intend to have a paid working relationship with Ecademy in the future, to help raise their visibility in the US.
- Louis Gray
@Louis now I am embarrassed I simply got you a diet coke... Not liking this disclosure thing at all...:)
- Bindu Reddy
a diet coke, crikey we took him for two posh dinners and even introduced him to our three kids (who love him by the way)
- Thomas Power
Great thread, A+++ would [Like] again. Louis - I'm curious about your emerging relationships with enterprise players. Are these all Valley based? What sort of stuff are you getting into?
- Daniel J. Pritchett
Daniel, today my major enterprise client is Emulex. They have a San Jose office, but are based in Costa Mesa. Most other clients are startups.
- Louis Gray
/Disclosure: I watched Louis Gray eat fried chicken for breakfast once.
- Mistletoe Glen
i wish i had something (anything!) to disclose
- Chris Heath
I'm not very interested in the FTC rules, but because of that nice review on his blog back in January I guess I'd better click like anyway.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
Somethings always bugged me about McRib... They're boneless, right? Isn't boneless ribs sort of any oxymoron?
- Ken Sheppardson
I don't question the genetically engineered workarounds McDonalds performs to bring us food. Next you're gonna tell me that McNuggets don't come from chickens.
- Mark Krynsky
Well they could call it McPork or something. Is it actually rib meat? That seems like a *lot* of work for somebody to de-bone ribs. Maybe that's why they have it for a few years, don't have it for a few, have it again. Maybe it takes a few years to de-bone all the ribs for another batch. And if you're going to name it for the part of the animal where it comes from, they should have the McBeak, McTail, etc.
- Ken Sheppardson
Frankly, it should have been called McMagic, because that's what it is. Something greater than the sum of it's parts.
- Adrian
Sadly I've always wanted one... but never actually gone and gotten one.
- Shawn Whitmire
Jeff, that pic of the McRib washed off to expose its pallid fakeness?? 'Nuff said.
- Kamilah Gill
Thanks Jeff but even knowing the truth behind the McRib does nothing to deter me from still wanting it.
- Mark Krynsky
You mean to tell me a magician doesn't really have a rabbit in his hat? Pfft... Seriously people, how easy is it to get on a high horse about McDonalds food. Come on... we're having fun here.
- Adrian
Who's getting on a high horse? We're merely presenting the facts. No opinion has been stated one way or the other (at least right here by me).
- Kamilah Gill
Kamilah, look at photo #2? What do you see? Pure joy! Do you think that lovely man wants to hear facts at that very moment? When you're at a bar downing a shot of tequila and cheering for your favorite football team do you want to hear about what it's doing to your liver? Nope! Anyway, some of us are pretty sensitive about our irrational affection for the McRib... and high horse was probably too strong a term... grumblegrumble...apologies...end rant.
- Adrian
Right, Adrian... we're having fun here. I think those of us who have fun deconstructing the stuff can coexist with those who enjoy eating it, no? I mean I enjoy me some Quarter Pounder now and then as much as anybody, but I don't pretend it's actually "food" per se. ;-)
- Ken Sheppardson
It's alright, we're cool, Adrian :)
- Kamilah Gill
No worries folks...we all have vices that can be deconstructed to show their evilness...in the case of the McRib it's only around for a short time so it couldn't cause me much harm even if I wanted it to.
- Mark Krynsky
I'd really like to see Leo Laporte do a talk-soup type show, that summarizes the best of all the TWiT network shows, doing clips, with banter in between by one of the producers who's putting it together. It could be called This Week At TWiT.
I generally don't like montage-type things like that, but it actually sounds kinda like an ingenious idea. I'd watch/listen to it, and I'm sure many, many, many others would too.
- Gus Cuddy
from BuddyFeed
I can't believe that this week of all weeks, not a damn one of you is willing to give Tina, who has given so much to you, her much deserved release! Shame! Blueballing the best of us......
- Matthew DeVries
I had a conversation just like this with my buddy Jason. The result was the following TWiTWiT podcast: http://bit.ly/75fBa [iTunes link] What do you think?
- Noah Wolfe
Need a geeky comedian to host this. I'd suggest MDV and Glen Campbell for this. Both of them are very funny and mildly geeky enough to pass it off.
- Uncle CW™
Anyone share this with Leo yet? Cause he always likes ideas about new shows. This would be easy to do to with a wrap up of shows that were done that week with a fresh face that wants to get into podcasts. Easy to do and fun. Did I mention easy to do?
- Uncle CW™
funny thing is, that this has been sitting in my inbox (inbox 1 if you will call it) since nov 4th... i'm glad we could finally get you some release Tina ;-P
- Chris Heath
oh and now i get to claim inbox zero!
- Chris Heath
Leo, if it's in the offing somewhere, you should grab the URL .tv for it. I bet it would quickly be the top search result when you type in that title!
- Matthew DeVries
Let me know what you think and if I can help with Superfeedr :)
- Julien
True to form, that comment came quickly! I'm trying to sort out the best way to get real-time notifications of posts inside a firewall. Pubsubhubbub won't work because I don't want to send feed contents. I'm looking at RSScloud. That'll ping some service through the firewall, which will notify me (back inside the firewall), and then my client can retrieve the content.
- Aaron Crews
Why don't you want to send the feed contents? Are they authenticated feeds?
- Brett Slatkin
They're generated inside the firewall, so for legal reasons, etc, I want to keep the content in the enterprise.
- Aaron Crews
Another option could be hosting my own private pubsubhub since it's open-source, but I don't know of any good clients that I could use.
- Aaron Crews
PubSubHubbub (and rssCloud) are primarily for doing messaging between two separate providers. It's an integration protocol. If you're entirely behind the firewall, why not use a simple message queueing service like Starling or RabbitMQ?
- Brett Slatkin
Brett - the simple answer is because I didn't know about Starling or RabbitMQ :) Thanks for the suggestions. I'll have to look them up.
- Aaron Crews
Well, I guess you find your way;) At superfeedr, we have an XMPP API that passes through firewalls pretty easily, maybe it's worth looking into that direction as well?
- Julien
Julien - that's very interesting. XMPP would work great, too. I am interested in that option. A lot of cool stuff to look into, including the multiuser chat.
- Aaron Crews
Good! Well, you know where to find me if you have any question/problem...
- Julien
Just now getting to this - looks like I can do some fancy things with RabbitMQ, the ejabberd XMPP gateway, and rabbithub (http://github.com/tonyg...).
- Aaron Crews
Yup. Please send an email with more questions (julien@superfeedr.com), I'd be happy to answer!
- testingsupsuperfeedr
Her: What is this long crazy word? Me: Typewriter? Her: What the heck is a 'typewriter'? Me: It's what we typed with before computers. Both kids: *BEFORE* computers? OMG.
They're still laughing thinking that I lived before home computers. I realize it's because they're used to 50 and 60s movies with room size computers.
- Admiral Anika
And pre-cellphone? Telephones used to be connected with wires and if you were out you had to use a payphone!
- Nick B.
Oh man, when I explained payphones to them a couple of years ago, they oldest acted like I was making stuff up.
- Admiral Anika
I had to explain what a rotary phone was yesterday to mine after we saw one in a movie. The look on their faces was priceless.
- Sels
My optician showed me the eye test for young children.One picture was of a black rotary phone. Every kid identifies it as a T shirt.
- m9m, Crone of FriendFeed
A friend in Texas took her kid to the optician and their eye chart for kids were corporate logos. She was pissed and walked out to find another doctor.
- Admiral Anika
Corporate logos seems particularly bad from the perspective of being able to test the ability to see. They are, by design, very distinctive and recognizable, even if blurry.
- Andy Bakun
Good point. I hadn't thought of that.
- Admiral Anika
Me and my friend were playing the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game on his XBox 360, his son came in and commented "the graphics are so bad that doesn't even look like a video game." ...I suggested we wash his mouth out with soap.
- Joe Pierce
A few weeks ago, I put in some classic Atari disc in the PS2. My daughter said, "No wonder you and daddy wear glasses. These games make my head hurt!"
- Admiral Anika
This is why I've always maintained when I have kids they get the video game progression I had. Start with Atari and Coleco-vision games, move on to some old school computer games (Oregon Trail and Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego-like) then NES, then SNES/Genesis, then Playstation etc.... ....It may be for the best that I don't have kids, I've put too much thought in here.
- Joe Pierce
OMG Eric, when I told her we used to play Combat for hours, she looked at me like I lost my mind. The boy declared it "boring". And they went to play with lint to prove their point.
- Admiral Anika
I think I'd better start ours on Yars' Revenge right away. He's been playing Little Big Planet for a while- don't want him to get spolied! :)
- Matt Mastracci
My kids are weird with what versions they like to play/watch. They prefer the older versions of Sonic or Pac-Man, but the newer versions of Super Mario.
- Admiral Anika
haha..............they wouldn't know a phone with a cord
- VAL D. Zone
Have you ever tried to explain the rotary phone to them?
- Joe Pierce
...then we stood up and walked to the TV and turned a dial to change channels but it dodn't matter there were only 3 CBS, ABC, NBC but Bonanza was in COLOR... yes I am old thanx for asking
- WarLord
I don't have to. They've seen rotary phones in the wild. We almost bought one at the beginning of the year, but figured it wasn't safe. They've seen phones with cords...we do have a fax machine.
- Admiral Anika
The other day someone asked me if we still had a TELEX machine at work.
- Nick B.
And all this is pretty funny considering my daughter thinks we need to go back to using quills to write. She already told me that for her birthday, she wants a quill and ink set.
- Admiral Anika
When I was young I wanted to write with a quill, until I tried writing with one. Not so easy.
- John (a.k.a. dendroica)
Same here. I think she'll outgrow it. I hope she will, at least.
- Admiral Anika
Maybe she does think I'm *that* old. We're watching Storyteller. I said, "I used to watch this as a kid." And she asked, "In black and white?"
- Admiral Anika
I usually tell my niece and nephews: "Before Youtube..." lol. It helps contextualize.
- anna sauce
You walked to the TV to turn the dial? The dial had fallen off our TV and we had a pair of vice grips on the stub where the knob used to be in order to change channels.
- Andy Bakun
You know, when I read this earlier, I immediately though of the scene in Ferris Bueler's Day Off where the principle is on the phone with Cameron claiming to be Ferris's girlfriend's father but thinks it's Ferris, and Ferris calls on another line and they show the blinking "on-hold" light dramatically. There's a lot of passing the receiver around and avoiding getting twisted up in cords. Then, later in the day, this movie was on.
- Andy Bakun
What in the world? Looks like you're about to make a movie... Pulp Feedition
- Wayne Sutton
from iPhone
oh God help us yes u look like Hugh Grant...em shades er are they D& G...l like
- Pam Gwenzi
This is still making me laugh. What were you drinking last night, Mr. Gray?
- Martha
Martha, I don't drink anything more toxic than Diet Coke. This was the Jon half of the Jon and Kate costume pair. I didn't have much opportunity to look Korean, however.
- Louis Gray
It is a most excellent costume and you pull off the lips beautifully. I like the pair pose as well.
- Martha
it is for me. Slow to load. Tons of "oops" errors expanding conversations and liking, loading partial pages, going black, hanging... did I mention slow?
- Jenna Bilotta
also? sad I can't sleep right now (on the east coast :(
- Jenna Bilotta
Completely agree that this is Article FAIL Louis!
- Travis Koger
On another point, why is Duncan still posting his articles to FF if he thinks it should be put out of its misery? I mean it is posted by his blog link, but still.
- Travis Koger
LOL Noone read the story, he was calling for a time when it would be no more, he feels we as users should know when the end will be, nut running around with our heads cut off.
- Jimminy Fuller
You mean you're suppose to READ Inquisitr stories? I thought it was just the headlines :P
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
Louis, what was fail about it, I'd like to at least know when the service ends, prior to it ending.
- Jimminy Fuller
The article suggests that the only way out is to pick a date it closes.
- Louis Gray
Ah well that is true, I'm trying to archive the service now, but I don't think that's going to get anywhere, far too many legal restrictions. So it all depends on how the deal was structured and if any of the team are still in control of the service. *sigh*
- Jimminy Fuller
I guess it's time to rejuvenate, er .. I mean transform the old Facebook account.
- BLOGBloke
I thought it was Zuckerberg who gets to shoot the old dog. Buchheit & co. sold it to him. Remember?
- Dennis Jernberg
Dennis, no one knows who is actually in charge of the decision, and Buchheit can let us know prior. They won't have an abrupt shutdown, I'd assume.
- Jimminy Fuller
But I don't think that if they do shut it down (and for all we know they likely will), it'll be anytime soon. And of course it won't be abrupt; Yahoo's shutdowns of 360 and Geocities weren't. If FB shut down FF abruptly, they'd have to face a whole lot of angry FriendFeeders.
- Dennis Jernberg
I don't understand all this "friendfeed is over, pick a date" stuff. friendfeed has hit pause on the evolution of features, but it was always the community that brought me here. The world will eventually move on to the point that it will no longer make sense to have a separate site here, but that will likely be a popularity vote made by us (and measured in traffic), not some arbitrary...
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- Clare Dibble
Clare, I don't mind hitting pause on new features. I think EVERYBODY expected that, to some extent. But when I look at http://ff.im/74ECA where current advertised functionality has been broken for almost two months and they haven't yet taken the time to fix it, THAT (to me) says volumes. This place has been given up for dead and nobody's bothered to notify the users. (Also, FF was...
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- Scott of Two Countries
Duncan wants it killed, and has blocked the most important members of the community.....why does he even spout an opinion about the service? He wants it killed and just used it to piss on when it thriving....
- Matthew DeVries
I don't see where this idea of us being given fair notice of the shutdown comes from. Kevin Rose gave Pownce users what, an hour to get their shit and get out?
- Matthew DeVries
Perhaps all of Facebook will be transitioned to FriendFeed. If so, how will I access Farm Town? :) I commented more fully at the post itself, after seeing a link to the post on Rahsheen's feed. And no, you're not seeing this level of conversation in Google Reader's social features, and if you are, you can't find the comments. Google Reader's a good sharing mechanism (I'm with Louis on that one), but it's socially awkward.
- John E. Bredehoft
Google reader's Comments engine and sharing engine are fracking perfect, but where it fails is in the conversation searches, and the "What/who the fuck was I talking about/to" and the "what are my friends talking about" function.
- Matthew DeVries
I will miss the FF search when it's gone. It's been an extension of my memory for a good year now. Oh well, I'll always have GMail... right?
- Daniel J. Pritchett
i like how, despite the arm-length protective sleeve, it still got spattered onto her shirt. i wonder if anyone will tell her about it before she gets into her pickup truck?
- Joe Silence is not Santa
Is it weird that I've always wanted to do this?
- Mellissa Claus
@Kamilah - she should be a vet and she's checking for things like whether or not the cow is pregnant and other such things. It's how it's done for horses too...
- JA Castillo
Oh, I thought that's how they made chocolate milk...
- Jeff P. Henderson
I'm guessing that this isn't what kids are picturing when they say they want to be vets when they grow up...
- Kamilah Gill
Amazing video. Some of those bullets are really cruel.
- Willem (@wim66) ☠
Those are really amazing. But could his "watermark" logo have been any larger and more obnoxious? I was almost in danger of being able to see the video :)
- Joel Webber
The impacts looks a lot like water splashing
- Benjamin Golub
It's a shame such awesome video has such lame music.
- Gabe
@mirat: I'm just guessing, but I think they still use chemical films. CMIIW.
- Pandu ● IT Optimizer
from fftogo
It's really impressive how quickly the fractures travel through glass (eg: 2:59 and 4:38). Significantly faster than a "speeding bullet".
- Laurence Gonsalves
I agree with April. The music is good.
- Louis Gray
I also agree with April and Louis. The music is "Temple" from Hook The Captain.
- imabonehead
I tried to remove the subject in Gmail, but people revolted. I really like that FriendFeed (and Twitter) don't have a subject -- it's just a message.
- Paul Buchheit
from Bookmarklet
I think email would be better if they removed the body instead of the subject.
- Jim Norris
On FF, there's a high assumption that the message I'll get is wanted because only people I sub to can message me. That's not the case with email. Sorry, you were talking about FB. Got derailed by the Gmail comment. I'd be okay with no Subject line in FB messages.
- pea
well, I can guess what's spam on gmail by the subject line. Since I never got spam on facebook's inbox... that could take things right to the point.
- Caio
Friendfeed removes the body from most messages, so you have to do the 'write a comment on your own message' trick to put it in
- Kevin Marks
That's a good point Kevin, a lot of people treat the first comment by the author as the subject line.
- Eric Florenzano
Which makes the feed API annoying for longform stuff
- Kevin Marks
People are using "pseudo tagging" on FF with the [something] syntax just to provide the "context" for their message. So, yeah, title is here to stay (where used).
- Claudio Cicali ♋
I tend to delete emails with no subject lines without reading them, since it's usually just one of my friends or family forwarding me some crap (Note: I have filters to remove Re: and Fwd: and similar additions to subject lines). So in that sense, subject lines are necessary if you want me to read what you have to say. I would extend this same concept to the Facebook Inbox as well:...
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- Otto
Hmm.. On a related note, I should just setup an auto-responder for no-subject-line emails. Tell people "no subject, no delivery", and also warn them not to send me their forward spam. Might work.
- Otto
Twitter has just the subject line, no body. ;)
- Amit Patel
It's the other way around Amit, which is why Twitter is better than Atom/RSS (RSS has titles, Twitter is just short messages). See http://friendfeed.com/paul... for an example.
- Paul Buchheit
"Twitter is better than Atom/RSS"?!? - splutters!
- Tim Tyler
it is very useless btw you also have to change the share box to old way.. It is very difficukt when you want to share a message to another user not to your profile
- Atif UNALDI
Instead of no subject, i often send email with no body, or the same in both. only use body when I need long form.
- David Stratton
Twitter and ff exclude the long-form use case. For email, subject lines should at least be an option. I don't use fb enough to comment on their messaging.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
No subject does totally work. Sometimes I really stuck trying to fill Subj form. Just have no idea how to summarize words like ”How d'ya do”. What's the subject here? No fkcng subj needed, for real.
- Кто это тут у нас
Bruce, the solution is to simply make the "subject" a part of the body, so that there is a smooth transition.
- Paul Buchheit
If there's one general problem I have with Gmail, it's the institutional attitude that they know what's best for the user. e.g. "You don't need to be able to sort by columns." I'm thankful they didn't let you dump the subject, Paul.
- Ken Sheppardson
How do you get users to do that? People don't naturally start long-form messages with concise summaries. Not that a subject line nails this problem, but at least you can prompt the user if it's blank.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
People don't write concise summaries anyway Bruce :). Ken, sorting by something other than date in nonsensical in a conversational context.
- Paul Buchheit
Facebook having a proprietary system that mostly competes with email, but is mostly incompatible with it is kind-of feeble.
- Tim Tyler
Paul: Perhaps, but people aren't always operating in a "conversational context" when they're dealing with email. For something as flexible as email, or messaging systems of any sort, I find it annoying when the system tries to dictate what my workflow and thought processes should look like.
- Ken Sheppardson
Maybe it's a dying use case, but subjects are really great for automated messages that are guaranteed to have a useful subject line. I can scroll through server notices, security advisories, and so on quickly and download the full message if I need to know more. The fact that you can download just the subject line (or rather, the email header) before downloading the entire email is still pretty useful to me.
- Mark Trapp
Ken, I'm referring to the UI. For example, sorting by sender doesn't make sense when there are multiple senders, as is the case in a conversational ui. The ui was designed to solve use-cases, not fill feature checkboxes.
- Paul Buchheit
Also, Gmail wasn't meant to cover all possible use cases. I think it's better to have a product that's very good for many people than mediocre for all people. It has open interfaces (such as IMAP) so that it's easy to use other clients.
- Paul Buchheit
I agree 100% with Ken. I almost always sort my e-mails by date, then subject (in Evolution, I can actually group them by thread, which is really nice). If I just kept all of my e-mails sorted strictly by date and none of them had subjects, I would have no idea which ones were related to each other. It's completely counter-intuitive to remove the subject line from an e-mail. Further,...
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- Curtiss Grymala
It's not meant to cover all use cases, but it's meant to be interoperable, right? If email originating from Gmail is not supplying subject lines (because they're hidden/downplayed/discouraged), but everything else relies on subject lines (like IMAP clients) to weed through the email list, the spirit of interoperability seems to be violated.
- Mark Trapp
I get that, Paul (re use cases vs features) and was just about to mention that I'm thankful for IMAP support, so I can use Thunderbird, Outlook, etc for those instances where my workflow calls for sorting by size; sorting a set of messages with well-formed subjects by subject; using sorting as a quick, visual proxy for search, etc.
- Ken Sheppardson
Mark, I didn't say that it wouldn't supply a subject line :)
- Paul Buchheit
What would it be? The first n bytes of the message? I guess that could work.
- Mark Trapp
i rarely use the subject line in my email
- andy brudtkuhl
it doesnt mean it is the best way if you use something in a way for a long time. i think no subject for emails is a good approach if you really think on it. it is the change scares us.
- Eren Emre Kanal
from iPhone
People who send me emails without a subject rarely have anything to say that I want to read. If you're too lazy to write a subject, then I'm too lazy to read your ramblings.
- Otto
The business world relies on subject messages for threading and sorting, and I anticipate will do so for some time. I would keep it.
- Louis Gray
Doesn't anybody ever take any business communications classes/training any more? Email without subjects lines is like a meeting without an agenda. Oh, and get off my lawn. Humbug.
- Ken Sheppardson
a direct message? no subject line. an email-like message? subject line for sure.
- Jim: Dead Like FF
This is why ultimately we may need to abandon email. It's broken in many ways, but difficult to change.
- Paul Buchheit
If by "broken" you mean "people don't take the time to learn how to use it effectively", I agree. ;-)
- Ken Sheppardson
For something meant to be so essential to communication, it shouldn't take time to use effectively: it should be a natural extension of what we do. If we're relying on everyone to use it correctly, that's not very efficient.
- Mark Trapp
ya i dont no why anybody wood half to lern how to do stuff it shuld all be natural
- Ken Sheppardson
Is it the norm to expect everyone to be bilingual? Why not expect electronic communication media to be an extension of the one form of communication that we all spend years to master? Why is it necessary to have to spend another large tract of time to learn another form of communication?
- Mark Trapp
Paul, do you think Google Wave will solve this problem? It doesn't have a subject line and it's much more different than email.
- Eren Emre Kanal
Eren, I don't know what will happen with Wave. It's a very interesting concept, but I suspect that it still needs a lot of refinement.
- Paul Buchheit
Now I'm curious what the subject-free gmail would have looked like, especially messages to/from other email systems.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
It's less different than you would imagine Bruce. The biggest change is in the composer. Gmail already kind of merges subject with body in the inbox. Unfortunately I didn't figure out the right ui until sometime after wanting to remove the subject. If I had thought of it sooner, we might have been able to do it.
- Paul Buchheit
At least I (mostly) got rid of it on reply though :)
- Paul Buchheit
Writing concisely, knowing what a paragraph is/should be, understanding what a "topic sentence" is, and being able to summarize a document in a single sentence aren't skills that are unique to email. Blog posts, reports, books, magazine articles all have subjects... except we call them "titles". Seems like the people I work with all use email in a ways that's fundamentally different than some of you. I don't really get where the idea that subjects are superfluous is coming from.
- Ken Sheppardson
Ken, when I call up a friend or family member, I don't start the call with "This phone call will be about the weather. Hey Dad, how's it going?" Conversations are not written prose, and the premise being put out is that emails are extensions of conversations.
- Mark Trapp
That's a great example Mark. Subjects are very formal.
- Paul Buchheit
Ken, because they're prose, not conversations.
- Mark Trapp
Paul - the fact that you say you "mostly got rid of it on reply" is exactly why subjects are so necessary. How else do we keep those conversations inline when dealing with other e-mail clients? Not all e-mail clients are able to thread conversations the way Gmail and Evolution do. With most of them, we have to rely on being able to sort/group by subject in order to keep related conversations together. As long as that functionality is broken, the concept of a subject has to stay in place.
- Curtiss Grymala
Curtiss, I'm not talking about removing the RFC822 header, I'm talking about changing the ui so that people don't have to waste time thinking about subjects.
- Paul Buchheit
Paul, I have to disagree with eliminating email. It's VERY useful for me in the way that I use it and for the people with whom I correspond. Of course, I don't have Wave yet so I may be eating my words soon.
- Jim: Dead Like FF
OK, I'm out. Y'all can continue to imagine this sort of topicless/subjectless world where email's just about "conversations"... good luck with that.
- Ken Sheppardson
But, somewhere that subject still needs to originate. Especially when we are talking about formal business communication, all of our messages (assuming you are using a snippet from the beginning of the message as the subject) would have a subject of "Greetings, _____" or "Dear ________" which would be completely counter-intuitive.
- Curtiss Grymala
In the old days, when letters didn't have subjects, there was no easy way to automatically file them together or find one you were looking for. I would hate to go back to that.
- Gabe
Imagine, if you will a typewriter NOOOOOOO!!!! I'm so glad computers came along! I had a temp job working on a selectric, on a 3-carbon forms. It was a nightmare.
- anna sauce
I just figured out how to filter my gmail for no subjects. Took a while, but subject:"no subject" will do the trick. Looking through those, they're almost all crap. I'm going to give them their own label for a while, see how they look. If they continue to suck, I'll set up a canned response to tell the sender to stick a subject on there before sending it.
- Otto
What would be a great innovation is if an email program let you assign a subject to email conversations that the original sender wasn't polite enough to write for you.
- Gabe
repeating how the ui might play out: snippet of body becomes the subject for a long form email, or short form email message is completely scannable in the message list.
- karl dotter
Kevin is spot on for why subjects world is better.
- Matthew DeVries
I agree with Kevin. I know I'm late to this thread but to answer Paul's "How do you know on FriendFeed?", the original post in FriendFeed/Facebook is in a lot of ways like a subject. It generates an overall topic that makes replies the body. When dealing with large conversation flows such as FF/FB, this tells the reader whether it is worth reading beyond. In many ways Twitter is the...
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- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
To add on, FriendFeed/FB Walls are in a lot of ways equivalent to being the flat file view of a message board's group of discussions/topics. Without subjects, it's just a bunch of unstructured data.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
Subject in a email often serves as a micro-summary. A chat message usually does not need it, for it is way shorter and woven into the conversation context more tightly .
- 9000
from IM
There's the expectation of the subject field to be there - it's a hard habit to break now - and it does give a bit of context and scanability to mail clients. But the process of labeling up mail could be migrated into place - 'mail tags', so to speak. Which could work for both sender and receiver and could make mail archives more like a folksonomy - and thus offer more integration with other web services.
- zeroinfluencer
I second that David, i was thinking along the lines. I would rather see the subject line being replaced with tags. Just keywords, no summary. Less thinking needed to summarize the message into one sentence, thus more productive and even useful for e. g. semantic purposes.
- Tibor Holoda
Hey - getting back on topic (we all got derailed there for quite a while) - I see no reason that Facebook really needs subjects on their messages. Since the messages are basically only used inside of the proprietary Facebook platform, which already threads the messages anyway, there's no real need for the subject.
- Curtiss Grymala
For what it's worth, Wave takes the first couple lines and makes it a pseudo subject, from what I can tell... It made it bold in the body of the wave (is it called a body?) and then added a dash in the inbox. Check out this example: http://img.skitch.com/2009100... all i did was type "Hi Louis!" as the first line of my wave and it did the rest
- Frankie Warren
Nope, don't need subject line. Instead, use labels (tags) to filter content (folders / views)
- Susan Beebe
For Facebook messages, the subject line isn't important; context doesn't need to be set. For "business" messages (Gmail/Outlook), it's more important, because the subject line is (usually) used as the first method of filtering/prioritising.
- Andrew Terry
yup, subjects with small updates is clumsy and noting but extra line that is not needed at all
- testbeta
I don't understand the problem. In the newsfeed there is no subject-line. In the message box, which is meant for long(er) form messages, there is one for fairly obvious reasons. It allows people to summarise the message and saves space. P.S. I use Facebook messaging as email nearly as often as I do Gmail, which I also want to include the subject-line.
- Vincent van Wylick
Yeah! Why do we always need to be formal?? Huh!? Is It social networking thingy or office networking thing? Lol! Good question, they should remove this. :)
- Mohammad Abdurraafay
from iPhone
The whole argument is pointless because in FB the subject is optional.
- Jason Williams
from iPhone
Wow, so much complaining. For subject haters, is it really that much of a problem to leave the box blank?
- Rebecca Sun
Furthermore, if you're writing just to say "hi" or whatever, put it on the wall! (Unless you're trying to keep your relationship a secret)
- Rebecca Sun
"# 8.18 seconds with CPython 2.5.2; # 2.61 seconds with pypy-c-jit (3x faster than CPython); # 1.04 seconds if you ignore the time spent making assembler (8x faster than CPython); # 1.59 seconds on Psyco, for reference (5x faster that CPython)."
- Paul Buchheit
from Bookmarklet
I wonder if unladen_swallow is to the point of being able to benchmark like this.
- DGentry