I get a different answer: three different blocks of results, the first for Ross Miller and Ross J. Miller, the second block for Danny Tarkanian, and then a third block for hits of Miller on the web, including rossmiller.net. It looks like Ross Miller and Danny Tarkanian are closely related terms in Google's mind, I suppose because of the Nevada secretary of state election? - ana
I guess you're just not interesting enough to the Google :) - Paul Buchheit
That is the exact opposite of a vanity search, no? - Cyndy
Is there a relation between the two names? - Philipp Lenssen
Odd. I'll invite some colleagues to dig into this. EDITED TO ADD: Ah ha, I think I found out what may be triggering this situation. Do a search on the two names, and you'll see that there was a big (political) race between -- you guessed it -- Ross Miller and Danny Tarkanian. And, contrary to the screenshot above, I'm unable to replicate a search results page without [ross miller] results at the top. Hmm. - Adam Lasnik
I did cut out the two top results to make it more compact... which is why it says "See result for:" instead of "Did you mean:"... That said... I still don't want to see results for Danny Terkanian when I search for my name... Just seems kind of weird... Even if he did run against that other *me* in Nevada... - Ross Miller
Ross, I'll mention this to folks here, but Google returns Ross Miller's Nevada Sec. of State website at #1, and our algorithms currently think that people interested in Ross Miller might also be interested in Danny Tarkanian. If you're not named Ross Miller, this would be a pretty helpful set of search results. :) - Matt Cutts
If you want to see Hype Machine as a supported service on FF (without having to route through Twitter), please leave a comment here... http://groups.google.com/group... - Mike Doeff
Textbook example of how to make a great mashup: two songs, both good, put together cleverly, to make something more than the sum of its parts- job done! - Iain Baker
That's a great mashup- if you want more check out the Best of Bootie collection; my favourite is: http://tinyurl.com/5qq6m3 - Fearghas
Actually, the ocean 'dead zones' frighten me a lot more than the plastic island. But yeah, it's depressing to think there is a partially-submerged plastic mass the size of Texas out there in the Pacific. - Phil Glockner
It looks like WinSCP's dialog. It's not a Windows OS dialog... I know we have some doozies, but give credit where credit's due...B-). - Shawn L. Morrissey
This is definately WinSCP, and I for one appreciate all the options. Especially the last 2, ever tried syncronising 2 remote FTP folders? - Robert Kloosterhuis
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I am with @Tad make sure you select to Never ask me again!!! - Joe Dawson (beta)
I like WinSCP. I think that all those buttons are a good idea as they give you a lot of control. It is a bit of a crazy user interface, but WinSCP is built for those that can handle a slightly difficult UI, IMHO. If you don't like it, you don't have to use it. There's always FileZilla if you find WinSCP not suited to your tastes. - possible248
The one thing that I think would massively improve FF is the duplication of items; say once from a blog and then again from GReader. If they can crack that, well I'd be a happy bunny! - Fearghas
One major concern is whether there really needs to be a messaging feature. There are messaging systems already like Twitter or even that slow thing called email. - Rob Diana
I'm not so sure about that Fearghas. I'd agree, but only if the post didn't have comments. Lets say someone blogged about something and I hid that. Someone else might blog it and it might have a great conversation attached to it that I'd miss. This would be a good feature but I'd like to filter it by with/without comments. - Thomas Hawk
A way to separate spheres of interest - Right now I've only invited friends to subscribe to me who want to talk about social networking & geeky stuff. If I pursue friends to talk about health & philosophy, for instance, wouldn't they find my current comments irrelevant and want to shun me? - Mark Arend
Good point Mark, I've thought about that with regards to DMU, a group where I post on Flickr. That place is *way* too crazy of a place -- and if I posted here like I post in there, all but about 20 people would probably hide me. Maybe the thing to do there is to create two FF accounts. Regular Thomas Hawk and Crazy Thomas Hawk for instance. - Thomas Hawk
I agree with everything except the direct messages. About the duplication of items, maybe they could be clustered together but indicating which have comments, so we can participate in them. Another thing I would like is to embed songs from Songza or similar services. That would be cool. ;) - Alejandro S.
Alejandro - I like that idea. I'd really like to perma-link to those "clusters" as well. Since my blog is currently on Tumblr, I link to the blog post when it appears on FriendFeed to allow for comments. If I could link to a cluster, that'd be even better. - Jordan Hofker
Thomas - #8 is what I'm looking for. I'd *love* to be able to invite someone to "take over" their current imaginary version. It seems like something that would really increase FF users. - Jordan Hofker
The ability to make your imaginary friends private would also be good. I created two for my children (so I could see their activity on other sites) and people started subscribing to them. Not what I wanted. - TranceMist
@TranceMist - your imaginary friends aren't private?? I could swear mine are... @Thomas oh dear, talk about fragmentation! Making a split personality in FF?? I wouldn't want to have to create a FF account for my separate interests... Might work for some services but not for twitter or my blog where I post whatever I like. It would be a lot more of a burden on users to insist on that. Give us filters instead so people can just not see the stuff from you they don't like and keep the rest. - Lindsay Donaghe
@Fearghas - regarding the duplicate links showing up in your FriendFeed stream. Check out Bret Taylor's post on this and see what you think. http://tinyurl.com/6zw4rp - Hutch Carpenter
Added a link to yours from mine! That's 32 now team FriendFeed - I hope you are listening. - Jeremy Toeman
http://www.toluu.com/kenlefeb but I haven't figured out how to add a contact, yet. :) or, even, remove feeds from my list (like package tracking feeds that were in my OPML but you won't be interested in!) - Kenneth LeFebvre
To add someone simply visit their page, then click 'Add' below their photo. To remove a feed go to the feed page, then you can click the 'Remove' button. - Caleb Elston
love it if you could chuck one at me please: laurence.timms@gmail thx - laurence timms
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And when Gadiel runs out, I have dozens more. E-mail is louisgray@mac.com. I passed out quite a few yesterday. - Louis Gray
I have a few too. david@fineartdavid.com - David Owens
I'm on the waiting list for an invite, already, but if you've still got extras to pass out, I'd love one. Thanks! kenneth@lefebvre.us - Kenneth LeFebvre
Im out of my 3 invites let me know when you get them. :) - Gadiel Rivera
Given Gadiel's note, I assume all of the above have invites. Send me a note if you need one, and I'll take care of the rest. - Louis Gray
Glad to hear you like our feed preview, we actually just added YouTube support yesterday, so if a feed has an embedded YouTube video you can play it right from Toluu. - Caleb Elston
Not to mention that Caleb does a FANTASTIC job of making updates and responding to requests -- and since he's right above my comment, he makes it easy to communicate directly with him. Consider me a fan of the service and I believe, more importantly, the man behind the scenes. - Vince DeGeorge
Vince, thanks for the kind words, I do my best to keep up with everyones requests and questions. It is because of all of you that Toluu is growing and becoming more and more useful everyday. It would be an empty shell without you all. - Caleb Elston
I have been slowly adding feeds and so far I'm enjoying the service. You all should join us here and share what you read with us, if you need any invite just ask here. - Gadiel Rivera
Daniel have you been sent an invite yet? - Caleb Elston
Caleb: I need more invites to dilute the tech geeks with scientists pls :) - Sally Church
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Sally, I just added a bunch of new invites to your account, I can't wait to see what kind of amazing science blogs your friends follow. It is super cool getting recommendations about a subject you are interested in, but have no domain expertise in. - Caleb Elston
Caleb: Crumbs one has signed up already. It's a neat tool, well done. - Sally Church
Sally: Checking out some of your feeds as well as Crumbs. We are still in the very early days of Toluu, we think there are so many opportunities to make it even more useful and easy to use. - Caleb Elston
Caleb: Wait unti more scientists join and drown out the tech geek noise ;) - Sally Church
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Sally: Bring em on! I want to learn about black holes and folding space from a great blogger who makes it interesting. - Caleb Elston
Updated my mobile FF rant and am pleased to be able to do so ;) - Colin Walker
wow, the iphone version is nice. doesn't look that much different than online. - Rob Diana
Just tried this on my Treo 700p and it seems pretty sweet. @Colin @acedanger - I have mine memorized too....it is sad. - elroy
It even works on a Blackberry - that is way cool @bgolub - Sally Church
Hmm...it doesn't pull up on my iPhone like the picture...shows full-size and the text is too small. - Paul Arterburn
beautiful job. writing this from my treo 700wx, the world's worst cell phone. if it works here it will work for anyone. thank you for developing this. - Michael Pardee
So sweet. Working great on my Palm Centro! Good job folks! - Dan Nimtz
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@JP try again? I just had some errors that I fixed - Benjamin Golub
tried and get "whoops something went wrong" when I try to comment. - Thomas Hawk
Sweet, gotta try it at lunch, my colleagues won't be happy with me though. - Caleb Elston
Very nicely done. That is just what I was looking for in a mobile version of FF! - Scott Jarkoff
I look forward to trying this on my iPod..as soon as I can find a wireless connection. - Mike L
Not working for me :( Just to be specific, when I put in my username and key and click "Login" it just goes back to the sign in screen. I've tried several times. - Vince DeGeorge
Sigh; Google App Engine has for some reason stopped sending authorization headers. I'm looking into it. - Benjamin Golub
Not working for me either. Can't log in. - Morton Fox
Regular Friendfeed works great on my iPod. - RAPatton
I'll have to try this (1st gen Moto Q with Windows Mobile 5 and IE4) - Ontario Emperor
I love all the rapid innovation that's going on here! Nice job Benjamin :) - Aviv
Looks very nice on the iPhone, but where is the search functionality? Thanks for your time and hard work developing a great app Benjamin. - James
It seems to work ok on my SE P1i, but I dont really like this remote key thing... - Fredrik Wennberg
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unless you have Verizon for your carrier. Brightkite won't work with Verizon either (in my experience) - Greg Hollingsworth
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Atleast the FriendFeed remote key is easy to remember. Very "human like". I already memorized mine by the third time I had to punch it in - Bartek Gniado
Twitter doesn't work (properly) with Verizon, either. I never get device updates. - Steve Lynch
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funny twitter works for me fine on my verizon phone but not at all on my N75 w/ATT - Morgan
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Iv'e got the same problem as Vince DeGeorge on WM6 - rodmitch
testing FriendFeed for mobile right now. pretty neat! thanks @louisgray - Myriam
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Rough week for Twitter. I've watched dozens of new, popular, and free web services experience scaling difficulties. I'm always saddened by knee-jerk responses of technologists who blithely assert "I guess they don't test their software" during outages. Testing is only a part of prevention and is always a moving target. Diagnosis and response can sometimes take hours/days/weeks/months depending on the problem or the system. Money or funding doesn't automatically translate into an ideal production, staging, and analytic environment overnight (especially if growing by millions) and NO service or platform is immune. None! Not One. Happens within Google all the time. (You might not know that the Reader team has been sleepless this week in attempts to keep the service running.) I figure those of us who can help out with coding or sysadmin work to services we love probably should offer our efforts pro bono. Might not be able to help - but might as well offer. That is, if we care about them... - Chris Wetherell
Great comments, Chris. People should know about how understaffed the Reader team is versus what we expect from it. - Louis Gray
@chris as for "noBODY IS PERFECT" - i want to point you to telco services, they are might be ugly but _reliable_. - silpol
@silpol It is much easier to be reliable when you don't innovate :) - Christopher Sacca
@sacca to me, innovation without reliabilty coming-second-but-coming looks cheaper than reliabilty without innovation ;) - silpol
Well, bless the Reader team, then. I'm hopelessly addicted. - Chris Baskind
@silpol - I think the Faustian bargain for using these services *must* be that you accept a little down time or lag once in a while, they are on the bleeding edge after all. Don't get me wrong I love a piece of software or hardware that feels solid state but it's not the number one concern for any start-up. Any company worth a damn is concerned however, that if they don't keep their users happy that there might not be a tomorrow, which is more than one can say for telcos. - Jason Shellen
Chris, thank you for adding some much needed perspective to this. I'm so sick of the Twitter bashing. - Mike Doeff
Chris, thanks for reminding me what it's like to work on these services. It is a pressure cooker and I can't imagine what that's like. Of course my own site is having its own issues, so I have a little taste trying to keep everything working. Thanks for Google Reader and thanks to the Twitter team for everything it's done. I'm freaking addicted to both, so both teams are doing something right. - Robert Scoble
There's a real catch 22. If you spend tons of time at the beginning of development on making a super-scalable product in a fast-paced market, you may miss the boat. However, if you don't, later you'll run into scalability issues and it's much harder to rearchitect on the fly. Not really sure what the answer is here...maybe quantum computing :) - Eric Florenzano
Great stuff, Chris, I was beginning to think I was the only one who felt deeply uneasy about the Twit-out. - Iain Baker
I used Twitter during the Twit-out, and I used the Hide function every time Twit-out came up from the participants. It's one thing to use a service for what it was intended, and another to pour salt in another's wounds to show how you don't think you need it as much as you might have before. Also, such wide discussion of the activity seemed overly self-congratulatory to me. - Louis Gray
@shellen i understand your logic but don't buy it. in my opinion, twitter _is_ too long in kindergaten and _too_ repetitive in fails. they could open door for paid service for those looking reliabilty at low price, leaving masochists with all-time-failing-but-free level... - silpol
@Chris - They had already received $5.4M in venture capital. Why should we offer services for free? And they just received $15M more tonight according to GigaOM. if anything, we should volunteer our time to make something else better that's being bootstrapped instead of something that has received millions in venture capital. $20M buys a LOT of hardware and pays a lot of salaries. - Erica Douglass
So in other words, you build a Rube Goldberg machine, and then complain it's hard to figure out why it doesn't work? It's been a year. They first ran into scaling problems at SXSW 2007. They aren't working on the next NYSE in terms of data processing and scaling. I've been one of their biggest defenders. But I'm no longer convinced they really want to listen about solutions. - Cyndy
The graph in that blog post looks more like a fundamental flaw than soemthing that can be fixed easily. Maybe this is proof that RoR isn't a good choice for a platform... - Alexander Falk
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Hmm..could news of the 3rd round funding have reversed the feelings of generosity and forgiveness we were feeling towards Twitter? Still against the twit-out. - Kamath ॐ
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The key fact is that Jack *talked* about them. That's all I ask. - Ontario Emperor
@silpol - Your assertion about telcos requires more nuance. AT&T, Vonage, and Skype (first off the top of my head) have had major outages in their data services. And phone services (including a massive transition from analog to digital in the PSTN) have had roughly 80 years to work on scaling issues during which there has been significant downtime. Also, I'm not sure what you mean about telcos being "ugly." Are you talking about Bell Labs' DS0 digital signal? Marketing? Pulse dialing? SS7? - Chris Wetherell
@Cyndy - Your opinion about Twitter's system ("Rube Goldberg") sounds definitive. Have you seen their code? Their network topology? Their database schema? Do you know their message volume? What's your opinion about their message queue solution? Do you know more technical information about Twitter than the platform they've (reportedly) chosen for their web service? I'm suspicious, hopefully understandably. Also, Gmail and Google Reader have had big outages...do you also think they are Rube Goldberg machines? - Chris Wetherell
@Erica - Because (as I mentioned above) funding doesn't automatically translate into an ideal production, staging, or analytic environment overnight (esp. if growing by millions). Also, hiring and getting people up to speed are potentially high-latency tasks as new companies don't usually have built-out HR depts. So, in the meantime, I like the idea of offering help to stuff we love and use. Not for everyone and potentially inappropriate but there's a chance it'd be more effective than redundant outage notification. - Chris Wetherell
Too bad Louis. You missed the entire point of the Twit-Out as did most of the web. That's ok though, we all love Twitter the same. - Bwana
Never underestimate the value of hiring someone who does solely community outreach and customer/client relations. Twitter would benefit immensely with a person in that position, even if they aren't doing a line of code. - Mark Trapp
Ruby on Rails is only part of the infrastructure, as Ev has mentioned before. It's not as simple as just rewriting that part. But still, they've been working on this for what a year or so now? - Ryan W
I think Trapp has a great point as do Bwana, Scoble, Gray, and Wetherell. Scaling will always be an issue whenever a "widget" takes off whatever it is. Support for said "widget" is then necesssary, as well as prompt communication of c/s issues. Many times having a "non-techie" be the c/s person helps provide a different insight as to where the current user as well as the potential user are coming from. This all said. I am increasingly addicted to both Twitter and Friend Feed! :) I am glad that both are around. - Mathew A. Koeneker
Alex Payne is such a good guy. I think if people knew how hard those guys work at Twitter this wouldn't even be a discussion. Perhaps they should be more open in communication, but that would mean vindication to those whom seek to be disruptive. I think if they just added the "Beta" tag to their Twitter logo this conversation wouldn't even happen. It would set expectations that appear to have gotten out of hand. - Brandon Werner
And then there's tumblr. :-) I'm still working out how all of these pieces fit together best for me. I'm leaning towards tumblr as my private version of FF. Then again, just how many of these tools do I really need? :-) - Joanmarie
Rob you're right without SMS, FF is lacking. Joanmarie that is the other part of this. These are tools. Just tools. So, which tool works best for you and does what YOU want it to do? - Tris Hussey
joanmarie: tumblr is more of an egoblog for me, easy to post stuff I like, not caring if anyone notices. - rob
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I think that if FF gets bigger, then Pownce can still benefit due to files/links/events, so it's not mutually exclusive there, but Twitter can only lose. - Eric Florenzano
Rob: Exactly. That's what I meant by "private version of FF". :-) "Egoblog" is much more clear and concise. Thanks! Tris: I have no clue. But I'm having fun working it out. - Joanmarie
I think it's going to be a long time until Pownce or Twitter takes the place of FF. I just don't think of FF as the same. FF is more like the bookshelf than the book. - Clay Newton
Today proves FriendFeed's opportunity! I haven't seen much increase in Pownce traffic; whereas FriendFeed traffic is going up! - Susan Beebe
definitely FF. But I agree with rob: we need SMS integration in FF before it can totally replace Twitter - Alexander Falk
FriendFeed activity is hot. These comments are amazing. But ... checking if this chatter also brought you to read my post. - Tris Hussey
FriendFeed's opportunity for sure. I used Pownce for a while, but it just died. There used to be posts every 5-15 minutes. Now I'll be lucky if a page doesn't have a post from yesterday. - Zach Flauaus
FF is great, but the lack of serious mobile connectivity, beit SMS or a native app etc just kills it for me the moment I'm away from a computer; why I still end up using Twitter. If, and it's a big if, FF can get some serious IM/SMS/m.ff access going, then they can capitalise, I think. - Fearghas
First time reader Tris, so you can count at least 1 hit produced by FF. I think this quote hit how i feel about FF right on the head "the glue that might stick it all together." Not so much a replacement as it is a facilitator for people on social networks. Thanks for the interesting analysis. - Geoff Schultz
Good points, however, you'd really need a lot of people to join FriendFeed in order to make the actual microblogging platform irrelevant. - Mark Dykeman
Agreed with Fearghas. The mobile integration still keeps me Twittering. - Jared Smith
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“One thing I'm not necessarily liking about FriendFeed is that because I'm one of 4 teens in my network, I feel like I have to watch what I say. Like, I can't say random blurbs of things since everybody else is an adult. That's mainly a demographic thing though.”
Ok. I hate Algebra II. And I really don't want to go tomorrow for two hours because of one exam. After that, though, you'll be seeing a lot more of me. :) Who's ready for that? - Zach Flauaus
Yay for that. Rock that exam and then don't just spend time chatting, do something fun with that extra brain power. - Todd Jordan
If you keep your comments like your post, you'll be fine. - Vince DeGeorge
How old are you? Of course only if you want to tell :) Cause Im a teen myself. - Gadiel Rivera
If I didn't have a truck that got 15mpg, I'd probably go shopping with somebody. And by shopping, I mean window shopping. Maybe I'll take my mom's car... - Zach Flauaus
I've heard of it, but to be honest, I don't think my parents will go through and look at my 4000+ tweets. Weirder things can happen, I know, but I don't put anything too horrible. - Zach Flauaus
BE YOURSELF... don't censor yourself too harshly. But do remember what you say here is now available to the entire planet! and TRACKED by a variety of web services ;-) sooo that is a head's up to everyone! - Susan Beebe
@Zach - I know the feeling, I've got an algebra exam in 7hrs, hence why I'm up this late (2.45am GMT). The great thing about ff is that it's just about the content and conversation; you're not judged on your age or demographic, just on whether you're doing something interesting. - Fearghas
@Susan *Cough*Google*Cough*. ;) @Fearghas So true. Just on Twitter I get on rants sometimes. At least with FriendFeed it will be all in one thread. :) - Zach Flauaus
This is one of those situations where I feel really bad clicking "I like this", but I want to mark my appreciation for it. Makes me feel I should be doing something more meaningful with my SX-70 that's sitting in my drawer. - Fearghas
Wow. I tried taking a picture every day for a year. Only made it 6 months. I can't imagine doing it for 18 years! That's really dedication, especially when I'm sure there were days he simply didn't feel like it because of his health. Amazing, yes. - Lindsay Donaghe
Incredible and inspiring. Thanks for posting this! - Jeremy Brooks
...I began my 365days on flickr 01.01.08 and thought that would be a large enough endeavor. For him to do that many years is amazing...so is his story. - JA Castillo
That is very moving. Thanks for sharing this persons story. - Geoff Schultz
Amazing. Reminds me a little of Matt Haughey's '10 Years Of My Life' project (http://www.tenyearsofmylife.co...). It appears that Matt abandoned the project late last year. - Mike Doeff
this is one of the reasons why FF is so cool and why I like to cast a large net and add as many people as possible. I've been finding so many really interesting storie
