"The Internet is not about technology; it's about communication. The Internet connects people who have shared interests, ideas and needs, regardless of geography." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
I like it, but I think it doesn't go far enough. The telephone allows you to communicate. But when you hang up the phone the call is gone. The internet has persistent objects that can be manipulated, so it is also about cooperation and collaboration.
- Neil Kandalgaonkar
Technology sure makes that communication much easier, though. Long live Friendfeed!
- Josh Haley
from iPhone
I always thought the Internet was for porn. At least that's what I learned one year at SXSW.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, you still owe us (me and Joge) $5000, btw ;-)
- directeur
I think porn falls under the connecting people with shared interests and needs. ;-)
- Brian Sullivan
Hmmm -- I think saying the" internet is not about technology, it's about the communication" is like saying driving is not about the car, it's about the journey. I like John Dupuis' way of putting it -- the communication part was an emergent property -- Michael Neilson has interesting things to say on this topic, too, but I've gotta dash so I'll link later.
- Mickey Schafer
YAY, I love the internet. Couldn't agree more. GLOBAL unfettered communication amongst all peoples, socio-economic class, philosophy, etc. is what it's all about; whereas, the technology is there to support the communication layer. THAT is very important in the DESIGN of Information Systems.
- Susan Beebe
The following (wild) question just dawned on me: If in 1440—the approx. year of Gutenberg's press—a global electronic network had magically emerged instead, A) What purpose would the power structure at the time deem for it, and B) How would it actually be used within the first few decades? Hundred years?
- Micah Wittman
Neil: different communication formats have varying values for similar properties, such as bandwidth, delay, and rate of decay
- Mike Chelen
Neil: Good point about persistence, except that Twitter has objects called tweets that last only about 7 days ;)
- Alex Schleber
Alex: one compensating strength is that posts are publicly web accessible, allowing them to be independently mirrored
- Mike Chelen
High communication: words. Medium communication: pictures. Low communication: grunt, poke.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
Internet = TV + Radio + Books + Newspapers + Magazines + Telephone + Soapbox + [add your medium] = Media melting pot
- Ciro
Actually, the Internet may be about the incarnation of cosmic consciousness, and may not be primarily about anthropocentric intraspecies communication. I only half jest -- sometimes species are only vehicles that don't necessarily understand their function in the big picture, or what they are birthing. With the Internet, one senses something trying to pull itself together that is bigger than human.
- Sean McBride
let's say it again: it's. com. mu. ni. ca. tion. :)
- Alberto D'Ottavi
+1 Mike Chelen; to Ciro, Alberto -- conflating function, social value, and technology diminishes the ability to understand what the "internet" is/does/could be, etc. The internet is not portable; certain technological devices are. The infrastructure that supports portability is inconsistent; radio rarely is. It's very difficult to "listen" to books using the internet; the internet is...
more...
- Mickey Schafer
I agree with you 100% - The connections made here can't be made anywhere else! The transparency and accessibility of people, good people, is prevalent!
- Angels In Action
I didn't read all the comments above, but I don't think it's just communication. It's also about knowledge, data, availability of knowledge and data. creativity, etc... I'm afraid with this situation of lots of social networks people are a bit too preoccupied by the community-factor. Internet is more than that. Please don't forget that.
- Ton Zijp
To Mickey: 1. "The Internet is not portable; certain technological devices are." splitting hair...Give me the Internet without the "technological devices" as you call them. 2. "The infrastructure is inconsistent..." Video is video, audio is audio...otherwise the TV is also inconsistent and so is the radio and books, I digress on this one. 3. " And I believe it is actually important to...
more...
- Ciro
Ton, I agree! Ciro -- As someone who teaches undergrads who have to use technology and the net, I can't afford to be blithe about "they can if they want to". One of my interests is the relationship between discourse and behavior, so for kicks, I conducted a survey last year to get a feel for how students related to tech developmentally. One overwhelming result was that sometime during...
more...
- Mickey Schafer
I don't agree. Technology IS COMMUNICATION. Please consider W.J. Ong's Orality & Literacy or Pierre Levy's essays. Our literacy is still evolving and that's possible just because we can write (and communicate) with different technologies. So... Nice quote indeed, but wrong.
- Matteo Balocco
Bruce: language, art, and gestures are all forms of communication technology, each of which can be used to greater or lesser effect
- Mike Chelen
Internet is technology, great and simple technologies which work well and so you can focus on communications stuff
- Luca Zappa
Mickey: internet access may not yet be a universal commodity like paper, yet this property can shift rapidly in degree, redefining its qualities. regarding user expectations, to some extent this may be addressed through improved software design, for example google docs automatically save every few seconds
- Mike Chelen
Matteo: is that different from saying that all communication is a form of technology?
- Mike Chelen
Mike, I'm afraid it is different. While communication is a natural competence shared by all the living beings, technology is just an optional layer for just a niche of them. So we may say that all the technologies carry some informations (and we must consider them communication) but certainly not all communication is a form of technology.
- Matteo Balocco
However we agree that this is nothing more than an academic discussion. The quote by Taylor is still really good for some slideshows. :)
- Matteo Balocco
Mickey, thanks for your feedback. I don't disagree with any of your latest observations regarding the importance of keeping machine (medium) and internet (content) separate and the dangers of not doing so...My point was simply directed at the idea that in the context of pure content utilization, the hardware such as the cables (or airwaves) as transport media and content presentation...
more...
- Ciro
This could be very good! "Google software luminaries such as Unix co-creator Ken Thompson believe that they can help boost both computing power and programmers' abilities with an experimental programming language project called Go. And on Tuesday, they're taking the veil of secrecy off Go, releasing what they've built so far and inviting others to join the newly open-source project."
- Paul Buchheit
from Bookmarklet
What do you think, Paul? I know it's early, but Python latched on at Google... Think this is a response? And just on a lark, do you think Go may be headed for the browser at some point (to replace javascript)? Many of us have wondered if Chrome will take a stab at reinventing/reworking the web stack. Go feels more like a back-end tool, but wondering what came to your mind when you saw this...
- Christopher Galtenberg
Christopher, Python is nice, but we need a new system language, something high-performance to replace C/C++. This may be it.
- Paul Buchheit
My first reaction was oh yay, another C like language with brackets to make it acceptable. Having Rob Pike and Thompson on the team is impressive but makes me think of a plan9 resurrection. Using CSPs though is pretty cool and it looks like it supports mobile tasks.
- Todd Hoff
"Specifically, Go uses a technology dating back to the 1960s called CSP, or communicating sequential processes, that handles interactions among a set of cooperating programs, Pike said. The technology made an appearance in programming languages such as Occom and Erlang, but it generally hasn't been applied in systems programming."
- Paul Buchheit
If Google uses this for internal projects, that will give it a big advantage over something like plan9 in terms of being practical (not to mention the fact that it's free software, which plan9 was not, and a programming language, not an OS).
- Paul Buchheit
I am very excited about this, it's not genius or rocket science but it maybe the language to put alongisde C/C++ for real. I thought it was going to be D, maybe this is it
- Lawrence Oluyede
D seems too fragmented to be usable. All my hopes are on Go now :)
- Paul Buchheit
And note that the language is designed to be IDE independent.
- Piaw Na
Plan9 was a set of composable tools. In this case Google is providing the OS and the tools.
- Todd Hoff
Please ; at the end of lines... (I hate languages without ; for some psychological reasons)
- Ozgur Demir
I am no fan of language features designed to ease parsing but i suppose that's important for a system language? But it's hardly a user (i.e. programmer)-centric design. I think they should have drawn more from Scala (for concurrency model) and Io (for a beautiful syntax) instead of the messy, old languages they chose. Luckily, it's not designed for my needs so i'll never have to worry about it.
- ·[▪_▪]·
@ozgurdemir I agree. Either require them or don't. Don't make them optional in some cases. It confuses what programmers generally expect of a programming language: consistency.
- ·[▪_▪]·
Just checked and hated it. Sorry guys, it's not about the rest of the language.. it's just the ;'s.
- Ozgur Demir
while checking it, I noticed how much I love C / Java syntax and how lame to trying to change it just for to make a new product different.
- Ozgur Demir
@Paul you should know better than to confuse a language with its implementation! The people working on this all hail from the C/Java lineage and I don't know...may be fast but generally C is a hassle and Java is too dumbed-down. Trying to fix the mistakes they made in the past. Wonderful...
- Rudolf Olah
For god's sake, who cares what the syntax looks like? What matters is whether it solves useful problems or not. It's designed to clean up a lot of the problems stemming from the legacy of C[++], compile fast, execute fast, be appropriate for systems programming, and have good primitives for concurrency. Those are good goals in my book, and they fill a much-needed niche.
- Joel Webber
I thought it was kinda weird the way the video highlighted how fast it compiles. Compilation speed is great, and the vid was impressive, but I've never seen a language launch where that was highlighted so much. "Look, it compiles fast!!!!!! Oh, BTW, we are trying to solve concurrency".
- Nick Lothian
@Ozgur: Sure, but as long as the syntax isn't broken in some way, or ambiguous (VB6 comes to mind), it's surely much less important than what the language is capable of (compile speed, execution speed, what can be expressed, etc). Syntax seems like a distant third- or fourth-most important aspect to me.
- Joel Webber
@Nick: That kind of struck me as well when they first started talking about it. But when you consider that your main alternative is C++, and that compile times can get absolutely brutal (try compileing WebKit sometime -- it takes hours), it makes a bit more sense.
- Joel Webber
@Joel. yea, I can't say you're wrong and I am right.. these are all preferences.. for me, syntax is an important aspect in terms of code readability that's why I care since it becomes a real pain in the ass on a midsize or bigger project.
- Ozgur Demir
This thread is degenerating into rubbish. You know who you are - please stop.
- Christopher Galtenberg
from iPhone
@Joel yeah, I guess. But compiling something like that should take hours! Back when men were men and compiling a kernel on my 386 was a major undertaking success was so much more satisfying! Who are these young'uns Thompson & Pike and what do they know anyway!
- Nick Lothian
Yeah, really! Real programmers had to swap disks multiple times to run a Pascal compiler on Hello World for the C64 :)
- Joel Webber
Yeah, compilation speed doesn't mean too much. Would be nicer if they focused on the *thinking* part with regards to concurrency.
- Rudolf Olah
Compilation speeds mean a lot when you're dealing with the google programming model. This is a company that invented code search for internal use. (See as an example: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7613693...)
- Piaw Na
@Piaw - nice example. I only skipped through it, but I can't see why something like that makes compilation speed critical. It seems similar in concept to static analysis - more speed is good, but the lack of speed doesn't break the model.
- Nick Lothian
@nlothian: static analysis and compilation both include parsing. efficient parsing of C++ is rather hard to achieve, due to messy nature of multiply included files and macro substitutions. if code analysis takes hours (ok, half-hours), it ceases to be useful.
- 9000
Lack of speed totally breaks the model. When you can get your analysis and search tools to respond in sub 500ms, the model for coding completely changes. You no longer remember where files are --- you just search for them and expect the search tool to remember for you. This enables massive code sharing, and allows small teams to be extremely effective, since they can now leverage other teams' work.
- Piaw Na
Use an IDE for iterative development of the components you are working on, make modules independent through interfaces, do a nightly build so the bulk of build products like libraries etc are available, then these compile issues go away. Justifying based on compile times is so 1990s.
- Todd Hoff
Ah, but how exactly does your IDE allow you to do iterative development quickly? You have to be able to compile individual modules (whatever form they take) quickly enough to make this feasible. If you take C[++] as the de facto systems language, it fails badly on this front, because the only way to share interfaces among modules is via the preprocessor, and precompiled headers only get...
more...
- Joel Webber
C++ allows for abstract base classes. No implementation. Compose systems this way and you minimize recompilation. And I'm assuming the initial subsystems are developed in a mocked unit tested environment and then within a very narrow scope, so interface changes are minimized until the system test phase is reached. The compilation argument would make sense if they were talking about a...
more...
- Todd Hoff
Sure, but you still have to define the abstract base class (interface) in a header file somewhere, and individual .cc files end up depending upon a large number of these in practice, so that any change to one of them tends to force you to recompile a lot of object files. As you say, there are some ways of reducing this effect, but in practice large C++ systems end up taking forever and a day to compile (try compiling WebKit; a lot of Google code has this problem as well).
- Joel Webber
C++ templates are also implemented badly, which makes compilation slow.
- Piaw Na
Only if you don't compose your system well Joel. I've worked very comfortably on systems that took 12 hours to compile across a cluster of 32 build machines. I'm not saying I don't want a language where you don't have to go through all these hoops, but to say it's inevitable in C++ is not so, you just have to beat make into submission and not create a big ball of mud, which is good practice anyway.
- Todd Hoff
@Todd: Fair enough -- I'm definitely not saying you're wrong, and I have also worked on fairly large C++ code bases (mostly games) without everything going to hell in a handbasket. But you have to admit that it would be nice if you didn't have to wait many hours (or use a Google-sized build cluster) for compiling your code :)
- Joel Webber
I've worked "comfortably" on projects where the full rebuild time was a few hours on my local machine, but I can't say that I was ever working optimally. Even in the instant-on environment I'm working in now, there are occasionally changes that I have to wait a full build/deploy cycle to test and it almost always takes me 2-5x as long to solve problems in that case. You can multitask while you wait, but it's just not the same (IMHO, of course).
- Matt Mastracci
I think 12 hours to compile across 32 build machines is unacceptable. I want instant compilation. You know, the kind that Turbo Pascal used to have.
- Piaw Na
I think that there's a dramatic improvement in developer productivity when the compile-link-run cycle time goes from a minute to a second.
- Gary Burd
Piaw before you say what is or is not unacceptable you might want to take the trouble to know what problem is being solved. Turbo Pascal to a real deployed product like a unicycle is to the 5th fleet.
- Todd Hoff
But any, good, modern IDE compiles incrementally and continuously so there's no noticeable compilation step. Compilation shouldn't be a _highlight_ of a new language. It's nice and the ease of building developer tools is a benefit to uptake but, in the end, the language has to be something developers _want_ to read and write since we have to look at it so much. Syntax matters. It's why so much sugar is added to languages.
- ·[▪_▪]·
As stated before, modern IDEs don't scale to google-sized code bases. Go is not designed for your tiny projects that fit in main memory. It's designed for large scale development projects.
- Piaw Na
@piaw You seem to assume that Google doesn't organize it's code. Any good project, regardless of size, especially for large projects, should be modularized. If Google has to load every piece of code into the IDE, they have more serious problems than Go will resolve. Trust me, I work on a project with tens of millions of lines of Java code and i've been responsible for analysis and...
more...
- ·[▪_▪]·
Well, Piaw actually did write a fair amount of the code at Google, so I'd give him a little more credit :) I know plenty of people at Google who *do* use Eclipse/IntelliJ on Google's code base (myself included), but you do have to break it into manageable chunks to make it work. That's sometimes easier said than done, to be fair.
- Joel Webber
When I worked for a large company in the internet advertising business, I found that dependency creep was a constant problem. I spent more time than I would have liked trying to get fast compilation time in Eclipse/IntelliJ. I welcome a tool that helps with this problem.
- Gary Burd
I think that time spent pruning and organizing your code and library is best instead spent working on better tools that make your development environment super fast and capable of scaling. That's the way Go was designed.
- Piaw Na
If you want fast turnaround, eliminate compiles all together. There's no reason why a language can't support a double or triple hybrid model. Look at a language like Factor, image based like Smalltalk, you write a function, and can patch it into the live running app instantaneously, where it will run interpreted in combination with compiled code, until the runtime gets around to...
more...
- Ray Cromwell
I noticed that Go has an interpreter work-in-progress living in its source. The start of an instant-run mode?
- Matt Mastracci
Smalltalk had a massive sharing problem --- you couldn't ever replicate what was in your Smalltalk image on someone else's machine. Eliminating compiles would be nice, but again, if you're solving problems at a massive scale, interpretation would be an order of magnitude loss in execution speed that you can't afford. That said, a Go interpreter would not be out of the question, or even hard to build.
- Piaw Na
@Piaw - was just reading "Coders at Work" this week and Ingalls (http://www.codersatwork.com/dan-ing...) was saying the exact opposite. He said he pauses his Mac machine and sends his Smalltalk system state over to a Windows developer and they start right up, debug, and fix.
- Daniel J. Pritchett
The point is not to have the production version run in interpretation, the point is to increase developer productivity by allowing a fast edit-run cycle, production builds can take as long as necessary. When you're in development mode, you often don't need full execution speed, you are checking for correctness. Take GWT for example. You can make changes to Java source, hit reload, and...
more...
- Ray Cromwell
What does production mean? An experiment that processes a large number of records so you can decide how to proceed with your line of research is hardly production, but it nevertheless has to execute fast over large amounts of data. You might think that it doesn't matter how quickly that runs, but the difference between 10 minutes and 100 minutes is huge in terms of productivity.
- Piaw Na
Yes, if you copied the entire image over, you could replicate a smalltalk VM. The problem is, then you have to live with the other guy's image and customizations. Smalltalk is great, but it really was designed as a single-user environment.
- Piaw Na
It depends how often you are running experiments over huge datasets like that. In the case where I needed some experimental data to proceed, yes, if after every edit, you had such an experiment, then maybe programming in a neutered language would be worth it, but I'd say that for the majority of developers, this is not the case, so being able to run unoptimized builds/interpretation...
more...
- Ray Cromwell
No, it is not for everyone. It's very much for large scale datasets that are encountered somewhat frequently on the WWW.
- Piaw Na
Almost nobody understood my earlier webapp idea, so I'll try again. Imagine you were looking at a website such as FriendFeed and you wanted to create a near pixel-perfect copy but in a way that you could move things around, adjust shadows, etc. I want a tool that makes that easy.
And without taking screenshots or copying the html, since the point is that it should have the power to quickly create something that looks just like our current ui. Also, it should be web based, because then fonts, etc will be right, and also I hate installing things. My previous attempt at explaining this: http://friendfeed.com/e... (Balsamiq is not what I want). It does not need to produce html though, so it can cheat anyway it likes.
- Paul Buchheit
So you wanna something like "html to png/psd"? Editable graphical interface with layers and stuff?
- Selim Yoruk
No, not at all. My point is that you could look at the the FriendFeed ui (with your eyes) and then create something that looked just like it.
- Paul Buchheit
Fireworks is pixel perfect, correct font sizes and previews image in browser. Yes/No?
- Toby Graham
Paul, I like the idea, it's got merit. There's plenty of tools that do half the job, that is, snip the page. The second part, i'm not overly familiar with the tools out there. The manipulation. I guess you could snip the page, and embed into your tool a js library, like scriptaculous, and attach special event significance to the controls/tags, for moving, dropping, dragging.
- Stu Andrews
I think I get what you mean now and I agree. That's not very helpful but hey. In the mean time you could edit the page live using firebug maybe?
- Toby Graham
It seems to me like you want the Visual Studio Win Forms designer for web apps hosted and served to designers as a web app. Drag and drop elements onto the page and adjust their properties in a property grid. Then send a link to others so you can share your concept.
- Eric Schoonover
For this, I use simple vector graphics editing app, like Xara or InkScape - I just make screenshots and use them as raw building blocks - usually I cut out from them small elements like controls/text-blocks/images/etc... In vector graphics enironment managing such kind of blocks is much more easier than in photoshop.
- Phil Smirnov
remembers that this idea has been described by David Siegel in 1997 in his book : Creating Killer Web Sites (http://tinyurl.com/5skw63)
- Oaksun
Paul, i think the edit-page command on ubiquity with the ability to: visually edit css and publish the changes is close to what you are describing.
- Ian
Eric pretty much nailed the description of the dream tool that I think Paul was asking for. In my dream the web app is truly collaborative and has an active GUI. So you can adjust those properties using a mouse or tablet and anyone else on your design team can watch as you do it so they can make suggestions and modifications as you work.
- David Muir
Let's say you want to make a mockup of FriendFeed called "FriendFood". You want it to generally have the same layout, only the top blue bar will actually have a background made of lasagna and a font that is made of French fries, and what shows on the page is everything people write about food on the regular FF, like "pasta OR bean OR potato OR steak". But you'd like someone to be able to do that from the web and without messing into much coding. Is that it?
- Rodrigo Jaroszewski
Could you achieve it by using Firebug and tweaking the CSS?
- Shakeel Mahate
So something with the usability of say, omnigraffle, but that only used webkit for its rendering. With text controlled and positioned by actual css so that line spacing etc were correct, although again with a simpler UI than CSS has.
- Robin Barooah
Paul - I _just_ came across a site that did exactly that. Unfortunately, Safari's browser history is failing me and I can't find it anymore. Doh!
- Patrick Lightbody
Paul, not sure if you're still reading, but are you looking for interaction design changes as well, or just appearance?
- Mark Trapp
I had never heard of Pencil, but it sure looks a lot like what I think Paul is describing.
- Jason Wehmhoener
I use ScrapBook Firefox extension to capture the page as is, and then edit that using Firebug.
- Jughead
Paul, I totally got you first time - anyone who thinks it's not a good idea has plainly misunderstood :-) It's the next step up from sketching out your UI on paper, n'est pas?
- Slappy Line
One quick tip in Photoshop is to turn off anti-aliasing and use your various web fonts (Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, etc.) and use your preferred font size in pixels/points... This will provide you with screen accurate font appearances and sizes. The biggest problem with a "pixel-perfect" browser rendering is that it will never be consistent from browser to browser. They all render ever...
more...
- Nathan Chase
Idea for a useful webapp: A tool for doing web page mockups that's better than Photoshop because things actually look right (because it's rendered by the browser). It doesn't need to generate good html, so absolute positioning, etc is ok.
Totally brilliant idea. I write my own bad html mockups in a text editor or whatever IDE I'm playing with at the time, but a tool to ease this process would mean I could get on to abandoning the half-finished project much sooner than usual. :-)
- Slappy Line
Please god no, don't create another "doesn't need to generate good html" code generator. srsly
- Jason Wehmhoener
Well, as for the mockups, there is really great Firefox extension called Pencil. You should try it.
- Mladen Srdić
using Cappuccino, an open source framework that makes it easy to build desktop-caliber applications that run in a web browser?
- huixing
Paul, have you checked out Axure http://www.axure.com/? I've typically used Visio or resorted to whiteboards/paper as they are easier to edit.
- Jauder Ho
Jason, I would be fine with it not generating html at all. As for Balsamiq and some of the others, the idea is actually that it would look more like the final product instead of less. Photoshop gets fonts wrong and stuff because it isn't a web browser, and yet people still keep using it, so it seems that it must have some advantage over the other tools.
- Paul Buchheit
Photoshop has two major advantages, multiple uses and precision. Photoshop can be used for more than just web mockups. One person can achieve multiple goals with Photoshop while a mockup tool just makes mockups. The second advantage is the mockups look great in presentations because the author has complete control. Photoshop mockups aren't real they're hyper-real.
- Kevin D. White
Depends whether your goal is to sketch and idea or create a final design. For the latter, you really do want it to be pixel perfect. For the former, you want a "wireframe" or whatever the cool kids call it these days.
- ⓞnor
What ⓞnor said. For "wireframes" a whiteboard is fine, but eventually you want pixel-perfect designs.
- Paul Buchheit
Paul have you tried Fireworks, that's what our designers use.
- Michael
http://www.balsamiq.com I got this link from Cooper U boards a while back, and a lot of my co-workers have found it very useful. While it's not pixel perfect, it allows for really quick mock ups with the idea that the design of the end product will be done by actual designers.
- Sam Ee
I've been looking for something like this for years. Balsamiq is definitely a good start, but I feel like there's not quite enough depth yet. Has anyone had luck with stencils like the ones found at http://graffletopia.com/ (for Omni Graffle)?
- Sutee Dee
pixel perfect? The web isn't print. Complete control over the rendering environment is an illusion. Don't submit to it!
- Andy Bakun
Vi is pretty good. You just write some text and point a browser at it.
- Cliff Gerrish
Try wireframing and prototyping apps - I am not sure if output is rendered at browser level though. Protoshare.com, jumpchart.com, productplanner.com
- TrafficBug
"Moreover, our algorithm is conceptually simple: we use transactions to manipulate B-tree nodes so that clients need not use complicated concurrency and locking protocols used in prior work. To execute these transactions quickly, we rely on three techniques: (1) We use optimistic concurrency control, so that B-tree nodes are not locked during transaction execution, only during commit. This well-known technique works well because B-trees have little contention on update. (2) We replicate inner nodes at clients. These replicas are lazy, and hence lightweight, and they are very helpful to re- duce client-server communication while traversing the B-tree. (3) We replicate version numbers of inner nodes across servers, so that clients can validate their transactions efficiently, without creating bottlenecks at the root node and other upper levels in the tree."
- Paul Buchheit
Paul, I think many of us are going to trust your opinion on this white paper. All Greek to me.
- Jon-Paul Bussoli
All I understand is that it is in my best interests to cheer for the way you access B-tree nodes in order to continue to enjoy friendfeed reliably. Go friendfeed algorithm go!
- Jon-Paul Bussoli
@nor It's really not the same thing, unless somehow you're using a distributed B-tree on hash collision, however, if you're getting that many collisions, then the hash algorithm is probably wrong or your key width is too small. Then again, I really don't know what I'm talking about.
- Eric Florenzano
Curious as to what problem Paul is looking at... My default data toolkit these days would probably include sqlite for in-memory data, sharded bdb's for btrees that are too big for memory, and hbase/hypertable for a distributed store. I wonder where this fits in...
- DeWitt Clinton
Ok this is a really *nerdy* post! :*)
- Susan Beebe
DeWitt, I just thought that it looked like an interesting paper. As for the several solutions you mention, I don't know that any of them have distributed transactions (maybe bdb, but that doesn't really work).
- Paul Buchheit
B-Trees and Prof. Bayer http://wwwbayer.informatik.tu-... - would be interesting to know what he'd say, unfortunately he's retired a few years ago. Used to be fairly approachable in all matters B-Tree.
- Mustafa K. Isik
@DeWitt - no room for a traditional SQL based database except as an in memory database?
- Nick Lothian
we had designed and implemented distributed tree control, but transactions were considered "too much" for near-real-time, and they were already in protocol... the rest you know as xGSN boxes in GPRS/3G/HSDPA - dynamic routing for mobile packet networks. I'd left team in 2003...
- A.T.
@paul - I'll readily admit to being out of my depth, but it depends on what the definition of "distribution transaction" is. With bdb a combination of local transactions and guaranteed consistent replication you can approximate a distributed transaction at the cost of speed. See http://www.oracle.com/technol... and http://www.oracle.com/technol.... But those won't work across bdb shards.
- DeWitt Clinton
@paul - A table-based distributed store can do this via a lock on entity groups, where entity groups are defined by relationship formed by instances of similar models that belong to the same parent-based ancestry chain. This is how App Engine transactions work -- see http://code.google.com/appengi... and http://code.google.com/appengi.... Ping ryan for some background there. Not sure if hbase or hypertable support this via their api.
- DeWitt Clinton
DeWitt: have you ever successfully used BDB with millions of newly written entries and transaction support turned on? We kept getting transaction logs with millions of entries that were never consumed, so restarts would take hours as it replayed the logs. Configuring BDB to work for large databases is insanely esoteric to say the least, and it may be impossible to get it to work acceptably in some cases.
- Bret Taylor
@bret -- no, definitely not with large databases. We used bdb's heavily at my last company, though. Aggressive sharding is the key if you want to support either transactions or replication, which matches intuition about how it is implemented.
- DeWitt Clinton
But your comment about millions of entries makes me wonder about which data is getting written to which place. I suspect a lot of problems like this end up with the bulk of the data being written transactionless + replicated to a table-based store (or a transactionless bdb), and only a small subset of the data gets transaction support. So multiple datastores. But you guys know this better than I do, so why am I rambling? : )
- DeWitt Clinton
DeWitt, you can also look into all the trouble that Gaia had with bdb - I simply wouldn't trust any fancy bdb functionality.
- Paul Buchheit
Also, AppEngine transactions are limited to a single "entity group", which I assume means a single BigTable tablet. Essentially, they solved distributed transactions by not having them -- all transactions must be local to a single tablet. From the docs: "Every entity belongs to an entity group, a set of one or more entities that can be manipulated in a single transaction. Entity group relationships tell App Engine to store several entities in the same part of the distributed network."
- Paul Buchheit
@paul - yup, that's the trade-off. Entity groups ensure locality, locality makes transactions fast(er). Same old lever problem -- speed of consistency vs. scope of the transactions.
- DeWitt Clinton
DeWitt, there's nothing wrong with having local transactions -- I'm just pointing out that they aren't distributed transactions.
- Paul Buchheit
Point taken. I got way off-topic regarding your original post anyway.
- DeWitt Clinton
The design seems reasonable. The only part that is under-specified is the way they switch from a master node to a slave. I'm curious why they don't use transactions to maintain replicas but instead rely on some unspecified master/slave replication scheme.
- Private Sanjeev
That is *exactly* why FF will become more mainstream than twitter.. try explaining how to tweet to your parents (who are finally comfortable with email)!
- Chris Myles
@Mike, yup. Bittersweet is a good way to put it. It was a great office, as was the one before it, and I'm sure the next one will be too. :)
- Dan Hsiao
Don't throw away the Fluff... FF will always share a special place with (f)F in my heart
- Mike Sego
Exxxcellent, sir. We've been asking for this for awhile now. With this taken care of, how close are we to being able to collapse comments that we've expanded?
- Akiva Moskovitz
Let's call that a $50 million feature ;-)
- Laurent
+1 Akiva, was thinking the same thing - Also, thank you much! Been hoping for this. :-)
- Matthew Horton
Good to see development on FF hasn't stopped, Paul. I thought the FF API v2 post was the last FF update we'd ever see. This warms my heart :)
- LANjackal
it's not too late, personally alot my post-FB fears will be allayed if dev continues on FF.
- Joe Silence
Very cool! Keep bringing the cool features!
- Dakota O'Neill
can you please add one at the bottom of the page, too? i keep having to hit About then the friendfeed logo, and finally back at the beginning/top :)
- mike
Let me guess, the 500+ message thread about FB buying FF brought this on. Like!
- Evan Parker
Matthew, Laurent, Akiva Roflol. This is like the bouquet you get when you're the girl and he messed up. Louis, you were right. ;)
- Melanie Reed
It does not appear until certain number of comments are made. This is really nice because if it appeared twice in proximity it would not look nice.
- ashish
Now, can you add a collapse comments feature? I hate having to scroll up or down for what seems like miles and miles of comments just to get to another post.
- April Buchheit
We really wanted this when we were conference blogging--will be great for next time.
- Ruchira S. Datta
+1000 April - yes, i've wanted that for a while, too ... please :)
- Susan Beebe
Nice start. That means I can almost uninstall the Greasemonkey script that had been doing this for me for the past month or so. Now could we also get a link to collapse the comments again. Pretty please? Oh, and why no "Like" link at the bottom as well?
- Alex Schleber
ooh yes, a link at the bottom to re-collapse comments would be great. or maybe even every 30 comments or so there could be a re-collapse link. sometimes i expand and regret it in short order.
- Felicia Yue
Happy to see this :-) and happy for Myrna too
- Majento
now that I Like'd this post to show it to my friends, I keep receiving comments to it in my IM, most of them rather predictable. Is there a plan to add a @mute command that would stop the streaming of comments to a certain post to IM?
- 9000
from IM
Looks interesting, have been investigating a lot of these systems lately just out of curiosity, but most have not met my expectations. This one is new, but I plan on checking it out.
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
Anything in cluster form is great. Servers, Breakfast cereals etc.
- CannonGod
Did you ever have a look at Tangosol Coherence? They were around before even memcached got popular, with a clustering solution with very flexible partitioning strategies, and the ability to run queries on the cluster. The continuous query functionality is pretty cool for real time stuff: http://coherence.oracle.com/display... Of course, the fact that it's written in Java might turn some people off.
- Ray Cromwell
Bret, have you looked at redis, and or Tokyo Cabinet?
- Nick Halstead
Nick: I love Tokyo Cabinet. It is not a distributed key value store, though - it just runs on one machine. There is a huge difference, and unfortunately most of the open source projects in this area don't actually work (largely demo quality from my tests).
- Bret Taylor
Of course, Oracle bought Tangosol, but their original product was great. I don't know how much it costs now, but some of Tangosol's competitors were good too.
- Ray Cromwell
Note that it's under the AGPL (Affero Gnu Public License), so you can't use it for closed-source web services.
- Jim Norris
Oh: good point, Jim. Nevermind. I will not be checking it out.
- Bret Taylor
Bret, http://opensource.plurk.com/LightCl... gives distribution + persistance to Tokyo + REDIS, definitely check out redis if you have time, although its still early days they have key/value + the values can be sets + queues, and all operations are atomic. Redis is also very easy to hash across servers.
- Nick Halstead
Re: AGPL. I recently looked at mongodb because apparently I'm not alone in thinking this whole space is fascinating (though it is not distributed key-value store). Anyway, their description of AGPL seems to be that it is possible to write a closed source web service against it so long as you give your changes to the server back to the community. However, I think this is enabled by the fact that they release their client library as Apache. Does that sound consistent with other people's understanding of AGPL?
- Kelly Norton
Apache driver license looks safe to me except for the C++ driver. Not sure how that one avoids AGPL...
- Michael Herf
from iPhone
@Michael - You're right. Looks like the C++ driver is AGPL. I have to admit, I don't see how anything could really escape the viral nature of the AGPL. The site claims that there are drivers available from third parties under different licenses, but that would seem to violate AGPL. I think it's probably best to stay away from anything AGPL.
- Kelly Norton
Obviously I can't provide a lot of detailed plans and guarantees, but I can tell you that I'll do my personal best to ensure that the FriendFeed users and community are treated right. I love this product too, and don't want to see it disappear.
We love you guys and FriendFeed.. we are just a little hurt and worried.. just please give us details as soon as possible.
- Tim Hoeck
FriendFeed lets me use people as filters to turn data into information. Facebook doesn't. Until it does, please, Please, PLEASE keep FriendFeed as a destination alive.
- AJ Kohn
congrats guys! facebook needs what you got!
- Lorna Herf
I'm sorry that I haven't said more about this. As you can imagine, it has been an extraordinarily busy day (and I've barely slept in the past week).
- Paul Buchheit
I'll add my plea to the chorus: Please don't take FriendFeed away from us. And don't make us go to Facebook (because we won't). FriendFeed means a lot to a lot of people and the thought that it will dry up and blow away shortly is very disturbing.
- Fa La La La Lindsay
It's still great to hear from you Paul. Congrats on that new swimming pool full of cash. :D
- Chrimmus Tad
Simply glad you're here now. You've always been a very responsive and transparent team. As much as I cringe at the thought of FF going away, I *am* happy for you and the team.
- AJ Kohn
I request you make it to the next scheduled FFundercats podcast to talk to the community. This announcement deserves a live appearance to the community.
- Eric @ CSTechcast.com
Have been dealing unsucessfully with Twitter for two days, trying to get logged in...Their password reset page says"Snap we can't find you." I keep writing to Tech Support at Twitter and get their helpful auto-generated Twitter Trouble shooting email. My problem is not there. =( Hope FriendFeed does not get that blaise about helping users. @EV
- SashaKane
If FB can't keep the service running, would you consider open-sourcing the thing, so we can?
- Christopher Galtenberg
from iPhone
Hi Paul, thanks for the assurances. In the future, I would highly suggest that you make this sort of statement shortly after the initial merger release. Thanks again.
- Alex Scoble
I would like to give you a hug right now Paul. However, that would be awkward and April might beat me up so I will just say thank you and press the like button.
- EricaJoy
Thank you for affirming that. Much appreciated.
- Karoli
A few more points that would be nice to have addressed soon. Ability to export data, tool to import friends to Facebook, and will ff.im urls continue to function?
- Mark Krynsky
Those that like friendfeed as is should be most pleased with this statement, as it probably means maintenance to keep the current system as is, without as much attention to new features. It's also good news for all those who like both friendfeed and facebook, as facebook will likely adopt the better features from friendfeed
- Ivan Kirigin
Thanks for making FriendFeed what it is, and lets hope it stays that way, though there's slim chance of that
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
Now that I think about it: are you kidding me? They've already stated that FriendFeed's going to be absorbed into Facebook. What kind of sleight-of-hand are you trying to pull now, Paul?
- Akiva Moskovitz
@EricaJoy: I have nothing against hugs. :)
- April Buchheit
Thanks, Paul. I've been getting more and more depressed thinking about the bad ways this could go. The reassurances help a bit, at least. In fact, just hearing you speak on the point is encouraging - the open lines of communication between the FriendFeed team and its users has always been one of the great things about FriendFeed that I'm afraid will be lost with the Facebook buyout. And yes, a FFundercats appearance would be a great idea.
- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
I don't want to read too much into this reassurance but the "personal best" remark made me think like there is not a united FF anymore and that it's up to your personal efforts to prevent it from being eaten by FB :)
- Turker Keskinpala
you can sell the tech but the community can not be bought sold transferred or merged
- Robert Higgins
from f2p
Turker, I do believe that this deal was the right decision -- I'll write a bit more about that when I get a chance. I say that I'll do my "personal best" because I will -- it would be misleading to make promises on other's behalf :)
- Paul Buchheit
Paul: I'm hopeful that this will be the best for both Facebook and Friendfeed. What you and the staff at FF have done is amazing, with only 12 people! I love the service here. I also enjoy Facebook (one I ignore all quizzes and stupid apps), but in a different way. Hoping some coolness can be brought to both. Good luck to you and your team!
- Travis B. Hartwell
this echoes star wars galaxies, incredible unique community. but they upgraded it to be like world of warcraft. this is a replay of the devs soothing messages. the forums were livid the community evaporated.
- Robert Higgins
from f2p
When socialmedian was acquired by Xing they left it alone. I hope the same happens here. I'm sure you will do your best though!
- Michael Fidler
On behalf of the Dutch citizens our Queen wants to let you know: Thx Paul.
- Ton Zijp
Don't know what to say, so lets start with big congrats! from one hand, as an early member of Friendfeed I think we've created here a very cool, collaborative and tech-savvy/passionate community of great people that all probably wish to stick around as much as possible. From the other hand, I know how corporates work and it takes one small decision of share holders to close Friendfeed...
more...
- Nir Ben Yona
My first reaction is disappointment. I don't believe big corporations do better than small ones. Facebook is inferior to FriendFeed, although it's user base is much larger. Clearly FriendFeed won't survive in the long term, unless it is open sourced. Why not open up and embrace the wonders of the GPL instead of joining forces with the Walled Garden no #1? Facebook don't even operate with permalinks,.
- Morten Blaabjerg
Thanks for the explanation Paul. Of course, I congratulate you guys. I think anyone would do the same thing if they were in your shoes :)
- Turker Keskinpala
Ryo: if you delete your account everything goes away. I totally disagree with you about Facebook, but that's OK.
- Robert Scoble
Good to hear. Unfortunately I think Facebook are going to download the brains of all FriendFeed staff then kill FF.
- Michael McGimpsey
but Paul it is going to disappear - Facebook bought FF not for the site but for you guys. So obviously once its integrated into Facebook, development on FF will stop
- Anthony Feint
If FriendFeed and all of it's functionality get integrated into Facebook I'm all for it.
- Hugh Isaacs II
Paul - that's great news. It surely can't cost a lot to keep this place running and it's a good place to try out ideas before they move to FB.
- Martin Bryant
what about improving the product and making sure it gets more users, not only supports those who stay?
- Ihar Mahaniok
Ihar - unlikely. Facebook bought FF for the developer talent, not for FriendFeed itself.
- Martin Bryant
from iPhone
Martin - I also think so, and it is most likely. But I could still have a hope
- Ihar Mahaniok
Paul, please - underpromise & overdeliver...they say it works.
- A.T.
Nice to hear. Too bad you don't call the shots anymore.
- jcunwired
FriendFeed is Dead! Long Live FriendFeed! (nice name for Facebook skunkworks) I'm sure everyone would love to see FriendFeed itself stay around, even if the innovations that happen are geared towards implementation at Facebook. Thanks for this note Paul! :)
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
There are a few promises and guarantees that you SHOULD be able to provide. Like, that our network of friends will remain intact and that the features that make this site great will remain. If you can't make those promises, then you shouldn't have done the deal. I sure do hope that the real-time search engine wasn't the centerpiece of this deal (it probably was), because that certainly...
more...
- Brad Williamson
Paul you did such a nice job with friendfeed, and I so want to believe you, but I'm not sure I can. Not because of you, but because of your new employer. Because your new employer is no longer you, and while I have kind of come to trust you, I do not trust your new boss. Not at all. Please prove me wrong, if they'll let you.
- Jim Addz No Value
Paul - thanks for that reassurance. PLEASE stick to that! I was in the middle of reading and participating in a lengthy discussion off of a Robert Scoble post yesterday ... then I came up for air and saw your news. Congratulations - I have no idea what that feels like or how pumped you must be. There are so many things FF does that I LOVE...I know you know that. Please Please PLease dont' go away! Thanks!
- Tobin Truog
Thank you, I think everyone here loves Friendfeed. :)
- Hunt
from BuddyFeed
This is nice to hear, and I really hope that FriendFeed will keep on living. I still have some pain in my stomach because of this :/
- Patrik Johansson
First zombie/mafia request and we're all outta here....
- Fossil Huntress
+1 Fossil Huntress The partitioning of the networks between friendfeed and facebook was a major feature that many people made use of, lacking appropriate controls for who sees what. Merging the two groups of friends isn't going to work, at all.
- Mr. Gunn
we all know what needs to happen. the question is, where? ... FB needs, - apart from being/it is, a large, general, open application platform, - 1. Smart keyboard shortkatze - and Im a kbsCzar to go to, 2. Aggregating facilities, smart /RSS/ .. 3. Full blogging facilities, capabilities, not 140 chars. 4. Full real time comments facilities, capabilities. 5. Real time, live, but ALSO...
more...
- Petr Buben
I hope you're being open and honest with us. This time. :(
- Kamilah Gill
Thank you! I am sure you will do great things at FB. I just hope that the great app you built here isn't destroyed. I don't know of any other aggregation app that I can embed into my site like this one!
- beersage
Congratulations on your successes, best wishes for more. And thanks for continuing to look out for us loyal, addicted FFanatics!
- Rob Schieber
I hope it continues, i'm a new user and absolutely love it (wish i knew the value of it before)! Congrats!
- Luis D. Santos
As nice as it sounds I'm sorry to say that as a, now, Facebook's employee I'm afraid you'll have to comply to whatever your new boss tells you. Didn't MZ make it clear?
- lelapin
and let me add second, obvious, "Facebook needs" - Friendfeed bookmarklet, and Friendfeed tools - widgets, embedding - real time and not - of posts, and groups ...to embedd, to inject oneself into this thing called Internet ..... so, if FB listens to FF engineering long enough, they are going to get it .. right
- Petr Buben
Paul, what I am worried is not that you're brainwashed, but that there's simply no business need for Facebook to improve FriendFeed from now on, period.
- Ihar Mahaniok
I have confidence Paul. While some of the comments were probably uncalled for, covering an investment (of time and money) in these times to move on and hopefully provide even 'better stuff' makes sense to me. It's pretty obvious there are a LOT of people that don't want to 'lose' Friendfeed. (I wouldn't hold a town hall for a few weeks though :)
- Charlie Anzman
Congrats, Paul. It's sad that people have to make these uncalled for hatred comments about Facebook though. Why can't both sites work together. I think Facebook will do better with FF and vise versa. Take the good features of both services. Don't boycott FB, enjoy it. I'm sick of the negative comments going on, that's all. :(
- Molly, "sorry"
Molly: What makes you think there's going to be a "vise versa?"
- Christopher A Carr
Because I don't think Paul and the other FF developers would allow FB to do anything. I'm sorry, I am not going to think negative here like some here are. I guess I'm a fangirl for FB.
- Molly, "sorry"
Finally something about the changes on the horizon that isn't all d0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0om and whining. Thank you, Paul! :D
- Christian (Simply X)
The time to think about how you could do your 'personal best' to ensure FriendFeed continues to exist was prior to the discussions with Facebook. Not after.
- Andy C
Paul, what about the content scam that FB T&C is, does it apply to Friendfeed now? Should we all start writing scripts to retroactively delete all content ever uploaded to Friendfeed? Elaborated a bit here - http://friendfeed.com/mbravo...
- Michael Bravo
We know you'll try your best, Paul. But sometimes, you just can't win the dark side...
- Winston Teo
Thanks Paul for all your efforts. Founders often want the best, but acquiring companies often have people with political/power issues or different/limited visions.
- Mitchell Tsai
*throws a sheep at Paul* is that a good thing?
- Joe
from iPod
yes, thank you, Sergeant Paul ... well, good to hear we go on ... because if not, how about starting www.anotherFeed.com ... or, www.Letsgofeed.com ...... anyway, lets boost blogging capabilities, post more than current amount of chars, lets have TOP POSTS / clicks count list at the head of each group, some stats, lets index group headers, lets have MORE keyboard shortcuts .. - now ......
more...
- Petr Buben
I think I've seen this pic before.....where?
- bill spinks
Bill: both TechCrunch and Louis Gray linked to this photo speculating (wrongly) that the party was a celebration of Facebook's acquisition of FriendFeed; this may be where you saw it.
- Tudor Bosman
Above is my email to join the private beta. I remember after signing up that it didn't offer much of a compelling experience over the other Lifestreaming services out there, but over time as they added likes and comments, that all changed.
- Mark Krynsky
"We've all been there - hunting for that one killer app that would make life so much easier. If only it existed. If only we could find it. With Bodega, you don't have to spend your time hunting for software - it's your one-stop for all your software needs."
- Outsanity
from Bookmarklet
I found a neet app already on here. MoodBlast
- Outsanity
Yesterday I went surfing, thanks Luke Kilpatrick for taking me out in huge waves. It’s not as easy as it looks and I’m sore today. Oh, and this is a test of FriendFeed’s email feature. I just sent this to share@friendfeed.com and we’ll see if it goes up.
- Robert Scoble
from email
so where is your iphone and video camera crew :p
- Darren Stuart
If the yo dawg memeage wasn't DEAD <wink> there would be a surfing while you surf thing going on here =)
- Micah Wittman
Darren: this was taken with Luke's Palm Pre. Who needs an iPhone? OK, I'm outta here. Just needed a quick hit of Real Time web to keep me going. I was starting to twitch there for a second. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Tibor: it will only work properly if you're sending from on of the email addresses that you have on file and verified in your FF account. Double check and make sure you it was the correct address and that the same address shows as 'verified' in FF.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Robert, try sending a voice memo to share@ from your new iPhone. The quality is amazing and it attaches in FriendFeed, just like photos. I'm told soon they'll stream straight from here as well.
- Jesse Stay
Appears to be a longboard, has a wood laminate look.
- JimmyJet
Tina: Thanks, but i did check that. Used two verified addresses of mine, none of them worked. Strange.
- Tibor Holoda
Cool, don't give up, surf every day you can. You will love it!
- Eduardo Sasso
That's a nice ride! And lol @ thinking any surfer would take a newbie to Maverick's. I doubt I could even swim out to the break at Maverick's, let alone ride any waves, but scoble's more badass than I.
- Lo
Nice! I just came back from my first lesson in Pacifica, loved it!
- Yousef
Robert! So this is like twitpic for FriendFeed? Yahoo! I gotta get this set up on my CrackBerry for the weekend! Mahalo dude! Enjoy the waves and keep practicing... for Hawaii!
- Arleen Anderson
The board is a 9'4' Jeff Hakman, Hawaiian Pro Design, it is a wood veneer, but real wood none the less. It is a Surftech epoxy wood series. Check it out - http://www.surftech.com/tech... - I took Robert out to the Half Moon Bay Jetty, it was supposed to be small but a great south swell hit at about 6pm. I tell the whole story here http://www.lukek.ca/?p=348
- Luke Kilpatrick
Peter: I would love to join the geek dawn patrol in SC, I try and surf SC once a week. Mind sending me a dm with details? I will do my best to bring Robert as well.
- Luke Kilpatrick
I think that it is a Hakman board and a sweet one at that. :-)
- Mathew A. Koeneker
Well I'll be darned, I thought from the pic it was a classic board. Thanks for the link and info Luke.
- jcunwired
Rumor is (read it on TMZ) that the board in the pic is a short board.
- Jack (a.k.a. Jeber)
Mathew: My mistake, the name is usually so covered with wax that I misspell it. I love this board and it seems to be the one in the photo of every person I take surfing with me, I think I have about 6 different people in the same pose as Robert with that board.
- Luke Kilpatrick
Nice board, wetsuit and booties Robert - but Luke says you have a big stick, whats the connection?
- Geer
Geer: Surfing has its own language, that has never really been fully captured by the mainstream. A stick is simply a surfboard, a big stick is a long board (aka a board over 9ft). A common phrase is "wax up the stick and go catch some swell" which to many non-surfers wouldn't mean much but to a surfer its the best part of the day.
- Luke Kilpatrick
Geer: Sorry, didn't look too closely at your profile, Awesome waves! The ones at the Princeton Jetty last night were close to head high and closing out hard, those look just perfect overhead with nice offshores. Jealous! Send some of that swell, water and winds to CA please. @surfergrrrl, one of my best surfing buddies is goofy foot and insanely jealous that you NZ guys have Raglan. There isn't a left point break here of any quality for hundreds of miles. Santa Cruz is land of the right.
- Luke Kilpatrick
Awesome Rob, the bit Rackspace hosts performs perfectly and the part it doesn't fails epically ;)
- Mark
There is an account waiting for the taking their Robert. I remember the Apple coverage, the pages loaded INSTANTLY even with millions of users.
- Mark
YES! i heard of Arrington surfing on his vacation to Hawaii....now @scobleizer ! Hell yeah...glad you had fun...hopefully this catches on as it is very therapeutic ....Surf off between tech leaders!
- shayne catrett
I managed to lock myself out of my old Grandcentral account. I can't wait for this to open up already so I can enjoy the service again.
- Brandon Mendelson
I'm not trying to be silly but - no -I have no interest in Google voice. Maybe I don't understand the product.
- LPH™ and his dog P™
from BuddyFeed
i've been using GrandCentral for a couple of years now, and it has been great- when i was overseas i was getting phone calls through the Gizmo softphone on my computer and i never had to tell anyone a new number.
- Nathan Eckenrode
LPH - i wasn't super excited at first. the whole SMS think is a bit wonky. But for phone calls incoming it's awesome with call screening and "spam" filtering. The best is the first time i opened up the webpage and dialed an overseas #, and routed it to my cell phone, then 10 min later walked in the front door and seamlessly transferred it to my home phone..... to continue the call there. WOW
- Jeff (the マクダジ of FF)
I'd like to use Google Voice, but I don't want to give up the cell number I've had for 8 years. So I'm waiting until I can port my number to it.
- Evan Parker
from iPhone
Google Voice is AWESOME, I have been using it since the day it was launched as Voice, it is the best way to filter your calls - period, I use one number for business and personal and I can control who gets blocked, who goes to voicemail, I even rigged it so I could leave myself voice notes that are transcribed to my email! I want to get another Voice # but I heard you can only add phone numbers to one Google Voice #, you can't add them to multiples, is that true?
- Kelly Johns
One thing I have noticed is that in any ovie, v show, etc where anything odd happens, the English are always portrayed as standing in place saying something like "This can't be happening" or some stupid thing like that, when it clearly IS happening. Is this some sort of national trait? I like to think that if, say, the dead rise and turn on the living, I would fight back + run to safety FIRST and worry about the ontological implications after.
- Neal Jansons
Laugh, sure. But your pounds sterling end up in a California bank account. ;-)
- Chris Baskind
My cousin dl'ed the Moron Test and tried to get me to take it. I told him he'd already failed because he was a moron for buying it in the first place. He was unamused. I wasn't.
- tinypants - Hagitha of FF
To be fair, he's kind of a tool, so it's less a reflection of the app and more a reflection of how much I want to throw him off the nearest high-rise.
- tinypants - Hagitha of FF
I notice that the U.S. is no longer a nation of morons -- for the last few days, "The Sims 3" is #1, so we're now a nation of replicants.
- Stephen Mack
got this after my first intelligent use of ff filtered search. populist USA likes to feign ignorance and UK likes to superficial awareness
- Lane Rapp
One downside of being at a startup is that I am totally behind in music. How did I miss out on Santigold? http://www.youtube.com/watch.... Her whole album is awesome. It is like MIA meets the Pixies or something.
Just edited the entry. I don't really understand Songza. I think this was the video it was pointing to.
- Bret Taylor
I'm pretty late to this awesome CD as well. First heard her on Jimmy Fallon's show.
- Mark Krynsky
They seem to be having a huge gathering in Golden Gate Park right now... On the other topic, someone *really* needs to get the rights to do a bookmarkable music service. Lala offers one free play per song and has bookmarks, though they are rather hard to find: http://www.lala.com/song...
- DeWitt Clinton
@Helen Didn't know that! Thanks for the enlightment. BTW, it's Nenad and you read it like you spell it, and Santigold is almost like that. ;-)
- Nenad Nikolic
from twhirl
Thx to your very post here, I now listen with pleasure to "Lights out"/Santigold & I grasped the value of Friendfeed in a very concrete manner... this chain of streams of people selections (trying to give value: info, humour, tips, likes... they "point" us at relevant/good things, or encourage feedback loops) can definitely lead to many small good things... and the coumpond interest of these may go far.
- Harscoat
Also liked Santogold. Other new(er) music I've been listening to: Girl Talk - Feed the Animals (best party music made in years), MGMT - Oracular Spectacular (pop Bowie/Beck/acid), The Hold Steady - Stay Positive (Springsteen if he were good).
- Chip Ramsey
Without being to preachy about how you waste water while showering, a group of ID designers have come up with valid solutions instead. Not 1, not 2 but 3 options to save/conserve water is what the OLI Shower Water Conservation Project is all about. Briefly it includes a REFRESH-N-REMIND shower monitor, REDUCE-YOUR-USE mat and RELAX-N-REUSE [...]