Good post Dave. While I love many of the iPhone features I still don't like the closed platform, short non-replaceable batter, and single carrier aspects of the product. Seeing people stand in line like sheep just amazes me, but it's their right to be able to get one and run home to show off to their friends, or perhaps to be part of the 'in' crowd. - Jim McCusker
Fake Steve Jobs prescient answer:http://tinyurl.com/ytfk68 Don't like walled gardens? Have fun w/ OpenMoko or waiting for Android - Steve Weis
Jim, not to be a fanboy, but to say the iPhone isn't the best phone on the market is misleading. I don't get camping out for a phone, but in a world of walled gardens and not, when the walled garden is the only good thing on the market, you bet that is where people will go. I would love to see carriers open up networks and platforms, but barring that, having one cell phone that doesn't suck is still a step forward. As in most things, "It works" beats out ideals in head to head competition every time. - Robert Cooper via twhirl
The iPhone is good - but it is not the best phone on the market for many people - and for many uses. It simply lacks a number of features that a lot of folks use on their phones every single day. No tethering, no MMS, no stereo bluetooth, no background processing for 3rd party apps, no copy / paste, no Java, no flash, no turn by turn gps, no tether to third party gps receiver for car use, no removable memory, no ability to swap for a spare battery. As a smartphone it is feature poor. - Soulhuntre
Dont get me wrong, what it does do it often does brilliantly, but for peopel who need the features entirely lacks it doesn't work at all. - Soulhuntre
@Robert, the iPhone definitely has major differentiators from any other phone on the market. But the fundamentals of being a phone, like battery life & carrier choices, reception and sound quality are definite negatives that have been noted. For anyone who doesn't care about those issues the iPhone is by far the best. I personally think Apple can and will do better in future releases. - Jim McCusker
Well, if you are in the states, you don't have carrier choice with any but a small handful of phones. Certainly nearly every instance of phone, regardless of model, is locked in the states. All that aside, I marvelled for years at how horrible the software on Moto and Nokia phones were. WinCE is still pretty abysmal, and RIM's software is more usable, but primitive. For me, I didn't get an iPhone until 2.0 shipped. I *had* to have IM on the phone. I use IM way more than talk time, so that was my deal breaker. And yeah, because I don't talk much, the battery issue is minimal to me, but I can see how that can be a deal breaker for some. - Robert Cooper via twhirl
From the Nation. The top graph shows the average income of the top o.o1% compared to the bottom 90%. The higher the peak the bigger the gap between the two groups. In 2006 you would need an income of over $10 million to make it into the top 0.01% while your income would have to be less than $100,000 to be in the bottom 90. The second graph shows the marginal tax rate over the same time period. - grant via Bookmarklet
the startling detail to me is that the last time there was a period of low income tax on the rich it was followed by a depression; that's not to say that that could happen this time around, but I always hold onto the belief that everything reverts to the mean and when stuff gets out of wack, it finds a way to get fixed. - grant
free markets is one thing, misrepresented taxation another. - grant
The unstated goal behind the “income gap” presentations seems to be to bring down the rich, instead of bringing up the poor. Both bridge the gap, but they don't lead to equivalent worlds. - Amit Patel
Amit, how do you bring up the poor without raising taxes? - Jason Wehmhoener
I think education could go a long way, but maybe I'm too optimistic. Teaching people to save, to not go to the mall when they're bored, to avoid fast food, to drink water instead of soda, to drive less, to not “buy as much house as you can afford”, to stop giving money to DeBeers. I don't see taxes as much of a solution. - Amit Patel
I'm a believer in safety nets. Health care is a big one. - Jason Wehmhoener
Are people really surprised by this? It seemed obvious, IMHO. - Steve Lynch via Alert Thingy
This is interesting from both sides. The average income of the top 0.01 percent jumping over 5x from 1980 to 2006! But on the flip side in 1944 a top marginal rate of 94%, and paying uncle sam 65% of your total income! - Derek
Interesting that at the height of WWII an extreme progressive tax rate was acceptable as a wartime measure, but now that we're fighting another very expensive war the cost is much more distributed across all income levels. - Jason Wehmhoener
What is really interesting is that the top 1% paid 25% of all taxes collected in 1990 & in 2005 after the Bush tax cuts they are paying 39% of all taxes collected. Sounds like exactly what the liberals would want to have seen happen right? - Brian
Brian's numbers are computed by cleverly excluding payroll, social security, and medicare taxes, which are paid mostly by the working class. - Piaw Na
My numbers come from IRS 2005 data and includes all taxes collected from all taxpayers. - Brian
You can also do that "?" in Google Reader (if you use it) - AJ Batac
Thank you Paul! (I undo more than I do ....) - Charlie Anzman
thinking, whether its technically possible to more undo than doing! :) - Jigar Mehta
Still waiting on the "unsend" feature.... - Alex Cook
Charlie captured my editing style pretty well also. It is possible, at least by my count. Type something, undo it, type it again, undo it, retype it and then actually send/post/submit/publish it. You've really only *done* it once, and undone something else twice. See? :) - Todd McKinney
cool! Does that mean I can UNSEND a message now? I keep waiting for them to add that... - Tim Hoeck
I wish. Unsend would probably be my top feature request at this point. It's a little tricky, but definitely doable (requires a small delivery delay obviously, but an extra 15 seconds is not big deal for email). - Paul Buchheit
totally agree on unsend. holy shit that feature would have saved me from alienating most of my friends (i think... sniff.... yeah, its not the BO) - tommy payne
Even I would wish for outlook/exchange-like 'Recall' feature for google based domains (gmail and google apps).. I love it when I use it from outlook.. :) - Jigar Mehta
@Jigar You realize that "recall" feature does absolutely nothing except say "this person wishes to recall the message blah." You can't unsend an email unless you're sending to people in a controlled environment. - Erica Baker
wishlist: 'd' to delete instead of '# 'since I used it the most :( On mobile 'd' is used for delete but not on the desktop..why? - Yeong-Ping Koh
I can't say for sure... but I can guess: we wanted to make it harder so you didn't accidentally do it (hitting # requires two keys) and d = delete doesn't internationalize well. - Michael Leggett
That's exactly right. Delete and Report Spam are "severe" operations, so the shortcuts are # and !. - Paul Buchheit
“listening to peoples' Last.fm stations, via FriendFeed. Pretty fun. @parislemon not so much, schlomo robinowitz has pretty good taste, listened to Leonard Lin's station all day yesterday, now @sarahintampa ”
Jazz is good taste. Everything else is just... well... music :) - directeur
didn't know stevenhodson listens to electronica...good stuff. - Alan Le
Another great use of social filtering. I've become more interested in Flickr and photos through here. Music will have that same quality. - Hutch Carpenter
I've been doing the same thing Marshall! Let's see.. Recently, I've listened to revcorwin (old friend), onejasonforsale (another friend), stevenhodson, tlandow, and calebelston radio stations. Good stuff! Oh, here is mine: http://www.last.fm/user/eng1ne... - J. Phil
I have a problem with Louis' station, since I can't SIT when listening to it. You can take the club kid out of the clubs... It's probably my favorite but it is completely not conducive to working. Ben, I'll add you, but I'm guessing yours might involved a few flashbacks. LOL. The Dead? Good to see the next generation appreciates some good music. - Cyndy
Sometimes I'll cruise http://friendfeed.com/public?s... and look for songs and bands that I've long since forgotten, and go listen to them. http://www.last.fm/user/kittel... is me -- indie hip hop plus some off-kilter (Ween, CVB, Rev HH). I'll be sure to check out these other stations when I get home. - Kirk Kittell
Ontario, I love the idea but I just can't keep up with FriendFeed when streaming in in there. I like to either play someone's station or see ones that they "love" on last.fm. - Cyndy
look at this thread! is FriendFeed awesome or what?? it's SO much fun! did you know MyBlogLog gets 4X as much traffic tho? oh well - Marshall Kirkpatrick
I've been trying to get into Last.fm the past couple days. I think I'm just not getting it. Pandora seems so much easier. - Yolanda
how to find people with last.fm in FF? - Ivan Pope via twhirl
I've been on Pandora. Gonna have to check out Last.fm. - Hutch Carpenter
Marshall - re MyBlogLog - If you build it they will come. FF has the infrastructure to continue to grow over time. - Russellreno
are some people just pandora people and others last.fm people? Because pandora has never appealed to me but I'm a last.fm evangelist. - Jason Toney
Pandora is fun for the chance to hear things you weren't expecting. I assume Last.fm has some of those aspects as well? Just signed up. - Hutch Carpenter
i've always been a Pandora user but the social side of things is so much richer in Last.fm. I've just been hovering over peoples' names here on FF and looking for the Last.fm logo. that said, the Pandora player is much easier to use. - Marshall Kirkpatrick
I'm a pandora person as well, but maybe I'll listen to last.fms on here - I doubt many people share my geeky tastes, but who knows? - Erin
Marshall - I like Pandora as well, but Pandora is pretty much restricted to users in the USA, preventing our international friends from listening to our playlists :( - Brian Daniel Eisenberg
Yolanda.. Last.fm and Pandora are both great but, like Twitter and FriendFeed, have completely different goals. Pandora works behind the scenes to tailor a stream to you. last.fm throws everything together in a huge pot and gives you the sliders to make a great listening experience. They call this "scrobbling" (actually, the AS in LAST stand for "Audio Scrobbler") .. anyway, like a stew, the more stuff you put in it the better it is. Add a bunch of people, hook up last.fm to your itunes, go nuts! - J. Phil
interesting, hadn't thought about doing that. Gonna check your out, Mr, Kirkpatrick! You better have the Celine Dion at a minimum:) - Schlomo Rabinowitz
Great discovery Marshall...I think of this as a dynamically generated muxtape made by my friends without the fuss. Here's my eclectic station http://www.last.fm/listen/user... - Mark Krynsky
Chris makes a great point about Facebook. I wish I was smart like him. - Robert Scoble
Saw it too, and re-used it in my post where I outlined my thoughts on Social Media.. Comparing Facebook to the Russian Railroad not only made me laugh out loud, but also think. Excellent one! - Alexander van Elsas
an alternative explanation could be that facebook caters to the masses instead of the instead of the digerati. You like the tools to be "messy" because you are comfortable with the mess and able to use it to your advantage. This does not make facebook the soviets. they are just listening to mass market instead of only focusing on early adapters and heavy users, and hence more likely to succeed. - berkay
berkay: hint: the open web has a LOT more users than Facebook. I don't know where you got the idea that a walled garden is bigger than the open Web, but it's a wrong idea. - Robert Scoble
@berkay I think the Soviet (actually Russian) part of the analogy by Chis was related to the fact that Facebook uses proprietary software and walled gardens to try to remain important. Instead of the alternative of being open from launch. It has brought them success,but it has also brought them their very own innovators dilemma. They can't open up anymore like others will, it's just not in their business model or genes. - Alexander van Elsas
Of course Google operates a walled garden too, but it covers the ENTIRE web and beyond ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
i like how his "nanny state" href points to facebook.com lol - Wolfsbayne
My problem is that Facebook is like a hall full of booths at a tradeshow. Everybody sets up their booth in hope that people will stop by. And to interact, you have to go to each others' booths. FriendFeed is like the big party where everybody is mingling, or at least the Q&A in a breakout session, - Bill Bittner
It's a great analogy with regards to the train tracks - but please don't extend it too far. The USSR collapsed because of debt and opening up too quicky - not because of communism. Read my comment on Chris's blog. - Elias Bizannes via twhirl
Elias: oh, I don't know about that. Seems to me they had deep problems even before they collapsed. I had a few Russian friends back in the late 1970s who told me about how few goods their stores had and how long they had to wait in line to buy them. - Robert Scoble
the analogy doesn't work for me... web communities aren't nation states. I'm with berkay on this one. Yes, facebook may only have a slice of the overall webs population, but I think it has the *right* slice- the demographic that has the most sustainable long term usage patterns of the web. - Chris Hollander
Or even better, drunk college students. - Robert Scoble
Messina's analogy is right because of the 'train tracks' - setting the standard helps protect you. But saying Facebook is like the USSR and therefore will collapse is the wrong angle; instead we should extend the analogy to mean that opening up too fast (like what happened to poor Gorbachev) will create collapse. As I point out in Messina's post, openness is like the free market, but these closed systems need to adopt their own type of openess like how China did, for them to eventually get on the same system (the open web) - Elias Bizannes via twhirl
Elias: I like it better if it said that Facebook is like the Soviet Union, stay there and you'll have to wait in line to buy your toilet paper. - Robert Scoble
Scoble: I'll agree to that as long MySpace gets to be the USA. In your face, marketing-heavy, and arrogant enough to they will always be number one as the other social networks like China and India overtake :P - Elias Bizannes via twhirl
for some reason I think of Facebook as "built around me" while Twitter or Friendfeed is "built around others/my friends". I prefer the latter - Sebastian Keil via twhirl
"You do the math..." Okay I have. And it tells me that Facebook hasn't had any problems with "adoption, gaining and maintaining [developer] interest and in stoking distribution." - mrshl
I need about eight to nine hours sleep but it's rare that I get that. Especially with three children and the alarm clock attacking me every day! - Joe Dawson
@Tyler yeah it attacks my ears, I have it set to a really annoying sound so I have to get up. I snooze it, turn it off, hide it etc but it keeps coming back to wake me up. That annoying sound, my ears...... - Joe Dawson
I usually aim for 6 hrs at night and a nap sometime in the afternoon. My work usually starts around 5:00 AM and I get home about midday, check the interwebs, eat, snooze and then surf 'til I drop! - Stephen B via Alert Thingy
Optimal for me is 9-10 hours, usual is 7-8 hours and after a few days of less than usual, I have 12-13 hours for a day or two. @Joe: I have an alarm clock that it is a foot in diameter. *No one* gets back to sleep after that sucker goes off. - Cyvros/fyc
Kick-butt BEAUTiFUL mockup screens! For a second, I thought I had missed seeing a configuration screen in FriendFeed. Bayesian - they don't have to start with even priorities. We use something called "priors". Setting all the priors equal to each other is actually quite a big assumption. - Imagine Have-AIDS and Have-stomach-ache starting with the same prior probability. Causes huge problems, and could take a ...long... time to move to the actual probability. - Mitchell Tsai
Good ideas there Hutch, would make like much easier - Colin Walker
incredibly cool ideas! mashup! and great matching feature explanations... *drooling* ....sooo... when can we get Paul to implement this! ;-) - Susan Beebe
Great job, Hutch. I have been a long-time advocate for well-implemented filters. Yours are a good mockup. - Louis Gray
Definitely some interesting ideas Hutch. Given the background of the friendfeed team, I would not be surprised to see tagging appear at some point. - Rob Diana
@Mitchell - I hear you on the amount of time that Bayesian could take. Movement can be slow. But that's partly the point. You want to be sure a keyword really belongs in a category. Graduating a keyword to a category would be set at the server level, and you could modulate the score that graduates keywords to categories. Tell me more about "priors". - Hutch Carpenter
@Susan - I'll bet this would be a pretty big job for Paul, Bret, Kevin and the crew. They're just going to need to hire some more Googlers... - Hutch Carpenter
@Erhan - the thought occurred to me that all this categorizing for a negative - noise control - could also be turned around for a positive. I "want" information for a certain category. - Hutch Carpenter
Totally - filtering is an inclusive as much as an exclusive tool - Slippy Lane
Keyword filters I understand and like. Category filters, I don't know. There's a lot of interesting stuff you could miss because of wrong settings, etc. Besides, I'd like to keep Friendfeed simple. Anyway, I want to get rid of the duplicate links first. I think it's more important. - Alejandro S.
Isn't Crowdsourcing like networking, and how can that make FF better? I like it this way!!! - Paul
@Alejandro - I'd be less likely to ever use a category filter, but I see enough people here talk about it that I believe there are plenty who would take advantage of them. It should be an opt-in thing. If you don't select a category filter, you won't miss anything. - Hutch Carpenter
@Paul - crowdsourcing = networking? Not sure I follow. - Hutch Carpenter
I suppose I'll go be a 14 year old girl then... wait did that come out right? ;-P - ChangeForge via twhirl
Whenever I think of plurk, I think of a fish jumping out of its bowl onto concrete...strange. - Jeevan Padiyar via Alert Thingy
My verdict which apparently is so very important - plurk will do more for twitter than anything else recently and will remind us ingratiates why we loved it in the first place. - Kamath via twhirl
I can't get their stupid timeline to show up in firefox on my mac (though it works on safari & firefox on my windows laptop). Not worth using safari just for that. :-/ - Bob
you know, I agreed with you until I used the mobile site on the browser on my treo tonight - then I was blown away... fabulous for conversations - blows FF & Twitter out of the water in that aspect. Seriously - I was kind of surprised. - Lucretia Pruitt
@lucretia is right. i use http://plurk.com/m in the sidebar. also check the group feature. - kosmar
Plurk will probably end up being the MySpace of micro-blogging services - and that is not a bad place to be. Great implementation IMHO. - Aviv
Wow, Neopets? Been ages since I've thought about it... Comparing Plurk to it never occurred to me. - Voyagerfan5761
its just who you follow. you wont see the myspacey customized or teeny user part of it, when you dont add them. also ist not likely to browse on anywhere else than your own customized page. - kosmar
Was not impressed with Plurk at all. I must agree it was to weird for everyday use. Good luck Plurk. - Jeff B
I resemble that remark! Think I'll err on the Tamagotchi side, though ... - Ashton
I had to go back a few times before liking it a nice twhirl-like client would be good though - Sebbe D'Hose
It's hard to say. It might get a different Twitter-sized audience. The audience isn't us, that's for sure. And they do need to take a few barriers to use down though in order to get really viral. The lack of an API is also a major issue. - Dion Hinchcliffe via twhirl
at least you can conjugate plurk like a regular verb. with twitter i usually felt stupid trying to come up with a verb form ("he, uh, twittered") and there was the whole "twitter/tweet" thing for the noun. whereas a plurk is a plurk is a plurk. - Karim
That's right, considering all the silly names we've been seeing in the past few years, Plurk is a brilliant pick and I think it'll be a key contributor to its [potential] success in becoming the MySpace of micro-blogging services, as well as attracting its intended audience (yes, all those 14 year olds currently populating the service). - Aviv
Robert, at the end of the day, 14 year old Plurkers simply don't have the same expectations as Twitter super-users and tech geek early-adopters. If Plurk goes down for 30 minutes, they'll happily turn on their Tivo and try again after a Hannah Montana fix. - Aviv
There's got to be a better critique of new things than 'Not as simple as Twitter" - Ivan Pope via twhirl
Openframeworks is a c++ library designed to assist the creative process by providing a simple and intuitive framework for experimentation.
The library is designed to work as a general purpose glue, and wraps together several commonly used libraries under a tidy interface: openGL for graphics, rtAudio for audio input and output, freeType for fonts, freeImage for image input and output, quicktime for video playing and sequence grabbing. http://www.openframeworks.cc/ - Jason Wehmhoener
