OMG, I can't even stay connected to Facebook at all. Been trying to chat with a friend (using Adium) and connect...disconnect...connect...etc.
- Kenley Neufeld
This is teaching us something about the framework of the current Internet traffic patterns. We're watching cascade scale problems from one major Internet program going down.
- Melanie Reed
interesting possibility: a massive DoS attack on all SNS properties at the same time! with no SNS people might go at each other tooth and nail. this would make a great Onion report!
- MikeAmundsen
I'm with Helen on this one - after Scoble's Great Unfollow, Twitter's database is so full of holes they're having to do a massive reorg...
- Andrew Terry
Posterous seems to be down, too, for what it's worth.
- Eric Johnson
Posterous is working for me (for now)
- Susan Beebe
You can read "panic tweets" from Twitterers about Twitter being down: http://bit.ly/lA7HK
- Gus
@ Andrew - there's a model in Chaos Theory where you take a cube, hollow a hole in the exact centre of each side, then keep repeating the process - end result? A finite cube containing an infinite number of holes :)
- Iain Baker
Susan - Posterous is back for me, too. And was a 500 server error, so probably not DoS related.
- Eric Johnson
So I guess we ought to help the folks at Twitter out and shut down our Twitter clients? I expect that zillions of API calls aren't helping their situation right now...
- Eric Johnson
Facebook, LiveJournal, and Twitter all down, to much of a coincidence to be a coincidence? API calls all the way
- courtney benson
Wondering now if that suggestions a massive DDoS attack launched against a bunch of sites, or possibly also infrastructure issues as well?
- Susan Beebe
my FF has crashed every time I've tried to subscibe
- WarLord
It does feel like everything's either under treacle or attack. I'm hoping it's treacle.
- Dan Biddle
@biz ---> Thursday, August 06, 2009 Denial of Service Attack On this otherwise happy Thursday morning, Twitter is the target of a denial of service attack. Attacks such as this are malicious efforts orchestrated to disrupt and make unavailable services such as online banks, credit card payment gateways, and in this case, Twitter for intended customers or users. We are defending against...
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- Susan Beebe
Thought that was just my slow Australian connection - or the huge full moon in the sky tonight o)
- Chris Loft
Of course there is, the two sites are highly interconnected and trouble with one will cause problems with any service which continues to access twitter to update their users profiles
- Lillian Banchik
Chris Loft - of course everything takes longer to get to Australia! I'm with amygeek - let's blame it on N. Korea...
- Baffled
from fftogo
Ohhh... I don't recall Twitter being down for such a long period of time, although I must say I've seen a sudden rise of spam lately.
- Bruno Mertins
God, just figured out that we would all have to go back to talking to one another in person or on the phone if this continues.
- courtney benson
cnet article, "There has been no indication that any of these various attacks are connected. But it's probably not a coincidence that they all coincide with the annual Defcon hacker convention." (Twitter crippled by denial-of-service attack) -- http://news.cnet.com/8301-13...
- Susan Beebe
Baffled I've been trying to post this to you at Twitter -- I knew a hooter / thought - did she have a suitor / or was I too late? /// #haiku#haikuchallenge
- Chris Loft
I wonder how much impact (think overhead) those stupid Spam Bots cause for twitter? 24% of all twitter traffic is due to spam bots - augh!
- Susan Beebe
Courtney - LOL ... that is too funny!
- Susan Beebe
They're probably both the government. Real talk.
- professor daddyo
military is testing inet/SNS preparedness/vulns.
- MikeAmundsen
About 8-12 hrs ago, Facebook kept giving me "Database Write Failed" errors: "An error occurred while writing to our database. Please try again later or contact customer support."
- Mitchell Tsai
Yep, I've been getting all kinds of Facebook "transport errors" while attempting to wall post, comment, etc.
- Susan Beebe
Derek - that was slow, but CNN is getting better! LOL
- Susan Beebe
Twitter Status Blog - 2nd Update: "Ongoing denial-of-service attack -- We are defending against a denial-of-service attack, and will update status again shortly. Update: the site is back up, but we are continuing to defend against and recover from this attack."
- Susan Beebe
No way! Remember Paul Buchheit, one of FriendFeed's founders, coined the term "Do No Evil" when he was at Google. The FF team is really cool, no bad dudes over there!
- Susan Beebe
FWIW, I always thought Google's catchphrase "do no evil" would have been better when qualifying a statement, like this: "Let the old lady finish crossing the street; don't be evil"
- Richard Walker
Twitter Status Blog UPDATE [12:46pm EST] : "Update (9:46a): As we recover, users will experience some longer load times and slowness. This includes timeouts to API clients. We’re working to get back to 100% as quickly as we can."
- Susan Beebe
Here's a Facebook "Database Write Error" I saw repeatedly last night ~1-3 am ET, before the DDoS attacks this morning. http://ff.im/6fUfO I'm not sure if there weren't precursors to the main DDoS attacks at 6 am today, but Facebook was having weird issues a few hours earlier.
- Mitchell Tsai
Facebook kept giving me the ol' "transport error" messages - tons of 'em too!
- Susan Beebe
Funny. I could not log into Twitter, Tweetdeck or Facebook for over an hour. Then I had this sudden horror that an aweful event, such as a terrorist attack, would flood both sites with traffic and cause this. I went to CNN- there was the story of Twitters DDoS Attack.
- E-Advocate Network
Pretty scary stuff, huh? I wonder who would be behind all this. Hope they catch 'em and lock 'em up!
- Susan Beebe
Susan, I also got lots of AJAX transport errors & long delays at Facebook, but those happena ll the time. This was the first time I've seen the "database write error".
- Mitchell Tsai
To deal with future network problems, we need an emergency backup mechanism to access twitter: carrier pigeons. http://crankypm.com/2009...
- DGentry
Hope they catch them too Susan. I sure was releived to find it was a cyber attack causing the flood instead of people reporting on a real life attack though! I do worry about real time events right now that are lagging coverage due to this: #iranelection.
- E-Advocate Network
Yay!! Google, facebook and twitter are investigating the DDoS attacks today! See Mashable's post about it here: http://mashable.com/2009...
- Susan Beebe
Seriously, even Friendfeend, via Buddyfeed client, was unavailable a few times. I'll venture a guess the DoS attack targetted a whole heap of social media at the one time.
- George Hall (Australia)
That bird pic at the top of the thread is intriguing. Is it public domain?
- George Hall (Australia)
Hardly use Facebook. When I update facebook it's when I do a mass update through Ping.fm, other than that I hardly use it.
- Patrick
Where did you get the dead bluebird icon? I love it.
- shelisrael1
I think this is a definite competitor for the Fail Whale!
- Justin Davey
Are they both routed through the same Bay Area server network? Just askin'. Maybe there's a rapid growth of Twitter-to-FB feeds that's screwing up everything? I also like the dead bluebird & upside down FB graphics!
- Cathryn Hrudicka
I had much trouble w/ FB this morning as well. It got better after the rain stopped. A day w/o SM is a day without sunshine.
- shelisrael1
AP reports that a pro-Abkhazia activist blogger, who uses the account name "Cyxymu," (the name of a town in the Republic of Georgia) is related to the attacks on SNS. Whether the pro-side (Georgia) or con-side (Russia) coordinated the attacks is unknown. "There's very little way of distinguishing which side was taking this action, because either side could hypothetically benefit from...
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- Mitchell Tsai
lots Blogger as well and Livejournal. It was a concentrated attack.
- Rob Cairns
Mitchell - wow, thank you for the awesome insights into the DDoS attack story. I truly appreciate the info and citations you kindly provided here. Good stuff, as always!!
- Susan Beebe
from BuddyFeed
Cathryn - I flipped the facebook logo upside down - glad you like it!
- Susan Beebe
from BuddyFeed
seems like whatever Google did mitigated the attack on their end, it'd be interesting to see what data google could provide to twitter and facebook on how to protect from ddos attacks in the future
- Ⓐ ☠ slayerboy ☠ Ⓐ
from IM
Mike - agreed!! Google's insights would be really important for future hardening of systems to defend DDoS attacks
- Susan Beebe
Fri 8/7 UPDATE: @Twitter: "Due to defense measures some Twitter clients are unable to communicate with our API, and many users are unable to tweet via SMS."
- Susan Beebe
Fri 8/7 UPDATE: Twitter STATUS Blog: "Restoring API and SMS [12:42pm EST] Due to defensive measures we’ve taken against the ongoing denial-of-service attack, some Twitter clients are unable to communicate with our API, and many users are unable to tweet via SMS. We are working as quickly as possible to restore our full service. "
- Susan Beebe
Why do you use Facebook ? I mean it's a site for < 17 years old
- Thierry Lhôte
How many blogs - not counting your own - do you visit each day? Week? The number dwindles rapidly esp. once FriendFeed grabs you.
- Thom Kennon
@Thom, Google Reader is becoming a casuality to my own personal attention crash. That's one reason why I use Newsgator now - it's fine for managing a few feeds.
- Steve Rubel
My Google Reader is overwhelmed with feeds, Steve. I was a feed addict, subscribing to everything, it seemed. Streamlining the feeds now. Managing our social and information networks is a MUST!
- Dave "Freedom 35"
Definitely not... Its the new easy website maker... FB, Friendfeed, twitter etc don't have the content that blogs & regular sites have. They have just become the communication channel people use not the information channels that people are searching for on the net. Most of the internet's usage is still for searched information... When was the last time a google search you did brought up a tweet?
- John Olsen
For conversation perhaps, but not for everything. A blog can be part of one's online CV, something which persists and can be searched in the future. I would never send a potential employer to my facebook for this.
- DGentry
We still love blogs but we love to discuss those blog posts on Friendfeed and Twitter better :-)
- Steve Chou
Imagine Twitter without any links to blog posts ... and watch it dwindle and die. Blogs are here to stay.
- AJ Kohn
Absolutely not. Twitter and Facebook in one of their various hats are used as effective channels to connect between blog posts and readers.
- Nir Ben Yona
Twitter may be a replacement for the casual blogger, but longer posts will always need somewhere to go.
- Donald Forth
Twitter and Facebook not only have re-shaped the blogging landscape and changed, but changed our reading habit as well. However, i heard that, many people like me would bring opinions from Twitter and Facebook to their blog posts.
- Jansen Lu
No. To the contrary, all it says is that there are more people posting content online.
- Mike Reynolds
No. More people are posting online, but many of those people are still sharing links to actual blog posts. We will always have a need to see a full developed post. It's like saying 30-second snippets of songs will replace actual songs or single chapters from books will make books obsolete.
- Rah-PM 2012
these people and their "either / or" view of life. There's always space for more than one player in what we use, buy do, but these analysts just see it all as an exclusive proposition. We still have radio, music, tv, film, board games, books and more after all these years of "X will kill Y" predictions.
- Iphigenie
If anything, it's more relevant than before. Twitter users read, share, and retweet links. The more users there are, the more links they need to share. Bloggers supply the content for the links.
- Michael Fidler
I think blogging, as looked at 2-3 years ago, is no longer a well defined group of people that others look at as 'the bloggers'. It obviously still exists as demonstrated by any number of websites with bloggers writing. Those who defined the industry by the 'buzz' they got a few years back are still blogging but people are no longer paying the attention because the market, so to speak...
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- Sheryl
No. They may have displaced some of the traditional features of blogging but they're not obsolete. In fact, I think they enhance blogging and re-focus blogging on the content focus of blogging versus its social component.
- phil baumann
No. I think all of these social media augment each other's potentials
- IV
@AJ - good point re juice within Twitter (at least), it's all about the links that lead back, often to a blog or to a pub or to FF. But FriendFeed does that PLUS support actual conversations & self-contained content - like this one. Btw - this very topic was the subtext to yesterday's circular, near-maddening debate on Gillmor gang re "the death of RSS" aka Google Reader, Bundles etc.
- Thom Kennon
I don't use Google Reader as much as I did before. I just started to import the blogs I read into a FriendFeed Group, and so far, it is working nicely. Google Reader would always overwhelm me because I felt like I had to read everything, but now I can read it as is comes along.
- Shawn Hickman
@Thom: Yeah, I riffed on the whole RSS is Dead meme two weeks ago. http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/rss-mar... RSS is the fuel - without a good snow pack the real-time river winds up being a measly trickle. And agreed, FF delivers great meta data (comments, likes) that add superior value compared to Twitter.
- AJ Kohn
We often need to think in more than just sound bites
- Mark Scrimshire
from Nambu
Twitter not only reshaped blogging landscape, but also changed our reading behaviours.
- Jansen Lu
No. I read *more* articles more slowly in fewer feeds now, because social media have made it easier for me to find blogs that are relevant to me.
- Robin Barooah
I suspect that the availability of twitter and facebook etc, will improve the quality of actual blogs, since the bar for what's worth writing in long-form is raised.
- Robin Barooah
from IM
Half, if not more, of the purpose of Twitter and Facebook is to link blog posts and legitimate articles. So, no, I don't agree. these people are just getting ahead of themselves and forgetting the purpose and place of each medium.
- David Chartier
from BuddyFeed
No, nonsense. It might be for some, those who started early, but lots of people are just beginning to blog. It's a totally different way of expressing oneselves compared to Twitter & Facebook. & There are still people who need that way of expressing. You don't change that feeling. There is just the hype that has been changed.
- Ton Zijp
Unless lots of people actually read your blog, it is obsolete with or without Twitter/Facebook.
- Will Higgins™
I think it shows how little they understand blogging, twitter, and facebook. I also think all big media publications hope that blogging is dead. For some people personal publishing is like breathing and I don't see how anybody could say it's dead or will die as long as the opportunity to share your thoughts with the world exists.
- Mike Elliott
It's not obsolete, but for very short content Twitter and Facebook may be taking away some of the postings that would otherwise be posted on blogs. Twitter and Facebook are good tools for driving traffic to blogs. So I believe people will continue to integrate Twitter and Facebook with their blogs.
- Bill Romanos
it's like asking if having a home page is obsolete. it isn't if you *want* a home page. it's all about your individual objective. twitter/facebook accomplish different goals than blogging.
- Jeremy Toeman
not to forget that about half the seed content on these services comes from links to blogs and sites
- Iphigenie
I like having each service as an individual contact. Much easier. Can we see the same for Pownce?
- Chris Nixon
Well, IMified has taken bot to a next level.. I even created a customized option to check my google calendar appointments for today (a quick schedule for today) by interacting with bot! Not sure, if they have one for Pownce..
- Jigar Mehta
from bTT
One year later. Just bumping this because it's the one year anniversary of the only item on FriendFeed to get more than 400 likes. (452 at the moment)
- Ken Sheppardson
Changelog: -- removed the grey background -- removed the bar background and made it subtle -- some font size changes -- some spacing adjustments -- select text background changed
- AJ Batac :)
from Bookmarklet
* Cleaner and cool look and feel (FriendFeed is already clean, this makes it a lot cleaner) * Different font style * Highlights friends comments with baby yellow (instantly know that the user is already your friend) * Highlights your comments with baby blue (it’s cool to see your own comments from river of comments. Looks good when you are a distance away your computer, makes your...
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- AJ Batac :)
This userstyle brings the FriendFeed conversation to another level by instantly letting you know… 1) Your own comment (Powder Blue) 2) Your friends comments (Light Yellow) 3) Your non-friends comments (Normal FriendFeed Comment Color) 4) Likes (Light Pink)
- AJ Batac :)
As FriendFeed becomes popular, you’ll definitely need some kind of instant and attention grabbing color that catches your eyes and tell you where you left off in a conversation. Hope you like it.
- AJ Batac :)
installing - lovely- although there is something in having the "main area" diff. from the rest of the screen as in the original design - must play and see what works better for me
- Naor Mark
wow that was fast... I don't mind the gray, but this is a nice option for those complainers who don't
- Nathan Chase
Switched already and I'm lovin' this script - much nicer!
- Sally Church
I cleaned it up further. If you've downloaded it already, edit and change this line (.bar {border:none !important; background:none !important;background-color:#C8DCF5 !important;}) ;) much better without those borders on bars ;)
- AJ Batac :)
(too lazy for looking up the line - re-installed :)
- Naor Mark
Same as Naor, but yeah it is nicer :-)
- Sally Church
I can't tell... are you mimicking the effect of the little yellow halo around the comment bubble when it's inserted into a page you're viewing? Ah... there it is... the halo's still there. Might be nice to have the entire comment's color fade. Skill Level 2.0 ;-)
- Ken Sheppardson
Wow, this style is gorgeous! Blows the default beta away. Still no fan of fixed-width but if devs go with this style and the new functionality, it's enough win for me.
- ·[▪_▪]·
Really enjoying the Cleaner FF. By the popularity of this thread, I'm assuming many are not really happy with the gray background and colored sidebar boxes.
- Ricardo Vidal
I personally have not much trouble with the new color scheme. Try removing the avatars, they are really noisy. Just try to experience the difference.
- Meryn Stol
colored and + fontsized the post titles, as i prefer to catch the posts rather then the comments, it really works.
- Yunus Tunak
Haven't gotten the new look >.<
- Patrick
from twhirl
I changed the background for #f8f8fc because it doesn't look as good when it's just as white as the main column. Having it an off-white like that is a lot nicer. Just a suggestion.
- Chris Charabaruk
Also, I turned off highlighting of friend comments (although not my own) because you all chat too much. :)
- Chris Charabaruk
AJ, you da man! I like it very much. :)
- imabonehead
I tweaked it so all it really did was get rid of the gray background, but left the font sizes and colors alone. Now it looks REALLY good to me. Will screenshot it now. Thanks, AJ!
- Josh Haley
wow, just installed this, way better!
- Marcos Marado
I agree! I think I like this much better. The Gray background was getting to me.
- Kreg Steppe
Still prefer the post options from the 'old' freindfeed interface - they were out front & more available for on-the-fly, intuitive changing
- awd
@Aaron, I like the new one better. ;)
- AJ Batac :)
Great job, AJ. Soooo much better. I hope that FF notices that we like their original clean design better and incorporate it into beta again so that I don't need a script for this.
- Carmen wBabby
Plus once you have the transcript, you can provide it alongside the video to make the content more accessible for people with hearing difficulties.
- David Owens
It's easy to think everyone has a computer & connection that can handle video when you are financially well off enough to have it yourself, but the truth is that there is a huge amount of people in this world that aren't as fortunate and can't see your videos. Nonetheless, they would like (and sometimes even need) the information in your videos. Transcripts are perfect for this and...
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- April
April: one problem with that. I don't have the budget to do that. My cameras cost $200 and adding transcripts is a lot more expensive than that (I'm putting up 15 or so videos this week alone).
- Robert Scoble
I meant for those that have the transcripts and not making them public, using them only for SEO and internal use. If you don't have them, it obviously doesn't apply to you.
- April
I discussed this very idea of enabling search and indexing of video, with a friends, a few months ago. Glad to see someones making it work. I like the idea of making transcripts available for scanning (to find the part of the video you want fast). Of course won't work on video with little or no dialogue.
- Alistair (alpinefolk)
About 2 years ago AOL started doing this with audio for podcasts, for their podcast search, which would give a page of little players queued up to the exact spot your search terms appeared in a podcast file, as your search results. It was pretty cool. Unfortunately, they killed the project.
- April
We used http://castingwords.com/ for some video we had captioned for the Healthcare Commission in the UK. They were very good and very cheap considering the complexity of the language used. Pretty sure they use Amazon's Mechanical Turk though. If this is genuinely automated it sounds pretty impressive.
- David Owens
When did FlickrFan get a FriendFeed account? Cool photos on this account. I wish it would batch them up six at a time, though. Would make it more likely that I'd click "Like" and share these with my followers.
- Robert Scoble
For those who don't know, FlickrFan is a software service that Dave wrote that subscribes to great photography from many of the world's photo agencies. This one came from Agence France-Presse, which is France's "Associated Press." Good stuff and photography that you can't easily find elsewhere (high res stuff too).
- Robert Scoble
FlickrFan is cool! I've subscribed it!
- Jansen Lu
Scoble, I just created the account a couple of days ago. This is a special feed for breaking stories. Today the obvious story is India and the pictures have been fantastic. At times there may not be a breaking story so there won't be updates to the feed. It's all experimental, I'm starting with FF because it does a reasonable (but not perfect) job with feeds. I don't know where it leads, that's why it's fun. :-)
- Dave Winer
I already love this a LOT more than the FlickrFan on my HDTV. I think it's because I can quickly scan images and see some metadata around the image. I also can see how other people reacted to it, or add my own thoughts that an image conjures. That said, this makes me want to turn on FlickrFan on my large screen again and see these images in all of their high resolution glory.
- Robert Scoble
I also think it's funny that FlickrFan is subscribed to me. Hmmm, what is FlickrFan learning by doing that? :-)
- Robert Scoble
I know what you mean by batching them up 6 at a time, but I don't think that's something I can do. I think they have special code in there for Flickr. Not sure.
- Dave Winer
FlickrFan subscribed to you to get you to notice it. :-)
- Dave Winer
Dave: that's not how FriendFeed works. The reason I saw it is you clicked "Like" on the photo. That put it in my view. Followers don't have any effect on my view. That's why I say it's far more important to pick who you are following (because smart people will put smart things in your view) than it is to have lots of followers. Plus, if you keep saying smart things and putting smart things in other people's view, you'll get more followers anyway cause we'll talk about you. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Now what would be cool is if FlickrFan was watching the cool photography I was adding to my feed and would add some of that to FlickrFan itself. For instance, let's say I or Thomas Hawk put up a photo and it got 10 likes here. Wouldn't that be cool to add to FlickrFan? I thought that's why you were following people who put up photos on a regular basis.
- Robert Scoble
Scoble, those things sound doable. I'll add it to the mix of stuff to think about for the next few days.
- Dave Winer
just like the showing of many likes, you could have the same functionality for identical status updates to Twitter, Plurk, Identi.ca, Rejaw, Brightkite, Pownce, Jaiku, etc. via multi-updating services like Ping.fm, Hellotxt, and updating.me
- Nathan Chase
Great idea. Would love to see this happen.
- Iain Baker
This is how Socialthing! is doing it right now, and how FriendFeed should pick it up. When the comment box drops, it should also have the option if you want to reply on which service as well.
- Andrew Trinh
yes. it could streamline our feeds tremendously.
- Jansen Lu
Flickr, FriendFeed, GReader, Mento, Facebook
- JA Castillo
FF, Twitter, Google Reader, Digg, StumbleUpon, Last.fm, Feedly
- Patrick Jordan
I'll have to agree with Nathaniel. FriendFeed, Twitter, and Facebook are all I use anymore.
- James Mowery
from twhirl
FriendFeed, Mento, Twitter, GReader, Linkedin (end of the list is toss up between LinkedIn, Facebook and maybe Flickr/Picassa and Like.Fm)
- Marco(aureliusmaximus)
FF, Google Reader/Feedly/Toluu, Ping.FM... that's pretty much it
- Bwana ☠
FriendFeed, Google Reader, wordpress.com, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook
- Hutch Carpenter
I didn't know GReader qualified as a social media application -- never thought of it that way. I guess because it's not as interactive. But since it seems to be a valid entry on the list, +1 for me, too.
- Mansi Bhatia
Google Reader, FriendFeed, Twitter, Digg, del.icio.us, Facebook, Flickr. Everything else are supporting apps and blogging tools to distribute the information to other networks like Plaxo and Tumblr.
- Glenn Batuyong
from twhirl
twitter, friendfeed, Google Reader, Plurk, and various blogs
- Ian May
from twhirl
Flickr, FF, Google Reader, Facebook, Zooomr
- Tom Harrison
FF, GReader(using rss meme and feedly makes this more social), Flickr, del.icio.us, tumblr, hypemachine
- Rafael Robayna
Unless I'm missing something -- Hope the API gets this feature as well. We had to convert NewsJunk to us the API because their polling was too slow and they didn't pick up the descriptions through the feed. We have podcasts in NewsJunk, for the big Sunday shows, and for FreshAir when they cover politics. Shame you won't be getting those right away. Unless of course I'm missing something.
- Dave Winer
Great idea Dave, we'll add this to the API also
- Casey Muller
Excellent. As soon as it's in we'll start pushing podcasts up to FF.
- Dave Winer
publishing an mp3 to my blog now. Will test this out in a bit here.
- Thomas Hawk
I really think FF is the new Google - they're just approaching it with social instead of search, and building on that, piece by piece, the same way Google did.
- Jesse Stay
Is this their first Flash dependent feature?
- Phil Whelan
Jim, are you using Blogger or another blogging package? If you are using Blogger you have to click on the "Add enclosure link" button before you publish your post.
- Thomas Hawk
Thanks for the reply. I am using wordpress.com. I got it too work. Thanks.
- Jim Williams
I love the minimal design of it. Great job ff!
- Alan Le
Spot on Mike. The only limit right now is that as far as a focus group is concerned it doesn't yet have deep penetration with normal everyday (facebook) people. I like it that way right now but it will be changing soon.
- Jon-Paul Bussoli
Go Gmail! "The cost savings are substantial. The Outlook/Exchange platform involved a AU$33 million contract and took four years to go live, although it’s unclear why it took so long. The Gmail/Google Apps rollout, which is being completed by subcontractors, will cost just $9.5 million and should be live by the end of 2008. User storage will increase from 35 MB to 1 GB."
- Paul Buchheit
from Bookmarklet
This is small compared to the rest of Gmail, so scaling isn't an issue.
- Paul Buchheit
Has anyone ever played Warcraft and clicked on a sheep until it exploded? That's what I want to do with the "like" button on this link.
- Phil Glockner
My guess is that the Exchange contract involved having many local servers and administrators (managed by Unisys), while the Gmail contract involves just letting Google do all the work in the US with SMS only doing the local integration. This is all fine and dandy until some ship cuts the submarine cable to your continent and your email doesn't work for a week.
- Gabe
I work tangentially to this stuff.. the next step has to be a Apps rollout (or at least replacing Office with OpenOffice)
- Nick Lothian
Of course, if the submarine cable gets cut, email won't work anyways.
- Jim Norris
Presumably they're spending millions of AU$ so the students can email teachers and other students. One would hope the Exchange-based system wouldn't require transoceanic cables for teachers to email their students. With Gmail you can't even edit a draft without a decent Internet connection to some Gmail datacenter.
- Gabe
There may be datacenters in Australia by now.
- Paul Buchheit
Australia has something like a dozen undersea cables connecting it to a variety of destinations in Asia and the Americas. Events that would disconnect Australia from the world, or shut down Google's data centers, are so much more rare than Exchange downtime that it's not even worth talking about. There are plenty of valid reasons to prefer locally served email over a hosted solution, but undersea cable cuts aren't one of them.
- ⓞnor
Gmail is a great choice, but the funny thing is that Exchange seems like a really awful choice for this situation. To give email to a million students, it seems like some big-ass conventional IMAP servers would be a lot cheaper and easier to manage. Maybe they were sold a bill of goods about how Exchange/Outlook would integrate with educational courseware?
- ⓞnor
The problem really comes down to local vs. hosted services. The article techcrunch incorrectly quoted said the email would be hosted by Google overseas, meaning there are dozens more points of failure (a submarine cable being merely one). My guess is that it was Unisys (the low bidder in 2003) that chose Exchange as the platform, and that SMS (the low bidder this year) chose Gmail. I would also guess that there is no SLA in the contract.
- Gabe
gmail is so much more reliable then anything microsoft could ever manage in underfunded corporate IT environments - why even try and compare
- ben rogers
from twhirl
Gmail may be 100% reliable, but that doesn't matter because the Internet isn't even close to reliable. All it takes is one kid running BitTorrent to make every student in the school (or district) unable to access email.
- Gabe
Does it frequently happen that you can't get to Google because some kid is running BitTorrent?
- ⓞnor
@ⓞnor - bittorrent isn't too much of a concern AFAIK in most schools. What is the big concern is the cost of bandwidth. Telstra (the incumbent duopolist) signed a lot of schools up to very expensive contracts with capped bandwidth (esp in remote areas). It's expensive enough that at some schools they disconnect the internet once the cap is reached (although this isn't in NSW AFAIK)
- Nick Lothian
It doesn't matter whether it's a broken cable, BitTorrent, a misbehaving router, or any of the dozens of other causes that could make the Internet unreliable; the point is that the Internet is inherently unreliable. Anything that relies on the Internet will eventually fail, and at some point it will fail the day before the big project is due or the final exam, and there won't be anything the school will be able to do about it.
- Gabe
Yeah, but it's all about failure rates. Everything fails sometimes, including Exchange servers. Microsoft themselves, for example, have suffered *weeks* long company wide email outages while they struggle to repair broken Exchange installations. If I cared about reliable access to my mail, I know which one I would pick. And there's no secret mystery failure here: you can just ask people "is it OK if your email is approximately as available as Google?". They know how available that is to them.
- ⓞnor
I don't know about you, Onor, but I check Gmail dozens of times each day; I use the rest of Google perhaps 3 times a day. The reason I still use Outlook (instead of forwarding that email to Gmail) is that some mail I need access to even when there's no Internet.
- Gabe
@gabe: imap with gmail. you can get a local snapshot if you want without the hassle of having to manage an email system.
- Ashwin Bharambe
Really, why don't you do that? I know that comments can be edited but could there be at least last date of editing. And no, date and time don't have to show all the time, just when user points the comment. That way things would still look clean and nice but there would be more information for those who need it.
- Daniel Schildt
i'm not sure. I like the idea that stories arrive "when they should" i.e. when people are discussing them. Threads sometimes re-appear when they are rediscovered, or someone has extra information to impart. In that sort of situation, does it matter about the timing of each comment?
- Iain Baker
@ kevin, well, my point is that the freshness of a conversation just depends on whether someone has added something fresh to the story. I don't really mind if the original story is no longer fresh, I just want to hear the fresh information. So, the timeline ceases to be all that important to me..
- Iain Baker
Women like what marketeers, social designers and evolutionary psychologists tell them to like. So do men. Young girls like sci-fi now, it's ok. Guys don't have to like football. I think the article is a mind seed. A meme. It fits in with other girl-social meme stereotypes so it will stick. you are not your astrology sign until someone tells you what it is. You follow expectations and then convince yourself to stay consistent till that's what you become. It's all social engineering.
- Kit Krash
Interesting. There are actually quite a few married men over 30 on my Pownce friends list. Different services probably attract different demographics though. My Pownce group skews highly nerdy (in a good way).
- Heidi Cool
I have noticed that many of the folk befriending me on Myspace do fall into the 35-50 female category and a group of friends in that age group from a reality tv forum all joined last year to follow one of the show's contestants...mind you - a few older and (younger!) men are befriending me now too....must be my trendy hairstyle..lol!!
- Julia Ault
What's the status of tools like this in regard to Flickr's ToS? Considering their API monitors and throttles bandwidth (and their pricing structure is based on bandwidth usage), I can't imagine this not getting a few eyebrows raised at (or a banning from) Flickr.
- Mark Trapp
wish there was something for linux, windows,or dta
- clarke thomas
I agree. I am very happy with Twitter. Even if it does go down alot. But they are getting better. I haven't seen twitter down all week
- Tyler (Chacha)
from twhirl
Over the last month, I have tended to use Twitter less. During the last Lakers-Celtics game, for example, I was in the NBA Finals FriendFeed room. Ironic, since I spent good chunks of the World Series on Twitter.
- Ontario Emperor
from fftogo
Good article. The idea of pruning your FriendFeed to give it a higher signal to noise ratio by pruning your feeds that end up here sounds good, but since FF aggregates all your online media creation, I think another approach to this is to do the pruning before that noise gets out on the Internet to begin with. I think this is a skill people learn over time. Most people's first tweets...
more...
- John F Morton
Rooms are great, as Friendfeed gathered a big group of members, who are willing to respond to topics in rooms of their interests.
- Jansen Lu
the better question might be, who benefits? where will the conversations go when twitter crashes? all FF? some plurk? a mishmash of those and pownse and jaiku?
- Christian Anderson
following on from another discussion of Google share and Delicious i thought this might be useful. Some great ways to integrate your SM activity
- stuart brown