Jonathan Terleski

i just read something about this today.. .apparently it makes people vomit... let me know how it goes. - jenna

My copy should be arriving sometime this week. If I can't make it in to work. you'll know why. - Mihai Parparita

For the first time I've found myself in a position to actually care about whether I should get a game for the 360 or the PS3. Apparently the PS3 has some undisclosed 'extra content' but I greatly prefer the 360 controller. Anyone have any insights into platform differences for this game? - Kevin Fox

I played the 360 demo and found the controls to be quite cumbersome - I'm going to wait for the PC version and play with my tried-and-true FPS controls of WASD+Mouse - Nathan Chase

@Kevin--for me the only diff. besides the controllers would be the multiplayer. That and the 360 drive noise is annoying--unless you've got a big HDD and can rip it to your drive with this week's dash update :) - Josh

Kev - in general I prefer the 360 controller also. But this game is much, much better with the PS3 controller. I tried the demos on both systems and the 360 controller just got in the way. That, along with the better graphics engine making sure your eyes don't stress too much from the all the white - is the reason I got it for the PS3. Great game if only for the experience for moving through the world. Cutscenes are awful and the story is just okay. There is a demo on PS3 also if you want to test it. - Nida

Meh. Play Fallout 3 instead. - Jonathan Terleski

Also watching it here: http://www.sfgate.com/election... - Michael Leggett

Thanks Michael, the SFgate link is great! I was just wondering about where to find results on Measure R (the George W. Bush sewage plant). : ) - Jess Lee

Yeah, SF isn't reporting anything yet... so Prop 8 still has a chance to fail. But, I fear it is going to require a big margin in SF to cover the current 8% gap. - Michael Leggett

My faulty math: If the trend continues, with 11% reporting and a gap of 8% (252,592 votes) we need 2,296,290 votes to defeat Prop 8. - Michael Leggett

SF results at http://www.sfgov.org/site/elec.... So far they're reporting 14,387 (32.39 %) as Yes on 8 and 30,035 (67.61 %) as No on 8. - Jess Lee

Only about 350,000 - 400,000 registered voters in SF. So, that's only going to give us 150k at most. :( - Michael Leggett

55% yes, 17% reporting... : ( - Jess Lee

Prop 8: Please die. - Jonathan Terleski

It is closing. 53% yes 47% no with 25% reporting. The green is spreading down the coast: http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/20... - Michael Leggett

Not looking forward to talking to some of my coworkers tomorrow if Prop 8 passes. I can't even begin to imagine what it feels like to be told who you can or can't marry. - Jonathan Terleski

The gap is closing a little bit, but it's still quite large -- 47.5% no, 52.5% yes. - Jess Lee

no autographs, please. - Josh McFarland

i heard U2 will be playing at that party. - peter

People don't seem to understand that the smaller Google acquisitions (not YouTube, DoubleClick, etc) are generally for the people, not the product (or at least not the product as it is). - Paul Buchheit

@Paul, totally. I work with great people everyday and a lot of them came as part of an acquisition and I couldn't imagine some of my projects without them. - Jonathan Terleski

@Paul People often don't understand that because it's not made clear when the acquisition is announced. - Kevin D. White

+1 Kevin. If a service has users pre-acquisition and the intention is that the service will be mothballed and the engineers re-distributed then that intention should be made clear to the users. I believe that Grand Central will eventually open up again, but Jaiku? And what's FeedBurner done lately? - Kevin Fox

@Kevin Given that all 3 services you've mentioned are working just fine and serving their existing users I'm not sure what more could be expected of them. Given that Google doesn't pre-announce stuff all you can know is that these things are still working. I think we all know better than to believe that because there are no user-facing changes or dramatic announcements that a service is dead. Sadly many of the pundits don't build software and so think that if you go more than a few months without feeding - Adewale Oshineye

the hype machine then you must be dead. There's no real way to refute these sorts of allegations without making thing worse. It's like being asked "when did you stop beating your wife?" - Adewale Oshineye

@Adewale: Sorry for any confusion. I wasn't making an allegation, I was raising a question. I honestly don't know what's going on at Jaiku, but I do know there are products that have been bought and augmented, products that have been bought, torn apart, and re-worked into other services, and products that have been bought for talent, where the service was mothballed and I'm openly wondering which category Jaiku and FeedBurner will end up in. Also, I would suggest that a social network service that has closed signups isn't "working just fine and serving their existing users" but that's not the point I was trying to make. Sorry if I ruffled any feathers. - Kevin Fox

As long as people understand that there is a difference between when they see on the outside and what is really happening on the inside. Obviously I can't comment on some stuff simply because it isn't public. But I appreciate that perception matters, of course. And vice versa, the public should appreciate that they're only seeing one part of what is going on. - DeWitt Clinton

@Kevin I can't speak for FeedBurner or even Jaiku. However the best way to learn what's going on with Jaiku is to join the site and follow jyri/teemu/termie. Drop me an email on adewale at gmail and I'll send you an invite if you don't already have an account. - Adewale Oshineye

@adewale, in your comment to Kevin, you said that these services were "working just fine." Maybe you don't use any of those services, or you have a very loose definition of what "just fine" is. These services are slowly being mothballed and deconstructed bit by bit. That is NOT fine. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

Google used to define innovation now they simply stifle it. Their motto: If you can't beat em, buy em and bury them in the backyard. - Matt Shaulis

Matt, I'll play Devil's advocate: What did Google ever innovate? They weren't the first search engine. They weren't the first company to sell CPC ads by auction. They weren't the first to do web mail, online documents, web video, IM, blogging, wikis, or any number of other things. Google's strengths are making incremental, yet essential, improvements and doing it on an unheard of scale. Immunity to Not Invented Here syndrome is a positive. - Steve Weis

Everything is incremental. Products don't have to be entirely new in order to be innovative, and in fact an entirely new product would probably be completely incomprehensible. - Paul Buchheit

Call me biased, but I still think Google Maps was a damned awesome launch. If you want to talk about acquisition success stories, you can't get much better than that. Not every acquisition works, but I think Google has got a way better track record than most, including some total home runs. - ⓞnor

Yeah, Google Maps was great, though the acquired product was actually a windows client, so it's also a good example of changing the product direction post-acquisition (for the better). - Paul Buchheit

Google Maps was a game changer. It really changed how we thought about what could be done with the web. - Jason Carreira

Yes, part of why I call it a success story is that it wasn't just Google buying something and slapping the brand on it. Where 2 had this crazy idea that you could pre-render maps for the entire world and use that to drive a totally different user experience, and they had a serious passion for high quality map rendering. Google knew a lot about Web design and large scale services, and a combined team brought it all together to launch something neither company would ever have pulled off by itself. - ⓞnor

@Mark You state that "hese services are slowly being mothballed and deconstructed bit by bit." I'm on the internal Google mailing lists for 2 out 3 of these services. I see them writing and checking in code on a daily basis. That's what I base my belief upon. What basis do you have for your claim? - Adewale Oshineye

@Paul exactly, talented people are a great reason for acquisition. Precisely why Google took over jaiku. Not because of the service, but because they got their hands on some really talented mobile guys - Alexander van Elsas

Adewale: I base them on the fact that I've been users far before acquisition on two of the three, and the fact that I'm really observant. GrandCentral is rotting away and getting less usable by the day, and FeedBurner continues to be robbed of major features that make it in any way an attractive solution. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

"Why not build new services and integrate at the same time? There are lots of opinions about the best way to go through integrations. Our perspective is that the time you lose trying to continuously merge an updated legacy codebase with a new rewrite causes you be in a world of never actually getting the integration done because you're constantly working on merge problems, which gives you less time to add new features OR get the new backend integration done, and eventually you kind of grind to a halt." ( http://blogs.feedburner.com/fe... ) - Ionut

@Mark You're still not getting it. Ade just told you he see's code being checked in for 2 of 3 of the services you mention. How does this equate to "rotting away?" WRT FeedBurner, exactly what major features was it robbed of that makes it unattractive? I've been a huge FB user since long before the acquisition so I'm curious about the functionality I should be missing. Everything still works like it did before for me. - Erica Baker

No, I think it's you guys who aren't getting it. Don't get me wrong, I love a lot of Google stuff, but you folks are killing some of my favorite features. Replacing FAN with AdSense? Completely dumb move. GrandCentral used to work reliably. Now, half the time I can't download or listen to voicemail. You guys may be doing stuff to the code, but I'm here to say it isn't improving the service. These aren't temporary problems or issues - these are shifts in service levels. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

This is the kind of awesome targeting we've seen from AdSense for Feeds since Mashable switched over from FAN: (http://mashable.com/2008/08/15...). Gay pr0n and ponzi schemes. As I said earlier in the week, robbing FeedBurner of the one key advantage for publishers (i.e. sophisticated monetization) will kill FeedBurner. It's trivially simple to set up RSS redirection, which is the only other major benefit to FB. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

Collect $200, return to Go? - Kevin Fox

So Ben gets to make FB money as well :)) - Bindu Reddy

Does that mean I'll get $10 for every YouTube video I watch? - Roshan Vyas

This is just amazing infoviz. The most telling elements to me are how much being the host country influences the number of medals you win (presumably a 'home court advantage' and a larger number of competitors), and how many more countries have been participating in the games in the last 20 years compared to previously. It's really amazing. - Kevin Fox

That's pretty damn cool. I thought 1936 was especially interesting. - Cyrus Lendvay

It's cool to see that as time passes, especially from 1988 on, there are a lot more countries winning medals. - tim

don't do what Scoble says, especially! :-) - Robert Scoble

Damn paradox-maker... - Kevin Fox

Or as the great Todd Rundgren says- "Don't change your music to your audience, change your audience to your music." http://www.tr-i.com/ - Nice Fish Films

In business analysis, we say "listen to what the users want and then give them what they actually need." - Nathaniel Payne

Stories that validate my employment and salary will always get a "like" from me. - Jonathan Terleski

http://www.birthdayalarm.com/ - Kevin Gough

You'll have some competition: http://www.jackcards.com - Mike Doeff

What if you could use your phone to take a photo of a handwritten note, and the site would clean it up, put it on a card, and send it? - Jim Norris

I would love this... I would want it to send a bunch of flowers or some such as well... - Bindu Reddy

jackcards is great! i'm using it now. thx mike doeff - peter

Will receiving a birthday card mean anything if it no longer means you remembered? - Amit Patel

Every X% of the time (X is based on a personality survey taken at signup) it will send the card late with an apology. - Larry Greenfield

Probably not because I never remember to do this early enough. Now, if you could promise same day delivery for an extra $1, I'm game. P.S. you should offer to include gift cards (I bet you could get some kind of commission from places like Best Buy, REI, Target, etc). - Michael Leggett

love the same day feature for those like Michael...and me! - peter

It should mail the card to *me*, along with a stamped, addressed envelope for the recipient. I take it out of my mailbox, sign it, write "Happy Birthday!", and stick it right back in the mailbox. I'm imagining some sort of netflix-esque mailer... - Doug Zongker

doug - check out jackcards.com - like it? - peter

doh! - Doug Zongker

do you think your friends know your handwriting? your family might recognize it. wondering if the handwriting could come from someone who isn't you. - peter

Knowing me I would enter a date that was too late. - j1m

sounds like a great app for a social network that already knows your friends birthdays - Kevin Marks

nah, i probably wouldn't use this. i like giving people real things. - Michael Sippey

i dont think this would work on a social network. it's more about your most important relationships. like your mom. - peter

i tried jackcards.com. cool concept but implementation needs some work. took me too long to schedule a card. - peter

How about calendar events that trigger *actual* events? Whether it's online bill payments or sending birthday cards, triggering arbitrary services / APIs based on a time/date you put on your Google Calendar could be interesting. - Jonathan Terleski

I totally disagree - it's much better this way, it does include the url as well. - Richard Bradshaw

trent thanks for sharing that. ;) - Nicole Simon

The so-called "awesome bar" is junk. That Oldbar extension is aces. - Mark Trapp

about:config and set "browser.urlbar.maxRichResults" to 0 but it's a great feature and I love it - Dobromir Hadzhiev

maxRichResults = 0 removes any sort of completion, which is not what Kevin's looking for. Oldbar will do it, though. - Mark Trapp

it works bothways, not just for the page title btw... - chandoo

@kevin: Have you given it a chance? I found it to be quite useful once I gave it a shot. - nadim

I think it's great. Who needs bookmarks with autocomplete? - Rick Powell

Yeah, give it a chance, both of you may adapt. I was an awesomebar hater once myself. - ⓞnor

The awesomebar was one of the main reasons that I made the pre-release my default browser months ago. - Roger Benningfield

The autocompleter displays previews of my emails in gmail, even when I'm not logged in! Any way to stop it doing that? - Alex

there is an extension called something like "OldBar" that will change it back - xxdesmus via twhirl

I wonder when my brain started associating FF with FriendFeed instead of Firefox. :-/ - Erica Baker

It takes a week to get used to the new awesome bar (or better: to be able to use it efficiently), but then you wouldn't want to miss it. - sebmos

I have far, far too many pages whose title starts with 'FriendFeed' but very few URLs. - Kevin Fox

Yeah, I used to hate that autocomplete, but overtime my brain adjusted to fully love it. It took some weeks before I realized I was getting annoyed at Safari for not finding what I was looking for! - felix

Kevin, you gotta remove the FriedFeed from all your titles - bad for SEO! ;) - felix

The AwesomeBar has become my friend; persevere - David Peacock via twhirl

Awesome bar is awesome. Give it some time. - Jonathan Terleski

Dumped! It got in my way without giving me any clear advantage in the short term. - Kevin Fox

hated it but eventually grew to love it. - Jake

I hate the new address bar... - Luis Figueiredo

Love the new address bar. :D - Tanath

mainly i like the name: AwesomeBar. - edythe

The awesome bar is like marmite. I've learned to love it - Neil Dunn

Awesome bar is junk because webmasters SPAM titles of their site! Oldbar all the way. I've been using FF3 for more than a month and still find it annoying, because when I type "digital" I don't want to be presented with buy.com just because they have "digital cameras" in the title. Arrrgh - Max Smolev

Awesome bar rocks. - Elias Torres

I ignore it and just type the whole address... mainly because it's not awesome. They need it to be an "option" not the sole feature. - Enrique Gutierrez via twhirl

Nevermind - I now use this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-... - Enrique Gutierrez via twhirl

That's the cool thing about it: Type in the normal Url, and everything works perfectly. But if you find out how to use it more efficiently, you'll love it. I didn't realize a big change in the beginning, until I started to try it out. Now, I search my history through the awesome bar at least 50% of the time, and I love it. It helps me a big deal. Funny thing for Google Docs users: type in "new document", and the page for new documents should pop up. ;) - sebmos

But it doesn't. My standard way of navigating is to type in 'rea' and choose between 'Google Reader' and 'RealClearPolitics'. Now if I type in 'Rea' I get a list of a whole lot of sites that have 'Rea' in their page title, and the two sites I care about are much lower on the list. It works worse for me, and many people who already used the old autocomplete. If you never used the old autocomplete it's probably a lot better. - Kevin Fox

Kevin, you just have to use it a while longer. The sites you visit more frequently will bubble to the top of the list. After you've used it for a while, you'll find that it really is more powerful. (I hated it at first too.) - Brad Lauster

It's great because you can use it either way, it's just a matter of typing the right snippet & picking from the list. Type the right thing and you can usually get a very short list. And it learns when you use things frequently. - Tanath

These are fake. Looks too much like Palm Springs. - peter

also why didn't we send a color camera? - peter

20 - Bwana

22 - assuming in the short term they still do the mini deal with Google - Adam Kazwell

around 20 - Sandosh Vasudevan

22 - my lucky number - MG Siegler

Any idea whether this will raise or lower GOOG? I suppose a lot does depend on whether they still do the ad serving deal. - Kevin Fox

19 - Kevin Fischer

15 - Steven Hodson

$18 - Susan Beebe

I think it may be better to ask where it will end up Monday. Ballmer acknowledged today that Microsoft believes Yahoo is worth $33 per share. This was undoubtedly influenced by large MSFT shareholders (some of which also own big chunks of YHOO) and a small army of investment bankers consulting on the inherent valuation cap. Either way, I would defer to the fact that they are all a lot closer to the data than myself and while YHOO might tank in early morning crazytalk, it should recover nicely and it probably holds a fairly solid buying opportunity when it bottoms out. Regardless, it will be an interesting cinco de mayo...maybe this is the outcome Ballmer had in mind from the start of this silly bid...he'll toast it with a corona with a twist of lime. - Michael Mayer

Ballmer thinks Yahoo is worth $33 if you put Microsoft management in charge. Yahoo management thinks Yahoo is worth $39 or more with Yahoo management in charge. The stock market used to think Yahoo was worth $19 with Yahoo management in charge. Monday morning should be quite interesting. - Ranjit Mathoda

I'm imagining a $15 price after things settle down - Nick Malaguti via Alert Thingy

KevinFox: I think GOOG would have benefited most from a MSFT hostile takeover of YHOO. Both MSFT and YHOO would have been in hell and GOOG might even have gotten revenue from YHOO outsourcing ads to it. I don't think it's possible to tell whether GOOG would have benefited more from a merger or the status quo. What really matters is who solves the customer's problem, and it's hard to figure out whether MSFT and YHOO do that better apart or together (the managements of both companies disagree). - Ranjit Mathoda

$20 - Clickry

11...via feedalizr - Anthony Farrior

19 - Charlie Anzman

$0 - Sam Purtill

I'm a buyer at Sam's price - Charlie Anzman

not sure of the open, but I'd go with a close of ~$22 - Jonathan Terleski via Alert Thingy

I'd say it will plummet to $15 (by Thursday at the latest). Let the stockholder revolt begin. - darnell

Kevin - Would guess that GOOG will track the tech sector in general in less there's news from them. If Friday's any indication, it looks like things may finally be returning to some level or normalcy ?? - Charlie Anzman

$18 at the open, close in the very low 20s - Charles Hudson

Sunnyvale. - Louis Gray

I think it opens around 15, but is probably a buy there as I expect it to be near 20 by mid week - Sean Reiser

around 20 - yang is going to be a hero to his employees and face pressure to keep his job from his shareholders - Morgan via twhirl

$29. - Amit Patel

At 5 AM EST, Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) was bid at 22.75 in extended hours trading, down 5.92 from Friday's close (Source: SEO and Tech Daily ). So, it looks like MG Siegler (ParisLemon) of Venture Beat might have nailed the opening value (he guessed $22 bucks)! However, I am more curious where YHOO stock price will *close* at today and Friday later this week.... should be a wild ride for the Yahooilagans! - Susan Beebe

Well I was sort of close with 20 :) - Bwana

Remind never to ask any of you (except Amit) for stock advice. - Jason Wehmhoener via Alert Thingy

Is it possible that Paul, Jerry and Steve are all buying ? (I couldn't resist :) - Charlie Anzman

Susan, what about me? I got my price of $22 in before MG :) - Adam Kazwell

Full disclosure: I bought at $24. - Louis Gray