Good to know for commercial blogs -- I only use it personally for videos and images mostly
- Shey
whenever I check statistics of tumblr the number of visits to tumblr.com is equal to the number of visits to funkyboy.tumblr.com. Not much useful...
- funkyboy
Tumblr is a mortification story for blogging world! : )
- Erhan Erdoğan
I have a tumblr account for personal use. after I heard about tumblr has problems with seo, I like it more
- ahmet bulent
Not trying to be contrary, but is it Tumblr that's creating the problem? Maybe partially, but very few free blogging platforms get much engine love right out of the box, and it doesn't look like a lot of effort was made to optimize it. It ranks #3 & 4 for [cara austin], right behind her main site. Google has indexed over 100 pages, many of which are just photos. No unique titles, no descriptions, very little content. Exactly what queries is this site NOT doing well for that it SHOULD do well for?
- Erik Dafforn
Interesting idea that it's not Tumblr but the content. I am planning on porting the content over to wordpress, so I'll have a one-to-one experiment to test against. I think that the big issue with Tumblr is that without a lot of customization, it isn't easy to create that SEO-friendly content - like titles, descriptions, tags, categories, etc....all that stuff that gets posts indexed....
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- Melissa Chang
I knew there was a reason why I stayed on Blogger. :)
- Ontario Emperor
I did some quick testing and it appears that {PostTitle} does not do anything useful and {Caption} is not permitted between title tags. So basic SEO techniques do not appear to be usable.
- jho
The URLs are worthless and the lack of post titles makes tumblr a terrible choice if you care about search engine traffic. More here - http://tinyurl.com/5j5g56
- Bjorn Stromberg
@David You may make a good point about Tumblr being able to be customized to make it seo friendly - but the reason that I used Tumblr in the first place (and why most people use it) is b/c it's simple and you don't have to be a developer or get a developer involved to use it. Having to mess around with the code defeats that purpose.
- Melissa Chang
@Melissa That's a very big reason why I decided to launch my first blog on Tumblr. It was easy, no-fills posting. "Great," I thought. But I started to notice that Tumblr was living in its own universe: folks went lived in the Dashboard and never really escaped. Post titles and dates were never really correct. It gets frustrating when you spend time to write (and not merely bookmarklet sites) and then it vanishes into thin air.
- David Ambrose
David - I would say the same for LiveJournal and, to an extent, Facebook. Nice gardens, but walled nonetheless.
- Phil Glockner
@Phil. For sure! Great way to put it.
- David Ambrose
You are aware that you can add post titles using {block:PostTitle} {PostTitle} {/block:PostTitle} ?
- pratham
I think it's fair to say that T could be more seo-friendly by default with title tags, pulling X chars from the body as a meta desc., etc. But I also think comparing it to WP is unfair, because in many cases (not all), people post far less original content and use it differently. It doesn't seem to have crawling issues. Plenty of WP blogs do fine with URLs like /?p=50 if other things are in place. Those things now exist in WP because the community made them possible via plugins and smart templates.
- Erik Dafforn
@ptm see @Erik's response below. It's the idea of having SEO-friendly post titles as default that makes sense to the community.
- David Ambrose
Maybe a site like FF, as a third-party site giving some linkage to Tumblr posts, will be what some people need to get some search engine attention. External linkage is a big part of the puzzle that we haven't discussed. If you have a Tumblr blog and 25 active FF friends, that should start to make a difference sooner or later, providing you're writing about things that people are searching for.
- Erik Dafforn
@Erik FF is a big push to my site, but a lot comes from Twitter as well as Facebook...which is interesting.
- David Ambrose
@David that is very interesting. I'm fascinated to see how the traffic funnel develops. One benefit of FF and Twitter's "open" state is that unlike with Facebook (whose public profile shows "some" of your friends), bots see all your friends and you benefit from activity and making friends. Oddly, I would not have known about Tumblr if not for seeing people's FF feeds... So I think the two (FF and Tumblr) will benefit each other.
- Erik Dafforn
@Eric That's right on. I'll post some screenshots from Google Analytics around FF, Twitter and Facebook modules.
- David Ambrose
This discussion is disappointing, guys. Tumblelogs (and Tumblr specifically) can index EXTREMELY well, which actually forced us to turn away droves of affiliate spammers after we became their platform of choice last summer. My silly tumblelog at davidslog.com is 1st on Google for "david karp" and 17th for "david" (above David Pogue). There have been some seriously uninformed comparisons...
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- David Karp
@David @Phil The Dashboard (and tumblr.com) accounts for less than 10% of Tumblr traffic.
- David Karp
@David I'm not saying that this conversation is "FUD"; rather, quite the opposite. Thanks for stopping by and implementing the features.
- David Ambrose
Wow, that's a fast response. I'll be happy about the {PostTitle} summary!
- rodmitch
@ptm Yes I am aware of it but as of yesterday it was not producing anything really useful. @David Karp, good to see that you are listening to the conversation. I would suggest 2 things. 1) Make both {PostTitle} and {Caption} available in the title as well as meta description (or make Caption = PostTitle) and 2) enable Title as url so that something like http://foo.com/posts... works. Looking forward to the improvements.
- jho
Tumblr does index well. Particularly if you use text posts with titles.
- Chris M
SEO has nothing to do with Tumblr and everything to do with how your theme is written. This is the same thing with Wordpress. The idea that Tumblr somehow is inherently poor for SEO is based on misinformation.
- Anthony De Rosa
As of Saturday my parent's home was still there when my dad left. He stayed on the roof with a hose fighting it by himself. The firefighters helped him fight it for a while. They used a pump to pump water from the swimming pool to fight it but eventually the firefighters gave up. The neighbors house burned down. My dad was able to save our house, at least as of Sat. afternoon. It may be gone now. He was going to try and hike back in on Saturday night in order to bypass the roadblock by the Sherriff, but wasn't able to get back in there.
- Thomas Hawk
from Bookmarklet
I think the house may be ok. Well see. On Sat. night when I talked to my mom she said that he'd been able to save the house fighting the fire from the roof. But a storage/garage type structure on the property burned down and 3 cars were lost as of Sat afternoon. The whole thing could be gone now though.
- Thomas Hawk
Oh, Thomas! Many prayers, warm thoughts (warm = the affectionate kind, not the fiery kind), and hugs to you and your family. I hope everyone is safe!
- Ladyepiphanybug
Oh, man...I am sorry to hear that, TH. Thoughts & prayers to you and your family.
- JA Castillo
they are all safe. my mom was in ventura giving a seminar and my dad stayed until the fire burned through the property on the canyon. There were still hot spots though that could have flared up. He left on Sat. afternoon after saving the home and the fire burned through the property. I think he wanted to get to town as there's no phone/electricity up there to let everyone know he was...
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- Thomas Hawk
Oh, sh*t!! That's awful. Glad to hear your folks are OK, Thomas.
- Andrew Terry
Sending good thoughts your parents way, Thomas. *hugs*
- Mol, FF Music Lover
I'm so sorry, Thomas. You and family are in prayers, I'm so glad to hear that you are all safe. Your father is a very brave man. Please let them know I am praying for them.
- Melanie Reed
So scary. Best wishes to your folks. The worry must be unbearable.
- Kathy Fitch
I've lived in Altadena/Pasadena for the bulk of my time in Los Angeles, nearly ten years. It's really scary to know that some of the homes that are being lost are undoubtedly friends or relatives of friends and people that I know.
- Derrick
Hope everything turns out good for your parents, looks terrifying
- Kim Landwehr
Hope everything turns out alright, with no more property loss, for your parents!
- Rene, Pro Button Pusher
How scary and terrible! I'm glad that your parents are ok, though!!
- Susan Dennis
I'm so glad everyone is ok. I'll keep your family in my prayers.
- ChiliMac
I'm glad everyone is safe. Is this the worst fire season in recent years?
- Bryan R. Adams
yeah. this is the worst fire since the fire that burned through there maybe in 1977 or so? I remember that one too. It was pretty bad. This one seems worse though. The other thing that's terrible are the floods that follow the fires the next winter.
- Thomas Hawk
Scary things fires like these. Glad to hear your family's safe though - at the end of the day that's more important than the house.
- John
Really scary. I saw a wildfire up close for the first time this weekend in Yosemite. It's not something I hope to be near again.
- The original Kevin
So sorry to hear this. Good to know that your parents are safe.
- Anne Yeh
ohhhhhhh shit! that totally sucks :-(
- Ralph Reijs
Thomas I am so sorry. I hope their house is ok. Gosh, I feel bad for you guys.
- Jim Williams
I talked with my dad on the phone for the first time today. He seemed fine about it all. He said it was exciting actually. He was the only one there fighting the fire for a long time. He said it was really quiet except for sounds of the fire. He'd hear a tree fall and yell "timber." He was in pretty good spirits all things considered. He's pretty sure the house is saved and hopes that they might escort residents back in in the next few days sometimes in this part of Big Tujunga Canyon.
- Thomas Hawk
I'm sorry to hear about this, but I'm glad everyone is okay!
- Michael Fidler
It is a story all to familiar for us Australians and thankfully my family and I have never been caught up in it ourselves, but have come very close. Glad to hear that your folks are ok and in the least have a story to tell. Everything is replaceable except your life and these types of events bring people to that realisation faster than they would like unfortunately.
- travispuk
from iPhone
WHOA! I hated the CA wildfires ..that was something I'll never miss again... augh
- Susan Beebe
he's a pretty crazy but resourceful old dude actually. the firefighters were there helping him for a while but they bailed on the property figuring they couldn't save it and he stayed and fought it off himself.
- Thomas Hawk
Can't think of anything more scary than having to run from your house as it's being surrounded by fire. Very glad everyone is safe though....that's what is important.
- Bonnie Foster
So tough. Hope the house made it - but mostly glad everyone is safe.
- Auntie Buttinsky Botts
So glad to hear your folks are safe, TH. Wow. Praying for the firefighters and rest of the people caught in this horrible fire season. :-|
- Lisa L. Seifert | FHG™
OMG! that's really dreadful! glad to know your folks are safe. and stunned that the fire looks so beautiful in this image!
- B.L. Ochman
Yeah WOW. So brave for your dad to fight the fire all by himself. I'm glad to hear he's ok.. I feel a little sorry about their house, it's beautiful :(
- Friendfeed's Francisco
So sorry they have to go through this. Thank you for sharing the story, Thomas.
- Micah
I was listening to a story on the radio about how quickly you can be engulfed by a forest fire, specially when certain types of trees literally explode raining burning chunks around, honestly, it sounds very risky to stay behind and fight these yourself.
- Ray Cromwell
Thomas, I hope your parents house makes it though the fire OK. I'm glad to hear that your parents are OK, regardless of what happens to the house.
- Jeff P. Henderson
I feel for you Thomas because I've been there just over 6months ago. All I can say is (unfortunately) you're in for a shite of a year ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos...
- Peter Renshaw
glad to hear your folks got out - terrible to see the devastation!
- Kate
glad to hear they're OK but gutted for you TH
- Phill Price
Sorry to hear about your troubles Thomas, but I'm extremely glad your parents are safe and sound. Looks like you guys are having a really bad season
- Mo Kargas
sorry you guys are having to go through this shit. And I'm seriously impressed by your dad! major balls.
- vijay
Sheesh* Scary Poop Batman - hopefully Everybody is OK* I saw that on the Front Page o the Paper this morning + U never think it's somebody U know*
- Billy Warhol
I didn't want to click on the Like link because it's almost like saying I enjoy watching Thomas Hawk's parents house burn down. Hope everyone is safe ;-)
- James Robertson
I am sorry to see the fire was such a danger to you and your family. I sincerely hope your Dad didn't manage to sneak back in - he just endangers himself and the fire fighters.. It is better to have your Dad around than a house.
- Bill Rawlinson
I'm really sorry to see and hear that.........
- Kevin Montgomery
That is so scary, but the biggest thing is that you know where your parents are, and they're safe.
- mark zero (Jason)
My parents went back into their property yesterday afternoon. They were letting some residents back into Big Tujunga Canyon. The house survived but there's a lot of work still to do. The pipes from the water pump to the spring burned up and so my dad's trying to repair those to get water back to the property. Electricity is still out and probably will be for at least a few weeks. He's...
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- Thomas Hawk
It's going to be hard for the whole community now Thomas - it is the same in Greece where there were really devastating fires close to Athens these past few days. At least your parents are safe - all the best.
- Sofia @ SoMaFusion
We're glad you could attend Google's "tips and tricks" session. We created this site as a way for you to revisit many of the shortcuts and product features that we shared in our session. Here you'll find resources for everything from Search to Google News, Trends, Earth, and Mobile.
- Leo Laporte
from Bookmarklet
Sorry to crash the party, but I remember seeing this ages ago. Apparently, it was a produced commercial for a Japanese magazine. A 2005 forum post: "I went to the Japanese web site & watched both ads. (http://www.kodansha.co.jp/comic...) Based the translations above, I think that these are very clever ads that exemplify the magazine's intent to bring the unexpected to their readers....
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- Micah
"To share files on friendfeed.com, simply click the "Files" link underneath the post box and select which files you want to include. You can also share files by including them as attachments on emails sent to share@friendfeed.com."
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
We have a rolling 24-hour limit for the number and size of files you can upload, but you probably shouldn't hit it unless you are sharing really big stuff.
- Bret Taylor
Are the files public when accessed via direct link? Or do they require authentication?
- Mark Trapp
Any other files that don't work with it?
- Kol Tregaskes
What's the file attachment size limit?
- imabonehead
Kol: i assume you can attach video? it just won't play in-line? or did i misinterpret that?
- Frankie Warren
@imabonehead, from Bret's comment above: "We have a rolling 24-hour limit for the number and size of files you can upload, but you probably shouldn't hit it unless you are sharing really big stuff."
- Dan Hsiao
I tried it with both a txt and a rar file but neither seemed to work (the message was posted without a file attached). [Update: works now for me]
- Philipp Lenssen
Gonna give a big W00T!! to this before I even read the whole thing...
- FFing Enigma
Now all I need is a number where I can call and leave a VM that gets changed into an audio file, and I can get rid of drop.io for good! Yeah, we're never happy are we? Sorry....
- FFing Enigma
All we need now is a calendaring system and support for source code.
- imabonehead
mp3 sharing works in FriendFeed? Just when I'm thinking to share some 'musiclets' from time to time via Tumblr! mhh.. interesting, really!
- Thierry R. Andriamirado
this is awesome, i was literally just trying to do this last night on one of our team feeds and had to post links to published google docs instead. going to try it out now. it's like they read my mind.
- Mike Elliott
Kol...we use Drop.io all the time here at my office. This would be great as it is supremely simpler. But approved file types and sizes needs to be understood.
- JA Castillo
Mitch, that would be an option, but I can only imagine the opportunity for the wrong voice file to go to the wronge feed...
- FFing Enigma
And Akiva is right...where do we start donating?!
- JA Castillo
If we had basic HTML support for first comments on FF, it could almost be used for mail (at least for forwarding and reading mail to and on it).
- Kol Tregaskes
JA, a list of supported file types, limits and sizes is needed... please. :-)
- Kol Tregaskes
This will go a long way in convincing some of my Yahoo Groups to move to FF. Although we must have a list of file types supported, retention times and also if there is a max number of d/l's.
- Gil Francisco III
Gil, I'm seriously considering moving my Y!Groups list members from there to FF.
- Kol Tregaskes
This is one of those features that people don't complain about even though they didn't ask the community prior to launching ;)
- Frankie Warren
Dare I ask about Boobies.jpg.virus.exe? - Oops Casey says they are virus scanned
- Richard Walker
Jannifer: RIAA and MPAA, specifically. Say someone shares a copyrighted song or something...RIAA gets cranky.
- Jordan Hofker
Am I the only person that thinks this is an incredibly bad idea?
- Jason Nunnelley
How about .zip s that are password-protected? Reject I hope... (edit) .zip not supported at all, I gather, good!
- Richard Walker
yeah search by filetype absolutely! filetype:pdf, filetype:mp3, filetype:zip, filetype:doc etc.
- Nathan Chase
Christoper: (via Bret) "Unfortunately we only can play back MP3s at this point. The iPhone voice memos are in M4A (AAC), so we really want to support them, but it is a bit more difficult with Flash and our media setup at the moment."
- Ross Miller
NICE!!! Been waiting for this... thanks FriendFeed team!
- AJ Batac :)
Cool! FF is becoming more of a platform of choice for me. Thanks guys :)
- Dilip Dand
I'm not sure that I'm going to use that feature (I rarely share docs over the internet that weren't created in Zoho or GDocs, anyway), but still it looks pretty neato.
- Miss Elle
Bret, do you have any restrictions to protect against music filesharers etc so you do not become an RIAA target?
- travispuk
@ Travis: I was just wondering the same.
- Brian Chang
Bret Taylor, a friend of mine uploaded 1 mp3 and it disappeared. Now he can't upload any mp3 file, seeing a [The "" file type is not supported]. Broken message?
- Jason Nunnelley
I haven't tested this but, how exactly are you determining audio file types, just using the file extension. If so there is a work around with a simple file rename, an example would be if you change an .mp3 to a .pdf and let people rename it once it becomes local on their machine. EDIT: This workaround would also allow video to be transferred.
- Jimminy, CoG of FF
Maybe I don't know enough, but doesn't this kind of open the door to slipping malicious code to unsuspecting users?
- Fleagle
this is the best thing I know this morning when I open my eyes, well done!
- K.D.
Fleagle: It is possible that someone would do that but FriendFeed is fairly well self monitored. It is still a small group of people in comparison to other networks.
- Jimminy, CoG of FF
Glad for this feature, though perhaps close partnership with Box.net or similar could keep FF storage costs better contained? Not criticizing, just hoping Core Team doesn't get distracted by extending (and babysitting) commodity services. Keep up the great work!
- michael silverton
Hmmm @Ryo, good catch, posting directly from Android to FF your voice messages, would be cool!
- Özkan Altuner
Can we tell the lawyers that they "won" and give them all the money? Then start over with a new set of I.P. laws and a new currency? Pretty please?
- Richard Walker
This is great. I'll try this instead of posting to Ipernity.
- Rick Cogley
Seems like a good step in the right direction indeed the concerns are founded based on previous experiences but it is a good start.
- Ubuntu101
Is it possible to set it up as part of the feed like a podcast?
- Ubuntu101
Excellento - inline playing of mp3 files at last - this will be dangerous. But is there are limit??
- Chris Loft
embedding mp3's is just fine when it works .. I've been trying to get a podcast rss feed I have setup imported for the past 8 hours straight only to find out that each time it's not importing squat.
- John Blanton
from twhirl
I take that back it worked once but everything in the description tags showed up twice.
- John Blanton
from twhirl
:( Apparently not *.pdn files (Paint.Net)
- Vezquex
Can us folks with Symbian OS-based devices have some Adaptive Multi-Rate codec/AMR file love, too? I believe that some Samsung and NEC phones also use that audio file format...
- Tyson Key
Oh, and Google Earth KML files, and Ogg Vorbis files aren't supported right now either, for what it's worth. Still, it's a nice idea, so far.
- Tyson Key
Tried to share an .hta file with Micah yesterday....couldn't attach it. Tried to zip it and still couldn't attach it. Ended up tossing it in my dropbox and posting the link. :-(
- April
Question [ 01 ] - Michael in St. Louis asks about a Kindle DX Review? I was curious when we will get the Kindle DX review you commented on in a previous Security Now podcast. I have been really looking at that as a possible reader, but since there is no local store I can go to and put my hands on the product, I am weary to make such an investment. I read and have a large collection of technical books in pdf format and would like to know how native PDF support works on the DX.
- Leo Laporte
Question [ 02 ] - Steve Whaley in Lexington, Illinois asks ... is SecureZip Free??? On your Netcast you indicated that SecureZip was free. I am unable to find a download of this product that is free. It appears that PKWare wants $39.95 per user for home PC's. Am I missing something?
- Leo Laporte
Hmm, are Amazon using US customers as guinea pigs for the Kindle, before unleashing it on the rest of the world? :-P
- David Wright
from twhirl
Question • [ 03 ] - Damien Eversmann, a professional programmer in Sacramento California, wonders why "Coding Error == Remote Code Execution?!?... Steve, First, ditto what everyone always says. I've been listening since episode one and I hope you and Leo keep it up for some time to come! So, here's my question.... I'm a programmer by profession. I've been doing it for about 15 years...
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- Leo Laporte
Question [ 04 ] - Joseph Vollmer in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada wonders whether WPA/WPA2 is "Quickly crackable????"... I am fully up to date with all the episodes. I started listening to security now January 2007 and have been listening ever since and love the show. I am an IT Support professional and a bunch of my co-workers claim that they can or it is possible to crack WPA/WPA2 with...
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- Leo Laporte
Question [ 05 ] - A Security Now! listener in California has asked to be Anonymous while asking about a "Home-grown VPN Client"... Steve - As a consultant I am often asked to use a client's VPN for remote access to their network. My current client has a home-grown VPN client. It is an Active-X add-in to IE. Is there some way I can determine what this VPN client is doing? Is there a...
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- Leo Laporte
They usually overlay their own card reader over top of the slot on the machines and pinhole cameras over the keypad. Teams come into Germany from Eastern Europe and rig machines. I always give the slot a good yank and cover the keypad and my hand with the other hand whilst typing the pin.
- David Wright
Question [ 06 ] - Anthony Fitch from Blaine, Kentucky saw it happen first hand!... First of all, I have listened to every episode of Security Now! and it has filled in all of the gaps in content that were missed in my formal classes at my college. This show has lead me to win First Place in the Computer Concepts category in the Phi Beta Lambda state competition two years running! Thanks...
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- Leo Laporte
Question [ 07 ] - Rick Huebner in Melbourne Beach, Florida is worried about "same plaintext and multiple ciphertext in Secure Zip" Steve, in the discussion on Secure Zip, you said "So the idea is, if you wanted three different people to be able to decrypt this ZIP file, you're able to attach their certificates to that file. And essentially it takes their public key and encrypts this...
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- Leo Laporte
Leo, it could be a good idea to call your bank and tell them where you will be using card, so they don't flag your transactions as suspicious
- notagolfer
Edeka supermarkets in Germany use a custom Linux installation.
- David Wright
Amarok is a powerful music player for Linux and Unix, MacOS X and Windows with an intuitive interface. It makes playing the music you love and discovering new music easier than ever before - and it looks good doing it.
- The Real sofarsoShawn
Some new features: Integrated Web Services* Last.fm Last.fm Scrobble and listen to any last.fm radio stream with fully featured last.fm integration. * Magnatune Magnatune Buy tracks from the integrated Magnatune store, and help support the music label that Is Not Evil. * Shoutcast Radio Directory Shoutcast Stream thousands of free Internet Radio stations right inside Amarok. * Ampache...
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- The Real sofarsoShawn
Amarok 1.4 was a really nice player, my preferred one on Linux -which I use all the time-. Unfortunately, version 2 released with Ubuntu Jaunty was too broken to be considered even as a alpha, so I was forced to switch to Rhythmbox. I doubt I'll go back to amarok for some time, and if someone wants my opinion, 1.4 was good enougth (very good, in fact) and songbird is a good alternative, also.
- jmiguel rodriguez
I'm going to give this a shot due to having touch & go iPod integration with Songbird, also the integrated web services look more advanced, and for scripting resources
- The Real sofarsoShawn
Peter Cochrane's Blog: Become a bandwidth scavenger - Networks - Breaking Business and Technology News at silicon.com - http://networks.silicon.com/broadba...
On one day our Prime Minister announces that every home in the UK will have 2Mbps broadband in 2011, and the next a Korean minister announces that everyone in his country will have 1,000Mbps in 2012.
My number one request for FriendFeed right now? Give me this same feature for *Flickr.* Would love to be able to find more of my Flickr contacts who are on FriendFeed. Even better, give me the same Yahoo mail / Gmail functionality to invite my flickr contacts to FF via the Flickrmail system.
I know that many of my Flickr contacts are on here that I'm not even aware of. Monitoring their photos and faves via FriendFeed is vastly superior to Flickr's own "most recent contact photos" page. I wish I could add more of them. Photos are my favorite thing on FF.
- Thomas Hawk
I know that the vast majority of my Flickr contacts are *not* on FF -- but really *should* be on FF. If FF could use the Flickr API to allow me to invite all of them via flickrmail to my FF (like Yahoo mail and Gmail) this would be huge in making FF even that much better for me. I so wish more of them were on here. There are so many amazing Flickr photographers that could add so much to FF.
- Thomas Hawk
Yes please, I am way more interested in seeing new images than seeing tweets show up in 2 places.
- Bill Pennington
from twhirl
Kinda shocked the CEO of Zooomr doesn't also suggest Zooomr
- dbcohen
There are a lot of possibilities. I would love to be able to filter people based on their feeds, and groups for example. Like searching for people who have imported their flickr stream into friendfeed and who is also a member of the 'Tech Bloggers' group. Basically I would love to see them improve the way we discover people on friendfeed. Simply being able to search by netwwork would be amazing. Like tell friendfeed to list all my contacts who are also on delicious!
- Kasper Sorensen
Zooomr would be great too. But Zooomr is a far smaller service. I have a list for all Zooomr content on FF and that is manageable just with a list right now. Flickr is not. Since Zooomr basically uses Flickr's API though I'd think that if it could be done for Flickr that there would be no reason why it couldn't also be done for Zooomr. Would love that too!
- Thomas Hawk
I'd just like the ability to create a Flickr account without needing a Yahoo account - it's incredibly frustrating if you create them regularly. Yahoo have a really cumbersome sign up process.
- Martin Bryant
Running friendfeed vertically rocks. I didn't know my monitor could do that.
- Robert Scoble
That's pretty cool. It's nearly like running Tweetdeck when you set it up like that. Now we just need the real-time search for it to be perfect
- Kasper Sorensen
from fftogo
There should really be a greasemonkey script to run FF just like you have it there. I'm assuming that is your likes, comments, and the main feed?
- Andrew
Andrew: nope. One is my Twitter friends. The other is my main feed. The third is my Tech News Makers. I should do a video. It's fun to watch.
- Robert Scoble
Interesting setup. I think you should definitely do a video
- Angus Burton
Gmail has way better spam filtering than yahoo, and probably than any other email service out there. Its conversation view is a clearly better way to look at email ("View by conversation" in Outlook is a different concept). Obviously search works great. And yet, after many years, Gmail hasn't totally taken over the email world. What does that tell you?
- Bruce Lewis
I'll answer my own question: It tells me that gaining adoption is hard.
- Bruce Lewis
I love to check out the habits of successful people
- Bryan Vartabedian
Bruce, some things take time. Gmail is growing faster than the other services, and I suspect that it will be #1 in a few Years. Also, I believe that it's especially popular among heavy users (someone who spends all day in email matters more than someone who logs in once a week to check their spam).
- Paul Buchheit
Switching email addresses is unbelievably painful for the average consumer using email services that don't allow forwarding to a new address.
- Rishabh Mishra (p248)
Paul, I think you're right. I just keep hoping someone will somehow prove you wrong, that things don't have to take time.
- Bruce Lewis
Paul: I once asked an MBA class which email client they use. ALmost all were on Gmail.
- Robert Scoble
Bruce: all of these things are doubling pennies. They double at "n rate" and all of them take time. No easy way to get everyone in the world all in one day.
- Robert Scoble
Ain't that the painful truth. No easy way. Back to work, I guess.
- Bruce Lewis
Something that often goes unsaid in the discussion about online identity is that while most websites right now require usernames and passwords, many people actually use the password manager feature in the browser–effectively turning their browser into a limited identity manager. So one of the things we can and should be looking at is how to improve the existing identity manager to better serve our users’ needs.
- LANjackal
from Bookmarklet
Interesting especially in connection to our discussion yesterday about Firefox vs. Facebook.
- Kasper Sorensen
Well, I still think the concepts of identity management vs. running a full-blown social network are related but are still very separate issues. There's a difference between managing a set of keys (what Firefox is doing) and actually building/running/maintaining a house that requires a key for entrance (what Facebook is doing). It's true that the 2 are interdependent, but saying that one competes with the other IMO is still a largely inaccurate statement. We'll see how it turns out.
- LANjackal
not too bad at all. going to have to start trying that out on a few projects.
- Jim Carter
It looks something like Kosmix, but it's not.
- Kol Tregaskes
Kol, I've written about them before. Tech-related.
- Louis Gray
Susan, we always have fun. Mike, Akiva and Anna think it's scary. :)
- Louis Gray
Is Matthew trying out for the "Stuck on You" prequel?
- Jodi Olson
Jodi, it is possible. The toughest part would be trying to find him clothes. Now tell me the truth, did you find this only due to a Kosmix vanity search?
- Louis Gray
Nope--I saw your update on Facebook and was curious! :)
- Jodi Olson
Though, I have to admit that I'm one of your followers who hasn't made the full jump to FF. I'm going to start spending more time here--though I may need a lesson in getting the most from it!
- Jodi Olson
Kol, maybe you can show me how to really get started on Friend Feed. I know you and Louis are both big fans.
- Jodi Olson
I have loads of fun with Photo booth Its the first thng i do whenever come into contact with a mac
- Roberto Bonini
fan bloody tastic! So we can post here and Twitterers can comment away without any complaints! The only think you need to try and do is bring in comments (about a share) from twitter into here! :)
- Zee.
This is great...should help new users quite a bit.
- Mark Krynsky
OK, I admit I'm dense. As an existing user will this help me find the folks I follow on Twitter?
- Laura Norvig
Cool, is it possible we could have the ability to bulk import or non-FF Twitter friends as private feeds so we can track them in FF? :-)
- Kol Tregaskes
Laura, existing FriendFeed users should just go to http://friendfeed.com/friends... and click on the Twittter (and Facebook and Google) icons to find their friends. Kol, not yet, but I'm hoping to add something like that soon (improved imaginary friends).
- Paul Buchheit
Thx, Paul - guess I haven't been to that page since the launch. btw, I'm definitely coming around to the new friendfeed (colors notwithstanding).
- Laura Norvig
Great to see the standards working -OAuth fro Gogole and Twitter login on Friendfeed
- Kevin Marks
That's a great tool, Paul! Found a few from Twitter and Facebook I didn't realise were on FF...:)
- WoH: Minding her Steves
Oh man, that is suh-weet. Works really well.
- Laura Norvig
Paul, that would be wonderful, thank you. I'm keen to use FF as a kinda Twitter client. I'd love the ability to import my group I've created on Tweetvisor too but that would additionally require exporting facilities from Tweetvisor, and from asking them they've told me it's low priority (which is fair enough).
- Kol Tregaskes
That's fantastic! Sharing with all of my not-yet-friendfeedified twitter friends. Thanks, Paul!
- Eric Johnson
This IS good. Thanks for the hard work, Benjamin Golub.
- Micah
WOW! 313 new Twitter people! Amazing what the OAuth did. Amazing. That just completely Rocks!
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
That was just too easy, and found a bunch of Twitter people. I just subscribed, but I hope they participate. I'm sure I'll have to trim later.
- Eric
Thanks for everything Benjamin and the others, that is really great. :)
- Alp
I was subscribed to exactly 100 of the people I follow on Twitter. Added 93 more. Funny, this is actually helping me find people I *don't* want to follow in either place.
- Laura Norvig
I'm looking forward to the "advanced imaginary friends" section which lets me as an existing FriendFeed user view all the twitter updates from people that don't use FriendFeed.
- Brian Sloane
Just posted this to my stream then saw this, Cool stuff Paul
- Charlie Anzman
Some time ago I spent lots of time in removing my Facebook-Friendfeed integration, and didn't succeed, Facebook refused to remove it. Since that - no info about any other my services to Facebook, ever.
- orie
Happy to hear that there will be an improved imaginary friend option!
- Jacob
The improved imaginary friend feature will be great. No need to visit Twitter much then!
- Pinksy
FriendFeed is constantly bringing new value to the service. I'm loving it!
- Amie Gillingham
I just imported 8,000 new Twitter friends. Worked MUCH BETTER than last time.
- Robert Scoble
Smart move guys. A quick way to grow FF users is to tap into the current hot properties. Can't believe other Social Networks are so slow to respond.
- Neill Adamson
Paul, is there a way to sync it so that people I no longer follow on Twitter are unfollowed on FriendFeed?
- Jorge Escobar
Great news on the advanced imaginary friends. That plus the ability to comment back to Facebook posts as easily as we reply to Twitter would be killer.
- Kevin Kuphal
Ca passe 50 fois par jour ce truc là sur FriendFeed ! C''est pas possible d'arr^ter, j'en ai marre de le voir franchement ... ^^
- Jean-Marie Gall™
from twhirl
@Robert cannot seem to do that with groups. What I want to do: Concentrate different RSS feeds (e.g. newswires) which do not necessarily have an account in any other social network into one imaginary friend's collection of feeds.
- Mark Jacobs
Mark, "groups" (formerly "rooms") are able to import feeds just like regular users (and imaginary friends). See https://friendfeed.com/xoogle-... for example (imports the blogs of all known xoogle startups). The only thing special about imaginary friends is that they don't have usernames (or rather we assign a random 128 bit username).
- Paul Buchheit
Paul, the DM option on imaginary friends should perhaps be removed. Also, imaginary friends do not show up on the search dropdown list when you type in their name in the search box.
- Kol Tregaskes
Paul, is it possible to automatically create "imaginary friends" from twitter following list? What I would like is to read all my Twitter in FriendFeed; many of twitterers though are not on FF, so I have to create them by hand which is tedious. Also, it would be nice to allow to add them to some special list.
- Ihar Mahaniok
Ihar, see my comment up in the middle and Paul's reply. Looks like FF are working on it. :-)
- Kol Tregaskes
Still would like an imaginary friend than making bunch of Groups to simulate peoples that doesn’t use FF. BTW, unlike the Facebook Connect login, when I tried logging in using Twitter, it made a new account for me on FF instead of opening my own (which also has Twitter activity added).
- Natsuki Seika
I just spent a lot of time in Facebook. It's amazing that so few journalists include their phone numbers. Lots of others do, though. How are they supposed to get tips? I'm thinking about other things I'm learning by visiting hundreds of my friends in Facebook.
But Facebook sure has a TON of metadata about everyone. Far more than any other system.
- Robert Scoble
Some people just aren't open enough to give out their phone numbers. I've regretted giving out mine on several occasions (thanks to Twitter).
- Michael Forian
By the way, Safari 4 sucks. It freezes, and crashes if you open too many windows (on both Windows and Mac).
- Robert Scoble
So: how to combine the metadata of FB with the openness of FF?
- phil baumann
I just always hated the phone as a communications device, thus only very few people have my number. I give out my e-mail address readily (and blog URL, Twitter, FF and FB etc. accounts, etc.)
- Bora Zivkovic
Safari 4 does suck. It does weird things. It wouldn't even open my Gmail for the first couple of weeks it was out, and it does other weird things like I can't see Leo's calendar on live.twit, etc and other weird things. I think FF is taking off. I'm getting 20-30 new subs in my inbox everyday, and that wasn't happening a month ago. It's numbers have to be skyrocketing if my anectdotal evidence is any indication.
- Stephen Pickering
Getting an unwanted email is much less annoying and easier to deal with than an unwanted phone call.
- Barak B
Michael: that's not nice and that voice mail is not safe for work. Even when I work at home.
- Robert Scoble
Phil: Good point. Openness and personal metadata don't usually go hand in hand. But if one were provided a choice to opt-in, I guess it can be all right.
- Alexander Grundner
Regarding FF being onto something, my new criteria for how well I think a new internet service will do is how useful it is without a web interface.
- Chip Ramsey
God, Micheal, that is scary. Can someone be prosecuted for something like that. They certainly should be. I put my number on my blog, but I'm not a public figure. I always thought it was cool that Scoble did. I certainly wouldn't call him or anyone else unless I had something very important pertaining to their field that for some reason required a phone call instead of a DM, but I can't think of any.
- Stephen Pickering
I can't seem to share my phone number or email with "Everyone" on FB, even if I wanted to. (which I don't mind with at least the email, and my GoogleVoice number)
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Maybe it would be nice if I could store more profile data on FriendFeed?
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Rob: I think friendfeed realizes they can't compete with Google and Google is doing profiles. So, why not just use Google's profiles here? Or Facebook's? Facebook is massively ahead in that area.
- Robert Scoble
Robert (and Sam) I'd be perfectly stoked to see my Google or Facebook Profile brought into a profile link here. Sam, I don't really care to set up another profile, but, I want it to be convenient for the people I want to connect with. I send them mostly to FriendFeed for links to other connections. I'd be happier with the Google profile, because it has all of the social links that I...
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- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Sam: Judging from the FF mobile apps, widgets, desktop apps, etc. out there now, I would say they don't rate very well. However, if Twitter is an aggregated SMS utility, then FF is an aggregated MMS utility. I haven't played with their API, but after reading about their work with mysql, I have respect for their technological prowess and ability to scale. I would bet the FF service will eventually lead to some extremely useful non-web apps.
- Chip Ramsey
BTW, what's interesting about FF and mysql is not that they use mysql, but how they use it like a key-value pair DB. UPDATE: Here is the link to a post about how they use it http://bret.appspot.com/entry...
- Chip Ramsey
You're a better man than I Robert. I can barely stand to go over there. If it weren't for some old friends that I have no other way to contact, I would shut down my account in a heartbeat.
- Vicarbott
yes, but what about the stalkers. then again, if your friends are stalking you, what does that say about your judgment (in friends)
- JD Howard
Social networking convergency is a wonderful thing......if we could get it. The successful player will be the one that can bring this to Market successfully (and not necessarily the first). Facebook has the biggest number of users (>200million), but that doesn't necesarily mean that they will be the winner in the end. We are also looking for the player to be dynamic as well, things change rapidly and consumers (us) are looking to be part of the sooner rather than later.
- Clifford Kennedy
Sam: Primarily what I mean by "profile" is contact information. When I want someone to learn what I am all about, I direct them to find me Here on FriendFeed, and to a lesser extent on Facebook. FriendFeed would be the one stop shop if it included all of my "profile" information (like is found on the Facebook "Info" page or Google profile). I think you can see from that I value the...
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- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
That's a good question, at least include their 'work' number. I'm on the edge about Facebook, I don't know what to use it for, work, family, friends or a combo? I can see if Journalists wants to keep their profile completely private and simply use it as a place to hang out with their friends and not think about work, even though it would limit them in their job. I like to use friends lists, that way I can show separate info to friends and keep some of the more personal stuff hidden from 'strangers'.
- Kasper Sorensen
This is a good way to learn what others are doing
- prince
I'm sorry, what ever happened to email or DM via Tw????
- Bryan Vartabedian
Louis: Allen has more than 3,000 of my business cards already. Does an awesome job. I now have a much better contact list.
- Robert Scoble
I see my card in the photo. Heheh. Microscobleized indeed!
- Robert Scoble
Robert, you're getting Microrecycled.
- Louis Gray
That looks a very attractive idea: my business partner is currently trying to persuade me to buy a new scanner which also does biz cards - for $450! Yikes. This looks very attractive as I have thousands of cards that desperately need scanning. I wonder if you can import the scanned data into FilemakerPro?
- Sally Church
Sally, Allen knows this better than anybody, of course, but you can export it into CSV format, into Address Book (Apple), to your e-mail application, to Salesforce.com and other apps. I assume, Filemaker could get the data as well.
- Louis Gray
Sally: you should be able to. It's just a database.
- Robert Scoble
remember the old palms had the beam your contact feature. I am surprised that did not catch on. The newspaper industry may be dying, but the business card people I guess are ok.
- Jeff
I need to send Allen my cards. I tried Evernote, but I still can't find my contacts after scanning through there.
- Jesse Stay
Thanks Robert and Louis! Sally - we offer a variety of export files and a standard default file that should work anywhere. I've created a dozen custom exports for customers as well so if the default doesn't work, I can create one that matches whatever app you use.
- Allen Stern
Allen, thank you for the quick response! I will look into this seriously.
- Sally Church
Thanks Sally - let me know if you have any other questions.
- Allen Stern
Holden, if you've gotten a ton of business cards over time, and they're not all in your computer, Allen will get them into an online database, which is exportable to common address book programs and databases. CloudContacts also links online profiles to social networks, contains a scan of the card, and uses geolocation to show their office in Google Maps, etc.
- Louis Gray
i used cloud contacts and thought it was great.
- Charles Hudson
I had a discussion about this with my dad the day the verdict was given and I think this was a great step towards proving a point that can't be ignored. Not that piracy is OK or that Google is illegal, but that piracy will always happen, no matter how you try to stop it. Bit torrent is a great technology for sharing large files online, and I have used the Pirate Bay lots of times, mostly to download Linux distributions, which is completely legal.
- Kasper Sorensen
Quake is an online virtual reality used by hackers. It is a popular meeting place and training ground, where they discuss hacking and train in the use of various firearms. Many hackers develop anti-social tendencies due to the use of this virtual world, and it may cause erratic behaviour at home and at school. If your son is using Quake, you should make hime understand that this is not acceptable to you. You should ensure all the firearms in your house are carefully locked away, and have trigger locks installed. You should also bring your concerns to the attention of his school.
- Leo Laporte
BSD, Lunix, Debian and Mandrake are all versions of an illegal hacker operation system, invented by a Soviet computer hacker named Linyos Torovoltos, before the Russians lost the Cold War. It is based on a program called "xenix", which was written by Microsoft for the US government. These programs are used by hackers to break into other people's computer systems to steal credit card...
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- invariant
At the risk of exposing my own ignorance, I must admit I can't tell how much of that site is made up and how much could be real people's actual concerns about technology. I guess it's hilarious either way, but a little less sad if people didn't actually fear computers this way.
- midnightgolfer
It's a hilarious article, that I've seen before. Like many of us, I'm half-afraid that there are those that will take it seriously. (or that already take parts of it seriously...)
- Don Faulkner
In extreme cases, over-exposure to computer radiation can cause schizophrenia, meningitis and other psychological diseases. Also, the reduction in exercise may cause him to lose muscle mass, and even to start gaining weight. For the sake of your child's mental and physical health, you must put a stop to his hacking, and limit his computer time drastically. ~ now that explains the heavy doses of prozac & seroquel I am now taking! hehehe
- Matt Sengle
I remember being exposed to this sort of ridiculous nonsense as a kid using computers. My parents luckily weren't dumb enough to buy into what amounts to idiocy.
- Dane Deasy
They make Quake sound like Second Life. Actually, that sounds kinda cool.
- Matthew
I sure am glad this is an old article; hopefully the author has been informed of how the world works by now. However, it worries me that there are still parents in this world who do feel this way.
- Eric Geller
"I must admit I can't tell how much of that site is made up" - well, I understand the sentiment, but isn't the site name a hint that it's probably a satirical hipster-y site?
- Andrew C (✓)
A nice parody or a very inaccurate article - either way it's pretty funny
- Rob Owen
I know it is satire but I have heard people talking like this. Proof that a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. Anyone notice it is from 2001?
- Robert C
I saw an article the other day about some university freaking out because someone saw a student typing in a linux command line. MUST BE A HACKER!! OH NOES!
- iTad
Every now and again I give Linux a go. I normally just go cold turkey deleting windows and re-installing Linux. Last time I used Linux Mint which is built on Ubuntu but comes with a lot of normal stuff, like codecs, pre-installed. I like Linux, but I miss some serious video editing and photo manipulation applications. It's always either Photoshop or a video editing app that makes me re-install Windows.
- Kasper Sorensen
Using it right now. Not much difference from my perspective based on what I'm using it for. It seems a bit faster on this old Pentium II laptop.
- Glenn Niesen
Personally I find it a LOT slicker than the previous release. The UI is a lot smoother, the boot time is crazy fast, everything just works. Great release.
- Louis Simoneau