Lu Liu - Likes - FriendFeed

1.05 (670/633) - Micah Wittman from Bookmarklet

Can you remind me again where to find those stats? - Brian Johns

Brian, go to "Me" link (http://friendfeed.com/brianjo...) which defaults to the Feed tab. Look at the sidebar on the right, below Discussion. - Micah Wittman

0.75 (926/1226) - still relatively new here - mikepk

I only see my stats for the last week (17/14 = 1.21) Please tell me your 670 number is for more than just a week! - Brian Johns

1.44 (566/391) for brianjohns (after week tally you should see a comma then 'all time' count - I can see it on your page) - Micah Wittman

OK, sorry. I'm a total dumbass. I stopped reading after the weekly totals... - Brian Johns

3.74, which seems way off of everybody else's. I wonder what that says. I comment a lot more than I like. - Cyrus Lendvay

FFers use FF with their own strategy or simply default tendencies. The ratio is an interesting snapshot of behaviour. Thanks for joining in everyone, hope more keep flowing in. - Micah Wittman from twhirl

0.79 - Brian Roy

0.77 - Eric @ CSTechcast.com

0.67 - Nine

0.77 - Shey, Jamaican of FF

0.76 - FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

1.39. - Rochelle

1.80 - Brian Sullivan

1.61 - I only 'like' when I want to throw my support behind a topic but don't have anything constructive to add. - Bjorn Stromberg

1.12 - LogEx

1.41 - WorldofHiglet

5.08 (3181/626) ! - ◄ani625Ξ

2.41 - William Harryman

0.66 - I tend to 'like' things without needing to comment further, I guess, and I notice I usually like the things upon which I comment. Well, frequently. - ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ

.39 (2457/6242) I guess I don't comment much. I do 'like' a lot of things, it would seem. - Bren -- Loves Chrimmuh

0.62 then again i have over 11,000 comments - Cee Bee

1.23 (5287/4229) - I am put to shame by Cee Bee's participation, good grief! - Fa La La La Lindsay

@Cee Bee I think you meant 0.62 - ◄ani625Ξ

1.27 (902/705) - Leandro Ardissone ⍨

yes, thanks for the correction. lindsay, you're making me feel bad. lol - Cee Bee

0.8576, I only like mostly when I'm going to comment - Molly, "sorry"

1.55 endlessly repeating. This Like/Comment included. - Dana D

before this comment: .69 I kid you not. - InPerpetualMotion(Gina k)

So far: Average: 1.27 | Median: 0.81 ... (if you average 1 comment per like, you'd be 1.0 ... if you're 0.xx you might herd content more than discuss ... if you're whole numbers above 1 you may not 'like' much or discuss plenty or both) - Micah Wittman

CSV_A: 1.05,0.75,1.44,0.81,3.74,0.79,0.77,0.67,0.77,0.76,1.39,1.8,1.61,1.12,0.141,5.08,2.41,0.66,.39,0.62,.62,1.27,0.8576,1.551,0.69 - Micah Wittman

1.83 - Grant Bierman

I tend to like allot of photos which really don't need comments. - InPerpetualMotion(Gina k)

InPerpetualMotion(Gina k), I really liked this 'Like' of yours (in a series of pics, so I flickr fav'd it): http://friendfeed.com/e... and commented. Thanks! - Micah Wittman

.37 1002/2708 - Michael Fidler

this is what scobes walls would like if he didnt have FF - sean percival

I haven't seen Marc Canter's fabled fence (just heard about it), but I imagine this but on wood pickets :) - Micah Wittman

This week: 2.48 (1162:467) but this is not the norm, my likes usually match or are higher than comments, overall: 0.95 (14228:14846). - Kol Tregaskes

Thanks Michael, Kol! I'll recalculate average/median when we build up some more data points here. - Micah Wittman

1.03 748/723 - Keith - @tsudo

.68 6986/10194 Someone wrote a great article on the comment-like ratio a few months ago. Search on FriendFeed is crashing on me... I'll try to get the link. - Mitchell Tsai

Thanks Mitchell (btw, search crashing on me too - lots) - Micah Wittman

1316 comments/20221 likes (0.06), according to Windows Calculator, although I probably screwed up. - Tyson Key

*bump* - Micah Wittman

0.51 - MVB (Grinch of FF)

Thanks, Mark! - Micah Wittman

Thanks Spidra! - Micah Wittman

0.95 (1520/1604) - it's 2+ months later, and my ratio flipped (more Likes by .05) - Micah Wittman

.7 (1204/1724) - before this comment at least. - Rachel Lea Fox

Thanks, Rachel! - Micah Wittman

3.46 (3665/1057) before this comment and like. - Kevin Fox

Thanks, Kevin. 3+ is quite the comment on your commenting activities :) - Micah Wittman

I've got stuff to say. - Kevin Fox

3.98 (900/226) - Richard Lawler

1.02 (3538/3484) for sofarsofarshaun - Micah Wittman

.34 (600/1747, not counting this comment) - Michael Hocter

Thank you, Siavash and Michael - Micah Wittman

.52 overall, but .68 this week. - Rebecca

Nice, thanks Rebecca. - Micah Wittman

1.31 - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

0.56 - imabonehead

Rah and imabonehead - rock on! (Richard too!) - Micah Wittman

0.16 - Anne Bouey

1.39 - jcunwired

4.62 (287/62) -- Yikes! I'm chatty. - Ted Roden

Thank you kindly, Anne, jcunwired and Ted. - Micah Wittman

2.63 - Bryce Roney

Thanks for joining in, Bryce. - Micah Wittman

.15 all time, .13 this week. - Alix Whitmire

.52 - David HC Soul

Thank you, Alix and David! (and Alix, you're tied with Siavash for the Highest Like ratio. Wow). - Micah Wittman

2.94 - j1m

Thank you, j1m. Ok, I'm gonna roll this up into a csv and call it a night. - Micah Wittman

CSV_B: 0.95,0.7,3.46,3.98,1.02,0.15,0.34,0.52,1.31,0.56,0.16,1.39,4.62,2.63,0.15,0.52,2.94 - Micah Wittman

this week = 0.45%, alltime = 6.43% - chaz2b

CSV_B Mean: 1.49 (previous mean for CVS_A: 1.27) - Micah Wittman

Of course the numbers can easily lie, but I'm gonna say it anyway: "We're getting more conversational, people!" - Micah Wittman

0.49 (493/988) - Bluesun 2600

816 / 2502 = 0.326139089 overall | 50 / 233 = 0.214592275 this week I like much more than I comment. (maths via google) - Chris Loft

3026/5013 = 0.6036 - Roger Chen

0.107 probably the lowest here - Nicholas James

chaz2b, Bluesun 2600, Roger, Nicholas — thank you! - Micah Wittman

.76 - jamar78

5.25 but I don't know what this *means, yet. maybe I'm just stingy with my "likes" compared to others? - Marg Uerite

Thanks jamar78 and Marg! - Micah Wittman

A recent change in FF: now the comment count shows total number of comments (previously multiple comments in one thread only counted as one) http://friendfeed.com/e... so all the numbers above are from the old methodology.... - David HC Soul

My new ratio: 0.76 all time (old methodology .52).... this week 1.39 - David HC Soul

*bump* - Micah Wittman

1.26 (2965/2346) - Micah Wittman

1.37 - Mistletoe Glen

1.74 - ♥patricia♥

Thanks, Glen and pea! - Micah Wittman

Looks like my ratio as flipped again (comments back to dominating again). Seems to match my own awareness I've lately been commenting without Liking (commenting is my inherent recognition of value to me and the additional Like is when it merits an extra bump to help discovery by others). - Micah Wittman

.38 - Ryan Dadey

Ryan, I have to say, that's one high caliber ratio ;) - Micah Wittman

An update it's .44 which is an improvement from .36 - Michael Fidler

2.00 - Anthony Citrano

0.97 - Willem (@wim66) ☠

1.5 exactly - Ahsan Ali aka. Slick

2.94 1040/354 I have likes set to post to twitter automatically, so I'm careful with them. :) - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

0.85 - Steven Perez

0.73 up from 0.66 on Jan 08 - ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ

0.37 for the week past, 0.45 on the whole. - Parth Awasthi

Michael, Anthony, Ahsan, guruvan Steven, sıɹɥɔ and Parth - thanks for dropping in your stats! - Micah Wittman

5.81 i'm not using it as does everyone else here. that is fer sure. - Marg Uerite

But remember, the comment counts also includes comments imported from other services. - Ahsan Ali aka. Slick

Ahsan, huh, I'd never considered that. - Micah Wittman

17942/30571=.59 - Alex Scoble

Alex, thank you, sir. - Micah Wittman

ALmost 2:1 exactly. - Amani

Much obliged, Amani. - Micah Wittman

3062/5777 you do the maths. - Will Higgins™

.53 (3062/5777) for Will Higgins #math-on-demand-services - Micah Wittman

Thank you, amin/gnu - Micah Wittman

2671/12333=.21 - Darren Heydon

7.16 - Ken Sheppardson

*bump* (SEE ALSO http://friendfeed.com/jungleg... ) - Micah Wittman

1.45 (4374/3026) - Micah Wittman

1.73 - Aron Michalski

0.92 now. I think the movie reviews have been getting me closer to a 1 to 1 ratio. - Steven Perez

0.77 - Mathew A. Koeneker

Steven, yep, you were a 0.85 in April. - Micah Wittman

2.10 now ... - Amani

0.97 now. - Eric Johnson

Amani, so your comments have climbed a bit. - Micah Wittman

Thanks, Eric. - Micah Wittman

yes, but i am not consciously "not liking" things - Amani from IM

Probably, just chattier then :) - Micah Wittman

I'm down from 7.16 to 6.94 :-) - Ken Sheppardson

the live NBA playoff threads have ALOT to do with it. - Amani from IM

Ken, the FCC may be interested to explore how your "I'm down" may be offensively self-deprecating ;) - Micah Wittman

.56 eeep, must try harder - Threepwood

4.52. I don't bother to like things I've commented on, since commenting already flags it as interesting. - Andy Bakun

0.46 (1698/3638) - Glenn Slaven

Threepwood, Andy, Glenn - thanks (Andy, that's my mo too; then I'll Like if it warrants a "double vote"). - Micah Wittman

1.31 (4,471/3,401) - Karoli

Thanks, Karoli. And the both of us have a _very_ similar ratio and absolute numbers. wow. - Micah Wittman

Thanks, Ryo! - Micah Wittman

Darn - 0.52. I guess I need to say why I like something a little more often :-) Liking this thread because I was wondering the same thing recently. Has anybody worked out the average from the numbers here? </islazy> - Andy Bold

Andy, scroll upward and you'll see a couple calculations from before (January: Average: 1.27 | Median: 0.81) - Micah Wittman

In March the Mean was: 1.49 - Micah Wittman

1.021276595744680851063829787234042553191489361702127659... via Wolfram Alpha - tom murphy

Thanks, tom. And though a bit verbose, your friend Wolfram is resourceful :D - Micah Wittman

0.55 (254/444) - Willem (@wim66) ☠

Thank you, Willem. - Micah Wittman

In April you were 0.97, so you're liking more / commenting less. - Micah Wittman

1.88 (779/414) - Ton Zijp

Thanks, Ton. - Micah Wittman

0.43 (3597/8305). - Parth Awasthi

0.74 (1970/2667) - Scott of Two Countries

And thank you Parth, Scott. - Micah Wittman

Parth, compared to your April numbers, you've been consistent. - Micah Wittman

2.12 is my ratio. - Rick Cogley

Thanks, Rick! - Micah Wittman

Np Micah. What is that photo? - Rick Cogley

.54 (4148/7674) Updated! - Michael Fidler

Rick, you mean that face with glasses I photoshopped tint into with an apparently disembodied arm which is actually very much attached to my eldest son? It's mostly just me :) - Micah Wittman

Thanks, Michael. Yes, you have a rising tide of comment percentage (oh, wow, you were one of the originals from January - cool!) - Micah Wittman

1.82 from 798 comments / 438 likes - David Damore

Thanks, nivé and David! - Micah Wittman

2027/1594 = 1.27 - Brome

0.58 - Marc Dong

2.9 (3,242/1,116) mhhh.. time to straighten my use of FF a bit.. thanks for this entry - Thierry R. Andriamirado

Brome, Marc and Thierry - thank you! - Micah Wittman

Thierry - yeah, 2.9 is fairly high - got to pick the pace on like side :) [but hey, whatever works for you is fine] - Micah Wittman

Stats Update: Last time I commented here my comment to like ratio was 0.107 it's increased to 0.645 ;) - Nicholas James

1.91 - MiniMage TKDteacher of FF

Thank you Nicholas and MiniMage! - Micah Wittman

Yeah, that's a decent upward rise in comments, Nicholas. - Micah Wittman

.6 (6,000/10,000) 3rd update - Now it's time to flip this on its head. My goal is to have (16,000/16,000) next time I post here. Regardless of what happens, I'm just looking forward to the next 10,000 comments, likes, posts, and new relationships I make here. It's all good! - Michael Fidler

1.76 (7539/4290) My commenting habits haven't chanced much, but it felt like I clicked Like a lot less, and this ratio confirms that for me. - Micah Wittman

It's that time again. - Micah Wittman

.50 - Laura B.

Thanks, Laura! (you're a 50-caliber gal!) - Micah Wittman

0.64 - Imabug

Thank you, Imabug. - Micah Wittman

4.67 (I'm greedy :p) - directeur

0.99 - Steven Perez

About 1:2 comment to likes at this time - RAPatton from iPod

1.06 - Jim Is Not Smart

.81 - Brent - Loving Life

.63 - metalerik

Thanks Imabug, directeur, Steven, RAPatton, Jim, Brent and metalerik! - Micah Wittman

.83 - Jimminy Fuller

0.78 - Pete Delucchi

.82 as of right now. edit: on January 8th it was 0.39 -- when I saw that, I decided to make more of an effort to comment. When I hit 10k "likes" I decided I wouldn't "like" anything else until I also had 10k comments. - Bren -- Loves Chrimmuh

.11 - Penguin It's Cold Outside

And thank you Jimminy, Pete, Bren and Penguin! - Micah Wittman

2.47 as of right now. - Jonas, Leper of FF

Micah, are you doing something with these numbers? If so sounds interesting. - Jimminy Fuller

0.58 - James (!?)

Jimminy, I'm copyrighting every single number. It's kind of a honeypot ;) Actually, it was curiosity mostly, but I also hope to build a sampling (small and self-selecting as it may be) for anyone who might want to analyze it. - Micah Wittman

Jonas, James and Kurt - thanks you! - Micah Wittman

You're welcome. I hope the results do some good. :-) - James (!?)

.31. I have almost 4 times as many likes as comments. - edythe

.86 - Eric Logan

Thank you edythe and Eric! - Micah Wittman

195/245 makes 0.8 rounded not including this one which would be 196/245 making 0.8 unrounded, - tom murphy

Thanks, Tom. - Micah Wittman

1.98 (588/297) - Bryan Zirkel

1.67 (19,550/11,684) - Mitchell Tsai

1:2 - Jeff P. Henderson

Bryan, Mitchell and Jeff P. - thanks, guys! - Micah Wittman

1.18 - it's always been close to 1, since day one, for some reason. - Laura Norvig

Wow, Penguin is a prolific liker! - Laura Norvig

2.67 (875/328) - Nathalie, Dreamer of FF

Thank you, Nathalie! - Micah Wittman

2.18 - Spidra Webster

1.29 - Mark "DerBingle" J

Thanks, Spidra and Mark! - Micah Wittman

0.49 - Jammy Lee

0.825 - Mathew A. Koeneker

Jammy and Mathew, thank you very much. - Micah Wittman

2.16 - SuezanneC Baskerville

I don't know I just like that picture - Brian Hendrickson

.40 - Ben Hanten

Mine was exactly 2:1 about a week ago. Did a screenshot when I had 2,000 comments and 1,000 likes. - Joe from iPod

SuezanneC, Brian, B E N and Joe - thank you all very much! - Micah Wittman

Joe, it's like see the odometer click through a nice round number - it's just inexplicably engaging. :) - Micah Wittman

1.40, nearly the square root of two. - Raphael, Raphael

0.58 - Andy Bold

Thanks, Raphael and Andy! - Micah Wittman

1.15 (6777/5873) - JA Castillo

12.23 (844 / 69 ) I guess I take my likes seriously ;) - Chris Myles

1.63 - Serkan Mutlu

Wow I didn't realize I was so out of whack!! 12.23 that's got to be a record (and I don't even import my feeds with the summary as a comment)!! - Chris Myles

.87 - Nine

Thanks JA, Chris (wow, 12+ is unusual :), Serkan and Nine! - Micah Wittman

0.89 (17818/19913) (Somebody better make a cool ass graph of all this data!) - Haggis (Sean Loyless)

Micah.. I told you I take my likes seriously; ). You *might* want to ask (in a separate post) what percentage of likes were used to "bookmark" a post or save it for later VS actually "liking it". I NEVER used like for that.. but I did use a private group that if filled with my own topics (and comments).. - Chris Myles

1.78 (8529/4782) - Micah Wittman

Likes are down relative to comments, which matches my much lower frequency of liking. I'm a more selective liker than ever. - Micah Wittman

0.9009 (6055/6721) - Jason Huebel

OK, so statistically, what ratio results in better interaction on FF? - Jason Huebel

I don't think I could argue that any particular kind of ratio is "best", because if Lurkers like to Lurk and cultivate (via Likes) and the Chatty-ites love to chat, to pump out much many more comments than Likes, each can be happy and make for a great social experience. - Micah Wittman

So I'm fairly balanced, it appears. I would imagine it's because I try to comment on every post I like. That's not always true, obviously. But mostly it is. - Jason Huebel

Just clicking "Like" seems too easy. I feel like I should say something, too. - Jason Huebel

383/372 - ashish

'Just clicking "Like" seems too easy' — Jason, that's because you're from the Chatty-ite tribe :) - Micah Wittman

Thanks, ashish. - Micah Wittman

wow, what a difference time makes, when i 1st posted on this thread, 6.43%, now = 1.25%, for a 5.18% difference, :o (and this is the earliest post to date i've recovered of my activity on ff) - chaz2b

chaz, I think there's been a big fluctuation for most people (maybe not that much). This is the oldest post on which you commented that you've recovered? - Micah Wittman

When I first saw this: 1.91 Sept 28: 1.94 - MiniMage TKDteacher of FF

536 comments in the last month has me at .8736...still creeping toward 1.00 - Bren -- Loves Chrimmuh

.64 - Shannon Jiménez

Thanks, MiniMage (2x participant!), Bren (3x!) and Shannon (your inaugural visit!) - Micah Wittman

Thank you, SustainedEuphoria. - Micah Wittman

I 'liked" this to change my ratio! (1.22 1040/850) - Mark "DerBingle" J

Thanks, Mark. - Micah Wittman

1.45 - Brett Kelly

Thanks, Brett :) - Micah Wittman

5.67 all time. Second highest ratio on here. Woot! I love to talk. - Kevin L

0.125, I need to talk more ;) - mridul

Thank you both, Kevin and mridul (the two of you balance it each well :) - Micah Wittman

1.80 (10,189 / 5,666) [compared to Likes, my Comments still continue to rise] - Micah Wittman

1.02 (10323/10161) - Bren -- Loves Chrimmuh

.5666 currently (30,084/53,093) - Alex Scoble

Thanks, Bren. - Micah Wittman

Thank you, Alex :) - Micah Wittman

that was my third post... It's interesting to see how the number has changed. of course, I manipulated the number to a degree, because I stopped "liking" things for a while... - Bren -- Loves Chrimmuh

Bren, the other thing that can seriously throw off someone's stats is a feed that upon each item it imports adds a comment automatically. - Micah Wittman

true. that can seriously inflate comment stats, of course. Then you have someone like RAPatton, who posts a gazillion comments, in part because of his playlist posts where he will list each song in a separate comment. I found, after this post in fact, that I tended to "like" things much more frequently than comment on them, that I was lurking instead of participating. I have changed the way I use ff rather considerably, and I think for the better. - Bren -- Loves Chrimmuh

1.8 - Call me Bronco

4.26? - ‘-.-’ Tutivillus Grift

Thanks, Sarah, Tutivillus. - Micah Wittman

1.19 - Joe Bonner

Micah this is like 11 months ago, I see you have almost doubled your rate. lets make a graph for everybody now, :) - Mahmood Padura

Quick, someone write a greasemonkey script to inline some google charts! (tap-tap-tap...wut? don't look at me ;) - Micah Wittman

Thanks, Joe. And you thank you, Mahmood :) - Micah Wittman

1.66 - Mistletoe Glen

Thanks, Glen! Your comments in the ratio have gone up too. - Micah Wittman

1.70 (it was 1.41 on Jan 8) - WorldofHiglet

WorldofHiglet, thank you :) The comments are strong in this one. - Micah Wittman

0.64 (2,589/4,051) - Chieze Okoye

0.58 - Thomas Page

Chieze and Thomas - thank you! - Micah Wittman

*bumpage* - Micah Wittman

So, Micah, we never did find out what you were doing with this info.... - WorldofHiglet

2.21 (2,812/1,275) - Rene Wirtz

0.27 (5637/20234) - I only see a couple people lower than me. - John (a.k.a. dendroica)

4.06 (747/184) - Jan Ole Peek

WoH, World Domination. - Micah Wittman

Rene, John and Jan - thank you, all three! :) - Micah Wittman

1.94 - تلخک

2.74 (4,446 / 12,204) - J. Abdul-Qahhar

0.97 (6,694/6,929) - Jimminy Fuller

Thank you J., Jimminy and آقای تلخک :) - Micah Wittman

2.23 - Paola Bonomo

0.71 (8,200/11,551) updated - Michael Fidler

0.67 - Artem K

J. Abdul-Qahhar LOL 4,446 / 12,204 = 0.36 - Artem K

0.03 (284 / 10378)! - Daniel Rowley

Thanks Paola, Michael, Artemko, J. and Daniel! - Micah Wittman

1.09 (9990/9105) From and including: Saturday, April 26, 2008 To and including: Thursday, November 12, 2009 It is 566 days from the start date to the end date, end date included Or 1 year, 6 months, 18 days including the end date to reach 10,000 comments. - Christopher Harley

*thanks Christopher thoroughly* - Micah Wittman

14.86 (1442/97) I'm going the wrong way!! - Chris Myles

"After just 5 tests I already felt close to that 95% certainty that required 1,500 coin flips." - Kartik Agaram

At school, 30 is a typical number for usability study b/c of the statistical assumption. In reality, human behaviors are more predictable than random. - Lu Liu

I'm scared, and I'm not even going! - Louis Gray

10 more comments

Why don't the rest of you use paddles too? - Andrew C

We use our bare hands. - Jess Lee

They use the force. - Slappy Line

Sweet. - Andrew C

Make us proud! - RAPatton from iPhone

Yep I'd be scared - Rodfather

GO TEAM POLYVORE!! - Chieze Okoye

That is one badass team photo! Go Polyvore! - imabonehead

We lost in the first round against Meebo. Kosmix won the whole thing. But we looked really stylish losing! - Jess Lee

It's not about winning or losing, but how you played the game in style. :P - imabonehead

Jess, I LOVE your shoes. - Mona Nomura

An operating system? Wow. - Admiral Anika

15 more comments

Yup, this is the one. Here's a direct link: http://sites.google.com/site... - Nir Ben Yona

Talk about innovation. Good for Google. I'm not a fan of Chrome, so I'll be skipping out on the OS. - Admiral Anika

For some reason, Gizmodo just erased their post. - Nir Ben Yona

Nir it isn't the official one i think the link you provided doesn't exists maybe gizmo folks removed it and the one you provided in the comment, the chromeoslinux, i think it was posted weeks back and Matt Cutts clarified that it wasn't "the one", and also there isn't official post on any google blog - ffcode

Heh, this one even managed to trick me. I'm sure that the real Chrome OS wasn't built using SuSE Studio. - Tyson Key

Gizmodo just deleted the post that says the Chrom OS is available. I guess they were wrong and you can get only the Beta. - Nir Ben Yona

Just made an arse of myself tipping @techmeme! argh >< - Jorge Escobar

LOL...the speed that info is moving this days... - Nir Ben Yona

I wonder who's responsible for perpetrating this hoax. I bet that Google aren't too amused, given that it's hosted using their own services. - Tyson Key

Oh Well, Chrome+ with Mouse gestures, Super drag and IE tabs is still available. - Eric Logan

I bet they don't have permission to redistribute the Flash Player plug-in, and the Picasa desktop client, for what it's worth. - Tyson Key

I'm sure they'll be approved eventually. - Nir Ben Yona

Here's a PCWORLD post about what happened today: "Beware the Fake Google Chrome OS Download" http://www.pcworld.com/busines... - Nir Ben Yona

Zomg I want.... NAO! - Patrick from twhirl

It looks like that old Simon game.... - Archangel ωαřмaiden

Looks like the link disappeared. Google shows me this: Beware the Fake Google Chrome OS Download http://www.pcworld.com/busines... and this: Download (Chrome OS) http://sites.google.com/site... - Victor Ganata

They didn't show up for their scheduled appointment to install the cable cards for the TiVo HD this morning. I got on chat and called up their customer service. They claim the appointment is for Friday between 2-4pm. I have the chat transcript that clearly says today between 10am-12pm. WTF? - Cristo

26 more comments

This in addition to the fact I was on hold on Saturday for 3 hours. And that their DVRs rebooting every 15 minutes is a known problem: http://friendfeed.com/cristob... - Cristo

I've never had anyone so ignorant treat me as if I was so ignorant before I allowed a Comcast rep in my house. Bewildering. - Jess from iPhone

I wonder how much time I've wasted on these asstards: http://friendfeed.com/cristob... and http://friendfeed.com/cristob... and http://friendfeed.com/cristob... - Cristo

Anyone out there, if you can avoid getting Comcast service, you should SERIOUSLY consider it. - Cristo

Yeah they are asstards. - Santa CW™

So now I'm off to the service center. Wish me luck. - Cristo

Good Luck! I avoid Comcast by not owning a tv, but that probably isn't the option most people would go for. - Katy S

So, after spending all day on this, I have two multi-stream cable cards, one which I've activated. (I got the other one just in case the first one didn't work, and so I won't have to go there again when I install a second DVR). I also managed to return the broken DVR and get my phone number updated to one that works. All in under an hour. Not bad (for Comcast). However, when I got home... more... - Cristo

If I could I would drop Comcrap like 3rd period French ... but they are the only game in town where I live ... - Rene Wirtz

despite customer service hiccups, their 50mbit service is treating me nicely... - mjc

I purposely switched to Comcast from AT&T for phone and DirecTV for HD service, plus I already have two separate internet accounts with them. I have had great service from them every time. Our local office and techs are phenomenal. It floors me when I hear of issues people have with Comcast because I've never seen it myself. I count myself extremely...EXTREMELY...lucky. I would not have the ability to deal with that level of stupidity and disrespect for any length of time. :( - tinypants - Hagitha of FF

funnily enough, my parents' cable card installation appointment was equally difficult to uphold - mjc

But haven't you heard? They're on Twitter. - Ken Sheppardson

I refuse to become paranoid enough to think they've singled me out. - Cristo

Switch to Dish Network. I've been a customer for over 10 years and their customer service is top notch! - Jeff P. Henderson

I have Comcast Business Class Internet service and their CS has been pretty good over the past several years. - Jeff P. Henderson

Can't switch to satellite because we live in a building that doesn't support it. We can't put dishes on our roof. It's a historical building, and the HOA won't allow it. I haven't had any problem with Internet yet. Just the TV part. - Cristo

Ken... actually, Frank the Comcast guy on Twitter (or his team) was pretty responsive when I had a problem back in May, with Comcast I think YMMV... - .LAG liked that

Cristo, you might check the laws on satellite dishes where you live. In the US the FCC has imposed laws that allow you to install a dish on your rental/condo as long as it is within your own exclusive use space. HOA's have little control over this. Don't know if the fact that you live in a historic building would preempt the laws. http://www.allbusiness.com/real-es... - Jeff P. Henderson

Here's more about the FCC rules on mounting satellite antennas on Condos. http://condolawyers.com/article... - Jeff P. Henderson

Jeff, yeah I've heard that before (from people responsible for enacting it). The reality is we don't have any exclusive outside user space. Also, I'm not sure how much time you've spent dealing with an HOA, but the less time you do it, the more happy you are. E.g. suing your own HOA would be the height of masochism. - Cristo

I'm going through my own personal hell with them myself right now. If it were not for the fact that there's no other options approaching them in speed where I live, I'd have bailed by now. - Bill Kinney

They're my only choice where I live, too, but I've gotten out of their bundled plan, at least. The only thing that saves us is that a Comcast tech lives two blocks over from me. When my cable is out, so is his. I've never had to call when something goes out. However, billing issues are another story. Pack a lunch and take a nap while sitting on hold to get anything like that resolved. - Trish R

This conversation is #comcastic ! - MVB (Grinch of FF)

Monopolies (occasionally duopolies) FTL - Matthew DeVries

I recently moved. Comcast talked me into havng Triple Play HD. It cost no more than what we had, so I thought OK, we'll have the HD then. It comes with a cable phone, which we didn't have, as we didn't need one (we have cellphones, oh and skype which is MUCH cheaper). Now the bastard phone keep ringing with scumbag telemarketers. I very quickly asked to have the number unlisted, and... more... - Ian May

The only reason I personally have cable is for the internet. I don't watch US TV, and don't need their phone service (which is crap... see above). If there was another way to get broadband beside Comcast or the even slower DSL, I'd do it, but it's not available here. Comcast's service response for problems with TV and Cable has been fine, but it's still expensive for a slow service. I... more... - Ian May

"At the time, psychologists assumed that children’s ability to wait depended on how badly they wanted the marshmallow. But it soon became obvious that every child craved the extra treat. What, then, determined self-control? Mischel’s conclusion, based on hundreds of hours of observation, was that the crucial skill was the “strategic allocation of attention.” Instead of getting obsessed with the marshmallow—the “hot stimulus”—the patient children distracted themselves by covering their eyes, pretending to play hide-and-seek underneath the desk, or singing songs from “Sesame Street.” Their desire wasn’t defeated—it was merely forgotten. “If you’re thinking about the marshmallow and how delicious it is, then you’re going to eat it,” Mischel says. “The key is to avoid thinking about it in the first place.” In adults, this skill is often referred to as metacognition, or thinking about thinking, and it’s what allows people to outsmart their shortcomings. (When Odysseus had himself tied to... more... - Paul Buchheit from Bookmarklet

This is an interesting quote because it implies that "will power" is more about mental strategy, not some kind of mental strength for forcing yourself to do something. I have the same strategy with food -- I eat whatever I see, so in order to not eat something I just need to put it out of sight. - Paul Buchheit

effectively "out of sight, out of mind" - alphaxion

This is where the magic of science is: you spend time and resources to prove a proverb. - .i.m.a.r.s.o.r.a.m.a.

"The child who could wait fifteen minutes had an S.A.T. score that was, on average, two hundred and ten points higher than that of the kid who could wait only thirty seconds." - J.D. Deutschendorf

Sometimes I worry my metacognition is slowing me down because I'm spending less time just cogniting. (that oughtta be a word.) But no, in all seriousness, I think something, then realize the thought was there before I subvocalized it, and then I go in a circle several times subvocalizing those same thoughts as I examine the process of thinking. Frustrating! - Andrew C

Some friends and I refer to this study often, pointing out when we've failed the marshmallow test. Staying up late is my most common mashmallow test failure (sacrificing morning time to enjoy a few more bleary hours NOW), but it's easy to spot this sort of behavior and fun to have a standard vocabulary to highlight its ubiquity. - Seth

Episode on Mischel's marshmallows on RadioLab -- http://blogs.wnyc.org/radiola... - Alex Haar

As a parent, I consciously used this strategy to distract my children whenever they got in mischief, behaved badly or acted out. As a grandparent, I often send a box of tricks, things like super balls, an "uno" deck, paints, a book, a yoyo or top, for my daughter to use with my grandchildren when they are driving her crazy and need to think about something other than running around screaming. - Phil Boiarski

OK, that makes sense, but let's flip this on its head - How do you instead keep your mind on something and prevent yourself from getting distracted? You can't distract yourself from your distractions. Andrew C, the word you're looking for is cogitating. - Mr. Gunn

Mr Gunn, thanks. Though I think 'cogniting' is a touch funnier. - Andrew C

Some chimpanzees use this strategy as well, though not all of them. - Björn Brembs

i think bhudda had some theory on this too...:/ - Paul Moss

I'm going to marshmallow-train my kids!! - Jess Lee

Today my 4yo daughter was having trouble waiting for a treat, so I told her (and my wife) about reading this article last night. I talked about the ability to distract - and I thought I was doing a pretty good job of explaining it in 4yo terms. When I was done with my paraphrase/lesson, I asked her if she understood. "Uh-huh," she said. Then after a few moments, she asked if we could stop and get some marshmallows on the way home. All I could do is laugh! - Gary Walter (gwalter)

I read a different writeup of this experiment a couple years ago, when our daughter was about 1 year old. Its something that can be taught, and encouraged. She's now very good at distracting herself from something which she knows she shouldn't do or would get into trouble over. She's not easily distracted in general: she can focus quite well on something she wants to do (and is allowed to do). - DGentry

The experiment: http://friendfeed.com/haggis... - Jérôme Flipo

This definitely puts the nail in the coffin of the "RSS is dead" contentious debate. Now we can focus on innovations in-and-around RSS. (In response to the Google Reader question, I think that Google will use their HubPubSubHubb in conjunction with Feedburner,- however I suspect they will need to be compatible with rssCloud) Translation for end-users: wait and see. - William Mougayar from FriendFeed MT Plugin

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@William Hopefully - its a pointless debate - always was. - Chris Saad

pointless for those who don't care about realtime - Steve Gillmor

lol saying that to me is kinda silly too Steve :) - Chris Saad

Instead of debating, why not just let the API mashup devs do their thing and the rssCloud (RSSCloud?) devs do their thing. We (the social media megaphoners) need to just shut our speculating pieholes, wait, and anticipate being blown away (or not). Turning non issues into issues is SO Web 1.0. #justsayin #rsscloud #api - Mona Nomura

it's not a non-issue, and these technologoies were invented to give people a voice - Steve Gillmor

Mona, you're so wise! :-) - Dave Winer

The fact that we are all here in FF (SUP) vs. discussing via instantized blog/comment volley/query rebuttal is telling. This notion of approaching more realtime options is how blogs might get back to being useful for certain groups of folks. Maybe? - Jay Cuthrell

Real-time is a very important feature Jay - super important. So are a number of other key features of the social web and a number of new emerging features of the next web. - Chris Saad

(didn't mean to inject or hijack anything there btw... this is all good stuff) - Jay Cuthrell

Thanks, Dave. Congrats on the big news, btw! - Mona Nomura

To add - if "real time discussions" are pertinent to your forward thinking, innovations, and products: You're Doing it Wrong. Form opinions, then discuss. If you're wrong, apologize, learn, and move on. #CriticalThinking101 - Mona Nomura

Thanks Mona. :-) - Dave Winer

In hindsight, Steve's obsession with the subject of real-time might have heightened our attention on the debate, but also perhaps hastened the development of rssCloud. I'm sure that in the back of Dave Winer's mind, he wanted to show that Twitter (and Friendfeed to some extent) wasn't the only real-time game in town (in addition to the fact that this hook was already available in RSS... more... - William Mougayar from FriendFeed MT Plugin

William, you'd be 100 percent wrong about that. I was doing this stuff before Twitter or FriendFeed existed. - Dave Winer

I'm not so sure Twitter was ever real time. Only centralized. This made it appear realtime. (Except for the lucky few - i.e. friendfeed) - Jeremy Felt

reagrdless of the prior art discussion, certainly dave's embrace of realtime is good news - Steve Gillmor

amen, Steve - Jesse Stay

@stevegillmor: prior art? What on earth are you trying to say in this context? Since when did prior art have anything to do with real time? Or have I missed something fundamental? - Dennis Howlett

Let's see what happens with all the million Wordpress.com blogs. But I have a felling this will be big but we won't see the impact for a few months - Wayne Sutton from iPhone

@Dennis http://code.google.com/p... - Stephen Edgar

Dave, I'm glad I was wrong (as I hinted to the fact that you had that hook there from 2001). I recall well how Radio Userland and Manila used to interchange feeds in real-time. You sure have kept us in suspense, til now, though! - William Mougayar from FriendFeed MT Plugin

*Hugs Dave Winer over RSSCloud* :) - Susan Beebe

"Book recommendation: "The Fates of Nations" by Paul Colinvaux (I created notes on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...) It changed how I look at the world. Population control really is the #1 problem." - Kartik Agaram

That's up and to the right. I am now reading almost 30 percent more feeds than I was reading a month ago. Bring it on. And RSS powers everything - not just feed readers. - Louis Gray

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I just started... - Johnny Worthington from iPhone

Pubsubhubbub is making RSS even faster. RSS is behind FriendFeed, LazyFeed, and every relevant aggregator. This argument is so silly. - Louis Gray

Twitter's a great basic RSS reader for headlines and more realtime/'now' stuff. Not ditching NetNewsWire/Google Reader for actual post material anytime soon though. - BeauGiles

I agree, but RSS could do with a few upgrades here and there though (I just want to comment on blogs straight from the feed itself). - Hugh Isaacs II

Couldn't agree more. Sure, it might turn into more 'plumbing' for many users, but RSS is far from dead. - Brad Kellett

900 articles a day? Now that's a lot! - 321

Louis: I am writing an article about this. It will be in your reader a few minutes after it hits Twitter. :-) - Robert Scoble

RSS: 1. Really Simple Syndication ; 2. Rich Site Summary => I like the interpretation #2 better. - Ethan Gahng

That's fine, Robert. We're already discussing it here, though. :) - Louis Gray

Louis: http://scobleizer.com/2009... - Robert Scoble

My headline? RSS: interesting or boring? (Hint @marshallk and @louisgray, we’re not normal) - Robert Scoble

I never said I was normal. Just that I am kicking ass at my job. :) And that anyone else who wants to ought really read feeds. imho - Marshall Kirkpatrick

Agree with Marshall (and Scoble). I believe the best information producers are those who consume lots of information. Know your craft and use the best tools. - Louis Gray

Marshall: you can read the feeds. The real news lately is being broken in Twitter. But I'm glad someone reads all those feeds so I don't have to! - Robert Scoble

The signal to noise ratio in feeds is 10x to 100x better than Twitter, though. Even if you do prune your list of Twitter folks (as you have), much of what is there is not news-related. - Louis Gray

Twitter is the news ticker. If you rely on the ticker to inform your opinion of the world... Good luck - Johnny Worthington from iPhone

I had no clue why anyone would use Dave Winer's Twitter OPML tool to get all tweets from friends via RSS. But I tried it anyway and discovered that it's easier to find the really relevant stuff when you get tweets via RSS. I can skim through 1,000 tweets in a few minutes and separate the signal from the noise much more efficiently. And, of course, it's all searchable in GReader. - Dominic Jones

I'm with Louis on this. RSS is far from over. Like Louis, the number of feeds I'm subscribed to is on the increase, too. Services like Lazyfeed and Toluu are making it far easier for me to discover great new content. - Andrew Terry

RSS is critical to the growth of the social web, and is growing quickly. It will eventually be replaced by friendlier, less protocol centric technologies that shield the user from the mess that is ATOM/RSS etc. - William Toll

Me too. Feedly has rebooted my RSS reading. - Roberto Bonini from iPhone

completely agree. google reader is a great feed reader and is getting better GUI wise by the week. great avenue for syndication via friendfeed - James Butler from BuddyFeed

Taking into account that Im far from been an expert, I want to leave a thought. What if the way of use is simply different I mean, ok twitter is real time while RSS has some minutes delay, but in any case if I receive 900 hits/day I will not be able to read them all as they come so I dont see the problem on getting some delay.To me is just a question of leaving the noise on Twitter as is much more quick to read and pass through the news & info and get the selected ones on RSS for better storage and record. - Luis Guijarro

RSS needs a proper comment API, so you can fetch all recent comments on all posts in one call from a blog - with threading if the site supports that. - Richard Cunningham

That particular person was serving up link bait - Dave Hodson

Dave: links are dead. Or so says the same person (Steve Gillmor). - Robert Scoble

I stopped using Google reader a couple of years ago and I now just read it in the stream with my Twitter, Facebook, Flickr mixed in (in FriendBinder [disclosure: I wrote FriendBinder]) I'm not sure why other people don't do something similar. - Richard Cunningham

Stuart: life streaming is a headline with a link. For the most part. - Robert Scoble

The reports of my death are sadly mistaken - quote Mr. RSS - Dan Morrill AKA Techwag

Google reader is a great tool...if you keep it to only important and feeds that matters to you - testbeta

louis agreed I love using google reader. great tool. - (jeff)isageek

I love RSS and losing it would change how I work (and play), but I really wish it would be more mainstream. I work in technical sales and I bet <30% of that group even uses RSS day to day. I bet for the non-techies it is closer to 10%. - Bill Grant

Love RSS and Reader both, my feed reading is rising day by day! - Ahad Bokhari

i'm with you on this louis - Andy Jenks

RSS is dead. Long live RSS! - Aaron Strout

I can't seem to stop reading. Anyone else using Feedly in conjunction with Google Reader? - ronnieledesma

RSS is an essential part of many things now. The argument is irrelevant and though I'd never say they were wrong, they are misdirected or trying to get a reaction. :) - James Stratford

I use FF, Twitter and Google Reader for different things. Twitter and FF are far more about Buzz and the conversations around the topics. In Reader I aggregate many different original sources together. There is less need for it to be on-the-spot live, but it needs to be deeper and more detailed to be of value, and it is. They serve different purposes for me. - Robert

Lately, I've been dumping select Twitter & FF feeds into Google Reader, as well as Posterous feeds, so even though I'm using all of these services, GR has now become more of a hub for me. Also: gReactions gives me a sense of how popular a feed item is. I would wish GR would incorporate these kinds of services so I could get more metadata about a feed item. - phil baumann

Ughh, no, I believe the RSS is dead mantra arose from the real time Twitter phenomenon, however, us smarties know you gotta verify your sources & our attention spans MORE than the space of 140 characters. Catch that, the dual use of metaphor...attention "spans" MORE...As per myself, I read more articles via RSS feeds than ever as well. - sofarsoShawn

So am I but not in Google reader, I read mine on my desktop in my e-mail program, they come to me, I don't go 'looking for them' I love RSS! - Sandra Large

Say, don't Twitter streams have RSS feeds? The icon's right there at the bottom of the sidebar... - Dennis Jernberg

RSS? It'll never displace Usenet. - Ian Tindale

RSS is very alive and well and dare I say, even young. With tech news, there aren't necessarily thousands of sources like with general business news, etc. Where RSS will be big is in who can create the best filters for those larger niches. But the RSS readers we have today don't support all the features we'd need to create those filters. Google Reader management taps out at maybe 1500 feeds in Chrome, the most of any reader that can export opml (not just rss like Friendfeed). - beersage

I agree that the problem with RSS is filtering. If something changed the way I use the Net was RSS, but now the volume is so great that unless you prune your feeds regularly you can end up with a lot of garbage. Most average users don't have any idea of what RSS is and that's something that can't cease to amaze me. - Angel B

RSS & EMAIL are not dead. They are getting better and faster. PUSH tech can push anything. Push Email on mobile devices is just as fast as twitter. And now we are going to PUSH RSS/ATOM. Twitter is different, yet the same. Sure, maybe a news headline will break first on twitter but will I see it before I see it in my inbox or reader? Prob not because I'm not frozen staring at a twitter... more... - sull

From Wired Science: "These long, crazy-looking clouds can grow to be 600 miles long and can move at up to 35 miles per hour, causing problems for aircraft even on windless days. Known as Morning Glory clouds, they appear every fall over Burketown, Queensland, Australia, a remote town with fewer than 200 residents. A small number of pilots and tourists travel there each year in hopes of “cloud surfing” with the mysterious phenomenon. Similar tubular shaped clouds called roll clouds appear in various places around the globe. But nobody has yet figured out what causes the Morning Glory clouds. This shot was captured by photographer Mick Petroff from his plane near Australia’s Gulf of Carpenteria." - Mark Trapp from Bookmarklet

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Not every day that Mark Trapp and my mom blog on the same thing in the space of an hour: http://paradise.typepad.com/web_rob... - Louis Gray

beautiful! - Jean-Charles VERDIE

photoshopped...:P - Matthieu Balmes

Matthieu you're breaking down my dreams :p - Jean-Charles VERDIE

Louis: your mom has good taste. These clouds are crazy! - Mark Trapp

I'm sure I'm the last person to discover this, but figured I'd share just in case. =) - Tom Stocky

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just tried it out. LMAO!!! - vijay

I had no idea they did that. You're definitely not the last person to discover it. - Robert DeBord

LOL I had no idea! - Haggis (Sean Loyless)

I first heard about this only recently too. Very cool. - Mike Reynolds

I had no idea either, but then it's been years since I last went to Yahoo for anything (exceot Flickr...). - Alex Lomas

I had no idea either. Uh, their homepage still looks the same, just like from 90s. And you can switch colors, how impressive :P - Burcu Dogan

LOL Totally didn't know that! Pretty cool! - Carlton Hackett

But not on the UK version only on the US. - John Cooper

I didnt know this either! - Simon Wicks

Its brilliant - Roberto Bonini

Wow... just, WOW. - Brad Williamson

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That is just funky. - Andrew

I wonder if that...mass...reeks or not. Ugh! - CAJ, somewhere else

There was a dude on Haight St. that had a unidread like that going on, and you could smell that rankness from a block down. No kidding. ewwwwwwwwww (and I have dreadlocks) - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

so yeah, I'm sure that Stanks! - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

that's gotta be heavy. neck's hurting just at the sight of it. - ♥patricia♥

You'd need a chainsaw to give that girl/guy a hair cut. - Brad Williamson

*strengthens laser output* - Mo Kargas

oh god, it looks like a bird died and landed in her hair. - TheHenry

Her? I give you 10:1 odds its a dude. :0 - Bluesun 2600

Ewww! I kind of like dreadlocks sometimes, but that, that's just matted fur - Alisha Vargas

I can't look. - Kay Designer

That is unbelievable. - Mike Beck

It's either part of his religion or he's homeless or both. - Josh Haley

LOL@ Mo! Not certain if you will need a reboot after that one. - Janet

That's a museum piece. - Christopher Harley

It's Manny Ramirez. - Brad Williamson

matted fur is right....nice thin ones are fine, but as they get too thick, they never dry, and never get clean (I've had mine 11 years, they are very very thin) - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

That's just gross... if a religion insists on that, it's time to change your religion. - Fa La La La Lindsay

Eris chuckles. - Chrimmus Tad

Oh, g-ross! There is nothing endearing at all about that hair mass. - Jenny R.

Is there anyway to foldup that picture? It makes me want to Urp. - Kay Designer

On a happier note, if this person is homeless, he/she is growing a natural mattress. - Janet

LOL@jlt! Way to see the glass as half full! - Jenny R.

God, this is awful, disgusting ... ugh ! - ipek aral kişioğlu

I just saw this guy at the Powell MUNI station - Andy Bakun

I wonder if this is the same guy I was talking about that I would see / smell on Haight St. (I thought that guy had a longer uni-dread though)......either way, this guy give dreadlocks a bad name....ewwww.. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

@guruvan Your dreads look great in your profile picture :) There should be a different name for something like this, this picture does give nice dreadlocks a bad name - Alisha Vargas

Alisha: Thanks :-) I have one of two names for that: 1) Uni-dread-ew or 2) Tour-mat (you see those kids all the time who go on tour with The Dead, String cheese, Phish, etc and just stop being clean and have huge fat nasty dreads - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

guruvan :-) Both those terms describe it so well. Ewww - Alisha Vargas

Looks like cow dung - Kittyburgers

Brad, please swap this picture out with a different pic, a shampoo girl or something! - Kay Designer

Plllleeeeeeaaaaassssseeee. - Kay Designer

Was this taken from the parking lot at the Phish concert? =D - mark

Oh... Why did you bring this one back. It gave me nightmares the last time it came up! ;) - Bluesun 2600

Just saw this guy at the Powell MUNI station, and it looked like he cut most of it off, to the base of his neck. - Andy Bakun from Android

omg, yayk - `aziz´ Alihan ÇETİN

Wow - this is an oldie. - Brad Williamson

Ewwww .. Scissors required!! - Zax Stevens

Zax - scissors? I think you'd need an axe for that! - Martin Bryant from iPhone

or at least a machete. - Chieze Okoye

whew.. Geez.. - Vimala Vita

You can see all of your email settings at http://friendfeed.com/setting... - Bret Taylor

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Thanks Bret! :) - Matt Ruiz

Thanks to Kevin for doing a great design for what turned out to be a more complex set of UI options than we had originally anticipated, and thanks to Tudor for implementing the email backend. - Bret Taylor

Great! Thanks! Love FF! - Scott Monaco

I now get the FriendFeed Feedback posts as a Best of Day email so it doesn't fill up my feed, but I don't miss feedback. I also set up a "Best of Day" email for my "Technology people" friend list so I get a pretty good overview of tech news every day via email. - Bret Taylor

This is a really cool idea Bret, I wish you can make that an RSS feed option as well. I'd be much more likely to read summaries in RSS than in email. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Neat feature, but it's more focus on big shiney new features, while ignoring the glaring issues in need of polish in the site we currently have. - Matthew DeVries

Mark: http://friendfeed.com/bret... - Casey Muller

Very cool. I like how you give us the OPTION rather than sending a daily/weekly digest like other sites *cough* LinkedIn/Facebook *cough* - Johnny

Lovely. Thanks guys. - Mitchell Tsai

Casey: Thanks for the tip. What's the 7 before the "?" mean in the URL? The number of likes or replies needed to be included? - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

this is killer, the random influx of email during the day was kinda getting fail-ish. I love the daily digest. - Drew Lucas

Very cool! Any way to get archives of previous months? (especially helpful for those of us who leave the internet for weeks at a time...) - Mitchell Tsai

WOW. that's really helpful！ - K.D.

Looks like a great addition for those who are not embedded on the site. Nice intro. - Louis Gray

Cool! - Josh Haley

Just curious - at what time of the day will we get these emails ? Midnight US-Time, or will it respect our timezones ? - Ahsan Ali aka. Slick

Ahsan: it is somewhat random right now when the emails are sent, but we built in the backend capability to control what time they are sent, and we plan on exposing that control to users in the future. Right now, it is kind of random - sorry! - Bret Taylor

Thanks Bret - Ahsan Ali aka. Slick

Cool! can i get a daily or weekly email digest for the "Saved searches"? - 0M0M from email

Cool - Nimaa

This will be incredibly useful. Thanks to all involved in the design and execution. - Kathy Fitch

Nice addition! - Michael Fidler

But what exactly is "Best"? Is it anything that has a certain number of likes/comments? - Laura Norvig

@Bret LOL THAT WAS MY PROJECT! I will release it tomorrow. But you've also did it and killed my friendfeed application **sigh** But mine has multi-reporting weekly-daily-monthly at the same time and adjustable entry count! - Alp

@Bret please consolidate me or I won't code new apps with you api! :-) - Alp

Alp: we were not trying to withhold data. Later today the documentation will be updated to reflect the ability to obtain "Best of" for users. The feed id will be USERNAME/summary/N (similar to "Best of" for lists) - Benjamin Golub

Hi Ben, that is pretty funny, I tried that URL earlier today to see if it has been secretly released :) - Paul Kinlan

Bret: While Twitter struggle to keep their fail whale under control, you guys are developing stuff like this. Amazing - Thanks! - Jim Connolly

awesome feature, this will be highly useful for my corporate group ideas / content sharing; projects, etc.... THANK YOU :) - Susan Beebe

Great work. I especially like that it works on lists too. - Meryn Stol

my inbox might say different, but I like that :-) - Dobromir Hadzhiev

Wow, this is really neat! And it links into the idea I expressed earlier, re: reducing signup friction / enabling limited guest privileges. Imagine if I could embed one of my FF rooms on my personal web site, and enable people to subscribe to that feed by e-mail with just a couple of clicks... rather than saying "you can get e-mail notifications but you have to sign up for Friendfeed first." "sign up" -- though admirably lightweight on FF -- is still a huge barrier. - Adam Lasnik

Love it. - Zachary TG

is there a love button cause I dont like this option I LOVE this option..great work guys - (jeff)isageek

Three options I would like (1) Can I select "top 100" instead of "top 30"? (2) Could I select both "best of day" and "best of week"? (3) How about older timeperiods? I'd love to get an e-mail with stuff from last week or Mar 2009? Start & end dates? Anything to help me read FriendFeed off-line would be great since I spend long periods off-line at festivals (especially during summer time) or overseas. - Awesome job guys! - Mitchell Tsai

Great way to keep up with those you're most interested in; things you don't want to miss. - Diego Barros 

So this works on groups too, cool! But we still cannot see Best of for groups on the site on friends lists. :-( I have several friends lists that include just groups and when I select to view the best of the page it's empty (even though if I got to the individual best of for those groups there are entries there). - Kol Tregaskes

does anyone know of a web service that can do this? (I'm thinking weekly email updates of my favorite feeds/people) I don't think there's anything like friendfeed .. - 'Like' robot (frɐnc)

Thanks for posting this link, don't know how I missed it - Mark

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Mark, you haven't subscribed to http://friendfeed.com/friendf... or http://friendfeed.com/bret - Jérôme Flipo

I WAS subscribed to Bret, but he went to a private feed? Either that or be blocked me for some reason. Edit, yep, blocked me. Don't know why, don't think I ever even commented on any of his posts :/ - Mark

It looks like Bret's feed is now private. At least, that's what a quick test on his feed thru the API says (error 405 : Not Allowed) - Zackatoustra from IM

Zack: 405 means method not allowed (IE you used a GET when you should have used a POST or vice-versa) - Benjamin Golub

One important thing FriendFeed API doesn't seem to have on a very cursory fast read: location, location, location! Really it's too bad. - Robert Scoble

Robert: geo is included in the output (http://friendfeed.com/api...), and you can tag new entries with the geo arg on input as well - Bret Taylor

bgolub Oh, ok. Thanks! I've done this too quickly... - Zackatoustra from IM

You can create entries with "geo" information now: http://friendfeed.com/api... - Benjamin Golub

Benjamin, I take that back, very cool, thank you! - Robert Scoble

Thanks Dave checking it out. Great work Benjamin & team. Now to figure out how to use this to save many hours coding up similar stuff for my selfish project. - Mark Essel

Geo location features sound awesome :) - Susan Beebe

I hope Atebits will do a FriendFeed client for the iPhone now! - Ralf Rottmann

Agree with Ralf. We *need* a killer FriendFeed app for the iPhone!! Please? - Timothy Federwitz

Why are posts from weeks ago coming up now? - Mark

Probably me discovering older posts and liking? Nope it wasn't me :) - Mark Essel from iPhone

They never had engaged audiences. - Robert Scoble

3 more comments

@Robert Scoble exactly! :) - Lora Lufark

Robert's right, but I also believe that they are too slow to Market. We have so much content today at are fingertips and people need to remember that as consumers we have more choices than ever and most are finding social networking sites more informative at the end of the day. - Clifford Kennedy

Hi Darren: In your blog post, you suggest that mainstream media blogs attract fewer comments than mainstream media web stories. I suspect this is largely due to blogs getting less prominence than news stories on mainstream media sites. It could also be that blog comments are not being reviewed as frequently by moderators (the moderator could be the blogger of course) and thus generating... more... - Neil Sanderson

I think many of the media sites have their own, proprietary comment system as well. They lack a social aspect to them that's inherent in many of the sites with better commenting systems. Simple things like being able to follow people, see what comments others have posted, go back and review your own comments, "like" other people's comments, etc. all create a social atmosphere. I think if a lot of these sites adopted a more "open" commenting system like disqus they'd be better off and more engaging. - Bryan Zirkel

can't stop laughing when I see it - Dobromir Hadzhiev

omg, lol -- Karma FTW. - Nicholas Kreidberg

"Hey, before I go... can I at least get my gun back?" - Mark "DerBingle" J

it does not looks real or the shop guy is with iron nerves - no surprise, move before think (ex-spy? ;) ). - Stoyan Zhekov

Fail - k00pa

say hello to my little fwe.....oh.. shit.. bollocks.. help meeeeee... - Franz Sittampalam

nice - money

Hold hands this is an upstick. (one for the older listeners in the froup) - Gilbert Harding

"I can't believe it's not butter!" - Shawn K. Smith

What a maroon - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

LOL - Matt Ruiz

+1 internets to Rahsheen for the Bugs reference! - FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

whoops, :o - chaz2b

love this show on discovery channel! - Adri Munier

That's funny. - Evan Travers

that is why crime does not payLOL - Kirk Fontaine

You just have to love clumsy crooks. - Brant Padak

"Graphic images that reveal the devastating impact of global warming in the Arctic have been released by the US military. The photographs, taken by spy satellites over the past decade, confirm that in recent years vast areas in high latitudes have lost their ice cover in summer months. The pictures, kept secret by Washington during the presidency of George W Bush, were declassified by the White House last week. President Barack Obama is currently trying to galvanise Congress and the American public to take action to halt catastrophic climate change caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. " - Meryn Stol from Bookmarklet

Via Dave Winer. - Meryn Stol

"Today we are launching version 2 of the FriendFeed API for beta testing. We focused on making the API simpler to use, and we added number of compelling new features." Documentation: http://friendfeed.com/api... - Bret Taylor from Bookmarklet

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OAuth? Sweet. Thanks a lot for all the new good stuff in the API: can't wait to use it. - Mark Trapp

cool :) - Siavash

very nice. great work! - Alfredo

Yet another reason to like Bret. :-) - Jesse Stay

Great!!! - YungSang from FriendFoo

nice! - Daniel Rust

good job guys, I bet devs are jumping high right now - Dobromir Hadzhiev

Sweet, congrats! - Ivan Zuzak

nice, good to see OAuth support, this will enable a larger 3rd party ecosphere around FriendFeed, I hope - Jeroen De Miranda

After going through the documentation and playing around with some feeds, I love the fact that you can now see the subscriber lists of people who have their feeds set to private as long as you are subscribed to them and authenticate (mimicking the main site functionality). One thing that's absent is a discussion of Direct Messages. Do they show up in feeds if you authenticate? How do we find just direct messages? - Mark Trapp

Mark: direct messages are accessed using the feed ID "filter/direct". Read more about feed IDs at http://friendfeed.com/api.... Also direct messages appear in the "home" feed. - Benjamin Golub

Benjamin: ahhh, I see it now. I missed it when skimming that list over. Thanks! - Mark Trapp

Can you post the wget version of the command line? - Gabe

Gabe: wget --user=bgolub --password=passwd --post-file=MyPhoto.jpg http://friendfeed-api.com/v2... should work. In theory. Edit: nope. I'm not sure it's possible to do with wget. - Mark Trapp

Oh dear. And now I'm thinking "Command line Friendfeed UI - I can do that - that would be do-able" ;-) Nice work peeps, especially the subscriber list info! :-) - Andy Bold

Thanks God it is New API. - Ahmet Alp Balkan from iPod

Nice progress here with this release! - Micah Wittman

I love it! - friday night

Why is wget questionable? - Gabe

Gabe: wget doesn't support multipart forms as a design decision. If you post a file, FriendFeed returns a 404, and if you post data, the query is too long for wget to handle. - Mark Trapp

cool : ) - Gürkan Oluç

Good work, look forward to seeing what developers can create - Joe Dawson

doublepluslike - Raphael, Raphael

curl FTW. - Jeremy Kunz

This is great, FriendFeed team. Good job. - Thierry R. Andriamirado

Woowoo, bgolub's password is “passwd” ;-) - Amit Patel

Amit: I wonder how many people tested that :) - Benjamin Golub

Thanks to bgolub posting his password, I now have all of FriendFeed's secret documents about notorious users, useless metrics, Justin Timberlake's promoting FF on Oprah's show, hiring Colbert as a spokesperson, Ev Williams being just a “distraction”. TechCrunch is going to love this! ;) - Amit Patel

Yes big big thanks to the whole team for all their hard work!! - ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ from iPhone

thank you;) waiting for the release :) loving clone - abdellah from FriendFeed API Example

Yay subscribers exposed! - EricaJoy

Finally OAuth, I had a hard time memorizing my remote key. - Hugh Isaacs II

This is indeed very cool, anybody started on a c# version? - Jesper Lind

Apostol, I think this goes beyond any company. This is more about protocols. I think we're moving into the post-RSS era. RSS (or Atom) might be part of the mix (it will probably be) but it will only be one part. The Google Wave protocol might provide some clues for what will be the next thing we'll standardize on, but I have doubts that it will be called Google Wave. - Meryn Stol

I think a kind of bottom-up development is more likely, especially given the pragmatic need for new tools and services to work well with big sites who don't care about Wave. I'm thinking of Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed now. In evolution theory, there's the notion of "co-evolution". New things should play well with what's out there already for them to become part of the ecosystem. What's not part of "the" ecosystem is in some regards not there. "irrelevant" - Meryn Stol

Bret Taylor of FriendFeed will be in this lunchtime panel on what it takes to drive change online. If you're local, I hope you can make it. - Louis Gray from Bookmarklet

dang...wishin' i was cool enough to be there! - Tobin Truog

"Individual expression is the heart of FriendFeed, and today we're excited to launch FriendFeed themes, with six new designs to choose from." - Kol Tregaskes from Bookmarklet

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whoa! whoa! - Jorge Escobar

Check them here: http://friendfeed.com/setting... - Kol Tregaskes

Yes! I felt it coming with this new design. Now just to allow custom theme creation... - Brandon Titus

'Fresh' should be the default theme! - Kol Tregaskes

Shame, none of the themes have the comment highlighting that we have with AJ's script. :-( - Kol Tregaskes

For some reason I like the minimalistic approach in 'Helvetica' - Jorge Escobar

Jorge, yeah it's pretty cool. - Kol Tregaskes

Am liking the purple flowers :) - Ken Morley

What is your favourite theme? I think mine is Blue Wave. :-) - Kol Tregaskes

helvetica rocks - michael sean wright

the helvetica edition style (http://friendfeed.com/friendf...) is much better than the new helvetica theme - Doğaç Yavuz

com'on - Helvetica needs to have Friendfeed blue color at the top .. why black? - Petr Buben

Micah says his scripts still work with the themes too: http://ff.im/4DlX9 - Kol Tregaskes

AJ, how about a version of your Cleaner FriendFeed script that *only* changes the commenting highlighting and thus works with all the new themes? - Kol Tregaskes

I've asked AJ nicely. :-D - Kol Tregaskes

Kol my favorite theme is Fresh :D - Nimaa

Love these! I think Bamboo is my favorite - Tamara

I took the 'Blue Wave' -> 'Helvetica' path - Peter Warnock

Hey hey hey! Update is here -> http://friendfeed.com/friendf... ... just uninstall your old styles ;) - AJ Batac

Helvetica is the best one! - Michela Cimnaghi /cimny

test driving helvetica, but I think I still prefer classic - chrisofspades

Thanks, AJ, that's great! :-D - Kol Tregaskes

I now have Bamboo!!! - Joel Robert Perez

Comments are still grey on white, so fail. Thank God for userstyles and userscripts. - Vlad Bobleanta

I'm loving the purple flowers atm. - Bec Rowe @d0tski

Bamboo! Yay! - Kamilah Gill

I will be thrilled when the switch is thrown on allowing control of how other's see my pages. A few suggestions. 1. All FF pages should be viewed along with whichever theme has been selected by the FF owner, if the person viewing the page is not logged into FF. 2. All registered users should be allowed go to settings and opt-out/opt-in to viewing of other FF user's themes, globally or ad-hoc. I know some are minimalist, but I am not and don't mind people choosing how they wish to portray themselves. - Michael A. De Bose

+1 Michael. I agree about giving folks the choice, even though I'm indifferent as far as themes and customisation options go. - Tyson Key

Can't wait to see the theme customization features and to have the ability to change how my page looks to other people. - Hugh Isaacs II

"I'm still waiting for the day when humans navigate cities by being sucked through pneumatic tubes. But in the meantime, New Zealand's bicycle-monorail mash-up, known as the Shweeb, might be the next best thing. The Shweeb is a human-powered transit system that employs a recumbent cycle to move a clear passenger tube along a rail. Currently, the only operating Shweeb is located Agroventures Adventure Park in Rotura, New Zealand, where for $45, you and your friends can engage in Shweeb racing. But the inventors believe the Shweeb has possibilities beyond being an amusement park ride, and that it might just revolutionize your daily commute" - RAPatton

They had me at unholy - RAPatton

Couldn't wear a skirt though! - Zulema ◕ ◡ ◕ from iPhone

Just looking at the picture sets off my latent claustrophobia heebie jeebie nerve center. - Stephen Mack

And I only can go as fast as the slowest person on the line? No way! - Kevin Fox

But as a fun thing to do, this looks awesome. I'm sad they didn't have this when we were in Rotorua a few years ago! - Kevin Fox

When I heard that PrismaStar has helped several retailers greatly increase their sales, I had to see just how their search technology did that. After seeing it I wonder why they haven't been purchased yet by one of the big search companies. - Robert Scoble from Bookmarklet

54 more comments

More like, Amazon, why haven't you bought this company yet? - blake

its like asking why thye did not buy Like.com.. where is the ROI's ? - Peter Dawson

blake: yeah, that would be an obvious company to buy them too, but the patent they own could help a bigger engine even more. - Robert Scoble

Peter: what's the ROI of Bing.com taking another percent of market share? - Robert Scoble

Yeah, great video as always, an app like that applied to the web or search engine would be real innovation the kind that would get so much press you wouldn't need to spend hundreds of millions to advertise - Stephen Pickering

Google is more into replicating things at their end rather than spending money on buying. MS and Yahoo struggling with fixing the search, rather than improving it. - Veetrag

Robert, as a compliment, The video camera angles are working much better now. - Kreg Steppe

Veetrag, exactly, "Don't Solve Problems. Pursue Opportunities" - Stephen Pickering

Veetrag: that's not true. Microsoft has gone ahead of Google in quite a few areas with Bing. And Microsoft purchased several companies to do that (Powerset, Farecast, etc) - Robert Scoble

the CAPEX on bing has already been consumed (MSFT way) - so how can they divisfy ? at least MSFT . As for GOOG's . why assimulate something which really has services which is cross docking with Amazon ?? - Peter Dawson

I think its sick that they can patent this sort of thing. I bet there is prior art out there. - Luke™

Besides its utility, people want something to play with. The public would go crazy over those little sliders. it's like going to the fair or something - Stephen Pickering

Kreg: that's Rocky Barbanica, Building43 producer. By the way, this video is one of the most expensive we've ever done. Took us a week in UK to find this company and get excited enough to pull out our two HD camcorders. - Robert Scoble

Robert: I agree Powerset and few other purchases have been really good move but have those turned out well for MS. I would be happy to see some of powerset kind of features in Bing soon. - Veetrag

Apostol: we carry two $6,000 Panasonic camcorders. A lot more expensive than $200 Flips. - Robert Scoble

Veetrag: yes, those acquisitions have worked out very well. Search at Microsoft is finally gaining share and is impressing people. Have you used it? Video, shopping, and travel are all best of breed now (among the big search companies). - Robert Scoble

As #Microsoft already has #bing #Shopping http://www.bing.com/shoppin... which does somwhat similar to #Primastar #Answeroil solution and #MSFT has bought #Caio - Ashith Raj

Luke: I haven't seen any prior art, but the way the patent system works is those things will get decided on when there's a conflict. - Robert Scoble

Its a nice way to differentiate. - Jeff Stannard

Apostol: well, when you see the full resolution you'll see I don't agree at all. But we get better compression on the expensive videos because they are cleaner to start with. Also, by using two cameras you can edit and give a much more professional look. Believe me, I love low-cost video too (most of my career has been made with cheap cameras) but there's a place for the expensive stuff too. - Robert Scoble

@scoble I use bing regularly and for few days I switched my default to bing. Its very impressive and sure, would gain popularity too. - Veetrag

from what its shown in the video, its not a technological breakthrough, but using common search technologies to come up with custom solution for dedicated clients. Bing, Google are operating on all together different bigger space i.e. generic search. - Ruchit Garg

Another factor I like about Bing is, the traffic it is sending to my site. For an infrequent blogger like me, only source of traffic was Google. But Bing being able to index it proves that the cralwer is much better, indexing is better and thus results are better. - Veetrag

Ruchit: you didn't watch enough of the video. See how it could improve traditional search. - Robert Scoble

Ruchit: and, even if you were correct, the high value search customers are those who are buying things. It certainly could be used to improve the shopping areas on search engines, which would improve their profitability and usability. - Robert Scoble

I'm sure everyone who has commented here has also spent hours searching and re-searching through shopping and retail sites, and felt that growing sense of frustration that it's taking too long to find what you're looking for. If this gets implemented at *some* sites, those *without* it will certainly suffer.. I'd love to see this on Amazon... - Andrew Terry

@Scoble this app is kinda similar even if its only got one slider.. http://examples.adobe.com/flex2... I bet there are a bunch of flex apps with multiple "interdependent" sliders. - Luke™

Luke: if it only has one slider it isn't the same. :-) - Robert Scoble

@Apolsotol looks like lots of sliders there. - Luke™

with regard to the sliders on keyword searches, it would be super-cool if (on searches of, say 3 - 4 terms) it looked at the frequency of other keywords within your results and offered those related keywords up for you depending on your slider settings so that you further narrow or expand your searches. - Andrew Terry

I agree that this kind of weighted multi-parameter search specification and the monitoring that they provide is a major advance in search technology. Not sure whether anyone is already doing it, but the patent grant is a very good sign! - John W Lewis

It seems that http://www.Laptop.Bg is not the same. It looks as though it filters (on or off) on multiple parameters, but is not providing sequencing based on weighting of relative importance of those parameters. - John W Lewis

I don't understand why he's claiming that nobody else in the world can search/sort on multiple dimensions. I do that every day when writing SQL, using our in-house dev tools, when browsing newegg, ebay, mint, etc. They should NOT have been granted that patent. - xero

+1 xero - Todd Hoff

Does SQL alone allow sequencing based on weighted contributions from the values of multiple fields? - John W Lewis

@scoble I agree with your second comment that "the high value search customers are those who are buying things. It certainly could be used to improve the shopping areas on search engines, which would improve their profitability and usability". I just dont see why bing and google cannot do it using what they have today!. - Ruchit Garg

xero: the patent is for using two connected sliders. I don't remember seeing sliders in SQL Server. I don't remember seeing that UI used anywhere else on the Internet, either, but who knows? I'm not a patent attorney. - Robert Scoble

Speaking of new cool things, when is that new Dell coming? - Mark

I should apply for a patent on multiple checkboxes. ! - Luke™

Mark: I bought it yesterday at Best Buy. I am loading it up now. - Robert Scoble

I meant that secret dell you blogged about last month - Mark

The patent is just for using linked sliders? The way he talked it sounded like it was the algorithm to search/sort on multiple dimensions, not that the mechanism of doing that with slider controls. That said, Mint.com has had that for a long time, and I know I used it at some point before 2000, I just don't remember what desktop app it was. Games have used connected sliders for settings, but that's not to filter search results. - xero

The scheduling software my employer writes does very complex "sequencing based on weighted contributions from the values of multiple fields". And has been since 1997 I think. But, we don't have it displayed in linked sliders. In fact, all scheduling software does that, even Microsoft Project. Just no sliders. I will refuse to pay them royalties for a basic UI element for sorting data... more... - xero

The problem with searching for retail products is rarely with the ability to filter and sort, it's with the dimensions they provide for doing so and the inclusion of duplicates. In the video you could filter on thickness. That means someone had to enter the thickness into the database as a dimension. Newegg suffers from this problem all the time. They have great search tools but you... more... - xero

Holy crap, Robert, you're right. I watched the video and one of those companies should definitely buy them. Now. Honestly, it's simple and immediately intuitive and exactly mirrors our natural selection process. Crazy. - Chieze Okoye

Video doesn't seem to want to load for me :( - Steve Farnworth

Also, gotta love the armchair patent-lawyering going on in here. Does anyone have the actual patent number? - Chieze Okoye

Xero - in reply to your comment "I don't understand why he's claiming that nobody else in the world can search/sort on multiple dimensions." I agree with you - the patent cannot be about that - it exists and is FREE- it's just that this guy clearly has no idea what the rest of the World are up to! also - Robert - I challenge you to get any statistics on the claimed 30% increase in... more... - Jelly Roll Morton

Patents: http://www.google.com/patents... and http://www.google.com/patents... - Joshua Z. Tabin

REAL sales Conversion Rate (C.R.) data: 1-month trailing C.R. pre-selector - 1.25%; 1-month trailing C.R. post-selector - 2.15%. 72% documented increase in C.R. for users who used the selector. Over 700,000 live users during the 2-month the test period. Contact PrismaStar and they will provide documentation to prove it if you sign their NDA. - Joshua Z. Tabin

A quick lesson on patent law: Ice cream on a stick -- not patentable. Chocolate over ice cream -- not patentable. Ice cream on a stick dipped in chocolate -- patentable (well, in this precise example ice cream on a stick already exists in the public domain, so it wouldn't be patentable, but hopefully you get the idea). PrismaStar won this patent because nobody ever COMBINED interdependent sliders relating to multiple search attributes WITH dynamically-sorting results. Clear now? - Joshua Z. Tabin

Another real example: CTR before AnswerOil: 2.5%. CTR after AnswerOil: 8.9%. Again, sign an NDA and PrismaStar will show you the data, although you can also read about this example here: http://www.iea.cz/index... PrismaStar won a very prestigious award in the Czech Republic for this, beating-out name brand websites such as T-Mobile, Volkswagen, and Vodafone. THANK YOU, Robert, for doing your research! ;) - Joshua Z. Tabin

There is an amazing example of this fantastic technology here at D-Link, although it's by http://www.easy2.com a USA company - Click "Find your router" http://www.dlink.com/categor... These guys will send you Customer White Papers without having to sign an NDA and they have over 15 examples and plenty of testimonials on their website. - Jelly Roll Morton

Well whatever CTR is .....it ain't conversion rate is it? - Jelly Roll Morton

For those looking for prior art - here it is - Interdependent sliders in Flash from 2004 http://www.senocular.com/flash... - Jelly Roll Morton

The changes.xml approach is basically what is codified in the Simple Update Protocol that FriendFeed has been developing: http://code.google.com/p.... It's still polling, but it is a more efficient polling mechanism for large numbers of feeds, and it can be published either by an individual site or an aggregator. RFC here: http://simpleupdateprotocol.go... - DeWitt Clinton

42 more comments

How could it be changes.xml when it's not even XML? - Dave Winer

When you guys design these things, do you think a few steps into the future, when there are N ways to do something instead of 1. The confusion about whether your format will gain traction or the other one cause people to freeze, so neither one gets uptake. I cannot for the life of me figure out why you wouldn't just use what's already there. - Dave Winer

Did you read the spec? : ) - DeWitt Clinton

I didn't read the whole thing -- I got as far as seeing that it's JSON and realized there was no point continuing. - Dave Winer

Please read further if you have a sec. I'd love to hear your feedback -- there's still plenty of time for comments (it's still in pre-review). SUP adds a) opaque tokens for private resources, b) the ability to work with arbitrary addressable resources, not just feeds, c) poll and update intervals, and d) a link and HTTP-based discovery mechanism. Regarding the JSON format instead of XML, I'm agnostic -- I don't think it matters much. - DeWitt Clinton

The discussion room for SUP is here: http://friendfeed.com/simple-.... If people have comments, that's the best place to post feedback about SUP itself, I think, as Paul, Gary, Ben, Ade, me, etc., are following that. - DeWitt Clinton

The only reason I looked is because of the first sentence of your first comment. I got as far as seeing that it wasn't changes.xml. It is what I thought it was when I first looked a few months back. - Dave Winer

Feedback: I make the same suggestion to you that I made to the IETF guys when they were embarking on Atom. Start with changes.xml, and then change whatever it is you feel you can't live with, and document your rationales. That way what you end up with will be minimally different from what's already out there, and future implementers won't curse us for not having the sense to have one way to do things. - Dave Winer

Analog: When I travel to Europe, I wonder why they couldn't just do electric plugs the same way we do in the US. That way I wouldn't have to carry an adapter with me. I wish their cell phone systems worked the same way ours did (I gather they do now, somewhat) and that they billing worked the same (I'll let you know when the bill from my June trip arrives). When I travel to London I... more... - Dave Winer

Heh. Is this where someone is supposed to say the secret word ('Standardization') and the duck flies down?? - ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ

@Dave - thanks for the feedback. Can you point me to the changes.xml specification? - DeWitt Clinton

@DeWitt: You'll find a link in this piece which I just wrote: http://www.scripting.com/stories... - Dave Winer

Cool, got it. (http://oldweblogscomblog.scrip...). Thanks! - DeWitt Clinton

BTW, I just re-read it. The Notes describe the way it was used in 2001, a long time ago, and before the weblogs world grew at a huge pace. We eventually had a shortChanges.xml feed that had to be polled much more frequently than once an hour as we started getting a million then two million pings a day. I have no idea what it's at now. - Dave Winer

Yeah, scale becomes an issue. For example, Google Blog Search publishes a changes.xml for every changed feed it discovers (http://blogsearch.google.com/changes...), and it weighs in at a whopping 11MB for just the last 10 minutes. I have no idea whether this is even comprehensive. - DeWitt Clinton

I think its cool that Google are bending over backwards to get your input on all this Dave, and seem seriously interested in your advice. - Mark

Mark, what matters is what they do, not who they stroke. - Dave Winer

Remember when Microsoft came into RSS? They did a lot of stroking, but in the end, not enough listening. And the net-result was a big zero. They did nothing to improve things, and they really could have. - Dave Winer

We're in an equivalent situation now, with Twitter rolling up the entire pubsub space with virtually no opposition. We should have a small-pieces-loosely-joined alternative, it wouldn't take very much, but Google has to get their shit together here and lead. Add what they can add, and don't try to re-solve problems that have already been solved. - Dave Winer

@Dewitt, that's why I said in my essay today that if there are parts you must change, that you can't live with, then change them, and document your rationale (and also put that up for review). - Dave Winer

I remember watching this video in 2005 on the subject of Microsoft and RSS. The Tee Shirts really sold me http://channel9.msdn.com/posts... - Mark

From the Microsoft video on RSS: "Today Microsoft announced the addition of several new RSS features in the next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn. The Longhorn Browsing and RSS team (the one we interviewed here) is also are announcing a new RSS extension, to be released into Creative Commons, that lets you do lists in subscriptions." - Mark

Agreed, Dave. Though I should point out that FriendFeed authored and invented SUP -- I'm merely helping edit the RFC. I started doing so because there was interest within Google for it and no one wanted to implement SUP without a stable specification. So we were following a herd here; it was just Paul's herd, not a different one. You'd have to ask him why he chose JSON and whatnot. I just wrote down what he was doing on FriendFeed. - DeWitt Clinton

To start -- I want to be able to ping FF saying that my RSS feed has updated and have them read it right now. It's got to be that simple. And then why not just use the same endpoints that weblogs.com uses so that any blogging software can do it without code updates. - Dave Winer

code updates are sometimes necessary and/or unavoidable - and then again sometimes not - Chris Heath

It seems to me that SUP and changes.xml are aimed at slightly different use-cases: changes.xml is mainly aimed at the individual instance of a blog notifying a centralized service, whereas SUP seems aimed at centralized services notifying each other via a firehose. I do understand that these use-cases overlap, but do I have the distinction right? - Michael R. Bernstein

Regarding what I think we'd want to see in a refresh of changes.xml -- ignoring the distinction between JSON and XML for a moment -- the list is the same as above. First, I'd want it to be non-feed specific, and work with any addressable resource. This is the substantive terminology change I made when drafting the SUP spec. The second is a discovery mechanism, like we formalized using mnot's spec for HTTP link headers. - DeWitt Clinton

The third is the capacity for opaque resource tokens, which is necessary to support private feeds. And last, configuration/visibility of the aggregated intervals. - DeWitt Clinton

Dave: you can use public SUP (http://friendfeed.com/api...) to ping FriendFeed. It's as simple as adding a HTTP header or link tag to your feed and then pinging Friendfeed. - Benjamin Golub

And you can see the code in action on my blog: http://github.com/bgolub... it's only a few lines of code to be able to ping FriendFeed. - Benjamin Golub

Also, if you only want to ping FriendFeed (and don't care about the info being available to anyone else), then you don't even need to include the HTTP header or link tag -- you can simply ping FriendFeed with the url of the feed. We've also been consuming the weblogs.com and google blog search changes.xml for about 1.5 years now. In short, we take every available source of info -- we're not forcing any one solution on anyone. - Paul Buchheit

@Benjamin: Let me play that back to see if I understand. If I do an HTTP GET on this URL: http://friendfeed.com/api... that will tell FF that the scripting.com feed has updated. It will then fetch the feed and if there are any changes that will be reflected on FF. Correct? - Dave Winer

My response to you dave: http://rbonini.wordpress.com/2009... (and you are welcome to tell me how wrong I am - :) ) - Roberto Bonini

Roberto -- yes that could work. But we already reinvented RSS when we came up with changes.xml -- a format that basically does what you're saying RSS could be used for (which it could). You could argue that we shouldn't have reinvented way back when, but the politics of the software world were different then and what's done is done. To use RSS now for that purpose would itself be reinvention, and I wouldn't advocate it. - Dave Winer

I just tried a test, and did a GET on the URL included above, and nothing showed up here. So I guess that isn't the correct protocol. I'll wait for feedback. - Dave Winer

It showed up after 3 minutes. Not sure if that was due to polling or because I pinged. - Dave Winer

Understood Dave. - Roberto Bonini

That's correct Dave, the public-sup ping will work even without the tags (the tags are necessary for discovery, but internally we can connect the ping and the feed without them). We should recrawl the feed within a couple of seconds. If it's not working, double check that the url you are pinging is exactly the same url as the imported rss feed. If it still doesn't work, let me know and I'll try to debug what's going on. - Paul Buchheit

Paul, any thoughts on incorporating features from the feedbuster code? Having feedbuster inline negates (I think) Feedburner -> Friendfeed update capability. - jnman

Dave. I looked into our system and we have http://www.scripting.com/rss... as your feed (note the www). Did you try pinging with www? - Benjamin Golub

Yes. - Dave Winer

Dave, I like your thinking - but it seems laced with nationalist pride. The English have superior electrical plugs (with safety features that mean that they are less likely to electrocute people) and of course, they are the original seat of western civilisation, so it is the Americans that stubbornly failed to follow tradition by spelling things all wrong and driving on the wrong side of the road ;-) - Tim Tyler

i get the impression that a sup document must enumerate the set of changed resources. is this correct? if so, this will not work for systems with unconstrained sets of resources, such as a search engine rss feed or a tag intersection feed on say delicious. this seems problematic. - joshua schachter

This is where we do our UI design. - Paul Buchheit

39 more comments

Well, that explains the gray background then! - Akiva Moskovitz

And now the world needs to know who was sat in the empty space in the middle about 10 seconds before the camera came out :-D - Andy Bold

Each colored group of bricks are in a separate namespace. Don't mix them. - DGentry

I used to have a giant cardboard box with identical contents. I miss it terribly. - Daniel J. Pritchett

OK! I think I can finally apply now for R&D. ;-) - AJ Batac

I think I can see the namespace space, too - WorldofHiglet

why a Blue Snowball mic? - Joe Silence is not Santa

Where are the motors and microcontrollers? - Gabe

Sans mad scientist! Oh wait, he was taking the picture! - Rick Cogley

you g33k guyz :) - Alp

WIN - Josh Haley

I think you guys need more lego pieces. - FORA.tv

Oh... don't worry FORA... that's what's in those gray tubs :) - Ross Miller

Release early, release often :) - Micah Wittman

You guys got any job openings?? :) - Roberto Bonini

@Akiva: I'm glad this set of Lego had the grey "floors" and not the green ones! - Nathalie, Dreamer of FF

OMG MY EYES - Akiva Moskovitz

I loved LEGO and I am still thinking that it influenced my wish to study natural science, which some others might have thought, too - http://portal.acm.org/citatio... - joergkurtwegner

That looks remarkably like my kids' playroom when they were small (with the addition of some pink, white and lavender Legos)! - Anne Bouey

Now that's my kinda lab! Where do I sign up? - Jeff P. Henderson

http://friendfeed.com/about... - Benjamin Golub

OK, I'll start to compose my resume:))))) - K.D.

I need to learn Python :( I keep meaning to, but work happens. - Neal Jansons from IM

Heh, so that's how you built the FriendFeed server farm so quickly? Lego! ;) - Tyson Key

Watch Facebook will have the same lab in a month. - Robert Scoble

Nice $50 Walmart chair. I just replaced mine today with a different Walmart junk chair. That one broke. Those plastic armrests are fragile! See how I had fixed it temporarily: http://www.flickr.com/photos... - Dusty Wilson

Omg are you guys hiring??? I cook and clean! :) - Mona Nomura

Building better apps the unconventional way ! ..why now, where is additional keyboard shortcuts ?? under the carpet? .... isn't this overflow ideas cool-off roomlet containment? .... no! it's Google's 1 day - work on whatever project you want ..they got 2 grey bins, for binaries, i guess ... is it public access, though? - Petr Buben

Hmmok - Uygun BODUR

No one can afford to lose this job. - ashish

Lego Heaven - Kevin J Hatton

Wanted to make some R&D - Ozkan Altuner

Blue Snowball mic........someone must podcast? Decent mic, for what it's intended to do. - Gabe Taviano

Looks a little like my last office .... :) - Charlie Anzman

This is really cool. - Bryce the Screencaster

FriendFeed R&D needs more money Twitter R&D has more toys - Michael Mooney

What makes you think this is the sum of our toys, Michael? - Ross Miller

Not enough legos. - Steven Perez

Now we know the truth: http://www.servicedesigntools.org/tools... - Andrés David Aparicio

I knew html5 development processes were going to be weird - dthree

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