"Wherever there are gadgets, RSS feed readers are never lacking, and Google Desktop gadgets are no exception. Until now, there hasn't been a good way to combine all your feeds into a single gadget. With the new Google Reader gadget, you can now track your feeds and Google Reader subscriptions directly from your desktop. The Google Reader gadget is designed to be familiar for existing Reader users, yet compact like our other Desktop gadgets"
- Kol Tregaskes
from Bookmarklet
I think I'll stick with GReader in a Chrome window.
- Kol Tregaskes
Why are they still developing this product? They keep saying that the future is "in the browser": can they recycle those gadgets for Android, Chrome or NaCl? Do they just keep building an army of loyal programmers? Did they forget Desktop in the mass killing of January?
- Jérôme
I stopped using Google Desktop and the like years ago.
- Kol Tregaskes
Installed it but it doesn't seem to work on mac 10.4.11
- George Iordanou
What is this antiquated item you call "desktop"?
- Louis Gray
tried it but it locks up google desktop. Why the heck do you have to install google desktop for this to work. Have they never heard of adobe air or google gears.
- Zach Scott
Google Reader - check out all the fine keyboard shortcuts ! :] ... starting with "?" ... its the future .... im sure you are familiar with v - that practically is webpage feed - one key browsing .. very cool .... so, ff, how long does it take to be on the top of it.
- pb:
You and your shortcuts, Petr, hehe. ;-)
- Kol Tregaskes
i just think they are important :I ..and good, if properly done :] .. they make life more productive. and that's what we want ...
- pb:
"If you are a cat lover, this cat-friendly home might be the closest thing your furry friends can find to Heaven on Earth. Even if you are not as pet-friendly as this design, it is worth appreciating for the way in which it integrates the needs of two species in a single interior layout at vastly different design scales."
- Kol Tregaskes
from Bookmarklet
As a rule cats already sit on top of social ladder in our households, now we have to live in giant cathouses as well? Never.
- ianf ⌘
I hope my cats never visit Friendfeed and see this.
- Tom Landini
Don't worry, Tom. Think cats are intelligent enough to make the abstract jump from some pictures to acquisition of necessary remodeling materials at the Home Depot?
- ianf ⌘
Nice, looking forward to it Loic. I have been getting slow downs where character appear several seconds after I type them. Could be an Air issue as I keep your App open all of the time. Occasionally I shut it down and restart it and that seems to solve the problem. Still, I tell everyone your App is a key tool to surviving the Twitter experience ;-)
- Jamie Ginsberg
"The social news utility Feedly announced on its blog that it just added the ability to perform a supplemental search on content it knows about on any of a number of different sites like Google, Yahoo!, eBay, Wikipedia, Amazon and more. Results from this parallel search appear in Feedly Mini, an unobtrusive pop-up notification area in the lower-right corner of the Firefox browser window. Search results are drawn from FriendFeed, Google Reader feeds and other sources."
- Kol Tregaskes
from Bookmarklet
And they're using bit.ly now instead of tinyurl. Feedly is sharp.
- Bryan R. Adams
I also like how feedly adds tweets on the right side of the screen so you can keep up with what's going on in your network.
- Nakeva Corothers
Bryan - not only using Bit.ly, but since it generates the URL using your browser, if you are logged in to bit.ly when it is generated it automatically gets added to your bit.ly account for tracking & metrics.
- Phil Glockner
My favorite tip right here: Tip #3 - Assign the right views to each feed | Feedly allows you to assign different views to each feed. To do so, you can to drill down to the feed page in feedly by clicking on the subscription name and in the header of the page you should see a view drop down which allows you to customize how you want feedly to display the content of that feed. You can use...
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- Amani
Edwin, are there any plans to enhance RSS experience by filtering the content that goes into a user's feedly page?
- JCunwired
jcunwired. Yes filtering is definitely a key concept in feedly. You can see some of that in the digest where feedly uses both information from your own reading pattern, the favorite status of the feed and recommendations metadata from the feedly+google reader community to build the most relevant page possible. Have you had the chance to try feedly? What was your experience using the digest page?
- Edwin Khodabakchian
Edwin - If I am sharing an article within feedly to Friendfeed, how can I also include a photo which can be helpful to draw attention?
- Amani
Amani. Yes. Please try to alt+click on the picture you want to include (that will create a feedly annotation and then click on the friendfeed action (that image will be automatically included). We are looking at making this simpler and more intuitive.
- Edwin Khodabakchian
Nice that worked Edwin. Now is there a way to share it with multiple rooms (Ex. My feed, Apple Room, Apps, etc??)
- Amani
I am really liking feedly. I found another blog to subscribe to b/c of it. Question, if I am on a blog's page, is the only way I can subscribe to it within feedly cutting and pasting?
- Amani
Amani -- Click on the name of the feed inside feedly to bring up a view of just that feed, then click on the "+f" button to add it to your subscribed feeds and (optionally) a category.
- Phil Glockner
@Phil - does that work if it is a totally new feed that isn't in feedly?
- Amani
@Amani - it should work. Sometimes, if you are the very first person to add that feed, it might take a few seconds for Google Reader to fetch and provision that feed. If the back end is quick it should happen in real-time. If you see a timeout error, please try a second time and it should work then.
- Edwin Khodabakchian
I will test it out when I get home (unless Feedly can work on IE6!!) ;-) I will post up feedback/questions.
- Amani
Fantastic! I heard that the University of Oregon has students pedaling bikes and trying to make power, but it's not working quite that well. Guess those students don't have much future pedaling for major league stadiums now! (http://www.ecofriend.org/entry...)
- Craig Eddy
We all need to implement the knowledge & technology available for GREEN living.
- Debby Bruck
It looks cool too. Like a big carbon fiber snake.
- Will Higgins™
So does it store the power for nighttime use, or is it more that there's surplus generated during the day and then it draws back from the grid at night?
- Andrew C (✓)
Robert that video was awesome to watch. That setup is amazing. You get your audience involved, respond and recognize them. Changing the game each and every day.
- Geoff Farinha
from Nambu
I can only hear the audio - there is no video...what could be the problem?
- Mahesh Patwardhan
Mahesh: do you have the latest Flash player.
- Robert Scoble
Steve, the audio on the Qik site works fine for me. I do get black on the embedded version - guess I need a flash upgrade.
- Laura Norvig
The video was blank for me here as well. Using Windows XP with Google Chrome [updated today]. Was able to watch on the Qik site. Great video Robert ;)
- David Damore
I have the latest flash player... theres still no video here.. however I can watch it on the qik.com site.
- Mahesh Patwardhan
If you use the Qik link instead you won't see the blank video. I think the problem is on the FF side.
- Alexander Grundner
I'm torn between thinking - "that is awesome" and "what's the point?". For Scoble it makes sense as his job depends on keeping up with all this and commentating on it. For the rest of us, not so sure this realtime river of news is really where the future is taking us.
- Barak B
Love this video. You gave me an idea on utilizing feeds on a vertical screen
- Thomas Chai
Apparently, Scoble either wastes his time watching 3 friendfeed columns instead of writing a new book or revising Naked Conversations (in real time) OR he just showed us how the job looks like for some community managers.
- Michael Jung
Amazing how many posts come in. More data than the NYSE.
- Bill Hertzing
when i grow up i want to be a geek like Scoble
- daniela barbosa
You'd have to become a child to be more like Scoble :) His child like wonder is his trademark
- Chris Saad
serious overload. i'd tune it all out. it's too much.
- Don Martelli
Don: of course it's too much, but that's why my list of searches grows by about five every day. I want to have the best list of geeky searches in the industry.
- Robert Scoble
...Scoble, i am as realtime nuts as u with 65 soc news monitors therefore it irritates me that the new friendfeed doesn't allow realtime button-refresh twitter updates into the feed - or i was too stupid to find the icons. it also s*ks that u cant add all u old icons to make automatic refreshes in case there is some glitch. anyone else can help out in case scoble is busy ?
- ewing2001akaNicomedy2010
I read somewhere that Scoble singe-handedly save (or something to that effect) FF. Now I can see how. Thanks for sharing this. Btw, I also got black screen here, but fine video in Qik, using OSX/Firefox.
- waraney rawung
ewing: I have no idea what you are asking for. Tweets come here within seconds. Seems real time to me, why do you need a button update?
- Robert Scoble
Darth Scoble is more machine than man now.
- Rolf Schewe
interesting.. Scoble is watching the world in his war room.. :D
- Pico Seno
Proves once again how sorely track (realtime search alerts) is lacking. The setup as it is now is better divided between right and left eye serving corresponding brain hemispheres. The streams then should be tweaked in accordance with brain hemisphere functional/cognitive asymmetry; the result would be hyper-realtime web/personality blend leading to eventual zombiefication and madness :-)
- Mindaugas Dagys
That's amazing, that's the reason why you're the best at what you do. Thank you for sharing that video, Robert.
- Diego Espinoza V.
Can someone please tell us how to setup the Twitter stream like Robert has?? I want to set that up sooo bad.
- Jeff
Jeff: You turn an Apple monitor sideways. YOu open up three different Safari or other browser windows. You stretch those windows to look like my screen. You point them at various Tweet streams.
- Robert Scoble
I guess this is not live and you are saying what are you seeing here LOL I am seeing a black screen :o(
- David Gross
David: not live. It works here. Do you have the latest Flash player?
- Robert Scoble
hmm.. didnt work in Chrome, doesnt work in IE, I havent installed Firefox yet LOL
- David Gross
yes, have latest flash, would not play in friendfeed but when I clicked on link it worked on the qik site
- David Gross
I watched half of it till I started getting dizzy and shut it off LOL dont know how you do it Robert.. I guess gradually you can. ever use Pocketwit? LOL you would miss 90% of tweets.
- David Gross
btw I would like a windows mobile app for friendfeed or website :o)
- David Gross
Wow, that is so cool. Watching the long monitor is very hypnotic
- Asgeir
You can now choose which of your services you want displayed on your profile page. The option is available at the bottom your services page at https://friendfeed.com/account.... (We will otherwise select five icons to show automatically.)
Uh, bug. Nasty bug. I can't see some of my services, the box is taller than my screen. You should columnize them or make the list scrollable or something.
- Chris Charabaruk
I wish we could choose more than five. :-(
- darnell
from BuddyFeed
Yep, only five for now. We have gotten lots of feedback that the icons became useless when there were too many because you couldn't find the useful profile pages within the countless imported feeds. This lets you choose the few that have the most relevant profile info, but keeps the icon explosion from happening.
- Bret Taylor
Again. This is the same issue we had with the Rooms dialogue in the old interface. Didn't anyone check this first? What freakin resolution do the FF devs run at, anyway? LOL
- Rah-PM 2012
Rah, I'm 99.7% sure they use portrait mode on their monitors.
- AJ Batac :)
You'll take your five icons...and you'll like it! Thanks for the new feature.
- Mark Krynsky
Chris Charabaruk: some of us on macbook pros and other machines don't use scroll wheels. i agree with others that the truncation bug needs to be fixed. and, only five choices defeats the purpose of adding any more. some of us already have more services set up are used to seeing them. don't limit everybody in the process of simplifying it for a few, if it can be helped. thanks.
- sɹǝɥʇɐǝɟʞɔɐןq
Bret, Casey, thank you for this. Can you either make the list of services on the new screen either scrollable or in a smaller dialog box with a scroll bar? There's a bug that if you have a lot of services you cannot see the bottom of the list. :-(
- Kol Tregaskes
Love this, but can't use it because I use too many services. I can't scroll down the list.
- Thomas Hawk
A vertical screensize of 1200 pixels fixes mine. Your mileage may vary. I chose more than 5 services and let FriendFeed pick, presumably the way it can, had i chose less than 5.
- John Lam
Ok, I logged on on a PC and used the ctl scroll wheel trick and it worked.
- Thomas Hawk
great! I only want to show the most important feeds in my profile; and not clutter my profile with too many feeds that I include
- Jeroen De Miranda
Any word on the Iphone FF web? Or any news of an app? I can't see "my" discussions on the Iphone web version.
- orionstarr
That's a simple but crucial feature, in my estimation. But if I had to be fussy (which I usually am), the option to (re)order them would be also be good.
- Wayne Smallman
agree with wayne. I'd like to draw more attention to my blog, and less to my twitter ;-)
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Now if we could just select the order they display in - a' la Google Profile. Speaking of Google Profile... is FF planning on adding that to the list of services?
- Alexander Grundner
"When Times reporter Tim O'Brien said in his book TrumpNation that Donald Trump exaggerated his net worth by billions, and that the real number hovered closer to $250 million, the Donald was so pissed that he sued him for defamation. But in a deposition given on the case in 2007, which The Wall Street Journal has gotten hold of, it becomes clear that the Donald has indeed been using some creative accounting on himself. Very creative. For instance, we learn that the Donald bases his estimation of the value of his empire not on the actual numbers ("I'm not an accountant," he told lawyers), but on his personal perception of his brand value and "mental projections" of what this might be worth in the future. In other words, it is in part based on his mood."
- Thomas Hawk
from Bookmarklet
Brad, I don't see how that reference applies at all here.
- Tyler Hayes
This looks encouraging for the people of half her age to join the web bandwagon.
- Ashish
This is wonderful! PS: Why are there always some people who have to make stupid comments?
- Verena Fuchs
Not only is this a testament as to the popularity of the Twitter social networking service, but it also disproves the old stereotype that the elderly doesn't understand today's technology.
- Thomas Ward
It wouldn't be too fast for her. There are assistive technologies (puff and sip) and new ones coming that can keep up.
- Melanie Reed
Just use pause, like I do. Live streaming is too much like watching TV, which immediately turns me off.
- Ernie Oporto
I hope some more people "follow" her and enjoy the internet. It does not replace the joy of social life but she can enjoy having the feeling of being connected.
- Ashish
Longevity isn't for wimps. However, if you make it to 100+, you too can enjoy an exciting rewarding future as a media-prop for some random future technology. Of course, you'll suck, because you're old; for we all know that http://alloldpeoplesuck.blogspot.com/ -- #Sardonic-Hyperbole-With-A-Message
- michael silverton
Scam is bullshit. She's on there and still tweeting. Whether she's on Twitter because of a newspaper or because someone but a gun to her head, ages still on there, 104 years old and still Tweeting. Ahh, there, I feel better :)
- Zee.
oh and she just tweeter twice in the last 45 mins
- Zee.
Ivy is so sweet! A living testament that social media demographics are constantly evolving!
- Anna Barcelos
On Friendfeed's deficiencies as a feed reader: 1. no list view 2. no mark as read 3. no recommender system 4. no rich sorting of items 5. no incremental searching/filtering.
- Sean McBride
I agree, for FriendFeed to be viable as a feed reader, the team needs to work a lot on work flow.
- Meryn Stol
I think I could live without a recommender system.
- Meryn Stol
6. No feeds global settings (after all we have a bounch of feeds incoming, tagged to redirect in one or more groups, why not a GReader like configuration in a single page?) 7. rss/opnml import/export tool.
- CantorJF
I predict that recommender systems are going to be pretty much the whole ball game for future feed reading technology, and that feed reading technology and recommender systems will be ubiquitous. They will morph into generalized and universal AI-based personal assistants, indispensable mental augmenters.
- Sean McBride
Sean, I think that if you implement a recommendation system like you talk about, it's not really a "feed" reader anymore. Rather, it's a personalized news recommendation service. The name feed reader implies it's based on feeds, I'd say. The feed reader could be used to read personalized feeds from some other service of course.
- Meryn Stol
But, smart news assistants are certainly nice to have.
- Meryn Stol
And yet if you're willing to give up that OCD control issue re: feeds, it's a lot better.
- anna sauce
8. You can't actually READ the "FEED". You just get a URL to an article.
- Ken Sheppardson
Meryn: news recommender systems will build on and integrate seamlessly with current feed technologies (PostRank and Feedly are two good examples), and score/sort/rank feeds and feed items by various criteria (including personal relevance, global importance, global popularity, peer popularity, etc.). Have you played around with the Firefox PostRank extension for Google Reader?
- Sean McBride
Sean, yes, I have. But plugins for Google Reader can only go so far. A feed reader will be a feed reader. A personalized Techmeme or Google News (and better) will come to be, but I wouldn't that call it a feed reader anymore. The Feedly digest view can't be called a feed reader either. It's almost a coincidence that it piggybacks on Google Reader subscriptions.
- Meryn Stol
I'm a big fan of FF, but good point re: google reader.
- R. Ferguson
Meryn -- I define as a feed reader any interface to information which relies on RSS or Atom feeds for its input. There are unlimited ways to display the items acquired through such feeds, some which resemble mail readers, and others which look more like standard Web pages. It's all about the feeds -- the display is secondary. I suspect that Edwin Khodabakchian would be comfortable...
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- Sean McBride
Regarding Google Reader plug-ins: the PostRank extension is promising, but it needs more development. For instance, it is unable to automatically sort items by PostRank under folders.
- Sean McBride
Is FriendFeed trying to be a feed reader? I'd call it it a popularity/discovery/conversation engine.
- Eric Johnson
"feedly weaves your favorite content into a fun, magazine-like start page" - no mention of a feed reader here...
- Meryn Stol
I agree that FF is inferior to Google Reader as a feed reader but I like it that way. There seems to be too much emphasis on tools or services doing all the things that other tools or services do. A little integration and/or crossover is fine enough. FF doesn't need to adopt all the functionality of Google Reader. I like having the right thing for the right job.
- Mark H
"I define as a feed reader any interface to information which relies on RSS or Atom feeds for its input. " - I don't think many people share that definition with you. With a feed reader, people commonly think of workflow-oriented apps like Google Reader or Newsgator. They're the RSS counterpart to email clients.
- Meryn Stol
I read most of the content of FriendFEED and Twitter that I follow in Google Reader and FEEDly. Same feed content, somehat different (and much more powerful) display and interface. Friendfeed, Twitter, Google Reader and Feedly are feed-centric, and Friendfeed in particular can be used as a feed reader. I tend to think of Friendfeed, however, as primarily a piece of forum software, with some feed reading abilities. These categories are fluid and in a state of rapid development and change.
- Sean McBride
Meryn -- what does your taxonomy and ontology for feed-oriented software look like? What are the categories and nomenclature? Under which categories do you file Friendfeed and Feedly?
- Sean McBride
Sean, I simply haven't seen services like FriendFeed and Feedly meaningfully categorized. They fit in the "misc" category, and I'd rather describe them by analogies. There is no ontology. We're seeing more and more "one of a kind" services anyway. The only thing that I have a strong sense about in this regard is what a feed reader is: Something that helps me read items from RSS/Atom feeds. A feed reader is typically dumb but usable, just like an email client.
- Meryn Stol
BTW: With "dumb" I mean is that it isn't trying to think for you. Sorting items on some arbitrary variable/field (like a PostRank score) is not smart either. There might be a lot of smarts in the PostRank computation, but that's not a concern for the feed reader. It could as well sorted the items on date, title or author. I consider sorting still "dumb".
- Meryn Stol
Meryn: in my lexicon, Feedly definitely qualifies as a feed reader. Friendfeed is an odd bird which includes some feed-reading features, but which is not primarily a feed reader. Both services emphasize FEED in their names. They are feed-centric.
- Sean McBride
For me, it calling FriendFeed a feed reader would dilute the feed reader category. It would make the term less useful, less specific. I'd rather put FriendFeed in a broader category, "stream management" or something, in particular because it currently has no workflow support. It's more about diving in and out of the stream.
- Meryn Stol
"stream" and "stream management" -- good terms. In many cases, streams may be feeds or bundles of feeds.
- Sean McBride
It might be that I associate the term "feed" with being "fed", which implies the need to "digest"/process the information. Feed readers (at least in my limited definition) require explicit action for each post coming in, just like email. Of course, there's "mark all as read" but that's still an explicit action. Posts pile up. On FriendFeed, nothing piles up.
- Meryn Stol
FriendFeed has no read/unread marker and that's quite telling. You just watch the stream flowing by, and click "like" now and then. (or comment, etc)
- Meryn Stol
For me, a "feed" is a channel of information of a certain type, which may or may not be processed in certain ways. At a minimum, we want to display feeds.
- Sean McBride
I'd say that displaying feeds (optionally with the ability to add metadata like on FriendFeed) would turn the feed into a stream. It's not the user who is being fed anymore. There are no balls coming at you which you either have to catch or drop.
- Meryn Stol
It is also a greatly inferior Web browser and word processing application, not to mention a poor photo editing app. And the worst part - no native printer drivers!
- Louis Gray
Louis -- irony taken, but it seems to me that with a few simple tweaks, Friendfeed could be transformed into a first-class feed reader, in addition to all the other wonderful things it already is. I find myself dividing my time equally among Friendfeed, Google Reader, Feedly and Twitter, with a great deal of overlap among all four services. It would be nice to consolidate this activity under one service.
- Sean McBride
Sean, I actually do the same thing. The views provided by each service offer different benefits. I do prefer Feedly's interface to that of Google Reader for scanning 260+ blogs, but I can only use the Feedly plug-in in Firefox, the latest version of which crashes my system. I haven't checked to see if Feedly works in Flock but Chrome, which doesn't support plug-ins, is my default...
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- Jill O'Neill
I like the idea of going seamlessly from "stream mode" to "feed mode". Imagine watching a football game or something. Maybe at some point, you want to select a few seconds of the game, and analyze *each and every* still image, to see exactly what has happened, and to learn in detail from it.
- Meryn Stol
Jill -- what makes Friendfeed unwieldy for handling a large number of feeds (I subscribe to over 1,000) is, in my opinion, lack of list view, mark as read and automatic prioritization of items (a recommender engine). The third feature is a bear to develop (it may be the holy grail of personal computing), but the other two features are easy as pie. (Clearly you are grappling with user interface issues at the social media cutting-edge.)
- Sean McBride
untrue. FriendFeed's a greatly superior feed reader to Google Reader and Feedly which both lack powerful socially based recommendative technology. I stopped using Google Reader last year.
- Thomas Hawk
Thomas: what is "powerful socially based recommendative technology"?
- Edwin Khodabakchian
Edwin: Likes, comments, and Friend-of-a-Friend
- Ken Sheppardson
Sean, the reason I prefer Feedly's graphic interface (and I think the reason I preferred the old FF interface) was that there was more white space which enhances legibility and glance-ability. I stick with Google reader because it provides a higher level view (group view, individual feed view) which means I can scan text of more than 1000 items fairly rapidly. There are fewer...
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- Jill O'Neill
Thomas -- we've expressed our disagreements on this point several times in the past, and I always enjoy hearing your point of view. :) My point of view once again: my Google Reader 1,000 plus feeds are carefully organized into folders, and with GR I can leap over many mountaintops in mere minutes, extracting pure gold with a minimum of muss and fuss. Pure signal. Friendfeed is unmatched...
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- Sean McBride
Ok. First in my opinion, feedly and friendfeed are different: friendfeed is a social networking tool: I come here to have conversations with interesting people whereas feedly is a reader: I use it to track and read content. They both offer various level of collaborative filtering and personalization but that does not make them the same thing. Some people like Thomas who seem to be...
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- Edwin Khodabakchian
Jill -- amen on white space, legibility and glance-ability.. Regarding Feedly: it strikes me as mind-bogglingly brilliant -- I still feel like I have only scratched the surface of its elegant and nuanced feature set. It combines and transcends some of the best features of Google Reader and Friendfeed. (But it is not optimized for discussions of the kind we are now enjoying here on Friendfeed.)
- Sean McBride
Sean: if you do a search for photography with likes:3 and comments:3 on friendfeed, you will get a good list of conversations around that specific topic - so there is gold here and frienfeed is really too at detecting it (compared to twitter for example). So I think that the reason you and Thomas have a disagreement is because you are using the tool differently and searching for different things and I do not think that one use case will substitute the other in the long run.
- Edwin Khodabakchian
Edwin -- for me, scanning publications like Alt Search Engines, Lifehacker, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, MakeUseOf and Slashdot zones me into the most important tech developments with the maximum speed. And Google Reader and Feedly provide me with the best tools for doing that scanning. Generally I form my own opinions on new tech products and services quickly and trust my opinions. Much of...
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- Sean McBride
Sean - I think that I have the same usage pattern as you have. I think that redundancy of discussions is fine: the value of the conversation is really the connection between people and in a lot of context that connection has a lot more value to the user than the content itself (hence the growth of friendfeed and twitter)
- Edwin Khodabakchian
I agree with the post. Feedly + Greader rocks. Love commenting (on blog and Friendfeed) from my reader.
- TobiasVerhoog.com
TobiasVerhoog: I feed all my most important Friendfeed and Twitter feeds through Google Reader and Feedly -- which increases my efficiency in processing those streams 100 fold.
- Sean McBride
Edwin, the problem with traditional RSS readers is that too much crap is published. Every blog and site is guilty of this. Typically most sites only have about 10% of their content that is interesting. What your friends find interesting (and bump) in FriendFeed is more valuable than giving an equal weighting to every post on every site. Everytime someone likes or comments on an entry...
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- Thomas Hawk
Thomas -- if you stock your feed reader with the very best professional news and blog feeds available on the planet, and permit a news recommender engine like Feedly to prioritize the incoming stream for you, you will discover a superior signal to noise ratio than that available on Friendfeed. That is my experience, at any rate. There are quite a few bright people on Friendfeed, but most of the very brightest people are not present here and are better accessed through other channels.
- Sean McBride
I thought I was the only one that uses Feedly anymore. I couldn't go with out it.
- Kevin Eklund
One huge drawback of such a dedicated interface is that you can't easily share articles. In fact, now I look at it, I really wouldn't know how I could let someone else view the article I'm looking at. All I see is a print button.
- Meryn Stol
The interface and typesetting look very crisp. The tinted sidebar make it somewhat look like iTunes. Which raises the question: Where is the iTunes for news? Shouldn't the industry work on that? Where is the "Amazon" for news? Shouldn't the industry work on that?
- Meryn Stol
i think there's a lot of "iTunes for news" wannabes between aggregators, start pages and buzz trackers..challenge is tying all those together. There's still too much separation between where people start and where they consume and personalize.
- George Dearing
George, I was actually thinking of something that makes it very natural to buy something for $0.99 or so. The only option I see here is to subscribe for 3.90 per week. "Oh trust us, you'll *love* the NY Times!" - Yeah, I understand that the editor of the NY Times loves the NY Times, it's his paper! I really don't care about the Times, I care about high quality information. They should be pitching that to me.
- Meryn Stol
My number one request for FriendFeed right now? Give me this same feature for *Flickr.* Would love to be able to find more of my Flickr contacts who are on FriendFeed. Even better, give me the same Yahoo mail / Gmail functionality to invite my flickr contacts to FF via the Flickrmail system.
I know that many of my Flickr contacts are on here that I'm not even aware of. Monitoring their photos and faves via FriendFeed is vastly superior to Flickr's own "most recent contact photos" page. I wish I could add more of them. Photos are my favorite thing on FF.
- Thomas Hawk
I know that the vast majority of my Flickr contacts are *not* on FF -- but really *should* be on FF. If FF could use the Flickr API to allow me to invite all of them via flickrmail to my FF (like Yahoo mail and Gmail) this would be huge in making FF even that much better for me. I so wish more of them were on here. There are so many amazing Flickr photographers that could add so much to FF.
- Thomas Hawk
Yes please, I am way more interested in seeing new images than seeing tweets show up in 2 places.
- Bill Pennington
from twhirl
Kinda shocked the CEO of Zooomr doesn't also suggest Zooomr
- dbcohen
There are a lot of possibilities. I would love to be able to filter people based on their feeds, and groups for example. Like searching for people who have imported their flickr stream into friendfeed and who is also a member of the 'Tech Bloggers' group. Basically I would love to see them improve the way we discover people on friendfeed. Simply being able to search by netwwork would be amazing. Like tell friendfeed to list all my contacts who are also on delicious!
- Kasper Sorensen
Zooomr would be great too. But Zooomr is a far smaller service. I have a list for all Zooomr content on FF and that is manageable just with a list right now. Flickr is not. Since Zooomr basically uses Flickr's API though I'd think that if it could be done for Flickr that there would be no reason why it couldn't also be done for Zooomr. Would love that too!
- Thomas Hawk
I'd just like the ability to create a Flickr account without needing a Yahoo account - it's incredibly frustrating if you create them regularly. Yahoo have a really cumbersome sign up process.
- Martin Bryant
Academic books are $60 to $120 each and weigh many pounds. If they can get even half of the academic books ported to the Kindle this is a big win for students, even though it is expensive.
- Robert Scoble
I can imagine universities giving Kindles to first-year students or at least offering them to students at a reduced cost. I don't think we'll see a huge reduction in the price of text books, because you will still be paying for publisher costs.
- Nathan Finley
My books from school had a lot of text marked in yellow or pink, to remember what was important. I think it would take a lot to get use to using the Kindle
- Asgeir
Asgeir - you can bookmark, highlight and annotate text in Kindle
- Jamie
scoble: are the text books free then?
- Riaz Kanani
@Asgeir It is really only a matter of a couple of years that students will have NOT known that Kindles and other readers haven't always been around. To them it will be a natural to tag, search, share, etc.
- Jim Espinoza
It really is expensive. And you know textbooks are still going to cost $100+ each.
- Barry Biddlecomb
from twhirl
If the books are cut down to about half the price because of the kindle, every student will get one. I need to spend 200+ on books every quarter, and that's with buying used and looking for the best deal.
- robbie nakamura
the text books don't have to be *free*. if you spend $900 on textbooks a year (http://www.uspirg.org/higher-...), the Amazon textbooks just have to be 14% cheaper than the paper versions (saving you $126/year) for the Kindle DX to pay for itself after 4 years.
- Karim
good analysis here of why it's good for the publishers, too: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL... basically, without printing and shipping costs, they can sell books at lower cost but with a higher margin. Amazon is trying to do to books what Apple did to music. :-)
- Karim
good point karim - ebooks are cheaper typically than books.. so could be good if text books see the same level of discounting
- Riaz Kanani
so what is going to happened to libraries, if books in the future is digital?. Perhaps one day we can rent a book and read it on the Kindle?
- Asgeir
The Kindle is still a novelty until it comes with colour and supports graphic novels/comics, with backing from Marvel and DC. And drops to about $199. Then they'll be flying off the shelves. As it is now it's an expensive gimmick. What amazes me about the DX is you now need two hands to read. Can't be long until the market is flooded with cheaper, smaller alternatives. Or more likely...
more...
- Shéa Bennett
Kindle should come in 2 flavors IMHO... Wireless G and EVDO. I already have sprint internet on my phone. I won't buy a kindle to pay for a connection I already have.
- G Dub of the Carolinas
Students already have laptops: they need PDFs not another large device to lug. Physical books sell used @ 50% eBooks are new only
- Tyler Ham
My experience in the UK at least is that the ebook versions are not cheaper, can usually find printed ones heavily discounted. Although we can't actually get the Kindle, only other brands like Sony and have to buy ebooks from Waterstones or WHSmith. Will Amazon launch in UK soon?
- Steven Horner
from Nambu
I'd love something that is, well, like a book. Small and foldable. I couldn't take this on the train to read. People are used to reading books why not design to feel like one. ;-)
- Kol Tregaskes
Amazon is still only aiming this at the American market, once they go global, it will be quite a different story.
- chris demeyere
Is 500$ too much for being able to sit in the sun, save trees and finally read programming papers without code snippets getting messed up?
- Thomas Amberg
If my textbooks were available on a kindle... I'd pay up to a grand for one. The kindle is reusable from year to year... my text books... not so much. I pay just about two grand a year for text books.
- Joshua Schnell
Core texts are significantly cheaper in the UK, and unless you can resell on your core texts second hand (which you don't seem to be able to do with an electronic text in this case), it's going to be a difficult case to prove for the academic text in Kindle
- David Bird
you can resell a second-hand Kindle just like a physical book. :-) i'd guess that licensing on the DRM'ed books doesn't allow resale, but i can imagine a black market for those. how much would a freshman pay for a 4-year-old Kindle that already had every single textbook they were going to need in the next four years on it? :-) and what if the textbooks were already annotated with "this question will appear on the final" notes? NOW how much would you pay? lol
- Karim
Karim, that's genius. Could you imagine universities and colleges building them into their programs? Students would get a preloaded kindle with their course materials in 1st year. Man, that would be a game changer.
- Joshua Schnell
It's a no-brainer for all economic reasons laid out by many above commenters as replacement for dead tree textbooks. So only shoe to fall is MIT, UC Berkeley, CalTech and Princeton (above all- Bezos alma mater) to be part of a discount university marketing program launched by Amazon. Bring it on.
- Lisa thorell
I also say you should write to your readers. Know who they are and adjust if needed.
- Louis Gray
But if you're not writing, then no one's reading... ;-)
- Ewan MacLeod
The quote is about the fundamental difference between Facebook and Twitter, having to do with privacy controls. Facebook and Twitter are not competing in the same space.
- Meryn Stol
You could extend Twitter to the whole public web and social media, including blogs, Flickr and FriendFeed. Facebook is about sharing selectively, social media is about sharing with everybody,
- Meryn Stol
Couldn't agree more with both posts. Questions: Is privacy something we need? Is privacy something that Facebook can manage better than we can? Many problems just go away when individuals choose open. Or am I just being naive here?
- Eric Johnson
"Many problems just go away when individuals choose open." I couldn't agree more. Yet day-to-day reality for almost everyone in the west is that we keep at least *some* part of our life (relatively) private. You are not seeing the whole me on FriendFeed, and I don't think I'm seeing the whole of others either. But indeed, choosing to be fully public (no exceptions) with a certain aspect of your life really makes things simpler.
- Meryn Stol
Well of course I can't talk about my 007 identity...
- Eric Johnson
In theory if you write the readers will come. No always happens (just take my blog as an example lol) but you don't waste anything but time trying.
- Jason Williams