manielse (Mark Nielsen)

FriendFeed is the easiest way to share online. Learn more »

If anyone at Google is looking for something to open source, the core machine learning infrastructure (like Seti) would be very good for the world.

Tuesday - Comment - Like - Share

Michael R. Bernstein, Abhishek Tiwari, (1)Bebekvegebelik and 43 other people liked this

I agree, SETI would be great. But whoa, it would be a huge amount of work to open-source it. - Daniel Dulitz

14 more comments

Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence? - Gabe

Har har.... I assume there is ZERO chance of this ever happening. - Jay

@Jay - I suspect Paul wouldn't ask if he thought there was zero chance. Last time I remember Paul asking for something from Google to be open sourced it was their JS compiler. That took a while, but http://code.google.com/closure... - Nick Lothian

@Jay: Remember that Paul's referring to (relatively) generic infrastructure here, not search ranking code. But I think Daniel's right that it would be a *lot* of work, since most Google infrastructure is not "productized" and easy to wrap up in a bow for public release. Like any company with a lot of infrastructure, there are a lot of interdependencies that would be difficult to untangle. I think it would probably be better to simply publish papers on how it works, as with GFS, BigTable, etc. - Joel Webber

Boy, that would be a bold move Paul. Agreed that it would help out many though! - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

How about just dumping the source to the web without all the dependencies, even if it doesn't even compile? If it looks useful enough there's a good chance someone would adopt it. - Jim Norris

I suspect you're right about that, Jim. But Google would probably catch more crap about a "throwing it over the wall and letting it stagnate" open-sourcing than it's worth. But maybe I'm just down on it because Google catches crap no matter what these days... - Joel Webber

It's hard to open source distributed algorithms -- there's no obvious public standard to use, and the reasonable choices (TCP sockets? MPI?) are nothing like Google's internal infrastructure. I think a paper would be more useful than source code, the way MapReduce papers lead to Hadoop. Paul, have you looked at Vowpal Wabbit (http://hunch.net/~vw/)? It has experimental support for cluster parallelism, and I hear good things about it. - ⓞnor

Well, it doesn't have to be an either/or issue. - Jim Norris

If the code is too hard to separate from the infrastructure, then maybe a compute service like EC2 that provides an application interface specifically for solving problems with SETI could be good for both the world and good for the Google. - Bill Strathearn

@Bill: Now *that* sounds like a good idea to me, especially if accompanied by a paper describing the algorithms in use. - Joel Webber

Although technically really interesting and usefully, I do think that Google will not open source or even give inside information about such a key differentiating technology in the hands of their competitors. But I agree that it would be really great for the world. - yusuf arslan

I saw mention of JS open sourcing, did you folks see CoffeeScript yet? great stuff from Jashkenas, http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-... - Mark Essel

The value of "differentiating technology" is not in novel algorithms, but in the thousands of places where implementations of these algorithms have been fixed and customized and tuned to solve the problem at hand -- which wouldn't have to be described in a whitepaper. - Tudor Bosman

@Tudor Bosman: I do not agree that the competitive advantage is the knowledge of fine tuning and implementing the algorithms. The concept/design of Google's machine learning infrastructure is very important. Don't get me wrong, I do think that Google SHOULD open source this. But I think they WILL not because of business considerations. - yusuf arslan

Paul Buchheit

FriendFeed should be faster again. We were had some network issues which caused a lot of slowness this past week, but I think it's fixed now. Let me know if you are still encountering any extreme slowness.

October 26 - Comment - Like - Share

(1)Bebekvegebelik, Adriano, Jeremy (on vacation) and 121 other people liked this

Will this mean I'll be able to upload pictures again? EDIT This does not mean I can upload photos now. - Admiral Anika

34 more comments

Thanks for the update Paul! ;) - Merry Xmas FFeeders - AJ

Mainly just had problems with email posting and the bookmarklet. The rest seemed fairly okay. - Jason Huebel

I've been told that I'm extremely slow much of the time, but I don't think that's what you meant. Thanks for taking care of the issue, Paul. - Jim: Dead Like FF

Does seem very zippy, thanks team! - Stephen Mack

Time to time, it's slow. Overall fast (again), however. - Ozkan Altuner

I think the issues were directly related to Cristo's 11 MB PDF upload. - Louis Gray

Thank you, Paul! - Holly Rae

it looks faster now. thanks - Hakan İyice

I still see Twitter updates coming in here 10 -15 minutes later - Jorge Escobar

Thanks Paul. Much better. - Roberto Bonini

Im experiencing extreme slowness ,,,, but then again , Im 53 - johnpiercy

nice also to know your not Boarding up the Windows - johnpiercy

It did seem a little faster this afternoon. - John (a.k.a. dendroica)

The Twitter issue is a separate problem Jorge -- our realtime feed from them is gone, but we hope to get it restored soon. - Paul Buchheit

The Twitter feed went entirely???? o_O - Roberto Bonini

It would be great if you could speed up importing of Twitter feeds. The slowness has been an issue for me lately. - John (a.k.a. dendroica)

Got it, Paul. Thanks! - Jorge Escobar

Nice to know that there is indeed a problem with Twitter importing being slow, and I'm not just going crazy. - Tyson Key

Awesome news! - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Sweet - Josh Haley

Meanwhile, Dad's kids with his new wife get what kind of toys? - Matthew DeVries

Matthew, FriendFeed users have no reason to complain about our toys. And even if we did, bitterness doesn't help. - Bruce Lewis

FriendFeed is dying for me. In fact. it's just about gone. I use it as a control room and discussion space for my Twitter feed, and a searchable archive. Discussion threads are down about 80 percent. "Likes" are off about 90 percent. There's no real time feed in from Twitter any more. Sad. - Jay Rosen

Agreed, Jay. My personal life is in a bit of an upheaval right now, which hasn't helped, but the FB acquisition took the wind out of the sails for me. It feels like there's no future, or worse, a future wired up to the "friending" criteria of my Facebook account. I use the services COMPLETELY differently, however. Inbound updates continue, since they're automatic, but this is the first comment I've posted in weeks. Sad, indeed. - Ken Kennedy

+1 Jay - Daniel J. Pritchett

I am using Twitter and FB more and more lately. On the plus side, it's strengthening some real world connections. I'm missing out on the cool new stuff but I think I had gone overboard on that front. - Daniel J. Pritchett

I like FriendFeed, but I happen to find myself using Twitter and IRC more as of late. I guess I've probably just burnt myself and others out, given that I don't seem to have much in the way of compelling content and commentary these days, and that I just don't feel as motivated as I'd like to. :( - Tyson Key

Thanks - zizukabi

Thanks for the info and the update. - giuseppe c. | markgreene

Still seems to be some slowness. The Innovation Management Room (er...Group) hasn't updated for several hours: http://friendfeed.com/innovat... - Hutch Carpenter

Thanks for throwing some love over to FF :) - Susan Beebe

Is there currently an issue with posting from FF to update Facebook -or is Facebook broken after the re-design ? i dont get anything posted to FB anymore which worked fine before yd - Del_

Hi Paul, I know it has been a while since this post. But over the last 48 hours my Twitter updates have quit showing up in FF. I tried manually refreshing. Then I removed the account so I could just add it back in. When trying to do that I get the following message: "We could not find the given account" I haven't changed anything. Any thoughts on why this is happening? I haven't had any trouble until now. Thanks. - Mary-Lynn

My Twitter feed is coming into FF much faster now - thanks! *Edit - Blog feed, too! - Kurt Starnes

Ah, yes, search is much faster now. Thank you. - April Russo (app103)

Robert Scoble

Prediction for 2010: FriendFeed is going to see a resurgence.

Tuesday from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Flavio, ElijahBailey-Zu of FF <0,, 拓 | wavesand and 78 other people liked this

What's the rationale? - Pavan

60 more comments

Really?! - Michael Liss

I hope this prediction turns to be 100% true. - ashish from iPhone

I think this prediction's outcome might fall into the hands of Facebook. We'll see what they do with the property this year. - Andrew Dobrow

Funny that this comes from Twitter. =D - Junebug (aka Sarah Jill)

ROFL. - Derrick

So is RSS if we're going to follow Robert's logic. - Jimminy Fuller

HOW TO SPOT COMMENT BAIT IN 100 EASY STEPS — STEP 1: DID IT COME FROM ROBERT SCOBLE? STEPS 2-100: REPEAT STEP 1. - Akiva Moskovitz

already happening, yo - Josh Haley

it started surging (again) after ppl let the knowledge of fb purchase fall into the bits of history pages - chaz2b

Lets cross our fingers - polou/indigo_bow

This is SO an experiment on Scoble's part. - Jeremy (on vacation)

WTF is FriendFeed? - David Cohn

Rational, Twitter usage is flattening, people are finally figuring out that Twitter sucks for having a conversation. People though Friendfeed was hard to use, try having to install several software 'crutches' to be able to use Twitter productively without even half the functionality as Freindfeed. - Jeff P. Henderson

if you say so... - MobilAdam

Either this is tounge in cheek or Robert really hasn't gotten over our breakup... Robert, I hope we can still be friends but we have to move on and grow... FriendFeed will always love you, but we need some 'us' time to find out who 'we' are... *cues The Bodygaurd soundtrack*... *walks out into the rain, adjusts collar, walks off down the road*... *fade to black, credits* - Johnny Worthington from iPhone

LOL Johnny! - Jeff P. Henderson

Best Christmas present ever! - Jemm

Comment bait. Even Robert can't generate interest these days. - Russellreno

I agree. Friendfeed is for those who need more from a 2d interface. Until there spatial interface is there, Friendfeed is on top of the pyramid (especially when one knows how to use it best). - Kirill Bolgarov

Up - Luca Perugini from iPhone

*slow-mo head shake* - Micah Wittman from iPhone

Too funny! Johnny and Akiva -- you guys crack me up. - Mathew A. Koeneker

I would agree with a few here and say that FriendFeed is already resurging, Robert. #friendfeed - Kol Tregaskes

AMEN! - zʍıɔ

The stats don't agree though: http://thenextweb.com/2009... - Kol Tregaskes

it's like drunk dialing an ex-girlfriend... - Aron Michalski from BuddyFeed

i guess so too.. - Daniele - Viralavatar

so too :) - ★ Soner Gönül

Agreed wholeheartedly Robert - Roberto Bonini

Akiva: lol, Kol: that article only looks at unique visitors, and doesn't consider user hours. - Mike Chelen

:) @ Aron - sums it up perfectly... - 1x29

Lets hope so ... Miss some of my old peeps :) - Charlie Anzman

I'm surprised Robert made this statement but I find it very interesting in the change of view and wonder what has changed his mind or if he knows more info. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

The unpredictably erratic Scobot is at it again... - Ciro

Well, after glancing at his Twitter timeline, he's just making a bunch of joke predictions. I'd like to think that there's some truth in this one though... - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Sniffs... Do you smell that? It's what we used to call a troll. Robert is getting dangerously close to becoming irrelevent. - Jason Williams from iPhone

Robert is waiting until 2010 to respond to this thread. :) - Louis Gray

I told you so - Jesse Stay

Kol: the *stat* doesn't agree (note the singular) - Jesse Stay

Well, since I'm ready organizing the elections for the best Dutch blogs I can say the resurgence already started last week. ;-) - Ton Zijp

Kol: Here are many more stats that imply the contrary: http://staynalive.com/article... - Jesse Stay

Excellent idea. - Richard A. from FreshFeed

Scoble - I disagree ONLY because I think that FriendFeed activity is already migrating to Facebook via deeper integration over there but I'm wiling to hear you out (as are the other 40+ people commenting here). Do share why you think this is true? - Aaron Strout

I wrote this tweet for Twitter, not for FriendFeed. But nice to see you all! :-) - Robert Scoble

Jason: I'm definitely irrelevant if the people calling me irrelevant don't even have 1,000 subscribers. Sigh. - Robert Scoble

I actually see FriendFeed growing instead of slowing and there will also be new enhancements. A testing ground for Facebook. Just to expand, Robert's still the man! - amarquart

Akiva wins the internets with this mathematical formula for spotting comment bait. - Nicholas Kreidberg

You think we're fighting, I think we're finally talking! -all in one page - Tim Jones

Funny, when I write, I write for everyone, everywhere - Johnny Worthington

Beat ya to it Robert: http://friendfeed.com/jhuebel... And the resurgence is already happening. - Jason Huebel

@Jason Williams, wow that's the pot calling the kettle black, doncha think? Robert's not a troll. - Jason Huebel

@Kol, somebody mentioned that those stats often only consider US visitors (why that would be, I don't know). FF's non-US contingent has grown tremendously, so that graph may not show the whole picture. - Jason Huebel

Akiva wins the thread. - Mark Davidson from BuddyFeed

let's hope so - I love the darn thing - Arthur Coleman

I'm finding that FriendFeed is fiendishly sticky. On Twitter lists do help, they make twitter better and all but but but-but I think a lot of users are getting more sophisticated in their web usage faster than Twitter can evolve their tech. Louis Grey recently postulated that even if there is no interaction on FriendFeed it makes complete sense to stay riding this horse. That got me... more... - JSLeFanu

Dude..... I totally hope you're right, but not too sure about this! LOL Explain your rationale please :) - Susan Beebe

i agree with the original prediction. by the way, what's a resurgence? is it different than insurgents? :-) - Morgan Haley

Morgan - the insurgents never left ... ;-p - Robyn Hawk

Jason, OK. Good. :-) - Kol Tregaskes

I'll stay one faithful user, for those "outside the US" stats. Still feature plenty, still enjoyable. Still effective. Thanks for rallying the troops again Robert. Bring the hopes, and forget the ropes! 8) - ElijahBailey-Zu of FF <0,

like Elijah - maxilprof

Jesse Stay

Sharing on Facebook vs. Sharing on Twitter - http://www.labnol.org/interne...

Wednesday from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

I'd now like to see the results for sharing on FriendFeed - Jesse Stay

2 more comments

Well it would be a fraction of that 20% "Other Social" but one thing it wouldn't account for is that it would also gather links from peoples Twitter and Facebook accounts if they've enabled. But it's a much smaller (but better) community. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

On a per capita basis I think FriendFeed has more sharing than both sites together. FriendFeed is naturally all about sharing. - Jesse Stay

You're probably right on a per capita basis but my view has always been that FF is naturally all about engagement as a group whereas Twitter's lack of threads leads it to be a better place to share links with much less depth to discuss the topic. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Jesse Stay

I don't get why people feel they need to copy my ideas when the underlying code is open source. Why not just help out rather than duplicate?

Wednesday from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Alex Scrivener, James Williams, VAL D. Zone and 9 other people liked this

Wikipedia entries :) - Johnny Worthington from iPhone

6 more comments

Imitation is the most sincere form flattery.... or so they say. - Andrew Terry

For me, re-use would be the most sincere form of flattery. Imitation is just being unoriginal and unproductive. - Jesse Stay

Because duplicating is much easier than having to figure out someone else's code. It's faster, so yes, it is more productive. - Peter

I think it's a control thing (in both directions actually). The originator feels entitled to owning the property of the idea. And though I don't disagree with that, I don't believe that software patents/crushing imitators is the answer as it gives the originator a motivating factor to improve on one's service. On the other hand, the copycat feels that they can improve the original's idea in ways that should transform it to a new product. Plus new every idea is usually built off of someone else's foundation. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Peter, there's a difference between duplicating someone's code and duplicating someone's idea. Duplicating code is faster, yes, and I actually encourage that, so long as they adhere to the GPL and give back the changes they make. Duplicating ideas is completely unproductive, reinvents the wheel, and splits communities that could all be focusing on one effort. - Jesse Stay

Mark, if it's open source, yeah, technically there is one originator, but nothing's stopping anyone from forking it and working towards their own goals and controlling their fork. At least in that regard they're contributing back to the original code base if the original code owner wants to use that code. That beats the heck out of just completely rewriting it from scratch and copying the idea. - Jesse Stay

I agree with Jesse, duplicate the Code and if you make changes to code..reshare as GPL status. - Peter Dawson

LANjackal

My Droid experience thread

November 6 from IM - Comment - Like - Share

Imabug, Eph Zero, Fred Yankowski and 34 other people liked this

First of all, I love it :) - LANjackal from IM

65 more comments

Weight: solidly built, but dense. Smaller than it looks in pictures - LANjackal from IM

Physical Keyboard: I don't know what reviewers were complaining about, this is actually pretty damn good. The only part that's not so great is the optional protective hard shell makes the top row of keys a bit hard to press because it consumes the "overflow" space that your fingers would normally have - LANjackal from IM

On screen keyboard: OK, but there's not much reason to use it - LANjackal from IM

Battery life: hard to say yet - LANjackal from IM

The only major niggle I have with the Droid is that so far I can't figure out how to make it vibrate to notify me of incoming SMS when the handset is locked and the ring volume is silenced. If I don't figure that out I'm gonna miss a LOT of text messages at work, which is not good :/ - LANjackal from IM

All charged up! Despair's (my Droid's Bluetooth name) first night on the town. He's already texted one girl and called another from his Contacts, which is fully integrated with my Facebook account (profile, pics, email addresses, phone numbers). This last part is absolutely amazing. Wish us well, I'll tell you more tomorrow when we embark on a 16h bar crawl (no joke) - LANjackal

WOW. I have never set a custom ringtone this easily in my life. 1)Drag and drop song into phone from Windows Explorer (where it shows up as removable disk). 2)Go to Music App, which automagically finds ALL songs on the phone, regardless of location 3)Select track 4)Select "Set as ringtone". DONE. A-mazing, especially for a Verizon device (walled garden anyone?) - LANjackal

"...especially for a Verizon device (walled garden anyone?)" They would had to have fucked with normal Android functionality. Have you tried, "Ringdroid," I think it's called? -- for editing audio on the handset. Perhaps there's something better now. - Christopher A Carr

Idk about that, don't need audio editing capability - LANjackal from Android

Google Navigation: perfection. Period. Integrates with browser which integrates with calendar so I can nav my way directly to GCal event locations - LANjackal from Android

My buddy BR just picked one up himself. Verdict: fucking awesome - LANjackal from Android

Wi-Fi: works awesome. Using it @ a pool hall now - LANjackal from Android

*WANT*! - Travis Koger

Good hardware, presently. I would flash a fancier ROM. - Christopher A Carr

I'm not going to throw down money until there is a 1 GhZ device. Soon. In 1/2 years, people who have this phone are going to feel silly. - Christopher A Carr

... or we'll just get a new one? Handsets are salable dude. - LANjackal

Speed: (because Chris Carr brought it up). The Droid is plenty fast. Speed is not an issue. - LANjackal

Battery Life: Very good, but I'd bring my charger if I were going out of town for a weekend (I always do that anyway, so I don't consider than an issue) - LANjackal

Browser: Faaaast. I don't miss the pinch multitouch capability reviewers have been bemoaning the lack of, since the high resolution means that 95% of pages are readable as is in the first place, and there's a handy zoom-in/zoom-out icon that pops up at the lower right of the screen - LANjackal

UNPLEASANT SURPRISE: That charging cable that you think is a mini-USB cable? It's NOT. I don't WTF the port on the side of the Droid is, but it won't accept any other cable than the one that shipped with the device. Disappointing, but not a dealbreaker IMO - LANjackal

Fancier ROM idea: If you wanna go for it, sure. However, my phone is one of those device (like my car) that I expect to just WORK, 100% of the time. Don't wanna risk bricking it, but if you wanna do that go right ahead. - LANjackal

Contact management: This is simply the best implementation thereof you will ever come across, not only on phones but on ANY device. Full syncing of Google Contacts and your Facebook friends (all relevant fields, even job titles and pics from Facebook profiles), automatic duplicate entry handling, with search, email ... you name it. This is one thing the Droid beats everything else at. No competition. - LANjackal

Camera: It's not the best, but it'll do. Besides, cameras like those are merciful to those who aren't naturally photogenic like me. - LANjackal

Audio quality: Angelic. I know this sounds like an overstatement, but wait till you hear it. The audio on this device is just stunning. Everything else you've ever heard will sound like static afterwards in comparison - LANjackal

Does it use a regular audio connector, or a custom one like the older Android phones? - Mistletoe Glen from iPod

Regular connector - LANjackal from IM

Visual Voicemail is great, but if you have an active Wi-Fi connection it won't be able to sync. Which it tells you nicely. Perhaps Google Voice fixes that problem. Beginning to wish I had a GV account now. Oh well. Invite, anyone? - LANjackal

I still can't get over the monthly fee for visual voicemail. Sigh. - Mistletoe Glen

That's only if you have a 450min plan. The one I have has VVM rolled in... I think. Billing info isn't very clear on that, I'll see what my first new bill looks like when it comes - LANjackal from IM

VZW has the weird setup where feature prices vary BOTH by plan AND phone. For example, VZ Navigator is free on some phones but paid on others. I *think* Visual Voicemail's included with the data plan when you get a Droid - LANjackal

More on battery life: Charging takes a while (1.5h from 50% to full). Definitely enough for overnight, but people who rely on fast charge times will be in for a surprise. I'm really anal about charging, so I don't find this an issue. Less "responsible" users (read: college girls) whose phones are permanently "about to die" will run into trouble :P - LANjackal

Hmmm, not true mini-USB, slight disappointment. How loud are the ringtones and the call itself? Do you think the phone will feel weird with an extended battery? Do you experience any lag that has been reported in apps? Can't wait to have in hand next week! - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Lan: You want a GV invite? Think I still have one or tww. How do you like Stanford pounding the shit out of Oregon? Wow. - Christopher A Carr

Why do you say it's not true mini-USB? That contradicts what I've been told by a Googler who's been using the phone since August. - Mistletoe Glen

It may be a smaller USB connector than the "mini" one I'm used to. Phone ringtones are LOUD. So is the call volume. I don't know any phone that doesn't feel weird with an extended battery. - LANjackal from IM

Lag: bear in mind that you're dealing with a mini-computer that happens to be able to make calls, not a phone in the traditional sense. As with a PC, the more apps you run, the more lag you may notice (1 -2s sometimes, "missed" touches). In normal operation with mission critical apps though, there is no lag. I'd STRONGLY suggest Taskiller though, as the OS never seems to really kill... more... - LANjackal from IM

Battery Life Report: During a drinking marathon today filled with heavy use of web browsing, FB app friend adding, taking (and uploading) pics, texting, email checking, calling, hopping on and off free Wi-Fi, etc. the Droid lasted *drumroooooooollllll* 11 HOURS. Terrible for a phone, but pretty good for what's essentially a pocket computer. Word to the wise: the car charging kit? Get it. An extra USB cable for charging at work is a pretty good call too - LANjackal

Correction about the USB connector. It's a micro-B one, NOT a min-B one, which is why the other cable I had wasn't working. So yes, it IS a standard USB cable. Sorry to have mislead anyone - LANjackal

Nice feature: automagical backlighting that turns on and off in response to ambient light (even when going through shadows) - LANjackal

Camera: I take back what I said about it earlier. This is pretty much the BEST party camera ever. Reviewers who complained about the pic quality were simply taking the wrong pics. No one uses smartphones to take pics of flowers idiots. They use 'em to take pics at parties. The important thing is how skin tone and color come out WITHOUT being too revealing (trust me, no one wants to see... more... - LANjackal

Battery life: so my buddy BR who got one is complaining about the battery life also. And his phone was almost always dead BEFORE the Droid, so I can only imagine what the situation is like now - LANjackal

Another niggle: No character count for text message composition - LANjackal

UPDATE: OTA update will fix the SMS character count problem (exactly how that passed internal testing, I don't know) - LANjackal

UPDATE on Visual Voicemail: I checked with VZW today and it really does cost $2.99 extra per month. Thanks to Chris' Carr, though, I installed Google Voice, so I chucked VVM. - LANjackal

Bug: Google Navigation may forget to use the speakerphone at times. I think this happens if you attempt to navigate while the phone is in portrait orientation - LANjackal

On the no character count for test messages --- doesn't it show you how many characters you have left when you get close to the 160 allowed? - Kevin Mohr

I read that it does, but so far I haven't sent anything that long so I haven't seen for myself - LANjackal

Worried about the Droid's 11h battery life? 1) Get the car charger 2) Head over to Monoprice.com and get a micro-B USB 2.0 cable for your office for all of *gasp* <$3, shipping included. Then you'll be able to charge at home, in the car, and in the office. - LANjackal

Wait, an extra fee for VVM? That's just as lame as the extra fee for VZW Navigator. - Wirehead

Not if you were on a Premium plan like I was. VZ Navigator's free then. Unfortunately, Premium plans are unavailable for the Droid, so you have to drop down to a Nationwide Select plan and then tack on a data package. This keeps the service affordable, but it means that VVM's not included. Don't really get VZ's thinking behind this one, although they probably reason that anyone who's savvy enough can get Google Voice anyway while the "average" users will lose $36/year to VVM. - LANjackal

Droid lost 3G functionality this morning. How to restore: 1) With Droid still on, remove battery for 15 seconds 2) Replace battery 3) Turn Droid on. 3G should be restored - LANjackal from IM

Guess who got his Droid set up on the office Wi-Fi and VPN today? It took all of 3 minutes, no management approval and just a verbal request to the IT guy. Turns out he got a Droid himself, so he breezed through the setup and handed it back to me. So yeah, if you were worried about joining domain networks and whatnot, don't be - the Droid is ready for work - LANjackal

OK so after a few weeks of use, several bugs have become apparent: - LANjackal

1) This probably applies to all smartphones that can run multiple apps simultaneously, but active task management is a serious necessity if you're a power user. That means manually killing apps/processes that you aren't using to prevent your phone from becoming laggy. I recommend the Task Manager app - LANjackal

2) Switching between Wi-Fi and 3G sometimes isn't seemless. The Droid will sometimes forget it's a 3G device when moving out of Wi-Fi coverage, and similarly not automatically connect to a familiar network when it's within range. - LANjackal

3) The micro-B USB 2.0 port has become really loose over numerous plug-unplug cycles. It's now possible to plug the device in and have nothing happen because the connections aren't being made (This is solved by a little jiggling). To be fair, most USB ports weren't designed for this many plugging cycles, but for a device that needs as much charging as this you'd *hope* the port was a bit sturdier - LANjackal

4) Phone ringtone volume sometimes goes out of whack. Solved by simply re-entering the relevant menu, which seems to "remind" the handset what level it should be at - LANjackal

5) Plugging the phone into an HP docking station before booting the laptop will cause the laptop to fail to boot. I'm not sure whose fault this is. - LANjackal

And now for the good news: - LANjackal

1) Contrary to what the SF Gate guy said in that article I'm too lazy to link to, Google Navigate IS SAFE to use in the boonies. Verizon's 3G coverage is beyond amazing, I traveled through some of the most sparsely populated regions in the country today with no problems. The phone lost the GPS signal a few times (regained within seconds) but never lost 3G coverage - LANjackal

Another tip: turning the screen brightness down to the lowest level improved battery life a LOT - LANjackal

So @LANjackal, around Google Navigate, are you saying there's a map for that? :-) - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Pretty much, yes :) - LANjackal

I just set one up on Exchange. it's FAST. sadly no it was not my phone....I only had about 5 min to look at it. - Mike Nencetti

So one of the funny things about the DROID's contact syncing with Facebook and Google is that you can't edit any contacts that exist in your Facebook friends list only. You have to add a new contact on the phone with the same name as the Facebook friend, after which the phone will automagically merge the two. I suspect the reason for this is that although the phone imports your Facebook friends into Google Contacts, it's only a 1-way street ... - LANjackal

Therefore any changes made to a contact that exists only on FB would be reflected only on the phone and could be lost if something happened to the phone itself. The solution to this is obvious (import all FB friends into Google Contacts, treat them as immediately editable there), but for now that's how it is - LANjackal

Mark Krynsky

Sure Grandma doesn't know what RSS is but she doesn't know what AJAX is either and uses it every day.

Monday from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Ladybug Heather, Susan Beebe, anjelina and 19 other people liked this

True, true. http://www.flickr.com/photos... - Micah Wittman

7 more comments

You know, without RSS, I'd have to use bookmarks again. And I really hate using bookmarks... - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Yes MIcah...I was waiting for who would be the first person to show me that. - Mark Krynsky

Grandma doesn't know what day it is, but damn she still beats the pants off of most scrabble players. - Uncle CW™

All the people who think RSS is dead and that blogging is dead should shut off their Internet connections and go read the newspaper. - Louis Gray

You tell 'em Louis. Except I'd change "go read the newspaper" to "shut your pieholes". - Mark Krynsky

Well, there was that cleaning product... she must know some about Ajax, just not the right details ;p - ElijahBailey-Zu of FF <0,

Mark, I was scheming how to asynchronously display that image with Javascript and XML (er, wut? - it's all JSON all the time!!) - Micah Wittman

Well, I know a few grandmas that can sling code with the best of them, but I take your meaning. Mainstream users don't know about HTTP, HTML, CSS, SMTP, POP3, TCP/IP, Javascript, Python, PHP, Perl, or for that matter what a browser is. - Michael R. Bernstein

manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Sold my Oracle stock today for a 27% profit, Happy Birthday to me! :-)

Monday - Comment - Like - Share

Jemm liked this

happy birthday! - metalerik

Thanks Erik! - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Alex Scoble

Such is life...Was diagnosed with a hernia in my groinal area the day before we go to Jamaica

December 19 from IM - Comment - Like - Share

"Bitkisel diyet", Bryan R. Adams, Chieze Okoye and 13 other people liked this

dang. sorry to hear that, Alex - imabonehead

37 more comments

Not serious enough to require surgery yet, just mildy to moderately painful...also required me to buy bigger pants - Alex Scoble from IM

Ouch sorry to hear Alex - Rasmus Lauridsen

Man, that wedding night must have been GOOD! - Spidra Webster

You're not canceling your trip, are you? - imabonehead

Spidra beat me to the punch. Very sorry to hear that, Alex. - Jim: Dead Like FF

Hell to the naw!! Don't be crazy!! Hehe - Alex Scoble from IM

Drink more rum. Sorry to hear, hope it heals quickly. Enjoy Jamaica mon. - Eric Logan

In all seriousness, I'm sorry you've got a hernia and hope it heals up soonest. - Spidra Webster

:( My friend had 2 in the lower back but went to Twain anyway. Came back and had surgery then. :) - Rachel Lea Fox

Dang. :( - Laura B.

And +1 for "groinal." - Laura B.

I thought you guys would like that :) - Alex Scoble from IM

That sucks sack man... Be well and have a good time - Johnny Worthington from iPhone

Johnny just called me sack man - Alex Scoble from IM

Oh, forgot the comma... 'That sucks sack, man' :) - Johnny Worthington from iPhone

It was funnier without the comma :) - Alex Scoble from IM

Crikey. Enjoy yourself nonetheless, and we'll see you on the otherside. - Derrick

Thanks, Johnny and all - Alex Scoble from IM

Oh, that stinks. Good thing the water is warm there. =) Enjoy your honeymoon. - Admiral Anika

dam it to hell - VAL D. Zone

Weren't you just golfing? - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Hehehe, heavens no...that was my two brothers having fun in the sun in Half Moon Bay today...I don't golf - Alex Scoble from IM

This is going to be stuck in my head now, with slightly altered lyrics http://www.youtube.com/watch... - Ken Sheppardson

Sack Man is even funnier considering it's a groinal hernia. /14-year-old - Spidra Webster

That was a groiner, Spidra :) - Alex Scoble from IM

Oh, man. :( Sorry to hear that! Hope you can get some relaxing time in Jamaica. - Rochelle

*sigh* sorry about all the juvenile comments you've had to endure at this, your time of need, Alex. To poke fun at a man and his bulging [redacted] when he's on his honeymoon! For shame, FFers, for shame! Hope you have a great time and get your bits back into shape when you get back. - WorldofHiglet

If you can't laugh at your own groin, you can't laugh - Alex Scoble from IM

Alex, truer words were never spoken. - Laura B.

I suppose it's better than other people laughing at your groin :) - WorldofHiglet

:( - Steven Perez

Hope you'll be alright - Kamilah Gill

Get well, dewd. - Jeremy (on vacation)

:-( - Kol Tregaskes

ouch. I guess the only consolation is that the procedure is done via keyhole now, rather than the "slash 'em 'n' stitch 'em" method that was common when I had mine done! - Andrew Terry

Be careful an be safe. Try to have fun - Rodfather

You'll be feeling irie in no time, mon. - Josh Haley from iPhone

yikes, that's no good. Sorry to hear it - Chieze Okoye

Veronica

Looking forward to going home to Connecticut this week and having an actual white Christmas! I'm sure I will be sick of snow 20 min. later.

December 19 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

rowlikeagirl, Amy, ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ and 5 other people liked this

Yeah, I feel ya - i'll be back in NH thursday for a week... already dreading it - Chris Heath

12 more comments

Cool, have a nice Christmas Veronica - Fee501st from iPhone

I don't like winter very much but it wouldn't be the same without snow. - Sylvain Nadeau

I'm in Central Mass....waiting for snow and already sick of it - Phil B.

Best of luck with flights. Say hi to NY for me. - Dave Friedel from Android

Are you going dark this week or would a week without tech lead to withdrawals? I think I'd be 5150'd around day three... - Thomas from FreshFeed

she has her iphone, as long as the battery will last... dun dun dunnnn... - Fee501st

I'm expecting her to make tech gadgets out of snow once she cracks. - Carlos Urrutia

its been snowing here on LI NY for hours now and its a mighty blizzard and a Northeaster to boot - VAL D. Zone

They do have broadband in Connecticut. It's not like it's off the grid. If she's not at home, she'll be in a snowy Dunk. Most of them have free wifi. - Dave Friedel

We're going to NYC. I'm really looking forward to it, and kind of glad it may be white, but I'm not looking forward to the cold temperatures. California has seriously thinned my blood. Highs in the low 30s sounds scary. - Laura Norvig from iPod

@Dave LOL, yes we have broadband here in CT and run on Dunkin'. :-) - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

I used to live in Providence, the center of the Dunk universe. - Dave Friedel

snow tends to lose its charm after a while... - WarLord

Louis Gray

And in other news, FriendFeed, Facebook and Google Reader are still up. Poor Twitter....

December 17 from Facebook - Comment - Like - Share

Crutis, Philippe, Victor Panlilio and 34 other people liked this

Welp. Here we are! How's tricks, Louis? =) - Jolie O'Dell

47 more comments

Them tricks be played out! :) - Louis Gray

I see Twitter being down, for many folks, like a power outage. Everyone stops... rubs their eyes, looks around, and eventually picks up a book. :) - Louis Gray

Pretty much. I was polling people about something, but I guess I could go... uh... - Jolie O'Dell

Hacked by "Iranian Cyber Army" according to TechCrunch -http://www.techcrunch.com/2009... - Atul Arora

I am mainly curious to see if Google/Feedburner will automatically tweet my new blog post now. That's why I even found out, because I checked. - Louis Gray

Yes, Atul. (See the Google Reader share on my feed) - Louis Gray

Louis - my bad. Was lazy not to scroll down to the bottom of the screen :) - Atul Arora

...and I'm sure FriendFeed, Facebook, and Google Reader are seeing increased traffic just right now. - Claudio Sennhauser

Then you should be using Lazyfeed! http://www.lazyfeed.com. :) - Louis Gray

I got an error from DISQUS when I posted to your blog - Ankush Narula

Totally. Where else we gonna go? FriendFeed is, in that sense and to some people, like Twitter's less hot but totally more willing friend. Dang. - Jolie O'Dell

Ankush, I got your comment, successfully. - Louis Gray

Yes, no one will hack FriendFeed. - Jose Alvear

Jolie, FriendFeed is much hotter, but there is an entrance fee and bouncers. - Louis Gray

++ Louis. - Micah Wittman

yes... it posted to DISQUS... but I get a cross-site pop-up from DISQUS that wanted me to reconfigure my twitter connection - Ankush Narula

Are we still talking about apps?? - WorldofHiglet

Louis is right - I've seen peeps get bounced. Good times :) - Micah Wittman

Question is: How many blog posts will get written about it? And how many will have BREAKING in the headline? And... what's the point? :) - Louis Gray

Isn't a daily Twitter outage almost expected these days... - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

This seems like a bit more than the regular outage. Am I wrong? - David Damore

oh one more ... Twitter is like a really hot chick with a heart condition and tendency to get raped every now and then... - Ankush Narula

A tendency to get raped... Yup. I'm definitely over the Internet for tonight. Peace, y'all! - Jolie O'Dell

I predict FriendFeed traffic back up this month :-) - Jesse Stay

Why isn't there ever a Farmville outage, it has more people and money is even involved.... - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Louis, my question is how will you ironically work the word BREAKING into one of your blog posts by tomorrow. *taps toe...* - Micah Wittman

Is it a requirement, Micah? - Louis Gray

Interesting that http://search.twitter.com/ seems to be working fine. - David Damore

++Micah. - MaryB, BrandingBroadOfFF from iPhone

BREAKING HEADLINE: Twitter is currently DEAD. Scoble is not getting smarter right now! - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

nice - Ankush Narula

The phrase "twitter is down" shows results from third party clients, but none from Web. http://search.twitter.com/search... - Louis Gray

looks like a DNS poisoning attack: curl -H'Host: twitter.com' http://66.147.242.88 - Paul Lindner

Tech Crunch: "Update III: It is suggested that if you use the same password on your Twitter account with other accounts, now would be a good time to change your password on those other accounts. Because of the scale of this hack, it can only be assumed right now that Twitter has been completely compromised." - David Damore

Louis, yes, it's practically required now - MaryB voted on it! - Micah Wittman

Somehow, I just got a new Twitter follower 1 minute ago. :) - Louis Gray

Was it @IranianCyberArmy ? - Ankush Narula

hehe - WorldofHiglet

Back up for me - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

And now that Twitter's back up, I'm going down for the night. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

So do we now know how long Robert Scoble can hold his breath? - Keith Rowland

FriendFeed is pretty lame... I'm switching back to twitter... - Ankush Narula

"friendship to everyone" in your bio out of date? :D - Micah Wittman

:-D - Ankush Narula

Google Reader is borked in Chrome at the moment. - Raphael, Raphael

That's unpossible! - Louis Gray

I'm as surprised as you. - Raphael, Raphael

Well not completely. For my main use of Friendfeed, it's not. I use FF to update Twitter accounts (several) from Yahoo Pipes, and it stopped working almost 24 hours ago. - Ignacio Rodriguez de R,

manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Twitter, It’s Time to Open Source Your API http://staynalive.com/article...

December 17 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Jesse Stay liked this

Jesse, do have a script that auto-likes anything that has stayalive.com articles? LOL - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

2 more comments

Nope - I do that manually. It's my way of saying thanks for sharing. - Jesse Stay

I know, I was being funny as I noticed you never like any other news I share. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

If you see something particularly good that I shouldn't be missing don't hesitate to DM me - I mostly skim my feed and can some times miss things. I love pointing out the good stuff! - Jesse Stay

April Russo (app103) to April's feed, Code Junkies, Coders, programming, Software Development, OpenFF, Appetite

Important message from Michael "Monty" Widenius (creator of MySQL): Help saving MySQL (please share!) - http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2009...

December 13 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

John E. Bredehoft, Tyson Key, PasqualeB and 9 other people liked this

"I, Michael "Monty" Widenius, the creator of MySQL, is asking you urgently to help save MySQL from Oracle's clutches. Without your immediate help Oracle might get to own MySQL any day now. By writing to the European Commission (EC) you can support this cause and help secure the future development of the product MySQL as an Open Source project. What this text is about: - Summary of what is happening - What Oracle has not promised - Oracles past behavior with Open Source - Help spread this information (Jump to 'What I want to ask you to do') - Example of email to send to the commission (Jump to 'send this to:')" - April Russo (app103) from Bookmarklet

12 more comments

This guy is a joke. Telling us this after selling out to Sun for the big money. - Itachi

Besides, who needs this talk from him? MySQL has been forked and open sourced. The superior Postgre SQL is also there. Sorry, but I can't read this without a certain level of contempt for him - Itachi

A lot of what he is asking for are changes to the license in order to enable forking. Monty is concerned that Oracle will control too much of MySQL, to a degree that puts forks at risk. - Jason Wehmhoener

From the comments Monty says: "About fork; Yes, Monty Program Ab is actively, together with the community, working on the MariaDB fork. However, as mentioned in my previous blog, under the current conditions this fork is not enough to ensure that MySQL/MariaDB will be kept alive 'forever' and be able to put price constraints on the market, if Oracle would decide that it wants to kill... more... - Jason Wehmhoener

Although I'd hate to see the end of MySQL, Monty knew that selling the project to "any" company was a risk of it's future. I'm sorry but this is not up to the community to decide, all we can do is encourage the owner to keep it alive and hopefully continue with new developments. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

#yawn - LANjackal

I have seen it too many times that a big company buys a competing product or company with the full intention of damaging or killing it, in order to make their own product more profitable. Yes, it is a rather monopolistic practice, but in most cases there is nothing you can do about it. This time is a little different. You can have a say in whether this should be allowed to happen to... more... - April Russo (app103)

Worst case scenario? The code gets forked and a new open source project is started to maintain MySQL. It may have to be renamed, but who cares? - Jason Huebel

There is actually one such project already: drizzle. It's geared toward web-based applications and cloud computing, but that's what MySQL is used for 99% of the time anyway, right? The other 1% could migrate to PostgreSQL. To be honest, if they need anything beyond what an average website would need, they're probably already using PostgreSQL anyway. - Jason Huebel

There is also MariaDB (http://askmonty.org/wiki...) which is a community supported and maintained version of MySQL that uses Maria as it's default storage engine (which is an updated version of MyISAM). - Jason Huebel

Hi Jason H. There's a comment up above from me that is a pasted quote from Monty addressing his fears for the future of MariaDB. - Jason Wehmhoener

@Jason, ah I somehow missed that. I'm beginning to look seriously at drizzle now, anyway. I like some of the architectural decisions they're making, with the idea of a micro kernel and modularization of most of the features. - Jason Huebel

First time I've really looked at bzr in use. Interesting dvcs, there. - Jason Wehmhoener

Jesse Stay

FriendFeed will now automatically post all your updates from status update services to Facebook if the FF app's installed:

December 17 - Comment - Like - Share

Stanislas Jourdan, esragunel, jswi_jim and 40 other people liked this

From: http://www.facebook.com/apps... - Jesse Stay

17 more comments

Who said the FriendFeed team wasn't working on new updates to FriendFeed? - Jesse Stay

Hey Benjamin, do these go out as actual status updates on Facebook, or do they just get added to the stream (via stream.publish)? I think that makes a big difference on whether I install this or not (I removed Twitter awhile back because it was overwhelming my friends). Another option, which I know isn't available via the API yet, would be to set a preference on which friends or friend lists see the status updates. Then it wouldn't matter. - Jesse Stay

stream.publish is used for all the API calls. Status updates (FriendFeed entries not made via the bookmarklet, Twitter entries, Google Talk, etc.) become status updates on Facebook. Things that aren't status updates (Google Reader shares, the bookmarklet, etc.) also use stream.publish but without the "message" parameter, just a link attachment (and thus aren't status updates on Facebook). Anything with images will have media attached as well - Benjamin Golub

For make benefit glorious facebookistan. - EricaJoy

Thanks Benjamin - that makes sense - Jesse Stay

Benjamin, any plans to enable the bookmarklet to update the Facebook status? - Louis Gray

Louis: since the bookmarklet implies you are sharing a link, no. It still will be published to Facebook, just not as a status update :) - Benjamin Golub

Rats. :) - Louis Gray

Sorry :). The "message" part of a status update is supposed to be the user's words. Most of the time when you are using the bookmarklet it's just the page's title. A work around is to just visit friendfeed.com and copy/paste the URL along with whatever you want as your status. That will become a Facebook status update. - Benjamin Golub

I wish FriendFeed had a backwards compatible way for me to upload photos and share them. Their photo uploader thingy won't work through a proxy, so I can't share photos here. :( - Otto

playing around with this now. - (jeff)isageek

Something I am confused about is exactly which services will and will not be status updates. There are some that I would prefer not to become facebook status updates and some I am cool with. I am not cool with my twitter @replies becoming status updates, nor am I cool with things like Disqus or Backtype becoming one. Do you plan on adding some sort of preferences for users to be able to fine tune this? - April Russo (app103)

agree with april would love to see some way that my @reply messages on twitter do not become my status messages on facebook - (jeff)isageek

April: basically things that don't have a link (unless the link is *in* the message) are status updates. For example if you typed "check this out" and put a link in the box and hit post that is a status update. But if you shared using Google Reader or have a feed setup to pull in your blog posts those are not status updates. - Benjamin Golub

OK, got it. Still would like to see some preferences similar to what is currently available for posting updates to twitter, to fine tune this and filter out @replies. I am likely to make all my friends and family on facebook quite angry if they start seeing all the fragmented conversations from twitter. - April Russo (app103)

Sorry for Cross-Post but Ben seems active in answering here. So, currently today I have FriendFeed posts in a Tab and a Box in FB but not update my status info or post on my wall. Do I understand correct that I will no longer be able to sync in this way? That's truly a shame if that is the case, I do not want to flood my friends in FB with the stuff I post elsewhere, it's not fair to them. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Dude, I found that one out the hard way a couple weeks ago. It's total poo. Even after I removed my FB data from my FriendFeed, everything I did on the Internet kept dumping into my Facebook news feed. Acquisition fail? - Jolie O'Dell

There are more discussions about this here btw: http://ff.im/d0ZMp - Kol Tregaskes

Zach Flauaus to Zach's feed, Twitter

Twitter's down. Although the interesting thing? My friend just said she saw "This site has been hacked by the Iranian Cyber Army" in the title bar.

December 17 - Comment - Like - Share

Kol Tregaskes, Ho John Lee, Ryan - @magicofpi and 8 other people liked this

Confirmed(?) http://www.jackyan.com/blog... --This scares me. - Zach Flauaus

6 more comments

Techcrunch reports it as well: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009... - Zach Flauaus

Well Twitter is certainly down and there is no 404, 403 or failwhale. - WorldofHiglet

Tweets are still being indexed on Twitter Search... http://search.twitter.com/search... - Zach Flauaus

Techcrunch are running this story, too. - WorldofHiglet

I just saw the hacked page myself. - imabonehead

No kidd'n. huh. - Micah Wittman

I think the Iranians were just tired of seeing Tiger as a trending topic... - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

manielse (Mark Nielsen)

I love this quote hidden in a thread: "It's like a garden, if you don't tend to the garden bed, weeds will grow. If you don't prune your roses, you just have dead twigs." - Johnny Worthington | This is so true, I do this all the time in Twitter but I'm guilty for not doing this in Friendfeed & the community has lot's of new roses I haven't seen yet

December 16 - Comment - Like - Share

Micah Wittman, Ruxter, Alex Scoble and 6 other people liked this

*fist bump* - Johnny Worthington

2 more comments

I have to give you credit Johnny, that little poetic quote yesterday has inspired me to clean up my subscriptions soon and discovering new ones. A Bearded man usually has a lot of wisdom or craziness behind the fur, you have shown to have both. :-P - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Pruning isn't necessary, but you certainly need to add more fertilizer so you have more shit to read. - Alex Scoble

I've got plenty of Shit to read, I need more Shit coming back at me to be fully engaged with FF again. Without interaction, FF is just Winter. The snow is peaceful and quiet at first, then you feel cold and depressed. FriendFeed should be Spring, full of life and without Whales. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Jesse Stay

And you thought FriendFeed was doing bad - check out Google Reader:

Screen shot 2009-12-16 at 11.25.42 AM.png

December 16 - Comment - Like - Share

Paul Harvey, Mitchell Tsai, practicehacker and 59 other people liked this

Regarding FriendFeed's numbers, be sure to see here: http://staynalive.com/article... - Jesse Stay

200 more comments

I forget to use Google Reader. I prefer FF - Mike Nencetti

Also see: http://friendfeed.com/jessest... - Jesse Stay

Isn't that because the URL most people use for Google Reader is http://www.google.com/reader ? - Ken Sheppardson

Ken is right. I always use http://www.google.com/reader. You can also get feeds on http://www.google.com/ig/ Jesse, it's time for you to retire from stats mayhem. - Louis Gray

Remember, 65.4% of all stats are made up on the spot. - Ken Sheppardson

i use google.com/reader too - Jeff (the マクダジ of FF)

Web 1.0 is to Web 2.0 as Alexa is to Compete. - AJ Kohn

There will also be users coming from other countries like us here (google.ca/reader). - Merry Xmas FFeeders - AJ

Louis, I'm simply sharing the same type of stats you did with FriendFeed. Who shall retire first? - Jesse Stay

Louis shared stats for FriendFeed using the wrong URL? - Ken Sheppardson

Ken, http://reader.google.com is how I access Google Reader - Jesse Stay

See how it redirects to www.google.com/reader? - Ken Sheppardson

Ken, my point is Louis's stats mean as much as mine do - there are way more factors that go into this, I agree - Jesse Stay

Jesse, without demeaning you personally, this is false and ridiculous. FriendFeed is a domain, a specific one, and I chose the primary domain. Google Reader is a subdomain or directory, and you chose the one that, as you show, nobody uses. The Alexa data you showed for FriendFeed illustrated something that nobody is experiencing. This isn't gamesmanship. It's just wrong, again. - Louis Gray

I have a hard time understanding the fights and points Jesse chooses to get into.....just baffling. - Matthew DeVries

So let's take this constructively - what's a better way of comparing the two if http://reader.google.com is a bad way? - Jesse Stay

Neither.... it's apples and oranges. - Jason Williams

Jason - considering some use FriendFeed as a replacement for Google Reader it's not apples and oranges - they're competition. - Jesse Stay

Really? Why on earth would anyone use FF over Reader? FF complements Reader but shouldn't supplant it. Is there really a constructive way to read rss feeds here? - Jason Williams

Jason, many people do that - it always comes out when Scoble is threatening to leave Reader. It's also why your FriendFeed stats now show up with your Feedburner stats. - Jesse Stay

looks like we gotta get louis to work more hours to get that chart moving in the right direction! - Allen Stern

Amen Allen (that's the spirit)! I'd love to see more stability and more focus on core functionality, not the social features. More stats, more organizational tools, more sharing tools. Better UI. Less bugs. I would use it more if that were the case. - Jesse Stay

Give me a better way to manage thousands of items a day and I'll read thousands of items a day. For now I've had to reduce my use due to how bulky and hard-to-manage it all is. - Jesse Stay

for the record i rarely to never use google reader. - Allen Stern

when friendfeed shows me full content RSS feeds instead of just title links, let me know. until then, I'll keep using Google Reader. that's the same notion that twitter is a replacement for it. I get it but it doesn't work for me. - Bill Kinney

Jesse knows that I read more than 1,000 items per day and am connected to more than 1,000 people via shared item feeds. The graph above is not valid. Google Reader is a great complement to FriendFeed, and always has been. It's the vast majority of my feed. Reader is also, very flexibly, able to share to different sites, including Twitter and Facebook. - Louis Gray

Yes, Bill. Jesse is just grumpy today. :) He knows better than to post data without any substance and try and get a faux argument going. He also is tempting me to post a SocialToo traffic chart and compare it to Twitter. :) - Louis Gray

i think that louis and jesse need a "time out" - both of you to your respective corners for a juice box - Allen Stern

No way, Allen! Not when there are great injustices in this world! :) - Louis Gray

louis i just sat through 4 hrs of city council hearings at city hall - not once did google reader or friendfeed come up :) - Allen Stern

Jesse, the difference is that Readers traffic isn't dependent on who else is also using it. As much as Google would like it to be, it's not a social tool. I can get my FF feed in Reader but not vice versa. Do you really get your "news" from FF? It's the same thing with Twitter. People try to make it a RSS replacement but it isn't no matter how much you want it to be. 140 characters might be ok for links and quick social commentary but in depth news, not so much. - Jason Williams

Allen, but they did mention a series of tubes, at least in passing I'm sure :) - Micah Wittman

*thinks of how to talk Jesse down from the ledge...* Jesse, Hi :) At best you are criticizing conventional wisdom web statistics in general and mixing it with a clearly flawed swipe at Reader. ### Now, carefully, come back from the precipice and live to fight another day. - Micah Wittman

You guys are all proving my point - that this argument is just as crazy a claim as this one is here: http://friendfeed.com/louisgr... - you can't trust stats - Jesse Stay

I use Feedly, which is off the back of Google Reader - Ian May

Jesse, nobody has proven your point. The only point that has been made is that you made a mistake and tried to draw a parallel, and you failed. - Louis Gray

Of course you can trust stats, Jesse. You just have to understand how they were collected, what they mean, and not try to use them to support some completely unrelated hypothesis. I've seen two graphs of US and global FriendFeed visitor stats that support two different statements... that US usage is down and global usage is up, respectively. The graph you've created for reader.google.com is irrelevant and immaterial, for reasons given above. - Ken Sheppardson

I could be wrong, but a certain someone who pronounced FF as dead cited that new features in GR were going to kill it. Just sayin'. Also just sayin' - I'm with Louis on this one. The combination of Google Reader and Friendfeed have changed the game for me, bigtime. - jcunwired

Surely not. - Will Higgins™

I'm probably in the minority but I have replaced Google Reader with FriendFeed. Pretty much for discussions like this one. I'm not sure I find the same value in Reader, I tend to bookmark and re-visit the same sites anyway. FriendFeed brings something to the table that a bookmark just doesn't. Reader, not so much. At least not for me. - Mark Davidson from BuddyFeed

We need a UFC match between Louis Gray and Jesse Stay. The 9-lettered names of mayhem! - beersage

I'd like to append my last post with, I still scan GR, so the previous comments about using GR and FF together as a powerful combination--in practice, if not in heart--I'm in agreement with. - Mark Davidson from BuddyFeed

See what happens when I stayed in GReader (and some Twitter) all day, I missed a good thread. I read/skim a little over 1,000 posts a day, I'm not sure if I read more than Louis (42,597 items in last 30 days) but it's my information center. Friendfeed use to be my place for discussions around the news, since engagement has dropped here (for me at least), I've moved back to Twitter for a fraction of that engagement (FB for friends/coworkers/family). - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

I never knew there was a reader.google.com - Richard Lawler

Almost all of Google's (non-acquired) properties can do both whatever.google.com and google.com/whatever which is very smart actually. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

On the subject, I must thank Louis, Jesse and many others that act as filters on GReader BTW. When I don't have time to go through the bulk, these guys help bring the cream to the top. I try to do my part in filtering for others but I feel that it's a team effort to bring the signal to others as automated filters aren't smart enough (yet). - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Funny, I cut back on my usage of both services and the graph goes down. You can blame Scoble now. I don't use Google Reader anymore. - Robert Scoble

Don't talk about yourself in the third person. - Mark

I blame Scoble for the drop in the Twitter chart as well then. <smirk> - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

My use has gone down significantly and I'm seriously looking for the perfect solution to replace it. Hoping Seesmic or Tweetie or Tweetdeck do that soon. See: http://staynalive.com/article... - Jesse Stay

I now know Louis's Kryptonite - criticize Google Reader ;-) - Jesse Stay

Robert, please don't leave Gmail, because I still need that. Thanks. - Mark Davidson from BuddyFeed

Jesse - I agree with your April blog post 100%. I also want to mention that Google Alerts is also a helpful tool for monitoring blog posts. (And without a doubt, most of us use it.) - Mark Davidson from BuddyFeed

Jesse, kryptonite would weaken someone if it were their personal poison. I am not weakened by your inaccuracies and stubbornness. :) - Louis Gray

Anyone know what Feedly's numbers are?? - Roberto Bonini

it is still my best organic conversational real time tool... - Yann Ropars

Feedly is actually down 11% in Nov as well. http://siteanalytics.compete.com/feedly... - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Is this a trend?? The holiday season and all?? What about Feedburner stats?? If RSS usage (i.e for RSS clients) is in decline (unlikely) it would show up there. - Roberto Bonini

manieles: feedly's content is generated dynamically in the browser so the metrics you are pointing to are just metrics of our blog (most users download feedly from the mozilla (and now chrome) sites. 2009 was a good year for feedly: we grew 1,527% from Dec 08 until Dec 09. http://twitter.com/edwk... - Edwin Khodabakchian

Ah, I guess that makes my comment above moot. There goes that theory. - Roberto Bonini

Sorry Edwin, just like reader.google.com the compete numbers don't show the story of true use. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

No problem Mark (it happens a lot). Roberto: Feedly is still relatively a niche service compared to Friendfeed and Google Reader so your theory could be correct. I do not have visibility into the Google Reader usage information but I can say that the underlying infrastructure keeps on getting better and innovating at a very fast pace. They have the foundation for a distributed... more... - Edwin Khodabakchian

Sounds like what I said about FriendFeed :-) - Jesse Stay

Jesse: Friendfeed is down but they are not dead. It all depends on if Facebook will decide to invest and move the service forward or not. If they do not, at some point Twitter and Facebook will have a super set of the friendfeed features and at that point their will be no turn around possible. Friendfeed sold out too early. - Edwin Khodabakchian

Edwin, Jesse is having an off day. Feedly is doing fantastically. Google Reader continues to have the #1 position in RSS and things are flourishing with their social features. FriendFeed has great technology and a fantastic community, but stalled momentum. Jesse should be in better form in about 5-7 days. - Louis Gray

Jesse are you sick *again*? I told you to eat more bacon! :-) - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Would be interesting to see a metric that measures total number of posts having comments and likes versus total posts and compare that to the "glory days" of Friendfeed. How much different is the engagement now? - Steve

Louis is basing his "FriendFeed is down" on faulty stats - that's the point of this thread. FriendFeed's just fine: http://staynalive.com/article... - I agree Reader and RSS are fine. So is FriendFeed. - Jesse Stay

Steve, you can always use FriendFeed's advanced search to find 100 comments and likes posts. - Louis Gray

Jesse, discussing this with you is getting boring. That post was wrong and based on data even worse than the public information I used. - Louis Gray

Nothing on the Internet is dead until the servers are unplugged and the information is not cached elsewhere. There could be 1 unique user on a site and it still could be very useful for that one person. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Mark, that's correct. I covered that when I said I would still find value if I were the last FriendFeeder. What's frustrating about this nonsense of a thread is that Jesse made a mistake with his graph and continues to stand by it. - Louis Gray

As did Louis (I'm not standing by this graph - I was making a point), and he continues to stand by his (about FriendFeed traffic being down) - Jesse Stay

Because it is down. - Louis Gray

Louis, if you think my post is wrong, how about a post proving my points wrong - Jesse Stay

:-) - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

It is a waste of time. It also does not benefit me or the community to make high visibility of negativity around this site. That's why I posted what I did here previously, also knowing it tends to be written about and spun by other blogs. - Louis Gray

I don't think Louis believes his graph is wrong - who's the stubborn one? ;-) - Jesse Stay

Congratulates Jesse and his graph for making my best of day on FF. I am not a fan of Google reader. the graph looks accurate to me and the feedback I see of GR. - Mike Nencetti

Jesse: I am confused. It seems that the point you are trying to make is that graphs are wrong in general and that both friendfeed and RSS are fine. Is that correct? - Edwin Khodabakchian

Edwin, correct - Jesse Stay

Jesse, I believe that Compete.com data is not perfect, but it is the best publicly available data that we have. I also believe that the trends it portrays about this specific site are 100% accurate. Your data showing Google Reader at zero is laughable and an embarrassment to your reputation. - Louis Gray

Mike, this didn't make "best of day". It made "most obtuse of the day". :) - Louis Gray

Jesse: which metric would you use to determine if friendfeed as a service is up or down? - Edwin Khodabakchian

It is not showing it at 0 - it is showing it at very low. - Jesse Stay

Edwin: http://staynalive.com/article... - Jesse Stay

Google Reader's traffic is hidden within www.google.com's data. Dare I add iGoogle for RSS feeds into that picture as well. However, Friendfeed's traffic is not hidden (for US Traffic) in Compete's numbers. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Jesse relied on Alexa data (which is the ugly stepsister of Compete.com), and he suggested that Bret Taylor's graph showing a higher percentage of international users suggested growth, when, more accurately, it portrayed that US visitors fell away at a dramatic rate. - Louis Gray

Louis: May be you and Jesse are looking at this from different angle and are both right - Edwin Khodabakchian

Nah. Edwin, I will always support good data. :) This is bad data. - Louis Gray

Quantcast shows a similar decline. Every service that is respected shows a decline. http://www.quantcast.com/friendf... - Louis Gray

Louis, I never denied yours was based on US data. My point was FriendFeed was not down, which you claimed it to be. - Jesse Stay

May be Friendfeed has a lot more persian users which are less active but nevertheless users. But over all Friendfeed has a lot less momentum and engagement because the early adopters have moved to twitter - Edwin Khodabakchian

Jesse, I continue to claim that global traffic worldwide, including US and non-US traffic is down, period. And even if you were right, turning this into Orkut or Friendster is not a thing to be proud of. - Louis Gray

Jess: the problem is that down is not as important as momemtum and innovation. - Edwin Khodabakchian

Louis, again, you're showing the wrong state re: Quantcast - click the "all" link and you'll see something more reflective. They're down in the short-term (at least in the US), but not in the long-term. - Jesse Stay

There' nothing wrong with Alexa from a world view. Just don't mix numbers between Compete, Quantcast and Alexa. Compete clearly shows the US usage has dropped. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Louis, I never turned this into a comparison of Orkut and Friendster - where is this coming from? - Jesse Stay

Jesse, the short term is the start of the long term. You know better than this. - Louis Gray

I am. Those are sites dominated by non-US visitors, contrasted with Facebook and Twitter. - Louis Gray

Louis, I disagree the short-term is the start of the long term - Jesse Stay

Jesse: One simpler question for you: do you think that there is a chance for friendfeed to regain momentum and flourish without an engineering team behind it? - Edwin Khodabakchian

Edwin, absolutely, but I think there will be an engineering team behind it eventually - Jesse Stay

and there is an engineering team behind it currently, or it would not be able to handle the current traffic. - Jesse Stay

Hmm. Do you have another example to point us to? Where will the engineering come from eventually? - Edwin Khodabakchian

Edwin, Facebook - Jesse Stay

Friendfeed is clearly transforming. It may gain momentum for a while until 'other services' catch up. However once a better wheel is made... - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

I think that you are fooling yourself - Edwin Khodabakchian

Edwin, absolutely not - there are numbers to prove it - whether it's still FriendFeed or transforms into Facebook, it will still be around, and serving way more than it is now. - Jesse Stay

Facebook wanted the brainpower and that brainpower is not integrated into other facebook projects - Edwin Khodabakchian

That brainpower is still keeping FriendFeed running at the same time - Jesse Stay

Here again. I think that you are fooling yourself - Edwin Khodabakchian

That brainpower still believes in FriendFeed - Jesse Stay

Jesse, I would listen to Edwin, and Matthew Davies, and almost everyone else in this thread. - Louis Gray

Facebook is in a hyper competitive space, those brains are working 150% on facebook projects - Edwin Khodabakchian

You can clearly see that the FF team is porting features into FB, they are attempting to have a friend of a friend system similar to FF. IF THEY SUCCEED, FB has become Friendfeed. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Jesse, Bret is VP of Products at Facebook and working on Connect and the dev community which reaches 100x+ more people than FriendFeed does. - Louis Gray

Louis I didn't say FriendFeed wouldn't transform into Facebook. I did say it wasn't going away and it would continue growing. - Jesse Stay

But it is not growing, and that entire argument is dead right there. - Louis Gray

It is growing, your argument is dead. - Jesse Stay

I think that you are right that it is going to stay (that is a low hanging fruit) and it might grow in some geographies (like it does in Iran because of the network effect) and because it was ahead of its time in terms of conversation, the erosion will take longer but there is no doubt that with no engineering, it is a dead end. - Edwin Khodabakchian

AOL is not growing but it's hardly dead. Wait, I'm on Louis's side on this... - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

AOL is investing massively to survive - Edwin Khodabakchian

AOL is apples and oranges - if Facebook stops growing you can start comparing it to AOL. - Jesse Stay

Mark, that's fine. I don't think there are sides. There's what's correct, and whatever Jesse is doing. - Louis Gray

Or whatever Louis is doing - he seems to think he's correct, which he's not (now this is getting repetitive) - Jesse Stay

Too bad the friendfeed team did not believe in friendfeed the same way Jess believes in Friendfeed! - Edwin Khodabakchian

Edwin, the FriendFeed team saw what we all see and sold at the right time for a fantastic opportunity. - Louis Gray

I will agree to disagree with Louis - that's about the only way I'm backing down on this. I believe passionately in FriendFeed, and I see no reason it's dying. - Jesse Stay

Edwin look at how much the FriendFeed team uses FriendFeed - they still believe passionately in the service. They believe so as much as I do. - Jesse Stay

(and I never said it was dying, nor did I say I don't believe in what was built here) Go find me saying that anywhere. - Louis Gray

Jesse: would you have sold to friendfeed? - Edwin Khodabakchian

I don't get what you are saying Louis - what is your argument? - Jesse Stay

Start from the top. (And read your DMs). The graph you show here has zero validity and it is in no way relevant to the graph you are discussing from last week, period. - Louis Gray

All I know is that public statistics lie. Paul B knows the real answer for FF, as does Jeff Huber for GReader stats. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Okay, so your argument is that FriendFeed is declining - isn't that the same as dying? - Jesse Stay

If you get the flu, do you always die, Jesse? - Louis Gray

If you lose 20 pounds, is it guaranteed that you will eventually hit zero? - Louis Gray

Louis, okay, whatever - I see no reason it's declining - Jesse Stay

Then you are being naive and ignoring all the public data, plus anecdotal data from this site itself. - Louis Gray

The FF sale is more than a flu, it's a handicap scenario. It makes it harder to see a perfect future. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Louis: I am not sure that facebook was/is a fantastic opportunity for the friendfeed team. Facebook connect is awesome but this space is still at its infancy and I am not sure that the centralized facebook/twitter model will be the model of the future. Friendfeed had the advantage of understanding search really well and being distributed at its core - great asset! - Edwin Khodabakchian

Louis, not naive at all - I shared the public data publicly on my blog, showing backed evidence the site is still growing. Where's your rebuttal? Do I have to show this again?: http://staynalive.com/article... - Jesse Stay

Using your links in your article, Jesse, Quantcast topped out in August and has fallen significantly since. And we already noted that the Alexa data, which is the outlier, shows a small upward trend. - Louis Gray

Louis, your argument is it's falling short-term. My argument is that it's growing long-term. My data supports that. I'm definitely not naive and frankly I'm beginning to be offended you're calling me that. - Jesse Stay

OK. Good discussion. I think that Louis and Jess should go get a beer and huge each other. Time to go write some code! - Edwin Khodabakchian

Yes, if you put the calendar back far enough, the trajectory is upward. Of course it is. And Edwin, I can't get Jesse to drink beer. - Louis Gray

Great, then we agree - Jesse Stay

I agree that if you go over a 2 year calendar, traffic to FriendFeed has increased. - Louis Gray

I guess I missed something... I've seen (1) Quantcast and Compete charts of US reach/visitors which says domestic use is down (2) an Alexa chart that says international use is up (3) a comment and accompanying chart from Bret saying "international growth has started to completely dominate since August (4) a pretty significant shift in the FFholic Most Active user list to international users, and (5) lots of anecdotal evidence from English-speaking users saying they've seen reduced (or stable) activity. - Ken Sheppardson

...is somebody taking exception to any of those observations? - Ken Sheppardson

Nope. Agreed, Ken. - Louis Gray

But the entire thread originated with the Google Reader flat line, which was a mistake. - Louis Gray

Yeah, I think everybody's just trying to ignore that at this point ;-) - Ken Sheppardson

I just don't get why Jesse's trying to make this you-can't-believe-stats/charts argument. I think there's something in my list of 5 point that Jesse thinks is wrong. - Ken Sheppardson

Jesse doesn't believe the Compete or Quantcast data showing a decline. - Louis Gray

I don't think I ever agreed the above graph was correct - it was put there to show a point - Jesse Stay

So you believe US usage is up, or not declining, Jesse? - Ken Sheppardson

Ken, I didn't mean you can't believe them - I mean they can often be deceptive - Jesse Stay

Which is amusing, because the blue line here is identical to the same blue line I posted last week. - Louis Gray

My head hurts. - Ken Sheppardson

I thought I'd post it up against the same deceptive result so we were on the same terms - Jesse Stay

Jesse - Next time use a red line .... :) - Charlie Anzman

Sigh. I could also show a graph that over the last 120 years, GM sales are way up, and compare that to the sale of unicycles. - Louis Gray

Just laughed out loud at that one Louis - Hutch Carpenter

Damn, you mean Unicycles sales are up right now? Tomorrow is free shipping day.... :-) - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Are you saying Google Reader is like a Unicycle? - Jesse Stay

Nope. - Louis Gray

So Google Reader is going to be like GM? - Jesse Stay

Ah... sorry... a light bulb just went off... showing a chart that shows US traffic is declining is deceptive in that some people who look at it might conclude that's overall activity, when in fact total, world-wide activity is steady or increasing. - Ken Sheppardson

That's one of Jesse's theories, Ken. (Still doesn't explain the Google Reader non-sequitir) - Louis Gray

If Google Reader is like a Unicycle, it's like the Honda's U3-X..... a very cool one! - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

I'm starting to piece this together... so showing reader.google.com traffic is declining when in fact total Reader traffic is up... ? - Ken Sheppardson

Ken, correct - Jesse Stay

reader.google.com is a domain nobody uses. Reader traffic is unknown, but certainly not the flat line displayed here. - Louis Gray

Louis, I use reader.google.com - Jesse Stay

I'd agree with that theory. The World growth is outpacing US internet growth. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

I just took a look at the graph at http://www.alexa.com/siteinf... Turns out that although international reach is up as shown in your graph, Jesse, Alexa shows a 20% or so decrease in their pageview graph since the peak near August. More users spending less time... - Ken Sheppardson

Ken, that is short-term though, which was another point of mine. Long-term they still have an upward trend. It is still much too early to determine if they are declining yet. Maybe in 6 months you guys can all show me I'm wrong. - Jesse Stay

Facebook bought FF in Aug, that throws a trendline in completely different direction. It's an inflection point. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Mark, FF took a dip after that, but they recovered and went even higher than before the FF acquisition. I wouldn't call that an inflection point. - Jesse Stay

Which chart shows traffic higher than before the acquisition (not counting the spike after due to curious people who never heard of FF before they read it)? Are you looking at Alexa's "Reach"? - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Yes, Mark... Alexa's chart of international reach shows that the % of worldwide internet users who are visiting FriendFeed is up. It's also the 47th most popular site in Turkey, 227th in Italy, and 412th in Pakistan. :-) - Ken Sheppardson

Mark, correct, which is more accurate because it compares visitors globally, not just US - Jesse Stay

In fact Alexa says 20.7% users are from the US and 20.6% are from Turkey, and another 20% or so from Italy, Japan, and India combined. - Ken Sheppardson

Right but the question would be what were those percentages between countries back in August? A shift in demographics needs to be adjusted by online population in those countries. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

There's roughly 74M people in Turkey. For every 1% drop in US visits, about 4% would automatically gain for Turkey in the Pie Chart without a single new user in growth. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

I don't believe they're breaking out the % of users in each country that are visiting FriendFeed, they're talking about what % of FriendFeed users are coming from each country. - Ken Sheppardson

Ken is correct. - Louis Gray

Strongly Disagree. Look at my coupon work site: RedPlum.com 92.2% are from the US. I highly doubt I have that much audience but I'd love for it to be true. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Disagree with what, Mark? That stat means for every 100 people who visit your site, 92 are from the US. - Ken Sheppardson

Sorry, I misunderstood your comment. It's a pie of % of FF visitors are coming from which country. We are on same page. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Yeah, sorry... I switched from "reach" to the user breakdown midstream there. - Ken Sheppardson

So as I was saying, a 1% drop in US visits moves Turkey up 4% when you factor populations and no new additions. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

To tie that together with Compete's US view, the US audience dropped 20% in last 90 days so Turkey would naturally rise in the pie chart regardless of new user growth from that country. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Actually digging that information a bit more, only 21.1% of the Turkey population uses the internet so the spread would widen even further. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

wow - ★ Soner Gönül

Interesting...... - Keith Griffiths

What a ridiculous discussion! It has already been said: the stats are apples and oranges. Let's look at the comparative numbers for internet users who are brain-dead versus those who can type. It would appear graduation from grade school bans internet access. - Douglas Hopkins

Facebook hurts ! - Desirade

Yeah, don't bother. Senestezi is spamming. - Ken Sheppardson

Dave Winer

It seems there are never any discussions on FriendFeed. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place?

December 15 - Comment - Like - Share

david beckwith, Penguin It's Cold Outside, Kirsten Mitchell and 48 other people liked this

Unfortunately, discussions here have gone south... Vocal users have moved to twitter, but there discussions are lost. And then, there's facebook -IFAIC, I try to keep it "private"... - Panayotis Vryonis

104 more comments

Nope, *plenty* of discussion here. It's when you're not around that you miss it. - Itachi

There was an article about how FF's quality has gotten better recently. I don't see it either, which brings a tear to my eye. We had some great, deep discussions on topics over here. That was Friendfeed to me, it was deeper engagement. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

And I can't give Scoble all the credit but clearly he was part of that... - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Where DID Scoble go?!... things have gotten awful quiet. - Thom Kennon

He fell in love with Twitter Lists and gave up on FF after Facebook acquired... - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

*wonders if he has transformed into chopped liver* - Morgan Haley

What kind of discussions are you looking for. We've been talking about the best Robin Hood all morning! - Jeremy (on vacation)

I agree. Little discussion here and every one I generate takes root elsewhere. I occasionally join one here, but conversation on FF has dwindled in everything I see. - Ken Camp

See here's the problem I see here: There are people that I have rarely, if ever have seen in this thread. Dave Winer is a guy who is famous in the social media world. People often sign up and follow the feeds of Winer, Scoble, and the like and that's all they see. When Scoble leaves and others, they agree with them for saying FriendFeed is dead. However, to the contrary, it's very much... more... - Itachi

I think for some of these people if you aren't a techie, your conversations aren't that important. That's one thing I've noticed that has changed on FF. There is less of some things, but a lot more meaningful interaction among the people who have remained. The people still here are the ones who value a different type of personal interaction. FF is still very active and alive. - Junebug (aka Sarah Jill)

dave - everyone moved to social median - Allen Stern

I think there's a big difference between "tech" and "social media". People like Scoble often mix this up. There is plenty of "tech" discussion on Friendfeed. And I agree, with Junebug on that respect as well. - Itachi

Dave, Jesse blogged this http://friendfeed.com/jessest... + http://friendfeed.com/jessest... . DeWitt is back http://friendfeed.com/dewitt... and Glen http://friendfeed.com/dewitt... is going strong. Also, Itachi (mohomed) has a good points. - Micah Wittman

Maybe we just aren't talking about what you want to see? Your FriendFeed != My FriendFeed :) - Johnny Worthington

Once again, the color of the speech bubbles are very telling here. Morgan, Micah, Johnny, Allen have blue. People I'm subscribed to. Names I recognize. The rest of you? White. What are you guys subscribed to, exactly? - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

Bingo, Rah. The less than active tend to be subscribed to only the A-listers of social media who they are familiar with. And who, alas, aren't active on Friendfeed. - Itachi

the italian section of friendfeed is quite vocal... - Alb.

The problem is Dave that many of the tech influentials, CEOs, programmers, journalists, etc spend their time elsewhere now. There are conversations but they are dramatically different than what were happening six months ago. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

I think Itachi said it best earlier. The influentials and the like were the common glue (or routers so to speak) that joined various circles together. The routers are now gone, so now we are left with disconnected LANs. Each hold their value to that island but there much fewer bridges any more at least for the technical community. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

There are still some very interesting conversations that happen here - you just have to be subscribed to the right people. Follow some of the OpenID guys (Micah mentioned a few) - there is still a lot of conversation in that area that goes on here. It's a great conversations medium, much better than Twitter. - Jesse Stay

I would argue many of the developers and programmers who used Friendfeed are still on here. Just because it's not the hot fad of the season doesn't mean it's dead. Slashdot isn't covered much by the social media kings, yet it's still alive and well. - Itachi

Entries on my home feed with 3 or more comments: http://friendfeed.com/search.... You're welcome to modify the number to come up with your own definition of "discussion" - Benjamin Golub

my FF has slowed down recently - people I used to have regular discussions with are either not as active, or not at the same time I am... as a result I use it less, and it probably trickles like that - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

I think those people who formed a unique community on FriendFeed are noticing less of a change because their community is staying here. Those whose community exists outside of FriendFeed and merely uses FriendFeed as one channel of communication may find more volatility because it's easy to shift to the latest thing. Dave, as someone deep in the tech industry filled with early adopters (and early abandoners) your FriendFeed may be more adversely affected than others like myself. - Kevin Fox

Dave subscribes to only 122 people -- maybe he needs to broaden his horizons? - Brian Sullivan

My feed has never been busier, and I'm getting new subs every day. Of course, I'm not very techy so if you are, our paths might not cross. - Derrick

Building on Benjamin Golub's search: here's the same thing, but for friends of Dave Winer: http://friendfeed.com/search... Looks like a bunch of discussions, several in the last couple of hours. - Mark Trapp

I think everyone nailed it on this one... FF is no longer the holy land of social media zealot discussion, but has retained a very real connectivity to it surrounding non-tech and some-what tech individuals. IMO, Scoble and the like are not the celebs of current FF, but true wonderful characters like Derrick are becoming them in their absence. If left alone long enough this place could really be cool. - SAM

Not all discussions are in the main feed either. There's a ton of active groups. - Rodfather

Kevin should win an award or something for clarity of thought. And to throw in my two cents behind many of the others here, my feed is nuts. I often have to rely on a subset list along with RSS notices just to keep up. Also, unlike the last few months, I'm starting to see a lot of new subs recently. My guess is that FriendFeed is not dead; it was just tired after a long squawk. Seems to be perking up quite nicely now. - Akiva Moskovitz

+1 Rodfather. Group discussions don't show up in the main feed unless someone cross-posts to their personal feed. Also, techy discussion is fairly limited these days, for the reasons previously mentioned. Mostly it's discussion about our personal lives, work or some article that may be about tech gadgets, but isn't really a technical discussion. - Jason Huebel

Oh, and for one, I would like to see more tech-oriented discussions here. Sure, I'm all about the hyper-hangout that FriendFeed has become but I also miss the hardcore geek-outs that used to occur here. And I just seriously can't get my head around people having the same quality discussions about tech on Twitter that we used to have here. - Akiva Moskovitz

Yeah, it's not possible to have a discussion on Twitter. I've posted some tech-oriented things recently and I'm beginning to move more toward geeky stuff in general, but a lot of my geekier discussions are in groups that don't make it into the main feed. - Jason Huebel

I actually think the conversation streams and peeps have diversified from more hardcore tech to more cultural, art, cooking! not a bad thing. just a different tone and nature of the conversations. i still like that quote from a FF denizen who said "Facebook is where i hang out with people i already know. FriendFeed is where I hang out with people I'm getting to know." Speaking of FB -... more... - Thom Kennon

Dave, let's back up here... Looking at your feed, 99% of your posts are just imports from other services (mainly Twitter). Then you hop over to FriendFeed and say "why doesn't anyone discuss anything anymore?" It's because you aren't participating here. Gotta give something to get something. Commenting on your own Disqus imports isn't participation, either. I think the fact of the matter is that people don't feel an obligation to feed the geekeratti egos now that they've all but abandoned the service. - Jason Huebel

The last reply you made to a post that wasn't your own was back on December 1st (http://friendfeed.com/chrisme...). Two weeks ago! And you haven't even replied to this post, which you made 3 hours ago. - Jason Huebel

I also appreciate the fact that a large majority of users are having discussions in languages OTHER than English. - Johnny Worthington

It's an elegant social network for a more civilized age. - Goran Zec

Johnny, why? - Akiva Moskovitz

Because it counters the thinking (or lack of thinking) of a few social media experts that places like FriendFeed and Twitter and other social networks only exists in western, English speaking countries... - Johnny Worthington

Not everyone has an iPhone, not everyone can watch Hulu, not everyone can play Foursquare, not everyone has unlimited (uncapped) bandwidth, not everyone wants to know the news the second it happens, not everyone cares who someone reads and not everyone wants to talk tech 24/7. I like it outside the bubble :) - Johnny Worthington

Maybe I do need to follow more people, but with the same number of followers there used to always be something interesting in FF to read about and comment on. - Dave Winer

I also love the non-English. gives the place both a global feel - and reality. I have peeps, clients, etc. around the world and FriendFeed is our agreed great leveler. - Thom Kennon

People you used to follow here have moved on to Twitter. Not many techies around these days. This leaves the rest, regular guys talking about regular stuff. But maybe this kind of discussions don't interest you. - Jordi Soler

It's like a garden, if you don't tend to the garden bed, weeds will grow. If you don't prune your roses, you just have dead twigs. - Johnny Worthington

@Thom and Johnny, I participate in the non-English posts fairly often. It's easier with FF Translate, even though I can only reply in English (and hope they can read it). Hey Micah, any chance you can make a translate thingamajig that goes the opposite direction? Translate my English to the language of the post? - Jason Huebel

Jordi there are still a lot of Techies - follow Dewitt Clinton, myself, Chris Messina, Dave Recordon even some times participates. Then there's Paul, Bret, Benjamin, Kevin, etc. of the FF Team. Cristo's a techie. I could go on and on... - Jesse Stay

In fact I probably participate with more techies than non on here. - Jesse Stay

There are a ton of conversations here and some are tons more interesting than others. This one is interesting. The question is though if you are not having a conversation here - where are you hanging out lately? - Dan Morrill AKA Techwag

Dave, I've been following you since at least 1995, and long before Friendfeed and Twitter. It was because of you that I heard about and joined Friendfeed and I regret the fact that it's lost its momentum since being absorbed into Facebook. There is still no substitute for what FF used to be. But the circus has left town now and there is no way of bringing it back. FF will continue and... more... - Tim Ostler

@Jesse: Perhaps I don't follow the right people then. Anyway, it was not a complaint, it was just a theory of what has happened to Friendfeed recently. More international content (myself) and more "social" posts. Which does not mean that there aren't any techies left. I'll follow your recommendations, thanks! - Jordi Soler

I blame Facebook for all problems related to any lack of participation over here (j/k) - Jannifer @wordsforliving

Although "blame" is a harsh word, the Facebook acquisition was a significant turning point. Whether that's a downturn or not is debatable, but that's when most of the tech-elite skipped town. I admit to feeling down-in-the-mouth occasionally because I miss the technical involvement of the FF devs. But there is still a lot of good discussion here. It's just not as technical in nature. - Jason Huebel

Discussions are not missing. They're just harder to find. - Louis Gray

Jason, it's worth a good hard think and discussion. Posting translated text is a thornier issue (thinking form the POV of the tool maker). It commits to record an imperfect source, with any successive translations further degrading the signal (copy of a copy). Maybe I'm overly concerned about it, but like I said - needs more discussion. Thanks for getting the ball rolling :) - Micah Wittman

@kr8tr tried to hold a 30 min real-time Q&A yesterday via Twitter on "What's it like to be Scoble's boss". I bailed because little way to follow. Twitter search on "@kr8tr" kind of worked but you had to keep refreshing. Google search a little better. But it would have been ideal had he announced it on Twitter (where everybody is) and then pointed to Friendfeed for the Q&A. Not sure there's a better platform for that kind of rt discussion. - Nick in Manila

Another prob with Twitter in above context is everyone is using different Twitter apps that regurgitate the firehose at different rates so some people see comments much later that others. On Friendfeed, the sequence is at least consistent across participants. - Nick in Manila

Dave, you might need to broaden your interests. - zeroinfluencer

Nick: I agree. One little datapoint, though. Since Facebook bought FriendFeed I've gained 14,000 followers on Twitter. That is more followers than all but five people on FriendFeed have. The reason Twitter is popular is, well, it's popular. I'm sad that FriendFeed lost out, but it did. Oh, and Facebook has similar threading to FriendFeed only you have to refresh the page to see new... more... - Robert Scoble

Robert, with the 14,000 new followers, is that a spike or did it follow natural upward trends? - Johnny Worthington

Johnny: it's definitely going up faster lately due to new list feature. - Robert Scoble

So do we assume conversations are "dying"? (Hate the word, every once in a while something "dies" in the internet...) - Jordi Soler

It would also be helpful to evaluate the level of conversation that was here and has now left. Quantity != Quality - Johnny Worthington from iPhone

For each of us it depends who we are following and who is following us, and whether people with interests in discussing certain things overlap in time sufficiently with you to get a conversation going - I guess I need to change my follow profile - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

:D - ★ Soner Gönül

There's 59 comments and 32 likes on this thread. What are you looking for exactly? That said, I tend to read only the 1st and last comment in these long threads. - Vincent van Wylick

Vincent you got me there. Of course I knew there would be 33 likes and a zillion comments on this when I posted it. I am such an unreasonable person and you could see that! Your mother must be so proud of her little Vincent. :-) - Dave Winer

thats why i am out of here and spending my time in boredom ,reading or sleeping - ffcode

Vincent, the reason there is so much activity on this thread is because the topic is Friendfeed, specifically lack of activity on Friendfeed. People will flock to a topic if they can prove it wrong. - Jason Williams from iPhone

@Jason, that's a kind of cynical view, don't you think? This is a topic that's of common interest to everyone on FF. Most other posts are only interesting to smaller groups of people. That's not a bad thing. I think there is just a wider array of topics to talk about on FF now that tech evangelists have moved on. So the activity is spread out. - Jason Huebel

And again, looking at your feed activity, you spend very little time interacting with others on FF. Most of your activity is importing from Facebook. So your experience isn't going to be as good as someone who actually shows interest in the posts of others here. - Jason Huebel

I wasn't saying there aren't conversations to be found but I'm talking about his experience. He wasn't seeing any interactions on his posts until he posted about FF. Make your own conclusions. - Jason Williams

Which is why I said "again". Dave Winer's interaction with other people's posts is minimal as well. He comments on his own posts all the time. But you'll never start a conversation if you only talk to yourself. - Jason Huebel

Dave has obviously not visited the Life Scientists room :) - Deepak Singh

it's a hard sell when you can't engage with your own content, for sure. I'm trying to be better at adding commentary as to why I thought it important enough to (re)post what I (re)post rather than leave it to a bunch of bots to aggregate/shovel it out. - ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ

But he did start a conversation, it's just that it was about Friendfeed so others joined in. Go look at best of day at any time and you'll find multiple items about Friendfeed. It doesn't bode well for a service if the most popular activity on that service is about said service. If you looked at Twitter and saw half of the trending topics looking like (Twitter fail, twitter is dead,... more... - Jason Williams

Jason, I don't comment on my own posts. That's the second time you said it, and you're wrong. I hooked up my Disqus feed to FF so you're seeing my comments there echoed here. Stop being such a wiseass, you're not half as smart as you think you are. - Dave Winer

I'd love FriendFeed discussions. You can't have them on Twitter because of the lack of threads and you can't keep track of everyone's message. One of my biggest issues with Twitter. - Patrick from twhirl

Ah, nice. Name calling and insults. But you've just proven my point. The "comments" are also coming from somewhere else. You expect to have people interact with you but you invest very little time in FF yourself. If you put even a small percentage of effort into FF that you do other services, you might actually see results. It's no longer good enough to import one's feeds into FF and expect people to pay attention. That ended when many of the tech elite left the service back in August. - Jason Huebel

The truth is, the people left here on FF are mostly "little fish" when it comes to tech. So one really can't expect to get 1000 likes and 2000 comments on a post anymore. None of us have a "fan base" that can support that. - Jason Huebel

I don't expect anything -- I asked a question. - Dave Winer

I think Friendfeed is evolving into something quite different of what some people predicted a while back. But it's not dying, no way. - Jordi Soler

Except when I'm addressing the issues I've pointed out with your feed, when I say "you", I'm using that as people in general. I can change all the you's to "one", if that will clarify. (Done.) - Jason Huebel

Jordi, what is your definition of dying? Is it different than people leaving en mass (with the exception of non-english speaking countries) and the talent behind the service bought up by a mega-site all the while people arguing weather the service is viable/dying? - Jason Williams

Good point. Dying as in "Geocities dying". But I see people talking about many things everyday. Just not the same topics there used to be. - Jordi Soler

OK wait, Dave. First you claim that there are no discussions on FF. Then you say you don't comment on your own posts. The way I was brought up was that a discussion is when you say something, then other people respond, then you respond back, and so on. FF, like most anything else in life, is what you make it. If you don't interact with people here, then you have little basis for complaining (sorry, _observing_) that there are never any discussions here. - vicster is...

vicster++ - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

I don't understand why people think the convo on friendfeed has gone down hill. It is the same if not better then it was before. If you don't like the discussions from the people you are following then find some new people to follow. - Mathew™ one of a kind

i dunno about other people, but my FF is jumping so fast lately that i can barely keep up...and now it's mostly things i DO want to read about. - Joe Silence is not Santa

vicster+++ I just skimmed, but this dude sounds like he hasn't been skiing for three years and says "how come no one ever skies anymore?" If you came to the FF mountain once in a while, you'd see my crazy ass every freaking day. I use FF more now than I ever have, more than I ever dreamed I'd enjoy. Now maybe you think the mountain has been taken over by hooligans, and that may be a fair point, but the caliber and content of my discussions do not make them non-discussions. - Lo

My conclusion, based on this thread, is that there is indeed some discussing going on on FF. Mostly of the "Neener neener" variety. :-) - Dave Winer

You can't base your conclusion on one thread of conversation with a topic like this. Why don't go and look for other people to follow and you'll see some activity. - Mathew™ one of a kind

Well, sure. You called us out. So there's going to be a bit of that. But in all honesty, there's a lot of good people here with a lot to talk about. You just have to seek it out. - Jason Huebel

@Dave: "Neener neener" is the response your comments require lately. - Joe Silence is not Santa

Of course you don't see any conversations taking place...you aren't even subscribed to me. - Alex Scoble

+1 Alex, the Scoble of FF. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

When I said "Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place?" I was (in case it wasn't totally obvious) looking for suggestions not lectures. I'm now following Alex Scoble. I check FF many times each day. - Dave Winer

Woo! I finally hit the big time! Seriously, though...thanks for the subscription, Dave. Much appreciated. - Alex Scoble

Dave, what type of topics are you most interested in? - Johnny Worthington from iPhone

If the FriendFeed community were not so oversensitive, one of the 100 comments above would have answered Dave's question by pointing him to the advanced search form, specifically the "at least _ comments" field and the saved search feature. Then he could quickly find discussions on his favorite topics every visit. - Bruce Lewis from fftogo

Bruce: That was the 23rd comment, from Benjamin Golub. How more/less oversensitive does that make us? ;-) - Ken Sheppardson

Good point, Ken. I searched for "advanced", "comments" and one other term, but didn't find that one. It makes the community 34.7% less oversensitive. - Bruce Lewis from fftogo

Sweet. - Ken Sheppardson

Friendfeed and Twitter lack the depth and breadth of Facebook, no matter which way you slice it. Gather the best minds of our generation, in many fields and areas, on Facebook, and you will not have to complain. Friendfeed and Twitter are, however, useful as secondary feeds into Facebook. - david beckwith

FriendFeed still saves my stuff, unlike Facebook where my posts are lost in the ether, but I do miss the more active FriendFeed of times past. I think once "best of" became a standard feature, FriendFeed shifted to more family, personal life, etc... discussions rather than "tech" stuff (for better or for worse). Even for techies, new/lost jobs, new/old romances, etc... generated more feedback & discussion than most tech topics. - Mitchell Tsai

Louis Gray

The Problem With Android Market’s Growth - http://gigaom.com/2009...

December 15 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

Oğuz Serdar liked this

Such a foreboding tone for an article that could have been one sentence "Android needs some slight tuning to the market interface" - Matthew DeVries

+1 Matthew - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

manielse (Mark Nielsen) to manielse's feed, Coffee Lovers

Your Starbucks Barista is Admiral Ackbar - http://finds.manielse.com/your-st...

December 13 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

barce, Amber, Random Time Lord, rowlikeagirl and 3 other people liked this

It's a Frap! - manielse (Mark Nielsen) from Bookmarklet

LOVE! - rowlikeagirl

manielse (Mark Nielsen)

When Google Runs Your Life - Forbes.com http://www.forbes.com/forbes...

December 11 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Honstly ... I like the convenience. - Jeremy (on vacation)

I do too. Honestly, I don't know why people are so afraid of some company knowing your habits (buying, surfing, interests, etc) and a little bit of basic data such as birthday & relationships. If it can give me a better experience and tools for free (or heavily discounted), I think it's worth the data they are collecting. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

manielse (Mark Nielsen)

This is a test of the Emergency FriendFeed System. This is only a test because I haven't seen many likes or replies lately and really miss you guys. If this was an actual emergency, I want to make sure an audience actually still exists to see it.

December 10 - Comment - Like - Share

Tim Oakes, mohammadk, Serkan Unsal and 4 other people liked this

I see you. - Jeremy (on vacation)

6 more comments

Loud and clear. - Thomas Bøhm

Am I hiding inside the rainbow of colors? - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

"see" - Jeremy (on vacation)

still here - Mike Nencetti

Just been very quiet I guess, much less interaction than the past. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

i suppose, but those threads with 300+ comments were too big to read. - Mike Nencetti

Those colour bars aren't perfect. Look at the bottom right, you should see three shades of grey :-P - Richard A.

Nicholas Kreidberg

Apparently cats only like 1 of two things...

Screen shot 2009-12-10 at 11.46.47 AM.png

December 10 - Comment - Like - Share

winckel, Itachi, Kenton and 4 other people liked this

wow - Bren -- feeling merry

2 more comments

Mine is definitely the water liking type. - Nicholas Kreidberg

My results also say they like "to swim" fwiw. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

This is what MAUS has wrought. - Jeremy (on vacation)

Cristo to Cristo's feed, Home Theater

Dumb A/V question: Do home theater receivers require a preamp?

December 8 - Comment - Like - Share

Morton Fox liked this

The reason I'm asking is I think I want to buy a relatively low cost surround sound receiver (under $500) for testing my system before I jump in with both feet on really expensive preamps and receivers. - Cristo

16 more comments

And since I haven't been able to find any systems that can handle multiple surround sound zones, I want to keep looking. However, I also need something in the meantime to test my system and continue to iterate. I'd rather postpone the preamp purchase decision as well, so I was wondering if the receivers can operate standalone. - Cristo

A receiver consists of a tuner, a pre-amp and a power amp. You can buy a receiver or buy the three components separately. - MVB (Grinch of FF)

Mark, that's in the traditional audio world. But I think it's slightly different now for home theater systems. The tuner is no longer interesting, and for my purposes, the pre-amp is less important because I'm doing all the switching in the HDMI matrix switch. - Cristo

not sure if this answers your question or not but my onkyo (i am pretty sure its a 706) has a preamp and does multi-zones. - Carlos Ayala

Carlos, how many speakers does each zone support? - Cristo

i'll have to check when i get home and get back to you, but my impression back when i bought it was two full 7.1 zones...but i can totally be making that up. - Carlos Ayala

again, i think its the 706 but i will have to reconfirm that. my short term memory is failing me. - Carlos Ayala

A preamp requires an amp, a receiver has amps built in. - Alex Scoble

And if you find a receiver or preamp that outputs surround sound to multiple zones, please let me know. - Alex Scoble

However, chances are that if you do find a receiver capable of outputting SURROUND sound to multiple zones that it will only be able to power the first zone. You'll have to get separate amps for the other zones. - Alex Scoble

Alex this sounds like what i have. Mine will do multi-zones. But only a (independently) powered second with surround. - Carlos Ayala

I highly doubt that your receiver does surround sound to the second zone...should only do stereo. - Alex Scoble

My Onkyo TX-NR807 (newer than the mentioned 706) only supports 7.2 in the first zone. Zones 2 & 3 are stereo. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

I have yet to find a single preamp or receiver that will do surround sound (5.1, 7.1 or 9.2) to more than the first zone. So it would be of great interest to me if anyone knows of one. - Alex Scoble

Then again, I doubt such a device will exist in mass consumer gear as the additional zones are usually used to distribute music around a house. As far as consumer electronics companies are concerned, they seem to think that Chris White's requirements aren't monetizeable. - Alex Scoble

I couldnt wait so I looked up my order and its the 807. Right Alex, i meant stereo not surround and as Mark mentioned its 3 zones. dont mind me, I'm all f'd up. - Carlos Ayala

No. Preamps provide the functionality of decoding and processing surround signals, selecting a source and adjusting discrete signal levels (and lots of other goodies, depending on $ spent). HT receivers have all of this built in. As for multiple zones, most AV receivers I know of sacrifice the 6.1 and 7.1 channels to power speakers in different parts of the house. My Denons have two separate zones, each of which is two-channel audio. - jcunwired

manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Yelp Hops onto Android for Location-Aware Reviews [Downloads] http://lifehacker.com/5420892...

December 8 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

w00t - Jeremy (on vacation)

2 more comments

I'm trying to think of which other major sites haven't built an Android app yet... - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

urbanspoon - Jeremy (on vacation)

Friendfeed - Jeremy (on vacation)

manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Baby Forcefield - http://finds.manielse.com/baby-fo...

December 5 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Olivia Lovag and John (a.k.a. dendroica) liked this

The force is strong in this one... - manielse (Mark Nielsen) from Bookmarklet

Robert Scoble

I just talked with another iPhone developer who is moving to Android too. They hate iPhone app approval, says Android lets them iterate fast

December 4 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

ElijahBailey-Zu of FF <0,, Daniel Rowley, LANjackal and 7 other people liked this

Hey Scoble - If you're interested in talking to a mobile TV provider that is developing apps for both platforms, let me know. I am sure MobiTV can provide some interesting thoughts and comparisons. --Matt - Matt Wolpin

11 more comments

Yeah, iterating fast..that's what it's all about. Utter nonsense.. - Andy Connell

:-D - Jeremy (on vacation)

Problem remains that a dev preference for Android won't matter if most customers prefer iPhones. - Ryan Waldron

@Ryan That seems to be changing fast. When talking about phones before everyone wanted to talk about Iphone, now it is all about Android - Asgeir

Really? - Andy Connell

I had a read a Computer World article stating that the Android did not appeal to women at all. They are a significant share of the market. - Jerry Perez

My wife likes my android-based phone just fine. - Jeremy (on vacation)

Jerry: Appeals to me :) - Amy

This is why I said Computer World article, so I wouldn't get crap! Love you guys anyway. Besides, any ladies on here probably are the exception. - Jerry Perez

Jerry: I've just realised I don't know any women with an iphone or an android... excuse me while I go and educate my friends. - Amy

yey Android! - Tim Jones

In regards to @Ryan's comment. I'm seeing a lot of people in their 20s and under beginning to think that Apple is no longer cool. I believe a lot of that is due to the lack of openness which seems important to this younger generation. If that is true, Apple will simply not adapt a new culture quick enough (they can't w/ Steve Jobs) and it may hit them without much warning as the Coolness Factor is huge for them. Also developers moving means 'There's an App for that.... elsewhere'. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Jesse Stay

Sources: Facebook Connect Will Be “Everywhere” on MySpace Next Year - http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009...

December 4 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

Roney Smith liked this

Stop calling Identity a war! No one is at war with anyone in regards to identity. These sites are all simply making your identity more portable. I should be able to import my Facebook friends and contact info into Myspace and vice-versa. - Jesse Stay

5 more comments

Saying it's a war simply makes news. You're 100% right though, it's not a war BUT it is solidifying those sites as being your core identity. In that respect, there is an element of control. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Mark I don't think these sites feel that way - I think they feel they contribute a piece of your identity, but the entire goal of OpenID, Facebook Connect, etc. is so you can port pieces ID to wherever you go. Ideally you can keep your Myspace ID while still importing your Facebook friends, or vice-versa. You pick the sites that have the strengths you want and you port those pieces into the sites you visit. It's not a war or anything about control - it's about context for the user. - Jesse Stay

There's no doubt that any bridge between identities and sites is a good thing. OpenID is neutral, somewhat embraced by all the big names and could have easily been adopted as the true standard but each site had decided they had a better idea. Don't get me wrong, I don't buy into the 'war' hype, it's no different than a 'whatever killer' or 'blank is WRONG or DEAD' title. However, each site clearly has a strategy of identity beyond the OpenID standard. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

I should add that I don't think any 'are doing evil' in their strategies. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Can we just call it a "land grab" instead of a "war"? - Ken Sheppardson

Ken, that's a much better term - Jesse Stay

ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ

A good friend works for a giant, multinational manufacturing, sales & service corporation. He told me they just recently changed the dept named "human resources" to "human capitol". Sounds like business is either getting ugly or honest. Probably both, but it's gone by with nary a mention anywhere.

December 4 from iPhone - Comment - Like - Share

Beau Liening, vicster is..., Michael R. Bernstein and 4 other people liked this

Of course, it sounds better than "chattle" or "fodder". Or "chum". - ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ from iPhone

10 more comments

wow... just, wow. - Jim: Dead Like FF

LOL That would make me think twice. I remember at the last corp. I worked at, they had a companywide conf. call and they called us workers "investments". There was MUCH eyerolling in that call. - Admiral Anika

Human capital maybe? - Brian Sullivan

It kind of creeps me out when people say "children are our greatest resource" - Victor Ganata

Victor -- do you think "soylent green"? - Brian Sullivan

Soylent green lite? It's made out of children! 35% less fat! Just 1 calorie! - Victor Ganata

Yes, capitAl. My bad. My homophonia isn't aided at all by the iPhone. - ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ from email

Are you sure? I believe that it's not the giant, multinational manufacturing, sales & service corporation but rather the company that places people at the giant, multinational manufacturing, sales & service company's Human Capital Department. And yes, I feel just above "chattel", er ah, that is to say, if it was the company I work for. - M McElhone

Well you know how support companies usually position themselves alongside trends in the industry(ies) they support. - ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ from iPhone

Human Capital Management is not a new term but really, let's be honest, how many of those departments were "resourceful"? - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

@Anika - I've been called an "asset" so many times it's not funny... I hadn't heard "investments". At least that implies that they're interested in making their investment grow... an asset is just... an asset.... - Fa La La La Lindsay

manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Google Visual Search Coming For Android Phones http://www.eweek.com/c...

December 4 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

If you have a GPS enabled phone I'm not entirely clear why you would do something as complex as trying to do image recognition on a photo to get information on where you are. Might work for major land marks but after that... - Ed Millard

The industry is making augmented reality out to be this incredible thing. I haven't bought into the hype yet but I'm sure some neat things will come out of this space (kind of already have). Something that comes to mind that this service could do that a GPS could not is things that are not stationary. Art Exhibits, buses, maybe even dynamic facial recognition that locates social identity (though that's a stretch). - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

manielse (Mark Nielsen) › Comments