 |
|
| FriendFeed is the easiest way to share online. Learn more » |
Maxim Grinev › Comments
My favorite way to use FriendFeed is to have my "must read" people in a separate thread; talk about a feed with nothing but substance!
andy brudtkuhl, Kol Tregaskes, Mac Sharp and 18 other people liked this
That's a great tip, thanks!
- Chris Foley
How do you do that?
- Jason Miller
I adopted Louis Gray's filtering system and created an A-List group, which I suppose is similar
- Obayoo
Jason: I do it by creating a new friend's list (see "friends" over on right side) and putting my favorite people into it.
- Robert Scoble
Yes, what Robert suggested. You simply create a group and then put those you really want to keep up with into it. They can be in that group and your main section if you wish. Last time I tested you could put FriendFeed users into multiple groups. It makes it a lot easier to keep on top of specific interests. For example, you might put copywriters in one group and designers in another and personal interests in a third.
- Internet Strategist
I just made my "must read" thread! :)
- Johnny
I copied my lists from Louis...I think. But the problem is, I think I have too many lists now hehe.
- Patrik Johansson
Robert: I have just created a new friend's list. But posts are not ordered by the time when they are posted so I can still miss a post from my favorite friend that does not have likes/comments. How do you deal with this?
- Maxim Grinev
@Maxim. I don't know if I'm answering to the right question here. But you could try to save searches. Go to the "advanced search" and create a filter from your favorite users.
- Patrik Johansson
Good idea.
- Roberto Bonini
Patrik: thanks. I have just tried a search "from:scobleizer" but the results are not ordered by the time of posting. Is it what you mean?
- Maxim Grinev
@Maxim Yeah that's what I meant. I don't know if there is a way to have them ordered by time. Because if a post gets a comment or a like, it's moved to the top. I don't know if there is a way to go around this.
- Patrik Johansson
Patrik: it seems that there is no a way to do this so we will always miss some posts :( Nobody can help ;)
- Maxim Grinev
Just did mine. Who to add???
- Roberto Bonini
@Maxim: Hehe ok. Well then :p
- Patrik Johansson
@scobleizer What's the best Friendfeed app for iPhone? Thanks.
Alex Scoble liked this
Safari.
- Robert Scoble
LOL
- Drew Lucas
it's true...
- Chris Heath
So far, yes, Safari is the best. I have high hopes for amigo though.
- Brett Kelly
Safari is okay, but I think I prefer BuddyFeed despite its quirks.
- Justin Hileman
Safari is the best. I have tried BuddyFeed also. It does not explain why a post appears in your stream (who of your friends commented/liked it).
- Maxim Grinev
Nambu is nice but still is a little buggy.
- Dan Douglass
from Nambu
Scan Your Books And Search Them On Google - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
Useful feature. It would be great if people can scan and upload there own books.
- Maxim Grinev
Digging Deeper Into Data With Hadoop - http://gigaom.com/2009...
On how Yahoo! uses MapReduce to generate query suggestions
- Maxim Grinev
Google vs. Bing vs. Yahoo! (Blind Test) Most results are pretty much the same. Try for yourself: http://blindsearch.fejus.com/...
Elyssa Durant, Russ Jackson, Eric @ CSTechcast.com and 2 other people liked this
Are the results are all the same because they are all using some variation on PageRank? (page value weighted by Inbound Links). Do we know the algorithms behind Yahoo and Bing?
- Joshua Hayworth
hey louis- im a bit confused about this new friendfeed email thing becuz of the direct message limit that friendfeed imposes... i just forwarded a long email to myself using my friendfeed email address but the only thing that came thru was the subject heading.. so this email thing isnt that effective yet.. right?
- Jason Pollock
thanks again for all the gr8 content.. my followers have RT'd the crap out of you this morning!
- Jason Pollock
Esther Dyson mentioned in her post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/esther-...) that Bing uses Powerset technology but a Powerset developer told us a couple of months ago that it is not quite used in MS. Louis, you met with Powerset team not long ago. Do they use Powerset tech in Bing?
- Maxim Grinev
http://twitpic.com/6kxxc - sweet dreams
 |
Maxim Grinev, John Hardy, Jesper Kjær Hansen and 58 other people liked this
eeek.
- ♥patricia♥
Thanks for nothing, AJ.
- Steven Perez
I hate you AJ! LOL
- Jorge Escobar
:D
- AJ Batac
lol
- Anna Haro
People always clowning around.... I say, let it float. They all float.
- James (!?)
Trying to give us all nightmares.
- John (a.k.a. dendroica)
THEY ALL FLOAT DOWN HERE
- Haggis (Sean Loyless)
Not CLOWNS :(
- martha
Look into the deadlights...
- James (!?)
Awesome movie. Book was even better.
- Beau Liening
I never finished reading this book...
- Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah
CLOWNS DIE.
- Steven Perez
from IM
One of the scariest characters in a Stephen King book, which is one of Stephen King's stupidest books (judging just by the end).
- Tad
I saw it when I was 5. Now I'm eternally scared of clowns. :s
- Faraz Mullick
I had a girlfriend who was terrified of Nuns! If she saw one walking down the street, she'd cross to the other side!
- Jorge Escobar
*cries*
- Carmen - Happy 2010!
really don't like clowns =(
- Jhoy Imperial
Can't sleep... clown'll eat me... can't sleep... clown'll eat me...
- GeekDads.TV
WHY DO YOU HATE US?!?!?! *faint*
- WorldofHiglet
Hoooo! Mai! Gaaaawwwwwd!!
- Dean "Karnatos" Michaud
AJ I'm gonna hate you for 10 mins.
- Amber, Random Time Lord
noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo i hatew you
- Caroline
that is soooo wrong. hahahahahaha
- J. Abdul-Qahhar
He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
- Admiral Anika
farrrrrrk
- Bec Rowe @d0tski
Can't sleep, clowns will eat me.
- Neal Jansons
Hiding!
- m9m, Crone of FriendFeed
yikes! and i'm not even afraid of clowns.
- tiffany
AHHHHHHHHHHHHH! OMG! OMG! OMG! HAHAHAHA! This reminds me of this video I saw a few days ago, MUST WATCH! http://www.tjvids.com/the-ama...
- Michael Forian
Gee that's not creepy AT ALL
- Josh Haley
Oh geez, thanks. if you only knew how clowns creep me out. even benevolent-looking ones. ugh.
- Karoli
awesome :)))
- Alejandro
Good Morning Mr Clown! 8oD
- David Cook - 2010!!!
I just love Tim Curry. :)
- LB - all new for '10!
I was waiting for the sudden change of that face, scary:(
- K.D.
Still creepy.
- CAJ, somewhere else
am hiding the clown now. it keeps showing up at the top of my feed like Stephen King's monster. ugh.
- Karoli
i want to hide just because its creepy
- Tyler Gillies
My wife is terrified of clowns. I have an evil bone that wants to show this to her. ahahahahah >:)
- Bwana ☠
Nobody enjoys a circus any more.
- John Hardy
I met this guy last night. Is it good?
- Maxim Grinev
Exclusive: Sarah Lacy’s New Chapter On Twitter From Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good Paperback Version - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
Going to read it
- Maxim Grinev
Mahalo Will Now Pay You To Create Topic Pages - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
Semi-automated creation of user-generated content is good idea
- Maxim Grinev
LiveFlows Highlights Popular Posts from Your Blog and Network - http://www.louisgray.com/live...
Cool Widget!
- Maxim Grinev
Shhh. Blekko Is Still In The Oven. Do Not Disturb - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
Does anyone know anything about Blekko?
- Maxim Grinev
Putting http://txteagle.com into a presentation I'm doing next week about the networked future. Don't just think broadband, think smallband.
Jason Miller, Michael Metz and Maxim Grinev liked this
I like the idea of txteagle. It is like Amazon Turk but via mobile phones. I wonder whether it really works, especially this "Search Relevancy" task: http://txteagle.com/tasks.html
- Maxim Grinev
I manage a large website. Content tagging is a huge problem. No one wants to do it. Can txteagle help with that?
- Michael Metz
Mimetz: we tried to implement content tagging via Amazon Turk. It works pretty good. Have you tried any automatic tools for content tagging?
- Maxim Grinev
I cannot understand the order of posts in the (Home) stream. Posts are not ordered by date/time so it is hard to understand what I have read already and what is new for me. Is there any way to order posts by date? Or have I missed something and the posts should not be ordered by date? I cannot find the answer in FAQ.
Isha (Marysia), Kol Tregaskes and Kishore Balakrishnan liked this
posts are also ordered by the likes/comments date/time - so the recently commented appear first...
- Kishore Balakrishnan
Maxim, no way to order by date the entry was posted. I wish there was though.
- Kol Tregaskes
Maxim... it is still reasonable to expect a statement/hint in the FAQ...
- Kishore Balakrishnan
Does it mean that a post submitted month ago that I have read already and that was commented today appear on top of the stream. Correct?
- Maxim Grinev
Maxim, correct.
- Kol Tregaskes
Specifically it's not just the last comment but the last activity, so if it's "liked" then it pops to the top too.
- Kol Tregaskes
Kol, Kishore, thank you. Got it. Agreed with Kol that it would be convenient if I could order by date.
- Maxim Grinev
@Kol - Corrected the first comment to include likes..
- Kishore Balakrishnan
FF is 'missing' several sort by options atm. :-(
- Kol Tregaskes
On the Street......The Dancer, Melbourne - http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com/2009...
Don't miss the comments
- Maxim Grinev
Interesting: Navify - a new service that builds community around Wikipedia articles, like FriendFeed around tweets http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
I like this part: Navify "allows visitors to discuss the nearly 3 million articles in the English database. Each article is a community waiting to happen"
- Maxim Grinev
Zensify iPhone app shows key trends across your social graph - http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009...
Philip Lei, Johnny and Maxim Grinev liked this
Global trending topics is not very interesting often. Trending topic amongst people you follow is the right idea.
- Maxim Grinev
I have just tried the app. The idea is good but the problem is that topic inference does not work in all these apps. The tag cloud consists of meaningless words (not proper concepts) such as "issues", "hate", "beta", "help", etc. We need solid techniques to infer topics for stream exploration.
- Maxim Grinev
Cant undestand how it can be posible to tweet from IPhone while driving. U need 2 hands. Or am i missing something?
It is not good to tweet when you drive. iPhone is designed so that you are not able to do it.
- Maxim Grinev
Twitter’s Biz Stone: Thoughts On Repositioning Twitter, Search Ads, The Twitter Ecosystem & More - http://searchengineland.com/twitter...
K.D., Rob Diana, Cem Ozkaynak and 11 other people liked this
I like this part: “There’s actually a certain awesomeness to not putting too much fidelity on twitter early. To say use it for this is to block out a whole realm of possibilities. We got lucky because we built an API early, and that blossomed into an ecosystem. One of those key sentence [of what Twitter is] is that we don’t know. We need to leave in some mystery and the concept of emergence. A big mistake would be to think we’ve figured it all out.”
- Maxim Grinev
A nice way of saying that they don't really know what they're doing yet. I have to agree with Mike Arrington's comment in another thread that twitter needs PR help desperately. They need to get down to delivering services at 99.99% and focus on selling what they actually have. (but ads on search.twitter.com would make a whole lot of sense if you ask me, and wouldnt take anything to implement)
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
from PeopleBrowsr
Guruvan: If Twitter is just "simple transport" (as nicely explained by John Borthwick http://www.borthwick.com/weblog...) they don't need to know what they are doing, just transport. I agree that transport should be 99.99% service but I think that it is hard to implement when the service is growing so fast and you have new technical issues that nobody solved before.
- Maxim Grinev
Connect Your Thoughts To The Mindex With Imindi (Private Beta Invites) - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
We need better ways to explore and navigate streams via semantic relationships
- Maxim Grinev
Watch the Google anthill move toward social and real time - http://scobleizer.com/2009...
The ants are moving! - good (and scaring) metaphor
- Maxim Grinev
Why Don't You Love Flock? (or do you?) - http://www.readwriteweb.com/archive...
Brian Bufalo, Daniel Rowley, Mike Fruchter and 34 other people liked this
It could be good, but it's too cluttered for my liking.
- Rich
I've been using it for a year. It's the perfect browser for me as a blogger and social media user. I love that I can set up multiple accounts for email or whatever website. I like that I can send updates to Twitter from the sidebar. I wish I could reply/retweet/DM from the sidebar to Twitter and Facebook. I also wish it had FF support. But I love, love, love having all my feeds in one page instead of having to go to GR for them.
- Admiral Anika
I stopped using flock around 1.0. It kept snogging my computer resources, and per Rich, WAY too cluttered. I may try it again, tho'.
- Helen Sventitsky
Firefox does everything I need, so Flock doesn't really hold any interest for me.
- Tristan Seligmann
I might give it a try.
- Aaron Hood
from BuddyFeed
The first version was awful it kept crashing on a scheduled 15min interval due to that I haven't tried the new release until I hear at least some major postives.
- sofarsoShawn
Flock has to be as fast as Chrome to even stand a chance.
- vijay
There was a rumour ages ago that they were going to fork Chromium and replicate the current feature set. Don't really see that happening any time soon though.
- Rich
it's my browser numero UNO
- Yahya Sheikho
It uses too much ram, overheats the computer.
- Richard A.
Oh, I do and I really love the new update for Twitter and FB.
- Michelle Marie Miller
Chrome and Bookmarklets do everything I need, the rest is covered by desktop clients
- BCK
I did give it a try when it came out in 2006(Not sure about the year) but it was not compelling enough to make it my regular browser. I will give it a try today.
- ashish
Flock includes too much functionality from the start. I'm not really, really big on social media, so there were a lot of the Flock features that were just taking up space. The great thing about Firefox is that it starts out with things that nearly everybody needs, and then you can add functionality to create an awesome customized browser. If you are interested in reading more of my...
more...
- Rishabh Mishra (p248)
I like it because it is so easy to upload to Flickr (i think i use flock only for uploading to flickr) (and it is really great to follow fellow flickr users via flock)
- Ozgur Poyrazoglu
from BuddyFeed
Thx John, there we go, same problems I experienced with v. 1 there's much better browsers out there, and until it can compete with the big boys, pass.
- sofarsoShawn
I cannot run flock at work - so it is of no value to me :(
- LPH™ and his dog P™
Agree with Rich, Helen, others above - wanted to like it and do like some of the social stuff being so integrated, but the performance / resource-hogging traits were too much to handle - much prefer Firefox ...
- Patrick Jordan
Flock is my personal favorite browser for Facebook and drag and drop Blogging. It does seem like it should be the default browser for social media. The complexity constraints that may impede mass adoption have flip side benefits. Which are only realized after investing the time to properly set-up the browser. I have learned not to add to many additional Firefox extensions to prevent...
more...
- Eric Logan
from FriendFeed MT Plugin
I used it and then I stopped, but now on it and with Chrome by my side, things go pretty good, finally enjoying it again, thanks for reminding me how good it was, there you go Flock, said it. It's not that I don't want to use it, but I forgot what I wanted from it, and it's exactly that. I must've lost my installation or something, I remember successfully doing its portable version...
more...
- ElijahBailey-Zu of FF <0,
As many have said, it's too cluttered for my taste. if they could have all the functionality with a clean design where all features were accessed by just one button on the menu bar then it could make me check it out. Also, it's actually improving in terms of resources. Yet, I am interested in their move to Webkit. Would like to know why are they leaving Gecko behind?
- Manuel Mas
What are you talking about Manuel. All the features are small icons on a tab next to the bookmarklet bar, or you can arrange them to be on your menu bar. http://www.flickr.com/photos...
- Admiral Anika
Anika: Yes, yet that area on the top left-upper quadrant of the browser is full of icons, stars, too much stuff going on. I think people appreciate clean, almost transparent design a la Chrome. If they could keep their current functionality and appear to be lighter on the eyes, they may have something going.
- Manuel Mas
All that stuff is editable. You don't have to have it. The sole star identifies your favorites; pages you've bookmarked.
- Admiral Anika
Naah, I've moved over to Chrome.
- Patrik Johansson
Well, that being said makes me think. I never saw that application as a change of life and style. I see it as an additional tool. My favorite browser (may 23-2:25pm) is Chrome for its amazingly fast JavaScript performances. 8) But some nights, I feel like treating the information another way. The ideas or results of that work are what's missing when I'm not using it, the 'information...
more...
- ElijahBailey-Zu of FF <0,
cluttered + clunk IMO
- embee
dysfunctional, it cites that most mozilla add-ons work but doesn't list which one's so your guess is as good as mine the result it crashes on a regular scheduled program 2 minutes after start up #FAIL ~ there's enough add ons to "social" facebook into your browser that you don't need a browser dedicated to it in and of itself: which I regard as Flock's sole identity/purpose
- sofarsoShawn
There's a list of the addons listed on their homepage working with Flock. Try the rest and see.
- ElijahBailey-Zu of FF <0,
Add-ons I use with Flock: Foxytunes, Shareaholic, Blank Canvas Gmail Sigs, Zemanta & Stumble Upon. Those are all I need as all the other add-ons I used with Firefox are already built into Flock.
- Admiral Anika
That's another thing I find problematic; it builds in add-ons that I'll never use which bloats it's memory usage. Like Embee said "Cluttered and Clunk."
- sofarsoShawn
See, Sean, I think if you don't blog a lot, nor access/upload lot of photos/videos or use multiple social media or email accounts, then Flock is pretty much useless to you. Stick with FF or Chrome for the simplicity. I would never tell my husband to use Flock because he doesn't blog, he, doesn't need to search for images or video and he's not a social media user nor does he read a lot...
more...
- Admiral Anika
Good point Anika, I was using ScribeFire before in FFox but finally lost touch, when I installed the latest Firefox build, I kept it with minimal addons, I forgot Firefox was running that fast, got used to my constant discoveries of millions of addons to play with. ;p
- ElijahBailey-Zu of FF <0,
With Flock, I was actually really blogging often during a certain timeframe. That, I witnessed. The interface it was having at the time (since I haven't seen its features now) was pretty easy going, saving pretty much anything you want by drag n drop/text selection for the easy sharing, or drafting at ease.
- ElijahBailey-Zu of FF <0,
Yeah, I have 7 blogs and guest post to 5 others. The blog editor in the browser makes it easy for me to jot down notes, get photos from flickr and save stuff. I like that I can post to those blogs straight from the browser's blog editor. Saves me from having to log in to all of them and dealing with WP directly.
- Admiral Anika
Scribefire offers the same functionality in firefox btw.
- Rich
Maybe if social media was a paying gig instead of a dream of mine I could use something like this. For what I do now it is way too cluttered.
- MarkCarras
@Rich> I meant ScribeFire in Firefox, unless you haven't read it and was answering to Anika. ;p
- ElijahBailey-Zu of FF <0,
The last time I tried flock which was at least a year ago, it was using a lot of my cpu memory and was crashing. I'm going to give Flock another try and see if it's better.
- Wayne Sutton
from FriendFeed MT Plugin
I do like Flock, I'm mostly waiting for them to fix their Twitter and Facebook feeds, and then they might win in my personal browser war. lol
- Carlton Hackett
When it gets powered by Chrome I might like it again. ;-)
- Kol Tregaskes
I have gone back to flock. I really like it. Tend to find Firefox a bit bland now. I honestly don't remember it crashing, even after throwing on quite a few add-ons. And i've been running it on a couple of old slow PC's. It's great for 'checking in' on social networks or finding things quickly.
- Alistair (alpinefolk)
I love flock. Perfect for blogging, pic uploads to picasa, twitter (though I use gwibber mostly), email and delicious. I love the browser. I disable the stuff I don't need and add the functionality I do need through firefox addons. It's the best of both worlds.
- Amy H.
Flock supports functionality (such as sharing or reading real-time updates from Twitter) that does not require tight integration with a browser. You can easily do these via bookmarklets and in a new tab of your favorite browser. On the other hand Flock does not support important feature: it does not provide the (personalized) context for what you are browsing at the moment - I want to...
more...
- Maxim Grinev
from FriendFeed MT Plugin
I used to use it, but switched to Chrome. Flock seemed to use what ever RAM I a had available. (Granted I use computers that are over 5 years old with maxed out RAM). What I did like was the updates in the friends statuses- especially since FB changed its layout.
- moon_shadow70
I use Flock, but, I gradually migrated away from the various social aspects of it, to other programs. I now use NetNewsWire for RSS and Mars Edit for blogging. I think it's a pretty good tool, but none of the tools in it struck me as superior.
- Rick Cogley
Flock has been my default browser since 2007, I believe. Suitable to online marketers and social media addicts. But it does take a long time to open so if I'm in a hurry or just want to quickly google or check web-based email, I'll just use Chrome or Safari instead. All my Firefox add-ons work just fine on Flock, which Flock should really emphasize on their site. Of the Flock extra...
more...
- Marie Casas
from FriendFeed MT Plugin
I just started using Flock again with its new release. I'm giving it another try. I really like a lot of its features but find the media stream to be a bit too much at times. Also, with respect to twitter, I think it's important for them to add user groups and url shorteners. I never look at all of my followers, only certain thought leaders in social media. This is flock's downfall to...
more...
- John Vasko
from FriendFeed MT Plugin
I like Flock for its integration of the various ICTs, but do have a concern about memory. Right now, it seems like Chrome is faster in terms of loading pages, but I can do more cross-platform tasks quickly in Flock, whether blogging or updating status messages.
- Jill O'Neill
So wait, you took Firefox and built in a bunch of social services that I couldn't care less about like Digg and StumbleUpon. Nope, I think I'll stick with Chrome. It's like ordering a pizza with the works when you hate onions and green peppers.
- Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah
from FriendFeed MT Plugin
Comment on: Why Don't You Love Flock? - http://www.readwriteweb.com/archive...
Flock supports functionality (such as sharing or reading real-time updates from Twitter) that does not require tight integration with a browser. You can easily do these via bookmarklets and in a new tab of your favorite browser. On the other hand Flock does not support important feature: it does not provide the (personalized) context for what you are browsing at the moment - I want to see all comments, likes, etc from my friends/followees from all services (e.g. Twitter, FF, etc) about the Web page/site I am currently reading. I have described this idea at length in my post <a href="http://bit.ly/gY9Cz">"Social Browsers: Only Half Way There"</a>
- Maxim Grinev
from FriendFeed MT Plugin
ReadWriteWeb: Why Don't You Love Flock? - http://www.readwriteweb.com/archive...
Kol Tregaskes, Charlie Anzman, yagami and 11 other people liked this
New strategy: In Delicious, I write it as via @twitterusername: Source: Title. It redirects to FriendFeed and then Twitter. Then I delete the vias on FriendFeed and Delicious to clean up. :)
- Louis Gray
It'd be nice if we could automate that kind of thing and make it even more efficient. Like, if FriendFeed allowed some kind of regex filtering of activity coming in from different services, that would be cool.
- Mike English
Flock is too much of a good thing. I think it tries to do everything, but it doesn't do any of it amazing. I get a much better experience using other applications or websites.
- Kyle Judkins
Flock is too clunky and keeps freezing up on me. I couldn't use it even if I wanted too. Firefox on the other hand works beautifully for my needs.
- Ange Recchia/angesbiz
a good comprehensive thread on this (via @sarahintampa http://ff.im/3bbKN) in short it sux
- sofarsoShawn
Flock supports functionality (such as sharing or reading real-time updates from Twitter) that does not require tight integration with a browser. You can easily do these via bookmarklets and in a new tab of your favorite browser. On the other hand Flock does not support important feature: it does not provide the (personalized) context for what you are browsing at the moment - I want to...
more...
- Maxim Grinev
Like Google, Only Much, Much Worse. Wolfram Alpha is yet another pretender to the search giant's throne. - http://www.slate.com/id...
Vesna Gerintes, Darren Heydon, Yaroslav Nikolaev and 91 other people liked this
"Wolfram has discouraged comparisons between his new site and Google, insisting each serves different purposes. But that doesn't make any sense; you'll use both sites to look up stuff you don't know, so it's irresistible to compare the two. On a side-by-side test, Google wipes the floor with Wolfram Alpha. Using the search engine, I found life expectancy information for California and Kansas, the murder rate in South Africa and Baltimore, M.I.A.'s album sales, economic data for San Francisco, and the top speed of a Veyron: 253 mph. When you ask Google how many calories you'd burn on various sports, you find this page on NutriStrategy.com, which lists caloric measures for all those activities and dozens more, including playing drums, horse grooming, and raking the lawn. That example illustrates the difficulty Wolfram faces in trying to match Google. Much of the data that we look for online aren't found in formal, structured tables like the CIA Factbook. Even Wikipedia misses mountains...
more...
- Paul Buchheit
from Bookmarklet
When I met with Microsoft's search team a couple weeks ago, they said most of tech media covers search engines "wrong". So I have held off on giving this a full spin, but I've been quite underwhelmed with the tests so far. Why should it be so difficult to determine what is the right kind of query and the wrong kind? Why should I feel like it's user error when the product doesn't easily define what it is supposed to do?
- Louis Gray
I disagree, I think this is a great tool for research-based searches but not so great for trying to find a specific item
- mjc
It still doesn't seem like a search engine to me. And it's actually hard to define what is and, specially, how to use it.
- Arnaldo M Pereira
@Michael, inspecific research is almost an oxymoron
- Frère Noël
Yes but can google divide the amount of calories burnt playing drums by the weight of a slinky and provide the output in joules per slug-fortnight?
- Mitch
"That example illustrates the difficulty Wolfram faces in trying to match Google" --- a complete straw man, disingenuous and foreshadowed by the opening commentary. Who said Wolfram was trying to match, or even play in the same game as, Google?
- Isaac Hepworth
His test queries were very similar to the Wolfram demo queries though. I ran into the same thing -- it seemed like a cool idea, but I couldn't get it to actually give me any interesting answers even though I tried to construct problems that it should be good at.
- Paul Buchheit
The most succinct response to this question that I've heard comes from Tim O'Reilly: "Why are you asking Wolfram Alpha questions that would be answered by a search engine. Kind of like using excel as a word processor" (http://twitter.com/timorei...)
- DeWitt Clinton
@Alex, I didn't say nonspecific research. what I meant was if you are looking for a specific piece of content, wolfram alpha doesn't have a big enough index yet. if you are however looking for data on a subject that doesn't have to be from a specific piece of content (eg, plotting/solving equations, data about persons or trends...) then you will likely do very well with alpha. it's of course not as mature as google yet though. don't knock it until you've used it for a math course!
- mjc
@DeWitt++
- Isaac Hepworth
DeWitt, I agree with the idea of it being something else, and like the concept, but it just doesn't work very well for me. Have you actually gotten anything useful out of it? (not using a suggested search, but one you thought of yourself)
- Paul Buchheit
Criticism is easy. Innovation is hard.
- Gregg Scott
I wouldn't think of Alpha as a search engine any more than I would consider Wikipedia to be one.
- Gabe
wolfram alpha is much closer to public semantic data and querying platforms such as freebase than to search engines like google
- Mike Chelen
Gabe: further innovation exists in mathematic queries and comparison to wikipedia is apt because of integrated data set
- Mike Chelen
Paul, try searches that take disparate pieces of data and compute an answer, e.g. http://www91.wolframalpha.com/input... (or try population of USA/population of India)
- Deepak Singh
You need to use your imagination a little bit to grasp that the comparison of life expectancies in all US states, or all countries in the world, is really within the reach of Wolfram|Alpha, even if "it doesn't know, *just now*, what to do with your input", when you ask it about these things. Same remark about homicide rates. Sure, those may not be easy numbers to get at for some...
more...
- François Dongier
Paul: practical usage similar to online spreadsheets, for calculation of frequent tasks such as finding equations by regression http://bit.ly/18FZD7
- Mike Chelen
I get the concept Deepak, but was that an actual query for something you wanted to know, or a demo of Wolfram? My question remains, has anyone actually used it to answer an actual question they had? When I tried (something about the mass of oxygen in a 20cm sphere), it didn't answer. I go to go to Google for answers. I go to Wikipedia for answers. I could go to Wolfram for answers. In that sense, they all compete.
- Paul Buchheit
@Paul -- in response to have I gotten something useful out of it? -- no, nothing other than a contrived query for weather data (http://www16.wolframalpha.com/input...) that I heard would work well (it did). But I don't see that as a failing of Alpha. I don't use Excel much either, and never Mathematica. But I do know what they're good for, and if I ever needed a spreadsheet or a computational software I'd know where to turn. I'm fine with Alpha being designed for a specific need.
- DeWitt Clinton
Google (and Wikipedia of course) were in a much less advanced state than Alpha when they launched.
- François Dongier
I agree that it could be very useful as "Mathematica on the web", but the demo video and other hype made it out to be much more. Hopefully it will get better though -- I do like the concept of what they are trying to do.
- Paul Buchheit
Forget the hype, think for yourself. Alpha is Mathematica 7, 8, 9 on the web.
- François Dongier
I think the underlying thread in this thread, as it were, is that we want to believe in something innovative and new, but we are frustrated as to how we are expected to modify our behavior to work around its limitations (intended or otherwise).
- Louis Gray
It's qlpha, right? Let it go through beta and then full release--and then if it doesn't execute mathematical computations go ahead and dismiss it.
- Gregg Scott
So you're waiting for WolframBeta Gregg? :)
- Paul Buchheit
Yes! Gmail is still in beta after 5 years. I don't think it was intended for widespread use by non-academics anyway. It's machinery is for researchers, mathematicians and scientists. We should always support the innovators. Remember those black and white Apple ads?
- Gregg Scott
Raise your hand if you use Google or Yahoo to search the web. Keep your hand up if you think Alpha is overrated. Now put your hand down if you *don't* use Mathematica or NumPy or Maple or Matlab on a regular basis. How many hands are still in the air?
- DeWitt Clinton
Gregg, do you think the media coverage was an accident, and that they only intended for academics to use it?
- Paul Buchheit
When Alpha (or Beta) will incorporate some simple logical reasoning ability, its applicability and overall usefulness will explode.
- François Dongier
Paul. I don't know about their media strategy. I do know that tech journalism loves a new story so they may have inflated expectations by misunderstanding it's application. Or that could've been WA's marketing mistake. I heard Leo's interview with Paul Wolfram and I didn't get that he believes this is an app for the masses at all.
- Gregg Scott
Leo's interview was excellent: go 2/3 towards the end of http://www.podtrac.com/pts...
- François Dongier
Paul, WA may be guilty of inhabiting that bubble that all of us who love new technology inhabit by thinking that all the world is just like ourselves. It's a niche but potentially very powerful application. I think over time it will become more non-academic friendly. I could be totally wrong. Of course.
- Gregg Scott
It didn't help that Doug Lenat gave a ringing endorsement. :)
- Ray Cromwell
Comparing Google to WA is like comparing a cell phone to a graphing calculator.
- Gregg Scott
Search engines always have this problem where you don't know their domain coverage exactly. If you don't like the results, are you asking the question wrong, or does it not have the answer? Even Google has this problem, but when you can't tell who has what, you end up always using the search engine with the broadest coverage -- which is Google right now.
- ⓞnor
What I would like from WA is a nice hierarchical directory of all the data they have broken down by subject area. Their directory of examples is close, but isn't quite authoritative enough. That way I could really get my head around what they have. A well-curated set of general data banks with a good calculation engine on top seems like it could be really useful, especially if they make it possible for the community to participate in the data curation process. But it's not a search engine.
- ⓞnor
The thing which seems to be missed by a lot of people is that Google has a pretty decent "computation engine" right now. See, for a useless example http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub... vs http://www30.wolframalpha.com/input... Obviously Google isn't exposing many entities ("facts") to it now, but the possibilities are pretty clear (See Google Squared...)
- Nick Lothian
Wolfram|Alpha reviews seem to be a very interesting litmus test... there are those that grok the concept who may be disappointed by what it delivers - in this very early incarnation - but they don't write off the ideal. Those that don't grok it end up comparing the service directly to the Google in one way or another (often while proclaiming that they aren't) and write off the company...
more...
- David HC Soul
I think the underlying thread in this thread, as it were, is that we want to believe in something innovative and new, but we are frustrated as to how we are expected to modify our behavior to work around its limitations (intended or otherwise). - Louis Gray -- Think so too. I tried lots of things for kicks and was unable to get to anything really interesting, I had to look elsewhere for...
more...
- ElijahBailey-Zu of FF <0,
Pretty good for crosswords though ;p http://www22.wolframalpha.com/input...
- ElijahBailey-Zu of FF <0,
I agree with François. It is just "Mathematica on the web". And only this "mathimatica" part of the system works well. Other parts are data integration/inference and NLP they both are unsolved problems now. Wolfram|Alpha does not propose any new solution to these problems. It uses state-of-the-art methods and as result it does not work.
- Maxim Grinev
Nor: http://reference.wolfram.com/mathema... gives a good idea of the currently available datasets. Clearly incomplete. The interesting question is whether making it complete enough to be useful is or not realistic.
- François Dongier
From what's new in Mathematica-7: http://reference.wolfram.com/mathema... , the fun exercise is to imagine what new computable datasets will be included in future versions. Things could go very fast if the community contributes.
- François Dongier
Most of my searches,questions and answers are on Twitter and FriendFeed based on my trusted friends(experts).Main trend.
- Igor Poltavskiy
The data representation is great but the problem is that Wolfram expects the user to learn about it instead of it trying to learn about the user
- Kiran Patchigolla
I see Wolfram Alpha more as a competitor to Wikipedia than Google. The media are the ones who are pitching Wolfram Alpha as a Google competitor, yet they are the same ones that are saying that it can't compete... crazy.
- Stuart Maxwell
I hope the arrival of Wolfram Alpha will make Google start asking themselves the question "are we infallible." And I wouldn't be surprised if, in the near future, Google would begin paying more attention to how it presents what it emits. WA's one big and DISTINCTIVE advantage over typical search engine's output, is that it attempts to enhance and embellish the flow in graphically-palatable chunks (even though they've gotten few things wrong, and abuse small type in graphics-tables far too much).
- ianf ⌘
Has anyone tried searching for "swine flu"
- Peter Stuifzand
It is not "a great tool for research-based searches" even because it does not provide references to the sources where the answer was taken
- Maria Grineva
Wolfram Alpha is a good first attempt at building a computational knowledge engine, but it needs to massively expand its database to become useful and appealing for most people. It is still a demo, a tantalizing taste of things to come, not a fully realized product. At a minimum, it needs to convert all the facts in Wikipedia into a computational format.
- Sean McBride
"Maria - it does not provide references to the sources", yes it does, clik "source information"
- Anders
Sean: Wikipedia data could easily be imported through DBpedia right? Haven't heard much about how to bring data from the RDF web (LOD) into Alpha, but that should be relatively easy. The hard part is what to do with it, as long as Alpha doesn't do logical reasoning. Maybe the best way of merging the two would be to extract RDF from the web of data through a SPARQL query, send the data to Alpha's API and have it return some useful interpretation of that data.
- François Dongier
Compare Google and Wolfram Alpha for searches on the population of Pakistan: 1. search[Google; pakistan population http://www.google.com/#q=paki...] 2. search[Wolfram Alpha; pakistan population http://www46.wolframalpha.com/input...] The Wolfram result is more elegant and directly informative -- but takes quite a long time to produce.
- Sean McBride
Compare searches on GOOG YHOO: 1. search[Wolfram Alpha; goog yhoo http://www46.wolframalpha.com/input...] 2. search[Google; goog yhoo http://www.google.com/#q=goog...] The WA search results are clearly superior.
- Sean McBride
I like the concept, but I see two major flaws that need to be addressed. The first is probably easy: You can't, afaict, compare two disparate data sets over time (can you get it to give you a graph of russian gdp vs crude oil price?). The second is that they're asking for "curators" to help shepherd new data sets, but they don't seem to make them publicly available in raw form. I'm not going to volunteer to maintain their private database.
- Joel Webber
Sean: Actually I don't really mind Alpha taking a long time to produce its answer, I even seem to enjoy it... Feels like watching the machine thinking, trying to guess what sort of calculation and graphs it will come up with :-)
- François Dongier
I'm curious how long it would take google to approximate pi to a million decimal places... Mathematica 6 did it on my x2 3800+ w/ 2gb ram in about 8 seconds. Alas, 2gb of ram was not enough to approximate it to a billion decimal places :(
- LarchOye
I think that Farhad Manjoo just wanted to create buzz with this header. It's no sense to compare Google and Wolfram|Aplha. Its like comparing Word and Corel. They can do some same things, but would you use Word to create a graphic? Would you use Corel to write long text? I would use Google to see what food is good for me, and I would use WA to calculate a sum of its calories. If WA weren't any good, Google would not be showing us some of its not-working search experiments lately.
- Pablo Yamamoto
Thanks for that rational comment, Pablo.
- Christopher A Carr
Pablo summed it up pretty well. Besides WA just launched a couple of days ago and as the users themselves its still in a learning phase. I just wish i had an iphone + WA back in school during all my horrible maths exams lol
- Pretty Monkey Studio
@LarchOye: 0.34 seconds: http://www.google.com.au/search...
- Nick Lothian
I'm not listening to anyone's take on Alpha who isn't a Mathematica user. The rest of you tech journalists can go find something else to hype.
- Mr. Gunn
FD: the problem with WA often taking so long to fully display its results: I'll wager that many users move on to another web page without realizing that they've seen only partial results.
- Sean McBride
If WA still processes results "behind the window" after first showing them to the user without indicating it explicitly, then this is clearly a design error.
- ianf ⌘
hmm... do you always stop thinking after answering a question?
- François Dongier
at least they don't have the deletionist cabal ruining it for everyone.
- Jon
cuil, anyone?
- dario
No, François, but I look extra pensive to indicate more may be coming. Anyway, comparing lifeless computer output to a human answer is taking anthropomorphizing one step too far.
- ianf ⌘
ianf: was joking :)
- François Dongier
Thx, reading this article an thread give me some insights of the usefulness and reach of this tool
- Luis Enrique León
Convention is scary-powerful. We're so used to putting our strings of text into a box and clicking Search that we assume everything with a box and a go button are Google. WolframAlpha seems to be a different beast entirely, and I don't envy the creator(s) in trying to describe what it does. That's not to say it'll catch on if it fails to answer questions, because I believe the majority of people are too lazy to tailor what they ask, to the style that suits the oracle.
- Rick Cogley
Stephen Wolfram himself put it best, I think, in his interview with Leo the other day. He said basically that it's going to take some time for people to get used to the kinds of questions that WolframAlpha is going to be good at answering. And I have to add to that, over time the people on that project will discover and add new data sources to the engine, and come up with new techniques...
more...
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
That said, I thought this was a poor article, written by someone who really didn't try to understand the project. "Wolfram has discouraged comparisons between his new site and Google, insisting each serves different purposes. But that doesn't make any sense; you'll use both sites to look up stuff you don't know, so it's irresistible to compare the two" Wrong. It's just irresistible to...
more...
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Wrong.
- Chris Spizzirri
We noted your cute one-liner, Chris.
- ianf ⌘
Rob: I agree with your conclusion (poor article). The structure of the argument is this: 1. Alpha is an answering engine, not a search engine. 2. Alpha does not answer most of our questions (although answers are on the web). Therefore: Alpha is not a good search engine.
- François Dongier
I'm compiling some queries that work or don't, either way. Please add a couple if you experiment with WolframAlpha. http://friendfeed.com/rickcog...
- Rick Cogley
I agree with Pablo, besides its good to see inventive new services, I will try to get benefit of it instead of comparing to Google. Like I was doing to Google when using Altavista.
- Jacque
I like the new service. I can compute my motgage very easily with it.
- Derek Wei
There is one thing wrong with WA: I dont want to be trained to use a search engine.
- Burcu Dogan
But you've already been trained by your experience to know how to ask Google a question, and get the answers you seek. Why should a different tool be any different? For that matter, don't you need training to use any kind of tool? (even self-training)
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Semantics, Search and Big Honking Databases - http://luckyrobot.com/2008...
interesting post about Semantic search technology
- Maxim Grinev
YouTube.com is now the second largest search site online — YouTube generates domestically close to 3BN searches per month — it’s a bigge ...
it is really interesting fact
- Maxim Grinev
Other ways to read this feed:
