Greg North › Likes

does his name start with Nose? - Justin Korn

Begging for followers? - Aaron Myers

gasp! does his name begin with a K and end with a Rose? - Lise

I mean rhyme with "Nose" - Justin Korn

doubt it's Kevin, he's asking how to get rid of followers - clarke thomas

Seems ridiculous to beg for followers. All you have to do is be interesting, right? - Randy Hall

Your people, your rules! :) - directeur from NoiseRiver

yeah his name sounds like nose. - Robert Scoble

Scoble cracks me up. Keep up the good work! - Carlos Ayala

Wait, wait... is it Rose? :) - directeur from NoiseRiver

I would have made them stand in the corner and think about what they've done, but I guess I'm just old-fashioned like that. - Daniel Smith from twhirl

Im confused about this. For instance, I've noticed on many occasions where you basically say something like: "Come follow me over on FF, the conversation is over there". Isnt that the same thing? Trying to get people to come follow you? I dont mean to be critical, just trying to understand. - Andrew Baron

:D I unblocked him just to verify, and yes it was him!! - directeur from NoiseRiver

Somewhat relatedly, it's weird that I didn't think twice when Louis Gray asked us to digg a story for him. But in hindsight if it wasn't someone I knew, I would've considered it spamming/gaming digg. Interesting. - trextor

He needs another pole to broadcast actually, he won't participate in the discussions. I hate this kind of mentality. - directeur from NoiseRiver

Andrew I don't remember ever asking you to follow me. If I ever do, yes, that should earn me a block. There is a big difference between saying "here is a conversation" and "follow me." - Robert Scoble

directeur: exactly. This is my way of helping retard Twitter-style noise here. - Robert Scoble

trextor: agreed. That is interesting to watch. - Robert Scoble

Aaron: you are always experimenting with my block button. I will call you director of block R&D. :-) - Robert Scoble

Robert, right. I blocked him before because of this actually. Look at his digg page for example. He submitted only 374 news on Digg ang got 364 popular. I don't know if we see the same thing, but it looks _wrong_ for me. - directeur from NoiseRiver

Robert: I'm directeur! Don't mess with my brand ;-) Aaron is just Aaron! And please follow me! oh wait, you're already following me! :) - directeur from NoiseRiver

I've seen a few people post follow me messages. I'm here to follow not be followed - LPH™ and his dog P™

I just blocked someone for being a total asshole. Can dish it but can't take it. Know what I mean? - Dennis Howlett from twhirl

What I don't like is all of his fan base coming over here not even knowing how to use ff, or caring to use ff, but just adding him simply because they like him. Sigh... I was back and forth on the reason you were blocking him, but I completely understand now. - Dennis Jackson from twhirl

I'm yet to block anyone. I think I just like being annoyed. - Mike Lewis

haha, I guess I missed the memo that we entered high school again. I need to brush up on my drama. - Danish Khan from twhirl

Scoble, did you also pass him a note after class? Does this mean you're not BFF anymore? - Matthew Mamet from Alert Thingy

OMG this is funny and ridiculous all at the same time! LOL - Susan Beebe

I didn't notice the joke at first... Funny. - Mike Wills

Hehehe, that's great. - Andrei M. Marinescu

Old but clever. Apple's HQ is located at 1 Infinite Loop. - Jeff P. Henderson

hmmm and twitter address is "South Park" .. it makes me wonder :) - Naor Mark

+1 Infinite Loop - Hao Chen

wow...*snicker* - xero

*giggle* - Lisa L. Seifert | FHG™

Silverlight has the Olympics on NBC, so they'll get adoption. - Robert Scoble

I left my comment on your blog - want to make sure the non-FF audience sees it, too. - Dossy Shiobara

hey hey hey! who said silverlight was the better technology!? - Greg North

I woud have thought Silverlight needed the breaks. - john conroy

Isint silverlight straight XAML? That means its text and can be indexed. The real question here is what will microsoft do in response? - Roberto Bonini

Silverlight will be a threat but it will take some time. That's great if everyone has the plugin thanks to the Olympics but if developers aren't using it then that plugin is useless. I think it has a ton of advantages over Flash from a developer standpoint as well so really there isn't any reason it shouldn't catch on with some time. - Devlin Dunsmore from twhirl

We need to remember that this is not a perfect search engine solution for flash. There is a lot more that has to be done to really index flash to be able to rank highly in the Search engines. It is a great step forward though. Also, how easy would it be for Microsoft to come, just like adobe and say, here is a technology to crawl our software, why don't you use this. - Tim Flint

Older Flash movies win here. Most modern Flash sites store the content externally in xml and even then it's hard to tell what content is meant to be displayed. - Andrew Smith

Silverlight stores XAML in a ZIP file that's sent to the client. It is the better technology (C# on the client as opposed to ActionScript). But the tooling and community is seriously lacking still. - xero

funny how the title of the story says adobe gets a "break" then in the story he declares ms silverlight "game over". counting out microsoft is just stupid. - adolfo foronda

Here's ESRIA.com analysis: Let's also not forget that a lot of pagerank has to do with external deeplinks directed to your site. Web users have years of discouraging experiences bookmarking Flash sites, to the point that most don't think to copy-paste the address bar and drop a link on their blog, even if it's being updated by the Flash element via JavaScript. In this regard, Flash sites without an HTML frame will always be at an SEO disadvantage no matter what Adobe wants to say. - Bob Stewart from twhirl

"Silverlight might be better technology, but if it doesn’t get indexed by the two biggest search engines it’s game over." So, the inability to index Flash to this point doomed it? Who wins the Flash vs. Silverlight war will have nothing to do with Google's index. - Sprague D

Yeah lots of good tools and libraries coming out for javascript that are making it easier to do interactive features that don't need flash or silverlight anymore. - Ralph Whitbeck

This sorta feels like much ado about very little. What really matters is if the Flash content gets indexed in any MEANINGFUL way. PDFs get indexed but you have very little control over the display of the search engine results, so the listing itself is often meaningless. There are no navigation links in PDFs, so when you view the file, there's no way to navigate to the site to which it belongs, short of stripping down the URL, which most people won't do. Let's see indexed Flash in action. - David Erickson

@David, that's the main thing about this announcement. Google has indexed Flash application for a long time in generally the same way they index PDF (doa filetype:swf search). But now with this player, Google will have a lot more information about both what is inside the SWF and how it got there. Combine that with some of what SWFAddress has been doing with deep linking and hopefully this will make the Flash search experience much better for the end user. - Ryan Stewart

I did a research project back in 2000 that set out to prove we never needed Flash to begin with. And we didn't. Everything someone did in Flash I managed to do in DHTML (JavaScript and Ajax for you new guys). It's just a matter of how widespread the DHTML talent is. Though I'll have to say that the readily available JS packages have made life easier. Used to have to code all of that ourselves. - xero

DHTML / Javascript is now, and always will be, a lousy and fragile environment for anything serious. Flash and Silverlight really are the next steps. Javascript is badly implemented and inconsistent (and its not just MS with the problem, the spec is ambiguous). The reason Flash is gaining ground is that it is unified and consistent across browsers and platforms. Silverlight is all that WITH a real language and dev environment. - Soulhuntre

Robert, MJ Foley asked MS -- answer: Silverlight was designed to be SEO friendly http://blogs.zdnet.com/microso... - Sprague D

This is of little benefit if the content is many clicks deep within the application. Unless the content can be indexed by a specific URL then this is of little benefit. You will still need to design with crawlability in mind. This is no silver bullet. - Brad Curtis from twhirl

Rob: try again. Blogging still is barely mainstream and it's been out for 10 years now. Facebook just got to 110 million users. How many people in the world are there? Six billion? Funny how we consider things "mainstream." - Robert Scoble

Well, if 110 million users isn't "mainstream", then yes, I will change my estimates :) I think twitter (or microblogging) will go mainstream soon because it is so simple, and IM-like. "Real" blogging requires too much work and thought, and that is probably why it took so long. That and the tools have not been around for the full 10 years. Not sure when things like LiveJournal and WordPress really came about. - Rob Diana

LiveJournal was out in late 90s, I remember seeing it 2001 and I'm sure I wasn't early. WordPress came out shortly after that. Probably around 2003. Yeah, microblogging will probably be more popular than regular blogging. I'd agree with that, but it has a long way to go. Twitter has, what, a million or two users, not all of whom are active? - Robert Scoble

What's amazing is it seems that you guys beat the mainstream by days, not hours- for example, Andreesen/Facebook - Dino

LiveJournal, early 1990s? Try 1999, as late 1990s as it gets. ;o) - Fraser Smith

Sorry, I meant early 2000's. I'll fix that. - Robert Scoble

you are talking about heads down researchers from the nihs hp though robert :-p - mike "glemak" dunn

LiveJournal is huge in Russia, apparently. And the biggest search engine there is something called Yonex (useless info 4 the day alert) - john conroy

For me, I've gotten used to think in terms of mainstream for techies and mainstream for the general public. - Joey Lo

@Rob Diana - You're wrong - FriendFeed does not need more filtering to become mainstream. Mainstream users don't filter, they expect it to work and that's it. You're also wrong about FriendFeed becoming mainstream anytime soon. People don't use many services, therefore FF is useless for them. Not even blogging is mainstream, and probably won't ever at a scale like Facebook. Most people haven't got interesting things to tell. - sebmos

I'm no techie, compared to some of the folks around FF anyway. I know "just enough to be dangerous," according to my wife's IT dept. But I rely on posts from folks like Scoble et al. to expand my knowledge of the tech world. FF is invaluable for that, but even though I signed up for it months ago, I didn't really start using it until the last 4-6 weeks. I think new sites and apps take a little getting used to, esp. if you're not really "out there" in terms of knowledge and know-how. - Steve Lowe

steplow - like your comment, very reality based :) - mike "glemak" dunn

This says more about the researchers being out of touch than it does about social media. - Sam Pullara

I use my father and brother as 'touchstones' for mainstream. My dad, at 71 is an attorney who uses the computer for work only, doesn't regularly use email for personal reasons (but does for work) and can use the internet (he tracked down my twitter!) but doesn't see the need for it. My brother, at 44 is a judge who majored in CS & Psych in undergrad. He's a computer geek, but more into gaming than SocMed. They keep me from buying into the 'echo chamber' - yes, we are that far ahead. - Lucretia Pruitt

The Fins sold us the phones. So maybe we're not that far ahead. :-) - Dave Winer

I agree with Scoble,blogs, twitter, friendfeed, plurks won't be mainstream for a while. There is actual nothing in them that would give people a reason to hop on them in droves. E-mail yes, IM yes, static webpages, forums yes. And that's all. - Roland Hesz

I asked a bunch of people I work with regularly about Friendfeed and 1 person knew what it was. I work in the web industry. Maybe I was asking the wrong people. - Kate

Our focus is different. I don't know jack about sustainable architecture, for instance, but my friends who don't give a damn about blogs are all about green energy, sustainable city planning, etc. That's something that a lot of people on FriendFeed don't understand or care about. "Ahead" is a relative term. My dad is on FriendFeed, but he just sees it as another way to follow what I'm... more... - Steve Lynch from Alert Thingy

I like what Steve Lynch replied, re. his friends/other people having a different focus, especially the bit re. his friends "who don't give a damn about blogs are all about green energy, sustainable city planning, etc. That's something that a lot of people on FriendFeed don't understand or care about. 'Ahead' is a relative term." I see that in my own communities of interest, where people are comfortable with forums (ew!), have made tentative forays into FB, but don't get blogs, much less Twitter, FF, etc. - Yule Heibel

This discussion is a bit self-congratulatory, wouldn't you say? I would frame it a different way: how out of touch with the mainstream are we? The answer, of course, is very much so. Another question: are we out here on the cutting edge or just hunting snipe? - Juan Aguilar

I doubt Twitter will ever go "mainstream" if we define mainstream as a majority of the people who are online via computers or cellphones. Blogs, wikis, RSS, none of that is mainstream. Browsing, email, SMS...those are mainstream. - wrecks

now that it is mentioned, SMS reached mainstream pretty quick. - Ruben Llibre

@Jua Aguilar Hunting snipe. It's not in any way a cutting edge. It's just a way to pass time. - Roland Hesz

@wrecks: Good point. Maybe it would be better to talk about functionality rather than platforms, then. I'd say that social networking and IM are mainstream. I think real-time video on cellphones (for example) could go mainstream in a few years, but it wouldn't necessarily mean that "Qik" goes mainstream. I think wiki-like functionality will become more common... because it is very... more... - Steve Lynch from Alert Thingy

Lots a of great points, regarding Robert's original post I think that online video is finally taking off in a big way thanks to YouTube and that speaks more to the mainstream than any of the social applications we use to create and share content and conversation. Live mobile video broadcasting is still relatively new but video chat with Skype seems to be reaching a mainstream audience thanks to Oprah using it on her show and recent New Earth web casts. How much does the generation gap play into this? - Larry Kless

I just started work at fav.or.it, Nick is working to bring at least blog reading and following to the masses. but its hard work. - Tim Hawkins

it's not flash. it's flash developers creating RIAs on supercharged rigs and then pushing them out onto a Net where most users' machines are significantly less powerful than what the developers have. sluggishness and crashes ensue. don't hate the game, hate the players. ;-) - .LAG liked that

Remove flash from the picture and what do you have? A stable browser :) - Bwana ☠

If you're on OS X, it's Adobe's fault - Flash on Mac OS X is absolute shit. It's so Flash that some people use "Flash" as a euphamism for the word "shitty." - Ⓒⓗⓡⓘⓢ Ⓟⓘⓡⓘⓛⓛⓞ

but without flash, how would you deliver to the masses the greatness that is bwana.tv. ;-) - .LAG liked that

I hate flash (for the most part), doesn't even work in 64bit linux. - clarke thomas

Firefox 3 performance for me really depends on the underlying OS's age and kruftiness. It runs smooth as butter and extremely fast on fresh installs of XP and Vista.. not so much on my entrenched OSs. - Phil Glockner

I was glad to you start this discussion. Although it's working great on my Mac and I prefer it to see Safari, it's a POS on my PC and crashes each time I try to reinstall and launch it. I don't think I can blame Microsoft for that. Everything else works fine. - Larry Kless from twhirl

yeah, flash on linux apparently stinks, but what do you do to go beyond static text? - .LAG liked that

Running great for me on XP - Mark Forman

is Flash on OS X Adobes fault or Apples? i don't know a thing about it but based on the apparent struggle to get Flash on the iPhone I suspect Apple's playing a role in making the experience on OS X worse than it could be... but again, what's the alternative? Quicktime? - .LAG liked that

Chris called it - Rock solid for me on XP and Vista - Numerous complaints continue from some Apple users - Charlie Anzman

i was trying to watch Mr. Chocolate Rain on Ustream and it did crash on me alot - Outsanity

Don't look at me, I move between FF3, Safari and Opera (current) on a rather crufty XP install. It all WORKS, but some days are better than others. - Alexander Williams from NoiseRiver

I've yet to have a FF3 problem with Flash, had them a lot with FF2. - Sean Hanna from twhirl

Absolutely no problems here. And I love the new location bar. It's such a time-saver, once you've learned how to use it for your advantage! - sebmos

It seems if a flash applet is running, the amount of cpu consumed is very significant. Just observed FF3 consuming 50% cpu with a paused Youtube video. Closing that page fixes things. - jho from twhirl

Use Opera 9.5 :) - Nestor

Check out the beta for Flash, it fixed my issues with FF3 RC2, and haven't had any since. - Steven Van Tilburg from twhirl

FF3 is rock solid on Linux Ubuntu and Windows XP for me. - Opensource Obscure

Have you tried the Flashblock addon? - David Knight

Agreed - If your on a windoz machine take a look at the toolbar in a Google document... seem a little fuzzy?? Render it in IE and you'll see what I mean. I also had issues with flash and other stuff. Plus my theme was incompatible - but that just sucked... - Dave Gray from twhirl

That sux. FF3 is fast, stable, and awesome for me. I would recommend Opera as an alternative - Shey

I thought all my crashes were total flukes but now that you mention it every time its crashed it been with a flash website. It crashed 3 times on me yesterday :( Being a flash developer that makes me sad. - Greg North

have very little to complain about Firefox 3, could be Adobe issue, ver10 is awful - Dobromir Hadzhiev

Thanks everyone for the FlashBlock tipoffs. Been trying it today and I think it's helping the epic memory leaks I was suffering (using FF3 on OS X). - Mike

good thread... i hope someone at Adobe is aware of the sentiments some folks have for the flash plugin, especially on OSX and Firefox... with all Adobe's invested in Flash and Flex, if people are concluding (correctly or not) that their web browsers crash mostly due to Flash, then they have a problem...these are the early adopters... what will the eventual mainstreamers do? - .LAG liked that

I don't know if it's worthless crap, but it's certainly unnecessary. Any software problems you have, I take with a grain of salt. You are stuck with Vista basic after all. - Art Lindsey III

i have a quad core intel running XP SP2 FF3 hasn't crashed on me once - Tyler Gillies

Thanks for the feedback. There are a couple of things happening. One, we're always trying to work more closely with the browser vendors to make sure the in-browser Flash experience is good. Two, we're of course always trying to make Flash Player more stable on every platform. I've had my own issues with Flash Player on the Mac, but I think in 10 it's getting better. At least it has in my testing. =Ryan (rstewart@adobe.com) - Ryan Stewart

I've had a lot of FF3 issues too. I'm trying the 10 beta now, though. - Sarah Perez

Flash on Ubuntu Linux and FF3 crash. Flash on XP with FF3 ok, Flash on OS X spotty. I use the Mac the most, so it's not great for me. - Henry Burger

Eh? - Dewald Pretorius

Que the "Womp Womp waaaa" - Tyler (Chacha) from twhirl

:-o - browneyes

wow that's insane. - Clay Newton

another bad move by twitter, but i can see the logic as they need to scale back the load and this will certainly do it! - Susan Beebe

am i the only one who sees 'for now'?? - Mona Nomura

about time.... but what about people that already have insane follows? are they going to diet? - NoahDavidSimon

Here we move.... :P - Aaron Myers

You complete twitter. Now you must make new character and start new game. - k00pa

How come? - Gema

what's up with that?? - Sarah Perez

You may have reached the end of the internet... - Mike Lewis

Posts like these reveal a huge influx of new members. - Russellreno

Did you just coin "twuser?" - Hao Chen

I think he did. - Ontario Emperor

What the hell? - Brandice

yep, the world really is flat! :*) - Susan Beebe

Not sure if I'm cool with "twuser". Lends itself far too easily to "twluser" :P - Brad McCrorey

That's crazy, Twitter has not let me follow new people for a while now but never shows this error (only something strange happened, please refresh the page and try again). Interesting to know what exactly the limit is as mine is definitely a strange number. - Svetlana Gladkova from twhirl

why would you ever want to follow that many people? -just curious - Jason (not an Argonaut)

@Jason: That's a usual question :) I added tons of people first on Twitter to get a grip of what to do and continued when new people followed me that I found interesting. Now I really want to stop following some to make place for new people and can't as no application that shows mutual followers seems to be unable to cope with API limitations - Svetlana Gladkova from twhirl

WTF :) - Arjun

This is definitely a temporary limit that gets triggered when you follow a lot of people in a short amount of time. There are more details this and other new limits on Get Satisfaction:http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter... - Mike Doeff

13. yeesh. - lisa-k

12, apparently. - Jordan Hofker

21. Wow. That's a lot of cannibals. - Johnny Baker

It seem 12 cannibals (or zombies) could make a meal of me - Chris Moritz

16. Eat me - Andrew Smith

16. Nom nom nom. - Jeremy Brooks

18! Wow, I am a FEAST! - Phil Glockner

I've got a plan should cannibals attempt to get me, they're like ninjas... they can't catch you when you're on fire. - Will

13, yummm - Amit Morson

10 it seems, and there was me thinking I was fat. - Gerard van Schip

Yes, indeed, Scott. That site has my vote for weirdest web calculator. By the way, I'm good for 8 cannibals. - Rex Hammock

It told me 15. That's not good, is it? - ha3rvey (Hugs 50% off!)

The worst I could do is 24. (5 ft, 250+ lb, obese, teenager, vegetarian) - ha3rvey (Hugs 50% off!)

14.... so a little less then average I guess. - Stefan Hayden

Unlucky 13 - ronin

Andrew Smith beat me to the punch, I was going to say bite me! :) BTW, I came in at 13 - Jeremy Kunz from twhirl

I win, 23!!!.. oh wait, that's not a good thing... - Jonathan Johnson

21 cannibals for me. Damn, guess I need to use that Wii Fit a little more... - Brandon Wood

woo 20 cannibals, although, I think zombies would be less because they only eat brains - Robert Hafer from twhirl

half - Tyler Gillies

I don't know if this is good or bad, but I only feed 8, I second Rex's nomination for weirdest web calculator - nick carrasco

http://www.crunchgear.com/2008... - Robert H

Having an Android option might very well be the impetus for me to chuck my Treo. - Mathew A. Koeneker

Oh great another wait. I am WAITING for my invite to Jaiku. Now I have to WAIT for Android. Geesh as bad as my military days. Hurry up and WAIT. - Admiral70

Interesting. - Ⓒⓗⓡⓘⓢ Ⓟⓘⓡⓘⓛⓛⓞ

agreed! I'm pretty much committed to an iPhone 3G but if I had an Android alternative, it would be a much harder decision. - Phil Glockner

I liked it. =) - Eric Hamilton

I like the spikes :) - Bret Taylor

adding this to http://www.go2web20.net/ - Orli Yakuel

haha feisty little guy. - Frankie Warren