So, Duncan, it looks like Disqus trackbacks are here. - Louis Gray
Interestingly it tracks-back to the Disqus community URL link not the blog post itself. While I personally couldn't care less if another track-back ever showed up again, I don't see that decision to track-back to the Disqus community going over so well. - Robert Seidman
the real question: Spiderman underwear - did you show it? (watch the video at the bottom of the post for this) - Frederic
I'll implement Disqus on my blog the day it supports OpenID commenting - Pat Hawks
I don't see it. I see a box for Name, email and website, and a button to post unverified. I want it to check if the URL I entered is an OpenID, and if it is, use that to automaticly set up a Disqus account. - Pat Hawks
sometimes we play with these tools becuase they are there... to me plurk isn't about twitter's outages it's about seeing something different. Similar to when I checked out jaiku and pownce. - Sean Reiser
“Going to conduct an experiment: sign up a separate FF account and behave like a 'user' rather than a geek to see what I can get out of it when outside of the echo chamber.”
Its going to be hard to change your mindset. - David Risley
will your user profile subscribe to your geek profile? Would one bleed through into the other? This is really interesting stuff, let us know how it all goes! - Iain Baker
@Cyndy - that's my question too. Colin - to whom will you subscribe? - Hutch Carpenter
The two accounts will be completely separate and the new one will focus on non-tech stuff. I'll find to subscribe to via searches - not really worked it all out yet ;) - Colin Walker via fftogo
Colin, I do understand. My initial reaction to FriendFeed wasn't exactly positive. Then it grew on me. Still noisy, but I learned to dig it. - David Risley
pseudo handles have always been around- depends what type of online personality you want that pseudo handle to take on. - Peter Dawson
possibly, to tackle David's point about changing your mindset, you could ask a non-tech friend to sign up to FriendFeed and report back to you on their experience. Sounds like a interesting experiment at any rate, Colin. - Scott O'Raw
So THAT's why I got a signup from "NotColin_ForRealz". - Louis Gray
Scary - what if we find out there's life out there? - Aviv
@Louis, hehehe - not done it yet and nothing personal but I won't be subscribing to any of the usual suspects ;) - Colin Walker
@David, my initial reaction soon after launch was similar but I attribute that to not having many 'friends' on it at the time so it didn't really click. Once I subscribed to more people the value became apparent. As for getting someone else to do it, I don't think the experience will translate as well as I would hope. We'll see what happens. - Colin Walker
please do a lessons learned write up on this - love to see your findings! - Susan Beebe
I consider degraded service to be limited functionality, such as the inability to reply (which at least we were warned about). This is not limited functionality. This is no functionality. :-D - Andrew Dobrow
Ok. Database whale is back in action on the twitter page. Andrew is now happy that they are communicating like we asked. - Andrew Dobrow
Twitter API is apparently still accessible. Only the web interface is gone. - Morton Fox
“I've been putting off starting blog for about 6 years now. I think it's time. What should I write about? Warning: I have more interests than most sane people.”
I have been pushing starting a blog for longer than you, lately I've been trying to have a presence here an on twitter so whenever I set up my blog I can get some initial traffic going. Anyway if you plan on writing on tech or social media let me know if I can help you in anything. :) - Gadiel Rivera
I write about anything I fancy, but it turned out to be mostly geocaching stuff. - Morton Fox
I vote FriendFeed. What else is there worth blogging about? ;) Just kidding of course. - Thomas Hawk
My vote is, at approx $10 - 20 / year hosting fees, you can set up a niche blog for every interest you care to write about. And the ones that don't get popular or you stop caring about, you let die. Unless you start a personal brand blog. Then stick with one. - Phil (scribkin)
Photography, photography, photography! - Thomas Hawk
Write about whatever you want. I wish I started blogging (though it didn't exist) when I was 16. I can only imagine what it would have said - my thoughts, hopes and dreams have changed dramatically. It may have kept me on course? More importantly if you start now, this is the information you'll be able to look back on in the future - or better yet, the generations to come. I also imagine what it would be like to read a "blog" by my grandfather! In the past year, I've had my dad start blogging... - Vince DeGeorge
I recently started blogging again in March and had the same issue (not knowing to blog about). See my post and the comments that helped me out: http://www.sheysmith.com/2008/... - Shey
My advice: let it come to you. Try out different subjects to see what you enjoy writing about and focus more and more on that topic - Shey
Well, Shey, keep writing, I just added you to gReader! @ha3rvey, once you get going let us know! - Vince DeGeorge
I don't mean to be rude, but if you don't know what you should write about, it's probably better not to start blogging. There are already millions of blogs out there that nobody is reading, so unless you have a real passion and urge to express yourself and know exactly what you want to write about, I simply wouldn't start. Blogging for the sake of blogging isn't going to make you happy (or any reader). - Alexander Falk
My advice, write about what you're passionate about and don't worry about page rank and all that stuff... If you have something to say or an insight to share or you can help people with a tutorial or by pointing to information they might not have found otherwise then it's worth the effort. Sometimes I disappointed because I get so few visits to my blog but I'm not trying to be an A-lister so I just do it for me. If someone else benefits from my hard knocks, great! - Lindsay Donaghe
I appreciate where Alexander Falk is coming from but I have to respectfully disagree. Any quasi-successful blogger who is being honest will tell you that it is a learning process and that you can't be afraid to fail. i am learning this right now - I started a blog a couple of months ago and my posts have been a little scattered, but I am learning through the process and am starting to see specific areas where my thoughts offer something different form others. Just jump in! - Marco (aureliusmaximus)
@Alexander - I don't think there's any harm. No one has to read it and blogging can be very therapeutic, much like talking things out. - Vince DeGeorge
The reason my blog seems schizophrenic is that it is really an extension of my personality. Let's face it, it's not many places where you see tech, religion, sci-fi and baseball in the same place. Just write what you love, make sure you have a good use of taxonomy (categories) people can find the subset of your content that they want and you'll be fine. - Sean Reiser
Wow! Great comments, guys! This is why I say that FriendFeed and Twitter have different purposes. I've never seen a conversation like this on Twitter (or Pownce for that matter) - Harvey Simmons
I tend to agree with almost everybody, write about what you like most, that's all that matters. As somebody who just started a couple of weeks ago, and three people tops are going to read mine, I'm approaching from the standpoint it's really only for me. I can't compete with the cutting edge interesting topics of the popular blogs, for me it's all about being able to look back in a couple of years and see growth in myself (I hope). - Ace
Cyndy - Only use a few so I don't have a list. Still driving it. So far, it's fast and stable. The screen capture add-on I like is NOT supported. - Charlie Anzman
Cyndy, my dealbreakers - CS Lite, NoScript, and Adblocker Plus. Everything else I can live without. - Akiva Moskovitz
Adblock Plus is working just peachy for me. - Jordan Hofker
Jordan, strange! When I gave it a go last night, it was one of the extensions claimed not compatible. - Akiva Moskovitz
Akiva, those would be mine. I'm also using Tab Mix Plus and Session Manager. SurfCanyon already has a FF3 version, so I'm set there. - Cyndy
@akiva - That's really weird. I installed it at the same time as I installed Firefox 3 beta 5 and I've just been upgrading on top of that. I don't see how that could matter, but who knows! - Jordan Hofker
Of the few I use, searchstatus was the only one that came across, Gmarks not working - Duncan Riley
@Duncan Dig the new site. Best of luck!! - Charlie Anzman
Installing Firefox 3.0 RC1 has led Mozilla Prism to change its external link behavior to something I find quite annoying. I still haven't found out how that happened. - Morton Fox
I noticed this morning that Mozilla is making a lot of changes to the site. Redirects to the RC1 from old Minefield pages and promoting the new release on the Firefox front page. The good news ... The extensions that I thought were broken aren't. They just didn't migrate from 2.0 or Beta 5. A fresh visit to the new add-on page and I was back in business ?! - Charlie Anzman
Jordan, I must've been out of my head. I fired it up again and, yep, Adblock Plus is working just fine. - Akiva Moskovitz
I'm going to upgrade. If this breaks, I'm holding all of you responsible. - Cyndy
Uh oh. I better erase all traces of my FriendFeed account just in case! - Akiva Moskovitz
Great, I'm glad to hear it's working, Akiva! - Jordan Hofker
I'll wait for you guys to do the UAT testing for a week and then I'll see what the fallout is! ;-) - Susan Beebe
I'm with Susan on this one. I can't afford the losses, - Corvida
@Cyndy Since I did the original post I don't count ... right ? :) - Charlie Anzman
SO FAR... everything works. I'm still hunting down a couple of plug-ins. Some are not located on Mozilla site, but have more recent builds on their own sites. - Cyndy
You guys forgot to mention one key thing: no GOOG toolbar. GOOG: FAIL! - Cyndy
I didn't realize people still used site-oriented toolbars. - Akiva Moskovitz
LOL Akiva. I use the StumbleUpon toolbar and the Google one. Google mainly because I have a few custom searches set up for site searches. I miss them! - Cyndy
gonna wait till the kinks get worked out, don't wanna spend most of my time trying to figure stuff out. :P - Sean Hanna via twhirl
Be very wary of the updater. It'll claim that some of your extensions will NOT be broken by upgrading. It's lying. Lying it's fat little head off. I got into work this morning, saw that only some unimportant extensions were going to be broken so I figured there had been some updates over there weekend. Nope. Not a chance. My important ones are still broken. I AM SHAKING MY FIST AT THE HEAVENS. - Akiva Moskovitz
A lot of this is subjective because some of it will depend on your operating system?? - Charlie Anzman
Good point, Charlie. The updater 'lied' in Vista. I don't think that there is an updater for Linux. Can't say for OS X because I won't have a MacBook Pro until August. - Akiva Moskovitz
So far, simply flawless on all using XP SP3 (and there goes my old MSFT OEM Reseller Program Membership ... ? :) - Charlie Anzman
Pretty amazing resolution and interesting to look around. Looks like the guy with funny socks, reading a book dropped his pager. 2 people are enjoying bottled beer (a Guinness and Sam Adams). Two 2-tops have a person on the cell phone -- just plain rude. The top of the stairs is a bad place for that fan. What I'm wondering is if the older married guy got that ladie's phone number... - RandaL Hicks
photojojo tells me even private spaces are public if they are open to the public....... ianal - paulm
You have the right to take pics, they also have the right to ask you to leave. What the guards did may be bad publicity, but it's not illegal. However, they had no legal right to ask him to delete pictures. - Paul Holbrook
We live in an asymmetrical surveillance society. They (government and corporations) can take pictures of us, but we're not allowed to take pictures of them. Interesting. - Mark Logan
You never really know _who's_ watching. Found a refn off of @geekdave 's blog. http://www.google.com/search?q... If you remove everything after the IP address:port you'll get a livefeed. - RandaL Hicks
I understand the concern of the phtogs, flip side you have to see how what looks like high quality imaging can be seen as a first step to an attack - because it often is. GEtting pissy with the rent-a-cop is just silly. Leave, get a lawyer if thats what you want. - Soulhuntre via twhirl
It's a bit ridiculous the gaping hole I felt by this. I hadn't realized how addicted I was. We need to start a support group. - Carla Thompson
Does FriendFeed have a status report area? For example, Twitter has blog.twitter.com, which was used to report on an outage in late April (they reported 3 days after problems started, but that's another story). Does FriendFeed have a similar place to report on outages? - Ontario Emperor
Welcome back online guys. It's okay, I coped. I read a book and listened to some blues. - Slippy Lane
The FriendFeed Blog seems like a good spot for status reports. - Chris Rossini
I still think it was Scoble's fault...somehow. ;) - Alejandro S.
Quick, someone register isfriendfeeddown.com. - Kevin D. White
Wow, FriendFeed really *is* the new Twitter. - ⓞnor
I know I checked blog.friendfeed.com about 10 times during the outage. Makes sense that status updates would go there. - Erica Baker
I used Summize. No news there, but it was fun to watch all the people realizing Friendfeed was down one after the other. - Alejandro S.
“Just realized one thing I love about FriendFeed - the fact that any subsequent reader actions on a story (comments, likes, etc) pops it back to the top of my feed makes it easier to find interesting posts”
Like me clicking on the "Like" link. :-) - Robert Scoble
I like that if using the web interface. If trying to use FF from a program like Twhirl, it sucks. - David Risley
its like a beach ball at a concert. very cool visual feedback on your actions as well - acts as a guide/challenge to help ensure that you are posting things that generate reader activity. - Marco (aureliusmaximus)
That's interesting because some people actually hate that feature. I love it. It brings the most current at the top, which is what I want. - Bwana McCall
Items bouncing up like a "beach ball at a concert": Didn't get your metaphor at first. Beautiful. - Meryn Stol
And, if you try to keep them connected, everything breaks. That's why I usually don't send these comments over to Twitter. Not to mention, I'm too noisy on Twitter. - Robert Scoble
I didn't send these two over to Twitter. So, the only way people will see my answers is if they come over to FriendFeed. Is that a bad or good thing? - Robert Scoble
It's not broken enough to probably matter as the conversations don't matter THAT much. If you need to talk to someone and it's important for the conversation to not be fractured...you'll call them. : ) Or you'll just communicate w/them in their preferred platform and it will all show up on FF anyway. - Robert Seidman
Tell that to David Risley. He reamed me cause I didn't link directly to his blog. Heheh. - Robert Scoble
I look at this as an opportunity. I'm in the middle of writing a drupal module to pull the conversations about by blog posts back into my blog (http://seanreiser.com/node/132...) - Sean Reiser
Sean, what about when Louis Gray calls Scoble and talks about it there, or if someone talks about it in a Twitter direct message. I do not understand some bloggers' obsession with wanting all the conversation about what they wrote to exist in one place. - Robert Seidman
Robert: generally if we want you to see what we're talking about, we'll bring it back here somehow or take it into Disqus, Seesmic, or Qik. - Robert Scoble
You want a summary of all this? One word: lazy. - Bwana McCall
I can't do everything... but I can get a percentage of it back... my obsession is more about preserving a copy of the conversation, I don't know if these services will exist in a year, I know I'll have a copy of my DB ;) - Sean Reiser
Scoble: Riser? Now you're spelling my name wrong. ;-) - David Risley
Fixed. Funny, you got the point even though I mispelled your name. :-) - Robert Scoble
Twitter is better for chit-chat, friendfeed is better for discussion, because of it's threads per item. - Meryn Stol
Twitter is totally breaking for me. Too many friends and if I try to engage everyone gets pissed. FriendFeed is MUCH more scalable for conversations thanks to "hide" feature. - Robert Scoble
FF is getting more of my eye time, and I see I am reading two of Scoble's 46 Twits here... (thank God;-) - Mary Anne Davis
That's why I use Alert Thingy. Now if it added a few more service amangement features for Twitter and for FriendFeed I'd be very happy. - Simon Bisson via Alert Thingy
agree with Scoble. I don't even try to have conversations on Twitter, way too much noise. The hide feature on FF is invaluable. Twitter is pretty much dead to me now. - Thomas Hawk
Plus FF has these oooooh soooo pretty pictures that make Twitter look so bland in comparison. Adding Flickr faves in FF was one the best thing FF did to beauty up the place around here. - Thomas Hawk
I agree on this one, it would be great if the conversations were portable in someone. I think Dave Winer even mentioned the idea of integrated replies into twitter. - Chris Jones via twhirl
@Thomas - that's a first, "Twitter is dead to me now." Echoes of Facebook fatigue. I was never huge on Twitter; I am enjoying FriendFeed much more. - Hutch Carpenter
They all have APIs, though. This is only a temporary problem. - Steve Lynch
Someone needs to start the "Why Twitter is Like Fredo in GFII" meme. - Robert Seidman
twhirl gives you both windows side by side ! However you need to use quotably to see the conversation on twitter :) - Adrian via twhirl
With all the new data portability features being created FriendFeed could really come out the winner here - Devlin Dunsmore via twhirl
Adding to the conversation is so much easier in friendfeed... On the other hand, if lots of people would get on friendfeed, threads could get really long real quick. Next step would some kind of comment-filtering, I suppose. But maybe with a "friend of a friend" option, that would make it quite distinct from Twitter. - Meryn Stol
Broken is another word for fragmented. And that's just the reality for the near-term and mid-term future. - Mike Reynolds
FF needs to add the possibility to reply directly to a comment, like Digg does. The way FF handles the conversations is why I like it so much better than Twitter. - Alejandro S.
Well, if everybody just used FF for convo, then it wouldn't be all broken now would it?! ;-) - Susan Beebe
Exactly Susan, it's the playground all over again. "Hey everybody, come play with me in my sandbox!" - Bwana McCall
I like to do my tweet replies in FriendFeed b/c FF groups together the conversation. - Mike Reynolds
Did you take that pic? Absolutely beautiful! Nice view in your hometown! We're coming up on monsoon season here in the Vegas Valley (pretty much late May to the end of June) and we usually get spectacular lightning storms. Sometimes, I'll pitch up a chair to the bedroom window and watch the lightning hit the Stratosphere (the hotel, not the atmospheric layer) - Chris Reed
I wish I could take credit for it but I didn't. A family friend did. The body of water is Lake Nasworthy, a foul tub of pollution but one in which every town teen has likely learned to water ski. - Carla Thompson
“Overheard at the nail salon: "After all day in front of a computer at work, it's the last thing I want to do when I get home." Good to keep in mind as we build and test time-sucking services.”
Oops, typo. Ignore the quote mark at the very end. We need an edit button! - Carla Thompson
Exactly why we need less obtrusive mobile computing devices, faster and more ubiquitous wireless network connectivity, and OLED subcutaneous displays. - Kelly Fox
I knew you'd pick up on that one, Shellee. ; ) - Carla Thompson
so, a serious comment then...While a couple of my friends in education have set up Twitter and FF accounts, they aren't doing much with them. They'd understand this question you overheard. I'd add, however, that they're also not likely to have the computer in the "ON" position nearly all day. They're also not likely to be bouncing between 20 tabs or other apps while they work. It just isn't their working style. - Shellee
One of my most favorite New Yorker cartoons ever, by BEK:
“He spends all day sitting, so the last thing he wants to do when he comes home is anything else.” - edythe
Exactly. Twitter ~ Chatroom, FriendFeed ~ Forum. This is why I'll use both for quite awhile. - Jordan Hofker
I rarely post to Twitter, but when I do, it's typically from my iPhone. If I'm at a computer with a browser, it will always be FF. Then again, I'm someone who still doesn't "get" Twitter that much and have a difficult time following conversations. That's likely my own fault, though. - Vince DeGeorge
@J What s next one? ChatRoom twitter , forum ff, and....... FASTFOODR i think ; ) - Erhan Erdogan
Twitter is a god. FF will be, once all its minions arrive. There's not enough of my peeps on here to make this fun yet, but the potential is there. - Chad Norman
The main thing that I like about Twitter is the 140 character limit which forces people to provide a succinct and somewhat precise message which make for interesting and unusual information. I just started using Friend Feed and like it because it aggregates information. Twitter is just plain fun and Friend Feed is a way of organizing all of that fun and then some for info whores like @scobleizer and myself. - James
I've been saying friend feed is to twitter as ESPN is to Baseball. - Sean Reiser via Alert Thingy
I use Twitter for broad discussion and new viewpoints. FriendFeed tends to be more intimate, but with people "like me" - Mike Reynolds
yeah I like that analogy too -- conversations between multiple ppl much easier to come by on FF than Twitter. - Shey
I tend to use whatever is "closest", most times I do post to pownce, and some things just are better as a twit. FF does help bring everything together, I wish more of my contact used it. - Grant Bierman
FF is a mosaic painting that Twitter is a (big) part of. - Michael Dragone
@M.D. I think you are a mosaic painting too, what an aristocratic background you have : ) Nice comment ; ) - Erhan Erdogan
Similar dichotomies have existed before (in Microsoft Exchange, for example, you have email messages vs. threaded conversations in Public Folders), but there's usually some overlap... the interesting thing for me is that Twitter seems to be an acquired taste: at first you're all, "Huh? This is stupid" and then (maybe) you take a real liking to it. Whereas I "got" the idea of FriendFeed right away, I could see the utility, but I haven't taken a real liking to it at all. Twitter is CB Radio. - Karim
I just get overwhelmed with "stuff" on Friendfeed. Half of the content are twitter messages and the rest is stuff that people link to through twitter. The only real reason I have for FF is to read content from friends on other networks, i.e. I Digg, but a friend may Reddit...I still want to read his stuff sometimes...p.s. it does seem easier to have a more indepth conversation here...and I'm seeing lots of comments from people that I don't follow otherwise...so maybe I'll have to take a second look. - Thomas Lopez Jr
I'm pretty new to twitter and ff so its interesting to see how ppl who have been on them for a while use the services. - Nelson de Witt
age on Twitter or wherever and it shows up on FF, ready for commentary. - Soulhuntre via twhirl
Apples and Oranges. FF has the broader net. Twitter is the river. I check Twitter more often. FF of course has the visuals. FF needs friend tagging like Pownce has. Actually, Twitter needs friend tagging too. - Jonathan Leavitt
Grr. Try #2 - I dont post to FF as a "first level" channel. I use twitter or whatever and then FF aggregates it for comment. - Soulhuntre via twhirl
Twitter is also *SIMPLE.* Twitter = iPhone, FriendFeed = Windows Mobile. Twitter is from Mars and FriendFeed is from Venus. Twitter is a hot dog and FriendFeed is escalopes de veau a l'estragon avec endives gratineed with cheese. - Karim
Ya know, I'm just jumping into the FF field, but it looks to me like you've nailed it. The most frustrating thing about Twitter for me is that it's like a chat room where you can't always see all the posts (if I'm not following the other half of a conversation); the FF layout solves some of that, as I don't need to be subscribed to everyone to see their comments. - Tim Glinatsis
friendfeed is the new irc...with a splash of rss - steveo
LOL Hutch, I stand corrected. A well-thought-out analysis you have there. It would be fascinating to compare male/female usage ratios of Twitter vs. FriendFeed. Are structured, threaded, hierarchical conversations from Mars, and free-form chats from Venus? Interesting question... - Karim
@Karim - thanks! There are differences between the two services, and I think the organization around content in FriendFeed creates some real differences with Twitter. Twitter is organized around the person you're talking to. - Hutch Carpenter
Interesting view of Twitter and Friendfeed. But how do you handle messages that you want to get via SMS? - Ryo
I share on Google Reader, update on Twitter, post on Blogger... FriendFeed catches it all as a nice archive (that I use to create a weekly/monthly newsletter for clients). I don't have the big community following so the commenting feature is not such a benefit. If/when I do get more conversations going, then I can see FriendFeed becoming more important. Twitter is more of an echo chamber when it comes to conversation. - Joining Dots
After watching this Post I will be using FriendFeed much more effectively and therefore Twitter less. - Brad Nix
I'm doing that already without being prompted, here provide's a very addictive source of information flow and discussion! - Joe Dawson
Does no one view Twitter as a lifestreaming microblogging service anymore? I realize that as a practical matter, it is chatty, but that doesn't need to define it. I do agree, tho, FF is more like a forum, without all the BS, which I like. - rambn
if it weren't for twitterfeed.com and the AIM option I'd never post to Twitter - jon
twitter is like IRC - FF more like blog/wiki/forums - interesting video clip! - Jeroen De Miranda
