i enjoyed the interview. nice to see someone in congress so well versed in technology. we definitely need more politicians like her. just wish she was on twitter. (or friendfeed, scoble) :) - Matt Musgrave
Matt: we should start a FriendFeed cluster of messages to her. I'd email that to her, might get her to join up! - Robert Scoble
Robert: i'd really like to keep up with her political views . she seems to understand the issues and if she used technology (like twitter/friendfeed) to rally support from the masses, it might just make the splash it needs in congress to make a change. - Matt Musgrave
i think i was more amazed when asked if she had a twitter account, she responded that she didn't have time and not, "what's a twitter?" - Matt Musgrave
Nice interview, Robert... Always appreciated Lofgren - Chris Reed
Matt: I'm pretty sure that Tim Ryan (a congressman who Twitters) got to her already. His interview will be up next week. - Robert Scoble
i follow tim ryan and john culberson on twitter. i like when the real person tweets and not an aide or staff member. it gives all new meaning to 'write your congressman'..when they can reply personally. - Matt Musgrave
"Under the new plan, parents with two kids in Google day care would most likely see their annual day care bill grow to more than $57,000 from around $33,000.
At the first of the three focus groups, parents wept openly. As word leaked out about the company’s plan, the Google parents began to fight back. They came up with ideas to save money, used the company’s T.G.I.F. sessions — a weekly meeting for anyone who wanted to ask questions of Google’s top executives — to plead their case, and conducted surveys showing that most parents with children in Google day care would have to leave Google’s facilities and find less expensive child care." - Paul Buchheit via Bookmarklet
Strangely written -- hard to believe this is in the NYT: "Faced with this dilemma, Google decided that the way to solve the dual problems of a too-long wait list and a too-large subsidy was — are you sitting down for this? — to get rid of C.C.L.C. and make the Kinderplex more like the Woods!" - Paul Buchheit
Sergey Brin comes off as a real gem. Looks like 'don't be evil' is morphing to 'let them eat cake'. Amazing what a 40%+ drop in share price can do. - Peter Simard
I found it odd that NYT quoted Sergey multiple times but each quote was disputed by Google PR after the fact. Seems like their PR folks are trying to do some "damage control"? - Alex Barbara
$57,000 just for someone to watch your kid? Remind me to not have kids for a while.. - Alex Barbara
Slowly but surely the shine will finally come off of Google and reality will set in. - AJ Kohn
The sense of "entitlement" is pretty stunning to an outsider who is an occasional visitor. It's pretty obvious (to me) that the "gimme" attitude is going to be an albatross around Google's neck when the time comes that their stock price returns from the stratosphere and settles around something reasonable and in line with the true value of the company. - Jason Wehmhoener
Geez. I don't know one solution that didn't generate new problems as a result of its having solved an old problem. Can't win no matter what in the eyes of the media. Also, this is news-worthy enough to be in the Times? - Ginger Makela
I have no thoughts on the day care issue in and of itself but people changing "don't be evil" into "do no evil" makes me grind my teeth. http://www.google.com/search?q... - Erica Baker
@Paul, agreed -- it's a strangely written story. The writer's bias is clear. Using heresay from employees then vaguely referring to the official statements. - Sprague D
$57,000 was for two kids... and after the price reductions, it won't be that expensive. - Michael Leggett
The author feels that employee-provided day care should be a requirement just like health insurance (not sure I agree), but fails to applaud Google's effort to make it available to those that want it. A 700-child waiting list (over 2 years) is unreasonable as is Google paying a $37,000 subsidy per child. I love working at Google... and I want them to stay around. Paying that large a subsidy is irresponsible to its employees and its shareholders. - Michael Leggett
You could argue that they should just lower costs then... but the main cost is the teachers (as it should be). Google believes teachers should be paid more and I'm proud that they are putting their money where their heart is by doing just that. If you don't want to pay so much, you can always find day care else where, right? Am I missing something? - Michael Leggett
When I visited HP I noted that they don't have the coffee carts anymore that they used to have. The employees noted that other benefits had gone away too. When the high profitability phase of a company ends, the benefits usually go away. At Microsoft they tried taking away things too, like towels in locker rooms, and the employees rebelled. - Robert Scoble
wonder what is average daycare costs there, in area? - silpol
It's absolutely incredible that day care would cost more than the mean national income ($48,201 according to Wikipedia). I understand that this is Silicon Valley, and therefore not applicable to the rules of the rest of the country, but still...it's astounding. - Spinn
We were paying $21,000 a year for two kids and that was top of the line in Charlotte. In theory I like the idea of company sponsored childcare but in reality I don't want my employer to have any influence over my kids. - Lori Reed
I posted this to reddit and got on the front page :P - Bjorn Tipling
probably I have to stop bitching about local tax - I pay monthly for not-full-day at kindergarten in about 100 meter from my house about 130 EUR, for full day it might reach 200 EUR/month max, i.e. annually 2400 EUR (~3600 USD)... hmmmmmmm - silpol
"Google can’t just have low teacher-child ratios — it has to have the lowest of anybody." - Shouldn't it be high teacher-child ratios? Unless they want more children to less teachers. - nadim
I had a hard time believing this was a NY Times article when I first saw it. Talks about child care at the beginning, then references a blog post talking about how Google is not a good place to work and then goes on to detail the child care issue. - Turker Keskinpala
@Michael -- $57G's .. not expensive? ... I don't even make that much in 2 years anymore .. - Steven Hodson
"If Google had really wanted to do something path-breaking about its day care crisis, it would have spent less time creating elitist day care centers and more time figuring out how to “scale” day care for everybody no matter what their salaries." - Gabe Schaffer
Even $33k for 2 kids seems like a lot -- at $16/hr it seems like you could just hire a babysitter for 8 hours a day to watch your two children. For $57k you could just hire a child psychologist full time. - Gabe Schaffer
Mike - agree that Facebook has more... but FriendFeed doesn't need that stuff. Photos, discussions, blogs, events, etc all are "in" FriendFeed in the sense that you can see them and then go interact with the direct source (Upcoming, Flickr, etc). I prefer the distributed model myself, since the individual apps are of higher quality. - Patrick Lightbody
And...FriendFeed doesn't need those things because FriendFeed shouldn't be trying to *be Facebook*! :) - Mike Keliher via twhirl
Facebook without the embarassing pics. Well, unless you have them in Flickr... - Mark Dykeman
Good question Steve - it's emerging as my favorite social network. And I like geeks...hmmm. - Hutch Carpenter
I'd say info-junkies or convo-junkies over geek - Marco
still having difficulties moving people over to ff but once they do... they stay. info over visual- startling to some. - Nice Fish Films
Facebook is not an information mediium, Friendfeed is, so comparing the two doesn't make any sense - Deepak
I'm surprised that when people talk about FF, they don't mention Digg should be afraid. Right now FF provides more relevant links & info than Digg does and the comments are much better too. I would much rather spend my time here than Facebook or Digg. - Otto R. Radke
@Deepak - I guess it depends on how you are defining "information" - I think you could argue that both Facebook and FriendFeed are information mediums but Facebook is a parking lot to FriendFeed's freeway (or Nascar track I suppose, depending on your perspective on noise) - Marco
Two are for the most part different vehicles, just like FF and Twitter - Charlie Anzman
I would call FriendFeed IRC for Web 2.0 - J. Phil via fftogo
Nah, its kind of like Google Reader on Steroids with Twitter for comments???? - Roberto Bonini
Marco, if the information is people's birthday's yes Facebook is information, but I only use it to communicate (almost entirely with people I know), never to find new or interesting material. Friendfeed on the other hand is all about information. - Deepak
Great insight, Steve. I've been thinking for some time that FriendFeed is the stripped-down-for-performance version of Facebook. The Facebook news feed is, for me, its most appealing feature, and FriendFeed is a turbocharged news feed. However, I like facebook too -- it puts me in touch with a different group of people than Friendfeed does. - Mitch Wagner
Oooh! Yes it is!! The valley of links, the river of comments, the gathering services, etc makes FF Our blended Facebook... - George The Writer
we always want it to be black and white but it almost never is. Deepak, you're engaged enough here to communicate with people you don't know (as am I) so it can't be 100% about the information. I agree with both you and Marco because I think you both can be right in this case. - Robert Seidman
Tough for me to say. I could never stand Facebook. - Chris Baskind
That'll be more or less true until (if & when) it get's broader based adoption at which point all the geeks will bitch about it being too mainstream ... of course that assumes they haven't already jumped ship to some other service. - Clay Newton
geeks, nurds they can feel home with friendfeed, facebook is for the masses - Dobromir Hadzhiev
I am disappointed I have never been poked on FF. - Russellreno
If we can't separate ourselves from the proles with technology then what is the point? - Andy Wibbels
Robert, of course. Primary use would be a better choice of words. Of course, that's how I use it. I still can't see how anyone would use Facebook as a primary information resource - Deepak
FB is good for entertainement. FF not. We're not poked on FF. I think they are very different. On FB you see what people write on their superwall, on FF you see what people doing on the web. And what they doing for us is much interesting than what they want to show of us. - Hubert Guillaud via Alert Thingy
Facebook is heading in the direction of FriendFeed, slowly but surely. In combining the Wall and Mini-Feed with the tabbed profile update it will be a definite clone. Increase the number of stories/comments from ten and also the amount of imports and what have you got... - Joe Dawson
That presumes that FF content is all geek related, I'm finding that it's not, but I'm also following 1000+ people from a diverse range of backgrounds - Duncan Riley
FF is for geeks who sit all day with browser tabs open - the TechCrunch 53651 - Sean Kelly
I dont understand people who are saying they are using FF as their Main News Source...I tried hard..for weeks....and realized that 90% of the stuff really hapenning in the world is no covered in FF. FF is really completely focused on geek stuff. Take FF and social network related content out...you get 90% of the content out. - PF Thaler
For further clarification, geeks come in many flavors, I'd say these are social media geeks - Jeremiah Owyang
i want to block threads with the word facebook in it! - Dieter Schwarz
Tweetdeck is very nice. Breaking tweets out into @ replies and groups makes sense. Pretty, too. - Leo Laporte
Excellent! I'm just not that into all the dark gray. - kennbell
'scuse me while i wipe up this drool, but that looks hot! - Sarah Perez
This is very nice. Love the grouping feature. Makes it a lot easier to follow tweets. - Dave Rutter
ok, see that got all screwed up just now, had to delete & start over. - TheMacMommy via twhirl
so what I meant to say was, I like tweetdeck for trying to improve on apps like twirl or twitterific for that matter, but I'd still love to see some über combination of tweetdeck & twirl that lets you group, customize color in UI, post using ping.fm and receive more than just tweets like FF does - not so much a firehose but more like a spiffy detachable shower head w/the different dial settings. Come to Mamma! - TheMacMommy via twhirl
I like it Louis - thanks for the tip .. even though there are acouple of things I would probably like as options it is very workable in the short time I have been using it - Steven Hodson
I really like this so far, it'll be interesting to see what future plans holds. I'd like to see a tad more customization of the client itself. Nice so far though. - Nick
Nice that you can keep twittering even when Twitter is down. Categories/groups/tags is clearly a direction Twitter user needs are heading. Also need an app, though, that can handle multiple Twitter accounts. I tried Twhirl but after a while kept getting timeouts on the 2nd open account. Maybe that's Twitter's fault, not Twhirl's. - Gordon Vaughan
I still wonder why all of these apps default with a dark background. - Caleb Elston
Just saw it with my 9-y-o daughter. Animation was amazing and it was visually attractive. Story was cute, but not great. I think that Monsters Inc., the Incredibles and even Toy Story had better writing. Most interesting thing to me was that more than half the people in the theater were adults with no children. Definitely a bit of a geeky crowd, different than you might expect for a Disney/Pixar flick. All that said, Nice. Now all I need is a blackberry version (that also handles friendfeed) :) - Barry Graubart via twhirl
Using it .. nice. Try clicking on the photo. Looks like most of us need to go higher rez! - Charlie Anzman
pretty slick...just not picking up all my twitter friends though for some reason. - Zee from WeDoCreative
Ok, another ugly black twitter client. I want an Air app with some brushed metal feel to it. Having something on my desktop that doesnt match the rest of the windows makes me feel like Im on windows. - Colby Olson
I would rather pay for Flickr than put my photos on Facebook to be fodder for advertisers. - Andrew Feinberg
Are there any other Twitter services/apps with the Grouping functionality? Really loving that. - Bryan Landers
looks excellent. love the "maximized view" for real twitter addicts. though I can't imagine there are many left that are addicted, since, well, you know. can't really be addicted to twitter when it's down all the time - Mark Bao
Thanks! I'll check it out over the next few days! - Soulhuntre via twhirl
This is lovely. Funny how some really nice apps sneak up on you. Thanks for linking! - mark.kemperman via feedalizr
nice but I doubt it fits the workflow now that twitter is a tiny bit of it - Dobromir Hadzhiev
thanks Louis, very cool app, what do you think of the group service? - John Cass via Alert Thingy
I like the group service, but I love the Summize integration more. I've watched my search for TweetDeck just blow up today, and the app hasn't crashed once or locked up - which is saying something despite the fact it's been open all day. - Louis Gray
It's gotten so bad that I have to regulate myself. I use a plug-in for FireFox called Leechblock that you can use to limit your time during the work day.: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-... - Dan Kaplan
huh? F5 just blips my Mac's little sound level at me. - Thomas Hawk
@Thomas F5 = Command + R on a PC. Refresh. - Parth Awasthi
Yes, FF is the new internet addiction. F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5... - Tad Donaghe
The only way to solve this problem is for you people to post quicker ;) - Earl E Morningwood
@Jason you essentially just told Amy Winehouse she should check herself into rehab - how likely do you think we are to match your show of discipline? lol ; ) - Marco
At some point we just need FF to auto-refresh every second and include a pause button so we can stop the action to read stuff that catches our eyes. That would be pretty freaky, huh? - Tad Donaghe
it has been eating into my reading and sleeping time - RAPatton
What? Reading Friendfeed isn't constructive or creative? - Tom Landini
Sometimes I interrupt what I'm doing (re-reading the manual for Twilight Struggle) just to check for new FriendFeed action. Totally addicted. - Akiva Moskovitz
I do that too. But now we're going to see the Incredible Hulk. - Robert Scoble
F5=Crack. Crack is Whack. Flickr = Crack. FF is the new Flickr. - Russellreno
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O... It helps if you don't notice the walls of the maze aren't very high and there are these people looking down on you. - Karim
RusselReno, I had to double-check to make sure that you weren't Steve Gillmor - Todd McKinney
time consumption is simply the manual behavior. Get an auto refresher and save a micro second. ;) then again, if you want to remain aware, you have to read everything! - thecolor
use twhirl and updates come automatically to your desktop... no need of refresh, layout is awesome (discussions, etc) - Gustavo Munoz via twhirl
If we could get paid for using FriendFeed, wouldn't we all have our own private islands? - possible248
More like one palm tree, a couple of rocks, and a sewage outflow. - Akiva Moskovitz
"Start Uttering
Call your local Utterz number to record, listen and reply
Send video, pictures and text to
public: go@utterz.com
private: private@utterz.com
Create an utter or join a discussion online. Use any combination of webcam, computer microphone and more" - Paul Buchheit via Bookmarklet
Interesting service, but what a name! - Paul Buchheit
I've forwarded this feed to MHmazidi and Alireza coz yesterday they were introducing this service to Persian community here on FF and MHmazidi said that it won't get popular unless poular people in the web.2. (such as Paul or Robbert) be there and use it:)and there we go... paul just introduced Utterz here:) http://friendfeed.com/e/244134... - shandiz
شاندیز هستن مسئول بخش روابط بین الملل دکترین - shirva
:)))من اولین باره ترجمه می کنم, اسمایلی باور کن - shandiz
Quick! Get Robert's nick. He'll surely talk about it. - AJ Batac
Ok:D forward to Robbert scoble/ scobleizer.what do you think of this service Robert? - shandiz
There's a lot to like about Utterz. I record audio using my Blackberry curve audio recorder which records in .amr format. I like being able to pause the recording and restart. Just attach it to an email and send to go@utterz.com. It converts it and posts is. Also, you can attach multiple files to one post. Photo and audio. Only one of each but still nice. And the RSS feeds into Friendfeed.http://friendfeed.com/e/65c6fe... - Kevin Shannon
Utterz? Is that some sort of web 2.0 milkman service? - Gabe Schaffer
forward to Robbert scoble/ scobleizer.what do you think of this service Robert? - mhmazidi
for me it's easier. I like twitter more casue it's on twitter that I first experienced microblogging. You don't just have to "not suck" if you want me to move, you have to give me something totally different. Like.. Friendfeed? :) - Simone
I don't see that as trolling. Identi.ca was supposed to be "the competitor" for Twitter. The site itself is messy, subscriptions are weird, the tracking ability is lacking. I never cared for Pownce at all and Plurk looks like something a kid painted in kindergarten. - Candace Holly
I like it because you get the excitement of never knowing when it's gonna work - Blackopsmanners
i sorta agree, twitter usage seems to be resilient to fail-whale's mystic powers. loyal loyal base.. - Ruben Llibre
Twitter has the right user experience but the wrong internal architecture. The other sites don't even have the former and from what I've seen they don't have the latter either. Identi.ca seems to be amateur city as does Pownce. Plurk was too ugly to try out and no one I know uses Jaiku. - Dare Obasanjo
Jaiku is a pain to join, but the conversation features are nice. - Ontario Emperor via fftogo
Maybe it is just me, but I don't look at identi.ca to compete with Twitter. Rather it is more about what might be possible from an open source perspective when you're able to make multiple microblogging sites work together. I'm not looking for a "Twitter killer" from it, rather some real technology innovation for distributed microblogging. - David Recordon
plurk is only "ugly".. so why not use just the mobile version. - thecolor
I too enjoy the vertical layout over the horizontal, but prefer the threads in plurk and "stability" over twitters "just tweet". - thecolor
plurk is more of a game as well as a communicative social network. Twitter, feels more like a "statement made" only type of SN. - thecolor
@David Recordon +1. In fact, you truly are a visionary. +2. - Andy C
Isn't it also because FriendFeed lacks whatever it is that Twitter gets right? - blackmailismylife
I agree with David. I think its going to be more about supporting the people that are contributing to the development of a new way of doing Tweet like micro-blogging. - Chacha via twhirl
@blackmailismylife: FriendFeed isn't constrained to 140 chars. Twitter/Jaiku/Pownce/Identi.ca are. What some would see as a feature, others see as a restriction. Sometimes, you need to be constrained to 140 chars. Less is more. - Andy C
Much as I find Scoble the arse-hole of the A-Lister Blogger body, he has a point. Twitter is for all its flaws, the best out there. - Adam Wilcox
I tend to agree. I've tried pownce and din't like it in the least. Twitter is simple and easy. They just need to get their issues fixed. - Richard Miles
Seems to be the way things go. We stick with whatever "sucks less." - Jason Shultz via twhirl
People stick with Twitter because Twitter has the community and the cool API applications. - possible248
@Andy Apples and Oranges. This has been discussed to death but friendfeed doesn't fill the same shoes..er..rackspace as twitter. - Kamath via twhirl
Scoble: What an unpleasant and uncharitable comment to make about Identi.ca, a free service (that will remain free forever, something you are not guaranteed by any of the others that you mention) in early alpha testing. I was already unconvinced by the inexplicable personality cult that you seem to have generated for yourself, but now you've given me the last reason I needed to flip the bozo bit. Thankfully FriendFeed has a button I can use to do that. - Earle Martin
There is a difference between what something is and what it will be. Or what it may be. - Ontario Emperor via fftogo
Scoble curious what would Bush choose after leaving white house - Fred Grott
I have to agree with @earle on this one, comparing twitter and identi.ca is impossible, identi is very early stages, twitter has been around. I doubt you would compare a alpha release of a program with a final version. As far as the others sucking, how so? I find plurk to be more fun, enlightening, and easier to follow than twitter. - BCK
Identi.ca isn't ready for prime time. It doesn't even keep me logged in. Pownce is good, but no one is there. - Francine Hardaway
BCK: what do you mean we can't compare the two? That's the lamest thing I've read in weeks here. A clone of a service (and that's all that Identi.ca is so far) DAMN STRAIGHT BETTER BE BETTER THAN THE ORIGINAL. So far it's not. Why should I pay any of my attention time to it if it isn't going to be as good. And anyone who says that they are different is drinking on this 4th of July. At least Plurk looks different. - Robert Scoble
identi.ca was released prematurely, imho. if they waited til they got *all* twitter functionality working before opening it up, would have been a great Twitter clone. Now, it is struggling. Plurk, otoh, tried to look different with all those ajax thingamagigs but too much ajax is not really good! - Rom Feria
Rom: I totally agree with you. I'm also getting tired of trying all these Twitter clones. FriendFeed proved to me that even if something is better in a lot of respects you'll never get enough people to switch to really matter anyway. - Robert Scoble
But some of these services are a great place to talk to a very small number of people (which makes them fun in of themselves). - Robert Scoble
AndyC: Pownce is very slow and I can't sign into it. Fails to let me in. - Robert Scoble
AndyC: Jaiku? Slow and hard to comment on and I don't like the UI. - Robert Scoble
AndyC: Identi.ca has no way to look at replies, participate in conversations, not to mention no search, no direct messages (even though I hate them), no real community yet, and has lots of bugs like what Francine said. - Robert Scoble
AndyC: Plurk has a UI that 13-year-olds love, but isn't simple to track thousands of people on. - Robert Scoble
Twitter has a huge userbase. But like it or not, many users have moved on to a better Twitter and that's called FriendFeed ;) - Muthu Ramadoss
Replies, privacy, great UI, fast loading, SMS, command line interface, spam control... just for starters... this is why Twitter is still king - Cait
I think it's still because everyone is still on Twitter, and people get replies easily. None of the other networks have that as much. Twitter is still where the action is, despite all it's downtime and technical issues. People have built up quite big communities there too, so are reluctant to leave easily I think. - jjprojects
The only thing wrong with twitter is it's up time. We all like the service, and the API. If they just solved the DB problems, twitter would be near perfect. - Brian Norwood
@simon Thanks for that, I hadn't seen that before. Sadly it lacks the functions I'd want to use but it's a good starting point, cheers - Cains
When will everyone start to realize that Google is taking over the entire web and it's time for everyone to stop kissing their ass, I mean really enuff already. They are going to kill everyone. Should we all just give up and buy GOOG stock? - Donovan Slennon
@Donovan Is google acting in a way that is harmful to the "entire web"? Are they taking steps to reduce competition or innovation? It seems to me, and I use many google services, that they are innovating and encouraging other innovation. The nice thing about the web is the choices - I think you can ignore google if you want - although, I haven't tried. I mostly like their services. - Sean
Agree they are brilliant and innovative but Google are mowing down all competition in every related field one by one - have you seen their media server - pow, another few markets decimated in a matter of years; health - pow, lets just kill off health players; are we all just going to plug into the beast - i know i haven't expressed it succinctly or even well but if you can't see that Google is all powerful and is all about profit then we all need help. Someone needs to look at some antitrust law and save us - Donovan Slennon
@Donovan - ok, thanks, that is what I wanted to know, where they have been anti-competitive. However, in their defense (and I don't know why), there is a difference between anti-competitive and better than everyone else. I will be watching more carefully in the future. - Sean
Cool; I don't know my antitrust law but when you use your market power in one market to squash competition in another then you are abusing your power - key is the definition of the market - but helen keller could see that they are the standard oil of the 1900's. The extent to which the leading market commentators are silent on this is reminiscent of the free ride given by the media to Bush's Iraq invasion - no one stopped to look around until after the mess; so we desparately need some dialogue - Donovan Slennon
Donovan, Google has not killed the health field; there are a number of competitive products (HealthVault just to pick one), so if people gravitate to the GOOG (whether its good or bad), unless they took some specific anti-competitive actions, what's the problem? Outside of search and search advertising where is the field where they have more than even 30% market share? Ok feed readers perhaps :). I use their services if I like them. If not I don't. - Deepak
Respect your opinion but I don't think you're smelling the roses b/c of all the lovely scented sht that google has emeshed us in; just ask anyone with a web or web related business what the #1 issue/risk in their business is and it's those 'do gooders' from mountain view - one of the greatest pr machines of all time - Donovan Slennon
Since I am quite sure I have never bought into any PR, lets agree to disagree. I use what I like. A decent chunk happens to be from Google, and that's what it happens to be. YMMV of course - Deepak
I have a difficult time calling Google anything other than a 'good' company considering that I use a ton of their products and I don't pay a dime for any of them. Yes, they are a threat and competion for many companies which means those companies need to try harder for my paid business - it's pro-sumer. My message to those who don't like Google: Be better. - Vince DeGeorge
Jaiku is always fast for me but you raise a great point about 'track'. That is the single most underrated and underused feature of Twitter. Well, apart from the 'community'. - Andy C
For me, Twitter is perfect for what it's supposed to be. Save for the server issues, of course. - Spinn
its July 4th...grab a couple beers and your family and go outside...enjoy your life, everybody is out now. - Pokai
I thought I was the only one turned off by Plurk's UI. I can't stand their Karma system either. - Gerard Barberi via twhirl
I don't need Pownce, I don't like Plurk, Identi.ca doesn't offer me anything I need. I'm more than content with Friendfeed. - tsudohnimh
My issues: Pownce has no conversation, Plurk has no one I know, Idecti.ca = useless and what is Jaiku? :) - FF or Twitter plz - Tony
Pownce's best feature is the conversation... which makes the fact that it just doesn't load so much sadder. Aside from FriendFeed, it's my favorite service and it is just broken. - Andrew Burd
Twiter is what it is and does what it does and we like it that way. Why so hard for people to understand? - Andrew Feinberg
Twitter's SMS is absolutely vital feature. There's no real replacement for Twitter at this time.. - Jiri Fencl
again...I agree, Robert...Twitter is what emergency management professionals will use to spread the word quickly about natural and man-made disasters. You're China earthquake post was the cat's meow! - Bruce Curley
How do you track? I used to be able to do it with Jabber IM/Google Talk, but it doesn't work for me anymore. - Bjorn Tipling
are people getting spam after joining identi.ca? i just got 3 spam emails direct to my email account....i just sent an email to the admin - Pokai
Ping.FM Robert all the kids are doing it :) - Fred Grott
I love Friendfeed, but want SMS texts. Please. Maybe I could write something to pull FriendFeed posts into a twitter account. - David Sim
I use Ping.FM whenever I post. It's really very nice. So far I haven't experienced any negative issues. - Niall Connellan
Duncan: what's funny is even though Twitter is regularly down I'm still getting 100x more messages on Twitter than any of the other services. - Robert Scoble
Identi.ca has no replies or track, Twitter didn't have them either for a long time - Bob Ngu via twhirl
Scoble, I know. The magic ingredient still remains community. It is changing though, I don't have hard proof but I know Twitter is quieter now than it was 3 months ago, for me at least - Duncan Riley
Duncan: it's not quieter for me. I'm still seeing a new tweet almost every second. - Robert Scoble
Twitter, even with all it's downtime will still be the microblog service of choice. As we say in Mexico: "El que pega primero, pega dos veces." The rest are just copies. - Michel Bechelani via twhirl
Scoble, but you're also following more people than just about anyone as well. Maybe it's just in particular groups, but where as I might have seen 20 tweets a minute, today I see 2-5. - Duncan Riley
Twitter is still the best, even when taking stability into the equation. The UI is the key, plus the featureset - Cait
Duncan: I'm noticing that lots of people have changed their behavior over past three-five weeks. But in aggregate the users are still on Twitter. The people I like to talk with most (like you) are here on FriendFeed. - Robert Scoble
@duncanriley really? I'm surprised, I've seen more Twitter action since it's been really unstable. Are you taking your timezone change into account? - Cait
yup... plurk's ui is too noisy and slow - ming yeow
I'm really getting into Utterz. Not as a new social network but as a way to post a variety of content quickly and easily and redistribute it to other sites. Just realized when I saw this item that one Utterz post can contain multiple content types, like picture and audio. FF takes in the RSS and displays them very nicely http://friendfeed.com/e/8e6f99... - Kevin Shannon
It's all about the quick and easy communication from literally anywhere. Device updates on Twitter is what got me hooked. - Matt Horton
Ok guys, aren't you fed up? over 50% of your gibberish (excuse my lame english) is around twitter, friendfeed, etc... You use the same tools to talk about them. You aren't really creating anything new. Are you? - Guillaume
Robert have you looked at Kwippy yet? - Steven Hodson
For me it's mostly Twitter + FF, also checking out ping.fm + swurl but i have a strong feeling i'll be on FF for very long. Compared to portals, start pages, readers and newer stuff like Feedly, FF is actually becoming a fun useful and addictive zone. - Majento (Sharon Rudich)
I use a combination of SocialThing! and FriendFeed. FriendFeed has more of a breadth, but SocialThing! shows me a load of Facebook activity such as photo uploads that FriendFeed doesn't, and also keeps track of everybody, not just the people on FriendFeed or ones I have manually set up as imaginary friends. Neither gives me exactly what I want currently. - Richard Peat
I think this is simply the SSL certificate data. - Claudio Cicali
Most SSL sites (such as Gmail) don't show this. This is the first I've seen it, in fact. What is it called and how much does it cost? - Paul Buchheit
You need to buy an Extended Validation SSL cert (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...). Looks like VeriSign sells them for $1,500 per year and Thawte for $900. They aren't cheap. - David Recordon
btw Paul - while i've got you here & you're not flooded with comments...is there no way to link to a particular post here on ff? - Zee from WeDoCreative
that's not regular SSL that's SSL-EV ... SSL with Enchanced Validation ... it's more expensive then a single SSL cert .. read this link for more info http://is.gd/LIs - JohnBfromMemphis via twhirl
Zee, click on "More" then "Link to this entry" - Paul Buchheit
David - thanks for the info. I have always wondered about the green bar in FF3 but never bothered to find out if it was a different type of SSL certificate. - Atul Arora
Paul, thanks a million - and there was me thinking it something you overlooked... :) - Zee from WeDoCreative
@paul, you may read this http://tinyurl.com/4qttny first, to know what's the different between "green button" and "blue button" (green: paypal etc. blue: gmail etc). u definitly need to pay much for the "green button" - kukoo
@David @Paul sorry for the double post just saw the question and knew the answer .. should've scrolled around first ... sorry - JohnBfromMemphis via twhirl
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.... EV certs are just another scam from VeriSign, as far as I can tell. They're sold as an anti-phishing tool, but mostly they seem like a non-solution driven mostly by the need for CAs to extract more revenue from large customers. - ⓞnor
No, EV certs are just another scam from VeriSign because their regular certs are useless for determining that somebody is who they say they are. In other words, you'll pay hundreds of dollars for a cert for friendfeed.com, but they're pretty likely to give somebody else a cert for fiendfeed.com. The only way to combat this is to pay for an EV cert because their regular verification is almost a no-op. - Gabe Schaffer
@nor - Interestingly Google/Amazon dont use EV in the couple of examples I tried but eBay/Paypal do. - Atul Arora
It appears that GoDaddy has them for $400/year if you buy a 2 year cert. - Paul Buchheit
Well, a regular cert more or less says you're talking to the DNS owners of the domain listed in your address bar. Which is a service that ought to be worth about 5 cents. This one says... that you're talking with the organization that is generally known by that name? What *does* stop me from getting a business license for Fiend Feed, Inc. and so on? At some level it seems to be chasing "authenticity" which really means "will pay a bunch of money and/or fill out a bunch of annoying paperwork". - ⓞnor
What I really want is "is widely and unambiguously recognized by the community as the entity associated with that name". Where "the community" is... some big trust network centered on you and people you know? - ⓞnor
this is still far from regular idi... I mean casual consumer :) they shall say how much you are INSURED on your login when you come to this site, and insurance expressed in money, with sum signed by issuer into server side SSL certificate - only then you know for how much you are protected :) names are like talk - cheap :) - silpol
