I wrote this for my friendfeed buddies to explain why friendfeed sees a lot less "a%%hole" and spamming behavior than other places on the Internet.
- Robert Scoble
Martin: the system they built here is pretty darn interesting to study.
- Robert Scoble
Hmm, interesting , and yes I think decentralized moderation is a pretty good control (maybe like Churchill said democracy is a pretty good form of government) - but I think the PRIMARY reason Friendfeed doesn't have a ton of jerks and spam is because it doesn't have the masses here yet, just as you said about the early days of the NetMeeting forum. By the way I just used NetMeeting for work yesterday - it was a viable lowest-common-denominator when the fancier options weren't.
- Dan Becker
Dan: I totally disagree. When the masses do arrive (who said they haven't arrived yet, by the way? Heheh) this system is far more resistant to problems that have popped up on other forums and chat rooms.
- Robert Scoble
Dan: for instance: go ahead, try to spam me. Or, try to be an asshole. I'll show you how we deal with that here and keep the signal to noise level high.
- Robert Scoble
The general tone here is conducive to good conversation. Thought-provoking topics, interesting news, and plenty of lively, sensible debate/discussion. Wouldn't be that many people wanting to go against that sort of thing.
- George Hall (Australia)
Robert: I know - it's so simple and yet so complex. I tried to do a Screencast about it on Saturday (to encourage people to try FF) and there was so much to cover that it ended up 20 minutes long and I scrapped it. But yes, this model of moderation is very effective and probably the future, if it can be integrated in a wider way across multiple sites.
- Martin Bryant
George: see, though, the system here itself makes sure we both behave. This is VERY DIFFERENT than other moderation systems that have been tried.
- Robert Scoble
One thing I didn't cover on the positive side, is that if you both behave and participate with interesting content your stuff will get "liked" and "commented on" which increases its distribution dramatically.
- Robert Scoble
It's true that the masses aren't here yet, but I suspect Robert is right: that even when they arrive the simple concept of having each person moderate their own threads is powerful enough that it will keep bad forum behaviours to a minimum. The question is whether new kinds of bad behaviour, unique to distributed moderation, will arise.
- Edward Coffey
George: in short, if you troll here, I'll delete your comment from this thread. Strike one.
- Robert Scoble
I think this idea of "decentralized moderation" is also seen in the blogosphere. Here on FriendFeed, every post is like a post on your own blog. You moderate your own comments. FriendFeed is like a centrally hosted blogosphere, on steroids. :)
- Meryn Stol
George: if you troll me again, strike two. If you troll me a third time, I'll just block you.
- Robert Scoble
Blocking keeps you from seeing my items at all, so you can't attack me anymore.
- Robert Scoble
I said it before: The "blog" model has proven to scale. There are millions of blogs, each with its own conversations.
- Meryn Stol
Okay, I know I can delete my own comment...and I think, if I remember correctly, the thread-starter might have some control...anything I've missed there?
- George Hall (Australia)
Meryn: true, but with one HUGE difference. You have identity here and can be blocked. On my blog? You have NO identity in my comments and can not be blocked and you suffer no ill consequences from me trying, either.
- Robert Scoble
George: right, I can delete you on this item because I started it. You can delete me on items you start.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, yes. That's a major added benefit of FriendFeed. Something like Disqus, IntenseDebate, Facebook Connect or OpenID could solve that for blogs though.
- Meryn Stol
That's good to know, because I've seen the problem with spam/trolling on my blog...so it's good to know I've got some control over the total troll commentors.
- George Hall (Australia)
Meryn: it could. If I troll a Disqus blog, and get deleted, do I suffer negative consequences? And, does that blog get removed from my view totally? Nope, right? Well, then, it isn't as resistant as friendfeed is.
- Robert Scoble
I can see the actual consequence of getting blocked on friendfeed, as that would affect your overall friendfeed reputation.
- George Hall (Australia)
George: it doesn't just change your reputation. If I block you you can no longer see any of my items, comments, or likes. The attack surface you have has been reduced. That's HUGE.
- Robert Scoble
The more people blocking you, the harder to really misbehave in the long run.
- George Hall (Australia)
Robert, you've got a good point there. In the case of blocking (as opposed to regular moderation) the consequences are far more dire than could be done with blogs: You can exclude people from seeing your own posts. That goes further than excluding people to comment. (I do think we might two types of "blocking", one all-out, one only for blocking comments)
- Meryn Stol
All in all, that's quite effective compared to a lot of other sites.
- George Hall (Australia)
So that also affects even interacting with other people in your posts, too?
- George Hall (Australia)
George: yes. If I block you you can no longer interact with other people in my posts because you can no longer even SEE my posts! You also can't see my comments in other people's posts and my likes are now invisible to you, as well.
- Robert Scoble
So what's the exact mechanism for blocking? Haven't exactly paid attention to a block button yet...
- George Hall (Australia)
"You also can't see my comments in other people's posts" I don't think that's true. One person has blocked me. I can still see his comments in other people's threads.
- Meryn Stol
Robert: The biggest concern I have is possible abuse by moderators. You mention moderator reputation being a factor in preventing unreasonable behaviour on the part of moderators, but is it enough? The idea that I can have a fascinating debate with someone, then tomorrow find the whole thing deleted at the whim of the person I was debating with, or the third party whose thread we were debating on, seems like a disincentive to put a lot of time and though into such a conversation in the first place.
- Edward Coffey
Edward: you betcha it's enough. You just wait to see the blowback that happens if someone like me starts deleting comments without cause.
- Robert Scoble
I'd venture a guess abusive moderators would, themselves, eventually be blocked by a significant amount of people.
- George Hall (Australia)
Meryn: really? Hmmm. Must test that out. I could have sworn that it blocks everything from view.
- Robert Scoble
George: if someone deleted my comment and I didn't think they had cause I'd stop liking and commenting their stuff.
- Robert Scoble
George: and I might block them just for being a jerk.
- Robert Scoble
George: I expect the same would be done to me, too, if I did that.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, yes, I thought that at first too, but apparently not. I hope we can get different blocking levels. Then we could make our own "sanctions" against people. BTW I studied some international law in college. There are some similarities. :)
- Meryn Stol
It's fine to block bad people after the fact, but I'd still like to see some mechanism whereby if someone blocked me or deleted my comments, I could still access an archived copy of how the conversation looked before that action occurred.
- Edward Coffey
George, yes. I think that if someone is trolling in my threads, I wouldn't want to totally exclude them from my content. I would want them to keep them from commenting again.
- Meryn Stol
Edward: I don't mind that it's a death penalty. It's like a nuclear bomb. If you use it too often you end up killing yourself.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, funny that you are talking about a nuclear bomb, and I'm talking about international law. I hope we can work towards peaceful sanctions. :D
- Meryn Stol
As blocks can also been seen as a form of negative endorsement it would be interesting to see in someone's profile if _my_ friends have blocked him/her.
- Jan Ignatius
Meryn: wish it were that easy...you do get some really nasty trolls, especially on Twitter. One springs to mind who pops up during major situations around the world trying to preach hate stuff. On Twitter, blocking them from just one reader's view isn't that effective a solution.
- George Hall (Australia)
Jan, agree. That would be some interesting data to see. In general, it would be nice if you could make your block-list public, so that everyone sees who you've blocked. Maybe together with an (optional) reason for blocking.
- Meryn Stol
It's also a way to combat against fake accounts blocking a user just to hurt his reputation.
- Jan Ignatius
On twitter, a really aggravating, hate-preaching troll can be banned by Twitter, although the example I've cited keeps finding a way to get past that. Ahsan just answered what would have been the next question I was going to ask about friendfeed's method of dealing with that same case.
- George Hall (Australia)
George: plus the friendfeed team can see who is earning blocks and I'm sure that can also provide a warning system to check in and see if someone is needing a global block.
- Robert Scoble
Presumably a blog using Facebook Connect exclusively for comment posting should move the onus to the real user and hence their reputation and it would solve most of the same issues without the complexity. What do people think?
- James Harnedy
Does this lead to users having to join a service like Facebook, before they're allowed to sign on to regular blogs, and social media networks? Does it effectively end up with the 'walled garden' of Facebook (or similar service) enveloping almost the whole public internet - i.e practically all web sites that require a log-in?
- Ian May
Good idea James, that centralizes reputations. But what if someone wants to use Google Connect or OpenId ? Here on FF at least its all under a single umbrella ... and data from other sites is 'Fed' in
- Ahsan Ali aka. Slick
In fact, isn't FF, thanks to its architecture a mini-internet in itself ?
- Ahsan Ali aka. Slick
Does a facebook connect -only approach mean that one always has to comment with his true identity revealed? Surely there is need for pseudonyms in the future too..
- Jan Ignatius
@Meryn That is not a bad idea...scales of blocking. Like see their links but not their comments, etc. Interesting.
- Neal Jansons
Indeed it restricts your audience but like everything there is a balance and I see a trade-off between ease-of-use and content quality.
- James Harnedy
@Robert: how is friendfeed's block different from twitter's block ?
- Antoine Bertier
Antoine: if I remember right, they are very similar.
- Robert Scoble
One approach could be an openID provider that verifies your real identity but enables you to create pseudonyms tied to this account for every service you want to use. Now, if your pseudonym at service x is blocked you cannot create another one as the openID provider limits your pseudonyms to 1 per domain/service (and you can only have one verified account with that openID provider).
- Jan Ignatius
Why doesn't FF provide a comment widget that can be embedded in blog entries? The comment widget can then act as a mini UI tied to the permalink discussion over at FF. To minimize the effect of FF being a walled garden, FF should expand their authentication system to support things like Facebook Connect and OpenID
- Edmund Tay
Edmund: there are some Wordpress Plugins that do just what you're talking about.
- Robert Scoble
Excellent points. I too have been noticing the gradual degradation of the conversation in chat and forums. I do hope that the system here works to keep FF interesting.
- Leo Laporte
Leo: if not, we're coming over your house for conversation and beer! :-)
- Robert Scoble
But I can just create another account and continue attacking. I would love a system that let you say your account has to be X days old and you must have X amount of reputation (waiving magic wand) to comment.
- Chris Bartow
Robert: An official Javascript based widget provided by FF would be better because then it will be platform agnostic. Ok, I'll even settle for a 3rd party widget but it shouldn't be tied to a specific platform. With the existing Wordpress Plugin (http://blog.slaven.net.au/wordpre...), you get people like Louis Gray offering to pay for a Blogger version :)
- Edmund Tay
Chris: how would you gain reputation if people block you from their threads?
- Martin Bryant
yup you nailed it robert, the full control to the end-user of controlling their own experience here in friendfeed is what i've always liked & after only really looking for a presence aggregation service originally - i block w/out remorse so haven't had to delete or moderate comments yet but i like that the functionality is there
- mike "glemak" dunn
Martin: That's why I wrote waiving magic wand. It could be by # of friends or stats on a system wide level. Similar to identifying spammers on Twitter by looking at Following vs Followed.
- Chris Bartow
Hmm, interesting contrast between being blocked on Friend Feed (so can't follow) and not being able to be blocked from reading a blog. Still, even for a pubic blog, so long as there is some sort of identity scheme, one should be able to restrict commenters, not just delete their particular comments. Is this all just about anonymity, where FriendFeed even controls visibility through it...
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- Dennis E. Hamilton
So it seems that to extend the FF model for moderation well into more of the online conversation, ie blogs, twitter, fb, that several different identity systems may have to be able to leverage the FF model so that 1. users have choice 2. more people can be included in the conversations.
- Brendan Cosgrove
+1 Dennis, you said exactly what I was thinking while reading this thread. FriendFeed's comment lockdown is only possible because there are no anonymous comments allowed. There's a reason Robert hasn't disallowed anonymous comments on his blog, and it's because he wants to encourage as many comments as possible. FriendFeed still presents the registration barrier and that's going to drive away some would-be commenters even as it fosters increased participation by the ones who do register.
- Daniel J. Pritchett
daniel, i like to remember that ff started as a presence aggregation service and blossomed into a conversational experience, i'm sure you've been followed by what i call "null" friendfeeders: no profile info, avatar, service integration or activity (likes/comments) these are attempts at anonymity that the system easily allows us to recognize - of course once someone starts engaging they have entered the community, even if they started as a "null" user - from there they are judged by their actions in ff
- mike "glemak" dunn
I disagree. If 4chan decided to spam your FriendFeed, you'd be blocking for hours. I stand by my claim irc still has the best moderation tools.
- Bwana ☠
I could use color coded conversations or indent level matching-> fun trying to follow all the great ideas/responses but challenging making sense of the outcome.
- Mark Essel
ok finally made sense of the conversation: there's a need for protection against faceless spammers, and also a need for anonymous users to freely add value to posts. Some type of sliding bar per post security that is customized to each user to optimize their experience/expectations?
- Mark Essel
Agree 100% .. after all, here we are a "personal forum/topics administrators"... however diffusion of platform make the difference ... will see if we are right!
- Lucio Riccardi - CantorJF
bwana - yes, that example is scary and would waste lots of time, pls link to your blog post back in this thread - i'd read it :)
- mike "glemak" dunn
Great post, Robert. It came in handy for a discussion I've been having with investor relations officers who are looking at shareholder forums and shaking in their shoes at the idea that anyone can say anything they want on a forum.
- Dominic Jones
Ironic - My sites are down :) Hopefully I didn't tick the chans off
- Bwana ☠
I have already observed a new kind of trolling that results from the FriendFeed moderation system - I call it microtrolling. If you apply game theory to the decision to block someone, there's a cost-benefit analysis. Contribution vs Rudeness are orthogonal and are determined over time. If someone is rude but never contributes, they'll get blocked quickly, whereas someone who has contributed a lot over time can get away with more rudeness because people will hesitate to lose the expected future...
- Robin Barooah
...contribution. The same is true of people who host a lot of interesting discussions. If they themselves are rude, the threshold for blocking them is higher than for someone who doesn't, because you are not only excluding them, you are excluding yourself from discussions they start which involve other people.
- Robin Barooah
So someone who is very popular can enter a discussion moderated by a less popular person and there'll be a higher threshold for blocking them if they are rude or disruptive. My name for trolling above the mean threshold but below your own personal threshold (because you're popular) is 'microtrolling'.
- Robin Barooah
Robin: That sounds a lot like life. I won't spend time with someone who is rude all the time, but if someone is generally a pretty good person but occasionally a bit of an ass, I'll make allowances.
- Edward Coffey
Robert - Thanks for the fabulous post… Hooray! for this uber geeky post! I am super happy to see you continuing to champion FriendFeed.com - my all time favorite social site; clearly yours as well! :) ... While I was reading your post about the FriendFeed “block” feature, Paul Buchheit’s words immediately came to mind … “Do No Evil.” - If that doesn’t say it all, I don’t know what does! That is the basis of the FriendFeed culture. If one can’t live in that reality, they have no business in FF.
- Susan Beebe
Edward: It's similar but qualitatively different. I'm saying that their popularity on FriendFeed systematically enables someone to be ruder on other people's threads and face a lower threat of moderation. The fact that the thread is associated more with the with the thread owner increases the effect. If they were consistently rude on their own threads, then they'd lose popularity more rapidly.
- Robin Barooah
I like the FF option of having each individual deal with rude or uncalled for behavior themselves, different people are sensitive about different subjects and at different levels with FF I don't have to depend on anyone else to block someone, its my decision alone
- Kim Landwehr
Kim: you can only block people from your own threads though. You will still see them in other people's threads.
- Robin Barooah
Just to clarify - I personally like the way the friendfeed system works, but although it's intuitive to use, I think it's not entirely obvious what the consequences of each action is and this reduces the deterrent effect.
- Robin Barooah
robin - when you block someone they are gone from all your experiences on friendfeed and you are gone from all theirs...
- mike "glemak" dunn
Mike - you're right about that. Kim - I was wrong.
- Robin Barooah
That actually increases the strength of the 'microtrolling' effect I described. I.e. the loss in terms of a bad experience through seeing threads in a disjointed way is even greater if you block a very prolific user.
- Robin Barooah
robin, i've been on friendfeed for awhile and blocked the obvious trolls/haters from day 1, some of which are as you've stated prolific, so yes you do notice reactions to them in others comments, sort of a ghosting effect but it doesn't create a negative experience for me - i'm glad to have the trolls out of my experience and love friendfeed for providing that functionality...
- mike "glemak" dunn
Mike, I'm not talking about people who are consistently trolls and do little else, and I am not criticizing FriendFeed's functionality which I think is state of the art. I am pointing out that being prolific in general, and posting good stuff gives such people more of a license to get away with rudeness in other people's threads when madness strikes, and that there is no mechanism to control this other than their own self-control. i.e. the threat of blocking isn't much of a deterrent.
- Robin Barooah
ah got it robin - good point - the prolific folks I follow tend to not be rude at least in my experience
- mike "glemak" dunn
wait, so what's keeping spammers and trolls from just opening new friendfeed accounts as they get blocked?
- Ned Baugh
That's wonderful. I haven't seen a reference to Conway's Law in a long time. It hadn't occured to me that Microsoft would be the modern archetype. Duhh. I can also see the a corrolary about what happens when competing internal organizations have overlapping ambitions and claim the same territory. (Odd, I can even see how the Balkanized feature set of OpenDocument 1.2 reflects this in...
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- Dennis E. Hamilton
File this under: you gotta be kiddin' me! Amazon's MP3 store is selling this for $1.99 today. I figured there was no way it was 99 actual tracks (or they'd all be like 7 seconds long), but I was wrong. 99 tracks of classical for two bucks. Roll over Beethoven!
- Kevin C. Tofel
from Bookmarklet
has Amzon opened thier Uk MP3 store yet? Cause i'd love to have that.
- Roberto Bonini
Wow, great selection of stuff. How can I pass this up for only $1.99?
- Glen Campbell, B.A.
You can also get it in the Amazon UK MP3 store, although it is £5.99 over here, still a good deal.
- Mike Hellers
Bit steep, maybe next month (in the Uk store, I mean). Thanks for pointing this out Kevin
- Roberto Bonini
This is £5.99 in the UK store, which is still pretty cheap. It must cost more to get it through the tube across the Atlantic. I just ordered a copy of "The rest is noise" by Alex Ross (http://www.therestisnoise.com/). I'm planning to learn a lot more about classical music this year.
- David Owens
again i say iTunes who? downloading this collection now before amazon realizes they made a boo-boo
- Jay Martinez
just finished my download. for some reason itunes refused to import 4 tracks. so i have a folder on my system with 99 tracks but only 95 playable in iTunes
- Jay Martinez
And @Gabby iTunes for Windows is teh suxxors but, what alternative is there to sync an iPod, get iPhone apps and catch podcasts?
- MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)
These are all exerpts, but I am going to gladly play thorugh them and add them to my big random mix in Windows Media Player.
- Dennis E. Hamilton
from twhirl
This will go nicely with the 'Complete Works of Shakespeare' I got from wal-mart with the "Only 1.99" sticker on the cover.
- Robin Barooah
this is the top download on Amazon right now
- lisa.ong
Amazon is doing it again!! 99 Perfectly Relaxing Songs - On March 24, for ONE WEEK ONLY, Jade Music will make 99 Jade Music songs & chants available for 99 cents on amazon.com!!! Jade Music is choosing 99 of their most relaxing songs, ranging from Gregorian and various chants from around the world, to classical pieces by world famous composers.
- brianstreet54
when is amazon mp3 download gonna be available for the rest of the world... not sure if they realise... but majority of the world's population lives outside North America!!!!!
- Kunal Malhotra
+1 Kunal. Agree with you completely. There's a vast untapped market for downloadable music outside North America. At least in India, where I come from.
- Anirudh S
quote from daves blog "This month sees the publication of our article “Software Design for Empowering Scientists” in IEEE Software (IEEE Explore; DOI). It was fun to write. Basically it tells the story of the principles that we used in delivering the Taverna scientific workflow workbench (56,000 downloads and counting) and how we applied them to the myExperiment virtual research environment. Which is interesting, because Taverna is software you install on your PC while myExperiment is a Web 2.0 site – quite different beasts. I’m looking forward to seeing how this article goes down. Already it’s upset some computer scientists. I gave a lecture on it to my 3rd year class and there were protests that I was “saying the opposite to other lecturers”. It wasn’t just that I dared suggest that Web 2.0 isn’t hype but rather is a well-defined set of observed design patterns."
- Duncan Hull
I like myExperiment... but it could really do with RSS feeds for my account there... it may be web2.0-ish, but not really to other sites... (or am I missing the big RSS icon down that corner, or so?)
- Egon Willighagen
Good paper, dude, congratulations. I've already pointed some fellows in our group to your paper as a source of good advice for building a community website we have in the works. I just wish I was working on creating workflows in Taverna, so I would have a reason to use myExperiment.org for real! Alas...
- 'Mummi' Thorisson
@Gudmundur not my paper, one from Carole and Dave... but interesting anyway
- Duncan Hull
Interesting paper... but I disagree that their design points makes good computer science... it makes, instead, good community building. While that is rather important for open projects, it is not really 'good computer science'... it's merely an customization of the prototyping approach of software engineering. Not novel, and not 'good computer science'... just a form of computer science...
- Egon Willighagen
Taverna1 was a prototype, with quite a few limitations... but the prototyping was needed because life scientists have zero clue of software engineering...
- Egon Willighagen
I can easily see why the paper upsets computer scientists... I had my eyebrows go up several time while reading the paper...
- Egon Willighagen
My favorite is the opening sentence "Science is becoming increasingly digital"... who here still have analog equiment around in his lab???
- Egon Willighagen
Duncan - sorry, my bad. Got this paper mixed up with that other recent paper with you on the author list...
- 'Mummi' Thorisson
Saving money is very hard when that which you do invest disappears. 2008 was a mess. And the cost of living is high, which drives salaries up, which drives the feeling you need to buy up, and keep up with the neighbors (which I'm not doing).
- Louis Gray
how about saving money *anywhere* is frikken hard to do let alone for investing .. jeezzz ..
- Steven Hodson
I have heard that Los Banos is a ghost town. You can buy a 4 bedroom nice house REPO for $80k and have a 2 hour commute !
- Maneesh
if haven't done already time to reset expectations; had it too good for too long
- Bob Sonin
If you think silicon valley is expensive you oughta try living here in Tokyo!
- Scott Jarkoff
So with the idea that the high cost of housing was still an investment has to be modified for people worried about being able to save for their future needs.
- Dennis E. Hamilton
from twhirl
Come on out to Utah Robert, the water's fine - I'll even find you a few good places to get a good Margarita since you asked. I'll sell you my house, 4 bedrooms, for $210,000.
- Jesse Stay
Jesse is right. Utah water is the best. Straight from the tap, very cold and delicious.
- barl0w
Jesse: I couldn't do my job in Utah, sorry. Almost all the best tech companies are here and the ones who aren't visit here, not Utah.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, your situation makes sense. I don't understand the businesses that choose to start up there now with such a virtual world that we live in now. As a startup, I just couldn't afford to live out in Silicon Valley, especially with a family.
- Jesse Stay
Robert - This is exactly why I fought moving there while I worked at Intuit. I could have done it... and gotten a raise... but not enough to cover the change in cost... nevermind 401k and 529 accounts. Ironically it was that insistence on being in PHX that allowed me to choose to leave and bootstrap my own company. In some ways Silicon Valley isn't good to entrepreneurs...
- Brian Roy
Jesse: four reasons: 1. Access to capital. Many investors won't invest in things that they can't visit in a short car trip. 2. Access to PR. Mike Arrington lives here. I live here. So do most of the world's tech press and bloggers. 3. Access to talent. Need someone who has built a system that has millions of users? They live here and almost no where else. 4. The weather. That said, there are lots of places like Silicon Valley evolving. If I were a new company I'd think of Israel or Shanghai, China.
- Robert Scoble
Brian: I agree. If you are a programmer you can work anywhere in the world. But tech company executives do see an advantage of being here. I hear that over and over. The good ones that live elsewhere visit here every month, too. When I went to Israel I already knew quite a few people because of this.
- Robert Scoble
Oh, and Brian, if you moved here with a tech company you would do so knowing that you would jump ship a few times which would get you big increases in pay. But not this year. Keep your job, don't come here. It's going to be tough place to find a job this year unless you are superstar. Even then...
- Robert Scoble
uh... I'm not a programmer... and ultimately what precipitated my exit was the old "you can't be a leader without being HERE" - which was ironic after 6 years of doing it :) - There is an advantage to being there... but that advantage is shallow and wide - the advantages don't really extend down beyond a very small demographic.
- Brian Roy
@Robert. We all know the housing is the big p-i-t-a for costs, but do you find 'everything else' more expensive in SV versus say Seattle? -- A cup of coffee, a night out with friends, a movie? Or is housing the biggest stumbling block?
- Andrew Leyden
Andrew: gas is slightly higher. Lots of other things are slightly higher (Parking in parts of SF is very expensive, for instance, compared to Seattle), but not a big enough deal between Seattle and here. Housing is the biggest thing.
- Robert Scoble
Same problem in the NYC metro area with regards to housing. However, there are some things here that aren't quite as expensive.
- Morton Fox
Location, Location, Location. I've lived in the resort ski town of Whistler for the last 15 years and besides high costs, there are very low salaries. Barely able to make ends meet at times but man has it been fun :)
- Andrew Smith
For me it is all about choices/tradeoffs - Robert - I totally take issue with the "access to talent" that is echo chamber thinking. I've worked with some amazingly incompetent people IN and OUT OF Silicon Valley... I've also worked with some amazingly talented people both IN and OUT OF Silicon Valley. Talent is everywhere...
- Brian Roy
Brian: that isn't my quote. It's what CEOs from around the world tell me. There are very few people who have built databases and systems to handle hundreds of millions of people and they mostly live here. The Google's Yahoo's Microsoft's all spin those people out and they start companies (like friendfeed).
- Robert Scoble
I didn't take issue with you... just the idea. Just to note, one of the three companies you mention isn't HQ in Silicon Valley... The others have offices world wide. Increasingly, R&D is being shipped to Russia, China and India. My point remains the same... talent is everywhere.
- Brian Roy
Brian: of course. I'm just telling you why startups like Seesmic, Atlassian, and others tell me why they move here from elsewhere. Have we seen a big tech company move its headquarters out of Silicon Valley? Not yet.
- Robert Scoble
Microsoft isn't headquartered here, but has a huge campus here and hires thousands of people here.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: Yep... and I agree with you. You listed 4 reasons - and really the top two are the most important. Talent gravitates to opportunity. Opportunity comes from access to capital and the ability to promote... I only said I don't buy the idea that if you want talented people you have to be in SV... Did you get something else from what I said?
- Brian Roy
"There is lots of activity here. OhioLINK has a project going on along these lines, the Rochester XC project seeks to integrate many forms of metadata, and others. Preliminary words about Summon from Serials Solutions sounds like a commercial effort in this area."
- Peter Murray
I guess the technology industry isn't as immune as it thought
- Dare Obasanjo
Time for prudence in priorities and operating lean while targeting future opportunity. Classic contraction response, seems to me (at MSFT too). Some would say "about time?"
- Dennis E. Hamilton
from twhirl
Like a founder or early one, Dave Winer the neolithic blogger, or proto-blogger. You're a primitive in the sense of founding element. (Of course, there may be some other spin on it in German pop-culture.) Think of it like first blogger or the blogging archetype. And yes ... I am making this all up, but it is how I see Ur- used in other contexts.
- Dennis E. Hamilton
from twhirl
That resonates with how it's used in Norwegian, so I'd reckon your assertion is fairly valid. =)
- Daniel Bruce
Hey, we continue to celebrate a week apart. My son Doug beat you to 44 in December. I achieve 70 week from Sunday. Enjoying myself over that.
- Dennis E. Hamilton
from twhirl
Ahh...what to do? Robert said there was no need to wish him a happy b'day, but I do this for others; why should I exclude him? and everyone else is doing it...I know; happy Scoble's birthday, fellow FriendFeeders!
- MiniMage TKDteacher of FF
Happy Birthday, Robert!! Hope you enjoy your day and weekend. :)
- Her Lindsay-ness
Happy Birthday! If you were in Atlanta it would have been a snowy (predicted) birthday, not to mention a kewl place to celebrate in, home to Coca-Cola, CDC, Lockheed Martin and our very own Ted Turner's creation CNN. :-) [edited]
- Moushumi Kabir
Happy Birthday Robert! Enjoy your day!
- Laura Zickus
Wait. I thought you were 10 years older than me. Then I realized you were 10 years younger!! Now I find out you're my age? I am suddenly hopeful! Yes we 44yr- olds can! .......Hey Robert, seriously, I wish you another 56 healthy years. Happy Birthday! ♫
- Ed Shahzade /NextInstinct
Wishing you a great one Robert. Thanks for all you do for the Internet. I loved your interview with Seth Godin, you 2 were great together.
- Jeremy Campbell
from twhirl
@Jeremy Campbell - do you have a link to that interview?
- Peter Warnock
Happy Birthday! Hooray for 1965! (My birthday is still a few weeks away, in March.)
- vicster
Scobleizer, time to CELEBRATE-You have so much ahead of you, b/c what's behind you was great!! Thanks for all the great insight!!
- Harold Cabezas
AcaWiki is a "Wikipedia for academic research" designed to collect summaries and long-abstracts of peer-reviewed academic research, and make them available to the general public. All content on the site is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license so you can download, re-post, and reuse what you find here as long as give proper attribution.
- Deepak Singh
Sounds like it should rhyme with wackamolee. I like the idea but it is not wikipedia, since discussion and community editing are not part of the values. It is also not organized using MediaWiki (too bad) and navigation is clumsy (especially when lots more content). This is a research summary service, not a way to publicly discuss research, and seems even more heavilly-constrained than...
more...
- Dennis E. Hamilton
from twhirl
I like the idea of a human-edited summary service. Does it allow registered users to edit posted summaries?
- Mr. Gunn
Not really sure. Just found out about it yesterday
- Deepak Singh
Dennis, just a clarification, that text above is just from the "About" page of the site. That's pretty much I know all aout them
- Deepak Singh
Happy birthday Robert, have a wonderul weekend!
- Ginger Kenney
Birthday? Well, many felicitations. Have a good one!
- WorldofHiglet
Have a great birthday, Robert. Saw it on Facebook, and was just in GMail where I saw your status. But it makes the most sense to say so here!
- Louis Gray
I need something that won't require a download and will work on IE. I'm working with the somewhat technically inept, here. Plus, they need to go over a couple hundred pages, so Zotero would be a bit of a pain.
- Kårín Dalzĭel
It may be that nothing exists to solve my problem.
- Kårín Dalzĭel
sharedcopy.com seems like it MIGHT work. Even provides a RSS feed for edits so when I get the person set up I can watch as they make changes. And uses a bookmarklet rather than a download.
- Kårín Dalzĭel
http://www.protonotes.com/ looks like the winner. Add a bit of javascript to the page, and anyone can put notes. Will just have a separate review site.
- Kårín Dalzĭel
LOVING protonotes. Not many features, but man, you can't beat it for simplicity. You can even use your own SQL database if you don't trust their servers. Only thing I would add is highlighting.
- Kårín Dalzĭel
Oh! And you can get an RSS feed of the edits! Or download an excel file.
- Kårín Dalzĭel
Simplicity is wonderful! Sometimes there are just too many "cool things" and not enough of the basics.
- Katy S
Diigo also does something like this.
- Heidi Blanton
I dread having to explain how to use a tool, and with this I don't have to. yay. I would love to keep a local version of this. (I don't trust web services much. :P)
- Kårín Dalzĭel
"Oh come now, use the brain god gave you. It's so simple to just flip it around and say "block all but the checked addresses" -- all filtering systems have this kind of flexibility. My readers are smart so I didn't think I needed to fill in this level of detail, I thought it would be insulting to their intelligence."
- Dave Winer
I don't think this thinking is very far out of the box. I think, especially concerning petroleum dependence, we need to differentiate between personal local travel, commercial local travel, and long-haul with its local end-points (personal and commercial). I'm intrigued by some new-fangled overlay on the Interstate system that would provide express carriage of vehicles on the long stretches without driving and fuel consumption but not the usage friction of rail.
- Dennis E. Hamilton