you seem to be some kind of cloud-computing in humanized form, multi-tasking, non-sleeping, re-evaluating demo sites, reading and recommending...nice! - Gaby Benkwitz ☼
Number eight - latency is interesting because applications with extreme latency sensitivity are one of the things that may stay out of the cloud as they need to be physically near their consumers. IT vendors (the ones that don't decide to compete in the cloud market) are going to have to get used to a world where the big clients are all extremophiles. - mattpovey
Gaby, thankfully we do not have to pay Scoble by the GB! - Rob Diana
Matt, I believe some cloud vendors are looking into multiple cloud locations. Meaning, you could have as US cloud, a Europe cloud, an East Asia cloud etc. I could not find the article that talked about it, but I thought I remembered one. - Rob Diana
Rob. Yeah, you're right - one issue is going to be the question of trans-national privacy and data retention laws. People in Britain would be very wary of having their data shipped to the US for example (if it was even legal). There will still be a need for systems that are sited literally next to their 'users'. Applications such as algorithmic trading in FSI is an example. That said, that is an example of an application that might see 'niche' cloud players emerge for some applications. - mattpovey
cloud depends on the pipe .. the pipes want to constrict the flow .. how does this play out? - Gregory Lent
"For example, if a site such as FriendFeed switched from polling feeds every 30 minutes to polling every 300 minutes (5 hours), and also monitored the appropriate SUP feed every 3 minutes, the total amount of feed polling would be reduced by about 90%, and new updates would typically appear 10 times as fast." - Paul Buchheit
That's a very interesting idea! I think that for the case of push-generated feeds it will show nice improvements over the current polling approach (which is definitely not scalable). I am wondering if there would be a way to employ the same idea for poll-generated feeds (feeds that are retrieved on request only) though. - Alex Popescu
That's correct Alex. SUP works very well for most common feeds, but it's not ideal for more dynamic feeds such as a search (e.g. http://friendfeed.com/search?q... ). However, the vast majority of the feeds consumed by FriendFeed and others map into the SUP model very easily. SUP does not solve all problems, but it provides a very simple solution that should work for 90% of feed publishers. - Paul Buchheit
Alex, a conditional GET applies only to a single URL. SUP allows feed consumers to simultaneously monitor many thousands of feeds with a single GET. - Paul Buchheit
I've told you I might not be fully functional :-). You're right SUP is a container for updated feeds. Should I post any other questions directly to the room? - Alex Popescu
Paul this SUP technology is HOT!! I am totally awed by this disruptive innovative idea.... very impressive and incredibly brilliant!! wow!! - Susan Beebe
Your welcome Paul, you guys inspire the heck out me...American techie dream in real time...neat! - Susan Beebe
my flickr upload appeared much faster just now... are you guys using XMPP for flickr? - Travis Parsons
and written in .py :)- but if we throttle "generate_sup_update(db, 120)" and "SUP feed:
{"since_time": "2008-08-12T01:44:49Z", "period": 120," [[..|..]]" , so if we take "120" and make it lets say "30", wont this make the load even more to both sides ? - Peter Dawson
It's nice to see FF innovating things... its what I miss about livejournal back when it was just danga interactive. - Dave Dash
just curious, how to read SUP? pronounce sap or soup or syoop? - huixing
'sup, like the shortened version of "what's up?" - Tudor Bosman
So, where's the "omg it's not XML you idiots" backlash? - ⓞnor
Atom streams look more effective performance-wise and just a little bit harder to implement on both sides. See SixApart's: http://updates.sixapart.com/ - Alex Kapranoff
More than a little bit harder! Dealing with never-ending XML streams is a massive pain (see: XMPP), and keeping connections open is trouble. Also, the sixapart updates stream is a firehose that gives you all of the content being posted, you have no opportunity to filter out only those feeds you care about. The FF design is pretty much totally more awesome. - ⓞnor
work with feedburner to give you a ping every time one of the feeds changes and you can replace 5h with 'whenever it occurs' ;) - Nicole Simon
I can't wait for a DUDE or YO companion protocol. - abacab
Nice idea, one thing to include would be the information if a resource (feed) has been deleted, whereby one can build a mirroring system over RSS. - Christian Sonntag
Christian: no need; "deleted" is a special case of "updated". If a feed is listed as modified in SUP, the feed consumer will try to refetch the feed, and notice that it no longer exists. - Tudor Bosman
Integrates much more nicely with the site, although it highlights the disqus block which sticks out quite a bit now. - felix
Felix: fixed was working on the disqus block; which now fades in nicely too (no logo, no header, no background, no border). What do you think? - Benjamin Golub
Yeah i need to get to that. So much work left to do on my blog - Shey
I should have figured, looks great now! total worthless opinion time - but if you switch disqus to the small avatars it'll blend even more. - felix
Looks good! I think I'll swipe your .friendfeed CSS (all of two selectors) and tweak my own widget. Thanks! :-) EDIT: I'm also removing the background, since my blog's BG isn't plain white. - Voyagerfan5761
OK, how's mine look? http://voyagerfan5761.blogspot... It's down under the About Me box, so you'll have to scroll a bit. My only complaint is the fact that service names get cut off when they're long, but that's no biggie because of the icons. - Voyagerfan5761
Woo! Thanks, Benjamin! Now I have Google\n Reader instead of Google Read| Yay! And all it took was to add: .friendfeed .feed .entry .comments .comment,
.friendfeed .feed .entry .body .summary {
white-space: normal !important;
} - Voyagerfan5761
I hate how the widget doesn't line wrap comments. FriendFeed needs to fix that. They should truncate it nicely and add "..." at the end. - Bwana McCall
Bwana; CSS can handle that for you. overflow: hidden is what is making it hidden. - Benjamin Golub
Hmm, ok. The other options don't sound appealing. I don't want scroll, nor do I want it rendered outside the element - Bwana McCall
Bwana, white-space: nowrap is set; if you turn that off then it will stay inside the div. I think that's what Voyagerfan did. - Benjamin Golub
I did indeed override white-space: nowrap. Use white-space: normal !important; to do so. - Voyagerfan5761
Is it creepy that Microsoft is going to drastically change the meaning of "attach photo to email"? This is an interesting feature, but only if it is opt in and very well explained, not generally a Microsoft strength... - felix
I'm one of the 320m but I dont really buy into windows live yet - something is not quite right.. whatever it is its not enough for me to use it more than rarely. I don't really like Google but I am using more and more of their services - that says something. - riaz
I'm not sure how many people use Gmail but I'd say its a level up from the typical Hotmail & Messenger user. Google already has all that and more in place with Picasa, Gtalk, Jaiku, Grand Central, Reader, Docs, Open Social and Friend Connect. Microsoft is having to play catch up again like they did with the browser and I think this time around it just isn't going to happen. I think many of us would quickly refer a friend to Google for stuff over Hotmail or Messenger. - Delete Me
Scott: very few people use Gmail when compared to Hotmail. I'll try to get accurate numbers, but Google isn't claiming anything close to 320 million active users. - Robert Scoble
Of course I forgot about my one exception - I'm still an active Messenger user.. it is huge in Europe.. everyone I know uses it here - weird how everyone I know in the states use AIM. - riaz
I'm one of the 320 million as well, but I have only logged in once in the past 30 days, where as with Google, I log in everyday with multiple accounts for multiple services. - Snay Trivedi
Everyone here(India (and Everyone excludes Geeks)) uses Yahoo. Mail and IM. Yep - Yuvi
Good point from Snay above. Hotmail is poor compared to Gmail. MSN is hideous. IM/Messenger is a disaster. Microsoft Web apps are fundamentally 2nd rate. Everyone's a member, but a great many people use a different technology for minute-to-minute/day-to-day - john conroy
I think geeks uses Google Service every now and then.. Microsoft gets an edge because non-geeks (or semi-geeks whose profession is not Computers related..) have subscription with Microsoft Live services and they dont care for a similar new google service! may be because microsoft gives them what they want.. - Jigar Mehta
via bTT
"IM/Messenger is a disaster" I don't understand this comment from John Conroy. Do you use Messenger regularly John? What is disasterous about it? It works and it works well. That's it. What on earth is wrong with it? I dont get that opinion. MSN/Hotmail...yeah, they have some way to go. But Messenger is fine. - Jamie
Making it appear in Messenger would be quality, I already have a Facebook tab in Messenger so it would be the natural progression! - Joe Dawson
@jamie: okay, disaster is too strong a word. I primarily dislike the big (huuuge) load screen/advertisement that you get when you log in. Also, the fact that it loads on boot as default, and unless you disable this adds to your boot time. As with most Microsoft products, I think it is needlessly big/resource consuming. But it does work fine when you're actually using it. I used to use it quite a bit, in fact - john conroy
Jamie: I have to agree.. though the Yahoo Messenger/Google Talk deal is making me consider checking out yahoo messenger again. Hopefully Microsoft will announce a deal with Google soon and save me the trouble. - riaz
You can never count Microsoft out - 100% true. It may have been not having the best of times, it still has a HUGE pool of talent that it can bank upon and the number of users of these services completes the other end of the equation. @Yuvi Too general a statement; I don't use either; and I know large number of users on Messenger. @john adding to what @jamie already said; Wallop is another case in point. - Parth Awasthi
via twhirl
I think people are missing the point about consumer behaviors: no matter how hard I try, I have failed to teach my mom how to upload photos to Flickr and then email the URL. However, she's perfectly comfortable with sending photos in an email. The same goes for IM'ing versus Twittering. Microsoft has a great opportunity to "bridge the gap" between these old habits and new ways of sharing and communicating, and making the transition painless. - Carter Rabasa
Robert, I like your statement, "What did I take away from our visit to Microsoft? You can never count these guys out. They always have the potential to change the marketplace because of how many users still are engaged with their stuff." YEP! The sheer volume of 320 million users in Windows Live and Hotmail is staggering...wow! That's quite a base from which they could build a plethora of social network applications and tools. - Susan Beebe
Well said Carter. Consumer behavior is the "norm", not the way we tech savvy (read geeks) behave. As much as we do not want to admit it, we are the minority on the Internet. In the past, we referred to the majority as n00bs or other semi-derogatory words, but the truth is the vast majority do not have the desire or time and a company that recognizes and caters to them will always be around. - Joel Gray
MSFT are stiil all powerful simply becos they have corporates wrapped up - Sally Church
via Alert Thingy
@john conroy Gotcha John. Just re-read my earlier comment. it came on a bit strong - sorry about that! - Jamie
OK, 320m hotmail users and 320m messenger users. I assume they're not all the same but I'm sure there's a huge overlap. So, given MSFT have 430m active Live IDs, what are all the other 50-100m doing? And I wonder how many more they'll get when Mesh hits the bigtime. Questions questions....!!! - Jamie
Remember one thing, hotmail or Live addedses are still used to log into all of microsofts online portals. This includes managing your emails from msft, product registration, Connect betas etc and so on. This could be turned into a hugly useful social network with all the information that msft associates with that login. But ive not actually signed into mail for a while so it makes me wonder about the total number of logins currently being used by all of msfts services. - Roberto "Maverick" Bonini
@Roberto, its 320m ACTIVE users i.e. people that have logged in in the past month. - Jamie
I get that. But how many email address total are registered in Microsofts database ( that is over and above the 320m that logged in, in the last week)? - Roberto "Maverick" Bonini
Yep,320m.But Impression that Microsoft become detached from Main Web Trend - Igor Poltavskiy
They already have what you are asking Zuck to create. They call it Windows Live ID Delegated Authentication. - Jamie
I heard this exact same argument all the time when I was working at Yahoo! - the secret weapon is the hundreds of millions of Yahoo! Mail users. It's no good just saying you have the users; you need to execute well as well. I have yet to see evidence of Microsoft executing effectively on the web. It's 2008 and they still don't even know how to design a decent URL! - Simon Willison
Microsoft has more than just users - it has a wide, smart and deep developer pool. The work on hosted exchange / sharepoint and the stuff with Mesh and silverlight lets us know they "get it". MS Turns slow - but it DOES turn. - Soulhuntre
via twhirl
@Carter You're dead on. Consumers want to send photos using email. They're comfortable with it and get it. - Derek Del Conte
@Carter, did you try to teach her to open Picasa and click large Upload button? May work.. - Ihar Mahaniok
I've had a Hotmail account since the days before it was MS owned and hardly use it because it fills up with spam so quickly. I prefer Google's offering with the other services integrated so well without the ghastly flash ads. But that's just my personal opinion. Messenger I haven't used in donkey's years. - Sally Church
@Scobleizer: "What did I take away from our visit to Microsoft? **** You can never count these guys out. They always have the potential to change the marketplace because of how many users still are engaged with their stuff.**** "
Me: So, if that's true, then why not give Yahoo the same benefit of the doubt? After all, they have actually made money as an Internet company, something which MSFT has yet to figure out how to do. I would agree that Jerry has to majorly deliver now, but Y! has as good a chance... - Alex Schleber
... to hit one out of the park as anyone else. E.g. turn Yahoo into a true social network with innovative features from the inside out... right now of course their social projects have been floundering, probably in part due to the Micro-hoo distraction. Hope that all of Y! mgmt just had the crap scared out of them and that they will be hungry once again. Rebuild that rotting empire (well, same could be said for MSFT). - Alex Schleber
I've got some BrightKite invites if someone needs one. - Delete Me
I haven't seen Intense Debate on any site or seen it mentioned here, suppose I will see it trickling through once word gets about! - Joe Dawson
That's really weird (again). I've got a post launching later today with 'a different twist' on Disqus. Not shameless self-promotion, just true ?! Thanks gang. - Charlie Anzman
This site: http://www.dumblittleman.com/ uses IntenseDebate. That's where I learnt the existence of IntenseDebate a few days ago. It's somewhat similar to Disqus. I hope someone will do a comparison between Disqus and IntenseDebate. - Winston Teo
I use Intense Debate on my site...the reason you didn't see it mentioned much on FF is because Disqus was the star here..it was the only blog commenting system that worked here. Do a google search for Intense Debate + Disqus and you'll see there's been quite a bit of talk about their pros and cons. http://www.google.com/search?q... - Bwana McCall
Nice work Winston thanks for the linkage! - Joe Dawson
Great piece Brad and lots of good info. APIs are an absolute requirement now to get adoption and innovation from the edge. No Web app, or frankly, business, should be without one. Amazon's recent stats showthe immense possibilities as well: http://web2.socialcomputingmag... - Dion Hinchcliffe
via twhirl
No API means no Web 2.0, the future is interconnected apps that do something of value leveraging stuff on other sites. There will be no future SAPs in the world, success will be those who work easily together and who provide value to the users. Great article. - Jon Erickson
via twhirl
API's will be even more relevant when all companies are playing on a somewhat level playing field - one where API's matter. It is hard to imagine the SAP's of the world going away. Rather, they will migrate to more open architectures to support the requirements of the new, API-based enterprise infrastructure. - Chris Rechtsteiner
via Alert Thingy
Brad, excellent piece. It helps me convince people to embed APIs in the core of our work. Thx - Aad 't Hart
"[...] programmers do not want to write code out in the open. Programmers don’t want their peers to see mistakes or failures. They want to work privately, in a cave, then spring “perfect” code on their community, as if no mistakes had ever been made. I don’t think it’s hubris so much as fear of embarrassment. Rather than think of programming as an inherently social activity, most coders seem to treat it as an arena for personal heroics, and will do anything to protect that myth." Very good. - Mustafa K. Isik
"During his first week, he started emailing friendly code reviews to each of his coworkers, receiving strange stares in turn. Eventually his boss called him into his office:
“You know, you really need to stop with the negative energy. Your peers say that you’re constantly criticizing everything they do.”
Moral: not only is code review not the norm in corporate environments, most programmers are unable to separate their fragile egos from the code they write. Repeat after me: you are not your code!" - Mustafa K. Isik
I agree with the basis of this post, but that anecdote is not great evidence IMHO. Doing things is always more valuable than feedback, in companies or in open source projects. Feedback is often obvious (yah, we all knew that piece of code blows, but it works, and now we are on to the other 20 things we need to do). It seems like the dude above should have established a little credibility by writing some code before starting "friendly code reviews." It doesn't surprise me he annoyed his new coworkers. - Bret Taylor
@Bret I agree with you on "doing rather than complaining". But I also believe in communicating and teaching each other. Leaving the exact context of the story aside, my personal experience with similar situations is that there are developers who don't know when they are writing bad code (happens to us all) and worse, don't necessarily want to. This seems to be especially true, if the illusion of code mastery is the foundation for an individual's self-esteem. - Mustafa K. Isik
IMHO the bane of our craft, science and art is that there is no meaningful set of metrics to distinguish from good and utterly mediocre developers. After all anybody who can get his/her programs to compile can call him-/herself a software developer and sometimes I get the impression that that is exactly what serves as predominant classification method. - Mustafa K. Isik
If a new developer started emailing me code reviews then they had better be (a) right, and (b) sensible. By that I mean that a lot of the time things that look to be stupid aren't, because there are restrictions and/or history which isn't obvious when you see the code in isolation. I would think he'd have been better off emailing to ask WHY things were done the way they were, rather than suggesting alternatives in his first week - Nick Lothian
@Nick Lothian In open source a code review doesn't have to be about making sure your code is right, it's about sharing. You might be a hugely better coder than me but if I review your code on a public list, suggesting alternatives, and you convince me that you're right, the code and the community has won. - Michael C. Harris
@Michael - to me the article read like the person had joined a company and was doing internal code reviews. The social norms for that are different to most open source projects I've worked on. - Nick Lothian
@Nick You're absolutely right, the social norms are definitely different. I know which I prefer, and I know which I think leads to better code. Though I grant that the dev in the article sounds like they might have been a bit insensitive. - Michael C. Harris
great job loic and the twhirl team!! - Morgan
via twhirl
Great: rooms, auto-throttling - Not so great: FF posts take up so much room, less posts are visible at the same time - Can't wait for Seesmic support! - Garrido
via twhirl
Loic - First impressions are fantastic - Ed Dale
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its there and update feature to twhirl or do I need to download and re-install? - rambn
Hey - I like it! Could you add support for opening a new tab when right clicking links? I hate how it overrides my current page! - Zach Landes
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I really like the new FF features. Can't wait to see Seesmic added to the mix. - Dana Franks
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I'm ready to say that this is the first version of Twhirl with FF that I am willing to use, actually. - J·Phil·Glockner
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Tony, Seesmic is coming in a few weeks. Morgan thanks, Garrido it is coming, Ed thanks, rambn yes auto update close it you will see, Zachary working on that, Dana me too!, Marco yes Marco rocks, Josiah thanks, Dave it is not in this one, thanks Sam, Danish and Tom - Loic Le Meur
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I am a big fan of Twhirl and it keeps getting better - Mark Nassal
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WOWOWOWOW ... You guys are putting your release schedule on steriods! code monkies!!! I like all the new feature improvements! keep up the good work! - Susan Beebe
This caused me to dump alert thingy even though there are differences. Always liked Twhirl too bad it has picked up some hiccups from Twitter which is already the meme of legend in these parts... - Mark Forman
I'm in! This will def cause me to use friend feed more. - Evan Travers
via twhirl
This is a nice feature. Just upgraded to the new version to use this. But your blog is never unblocked by the Great Firewall here. - Jianjun Zhang
via twhirl
Comments inline work well, but make it hard to keep a track of whats going on. I guess thats more of a FF issue tho, nested conversations are much more complex than the flat twitterlike comments. - Steve Mactaggart
via twhirl
I guess I'm getting used to it - without doubt, it's an improvement, thnx Loic and Marco - Garrido
via twhirl
and try the pic share feature, it takes a few seconds to do what really looks like like a short blog post, a pic, a text and a link et voila! - Loic Le Meur
Loic, great update to twhirl, clean interface, more intuitive - Ralph Poole
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Nice update! Is there any shortcuts for Twhirl?? - Alex Sauceda
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still trying to get my head around friend feed in twhirl.... - djp
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Still not like the interface. Still not see the reason why we need a specific app for friendfeed. Some stuff could be sorted via a easy firefox extension e.g. notification. - Benjamin Kohler
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I'm not sure about this, but my main concern.. why does my FF feed in Twhirl look almost completely different than what I see on the web? Am I the only one seeing this? - felix
Love the new changes - a few issues still with the commenting. It remembers the past comment when I write a new one instead of clearing the box, and it also clears out my comment box every time the feed refreshes. - Jesse Stay
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Nice work! Loving the improvements! - Lon
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well - i´m still not sure, if I should prefer AlertThingy or Twhirl ;) - Dieter Schwarz
via twhirl
Really digging the reduced memory usage. Before twhirl would growto over 500MB and now it's pretty steady at 150MB or so. Thanks! - Jauder Ho
via twhirl
"Recordon pointed out to me that this API affords all the mechanisms necessary to implement the “leased” model of data access (rather than the embedded model), but leaves it up to the OpenSocial applications and containers to set and enforce their own data access policies." Indeed, OpenSocial is about defining the technical capabilities for data sharing, but each container is free to implement their own policies about what a developer can do with the data. - Patrick Chanezon
I hate Facebook because of this. Who are THEY to tell me you have too many friends? - Robert Scoble
They have good reason for that but still... there are power users like you and Scoble (and whole bunch of others) that would like to have more connections than what is possible. - Daniel Schildt
I guess guys like you and Scoble should not have user profiles but be groups, to be honest. I'm sure the groups have larger limits. - Gerard van Schip
Gerard: the problem with groups is that they don't have things like apps. - Robert Scoble
You can never have too many friends... facebook must be wrong! :) - Lucretia Pruitt
Loic, Robert: Is Facebook slow for you guys? - i.e. is there any truth to Facebook's claim that the 5,000 friend limit is there for performance reasons? - Mike Doeff
Mike: it's sometimes slow, yes, but never as bad as Twitter's direct messaging capabilities are for me. - Robert Scoble
Mike, yes it is sometimes slow but they fixed the add a friend now much faster. However I can't add any anymore but you know that already! - Loic Le Meur
Igor: the bans are only if WE add more people, not if people add us. I haven't added someone myself to Facebook in a very long time. In fact, I really don't use Facebook much at all. - Robert Scoble
Loic, try to add yourself as a friend to yourself and check what happens ! - Ron Shoshani
why the hell would I want to add myself as a friend to myself !? - Loic Le Meur
@Ron S -- Shhhh!! Doing this will open up a Scrabuloous paradox and rip the fabric of space and time and release the Zuck demon to reign over the universe for four Quatoon-epochs. (That's pretty much what's happening anyway, but we don't want to accelerate te process.) - john conroy
Lucky you!! Think of all the poking you're going to get!! - Mark O'Neill
that's hillarious & 1 of the reasons I hate facebook! Who r they 2 tell Anyone they've got TOO many friends! Wth?! Is there such a thing?! Shheeeesh! (shakes head) - Deborah Micek
In Soviet Russia, you do not have too many friends. Too many friends..have..you? - Mike Lewis
Great decision with the acquisition Loic, hope you already know how to deal with copyrighted content over there :) - Svetlana Gladkova
Svetlana, yes, I found a solution with copyrighted content on Google, we will turn off video upload on YouTube. - Loic Le Meur
Loic, I hope you aren't going to turn it all off, I like some of the things over there especially the record companies who put up there content for people to listen to and enjoy!! - Paul
Of course... everything should be filmed real-time! Even the copyrighted material... :) - directeur
