Yeah, i gave it another try last week and definitely impressive - but a couple of important glitches & bugs to fix - Zee at WeDoCreative
Edwin: there's no way to share the items I'm seeing, is there? That's a HUGE reason why I use Google Reader (so I can share items and get them into FriendFeed). - Robert Scoble
@Robert If you just click on 'Recommend' that's what they're calling 'sharing'. - Zee at WeDoCreative
Oh, I have to click on each item to recommend it? That's lame. I should be able to recommend an item right from the home page without having to click twice, just like here in FriendFeed. - Robert Scoble
@Edwin sure, will do. Mainly just sometimes posts don't load and j/k to scroll down will occasionally miss a post or not go all the way to the bottom of the page. When I select "unread only", often it still shows posts I have read. The two most frustrating things: I can't tell easily which categories have unread posts in and finally - I was really excited by the river view because I heard you could view by categories from that page - which is unfortunately isn't the case... - Zee at WeDoCreative
If the sources could be arranged into categories like they would be in google reader, that would be a big plus. - Zee at WeDoCreative
@Robert - yeah, you need to click 'more' on the homepage view to get the option to recommend. They could easily fix this with a 'thumbs up' button permanently next to the post titles though - Zee at WeDoCreative
I really want to like the app, so I'm hoping they really keep working hard on it & hopefully make it more than just a firefox extension & also create some way to have the same kind of facility on the iphone. - Zee at WeDoCreative
just use the google reader shortcuts to use it. Alt+s to share. - Svartling
you Can also choose the river of news view an easily go through feeds with the keyboard - Svartling
the keys J and K to go up and down and Alt+s to share. Just like in google reader - Svartling
robert: recommend will add the item to your shared feed. as mentioned by svartling, you should be able to use the GR keyboard shortcuts (they works specially well in the river view - second icon on the top). The part that is missing is "share with notes". Which should be there next week when we merge the concept of feedly annotations and GR annotations. - Edwin Khodabakchian
Edwin: wow that sounds cool! Merging annotations with GR notes i mean. - Svartling
robert: when you sent us your OPML a few months ago for performance testing, you had just two categories (normal and favorites if I remember). Do you have more now? - Edwin Khodabakchian
ok. so the magazine view is probably not adding too much value in your case. The new wall which will go out next week has some of the things you have been asking for a long time: compression of multiple recommendations, filtering based on min number of recommendations, etc..(http://www.flickr.com/photos/6...) That and the current friendfeed and google search integration might be places were we can create value for a user like you. Does Maryam read RSS feeds? (she is more of our target!) - Edwin Khodabakchian
Edwin, I have no doubt you've thought this through a thousand times - but since you need to a) use firefox and then b) install an extension to use feedly....Do you not think it's going to be super-difficult to try & reach the non-geeks out there who aren't passionate users of google reader? "Most" non-geeks I know hardly ever install firefox extensions, let alone install firefox...they just use whatevers open or put it front of them - Zee at WeDoCreative
Zee.You are right about firefox. But the extension installation process is getting simpler and people through iphone, facebook and firefox are getting used to the concept of "installing an application". Stumbleupon is a good example. The feedback we have collected so far is that our problem currently with more mainstream user is not the add-on but the first configuration experience and the need to further simplify the UI. We have a parallel project called "feedly mini" to try to cracks those two nuts. - Edwin Khodabakchian
Edwin, awesome. Yeah, I didn't mean to sound like I was giving you pointers on a business I'm sure you're thinking about day & night....I just wanted to give my two pennies & also say that us geeks really love the product too, so don't forget about us! :) - Zee at WeDoCreative
I've been using it exclusively for a week now. With the FF integration, I don't think I could go back to the gReader interface. - Chris Nixon
twhirl+ff is really opening my eyes to these services. Kudos. I'm off to take a look at Feedly. - Stu Andrews via twhirl
I am definitely enjoying my current switch from GR to Feedly. I like the fact i came accross Scobles twitter in Friend Feed because i was reading an article through feedly and ended up here as a result and discovered this. I enjoy loading up Feedly at lunch time to browse aimlessly, and i struggle to do that with Google Reader as i feel i have to stick to one subscription at a time and i end up getting put off. I dont feel overwhelmed when i use feedly. - Rowan Evenstar
Embarassed to say I downloaded and signed up a few months ago but have been too busy to use it. - Sally Church
Edwin, many people are still on Firefox 2 for obvious reasons. Isnt there a version for it as well? - Hayk Hakobyan
There is no feedly for iphone. But because feedly syncs in real-time with google reader, you can use/continue to use Google Reader on the iphone and it will just work! - Edwin Khodabakchian
Hayk: It was a hard decision but we really needed the extra security of windows.postMessage to mash services together more securely. Hopefully by the time feedly gets out of beta, more users have upgraded to firefox 3 (which is an *great* upgrade) and this will slowly become a non-issue. In the meantime , we are sorry to not be able to be more help. - Edwin Khodabakchian
I'd really like to try this out, but for whatever reason I live in IE mostly. Yes, I have Firefox installed, but I'm unlikely to start it just for Feedly... Switching completely to Firefox is not an option for me here. I'll give it a whirl, but until this can be done in IE as well, the market is limited to tech savy people... though that might be enough. - Matt Wollnik
Matt: we are a small team and decided to focus on firefox first to increase our chances of building something people like. Once we have a winning recipe we will look at porting it to other browsers. - Edwin Khodabakchian
Note to Robert: If you end up wanting to rollback some of the shared feeds feedly might have imported into your google reader account, simply go to http://www.feedly.com/feedly#g... There is an automated way to undo all the changes. - Edwin Khodabakchian
what do you think of the keyboard shortcuts? - Örjan Lundberg
Mixed reaction on Feedly here. I go to the river mode in Feedly and see all kinds of useful looking activity but when I click on the orange button in the FF toolbar I see a mostly blank screen with message: "This page is empty. Please connect your feedly to a set of sources and a set of social connections first. " -- this needs to go away. How to start at the wall or other mode instead of this empty placeholder page? - TDavid
Did not appreciate the hijacking of my reader. I do use it and finding I use it more than my reader at this time. - Jeff B
@Edwin - no thanks, it doesn't seem like something I'd use anyway. I took time to describe the bug for you here, that's your bug report. Copy and paste, mon :) - TDavid
TDavid: the reason I asked for the screenshot is because it would have allowed us to understand if you have sources defined but all of them are read or if an error happened during the welcome process or if there is somehow a problem fetching the content. Re the wall. In the more (at the top right) > preferences there is an option to change the start page. If the experience does not end up working of you, here is the 5 step un-install procedure: http://edwink.devhd.com/2008/0... - Edwin Khodabakchian
We just need to get you on Disqus now ;) - Jesse Stay
@Edwin - thank you for the uninstall link. Done. - TDavid
I will grant you that FF does not have the live ping of SMS or IM but I think that the bubbling conversations reduces this a bit. I can access FF when I have a moment not when someone pings me. I can do it at my pace. FFotGo or just the regular site work fine from my mobile. - John Cooper
I can crawl inside Mark Krynsky’s head. I can see what music he’s listening to, what he’s reading and watching, who his friends are, where he’s at, what he’s doing. I’ve never met Mark, but I know he listens to U2 and Red Hot Chili Peppers. - Mitchell Tsai via Bookmarklet
Krynsky, who lives near Los Angeles, is an early adopter of “lifestreaming,” which is a record of everything he does online, all in real time. “The cool thing about lifestreaming is you get to gaze into people to learn a lot that you might not otherwise know about them,” Krynsky told me. “You get an idea about what’s going with their lives in a way that you don’t have to interact, but you build all this knowledge and information.” - Mitchell Tsai
See Scott Rubel's FF post (6/14/08) http://friendfeed.com/e/851fa0... where Mark says "
I spent 40 minutes with Gina on the phone for that interview and did some Scobletastic pimping of FF of my own." - Mitchell Tsai
An extreme example of lifestreaming popped up last year when Justin Kan attached a webcam to his hat and decided that he would wear the camera at all times, with streaming live video and audio, attracting the attention of news outlets like the Today Show and NPR. The experiment morphed into Justin.tv, which is a network of streaming video channels (many of which are lifecasts); it also allows chat at the same time. - Mitchell Tsai
“One thing we’ve discovered is that email is not the perfect medium for every kind of conversation,” said Paul Buchheit, a co-founder of FriendFeed. “If you are sharing funny links of good videos or an interesting article, email turns out not to be the best way to share those…it can pile up and you start to feel guilty and anxious and not sure if you’re ever going to catch up.” - Mitchell Tsai
Turning people off—or at least certain aspects of what they put online—will likely become essential in social networking’s future. As sites like FriendFeed make it easy to blast out anything that interests you, the volume of material from people you know could be daunting. - Mitchell Tsai
Electronic communication has lowered the “cost” of finding out what’s going on with those you know, said Kevin Lim, a tech blogger who is a doctoral student in communications at the University of Buffalo in New York. Some will call very few people in their social network but are interested to find out what’s going on with a lot of people if it’s easy enough, he said. - Mitchell Tsai
We may simply have acquaintances who we don’t want to have access to everything we do. A year after Reichelt wrote about ambient intimacy, she adjusted her views: The longer someone uses a social network, the more it gets populated with those from different aspects of our lives—like bosses or colleagues—that we may not want listening to all of our inner thoughts. So having the same level of intimacy with people we want to stay close with risks some exposure, Reichelt wrote in April. - Mitchell Tsai
Adam Kazwell is a 28-year-old FriendFeed aficionado, but [his] attempts to get his girlfriend or parents to use the service haven’t worked. And he doesn’t expect them adopt the habit anytime soon. But he thinks that as more people use services like Facebook and technology like camera phones, that will change. - Mitchell Tsai
does that mean lifestreaming has gone mainstream :-) - ben rogers via twhirl
Nope... Almost none of my friends has Twitter yet. Even Facebook (90 million+ users) only reaches.... ~5-10% of my friends. - Mitchell Tsai
From the article: "Rather than the anonymous and often disparaging comments posted on a site like YouTube, the comments left on FriendFeed under a video go out to people reading your stream of information: So they know you, either in real life or through an online relationship, creating a group conversation." - Anthony K Valley
When I saw this picture, I wanted to be able to interact with it. Hover to see bigger pic, click to see their latest shared item, etc. - Alan Le
Love the article, but not sure about their term for individual FF items: "blasts"?! - David Young
Alan: FriendFeed Grid http://blogoscoped.com/friendf... is a random grid of FriendFeed people which you can play with (mouse-over highlights, click-thru to their account) ! - Mitchell Tsai
thanks mitchell! FriendFeed Grid is interesting. - Alan Le
"In most animals, the gut needs a lot of energy to grind out nourishment from food sources. But cooking, by breaking down fibers and making nutrients more readily available, is a way of processing food outside the body. Eating (mostly) cooked meals would have lessened the energy needs of our digestion systems, Khaitovich explained, thereby freeing up calories for our brains." - Gabe Schaffer via Bookmarklet
Diana Ross and the Supremes' Greatest Hits - My parents threatened to force me to return it, BTW. - Helen
I'm not sure if I give Pete the win for Back In Black or Akiva for Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me. Let's call it a tie. Or just proclaim Pete the winner for the Lost Boys soundtrack. - Mark Wilson
R.E.M. - Automatic for the People (that was the first CD-- I had lots of tapes before that) - Shannon Jiménez
Haha this was, sadly, my first purchase: http://www.amazon.com/Mickey-U... Mickey Unrapped. Mickey singing all the hot hip-hop songs back in the 90s. It was too hilarious! I was 7 years old. - James Mowery
Dave Brubeck Quartet, Time Out. Still have it in a box somewhere. 1992 maybe - Duncan Riley
U2 Rattle & Hum - very, very first one. Followed closely by Poison. :P - Morgan
Thanks, Mark. Just saying, Lost Boys Soundtrack FTW. It was my first paycheck from the San Jose Mercury News, hell my first paycheck ever, and the whole wad went to Rainbow Records @ Vallco Mall in Cupertino. - Pete Delucchi
not 100% sure, but i think it was U2's Unforgettable Fire. - Trent Olson
That's messed up, I can't remember my first CD! I think maybe Michael Jackson Past, Present, Future? I don't know anymore...it's the short term memory loss! - Sheryl
"Apple reinvented Mac OS, and the web turned into a dangerous place Windows just wasn't ready for. Commercial Unix died, with the arguable exception of the server room. Linux? Well, Linux just kind of muddled along. It didn't get much better, but it didn't get much worse. It was fine for development work, but a pretty lame desktop. Many Unix lovers (and haters, because it's quite hard to be one without also being the other) settled on a Linux box for development work and a Mac for everything else." - Louis Gray via Bookmarklet
My web statistics show more people using Linux distros than Mac OS. Linux for the desktop is here to stay. I have used both Ubuntu and openSUSE. Combined with Wine or CrossOver I can run everything I need except for photo editing with Adobe Lightroom 2.0 - Michael Tefft
My workstation at home and work are Ubuntu boxes. Have been running them for years. - imabonehead
@Michael, on louisgray.com, it's 65% Windows, 27% Macintosh, and 4% Linux. iPhone is 4th highest at 1.5%. On a second site I track, it's 91% Windows, 7% Macintosh and 2% Linux. Certainly can change depending on your focus and audience. - Louis Gray
Have been using WinXP for my desktop, CentOS for servers, and now added a Mac Mini to my mix. - Ernie Oporto
Very nice piece. As a user and tinkerer, my experiences of operating systems seems to be somewhat different to your experiences and choices as a developer. I for one have been getting more and more disenchanted with Windows over the years, and was so glad to learn that the Linux desktop was finally usable for the tech-savvy average joe. I made the switch like a shot, and I'm very happy here. - Slippy Lane
Apple has been selling more laptops every quarter. The fact is the vast majority of consumers will just use whatever OS is installed, getting people to change browsers is hard enough. Sad really as I find Apple to be a terribly two-faced company with an incredible marketing department - Cains
does the OS itself really matter that much? I spend so much time on the web, that I hardly notice the OS anymore. - ben rogers via twhirl
So here's a slippery slope...privacy advocates say you should have to give Google permission to photograph your house...but then Photography advocates are up sh-t creek...there goes our right to photograph things from a public street. - Sean McGee
Kind of ridiculous to make it seem as if SV has taken advantage of folks in mourning. I'm sorry for his friend but that issue is completely unrelated to Street View. - Andy DeSoto
Um, why should Google pull this? Out on the street. Zero expectation of privacy. Google had every right to take that picture. Wait... they did it out of respect for the individual and his sense of privacy and feelings? ;) - Cyndy
I'm sad for him but this is pretty funny. - Niguel Valley
street view is going into public backlash effect. Google better clean up its images before posting on the web. - Peter Dawson
This is not Google's fault. I hope they don't let any backlash affect pictures they post from public streets or we are just headed down yet another slippery slope - Rahsheen Porter
for those not following all the threads, my comment was meant as irony - Jason Carreira
Don't understand the brouhaha, people take images of others suffering, fail, what have you, every day. With or without express permission too I might add. - Mo Kargas
@Rahsheen, is it ok for a .gov agency to order google to remove coord and pic off Gmaps because its sensitive areas. Yet its not ok for users to request google to remove pics (on street view) that is being deemed an infringement of privacy ? there are two conflicting ways that google is acting here.. have they 4gotten "dont be evil" motto ? - Peter Dawson
We are all on the same photography ethics threads here, right? - Cyndy
@Cyndy, I belive tis "Google Street View " and "privacy" :)- - Peter Dawson
On Friendfeed, opinions-- and tangents-- run a dime a dozen! - Andy DeSoto
Wow are they scraping the bottom of the barrel for examples on this issue. This might be the most desperate attempt I have seen by a journalist to make his subject even remotely sympathetic. - Sacca
I can walk around any street and take whatever pics I want in almost any place in the world. I cannot, however, access images taken by satellite or however-the-hell Google gets those pics. I can see why gov agencies might not want people to have access to aerial maps of certain facilities. Either way, it's a messed up situation, but the more we complain and have stuff taken down...the more we chip away at our own freedom. - Rahsheen Porter
Rahsheen, ITA. However, Google isn't doing a darn thing that's in violation of the law. There is zero expectation of privacy on the street. They have every right to take that picture. However, without putting up a fuss, they took it down because it was common courtesy to do so. See where I'm heading with this now? - Cyndy
Cyndy: Google=Billion dollar company...Thomas Hawk != Google...point taken, though. - Sean McGee
They just got Street View live in Des Moines recently. I'm looking forward to pouring through all the streets to see if anyone I know can be found in a compromising or embarrassing situation. ;) - Nathaniel Payne
How can you possibly get bothered by Street View? If it's viewable from the street, it's public info. It'd be one think if this one seeing in some guy's window but this guy is passed out on the damn street. What did he expect? If I was walking by I might take pictures of him too. - Brandon Titus
"The conflict between Russia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia moved toward all-out war on Saturday as Russia prepared to land ground troops on Georgia’s coast and broadened its bombing campaign both within Georgia and in the disputed territory of Abkhazia." - Bret Taylor via Bookmarklet
Georgia and Russia Nearing All-Out War
By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ, ANNE BARNARD and C. J. CHIVERS
Published: August 10, 2008
Russia and Georgia veered closer to all-out war on Saturday as Russia moved parts of its Black Sea fleet toward Georgia’s coast and intensified its air attacks.So,according to this report, we have to "pay per view" what's happening?
For free access to this article and more, you must be a registered member of NYTimes.com - FAIL - Graham Steel
Silpol: Thanks for the link. The comments were interesting to say the least. - Mathew A. Koeneker
For me, this always brings up the question of when should countries allow separatist areas go and when should they forcefully bring them back to the fold? If the people in South Ossetia really want to be their own country, should the international community support them? Or should the sovereignty of the nation take precedence? - Brett Cannon
unfortunately I know Georgia too well - I used to serve there on the edge of times in 91-92, my unit had been here http://tinyurl.com/5mdyq3 (yes, now abandoned airfield in Vaziani) that scratched gray square is place where my *stuff* was... what is going on now in that area looks as dumb mistake from US side and Russia got (almost) all possible excuses to leave no alive spot on Georgian surface... - silpol
@Brett Cannon you ask actually questions which has no single answer, IMO - silpol
the political decisions of "ordinary" people mostly just suck. they only see whats surrounding them. they dont understand the bigger causal connections and how the power-game is played. just take a look what happened to east timor. they are now poorer then before and their wish to be independent was based on totally whack assumptions. the decision to separate should be judged on the likeliness that the living standards of the ordinary people would go up. - krz9000
...and not on history or the silly coolness of supporting the underdog - krz9000
@mcdawg: look at BBC, they carry nearly the same coverage. - 9000
Putin is still the boss, eh? The NYT articles implies all President Medvedev is doing is handing out press releases. Anyway, hope this all gets resolved sooner rather than later. - Jim Stanger
...but BBC's coverage is more peicemeal, alas. - 9000
only politicians like wars - because they don't have to die of being wounded, but it solves some of their problems - silpol
There is plenty of private industry that likes them too. - Geoff Schultz
I think we are kidding ourselves if we thought Russia was not a threat to world peace. Though; please to not fear for the worse if you live in other countries. "You must face your fears if you are to overcome it. Fear is in the future. There is not fear in the present, only action and reaction." -- Oonu in Dinotopia - Brandon via twhirl
This is going to be bad, bad, bad all the way around. Georgia is our ally, and we're ignoring them. Russia, flush with petrodollars, is making up for it's lost superpower status with a vengeance. If we never invaded Iraq and succeeded in Afghanistan, we might have the moral and military might to back up a diplomatic surge to end this type of over-reaching. But we don't. So our allies suffer and our rivals outmaneuver around the world. - Kawika Holbrook
this thing has been bouncing around the timeline forever... and no can't say I agree with the current status over there - the main problem is not knowing what the real issues are... is it geopolitical? is there oil involved perhaps? - ben rogers via twhirl
nice insightful piece - and as the social graph ties the web more tightly together, the actions of individuals will form part of a context not seen before - ben rogers
I am sure there is a lot of commentary you could put to this pic. My only comment is that the world at large must REALLY be tired of the current US Administration if you can get this many people (in another country) to cheer for the possible replacement. - Darrell Bell via twhirl
were the decemberists there too? - scott via twhirl
I think the full size picture is about so many people taking a picture that half of the audience is not able to realize that they are making history by not being aware that they are being photographed too. - Ton Zijp
It's really fascinating to zoom into the large image and see the details. There is an amazing number of cameras in the audience. Plus: above the Angola sign, what is that person doing with the laptop? Is it taking a picture? - John via twhirl
Todd, It's a warning sign that a US presidential candidate is getting a warm welcome from citizens of a long-time ally that we'd managed to alienate to a large degree over the 8 years or so? Why is that? - Erik S
Germans? one would have to wonder what the Obama campaign people are thinking. I understand that it makes sense to stop somewhere on his way back from the mideast, but perhaps a lower key reception would of been in order? This is not going to get him elected in the US. This will cost him a bunch of points. Lets be objective here. I hope he had a great time because he is going to suffer with a hangover from this. - Noah David Simon
Believe it or not, a design firm. I am launching something new and have been talking with folks about logo/identity work. They offered me a discount rate of tens of thousands of dollars and made sure to spell my name wrong in the quote. When I politely thanked them for their offer but let them know I was going with someone else, they wrote this excoriating reply. Until that point, I was still considering referring a large portfolio company to them for a big project. - Sacca
I think it invites bad karma to call them out by name at this point. If they materially f'd something up for me, I would feel better. But, being complete dicks at the quote phase isn't worth it. One of the likers above saw the thread though. :) (That said, if you are actively evaluating design firms in SF, just email me csacca@gmail.com) - Sacca
Let's just refer to them as excoriating.com - Ontario Emperor
It's really a very small world. I've never quite understood why folks burn bridges like this. - AJ Kohn
@AJ I was laid off from a law firm in 2001 and became general counsel of one of their biggest clients within a year. This is a really small valley, and because the firm handled letting us go with so much class, I was happy to do business with them. - Sacca
Wow, why and the world would you ever treat customers this way. I gotta speech when I worked a k-mart the customer is always right - Blackopsmanners
@Sacca: Exactly! Handle yourself professionally and be gracious because you simply never know what the future holds. It's a small merry-go-round here in SF and word spreads fast. You can recover from a failed venture but not if you're treating people poorly. In fact, you may fail (long-term) in a successful venture if you treat people poorly in the short term. - AJ Kohn
@Blackopsmanners: I'm not sure the customer is always right, but you never give the customer the proverbial finger. Sometimes you simply have to tell the customer that there isn't a match. Not a big deal really. Look at football, a QB may flourish in one system, but be a bust in another. Instead of trash talking, find greener pastures and, who knows, maybe the old team switches to the right system and they suddenly want you again. - AJ Kohn
Potential customer: "We're going with another company, but thanks" Cyrus: "I understand. Things have a habit of changing. Would you have any objection to me checking with you in 6 months?" I've often gotten customers who started off going with another company, but ended up not satisfied. Also, Silicon Valley is a very small place. Be a jerk and word will spread. - Cyrus Lendvay
this is probably a personal reaction from a vendor who has a fused personality - ie relies on the approval of others for their happiness - rejecting there products is a personal insult. - ben rogers via twhirl
“Skipped out to see the new Batman movie this afternoon. So-so ho-hum. I like movies with real plots. The Joker played by Heath Ledger was pretty fantastic. The makeup was great. The story -- feh.”
I agree. I guess it's probably hard for them to satisfy the basic Batman villain-superhero model but I wish there was a more original plot. Some of the lines and acting were sub-par too and the end seemed a bit rushed (probably because the movie was a little too long). - Brandon Titus
![Feeding Frenzy - The folks who brought you Gmail now proudly present: FriendFeed! [NY Press - 6/14/08 ??]](http://friendfeed.s3.amazonaws.com/f8fdf0bc2bd4a72ca4e6935aa0a0400986b51214 "Feeding Frenzy - The folks who brought you Gmail now proudly present: FriendFeed! [NY Press - 6/14/08 ??]")
