Robert, thoughts and prayers going your way - please send my thoughts to Maryam as well.
- Jesse Stay
I'm sorry to hear that, Robert. My wife's mother was diagnosed with (treatable, thankfully) cancer in the past month. I think it's the first time I've mentioned this online. As you said, treasure those moments.
- Micah Wittman
You are in my thoughts. Best to you & your family.
- professor daddyo
Sorry to hear that, but a powerful message. I hope things turn for the better.
- Eric @ CSTechcast.com
from iPhone
Hoping he will get well soon!
- victed
from iPhone
According to Alexa, FriendFeed is losing its international grip as well. In the last three month, the Alexa Rank for the site has been decreasing.
- professor daddyo
Glad Louis got you an invite, Rah! I have enough new shinies to play with, you know. I don't think I'd get much out of Google Wave. Nope. Not me. Nuh-huh.
- WorldofHiglet
Is that reverse psychology, WoH? Does it work? cuz, um, yeah, I don't want an invite. no time. yup. too busy.
- Laura Norvig
pls invite me to Google Wave - gattoo at gmail dot com
- Nitin Nanivadekar
It's almost too raw to use. I haven't logged on in a few days.
- Ben Hanten
I'll make this extremely difficult. Direct Message me your email and I'll see what I can do (haven't seen anywhere where I can invite people).
- Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah
I'm waiting for Rah to post that famous WTF photo of him.
- Cristo
LOL@Cristo. I haven't really played with it yet, Kol. Only friends I have there are Holden and my mom. Maybe I'll get a chance this evening.
- Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah
OK. :-) Just DMed you. Add me if you like. :-)
- Kol Tregaskes
Google may not be evil, but I don't want to trust them with my medical records.
- Michael
Funny, I have an 8 month old daughter, and I'm REALLY considering it. It may end up being THE tool if the healthcare madness pans out!
- professor daddyo
Soon, we'll buy music on chips (actual potato chips, not computer chips). Until then, let's reminisce. - Tuesday's Plinky question: http://www.plinky.com/prompts...
- Kol Tregaskes
78's - honest. We had a bunch of them when I was a kid. Then 45's on a spindle that played a stack of them into a radio. First 45 was "Rock Around the Clock".
- m9m, Crone of FriendFeed
Vinyl. My first record was the 45 of "Like a Virgin" by Madonna.
- Michelle Martinez
Vinyl. Then 8Tracks. Then Cassettes. Then CDs. Then MP3s. So, I guess i have run the gamut.
- Martha
Vinyl. My first LP was "Kings of the Wild Frontier" by Adam And The Ants and my first single was "House on Fire" by The Boomtown Rats.
- Timothy Griffin
45 => 33 vinyl. First CD in '81 then LaserDisc then SACD and MP3
- Francesco LVDI
33 1/3 Vinyl Albums - my 1st two were Beatles Hard Days Night + the one o them Jumping on the Rooftop in their Beatle Boots?? Twist + Shout?? I just remembered my Grade 4 Teacher wouldn't let me play them during Indoor Recess!! Damn Long-Haired Hooligans from Britain!! ;))
- Billy Warhol
I thought it was tape, but my first system was actually a record player. Wow, I don't feel that old.
- Rob Haas
45 => 33 1/3 => Cassette => CD. my parents had some 78s laying around the house & friends had 8-tracks; I never liked 8-track.
- jbrotherlove
8 track & 45's. I remeber dancing in front of the record shop on St. John's Place and Ralph Ave. in Brooklyn for quarters to purchase new James Brown Records.
- professor daddyo
Cassettes for me. I bought a few vinyl records but not many. I bought loads and loads of CDs but very rare to buy any physical media now.
- Kol Tregaskes
Maybe radio doesn't qualify as a "format"?
- Brian Sullivan
Analog: vinyl and 8-track. Digital: .au files via FTP on my C64.
- Jason Huebel
from iPhone
The "Theatre of the Mind" Radio!! FM "no static at all" lol (there was a little AM in there ) ;)
- Melanie Reed
Vinyl & 8-tracks. Vinyl has never left my life though.
- Admiral Anika
Somnabulist, was that always virgin vinyl acrylic? Direct to disc? :)
- Melanie Reed
People used to sing to me well before I started listening to the radio. Radio was next, and then LP's, but the first music I ever (personally) purchased was "American Pie" (45RPM single)
- Mistletoe Glen
Well, for all those vinyl lovers, always remember Nick Cages' endorsement from "The Rock": "These sound better."
- Melanie Reed
Actually, now that I think about it, the very first music was probably at church.
- Mistletoe Glen
Glen, actually, I think it was people singing to me that came first. You're right.
- Melanie Reed
Records and cassettes, though a few years later CDs were the dominant format.
- Andrizzle Gizzle
vinyl first (45s and then LPs) and then cassettes. i gave 8-track a miss.
- Joe Silence is not Santa
Cassette and vinyl. Cassettes (and eventually CDs) were more common when I was growing up, but we still had the turntable set up in the dining room and I was a fiend for my dad's records... Stones, Grand Funk, CCR, Skynyrd... it's no surprise I'm still big into classic rock.
- Penguin It's Cold Outside
my first 45 was Tubby The Tuba. my first LP was The Beatles - Rubber Soul. my first cassette was ELO - Time (my second was Pink Floyd - Dark Side Of The Moon, so i hope i get some slack for that). my first CD was Rush - Exit...Stage Left.
- Joe Silence is not Santa
The first song I remember playing in my room is "All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth" on 45, on a portable record player that had its own speaker. This was in the 1970s, so I guess the song was already 30 years old by the time I heard it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
- Phil G
LP Records, we still have the LPs around here (someplace), many of which are older than I am...
- Grant Bierman
I'm so old... had a childhood record player (vinyl, obviously) and at the time (circa 1960), many 'children's records' were 7-inch 78s! (Golden Books had Golden Records that were bright yellow).
- The Web's Wendell Wittler
Vinyl for me. Not LPs, at least at first; 45s. I still have all the old LPs from my childhood, at least those I haven't replaced with better copies (because I ruined the old ones when I was a kid), plus I've collected 1,000s more! And I listen to them. My next computer-related acquisition, at least after I get a new power supply and video card for my Dell (to run Windows 7), is a USB turntable. Of course, I got rid of the old 45s decades ago...
- Dennis Jernberg
Cassette tape and a Sony Walkman. Yep, I was livin' it up like Fresh Prince. Holler.
- Danny Minick
8-track, i guess. Also reel-to-reel and vinyl were around, but we weren't hifalutin enough to have reel-to-reel.
- j1m
Cassette tape with a Panasonic Mini player / Recorder .... I used to record my favorite song from other tapes using a karaoke double tape player
- Arash Nightwatcher
This depends. If we're talking about the first music I purchased and listened to that would be cassette tape. First music ever listened to period would probably be 8-Tracks and Vinyl.
- Give 'Em DBizness
Vinyl and reel-to-reel tape. Oh and radio
- Pete Gilbert
O - I forgot DAT and reel to reel, from my studio and live recording days!!!!
- Martha
vinyl for sure. i had a teeny little record player that unfolded. wish i still had that thing.
- Call me Bronco
need to buy a vinyl player with USB connector
- winckel
Winckel Great idea! http://www.anthems.com/Convert... I have a brand new turntable that's never been used just sitting around. would be nice if it could be converted.
- Melanie Reed
Has this ever happened to you? You go to your computer with a purpose in mind, and of course the first thing you see is Friendfeed (because that was the last thing you were doing on your computer before going offline to do something else), you become distracted with some stuff your friends shared and before you know it...
It happened to me yesterday. I was innocently checking some facts, working hard when I noticed the FFundercats were on and this Paul dude came on the line and then....it was two hours later!
- WorldofHiglet
Also known as: "WWILF" and a pretty good reason to do your more important things in the morning before opening your e-mail, Friend Feed, Twitter etc :-)
- James Kuypers
The trick is to incorporate FF into you computer time!
- professor daddyo
I actually love and hate hibernating my pc because of that =)
- Gökhan Çeliker
from iPhone
almost. every. freakin'. morning. I just wanna check the weather to see if I can ride my 2-wheeler to work, and there FF is, sucking me in, trying to make me late.
- MiniMage TKDteacher of FF
Just happened a few minutes ago. I forgot what I was looking for and find myself browsing FF instead. Then I opened another tab to look for this post and write about it here, but was distracted by something else and found myself meandering on FF again.
- Brome
Even worse, using the employer's network to visit and post to FF during breaks and lunch is now verboten, so it's even more tempting to just check a few threads before I scurry into the dead zone. I know I can tether to a phone for emergencies, but I chose to have a half-hour lunch, so I generally don't bother. I've switched off the iPhone's wireless a couple of times and hit one of my FF apps (got amigo after MotherFeed stopped working).
- MiniMage TKDteacher of FF
Digital distractions, they are aplenty - I keep opening new tabs all the time in my browser and find a hard time trying to close them down to keep num of tabs at manageable level.
- TrafficBug
I been trying to use it as my main browser with only some success. There are some things that don't work. Like in FF the add picture button is blacked out and it does tend to crash.
- Kim Landwehr
nope, the only time I use Chrome on the mac is when I'm in google wave
- Wayne Sutton
I actually think it the fastest of all with my MB pro, but no delicious plug in :-(
- professor daddyo
Yes, and no. I would prefer an official release.
- Zachary TG
I'm a full-time user on Windows, but I'm waiting for gold release on Mac before I give it a fair stab. Safari for now.
- CannonGod
No. I use FireFox because it has lots of extension and add-ons. How about Chrome? I'll try it.
- Kazuya Yokoyama
from BuddyFeed
I would if they had ad-blocking built in.
- cecily
I use it part-time and find it to be ultra-fast and reliable. Extensions would be awesome, and they're coming soon. I also like the Incognito mode, which came before Mozilla added Private viewing mode to Firefox.
- Andrew Dobrow
I want to, but I can't become Chrome/Chromium can't open any google.com URL. There's no way I can get rid off this bug. Check the last comment here, and please share a fix if you know the cause of the problem. Thanks!
- Jérôme Flipo
I have been since they added Flash. I find it fine apart from the fact that it's missing a Bookmark Manager.
- Andrew Trinh
I actually use more than one print dictionary for English, plus dictionaries (w/English) for French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Latin (with more to come). Plus an English thesaurus; I also have a French one (called Synonymes).
- Dennis Jernberg
My wife is Haitian. We just came from her cousins home out in the country. I love Haitian culture. I have a small daughter and I will teach her creole & french first, even though I my self do not speak it. Its so important that they learn the culture as youth.
- professor daddyo
"Awwweee, Louis, you bring back my gay mad youth. I started on Blogger in 1999, when it was still part of Pyra labs. I imported my b_central e-zine into it. Although I've moved the Stealthmode blog to Wordpress, my hip replacement blog is still on Blogger, and I still have a soft spot in my heart for Blogger, which still remains my tool of choice when friends of mine say "I'd like to start a blog. Where should I go." I feel kind of funny about this, but I knew about Ev before he was cool:-)"
- Francine Hardaway
Last week, I thought about "debinking" my 3 existing Blogger accounts, I use Wordpress presently. I think I might go back? Thoughts?
- professor daddyo
Professor, I've never used Wordpress, and I haven't really used Blogger in a professional way, so I can't really advise you there. Francine, it was fascinating to learn that you were using the Pyra product in the beginning.
- John E. Bredehoft
Interesting the last 2 phone calls I had both said something along the lines that a well known West Coast blog and a few more doesn't cover tech / startups on the East Coast! I agree and getting tired of this echo chamber controlling the "tech news" bubble world! Time do something about it . . Do you know which site they're talking about?
I had the same conversation while in NY with a few individuals. Startups and companies need to stop treating certain "blogs" like the end all press and just market your product/company to your target customers. Getting posted about on certain blogs is almost like the "digg" affect.
- Wayne Sutton
Dave: TechCrunch has employees all over the world, so no.
- Robert Scoble
Scoble you know, and just because acertain blogs have employees all over the world doesn't mean they provide a "fair" coverage to the tech space
- Wayne Sutton
I do think it's a dual problem though, startups and tech companies want exposure and tech blogs want traffic. I think it's a marketing and perception problem. Also a "social media" problem.
- Wayne Sutton
I am writing a whitepaper "what startups can learn from the music industry". Seems like you guys are reinitiating the east coast/ west coast beef? ha!
- professor daddyo
Wayne: maybe not, but I've seen tons of east coast companies in techCrunch. Nine companies from Israel were picked for TC50 last year. It's hardly Silicon Valley centric.
- Robert Scoble
Wayne, don't waste your time raging at the machine. Instead BE THE MACHINE YOU WANT TO SEE! to paraphrase and mangle the quote.
- Dave Slusher
Thanks, I'm going to become a CyBorg!
- Wayne Sutton
Fred Wilson just blogged about the NYC startup scene heating up and deserving some press. Let's pile on by talking up our own local space.
- Scott Magoon
from iPod