Rob Dolin › Likes

+1 - Tyson Key

AMEN to that - Susan Beebe

DOES IT COME IN MANANA? - Internet's Tad

CAN I HAVE A MANANA SPLIT. NO I WANT IT TODAY. WHAT DO YOU MEAN TOMORROW. THIS DAIRY QUEEN SUCKS. - Akiva Moskovitz

what is that - DO ANYBODY NO MONIQUE

For those who've never heard of Brawndo: http://friendfeed.com/e... - Paul Buchheit

Where did you get that? Is that a promo like the Kwik-E-Marts that popped up when the Simpsons Movie released? - Manas Tungare

what's the spider net kind of thing hanging from the window on the upper left corner of the picture? are you throwing empty cans at it? ;-) - Davide D'Incau

Why are you so scared of the map? - Brian Sullivan

Maps are so unpredictable. They scare me too. - Shellee

the fact that there is so much blue? Yeah, scares me too. - John Denver

my new favorite site. i love all the blue too! - Internet's Tad

Blue is the new color baby! - jcunwired

538 hit a number of the primary results right on the head while MSM traded jokes about the volatility of polling numbers. Blue maps on 538 always make me smile! - Shellee

That map shouldn't scare anyone...it's means that progress is ahead...as opposed to another 4 years of regression. - Alex Scoble

I hope it means progress is ahead. There's still an awful lot of red. Nice to see hope shining through in Jesusland though. - Chris Messina

I'm enjoying looking through the polls and such - interesting to find out who's polling what, and what that means in the bigger picture. I like the simulation run graph better :-) Its all those 'big land, small population' states that are scary on that map. - Justin Hart

Love that site. Note: more red on map, but more dense states tend to be blue. - Mike Reynolds

I'm moving to Montana -- it's neither blue nor red. - Sprague D

Good ideas, mostly. Of course, as always, the devil is in the details (and to some extent, I think that's the point). - Paul Buchheit

interesting list, surprised to see photo/video sharing sites on there. - Adam Kazwell

From pg's comment "Most people who read that one [search engine that concentrates on design] will think "huh?" But if someone reads it and thinks "Damn, how did he hear about what we're working on?" that's someone we'd really love to hear from." - seman

"More open alternatives to Wikipedia." Wonder whatever happened to Google Knol... - Philipp Lenssen

They should start FF rooms for each of these. I'd contribute to a few. - Amir Gharaat

I think most of these are *great* ideas. This post isn't food for thought, it's a banquet :-) - Karim

Seems a little like bait? Some of the ideas are excellent reading and should be interesting to a few thinking about 'what they can do better'. Some of the other mentions (and wording in particular) leads me to wonder why go public with the list. - Charlie Anzman

Related problem: Using your inbox as a to-do list. The solution is probably to acknowledge this rather than prevent it. --- :-) - Kishore Balakrishnan

Jesus, this single page has more original content and ideas than the last 1000 ff and blog posts I read. Inspiring. - John Murray

AWESOME idea, thanks for sharing Paul... this is going to be fun to watch! - Susan Beebe

Haha i posted thast too. Although Paul is most more visible on FF, of course. - Akshay Dodeja

Very interesting, especially #4 - Scott Schnaars

did any of the y combinator startup go big ? perhaps an ignorant question... a couple of them i know of are scribd.com, and a search engine for mechanical parts.. forgot the name. - Krishna Gade

We're working on #3. - Ryan Kuder

search engine for mechanical parts: http://octopart.com ? - Peter Stuifzand

Interesting: "Advertising could be made much better if it tried to please its audience, instead of treating them like victims who deserve x amount of abuse in return for whatever free site they're getting. ... What we have now is basically print and TV advertising translated to the web. " How does TV advertising treat its audience better than web advertising? - Constantinos Michael

TV advertising is generally more entertaining than web advertising. - Ajay Kapal

@ Peter yeah... I was talking about octopart thanks for the link. - Krishna Gade

@ Ryan, what is it ? do you have something outside to try ? - Krishna Gade

would have liked to see this idea for an iPhone App Builder make Paul's list....seems much for YC-esque: http://joelaz.com/post... - Adam Kazwell

@ Ryan Kuder, I've been looking into #3 for a while, I'd love to chat if your in the bay area - Kris

I definitely vote for better email, or better say, better communication tool. - Jan Horna

What I'm interested in are #5, 6, and 7. :) - imabonehead

Sorry to say... The "Y Combinator" team is a little ...ahem... short on business expertise. - Mitchell Tsai

"Why not use GrandCentral? It's free." from one of the comments. Jeez. - AJ Batac

I posted on Craigslist yesterday, it was a bit irritating - I had to pass 2 captchas, do phone and email verification. These spammers make life hard for normal people :( - Bindu Reddy

Takes one bad egg doesn't it to make all our lives miserable. Life in prison for spammers - Deepak Singh

I read just yesterday that phone numbers are available for $1.50 in bulk - Gabe

Link returned a 404 error for me? - asiriusgeek

Same here - borked link - metaverseoz

Good post Dave. While I love many of the iPhone features I still don't like the closed platform, short non-replaceable batter, and single carrier aspects of the product. Seeing people stand in line like sheep just amazes me, but it's their right to be able to get one and run home to show off to their friends, or perhaps to be part of the 'in' crowd. - Jim McCusker

Fake Steve Jobs prescient answer:http://tinyurl.com/ytfk68 Don't like walled gardens? Have fun w/ OpenMoko or waiting for Android - Steve Weis

Jim, not to be a fanboy, but to say the iPhone isn't the best phone on the market is misleading. I don't get camping out for a phone, but in a world of walled gardens and not, when the walled garden is the only good thing on the market, you bet that is where people will go. I would love to see carriers open up networks and platforms, but barring that, having one cell phone that doesn't suck is still a step forward. As in most things, "It works" beats out ideals in head to head competition every time. - Robert Cooper from twhirl

The iPhone is good - but it is not the best phone on the market for many people - and for many uses. It simply lacks a number of features that a lot of folks use on their phones every single day. No tethering, no MMS, no stereo bluetooth, no background processing for 3rd party apps, no copy / paste, no Java, no flash, no turn by turn gps, no tether to third party gps receiver for car use, no removable memory, no ability to swap for a spare battery. As a smartphone it is feature poor. - Soulhuntre

Great post! Left you some comments here http://friendfeed.com/e... Remember Trolls are magical. ;-) - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

Dont get me wrong, what it does do it often does brilliantly, but for peopel who need the features entirely lacks it doesn't work at all. - Soulhuntre

@Robert, the iPhone definitely has major differentiators from any other phone on the market. But the fundamentals of being a phone, like battery life & carrier choices, reception and sound quality are definite negatives that have been noted. For anyone who doesn't care about those issues the iPhone is by far the best. I personally think Apple can and will do better in future releases. - Jim McCusker

Oh delicious irony... The only reason I just read that was because two of my 'A-List' heroes, Mr Bourne and Mr Scoble, brought it to my attention on FriendFeed... mmm thats tasty! - Johnny Worthington

I don't think the A-list is dead, it's just less exclusive because of the new communication tools available. The A-list will probably get bigger, making each individual member less dominant, but it will still exist. - Kevin Bondelli

Scott, I agree that everyone is now getting the chance to become an A-Lister. But an A-Lister in what? I think the author may have missed a point slighty. It's not that I have a shot at becoming well know and respected, it's I can now choose to filter out those people or subjects that do not intrest me. I do regard you as an A-Lister in the rhelm of photography, Mac, certainly iPhones and podcast creation but to someone else that may not be the case. Social media has empowered chioce. - Johnny Worthington

And certainly the fact people like you and Robert haven't had to play all the 'corporate' games and have the power over your own brands and content has allowed far more genuine and personal relationship to form with the people who areintrested and trust your opinions. - Johnny Worthington

If they A-List is not yet dead, it is certainly becoming less important as blogging and social media normalize and more people use them as part of their personal and business life. While each day, Scoble's followers may still rise, the growth of social media is such that rises faster, giving Scoble a smaller share of the whole universe every day. - shelisrael1

Purely from the outsider perspective, why are some folks getting so up in arms about this? Isn't it a good thing to have more voices in the mix? More channels in which more can contribute their thoughts and ideas. So far, Robert whom I have yet to "meat" in the RW, has come across to me as a pretty decent person. - Mathew A. Koeneker

I'm not in the A-list because my last name does not begin with the letter 'A'. Let's all just move on from this nonsense, shall we? - Akiva Moskovitz

No matter what the medium, some people will get more attention than others. It was true when George Washington entered the doors of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, it's true today when (insert name here) writes a blog post, and it will be true in 2727 when Miraloma Xanadu sends her brain waves to the Bigg Sstar. Perhaps the new technologies may accelerate the turnover of names on... more... - Ontario Emperor from fftogo

Miraloma Xanadu is totally overrated. She conspired to get me fired off Space Dock 13 and has been ganging up on me ever since. - Kevin Bondelli

@Ontario: Miraloma will have to use brainwaves in 2727 cause Twitter still won't work by then... :P - Johnny Worthington

I'm with Kevin. Miraloma Xanadu is a hack. She still owes me 2.7 gigacredits from that time she "forgot" her chips and I had to buy her lunch. She's not that interesting in RL. Heck, she's not that interesting on the net, either. And don't get me started on her B2B (brain-to-brain) show. ugh. - ha3rvey, not a sweetheart

Jim makes excellent points. I don't see it as a negative but a need to simply evolve as conversations and influence become increasingly mobile. While it is true that everyone has the potential to have reach not all will become thought leaders or influencers. Everyone can present themselves as an expert but not everyone has expertise. - Karen Swim

The contention that there is no more A-list can be proven (more or less) mathematically. It is generally accepted (though not universally) that the blogosphere (and Hollywood, and most social networks) are scale-free networks -- meaning, the network has an A-list and a "long tail." If you count the nodes in the network and the number of connections per node, you can identify which nodes are in the A-list and which nodes are in the tail. - Karim

A large part of A-list authority involves *access*, to people making news, new products in the pipeline and simple geographic proximity (Silicon Valley) to the center of gravity. That won't change very quickly. - Sprague D

If the author is saying "the A-list is dead," he is saying one of two things: either the nodes in the A-list have changed -- and networks change all the time, nodes gain and lose connections, this is no surprise -- or, he is saying the network is no longer a *scale-free* network, it is a flat network, the A-list doesn't exist at all. The first contention is common sense. It can be established quantifiably. The second contention seems less likely. - Karim

Circle jerk. The blind leading the blind. A herd of independent minds. Strong and original minds usually do not clump together in conclaves of mutual navel-gazing. (Btw, some of the A-listers ARE strong and independent minds. A-listedness was thrust upon them; they didn't seek it out.) - Sean McBride

Jim Kukral might have pronounced the A-list as dead, but sometimes reports of something's death are exaggerated. ;-) Robert Scoble might be saying "about time," but it seems to me he does a good job of hopping on new social networks, gobbling up connections to other nodes. Except for maybe Plurk. heh - Karim

I'm calling BS and linkbait. There will always be an A-list. As humans, we are incapable of existing without instituting some sort of royalty. And for every person who stared at Scoble with dead eyes, I heard "Hey Robert!" just as often (mind you, that wouldn't have happened HERE, for instance, but I took it as normal in the abnormal world of California). - Cyndy

@Sean, not that I'm disagreeing with you ;-) but in the human population, what is the distribution of "strong and original minds?" :-D - Karim

Karim: .01%? In any case, as a rule they don't tend to get too cozy with one another. - Sean McBride

who defines this a-list you speak of? - .LAG liked that

@LAG, we do. Through our reading/following behavior. - Sprague D

It's like the Supreme Court said about porn, you know an A-lister when you see one. For example, Scoble is obviously A-list because there are 21 comments to him saying three words. - Kevin Bondelli

One can quibble over the methods of definition. How do you determine the most popular songs in any given week? Store purchases? Radio airplay? Legal downloads? Illegal downloads? We've been working on that problem for decades. I don't think there's a consensus on how to measure the A-list (reads? links? mentions in Google? mentions on Truemors?), or what the boundary is between A-list and B-list. - Ontario Emperor from fftogo

so it's like the 'cool kids' table in the cafeteria back in high school? and like that table, outside of the school walls, it didn't mean much to anyone else? - .LAG liked that

Ontario, yes, the demarcation is somewhat arbitrary -- it could just as well be "Top 97" or "Top 103" instead of "Top 100" -- but it seems a bit like the author might have been saying there was NO TOP. First he says "it's dying," then he changes his mind and says no wait, it's dead, it's been *eliminated.* That means there is no A-list, and that young Billie Jean Schmuckington's compilation of her favorite LOLcats carries just as much weight as Scoble. :-D - Karim

.LAG, yes, it's exactly like that. Usually when you talk about network effects, you constrain the discussion to a specific network. That was one problem with the article -- was the author talking about blogs? Or FriendFeed? Or Facebook? Or the Intarwebs in general? Different networks will have different A-lists. The lunch table A-list probably doesn't matter much on FriendFeed, and vice versa. - Karim

I'm perfectly happy with life on the D list, myself. - Helen Sventitsky

I keep leaving a comment on the post, but then it disappears. Main points were: Blogosphere growing up is a good thing, but the A-list isn't going to die, just weaken. - David Cohn

Kablam! - Dan Kaplan

After a brief test drive of Lively, I very much agree. Lively is more like a minor upgrade to Zwinky than a SL competitor. - Jon Galloway

Right now, Lively seems to be 3d VChat not SL - Dennis E. Hamilton from twhirl

So exactly who has been saying that this is meant to compete with Second Life? It's possible that there are people in the world besides Californians you know? - Adewale Oshineye