Rob Neville › Comments

Now, now, Jeff. I mentioned in the article that I typically prefer native apps or Web apps to AIR apps, but this one is very interesting, at least to me. I dig it. - Louis Gray

im just trying to be funny...hehe good post btw. - (jeff)isageek

Wow, twhirlscope down -- gotta try this out - Shey, Jamaican of FF

ah! and I was wondering why my twitter vanity search hit on that topic as I do not like the air apps. but grouping actually would be a reason to try it out. problem: as long as twitter decimates the request rates it is unreliable, but a first step in the right direction. will download it now ;) - Nicole Simon

Louis, I think you're right - there is still innovation happening around Twitter, fortunately. The fact is there is still a huge audience on Twitter and that audience still has the potential to be monetized. I'm even building something around Twitter at the moment. There is still that threat though, that developers could leave if Twitter keeps neglecting them - it's in the back of the mind - Jesse Stay

"feels" like Twhirl. Wish it had FF support...if it does it wasn't obvious from the website. I agree with others that I'd really like to see these Adobe air apps with some better skins - Rob Neville from twhirl

"Now, now, Jeff. I mentioned in the article that I typically prefer native apps or Web apps to AIR apps, but this one is very interesting, at least to me." - That's part of why I like the platform so much. Most people like native apps but AIR apps are pretty easy to build so there's bound to be a few that people really like. (Ryan - rstewart@adobe.com) - Ryan Stewart

snopes.com hasn't addressed the Facebook-LDS thingie yet, but they have answered the question "Do the Mormons own the Coca-Cola Company?" http://www.snopes.com/cokelor... - Ontario Emperor

And Osama bin Laden isn't hiding out in Utah. http://www.snopes.com/rumors... - Ontario Emperor

The Vatican owns Coca-Cola. And we are allowed to drink it out of the Grail. ;) - Cyndy

Great, personal point of view and explanation, Louis. - Rex Hammock

wow...yeah I'm also used to this kind of crap, but this one's just stupid. For one thing, at least locally, I've heard Church leaders cautioning youth not to mess with MySpace because of the risk of predators and questionable content so I can't see them suddenly deciding that Facebook is a good idea (despite the fact that I'm connected to several members via Facebook so we're obviously using it :) ). Oh well, I'll go complain to my many wives now LOL. - Rob Neville

My wife and I had a good laugh on this one last night. Too absurd to have taken seriously. - LiquidLag

Lots of rumors don't pass the smell test, but that doesn't stop the more stupid among us from repeating them. Think of all the stupid crap we've heard--are still hearing--regarding Sen. Obama from members of Congress and the media. I can think back to all the LDS rumors from when I was a kid. They were dumb, but nowhere near as harmful and ignorant as the rumors that we Muslims had and have to deal with day from the willfully stupid. - Admiral Anika

I guess you've read Steven Hodson's follow-up post, in which he took the "nonsense" comment personally. In his defense, it should be noted that Hodson did at least cite his sources. And if one takes the tack that the Facebook-LDS story should not have been posted without confirmation, does that also mean that the Inquistr and other outlets should have held off on the Bigfoot story? (I'll grant one difference. The LDS Church has listed contact information. Last I checked, Bigfoot did not.) - Ontario Emperor from fftogo

@Ontario Emporer: I always heard that we (LDS) owned the Pepsi company. - Jason Shultz from twhirl

Nah, it was Starbucks. :) - Ontario Emperor from fftogo

Ontario, I have a long record of appreciating Steven's posts. We've been peers and friends for about two years now. That he and I rankle each other now and again is absolutely fine. I think the story was nonsense, but I think he and others who wrote on it are good folks. :-) - Louis Gray

@Ontario, and if you contacted them, what would you expect them to say? The answer is the same whether it's true or not, 'cause you don't talk about deals before they're done. - Jason Carreira

Jason, the allegedly acquiring entity could issue a strong denial (we will not acquire Company X), which would close the issue. Or they could say "no comment" or "we have not made a formal offer," which means nothing one way or the other. - Ontario Emperor from fftogo

Ontario, any idea how many times companies deny something is taking place when it really was taking place? The corporate pull quote is something you stick in there to show that you were open to hearing from them, but generally, it's not truthiness. - Cyndy

sorry @mortonfox should I guess "premium subscription" was repetitive and redundant (the repetitive and redundant nature of the phrase "repetitive and redundant" was a joke) - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

There's value if you're a recruiter, which I'm not, so I don't have a premium - Bwana ☠

I hate the whole "x number of people viewed your profile - we'll tell you they work in X industry but we aren't going to tell you who they are and we aren't even going to show you all of the generic people's industries unless you pay us" thing - was just curious if there was any more value added to the paid subscription than satisfaction of my curiosity (which may be worth $60 a year by itself) - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

Don't like the full RSS feed being pulled into FriendFeed. Then FriendFeed steals page views and ad money from bloggers, rather than boost them. - Hutch Carpenter

the current views and bubbling work in my opinion... I'm not sure if these sort of changes will be for the better. - Alan Le

@Hutch, I think my forehead just caved in from my palm hitting it. Do you want to start that again? Why not argue against full feeds in Google Reader? - Louis Gray

I feel that it's broken, spending too much time hiding iphone articles and not enough tools to see items i'm interested in (noiseriver helps, though) - sergiooo from NoiseRiver

Yeah, I don't get it. FF links back to the content and actually displays very little of it. What more do you want? - Jordan Hofker from fftogo

I know Louis, I know. With FriendFeed, bloggers get the best of all worlds. Easy viewing of new posts, viral spread of them and a click of people to visit the blog. As a non-ad based blogger, I don't care if they get the full feed. But I'm sympathetic to the ad-based guys. Google Reader is a viewing app, FriendFeed is a conversation app. Question - those ads that get tucked into the Google Reader views...are those for the blogger? - Hutch Carpenter

Thanks Hutch for sticking up for us, it's appreciated. - Allen Stern

Depends on what you want as a blogger. I get the whole thing about wanting to drive traffic back to your blog, especially if it's ad-based. If what you want is to engage readers and get people talking about your blog posts, why make it any harder than it needs to be. In the few weeks I've been using FF, I've commented probably 3x more on things than I ever have on blogs because it's easy. Maybe the solution would be an option on a blog feed to publish the full content or not and let the blogger decide? - Rob Neville

Your second idea is interesting. Previously, I wrote a post about blogging on FriendFeed (http://tinyurl.com/5fgv7o). I go one step further. So, instead of importing/republishing things to FriendFeed, we might consider using it as a publication platform. - Kerem Ozkan

gregory: i did try out NoiseRiver and either I couldn't quite figure out what it was doing or it's broken because I ended up becoming frustrated with it and just left it. I know what you mean about the second point. As a blogger, I'm not sure how I would feel about it either. If I'm trying to build a personal brand or attract people to my blog, then FF would potentially damage that goal, depending on how I looked at things. - Rob Neville

gregory: needed more room. Seems to me that this is the same argument over whether to publish full RSS feeds or not. The point of a RSS reader is so that I don't have to check a bunch of different sites. Now introduce all of these social networks and now I have to check a bunch of different sites again. - Rob Neville

Rob, I reshared your post here http://friendfeed.com/e... - Mike Fruchter

Kerem: I still want my own blog, but I can integrate FF features into my blog so that they meld together into one stream. But, I agree with you in principle. - Rob Neville

@Rob Neville (stage3): Can I help in any way? :) What are you wondering about? (btw, I noticed this thread thanks to NoiseRiver's highlighting :) ) - directeur from NoiseRiver

@directeur: I think my frustrations were twofold...1) the del.icio.us import didn't seem to work and I was too lazy to figure out all the stuff I'm interested in and type it in :) 2) I couldn't really tell what it was doing...why were things showing up that showed up, what did it mean that it was at the top of the list...most relevant? most recent? To be honest, I haven't spent enough time with it to give you much in the way of cogent feedback. - Rob Neville

@rob I am doing the full text feed, but thri feedburner so I can see the number of subscribers I have. It's sorta annoying to have to check stats in several places but I had readers who would only finish and share posts on my blog if I used full text feeds. If friendfeed would provide similar support (for tracking) I may feel differently - gregory

@Mike Fruchter (fruchter): thanks! - Rob Neville from NoiseRiver

@gregory (gregory80): Well, if Feedburner can figure out to keep track of Google Reader subscribes then why not FriendFeed followers? I know that's not completely Apple's to Apple's, but a thought.... - Rob Neville from NoiseRiver

@Rob if that is possible it would be great, but it's sort of a weight and see. I derive very little traffic from Friendfeed at the moment. On my blog much of my traffic comes fro. Search engines and go to my tutorials, sadly my editorials and topic pieces get little love... - gregory

@Rob Neville (stage3): Thanks for the feedback! I'll look deeper to that delicious issue. Meanwhile, there's an even better feature. I see you're using NoiseRiver right now, you see that little pink heart that comes with every entry? click on it and it will let you set your keywords much more easily. Another cool feature: hover a user's name and you'll see a tooltip with his information, your social proximity and you can even set your feelings about his entries there! Give it a try and tell me :) - directeur from NoiseRiver

a solution for the mass proliferation of profiles - a single simple way for individuals to own their profile so that services could tap into them instead of requiring us to yet again create a new one would be highly useful - mike "glemak" dunn

Mike, I was reading a post on distributed social networking, it some what touches on that. Worth a read when you got some time. http://www.digital-web.com/article... - Mike Fruchter

cool bookmarked it and will check it out - thanks, i deal w/ this a lot from an enterprise perspective especially related to federated identity management frameworks - so highly interested in what that thinking could do to influence the more loosely coupled non-enterprise space... - mike "glemak" dunn

Well, I know you said not just FF, but I have ideas for FF: http://friendfeed.com/e... - Rob Neville

Some aesthetically pleasing way of visualizing the connections between the people you follow and the relationship of the aggregated items. At the moment it's often much too linear. On my screen there are at least two dimensions + color to use for this purpose. - Benedikt Koehler

Mike, Rob & Benedikt, thank you for your input. - Mike Fruchter

Negative keywords. - Louis Gray

Comprehensive filtering, like faceted search - Mo Kargas

oh oh .. getting to predictable - Steven Hodson

Liked the piece Steven. I think there's more mainstream potential than you do. Commented on the blog. - Hutch Carpenter

Steven!!! Funny, I just did a Qik video about comment duplication and Kevin Fox stuff and it hits on this big time. FriendFeed needs a new UI. I keep trying to spread it and I keep getting pushback I never got with Twitter. The people who run FriendFeed aren't delivering noise-reducing tools, either, and insist that the noise is good (duplication from one micro-node of friends to another). I don't think they've done research with real users. - Robert Scoble

FF should steal some ideas from Digg on commenting. It should also steal some of Digg's recommendation features. I think an interesting addition would be to have most popular threads and discussions for the global FF network, among other types of recommendations. - Charles Ju

Fragmentation and duplication are serious ills of FF - oh how I wish we could tag a conversation so we could have unified conversations around a topic; but just think how LONG the comment thread would be...wow. Rich convo but too long?! - Susan Beebe

Robert, you "don't think" Kevin's done user research, or you asked him and he told you he didn't? Kevin, what do you say? - Jason Wehmhoener

I agree with Robert, Friendfeed needs a new UI if it wants to go mainstream. Maybe some sort of homepage like the new facebook profile. More noise-reductions tool would be good too. - Alejandro

Well, considering most people I talk to still wont use a feed reader, you may be right. I think part of the mainstream problem is that there are so many different services out there and friendfeed can potentially pull all of it together for them. For me, I want to be able to read blog posts, shared google reader items, digg articles, etc right here, I mean heck - there's an awful lot of screen real estate there to the right-hand side....let's have some AJAX-y fetching going on of the actual content. - Rob Neville

I think you're incorrect, Robert: mainstream people are not as interconnected as people are in early adopter communities. I think Kevin's got a point: let's say you remove the early adopter audience. Do you think one person's friends really cares what you, or me, or potentially 50 to 100 strangers think about something? They care about what they're friends are doing. Just look to real... more... - Mark Trapp

To my point, I really don't care that 500 other strangers shared a story, or that there were 80 comments with people I don't know talking about it. I care about the people I'm following. I want to have a discussion with people I care about, not strangers. I think the reshare and fragmentation facilitates that. If say, James Ferguson shared a story, I'm interested in that, because it... more... - Mark Trapp

well then we need a feature that locks out superconnectors who have, say, more than 50 friends. Or at least locks them out for, say, a day so that a micronode conversation can happen first. - Robert Scoble

I was watching Michael Arington's Stanford Startup School presentation and I think a good point he made was that after your site gets to critical mass, the comments start to become trolly and the community loses its close connection. I can foresee this being a huge problem for FF as it grows. - Charles Ju

Robert, maybe even if there was a way for the content producer to say "Do not allow friend of friend on this post." So, it becomes sorta like an on-demand private feed. You can still see it, but your like and your comment doesn't expose it to 15,000 other people. And of course, there'd be some visual indicator: could even use the lock icon like it does for full private feeds. - Mark Trapp

Mark: point taken...I suppose what I was getting at, although not articulating quite well now that I read it again is that I think the key for taking FF beyond us abnormal folks is to make it a one-stop-shop to remove the confusion of so many social interactivity services and feed readers, etc. I think FF has the capacity to do that with some tweaks. - Rob Neville

I agree with you Robert Neville; I apologize, my response was directed towards Robert Scoble. There's a few assumptions that I think we take for granted that's lost on most people: 1) privacy is an illusion, 2) we're all interconnected, 3) we spend an acceptably large amount of time online. No matter how true those sound to us, for most people, there's a lot of pushback. Which is why,... more... - Mark Trapp

I think Kevin (and FF as a whole) is correct in realizing the value of fragmented conversations. The issue here is that super-connectors with 20K subscribers are bound to expose those fragmented conversations (that otherwise would go unnoticed by the masses, as intended) quite often - all they need to do is 'Like' whatever random item that shows up in their feed. Not only that -... more... - Aviv

Best two lines in this conversation: "We're abnormal" [Mark Trapp] & "we need a feature that locks out superconnectors" [Robert Scoble]. The rest is just noise. :P - Brian Daniel Eisenberg

a more compelling UI would truly elevate FF...but then, that could be said about many Web apps - .LAG liked that

on the contrary, i would much rather have a service that is up and running all the time than a fancy prettified site that is virtually useless. the past few days, facebook has crashed my browser SO many times, the only time i go on is via phone. myspace? every since their overhaul i NEVER go there anymore - Mona Nomura

some of my favorite services are niche! - Ross M Karchner

I actually like the FF interface in its current form. It's lightning fast ( damn facebook is getting irritatingly slower these days ) and its UI is simple much more Googlesque. It's quite unique that its social graph is not bi-directional (like many other social networks), and it gives me tons of useful links and is gradually becoming where i come for personalized information discovery.... more... - Krishna Gade

Friendfeed will go mainstream when the applications that fuel it go mainstream (which might be a while). Whoever mentioned that people don't even get feed readers was right. Even among tech-savvy types (non-web), concepts like RSS and Social Bookmarking are still completely foreign. - Steve Spalding

*sigh* niche tools are so important both digitally and in meatspace - why does everything need to become mainstream to be viewed as a success - the majority of businesses and products in the world would be considered niche and in aggregate far out weight the aggregate of what would be considered mainstream - no disrespect to you steve for writing this post but anytime i see "this will never be mainstream" sentiments i can't help but think that its a myopic view - mike "glemak" dunn

FF depends on a whole lot of users using open services like Twitter Flickr etc. I know no one outside of tech who uses them. Most people are locked into the privacy world view and wouldn't dream of openly sharing their stuff. FF is SV/tech niche only. Sadly......... - Sean Kelly

I got the same score for Spider-Man, Green Lantern and the Flash. I wonder why it chose Superman. I would have been such an awesome Catwoman, but alas, it was not to be. - RAPatton

Spiderman -- You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility. Umm...ok. LOL - Cee Bee

Spiderman 70% followed by the Hulk at 65% - Steve Lowe from NoiseRiver

Spider-Man 85%, Hulk 80%, Superman 75% - ha3rvey (needs soup)

As a super-villain, I am Apocalypse. Not sure how I feel about that. :) - ha3rvey (needs soup)

I'm 90% superman 70% catwoman :/ - Hao Chen

Supergirl 95% Superman 85% Green Lantern 85% Wonder Woman 85% Catwoman 80% Batman 80% Lean, muscular and feminine. Honest and a defender of the innocent. Spider-Man 65% Robin 50% Hulk 50% Iron Man 50% The Flash 40% - Caroline

Hulk 80% The Flash 80% - AJ Batac

90% Spider-Man! I'm a little disappointed that Batman was at the end with only 20%. There go my dreams of being a detective. - James Ferguson

I will NOT take this test. I know, deep in my heart, I am 100% Wonder Woman. - MLx

I am The hulk, with 70% Green lantern and 70% Wonder Woman. Which makes me 100% awesome. - ωαřмaiden, MFA'd poet

I wanted to be Batman, but I guess my childhood wasn't traumatic enough. Sometimes it sucks being a PK. - ha3rvey (needs soup)

Patricia, why? What hero were you? Detective Chimp? Ambush Bug? Booster Gold? Flat Man? Squirrel Girl (She is awesome though)? - RAPatton

I was always partial to Gambit, as far as cool superheroes goes... - Nathan Chase

I just min-maxed it to get Robin. - ha3rvey (needs soup)

Green Lantern 85% Spider-Man 65% Hulk 60% Catwoman 55% Iron Man 55% The Flash 55% Wonder Woman 35% Superman 35% Batman 35% Robin 32% Supergirl 25% Hot-headed. You have strong will power and a good imagination. - AJ Kohn

Patricia, does that mean Robin? - RAPatton

Spider-man! Woohoo! He was always my favorite as a kid :) - Rob Neville

There was a girl Robin, her name was Stephanie. Also, there is nothing wrong with being young and acrobatic. http://images.google.com/imgres... - RAPatton

Spiderman kicks Superman's white ass! : ))) - Erhan Erdogan

75% Spiderman, 55% the Hulk. mmm.... - Alejandro

that is definitely you, rap. :) "You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others." - edythe

@Noah - Ouch, that was a low blow. Not everyone who has to live in the South are hillbillies. - Dillon K. Hoops

Where in NC are you? Charlotte's full of tech-savvy folks with iPhones, etc. I suspect you'll find the same in Raleigh.... - Rob Neville from twhirl

Yeah this is just a really small town in OBX.. I didnt mean to dis the entire state :) - justine

The OBX has some really good nightlife! I used to live near there when I was in the Marine Corps.. you seem to have been there before so you should know. :P - John Barker

We're in a pretty dead part of the area.. There are a few decent bars, but there are a lot of good people here! - justine

But: if you leave on friend of friend after adding one or more of the Big Four (et al.), you're exposed to a pretty interesting group of folks and conversations. That's where I started when I joined FF and it's worked pretty well. - Steve Lowe from Alert Thingy

D PJ-So some transparency is in people's motives, not disclosure,eh? I agree with Steplow that subscribing to the noisy echo chamber usual suspects sometime results in interesting discovery via f of f's. - Mark Forman

just subscribed to Dread. - Robert Scoble

Yes, steplow makes a good point. You're better off following Scoble than some non-power-user when you're new to FF, because he's engaged in a ton of conversations and you'll just be exposed to more. Plus, one thing this post overlooks is that, though the Big Four get a lot of exposure when a new service like this launches, it's mainly exposure to the same group of people over and over again. Who here hadn't already heard about Calacanis or Arrington before joining FF? - Lon Harris from twhirl

So how come nobody's pissed off about Friendfeed not exposing your follow count, or other stats about your usage? You do realize by not publicly advertising how much you use Friendfeed over those impostors like Michael Arrington and Jason Calacanis, the MSM and everyone who isn't on Friendfeed (and even most people on Friendfeed) continues to think Arrington and Calacanis are the most influential members on Friendfeed, because the only data they have to go on is previous social network usage. - Mark Trapp

The recommended friends screen just illustrates the greater issue of the digital divide: the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. If you're an A-lister, all you need to do to maintain your influence is to merely have an account on Friendfeed. - Mark Trapp

Lon - good point. - Russellreno

One thought: so if the reason for following the Big 4 is the large range of discussions they supposedly get into, and we assume everyone is following the Big 4, how is this any different than just reading the "everyone" feed? QED: there is no reason to follow the Big 4 - Dread Pirate PJ from Alert Thingy

Mark I can see how many comments you have done. How many likes, too. And how many you are following. Only thing I can't see is how many followers you have but that is the least important metric of all these anyway. - Robert Scoble

Also, the Big 4 get into their discussions by following the "everyone" feed ;-) - Dread Pirate PJ from Alert Thingy

Why wouldn't they? If you owned FriendFeed you would do the same thing. - James Mowery from twhirl

Robert, you're already invested in Friendfeed. Take a newcomer, or take a journalist writing a piece about Friendfeed. They want a quick answer to "who are the movers and shakers on Friendfeed?" There are no global stats. So who do they ask? The people they asked for their Twitter, Facebook, etc. stories. This is such a non-issue. What do people think is going to happen? By randomizing the recommended list there's going to be a new A-list? - Mark Trapp

the everyone feed has too much noise for most people. I only am following 3,000 which is a very small percentage of who is on FF. I also only like items that are smart or geeky. - Robert Scoble

i think this whole kerfuffle about who is shown as default is overblown and wreaks of sour grapes - but i like robert's reaction above to subscribe to dread - made me go see who he was - dread is none other than pj cabrera, egc commenter extraordinaire - awesome, how'd i miss that - subscribed pj :) - mike "glemak" dunn

Anyway, I don't mean that Lon didn't have a good point; I have "met" a lot of good people and liked a lot of good stuff here because of F of a F. I just wish to dispell this myth of the benefit of following "big influential bloggers". Just do what they do: follow the "everyone" feed and get into a good discussion or two - Dread Pirate PJ from Alert Thingy

The Everyone feed is fun, but too unfocused to be really useful. I often get foreign-language posts and lots of repetition. If I follow an A-lister whose interests roughly align with mine, I'm going to get to see a lot of random, potentially interesting things I otherwise would not. Like it or not, the most active conversations tend to involve the Internet celebrities. It's just human nature. - Lon Harris from twhirl

Thanks for the subscribing, Scoble and Mike Dunn :-) - Dread Pirate PJ from Alert Thingy

Well, let me rectify a mistake: I do run the everyone feed by search and yahoo pipe filters to weed out content I am not likely to read. I can't read French, Arabian or Chinese, heh, so Unicode in the title is out, for example :-) - Dread Pirate PJ from Alert Thingy

To heck with"big-headed bloggers" I'd much rather follow rum drinking pirates that ride ruby's rails into hell anyday! - Mark Forman

I drink scotch and whiskey, rum if it's cheap ;-) - Dread Pirate PJ from Alert Thingy

I think FF should try to do a better job at recommending friends instead of pushing the same peeps you find on all networks. Finding interesting connections in FF really sucks and this 'feature' is definitely not the solution. - Alex Popescu

It always comes down to who's on the "A List". What do the women think? - Laura Scott (@lauras) from Alert Thingy

Figures....FriendFeed needs to do a lot of work on the recommended function...i.e. allow me to search by keywords, allow me to click on a "not interested" link next to Scoble's picture (kind of like Amazon recommendations) - Rob Neville from twhirl

Rob, that's exactly what I've been suggesting in the above comments. The current recommendation system looks a lot like pimping :-). - Alex Popescu

Rob, you can always Hide posts made by a Friend of a Friend you don't want to show in your feed. And if worse comes to worse, you can even block a user so that not even their comments show in your feeds. - Dread Pirate PJ

I would agree with that, Slippy, to some extent. Though, I think Warren Ellis is a damn fine blogger. - Phil G

So is Mathew Ingram IMHO - Brian Sullivan

Heather on Dooce is a great writer, i think. - edythe

Not all of us, but it is true that copy editing is not easy under serious time pressure. I no not what your talking abut. - Dan Kaplan

Edythe - Wasn't Dooce a blogger before she was a writer though? - Phil G

I disagree. Write like you talk. Most normal people toss in sentence fragments or end thoughts with a preposition when speaking. I'll take something that is *clear*, *conversational* and easy-to-read any day over stuffy, too-formal-sounding copy. - Rob Neville

Rob, if you have a minute please read the latest post on my blog and tell me if you think it is stuffy or fairly clear: http://www.scribkin.com/2008... If you don't like it that's fine. I'd just like your opinion. - Phil G

Bloggers are terrible *copyeditors*, not terrible writers. Regular writers turn in gnarled English, too; that's why magazines and newspapers employ copyeditors. - Brent Newhall

I spent a dozen years in publishing. Without copyeditors reading behind your copy, even the best writers and editors make grammar and spelling mistakes. Does this matter? Yes, if it impedes the readability of your copy. Conversational doesn't mean sloppy and unreadable. - Arthur Germain

+1 Slippy and Brent - Pat Hawks

Absolutely agree....you can't make distracting mistakes in spelling or odd grammatical constructions that cause the reader to stop and read something twice or three times in an effort to understand what the writer is trying to say. So, yes, I guess what I was saying that as long as it's readable, it's good. - Rob Neville

J. Phil, I read that article...have to admit that I didn't like it :( for the reasons I just quoted...many sentences I had to read and re-read to make sure I got it. It *felt* like an essay you'd turn in to your high school English teacher - definitely not conversational. That being said, I understand what you were trying to achieve with the writing style....but ummm...wasn't diggin' it. Just one man's opinion though! - Rob Neville

Lol no problem, Rob. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Luckily for both of us, It's not my normal writing style. Although I do have a weakness for the 50-cent words. - Phil G

I'm refusing to get one due to AT&T and their lunatic pricing. - John Barker

No 3G in my Area I am going to stick with my current Gen phone! - Matt Brown

i am in and my wife gets this first gen iPhone. Everybody is happy - David Jacobs

I think alot of Canada will be staying home next Friday. Lack of unlimited data plan + 3 year contact = FAIL - Phillip Jeffrey

Me 100% - Steve Isaacs

Not me. I was 100% but the rates plans made me reconsider. - Dave Fleet from twhirl

I'll probabily wait for 3G coverage before I upgrade. Ready for 2.0 software - Robert Hafer from twhirl

funny to see people complain about AT&T, check out Rogers in Canada and you will worship AT&T - Justin Luey

I'll be getting one, and it'll be my first. Bye-bye Treo. - Roger Benningfield

I would love to get one, just don't have the money for another phone/monthly bill... hopefully I will soon though! - Matty

I'm going to be camping out for shizzzle~!# - justine

It will be an upgrade for me. - Jeremy Franklin

I am buying one. What do you think 1G iPhones will list for on ebay, the day after? - Grady Neely

Still trying to convince my employer that it qualifies for their "smartphone/blackberry" policy and get them to buy it...keeping my fingers crossed :) - Rob Neville from twhirl

Rogers is screwing us on pricing here in Canada so I won't until better plans come along - Bruce Clarke

I’ll probably camp outside the Apple Store with a “WILL DROP PANTS FOR OLD IPHONE” sign. - Guillermo Esteves

I will be getting my 16gb black Iphone on Friday! - Doug Sampley from twhirl

Despite the fact that Rogers is gouging us canadians, I'll probably be picking up on Friday. - Jeremy

I'm going to wait. Not enough new Going on - especially with the price increase on the plans. The 2.0 Software is the only real improvement I was waiting for. And I'll get that for free. - Brian Kalata

Gonna try to get my hands on one in State College, PA. I'm an iPhone virgin. - Jason Hellmann from twhirl

I'm waiting until Oct to get either HTC's Touch Diamond, or HTC's Touch Pro (the Diamond with a slide our qwerty keyboard) AT&T is teh debbil. - Rantz Hoseley

not. - Brian Daniel Eisenberg

i sure hope so... I'm really hoping there's no long line at the AT&T store, but I probably underestimate the demand - Nathan Chase

I love my first-gen. Wish the service plans weren't such a bad deal. May hold off until the jealousy gets to be too much. - Ryan

It'll be my first iPhone - I love my Verizon service, but my Mac fandom is pulling me over the edge. - Jason Heath from twhirl

Yup, I will in August when present contract runs out - Fred from twhirl

I won't. :( Stupid Rogers. Stupid Canada. - Chris Thomson

Wow, Stephen, that really sucks. They should be all over trying to fix the problem if they're at all reasonable. Good luck! - Voyagerfan5761

I wondered about that Steven. Saw all the FF comments re: the podcast and was going to check it out. But couldn't land on the page. - Hutch Carpenter

Can they at least confirm that they are recoverable? That's like bush league stuff right there. Get it restored and get out as soon as you can. - Mark Trapp

Please name that hosting company. I'm going to get around to starting a new blog one of these days and am looking for a good host. - AJ Kohn

@Voyagerfan .. right now I can tell they are working on the email end of it because I am being flooded with what is now dupes of my email for the past two weeks .. maybe I should get something stronger to put in this coffee. - Steven Hodson

wow, that is awful. :( When things are back if you're running wordpress you should try the plugin that mails you backups of your db. I have them sent to a gmail account and it's good peace of mind. - felix

@Hutch sorry about that ... and people wonder why I get cranky :) - Steven Hodson

Damn, Steven. That is horrible. I'm with AJ. I wanna know who this is. - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

EPIC F*ING FAIL!!!!!!! wow, switch hosting companies asap! - Susan Beebe

to be fair they have been good to me in the past moving me from a shared server setup to a new cluster server setup with no extra fees being charged. But since that point I have been having problems on and off. Hopefully they will be able to get this all fixed up and things will go back to normal. @Mark as much as I might like to move hosts it is something I can't afford at this point. - Steven Hodson

@Susan I don't have those kind of financial resources to just up an switch unfortunately. In addition to the above they did send out an email notifying me of the transfer and not to be posting anything for a period of time as it might get lost ROFL .. would be nice if they wouldn't lose what I've already posted ... so I sit here with fingers crossed .. this is going to be a long day - Steven Hodson

wow that sucks steven - hope they can fix. - MG Siegler

don't like this at all, wish you fast recovery - Dobromir Hadzhiev

This is why I run a cron job that emails a MySQL and WP backup to one of my gmail accounts every night. Good luck with the recovery! - Bill Sodeman from fftogo

wow, that's really cool! Can they do that to mine :p - Rob Diana

Blog Backup Online dot com. I'm just saying. - Cyndy

Oh wow. Sorry to hear that Steven, that's seriously uncool! I'd be going over the contract fine print right about now. - Phil G

Cyndy - is this blogbackuponline place legit? - Phil G

J. Phil Very legit. I will vouch for them personally... it's a service from Techrigy, which also produces SM2. - Cyndy

I was wondering what happened to your blog... - Rishabh Mishra (p248) from NoiseRiver

that sucks Steven....wastes a lot of time to chase that kind of stuff down and get it fixed usually... - Rob Neville from twhirl

Ouch! - Mitchell Tsai

Cyndy, thanks for the tip, it looks like they back up the disqus comments as well, very cool - Phil G

One word - SUE :)- - Peter Dawson

Bad news, that explains why the feed was showing content from months ago. Hope you get it fixed. - Duncan Riley

@Duncan well I seem to have returned from the time warp I found myself in :) the hosting company said the migration was for the most part completed today with some DB's still to move but everything should finally be back to normal (as normal as that can be around here :) ). - Steven Hodson

Are you sure they are gone? i just went to http://www.winextra.com/2008... and it was there - Christian Anderson from NoiseRiver

@Christian the missing two weeks showed up at some point today as the hosing co. migration to a new server setup made its way forward. - Steven Hodson

that is great news! happy for you. also means i wont have to go fix any dead links ;) - Christian Anderson from NoiseRiver

ugh that's pretty cruddy - Shey, Jamaican of FF