"And guess what, when you purchase an app in the Netherlands and then change the residence to Luxembourg, all or most of your content becomes invalid and gets deleted from the device you purchased it for. It doesn’t matter if the app was free or not, it’s just gone, even though your purchase history clearly states that you did pay for that app!"
- Tapio Kulmala
The same has happened to me with digital distribution games - this is an absurd business concept from a past era (that of moving crates of items and per country regulation and currencies). We still have it for books and DVDs and film releases too, exclusive distributions rights per country. But all of these work fine if you cross borders. The digital distribution model artificially...
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- Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)
I bought a game in 2006 in the UK, now the platform I bought it on no longer has a deal for that publisher in the UK so I cannot reinstall or reactivate the game. I would think this is in breach of my rights and the terms offered at the time (which were that I could reinstall or redownload forever). Of course for £9 i wont take it to court, and that's why these models continue, the amounts are too small for them to be challenged in court. I think it is one for consumer protection associations.
- Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)
He wants us developers to do something cool that they haven't thought of.
- Jemm
Ok, just making sure I understood it correctly. It seemed super bizarre for a dev to suggest developing the UX, when people are talking about a specific issue. Maaan I would be embarrassed to have someone like that represent my brand.
- Mona Nomura
Raffi's new - I believe he just started in the last couple months. He's learning.
- Jesse Stay
But Jesse, it's Twitter. A <100 company valuated at 1billion. Really? REALLY?? LOL
- Mona Nomura
He should just learn to express himself in 140 characters :)
- Jemm
Mona, Comcast has similar issues - it's a common problem for growing companies, but I agree it shouldn't give them excuses. That said, I've gotten used to it - they've been doing this type of stuff since their early days, and it hasn't stopped.
- Jesse Stay
In some ways, it's so moronic it's genius. They don't have to think or work but have other people do it for them. That said, since third parties are helping the UX, they need someone to fix their backend already. The 503s combined with the 403s need fixing already haha!!
- Mona Nomura
"timelines that we didn't think of" .... Is he talking about parallel universes or what?
- Tapio Kulmala
I think their ignorance of the UI will backfire on them eventually, especially when the open efforts going around begin to pull traffic away from Twitter as a backend and onto other services. Once everyone is using a 3rd-party Twitter client, it doesn't matter what data is supplying that client. See what Wordpress and Tumblr just did (and Identi.ca)
- Jesse Stay
Could be that they are a bit afraid to do major changes because they fear criticism. When FB changes something, people always complain (minor but loud percentage). Retweet -feature wasn't welcomed that well, but Lists have been accepted better. Still, it took too long for these basic features to appear in the web UI/API.
- Jemm
Jemm, I doubt it - if so, they're ignorant of the fact they can ask developers beforehand since we deal with their users more than Twitter itself does. Twitter never asks the developers before releasing new stuff (okay, rarely). They seem to be getting better, but the fact that they're still repeating 2-year old mistakes isn't encouraging.
- Jesse Stay
it tells me that internally some people have moved on or left and they are losing what little corporate memory they had
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
Bear, I think you're right. It scares me a bit because I was starting to get excited about the direction they're going. Let's hope they're still learning.
- Jesse Stay
the flag for me will be if ryan delivers on the api and "firehose" changes they announced at LeWeb
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
Jesse, Maybe they want to be move responsive. They don't want to think about every possible scenario when they make API changes. They want us to create UIs and ask for API changes that support those new innovative ways of presenting the data.
- Tapio Kulmala
Tapio, responsive would be to let us know when they launch changes into the wild, like removing the retweet functionality or changing the way tweets over 140 characters are handled. None of those changes were announced to developers, and developers were stuck dealing with their users complaining that the features were missing or their apps were broken because of it.
- Jesse Stay
Bear, yeah - the API rate increases they announced would be huge for me.
- Jesse Stay
I'd have to agree with you, Jesse, RE "their ignorance of the UI will backfire on them eventually", but I think it's more widespread than that. In some sense I don't really see what defensible competitive advantage Twitter has other then the network effects of everybody using the system. That may sound a little silly, but I mean they're don't stand out in terms of UX, customer service and support, developer relations... in a sense they're just milking the network effect cash cow.
- Ken Sheppardson
... if the top three or five 3rd party clients all supported a parallel, alternative back end bus, I think you'd start to see some significant cracks in their armor.
- Ken Sheppardson
Ken, I predict that's coming. It will be all about how Twitter responds at that point. I've compared them to Compuserve before, and I think the Compuserve phenomena is still possible unless they start opening up and focusing more on their own UI. They want to be Google, but what they don't realize is that Google is focused on the open web. Twitter is focused on their own service.
- Jesse Stay
I think the UI train has already left the station. If they start trying to drive users back to the site from 3rd party clients, they'll be alienating the folks who got them where they are today, i.e. the people who made the ability to post to Twitter ubiquitous. Seems to me they're more likely to be successful as an enterprise-class, secure, rock-solid reliable subset of a broader messaging infrastructure.
- Ken Sheppardson
And I think they'd be well served to study Hal Varian's "Reward = (Total value added to the industry) * (Our share of industry value)" idea as described in Google's post the other day (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009...)
- Ken Sheppardson
Twitter is already a pipe not a place. They need to grok that, and sort their monetization path forward accordingly.
- Thom Kennon
Good conversation broke out here ... i think you folks are all onto something here... ken, jesse, and Mike ... esp with the 3rd party apps getting together to support a unified back-end (status.net?)
- Chris Heath
Ken's another one who's been writing on the Twitter API for the last 2 years
- Jesse Stay
Ken and Chris, there already is another backend API that is common across multiple clients, it is called Facebook. The main reason this is still a conversation is because Facebook is still a little difficult to work with, whereas Twitter's API has been fairly complete. 2010 could be interesting if Facebook really wants to attack the API side.
- Rob Diana
Rob, that's a total myth. Look at how many apps on Facebook vs. Twitter. Many, many more developers on Facebook than Twitter, much, much more API use there. The only reason we're still talking about it is because the major Tech blogs keep talking about it. Facebook's API is also much, much simpler. You only need to know HTML and Javascript to use it.
- Jesse Stay
I suspect that with folks like Dave Recordon, Bret, Paul, et al at Facebook they'll also be out ahead of Twitter in adoption of standards like Activitystreams that'll make it easier for them to be part of a non-Twitter network. Plus they really haven't given much ground in terms of handing over UX to third parties. Facebook's probably the most heavily used Social Networking UI by a long shot these days.
- Ken Sheppardson
The other reason we're talking about it is because Twitter's interface is such a closed interface we're wanting to find ways to make it more of a standard. Facebook is already building on open standards (to an extent, but that will grow much, much more in 2009)
- Jesse Stay
heh - great minds think alike - Ken and I posted that the same time :-)
- Jesse Stay
Jesse, I was talking more in the sense of posting and getting updates, search and list mgmt. Facebook is still fairly closed in some ways there. They do have an active platform, and the html/js angle is a great option.
- Rob Diana
Rob, yes, search is one of the main reasons people are using Twitter these days. Once Facebook opens that up, you'll see even more developers than "just" the developers working on over 500,000 active applications on the Facebook platform. :-)
- Jesse Stay
Twitter search is a pain in and of itself to work with though - you can pull similar information, amongst a users friends, in a much more efficient manner on Facebook (using a SQL-like syntax even!)
- Jesse Stay
All Facebook needs is a better privacy API and once that's out they can open up their public search to developers.
- Jesse Stay
Jesse, if Facebook opens up search better, it would be huge and could affect Twitter in a very negative way. I will admit that Facebook has more options for working with it as well. Geo-location will be important in 2010 for Facebook as well.
- Rob Diana
Rob, privacy-controlled geo-location will be important for Facebook. They won't do it unless they have privacy controls built around it. Everything released on Facebook Platform must have user-controlled privacy built with it. That is their entire mantra, and it's a powerful one. (and why they're so big)
- Jesse Stay
@sofarsoshawn, I usually let most things slide, but that first comment was quite out of line.
- mjc
from iPhone
Jesse - I think the thing that's missing from this discussion about the Facebook API - is though there are tons of apps out ON Facebook, there really aren't that many apps FOR Facebook. Why? Because they haven't spent time developing the APIs for accessing profiles, newsfeeds etc etc, and moreover they haven't spent any effort attracting front end app development. It's not been so important up until recently, but now Facebook needs to get into the act of being accessed via 3rd party apps.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
most #interesting conversation about #tech i've read all year (well, at least today i guess i'm just hyperbolic today) .... someone should tell Scobleizer about this one (pre-marking #scobleapprovedconversation ... pending approval)
- Chris Heath
Rob, "there aren't that many apps FOR Facebook" - based on what evidence? More than 80,000 websites have integrated Facebook Connect alone. Even that number's much, much higher than Twitter's. 2/3's of Comscore's top 100 websites have implemented Facebook Connect. Accessing the newsfeed and profile is as simple as a little piece of Javascript on your site - try doing Javascript with the Twitter API.
- Jesse Stay
Facebook has the same problems as Twitter but not as horrible as Apple - there just isn't an efficient work flow and communication method, which makes it seem as if they (the services) don't care. Let's do talk about Facebook and how their API breaks every time there's a change, and people (users) complain and complain about the devs, not Facebook. Way to throw developers under the bus.
- Mona Nomura
Mona, I won't argue with that - Facebook does need better communication, although their devs (note: actual devs, not a support team) do get involved on the developer forums quite frequently. They also stage each and every change in a beta staging environment a week before they go into production so developers have the ability to know if it breaks code. They are also now starting a...
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- Jesse Stay
Regarding things that break, Facebook has also been pretty good at updating their blog when things are slow or down so both devs and users know. They also fix them pretty quickly.
- Jesse Stay
You can also come over here and chat with Bret or Benjamin or Kevin or Paul or any of the FriendFeed team who are now leading the Platform over on Facebook. I have to admit they're all pretty dang responsive. I'd love to make more Facebook devs aware of that. I'd love to see the FriendFeed team initiate a Platform-Feedback room on FriendFeed the way they did for the FF API.
- Jesse Stay
IMHO testing often needs to look at state that's not public, so public interfaces can't be the only access path, but should be used whenever possible.
- Todd Hoff
Often but not always. I try to concentrate on how the objects react to commands and how they communicate with each other. If you put too much effort to testing state, you tend to have objects that are only data containers and don't have real behavior.
- Tapio Kulmala
I tend to test invariants. If x is added it is not enough that x be retrievable through apublic interface. All the invariants must also be met
- Todd Hoff
from iPhone
"Newsflash: Tomorrow is the last day of 2009. That means we’re moving into the first new decade of the 2000s. And we have a decision to make. Say “2009″ outloud. Chances are you’re saying “two thousand and nine.” But if you think about it, that’s weird. Say “1909″ outloud. Chances are you’re saying “nineteen-oh-nine.” It makes some sense, since we weren’t going to pronounce “2000″ as “twenty hundred,” but for whatever reason, going forward, we never moved to something like “twenty-oh-one” for “2001″ and so forth. A new website is urging us to do just that for the next decade."
- Jeff P. Henderson
from Bookmarklet
Easier than arguing over how to pronounce 011111011010, but I actually kinda like its hex brother, 7DA. "January ott-one, 7DA" .. yeh, i have issues. ;)
- Anthony Citrano
fuck, another amateur-shooter... this time in shopping center in my neighborhood :( few ambulances, police in vests and with dogs... my wife had been (on work duty) in library behind this building - they got them out all by now. Fuck!
- A.T.
from Bookmarklet
@tapsakoo she has not been injured or whatever but had aftermath shock - she had been in Prisma about 10-15 mins before that, now trying to recover
- A.T.
@silpol: Must have been very traumatic experience... I hope she recovers soon.
- Jemm
Nokia Oyj said it filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission alleging Apple Inc. infringes seven of its patents. Nokia filed a similar lawsuit in federal court in Delaware today over the same patents. Nokia, the world’s largest phone maker, alleges in the ITC complaint that Apple infringes in “virtually all” its mobile phones, portable music players and computers. Apple uses infringed technology with its iPhone, iPod and MacBook computer products, Nokia claims.
- Tapio Kulmala
from Bookmarklet
The company asked for an order excluding Apple from importing the infringing products into the U.S.
- Tapio Kulmala
The imported electronic devices named in the complaint include the iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3G mobile phones, iPod Nano, iPod Touch, iPod Classic portable music players, iMac, Mac Mini, Mac Pro, MacBook MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air computers.
- Tapio Kulmala
I've always wondered why some sites assume that the language has something to do with the location. It does not. For example en-GB formats time as 17:30 and en-US formats it as 5:30 PM. en-Us is simply English as used in USA. The site should not make any location assumptions based on the accept-language http-header.
- Tapio Kulmala
Sometimes I wonder if our authorities are retarded. All of the new regulations are simply ridiculous. As for the DHS statement that the new rules are "unpredictable" ... I mean WTF how are passengers supposed to comply with them then?
- LANjackal
from Bookmarklet
Maybe TSA has hired Peter Funt as a security consultant. :-)
- Tapio Kulmala
http://www.google.com/reader... I'm glad you asked this right now. I just realized that several people are following me and I didn't even know it. I hope it hasn't been this way for long!
- Michael Fidler
Just noticed that Reader now allows grouping of people you follow! Wondering: is Reader going to become a competitor (instead of complement) to FriendFeed?
- Chris Rogers
@rogersdc / Chris, Google Reader is obviously been trying to become more social, but I'd really like to see FF come out with a bookmarklet that makes sub'ing RSS feeds to FF easier/faster. Right now it's a manual process involving either a new Group/Room or Imaginary Friend. Should be 2 clicks tops.. Also see: http://friendfeed.com/alexsch...
- Alex Schleber
Here is mine : http://www.google.fr/reader.... I share (mainly on French sites and blogs) about libraries, literature and arts, human and social sciences, photography :-)
- Nadine Pestourie
LOL here we go again :o) http://www.google.com/reader... I share a lot of blogs and funny stuff that I read, it's neat how I can share and it gets posted all over by friendfeed.
- David Gross
http://www.google.com/reader... - I share items about productivity, gaming, movies, and misc. stuff from the Google "cool" via Recommendations feed. Thanks Kol for starting this thread because I've been trying to cut down on the number of feeds I subscribe to and instead just follow interesting people.
- Dusty Edenfield
Svartling: good point about adding people to groups. I noticed I couldn't comment on items that were shared by some users.
- Dusty Edenfield
I've (we) written a lot of more good tips on how to use Google Reader in Google Reader comments. It's too bad we don't have permalinks in Greader so we can share our notes and comments. Otherwise I could have posted a link here. Here are some on friendfeed: http://friendfeed.com/svartli...
- Svartling
The conversation is really blowing up (in a good way) on Reader. The most important reminder currently is to set up groups and allow commenting. That is NOT on by default!
- Vince DeGeorge
Thank you all. I think I have subscribed you all now (except those feed in languages I don't understand) Here is mine again: http://www.google.com/reader...
- Svartling
I've started to follow a few of the people here but there's quite a few, so will take me a while :) - My currently fairly bare feed is: http://www.google.com/reader...
- Roy Herrod
There are a few entries here you might like to read to help you. This one: http://ff.im/6CkQj explains about adding people to groups to allow them to comment and why some don't stay in groups. In this one: http://ff.im/6F9pQ I suggest a way to track a large number of shared items using PostRank. This: http://ff.im/6Ci0P and this: http://ff.im/6AM35 has a few tips on using GReader as a lifestreaming service. And this: http://ff.im/6EMT1 gives a few examples of GReader bundles.
- Kol Tregaskes
Those of you above whom I already follow on FF/Twitter/etc., I've subscribed to your feeds. As for the rest of you: if you follow me on GReader, I'll follow you back.
- Dennis Jernberg
I'm sharing some pages now, including a few of my past blog entries.
- Dennis Jernberg
Because I have issues with data duplication, I have merged this list with the google reader shares room feeds. You can view the Google spreadsheet at http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc...
- Rob Diana
There are a bunch of shared feeds that I could not resolve the Google username for because they did not have a named profile set up.
- Rob Diana
tristanhambling, your link didn't work. :-(
- Kol Tregaskes
It would be really handy to have all these shared feeds as an opml file. Has anyone added everyone? Care to export an opml of the shared feeds?
- Paul Jacobson
I'm http://www.google.com/reader... Not really comfortable with the custom URL though since it can only be your gmail username. Makes it really easy for spamspiders I think.
- TobiasVerhoog.com
Tobias, possibly but not had any problems myself though Gmail has the best spam filters around so I probably not noticed. ;-)
- Kol Tregaskes
http://www.google.com/reader... mostly webdev, photography news, music, world news which i get interested. plus half of them may be article in Japanese. sorry. :-p
- browneyes
http://www.google.com/reader... - OK I'm in. Late as always. Will post my thoughts, feedback and pleading requests for help over in Google Reader so please follow me over there. Eat your own dog food and all that.
- Andy C
MF/Kol = I live in Kingston on Thames. It's OK apart from the traffic (continually gridlocked) and the shops (girls just lurve them). Handy for getting into London both airports and out to the Thames Valley for work type things. Richmond Park and the river in walking distance is great too.
- Andy C
Andy, Richmond Park and the others around there are the appeal really. Good place to go photographing and cycling while being very close to London I think.
- Kol Tregaskes
Teddington (across the river from Kingston Upon Thames, is where I think I'd like to live. Just 'cos it's cheaper than everywhere else around it. :-)
- Kol Tregaskes
@Kol many years ago, we made the mistake of asking an estate agent in Surbiton whether it was any cheaper than Kingston. She replied 'No - of course not. We are on the fast line to Waterloo' and looked at us as if we were dog excrement.
- Andy C
I've checked rental prices in the area several times over the last 2 years and Teddington is definitely cheaper. I'm not buying, no way I can afford that. ;-) All a pip-dream anyway, need a steady job and I've not had that for a while. :-(
- Kol Tregaskes
anyone use google reader on windows mobile professional? I cant seem to get it to work and when I try to go to the mobile site it takes me to the regular site.
- David Gross
Nope, sorry can't help you there, David.
- Kol Tregaskes
Quote I’m running my Mac indie software business for more than 3 years now. For the first 2.5 years all my sales went through Kagi and later I decided to switch to PayPal. The sales were not high, PayPal worked well and all was good. This year, me and my partner Kosta decided to do some creative marketing for our application, ImageFramer. We decided to partner with several other developers of graphics software for the Mac and to sell all the software together, as a bundle, for 2 weeks. After months of preparations, negotiations and development, finally, MacGraPhoto bundle was launched on Nov 16. We, at Apparent Software, were responsible for all the execution of the sale and part of it included handling all the money related issues, such as collecting the payments and distributing to other developers their shares. There were 6 other developers in addition to us. We corresponded over email, sent them a Terms and Conditions document and got their agreement to it by email. We chose Pa...
- April Russo (app103)
"It’s very likely that you have many areas of debt—many bottlenecks—in your codebase. Finding the debt that slows you down the most will have the greatest net effect on increasing your throughput. Understanding, then tackling debt and resulting improvements as a team—as a system—is the most effective way to make positive change, because more eyes and hands on the code equates to less risk and better designs." Theory Of Constraints FTW !!!!
- Tapio Kulmala
This DIY Kodachrome machine (the "Filminator") was created to produce more film stock after the company discontinued productions. Michael, the creator, notes, "Plastic and goop go in one end, and camera film comes out the other end. This is not a trivial undertaking."
- Tapio Kulmala
from Bookmarklet
With today’s digital technology, you simply click the shutter and there ya go… Instant, cost free, test polaroids (without the Polaroid) So what if the exposure is wrong? Shoot another picture, stupid! :+) If it’s too dark, adjust. Too light? Adjust! What’s the big freakin deal? Use the histogram as your meter. If that puppy is over too far to the right, stop down. If it’s over too far to the left, open up. Shoot, view, adjust. Repeat as needed.
- Tapio Kulmala
I guess you do laundry right. Mine hangs on the drying racks for a week, spends another week on the floor, then I eventually thin the floor pile out by wearing stuff from it. Once it's almost time to wash again, I get sick of stepping on the pile, fold the clothes and put them near where they go, and walk past them again for the next few weeks.
- Baroness Von BusinessTime
Actually, Baroness, this stuff had been in the baskets for a few days. Tucker likes to snooze in the warm laundry, so he "presses" a lot of it for me.
- LB - all new for '10!
Laura, no offense, but you give very poor origami instructions.
- SAM
from iPhone
LED rings operate on DC power and unlike a ring flash, they provide constant light to help set up your shot. His finished project is well-built and should come in between $10-20.
- Tapio Kulmala
from Bookmarklet
"This settlement is actually proving the very point that Intel wants to keep AMD alive and able to compete at least in some small subset of the market, otherwise Intel will be faced with regulatory issues that they would rather avoid," said Avi Cohen, managing partner at Avian Securities.
- Tapio Kulmala
"With the web and desktop operating systems, the only thing in between software developers and users is a mesh of cables and protocols. In the new world of mobile apps, a layer of bureacrats stand in the middle, forcing each developer to queue up for a series of patdowns and metal detectors and strip searches before they can reach their customers."
- Tapio Kulmala
"In short, the mobile web needs better tools, better standards, and better browsers, and it needs them fast, before the only technologies that matter are the ones controlled by the gatekeepers."
- Tapio Kulmala
A Tyne and Wear woman whose raucous lovemaking earned her an ASBO and multiple cuffings will declare in court that the order is a violation of her human rights. Caroline Cartwright, 48, of Washington, was dragged before magistrates back in April for five breaches of a noise abatement order requiring her to turn down the volume during intimate moments with hubby Steve. Neighbours described her performances as "murder" and "unnatural", the Telegraph notes, and "even the local postman and a woman, who walked past the house taking her child to school, complained".
- Tapio Kulmala
from Bookmarklet
→ I agree :) Loud sex, it's such a right.
- H0llywoodWh0re
♫ This bed is on fire ♫ With passion and love ♫ The neighbors complain about the noises above ♫ But she only comes when she's on top ♫
- RAPatton