Ross and Dan made this video to illustrate the advanced technology we use behind the scenes at FriendFeed. (Ross and Dan, you are amazing - I can't believe how awesome this thing turned out)
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
How very creative. This is very fluid and cool.
- Louis Gray
OK, not exactly what I was expecting, but very cool.
- Kevin Arth
Anyone have the video somewhere other than Youtube? it's banned here in Turkey and I can't wait until we get home (next month) to watch it!!
- Chris Myles
Bret, this video should be titled: A Love Song for FriendFeed ! Great vid (and music) !
- Ahsan Ali
This is superb. I just showed it to my 5 year old son who enjoys Lego and has already taken some great photos, including one or two of his toys. So now he has the seed of the idea that, in time, he could take multiple stills and put them together to make moving pictures. Thank you very much for posting it and giving me and him that opportunity. Maybe, he might use FriendFeed one day too!
- John W Lewis
I think they need to make a full stop-motion version of the Matrix in legos. Now THAT would be awesome. I wonder what bullet-time looks like in LEGO?
- Bret Taylor
i'd pay to see the stop animation lego matrix, but not the sequels
- patrick
"Equipment Generously Provided By Casey Muller" - hahaha!! THIS IS AWESOMESAUCE!!! I love the creative energy and vibe in this video... LOTS of work went into that one! Thanks guys!! :)
- Susan Beebe
Genius, how much time did that all take?
- Wayne Hornsey
Chris Myles: if you want ot - DM me an address and I'll mail you a copy.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
It is my garden this spring. My photos can't do it justice--I need you Rachel! They were taken over two months. We have 30,000 +/- daffodils, the early varieties tend to be the yellows,now we are white while all the other flowers are coming in. It makes me smile every day!
- Sheila Taylor
Serendipity is what makes life much more interesting and memorable than if you lived your life exactly what you planned. Because of this, my original plan was to go to med school but ironically I'm working in the software field.
- imabonehead
my receipt is that every day we should do something that is frightening to us. whether it is fear of height , speed or approaching to pretty girls :) it increases serendipity and sets you free on daily basis.
- Bojan Babic
Oh, the pillow thing. Why is that called a sham?
- Stephen Mack
Not 100% sure, but isn't a sham the fancy pillow case that you don't actually sleep on, it's just for show?
- Jandy
Yeah, a sham is a fancy pillow case. I've never liked them. And yeah, that is the sale price. For a good quilt, it isn't bad, for a kids bedspread that is kinda insane.
- Rachel Lea Fox
There is now a hoax viral email claiming to be from me. Yay? Needless to say, never forward any email that urges you to forward it. http://www.snopes.com/compute...
The nice thing about viral emails is that they are a good way of warning all of your friends that you are gullible and probably not a very reliable source of information :)
- Paul Buchheit
The funny thing is, it might actually be true if it was talking about FF. Why don't you delete stagnate accounts, Paul? ;)
- Jimminy, CoG of FF
I'm going to forward that to all my friends.
- Amit Patel
GUYS GUYS THIS SOUNDS TOTALLY LEGIT BETTER START FORWARDING -- PAUL, CAN I REPLY HERE? PLS DONT DELETE MAI ACCOUNT. "Over the past few weeks, you may have noticed that Gmail's system has been getting slower. This is due to the increasing number of Gmail accounts. Since this occurrence, we have decided to delete accounts that are no longer in use. We will determine who's account is...
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- Stephen Mack
I just got this in the mail! Am so proud of you Paul :-)
- Gagan Saksena
If your wife touches another man's genitals, even by accident, you must cut off her hand. That's why I would never let my wife shop in a crowded mall or take a subway.
- Mark Davidson
from BuddyFeed
Any religious Jew would know that the written Torah is but half of the law. To follow it blindly without the oral Torah is about as reasonable as Morgan Spurlock eating nothing but McDonalds for a month and then shouting, 'Huzzah! McDonalds isn't healthy!' Oy vey.
- Akiva
Akiva, I think that was pretty much the exact intent.
- Jennifer Dittrich
The unfortunate thing is, though, that people took Spurlock's 'experiment' as something more than a mere entertainment. I'm sure they'll fall for this one, too.
- Akiva
Scott just read this book, and I've read some snippets from it. It is a really interesting story, and Jacobs believes that this experience changed him for the better.
- Ladyepiphanybug
Well, that's good that he got something positive out of it.
- Akiva
I thought it was excellent. He's a nonpracticing Jew (if I remember correctly) and went into the experience a skeptic. There was tremendous growth in the whole process for him. It was incredibly interesting.
- Jen (SquirrelGirl)
Can't most people find tremendous growth in most undertakings they delve into headlong for a year? Especially if it's contrary to their normal operating procedure. I didn't read anything about this but it seems to me that people grow mostly from exposure to new experiences almost no matter the experiences, positive, negative or otherwise. Just trying to point out that i, personally,...
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Akiva - The Mishna is written down... Jus' sayin'.
- Mark Davidson
Well, McDondalds _isn't_ healthy. Even if you eat somewhere else more often than at Mc, the food there _remains_ unhealthy, although you're going to suffer much less its effects if you have a balanced diet otherwise. So either the comparison doesn't hold, or it doesn't put the written Torah in a particularly good light ...
- Oblomov
I like how he started walking around with a handful of pebbles in his pocket so he could stone someone and got excited at the opportunity. :P
- Tanath
Mark, as is the Talmud and the Shulchan Aruch. Something tells me he consulted neither.
- Akiva
Because if it were simple, it would be regarded briefly and then forgotten.
- Akiva
Why be concerned about it Christopher...unless you really believe "Vox populi, Vox dei" and it becomes a solely political argument for you. I thought the issue of God was settled for you. Then let it be settled for others. You have made your choice. Let them make theirs.
- Melanie Reed
Christopher, not if it's something important to you. Last I checked, a relationship with a spouse was often arbitrary and complex but it seems worthwhile to me and nothing I'm likely to forget anytime soon.
- Akiva
And clearly you left your sense of humor at the door.
- Akiva
Yet the opposite doesn't always hold water. Interesting, that.
- Akiva
If I remember correctly, he had two Rabbis that he regularly consulted and he did quite a bit of research on his own. Toward the beginning (the pebbles and the stoning instances were in the beginning of his effort) it was clear that he wasn't taking it all too seriously. However by the end of it, as I said earlier, he truly was very well educated and transformed. For those that haven't read it, it's worth the read.
- Jen (SquirrelGirl)
Dammit, Jen, you've got my curiosity up now. I might have to read this thing now.
- Akiva
You should! He's not converted by the end of it, but he's much more open-minded and his experiences are interesting and enlightening for him and the reader (they were for me!). His writing is very tongue and cheek, so be prepared for that. But it's his style that makes it very readable. It's funny, engaging, and thought provoking. But then I'm an agnostic... so it would be hard for me...
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- Jen (SquirrelGirl)
"Not only will Computer Engineer Barbie be attached to her shiny pink laptop and Bluetooth earpiece, but Mattel worked closely with the Society of Women Engineers to ensure that Barbie's fashions were as geek chic as possible." Awesome.
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
If Barbie were truly with it, that would be an iPad she's holding. And a Bluetooth earpiece? Really? When I see people walking around with a Bluetooth earpiece, "geek chic" isn't what comes to mind...
- April Buchheit
I'm sorry but Bluetooth headsets scream "d-bag" to me. I once saw a guy leave it in for a 2 hour flight.
- Joe Beda
from iPhone
April, remember, she's an engineer; she probably has an iPad and takes it on social outings, but needs a real laptop (with a keyboard and a non-wimpy processor and the ability to download and run any software you please) for coding.
- Tudor Bosman
I'm with you on the Bluetooth earpiece, though. That has to go.
- Tudor Bosman
Too bad she's still anatomically impossible.
- Tinfoil 2.0
I agree, but those three well-executed features need to be done in the context of marketing/sales magic, otherwise the product won't take off. GMail by all rights should be the dominant email client today, or at least every other surviving email client should have copied the conversation view from GMail. FriendFeed should be bigger than Twitter. I'll admit that twitter got the "few things" part, but I don't think they won based on doing those few things well.
- Bruce Lewis
Gmail is getting there. It has already passed all of the other webmail systems -- they just don't realize it yet. iPhone is similar in that it hasn't won in absolute numbers yet, but it's the winner nevertheless. FriendFeed is a topic for another day.
- Paul Buchheit
"At the office, maybe we'll finally have an easy way of chatting with remote people while discussing a presentation or document (e.g. audio iChat with a shared display)." Wouldn't that be nice?
- Benjamin Golub
Gmail is getting there, and will eventually get there, but it has Google associated with it. Smaller products with weaker brands have a lot more trouble. There's already a tablet out that uses multi-touch to enable multi-player games, for example. Do you know what it's called? I don't; I just happened to see it.
- Bruce Lewis
There's no question that brand matters, and it would be difficult for anyone other than Apple and maybe G or M to successfully launch the iPad. You have to pick a strategy that works given the resources you have. Also, I bet that other tablet isn't actually good (clunky to use).
- Paul Buchheit
Paul, it helps me to hear you say there's no question that brand matters. Your essays really resonate with me, and when I read this one my first inclination is to run off and refine my core features. But refined features only bring new users if you've got the sales/marketing thing figured out.
- Bruce Lewis
Not every game is winnable Bruce. I wouldn't try taking on Apple and Google for the cell phone market, for example. Google succeeded in large part because nobody else realized that search was important.
- Paul Buchheit
"if the basic product isn't compelling, adding more features won't save it."
- Clare Dibble
Bruce, exactly. Especially since we're all seduced by the idea that on the web, we want to scale virally. In this conversation, we're talking about competing with Apple and Google. Do you have a particular target audience you could to go after first? Maybe dominate a given market segment - a niche or a subculture by focusing on something that's just for them, then grow into other niches...
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- Auntie Buttinsky Botts
Paul thanks for an enlightening article. How would you define winning? Can you win the game and still be a loser, for example MySpace won but could not sustain itself?
- Shakeel Mahate
Hold that thought, Mary. I'd really like to talk about it, but I don't want to hijack the discussion any more than I have already. Paul has a great post here about what does and (just as important) doesn't constitute a great product. Now that it's established that brand, etc. matters, I'm happy to stay on topic.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
I'm glad you address the different strategy implicit in developing gmail within Google. An independent startup trying to design a product doesn't have the brand or the support resources that something like gmail did (to Google's credit) will likely need to look at product design in a more holistic way. This isn't a direct criticism of you, Paul, but we like to boil down the product...
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- mikepk
I agree with your premise though, having lived through the experience of building a 'good' product that wasn't 'great'. We did a lot of things wrong with the "Grazr product" from Grazr. First and foremost in my mind was not focusing on the core elements and adding hundreds of features that just made the thing a confusing mess. We needed a benevolent dictator and I wasn't in the position to be that person.
- mikepk
So by this logic trying to turn Gmail into twitter will probably fail? Something like trying to turn Greader into a social network? One you take the care to identify the essential attributes that make something great, bolting on more attributes to make it something else doesn't seem a good idea.
- Todd Hoff
If your product is a fashion accessory, it doesn't need to be good.
- Gabe
People will buy all kinds of crap for the latest fashion accessory.
- Gabe
don't you have to be good at some point before you can iterate to be great?
- David Tran
Dan: Paul's thesis is that you can start out at great and then iterate to be good.
- Gabe
More seriously, Paul is using "great" to mean something nearly orthogonal to "good", rather than being "like 'good', but better".
- Andrew C (✓)
from Android
"Great" in this essay means it has features that are novel or way better executed than the norm. "Good" means achieving the norm for feature-completeness.
- Bruce Lewis
"Great" is a discontinuity. The iPhone is a good example because there was really nothing like it before, so it didn't matter that it was lacking some obvious features like copy&paste.
- Paul Buchheit
Well, now, hold on. On paper, there were phones that did most of the things iPhones did, even maps and youtube. The app potential wasn't even a huge selling point for the first year or so if I remember right; it was more that it had a browser that really worked. (and even then, there were other smartphones out there... people just didn't really write apps for them, not nearly on the iPhone's scale.)
- Andrew C (✓)
Andrew, I tried those phones, and they were all bad. Having features isn't good enough -- they need to actually work. iPhone was the first phone with browser that worked, maps that work, etc.
- Paul Buchheit
делаем ставки, когда mocap на приемлемом уровне научатся делать бытовые компьютеры :)
- Велопрограммист Аркадий
Выглядит как извинялочка. Мол, дорогие актёры, вы пока ещё нам нужны! (хотя, понятно, нафиг уже не нужны).
- Alex Kapranoff
@ilvar а кто сказал что они не умеют? умеют, и давно. системы продакшн уровня практически за копейки предлагает Optitrack - $6K за шестикамерный боди-мокап (http://www.naturalpoint.com/optitra...). но есть системы практически и совсем даром, мокап с двух и более вебкамер баксов за 500, http://www.ipisoft.com
- Sergej Sidoruk
@madsergio Я имел в виду работу "из коробки", со встроенных вебкамер, например. Все же 500 баксов за авку в чятеге много :)
- Велопрограммист Аркадий
@ilvar: была такая софтинка, лет пять-семь назад. под виндами, соотечественники наши делали. и продавали доллеров за сто, если мне память не изменяет (хотя ее и взломали сразу). там в реальном времени тречилась картинка с двух вебкамер и выдавала Poser-ready BVH, т.е. готовый файл захваченного потока движений для импорта в Poser. там даже калибровка какая-то встроенная была, так что...
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- Sergej Sidoruk
Nexus One usage has obviated my need for computers over the holiday. Device convergence is multitasking, and the N1 does it better than any mobile I've seen. - http://www.onebigfluke.com/2010...
#10yearsago I had been married for a few months, was working crazy startup hours, and was getting ready to go to Spain and Portugal for a couple of months.