There were some bugs in the "Twitter publishing" code that caused some entries to get published on Twitter when they should not, and others to not get published when they should. I've cleaned up the code to eliminate these problems, but it's possible some settings were lost. Please verify your settings at http://friendfeed.com/setting...
Cheers for this Paul. How cool is it that one of the founders of FF still gets his hands dirty in the code. Once a coder, always a coder :-)
- Keith Bennett
from Nambu
Thanks Keith :) By the way, if none of your posts are making it through to twitter, it may be that you changed your password. To verify, simply click "Save changes" at http://friendfeed.com/setting... and we will check that your Twitter credentials are still good (and sign-out then back in to fix).
- Paul Buchheit
Matthew, in general all the same settings that the old ui had are available on the new one (plus a few more), though they are now divided on to several different pages. You should be able to reach all of the the settings by clicking on the word "settings" below your name in the top-right part of the page (the dialog shows a few, and links to all the others).
- Paul Buchheit
You can filter by service by searching for service:twitter (or whatever service you like), and of course that can be combined with other search operators as well. See http://friendfeed.com/search... for more.
- Paul Buchheit
Thanks Paul, sounds like you pulled an all nighter to fix these.
- Robert Scoble
Yeah, unfortunately the code had gotten rather involved since it was trying to support both the old ui and the new (the old ui worked on a per-service basis instead of letting you decide individually on each entry), and the logic sometimes became inconsistent. I simplified it quite a bit, so there should be less room for bugs now :)
- Paul Buchheit
Nice try, Matthew, I congratulate you on being awake, and carpe-diem'ing Paul here, but have to disappoint you - if FF wanted us to have favicons, they'd already issued us our favicons. Do you see any favicons that made the transition from earlier version. No? You think Paul nuked them by mistake... be my guest, and I'll be looking forward to the next couple of years' worth of your pleading for favicons when you could be learning to live both here and thereater without them.
- ianf ⌘
I'm a bit confused about the "Post my FriendFeed entries on Twitter by default" and "FriendFeed (when there's no Cc box)" options. Are these exclusive? Does checking the first one mean all my FriendFeed posts will get posted to Twitter even if I uncheck the Cc box?
- Tony Ruscoe
Paul, thank you thank thank you for the "Check CC Twitter box by default" option!!! That's one step closer to only needing Friendfeed. I'm almost ready to dump Google Reader AND Twitter now!
- caj needs a haircut
Tony, the "cc twitter by default" option sets whether then checkbox is checked or unchecked by default in the share box and bookmarklet. The other option ("when there's no cc box") applies mostly to the API and other off-site interfaces, such as email (mail share@friendfeed.com) and IM. For any given post, only one setting applies.
- Paul Buchheit
I publish to Twitter by default but now link directly to the source. I figure that those finding outside of FF want to go to the source (while those reading on FF are already seeing the discussion).
- Mike Reynolds
Hi Paul, about 15 mins ago I "shared" an item from FF here to "my feed" and "cc Twitter". But still not showing up on Twitter. Just thought I'd let you know.
- Brian
Thanks Brian. It turns out there was a bug in the "Share" feature that sometimes caused us to sometimes not send the tweets (the new code errors on the side of not sending tweets). It's fixed now though. Please let me know if you spot any others.
- Paul Buchheit
Paul, that did the trick! Thanks for looking into that. BTW, that was a quick fix! Just shared an item on FF and it pushed thru to Twitter instantly.
- Brian
Hello Paul, when I try to publish just my google talk status to twitter and have "Link to source site instead of FriendFeed conversation" selected, it doesn't send the tweet. I'm not sure if this is because twitter seems to be having difficulty right now or if it's the lack of a source link because it's a google talk status?
- ehaab
ehaab, publishing to Twitter was broken this morning, so no updates went out. It should work fine now however, including publishing updates from Google Talk. Sorry about that.
- Paul Buchheit
thanks! it was driving me batty trying to figure out why it wasn't taking.
- ehaab
I think it's still broken. I just posted via the Bookmarklet and CC'd twitter... no go. EDIT: my latest one just posted, must be intermittent.
- Daniel Sims
Hi Paul, Mine is still not working. I have also checked the setting page.
- zahedzadeh
Yeah, sorry I couldn't respond to that one before. :-)
- Kevin Fox
well i be darned .... we now can rejoice, since fast paced additions to already good product are surely fastly coming about off the feedpipe ... it'l be a hectic season of finest upgrades ... I'm sure they'l start with keyboard shortcutze. ... I mean Google Reader rules on that. Intelligent to the extreme. ..Google.com, on the other hand - are we sleeping? .. not even "/" ??.. and that...
more...
- pb:
Congrats Ben! Totally agree with Jason. Our latest project wouldn't have become feasible without Ben -- I'm just so glad we managed to get a fraction of his time before he left! :)
- Simon
Congratulations, Ben! You're joining an awesome team.
- Anne Bouey
Congrats, you are now a "big company"! ;))))
- K.D.
That's not my picture! They got the picture wrong! In fact, I didn't get the letter of hire either. :( Oh, Hi there, Ben...if that's your real name. ;)
- Josh Haley
Good luck Ben! With you our preferred service will go more interesting
- Roberto
from fftogo
I think there were a bunch of spam comments made to some 2009-era posts by FF employees. For some reason even after the spam is nuked, the post stays bumped.
- Stephen Mack
Yes, I blocked a spammer that was bumping old posts about FF themes and what not.
- Zulema ⋅ spicy cocoa tart
Well, let's see this as an opportunity to raise a virtual glass to Ben and FriendFeed-that-was!
- Kevin Fox
It probably had something to do with the Tornado 2.2 release. I noticed Ben was the one who posted about the release on HN earlier. Edit: Or it could have just been a spammer. *shrugs*
- Jimminy, CoG of FF
I don't think it had anything to do with the tornado release - a spammer bumped a bunch of Bret's old posts today.
- Ben Darnell
You can now get a daily or weekly email digest for anybody's feed on FriendFeed. You'll get a daily or weekly email with the most popular posts from that person's feed. To get the email, click the "Email/IM" link at the top of anyone's feed, and select the "Best of day" or "Best of week" email option.
Thanks to Kevin for doing a great design for what turned out to be a more complex set of UI options than we had originally anticipated, and thanks to Tudor for implementing the email backend.
- Bret Taylor
I now get the FriendFeed Feedback posts as a Best of Day email so it doesn't fill up my feed, but I don't miss feedback. I also set up a "Best of Day" email for my "Technology people" friend list so I get a pretty good overview of tech news every day via email.
- Bret Taylor
This is a really cool idea Bret, I wish you can make that an RSS feed option as well. I'd be much more likely to read summaries in RSS than in email.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
Casey: Thanks for the tip. What's the 7 before the "?" mean in the URL? The number of likes or replies needed to be included?
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
this is killer, the random influx of email during the day was kinda getting fail-ish. I love the daily digest.
- Drew Lucas
Very cool! Any way to get archives of previous months? (especially helpful for those of us who leave the internet for weeks at a time...)
- Mitchell Tsai
Just curious - at what time of the day will we get these emails ? Midnight US-Time, or will it respect our timezones ?
- Ahsan Ali
Ahsan: it is somewhat random right now when the emails are sent, but we built in the backend capability to control what time they are sent, and we plan on exposing that control to users in the future. Right now, it is kind of random - sorry!
- Bret Taylor
But what exactly is "Best"? Is it anything that has a certain number of likes/comments?
- Laura Norvig
@Bret LOL THAT WAS MY PROJECT! I will release it tomorrow. But you've also did it and killed my friendfeed application **sigh** But mine has multi-reporting weekly-daily-monthly at the same time and adjustable entry count!
- Alp
@Bret please consolidate me or I won't code new apps with you api! :-)
- Alp
Alp: we were not trying to withhold data. Later today the documentation will be updated to reflect the ability to obtain "Best of" for users. The feed id will be USERNAME/summary/N (similar to "Best of" for lists)
- Benjamin Golub
Hi Ben, that is pretty funny, I tried that URL earlier today to see if it has been secretly released :)
- Paul Kinlan
Bret: While Twitter struggle to keep their fail whale under control, you guys are developing stuff like this. Amazing - Thanks!
- Jim Connolly
awesome feature, this will be highly useful for my corporate group ideas / content sharing; projects, etc.... THANK YOU :)
- Susan Beebe
Great work. I especially like that it works on lists too.
- Meryn Stol
my inbox might say different, but I like that :-)
- Dobromir Hadzhiev
Wow, this is really neat! And it links into the idea I expressed earlier, re: reducing signup friction / enabling limited guest privileges. Imagine if I could embed one of my FF rooms on my personal web site, and enable people to subscribe to that feed by e-mail with just a couple of clicks... rather than saying "you can get e-mail notifications but you have to sign up for Friendfeed first." "sign up" -- though admirably lightweight on FF -- is still a huge barrier.
- Adam Lasnik
is there a love button cause I dont like this option I LOVE this option..great work guys
- (jeff)isageek
Three options I would like (1) Can I select "top 100" instead of "top 30"? (2) Could I select both "best of day" and "best of week"? (3) How about older timeperiods? I'd love to get an e-mail with stuff from last week or Mar 2009? Start & end dates? Anything to help me read FriendFeed off-line would be great since I spend long periods off-line at festivals (especially during summer time) or overseas. - Awesome job guys!
- Mitchell Tsai
So this works on groups too, cool! But we still cannot see Best of for groups on the site on friends lists. :-( I have several friends lists that include just groups and when I select to view the best of the page it's empty (even though if I got to the individual best of for those groups there are entries there).
- Kol Tregaskes
does anyone know of a web service that can do this? (I'm thinking weekly email updates of my favorite feeds/people) I don't think there's anything like friendfeed ..
- Friendfeed's Francisco
Stephen, very happy to see new features like this, but I think the "death" part is the major users reducing their activity. I'd love to see some support from Facebook in promoting FriendFeed more to encourage those users to go back. Or maybe they don't want to? Regardless, bonus for me! Thanks Benjamin - you're awesome!
- Jesse Stay
Jesse, fair enough but major users always did come and go. Some of the departees who left said they were doing so because there was no new development. Clearly not all development is halted. Last week Paul hinted that FF may receive a major new feature, and characterized his participation as "20% time" -- I'll take that.
- Stephen Mack
I backed down off the all caps. The group "best of" is really useful, love it.
- Stephen Mack
Stephen, I agree - I'd just like some confirmation that Facebook cares about all this so I can know whether to focus my efforts on Facebook or FriendFeed or both.
- Jesse Stay
I noticed the best of on the iPhone the other day, wrote it out on a cake and then ated it.
- Josh Haley
Jesse, I think you should focus where your users are focused. What do SocialToo users want? But if they want Facebook focus, you should still keep an eye on FriendFeed, since the future Facebook will look a lot more like FriendFeed.
- Bruce Lewis
Paul Buchheit said the FB acquisition was attractive because of shared vision/direction. I would be surprised if a lot of that vision wasn't already embodied in this product right here.
- Bruce Lewis
not enough, best of day should be like a stream that can be traced back
- ffcode
We have received numerous reports of excessive FriendFeed posts showing up in Facebook this evening. While we are not 100% sure, it appears to be an issue on Facebook's end due to ignoring application settings. We have disabled all FriendFeed updates to Facebook until we are sure the problem is resolved.
See http://www.techcrunch.com/2009... for more information - it seems to also have impacted Twitter's Facebook app. Again, we are not sure if it is a problem on our end or not, but we are investigating now.
- Bret Taylor
No problem, if I knew it was on your end, I wouldn't have cared, but thanks for letting me know about the situation. I was confused because it happened right as I was trying out a new twitter game. This was compounded by the fact that the game has no controls for turning off public messages. I'll bet they plan to add them later, but right now they want everyone to hear about it. It’s a...
more...
- Michael Fidler
So, is it fixed?Every tweet, every everything is showing up as individual news feed posts for all my friends, this is too much and I'm likely to piss them all off. Options ... 1.Stop tweeting etc. 2.Ditch the FF Facebook application. Hmmm, it's a no brainer. Anyone got any updates on this?
- Michael M Bailey
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)
"Today we are launching version 2 of the FriendFeed API for beta testing. We focused on making the API simpler to use, and we added number of compelling new features." Documentation: http://friendfeed.com/api...
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
nice, good to see OAuth support, this will enable a larger 3rd party ecosphere around FriendFeed, I hope
- Jeroen De Miranda
After going through the documentation and playing around with some feeds, I love the fact that you can now see the subscriber lists of people who have their feeds set to private as long as you are subscribed to them and authenticate (mimicking the main site functionality). One thing that's absent is a discussion of Direct Messages. Do they show up in feeds if you authenticate? How do we find just direct messages?
- Mark Trapp
Mark: direct messages are accessed using the feed ID "filter/direct". Read more about feed IDs at http://friendfeed.com/api.... Also direct messages appear in the "home" feed.
- Benjamin Golub
Benjamin: ahhh, I see it now. I missed it when skimming that list over. Thanks!
- Mark Trapp
Can you post the wget version of the command line?
- Gabe
Gabe: wget --user=bgolub --password=passwd --post-file=MyPhoto.jpg http://friendfeed-api.com/v2... should work. In theory. Edit: nope. I'm not sure it's possible to do with wget.
- Mark Trapp
Gabe: wget doesn't support multipart forms as a design decision. If you post a file, FriendFeed returns a 404, and if you post data, the query is too long for wget to handle.
- Mark Trapp
Woowoo, bgolub's password is “passwd” ;-)
- Amit Patel
Amit: I wonder how many people tested that :)
- Benjamin Golub
Thanks to bgolub posting his password, I now have all of FriendFeed's secret documents about notorious users, useless metrics, Justin Timberlake's promoting FF on Oprah's show, hiring Colbert as a spokesperson, Ev Williams being just a “distraction”. TechCrunch is going to love this! ;)
- Amit Patel
Yes big big thanks to the whole team for all their hard work!!
- ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ
from iPhone
"It’s taking something everyone knows on the web (your email address) and making it immensely more valuable as a way to identify yourself and information about you. Exactly what kind of information? Here are some of the ideas from the WebFinger Google Code page: * public profile data * pointer to identity provider (e.g. OpenID server) * a public key * other services used by that email address (e.g. Flickr, Picasa, Smugmug, Twitter, Facebook, and usernames for each) * a URL to an avatar * profile data (nickname, full name, etc) * whether the email address is also a JID, or explicitly declare that it’s NOT an email, and ONLY a JID, or any combination to disambiguate all the addresses that look like something@somewhere.com * or even a public declaration that the email address doesn’t have public metadata, but has a pointer to an endpoint that, provided authentication, will tell you some protected metadata, depending on who you authenticate as."
- Paul Buchheit
from Bookmarklet
I don't want my contact information to be my identifier. I shouldn't have to give a website my email address, just like I shouldn't have to give a store my phone number.
- Daniel Sims
Daniel, I think it just takes the form of an email address, but does not in fact have to be one (or could be a "throw away" account).
- Paul Buchheit
It would be cool if we could get our act together (as an industry) and make this stuff happen. I'd also like to see ENUM deployed to the point that my phone number can be linked to my identity. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...)
- Joe Beda
This is a bad idea in so many ways I can't even begin to list them.
- April
If a site wants my email address, it's probably in order to spam me. It's usually a bad sign. If legit sites ask for my email more, it will make it harder to identify the spammers.
- Tim Tyler
Do gmail users seriously still have problems with spam? I don't.
- Robin Barooah
Personally this sounds great - as long as it really doesn't force you to use your actual gmail address.
- Robin Barooah
Does this mean I can have a .plan again?
- Benjamin Lee
Sounds like the .plan which is (again) accessed via an id in email format and returns different information/metadata about a person depending on who's accessing it. Email id is used to do a DNS lookup in order to discover URL for the XRD file (accessed with a HTTP GET) containing the metadata about the person being, er, WebFinger-ed.
- Nenad Nikolic
it is like user authenticating, having two three ids won't hurt ;) well i don't want to be identified, they are going same as gravatar
- testbeta
It's so curious to me that people have concerns that WebFinger would lead to more spam, and yet don't like the "format" of URLs for IDs. Personally, as far as OpenID is concerned, I don't care what the identifier looks like as long as people can remember it — typically email seems easier to recall than URLs (for most people in today's world).
- Chris Messina
Some users who have an email account with Google, myself included, have oodles of incoming mail both standard and secure so it fits the bill to increase security for both vendors and marketers.
- frank burns
I have no problem with the idea, but it seems to me that it won't help the current state of affairs much. The kind of information I'd be interested in sharing via Webfinger (my OpenID, a URL to a FOAF file, etc.) will have no better adoption, so the Webfinger configuration doesn't buy me much. I'll hold out hopes that after a couple tight integrations between Webfinger and OpenID providers (say if Google, Microsoft and/or Yahoo provided and consumed both) things will improve ... here's to hoping :(
- J. McConnell
Years ago I experimented with FOAF. I didn't fully understand nor appreciate what I was doing. To serve as a warning, if you take this example, ensure that it is blocked. #Example: I sent a file to Adobe which in turn, was sent to another email account I had at the time. I verified it's sender (ME) and sent it back in the direction of travel. A signed FOAF (API KEY) was then returned...
more...
- frank burns
I still haven't met a FF application I could stand to use for more than a few minutes.
- Craig Eddy
I saw an early alpha of the iPhone app. Looked good. I also saw an early alpha of Seesmic web and the way it advanced between the alpha and launch was dramatic - so I expect the iPhone client will track the same way.
- Steve Rubel
from email
Robert that's really great. I definitely will consider switching back when the Seesmic iPhone app arrives.
- Vinko
Will get me,too, switched back to using Seesmic ;) Looking forward to hear from Loic soon
- Ali BULUT
This might just tempt me away from Tweetdeck...
- Andrew Terry
If they add friendfeed to the web app, I'll maybe use it instead of PeopleBrowsr. But then again, peoplebrowsr has implemented friendfeed in a very good way already.
- Svartling
You gotta keep an eye on Yahoo homepage. They have FB integration and someday may integrate Twitter (they have the 'what are you doing now'). Seesmic is way ahead, but Yahoo has mainstream adoption
- Jeremiah Owyang
Jeremiah, I agree. The new Yahoo homepage is impressive.
- Steve Rubel
from email
Im not sure it's impressive, as it's evolutionary, not revolutionary. When Wave comes out, it could dash the shine that Yahoo has.
- Jeremiah Owyang
Where do I sign up! I'm praying your web app will make my life of FF, FB, Twitter ETC more manageable!!!!! W/out crashing my puters AND still let me see my Home feeds!
- Arleen Boyd
I'm thinking that this is the type of post that would be good reason for FriendFeed to have a "Love" click option next to the "Like" click option so that we can register better levels of our emotion towards news we read in others' streams!
- Chris Aldrich
Weight: solidly built, but dense. Smaller than it looks in pictures
- LANjackal
from IM
Physical Keyboard: I don't know what reviewers were complaining about, this is actually pretty damn good. The only part that's not so great is the optional protective hard shell makes the top row of keys a bit hard to press because it consumes the "overflow" space that your fingers would normally have
- LANjackal
from IM
On screen keyboard: OK, but there's not much reason to use it
- LANjackal
from IM
The only major niggle I have with the Droid is that so far I can't figure out how to make it vibrate to notify me of incoming SMS when the handset is locked and the ring volume is silenced. If I don't figure that out I'm gonna miss a LOT of text messages at work, which is not good :/
- LANjackal
from IM
All charged up! Despair's (my Droid's Bluetooth name) first night on the town. He's already texted one girl and called another from his Contacts, which is fully integrated with my Facebook account (profile, pics, email addresses, phone numbers). This last part is absolutely amazing. Wish us well, I'll tell you more tomorrow when we embark on a 16h bar crawl (no joke)
- LANjackal
WOW. I have never set a custom ringtone this easily in my life. 1)Drag and drop song into phone from Windows Explorer (where it shows up as removable disk). 2)Go to Music App, which automagically finds ALL songs on the phone, regardless of location 3)Select track 4)Select "Set as ringtone". DONE. A-mazing, especially for a Verizon device (walled garden anyone?)
- LANjackal
Idk about that, don't need audio editing capability
- LANjackal
from Android
Google Navigation: perfection. Period. Integrates with browser which integrates with calendar so I can nav my way directly to GCal event locations
- LANjackal
from Android
My buddy BR just picked one up himself. Verdict: fucking awesome
- LANjackal
from Android
Wi-Fi: works awesome. Using it @ a pool hall now
- LANjackal
from Android
... or we'll just get a new one? Handsets are salable dude.
- LANjackal
Speed: (because Chris Carr brought it up). The Droid is plenty fast. Speed is not an issue.
- LANjackal
Battery Life: Very good, but I'd bring my charger if I were going out of town for a weekend (I always do that anyway, so I don't consider than an issue)
- LANjackal
Browser: Faaaast. I don't miss the pinch multitouch capability reviewers have been bemoaning the lack of, since the high resolution means that 95% of pages are readable as is in the first place, and there's a handy zoom-in/zoom-out icon that pops up at the lower right of the screen
- LANjackal
UNPLEASANT SURPRISE: That charging cable that you think is a mini-USB cable? It's NOT. I don't WTF the port on the side of the Droid is, but it won't accept any other cable than the one that shipped with the device. Disappointing, but not a dealbreaker IMO
- LANjackal
Fancier ROM idea: If you wanna go for it, sure. However, my phone is one of those device (like my car) that I expect to just WORK, 100% of the time. Don't wanna risk bricking it, but if you wanna do that go right ahead.
- LANjackal
Contact management: This is simply the best implementation thereof you will ever come across, not only on phones but on ANY device. Full syncing of Google Contacts and your Facebook friends (all relevant fields, even job titles and pics from Facebook profiles), automatic duplicate entry handling, with search, email ... you name it. This is one thing the Droid beats everything else at. No competition.
- LANjackal
Camera: It's not the best, but it'll do. Besides, cameras like those are merciful to those who aren't naturally photogenic like me.
- LANjackal
Audio quality: Angelic. I know this sounds like an overstatement, but wait till you hear it. The audio on this device is just stunning. Everything else you've ever heard will sound like static afterwards in comparison
- LANjackal
Visual Voicemail is great, but if you have an active Wi-Fi connection it won't be able to sync. Which it tells you nicely. Perhaps Google Voice fixes that problem. Beginning to wish I had a GV account now. Oh well. Invite, anyone?
- LANjackal
That's only if you have a 450min plan. The one I have has VVM rolled in... I think. Billing info isn't very clear on that, I'll see what my first new bill looks like when it comes
- LANjackal
from IM
VZW has the weird setup where feature prices vary BOTH by plan AND phone. For example, VZ Navigator is free on some phones but paid on others. I *think* Visual Voicemail's included with the data plan when you get a Droid
- LANjackal
More on battery life: Charging takes a while (1.5h from 50% to full). Definitely enough for overnight, but people who rely on fast charge times will be in for a surprise. I'm really anal about charging, so I don't find this an issue. Less "responsible" users (read: college girls) whose phones are permanently "about to die" will run into trouble :P
- LANjackal
Hmmm, not true mini-USB, slight disappointment. How loud are the ringtones and the call itself? Do you think the phone will feel weird with an extended battery? Do you experience any lag that has been reported in apps? Can't wait to have in hand next week!
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
It may be a smaller USB connector than the "mini" one I'm used to. Phone ringtones are LOUD. So is the call volume. I don't know any phone that doesn't feel weird with an extended battery.
- LANjackal
from IM
Lag: bear in mind that you're dealing with a mini-computer that happens to be able to make calls, not a phone in the traditional sense. As with a PC, the more apps you run, the more lag you may notice (1 -2s sometimes, "missed" touches). In normal operation with mission critical apps though, there is no lag. I'd STRONGLY suggest Taskiller though, as the OS never seems to really kill...
more...
- LANjackal
from IM
Battery Life Report: During a drinking marathon today filled with heavy use of web browsing, FB app friend adding, taking (and uploading) pics, texting, email checking, calling, hopping on and off free Wi-Fi, etc. the Droid lasted *drumroooooooollllll* 11 HOURS. Terrible for a phone, but pretty good for what's essentially a pocket computer. Word to the wise: the car charging kit? Get it. An extra USB cable for charging at work is a pretty good call too
- LANjackal
Correction about the USB connector. It's a micro-B one, NOT a min-B one, which is why the other cable I had wasn't working. So yes, it IS a standard USB cable. Sorry to have mislead anyone
- LANjackal
Nice feature: automagical backlighting that turns on and off in response to ambient light (even when going through shadows)
- LANjackal
Camera: I take back what I said about it earlier. This is pretty much the BEST party camera ever. Reviewers who complained about the pic quality were simply taking the wrong pics. No one uses smartphones to take pics of flowers idiots. They use 'em to take pics at parties. The important thing is how skin tone and color come out WITHOUT being too revealing (trust me, no one wants to see...
more...
- LANjackal
Battery life: so my buddy BR who got one is complaining about the battery life also. And his phone was almost always dead BEFORE the Droid, so I can only imagine what the situation is like now
- LANjackal
Another niggle: No character count for text message composition
- LANjackal
UPDATE: OTA update will fix the SMS character count problem (exactly how that passed internal testing, I don't know)
- LANjackal
UPDATE on Visual Voicemail: I checked with VZW today and it really does cost $2.99 extra per month. Thanks to Chris' Carr, though, I installed Google Voice, so I chucked VVM.
- LANjackal
Bug: Google Navigation may forget to use the speakerphone at times. I think this happens if you attempt to navigate while the phone is in portrait orientation
- LANjackal
On the no character count for test messages --- doesn't it show you how many characters you have left when you get close to the 160 allowed?
- Kevin Mohr
I read that it does, but so far I haven't sent anything that long so I haven't seen for myself
- LANjackal
Worried about the Droid's 11h battery life? 1) Get the car charger 2) Head over to Monoprice.com and get a micro-B USB 2.0 cable for your office for all of *gasp* <$3, shipping included. Then you'll be able to charge at home, in the car, and in the office.
- LANjackal
Wait, an extra fee for VVM? That's just as lame as the extra fee for VZW Navigator.
- Wirehead
Not if you were on a Premium plan like I was. VZ Navigator's free then. Unfortunately, Premium plans are unavailable for the Droid, so you have to drop down to a Nationwide Select plan and then tack on a data package. This keeps the service affordable, but it means that VVM's not included. Don't really get VZ's thinking behind this one, although they probably reason that anyone who's savvy enough can get Google Voice anyway while the "average" users will lose $36/year to VVM.
- LANjackal
Droid lost 3G functionality this morning. How to restore: 1) With Droid still on, remove battery for 15 seconds 2) Replace battery 3) Turn Droid on. 3G should be restored
- LANjackal
from IM
Guess who got his Droid set up on the office Wi-Fi and VPN today? It took all of 3 minutes, no management approval and just a verbal request to the IT guy. Turns out he got a Droid himself, so he breezed through the setup and handed it back to me. So yeah, if you were worried about joining domain networks and whatnot, don't be - the Droid is ready for work
- LANjackal
OK so after a few weeks of use, several bugs have become apparent:
- LANjackal
1) This probably applies to all smartphones that can run multiple apps simultaneously, but active task management is a serious necessity if you're a power user. That means manually killing apps/processes that you aren't using to prevent your phone from becoming laggy. I recommend the Task Manager app
- LANjackal
2) Switching between Wi-Fi and 3G sometimes isn't seemless. The Droid will sometimes forget it's a 3G device when moving out of Wi-Fi coverage, and similarly not automatically connect to a familiar network when it's within range.
- LANjackal
3) The micro-B USB 2.0 port has become really loose over numerous plug-unplug cycles. It's now possible to plug the device in and have nothing happen because the connections aren't being made (This is solved by a little jiggling). To be fair, most USB ports weren't designed for this many plugging cycles, but for a device that needs as much charging as this you'd *hope* the port was a bit sturdier
- LANjackal
4) Phone ringtone volume sometimes goes out of whack. Solved by simply re-entering the relevant menu, which seems to "remind" the handset what level it should be at
- LANjackal
5) Plugging the phone into an HP docking station before booting the laptop will cause the laptop to fail to boot. I'm not sure whose fault this is.
- LANjackal
1) Contrary to what the SF Gate guy said in that article I'm too lazy to link to, Google Navigate IS SAFE to use in the boonies. Verizon's 3G coverage is beyond amazing, I traveled through some of the most sparsely populated regions in the country today with no problems. The phone lost the GPS signal a few times (regained within seconds) but never lost 3G coverage
- LANjackal
Another tip: turning the screen brightness down to the lowest level improved battery life a LOT
- LANjackal
So @LANjackal, around Google Navigate, are you saying there's a map for that? :-)
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
I just set one up on Exchange. it's FAST. sadly no it was not my phone....I only had about 5 min to look at it.
- Mike Nencetti
So one of the funny things about the DROID's contact syncing with Facebook and Google is that you can't edit any contacts that exist in your Facebook friends list only. You have to add a new contact on the phone with the same name as the Facebook friend, after which the phone will automagically merge the two. I suspect the reason for this is that although the phone imports your Facebook friends into Google Contacts, it's only a 1-way street ...
- LANjackal
Therefore any changes made to a contact that exists only on FB would be reflected only on the phone and could be lost if something happened to the phone itself. The solution to this is obvious (import all FB friends into Google Contacts, treat them as immediately editable there), but for now that's how it is
- LANjackal
The FB/Google Contacts integration leads to some funny situations. Such as when people give you their number only to have you realize - right in front of them - that you already have it. Guys don't mind, girls may think it's a lil ... odd, to say the least. Another is people who didn't give you their number texting you like "hey this is <insert name>" when in reality their name and details already show up on your end because you're FB friends. Love it.
- LANjackal
Motorola were apparently really serious about night shot capability: the DROID does better in low light, long range pics (such as a high altitude landscape pic at night) than my Canon SD1100 IS, which is saying a lot
- LANjackal
Manually installed official 2.1 update today. Process went smoothly, only 1 hitch: Gallery shortcut on home screen was broken (presumably because it's been replaced by a brand new app). Dumped shortcut, dragged new one out of application tray. Fixed.
- LANjackal
Major Improvement: the new Gallery app now syncs with ALL your pics on ALL your Google accounts (Picasa, Blogger, etc.). I turned it off since I don't have anything on those accounts that I'd ever really need on the go. Also, the new UI is superb
- LANjackal
From a utilitarian perspective, the new Maps live wallpapers feature is sweet. No longer have to fire up the Maps app to view my surroundings: they're already on the wallpaper.
- LANjackal
So while GPS performance has improved, it's still not the best. The Maps live wallpaper often puts me in the middle of the nearby airport runway when I get home. I wish there was a built-in way to force the GPS to always be on, but I don't know of any
- LANjackal
Google Maps Navigation finally has a detour option, thank God
- LANjackal
The 2D performance slowdown you've heard about with 2.1 is real. Unfortunately honest news. But not enough to make the device unusable. Just annoying. Still, performance is better than 2.0.
- LANjackal
Installed the official 2.2 update earlier today. 2.2 is to the Droid what Windows 7 is to netbooks. It's fast and very responsive so far. The Droid finally gets 5 home screens, and contrary to what I've read, the browser launcher links to whatever browser you've set as default on your phone, not the stock browser.
- LANjackal
Hmm, I have 9 home screens on 2.1. Probably because mine is technically a Milestone
- Mo Kargas
I am really loving the new Facebook LIVE Feed. I think Paul Buchheit and Bret Taylor had something to do with that :) Thanks guys, it looks really awesome. FB feed is highly useful now; much better engagement, relevancy and the photos rock, too! Wondering if this will keep FriendFeeders like Robert Scoble, Louis Gray, Jesse Stay, Dave Winer, MG...
I'm slowly removing those that are just importing Twitter over to Facebook from my FriendFeed favorites and I'm now tracking them over on Facebook.
- Jesse Stay
Robert - yep, I agree with you there. FB is now much more interesting for sure
- Susan Beebe
Funny how, at least to a UK sensibility, 'tracking' sounds like 'stalking'..
- Andy Connell
Nothing really new about it - Facebook has had the Live tab on the homepage for 18 months.
- Jamie
Jamie, it was removed back in March. They're bringing that back, and adding the "Hide" drop-downs that the previous feed had back to it.
- Jesse Stay
It wasnt removed - they actually just improved it in March and made it the default, pushing the old style static feed to the Highlights section on the right. The Live feed update in March added the network and application filters so you could see a live feed by family, colleagues etc. I have little doubt the FF folks have had input into this release though... because it basically mimics the Live/Best of Day feel of FF.
- Jamie
I sat next to Paul Buchheit yesterday and he said the FriendFeed team had nothing to do with it. But he likes it too.
- Robert Scoble
Jamie, my feed never automatically updated after March. I had to click a link to get it to refresh. Yeah, it gave me the number of new posts, but it didn't automatically update. Maybe you were on a beta test of some sort?
- Jesse Stay
I think I'm starting to understand. The Live Feed gives you everything that happens, in reverse chronological order, and you have the option to set filters on it. That's great. But when you log in you land on News Feed, which choses stuff for you, and in unexplainably non-chronological order. You have no power to adjust this? Ack - this smells like potential manipulation/advertising or something.
- Michael Slattery
if only you could bold an announcement in FF like you can in Wave :D [oh, and my username on Wave is the splendiforously original "adamlasnik"]
- Adam Lasnik
Guys, please read the title and the first comment. This is not a request for invites. This is for users who already have an account and want to share their account name. For invites see this thread: http://ff.im/91M9R
- Kol Tregaskes
My Wave ID is erier2003@googlewave.com. Feel free to add me and we can Wave!
- Eric Geller
Still don't really know what this is (Or Google Voice for that matter). This is like high school all over again. The cool kids are ignoring me!
- James Ferguson
i'm with the google wave woudl be really cool, if i had people to wave at crowd. jviddy@googlewave.com
- Jamie Vidamour
Everyone, read the title and first comment. This is NOT an invite thread!
- Kol Tregaskes
my plan didn't work. still trolling for an invite at dzinrgeek@gmail.com
- amarquart
Blimey. I must be going mad, is it not clear that this is NOT an invite thread. For invites see here: http://ff.im/91M9R
- Kol Tregaskes
Not sure if anyone else woudl find it useful, i'm going to add a load of you as friends and create a wave just to try stuff out in. Feel free to remove yourself from the wave or use it as you feel. Also feel free to add anyone else you think might want to be in on it
- Jamie Vidamour
Shockingly, I am robdiana@googlewave.com
- Rob Diana
Kamilah, you are kamilah.gill. You can find this if you click on yourself in the Contacts sidebar. You address (like everyone) is shown there.
- Kol Tregaskes
Karoli: is that your google wave nick or are you sniffling? :)
- Ahsan Ali
I'm sniffling because I don't have a google wave nick. Despite two invites, there is still nothing in my inbox. I am not in with the in crowd. :(
- Karoli
<- Waves hello! :) I'm at holger.eilhard@googlewave.com
- Holger Eilhard
hello holger, can you pls send me invite? fatihkurtoglu@gmail.com
- mfatih
Invite came today! I'm jalada@googlewave.com. As part of the second/third 'Wave' of people getting invites looks like I don't get any to share out.
- Jalada
M Fatih Kurtoglu: Sorry, I don't yet have any nominations to give out...
- Holger Eilhard
Hey, I'm in too ! :)) tagyboy@googlewave.com
- fwed
Just got my invite this morning as well. FF embed seems to be working fine. I've tried the Wolfram Alpha robot but didn't get it to work yet.
- François Dongier
librarysupporter@googlewave.com in my wave. :)
- MLx
Glad to see more and more people getting in. What we're waiting for is proper group support (a few weeks hopefully) then let the games begin! :-D
- Kol Tregaskes
Anyone have a spare google wave invite to send to me? email me at zaldor at gmail ! TY!
- Les Zaldor
that is a test from the wave that has this thread embedded.
- Nathalie
I will as soon as I get one WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
- Martha
banane@googlewave.com <-- writing this from wave. neat!
- anna sauce
marco.nunez@googlewave - FINALLY! like i said on twitter - i feel like the kid who got a nintendo 1 christmas too late when everyone had already beaten super mario bros!
- Marco(aureliusmaximus)
denise.straessler@googlewave - stupid me had no idea i wouldn't be able to select a different name .....
- denise
Wow. Thanks Kol!!! Here's mine for all ya'll to add - walt.ruppar@googlewave.com - although I just added like 150 of the above. While also deleting my pity pleads for an invite... ;-)
- JR
If you want to import your Facebook status, you must have "Allow friends to subscribe to my status" checked on the "Status Updates" custom privacy setting at http://www.facebook.com/login.... This is the default, but a few people have customized it away.
I think that's fine JA. They key is to have the "Allow friends to subscribe to my status" checkbox checked (the one right above the red bar in the second screenshot). That dialog appears when you select "Customize..." from the "Status Updates" pulldown on the first screenshot.
- Paul Buchheit
Wow, that totally fixed my issue. Thanks, Paul (and FriendFeed)!
- Mark Trapp
Sorry - this doesn't work. I have that box checked. Unimpressed.
- Mathew
Matthew, Facebook has been through at least one major redesign since this entry was posted on 21st October. Anyone help Matthew in getting his FB imported in FF?
- Kol Tregaskes
Kol is correct, Facebook has changed their interface since these instructions were posted. Unfortunately, they seem to have eliminated the "Status Updates" RSS feed entirely. If you can find it, let me know.
- Paul Buchheit
The feed itself can't be gone - people who added it to FriendFeed before Facebook's UI changed are still having updates pulled in here. But as far as finding it now to add it...I've been unsuccessful. And modifying the URL of a working feed doesn't seem to work, either.
- Jandy
Yes, the RSS feeds still exist at some level, but the UI for discovering their secret urls seems to have been removed.
- Paul Buchheit
I'd love to know what the FFers think about all the changes that Facebook seems to be doing lately.
- Eric Florenzano
so how do we get facebook updates to friendfeed?
- Noel Nuguid
Would like to know how to enable status, too!
- Andreas Stolze
so, FB buys FF, I think status feeds will be back soon
- Hakan İyice
@Hakan Agreed, they should be back soon, hopefully with the option to "CC Facebook" like you can with Twitter.
- Nathan Snyder
@mamund Thanks for the link, but it didn't really help me. You wouldn't think it would be that hard to reenable this feed.
- Nathan Snyder
from IM
is there an update to how I should get a link to "My Status" in FB? I saw a workaround that has you creating a friend list on someone else's account... but that can't really be how you do it right?
- Jason (not an Argonaut)
how's the ff/fb integration going paul? and thanks for the recent tech upgrades/fixes to ff!
- Chris Heath
HELP ME FRIENDFEED: Here is what I have so far in way of Halloween items. Bowtie and suspenders... Where do I go from here? ... (Who do I look like to you???)
Brisbane is featured very heavily in this film clip from epic Aussie band Powderfinger. Check it out to see what my city looks like!!!! :)
- Johnny
from Bookmarklet
Melly knows the score! GIANT POWDERFINGER!!!
- Johnny
Holy crap this is making it even more difficult to decide what city to move to. Though I have visited Brisbane before, it looks even more awesome in this
- Mo Kargas
If we did create a device that would allow parallel peeking you can bet the device would be patented, and they'd use it to find new ideas from the other universes. (Okay, of course it wouldn't be patented, it would be/has been kept secret)
- Kevin Fox
I saw a theory recently that Dark Matter and Dark Energy are the manifestations of leakage between our universe and another...
- DGentry
I think I'm going to hold off buying the "peek" device and save up my money to buy the device that lets you browse and swap places with the alternate you in the parallel universe of your choice.
- Ken Sheppardson
Is this thread about next week's episode of LOST?
- no name
@Bill: It's about the Other Universe in Fringe.
- Amit Patel
I hope JJ Abrams inspires thought on this topic with this season's run of both!
- no name
If Italy is going to make sites responsible for user-generated content, then it's the only safe course. YouTube should immediately block Italy from posting videos, to limit their liability.
- Otto
I totally agree, Google should block Italian IPs from looking at YouTube and Google Video. As well as any non-Safe Search. I mean it is one thing to take a company to court over these types of things... and lose because you have no case, but to go at the employees is just pathetic. Italy you should be ashamed that your laws allowed this to happen.
- travispuk
Nothing will happen until the legal process is complete and all appeals presented and heard is my guess but if this is upheld I suspect that blocking will be the only course open to Google (and others).
- Brian Sullivan
there are 2 more steps in the legal course. I firmly believe that the sentence will be overthrowed in appeal or in Cassation (Italy's equivalent of the Supreme Court). Anyway, the motivations of the sentence are not yet published... we have to wait at least 90 days to see the very reasons beneath the sentence...
- M.
I just 'poked' you to join in the fun and then went to a meeting doing a show and tell - with your face in one of my chrome windows looking all beardiness. and kept alt tabbing to it. Expecting p45 imminently
- Phill Price
Brilliant. Although not as good as a friend of mine who during a Sales Demo had a notification popup on the projector screen about a Torrent that had completed downloading and let's just say the title of the movie was somewhat embarrassing to say the least. The kicker, the torrent had completed by using the client's network. Luckily most of the attendees did not notice it due to a fast move on my behalf for distraction away from the screen... and no I was *NOT* the sale rep!
- travispuk
I hope at the very least /Facebook/ is working on some kind of mail upgrade & hooks up the mail to the rest of the universe. It's kind of unavoidable to use FB mail to some extent, and it's terrible.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Funny, that's exactly what you said when you started working for Google, too.
- Gabe
Sad. I thought I'll get to see something better than Gmail.
- Sachin Sebastian
clearly paul is working on cooking.. lamb sliders.. chicken tandoori.. preparing for the launch of buchheitsown.com.. the api will enable the world to become better cooks
- t toring
Paul's the official Facebook taste tester. He's back in the kitchen with his trusty fork--giving his approval or disapproval on the dishes.
- April Buchheit
Nigel: "There's a scale. One nod is good, two nods is very good. There's only been one actual smile on record and that was Tom Ford in 2001. If she doesn't like it she shakes her head. Then of course there's the pursing of the lips." Andy: "Which means?" Nigel: "Catastrophe" - 'The Devil Wears Prada'
- April Buchheit
But "hMail" is one more than "g". And Johnny could call it "Haytch-Mail"
- Josh Haley
Wait a second... Facebook employs the guy pretty much universally recognized as the inventor of Gmail, and he's not working on their email project? Hm.
- Ken Sheppardson
Ozkan, what part of "official taste tester" did you not understand? :-)
- Bruce Lewis
Well. At least we have the 100 meals Posterous to look forward to. :) Bacon and scrambled eggs ftw.
- Mona Nomura
Just get that damn Facebook feed looking more like friendfeed! ...oh and someone has got to change the 'Become a Fan' to 'Follow'! It's hard to sell a public profile by telling people to become your fan when you ain't a star! But I did have some wicked Tandoori pork at my Indian cooking classes last week! Love your choice of food.
- Phil Ashman
Phil, +5! To follow a FB page 'd be way better than to "become fan". People want to mark their interest in a product, not to be 'fan'.
- Thierry R. Andriamirado
from email