VibeMetrix › Comments

couldn't agree more. FF makes all those services more usuable. After only a few days, FF has already become one of my key web apps. haven't been to facebook, since I started using FF. - timepilot

Pretty interesting theme for your NextWeb-talk. Shows some good self-awareness ;-) - Johannes Kleske

Love the theme of your next talk...let me pose an interesting question/observation about this issue of the "Friend Divide" - I am a full time finance executive and entreprenuer that does his very best to stay up to date with social networking technology, I have a twitter account, Facebook, Meebo, Google Reader (too many RSS feeds!!!), LinkedIn account, iGoogle home page, Flickr, my own... more... - Bob DeCecco

@timepilot - yep. Everything is becoming more distributed. Yet it is also becoming easier to centralize because sharing is now an absolute ground floor requirement. That is why FF is so important and why tools like it will kill the social country clubs (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo,...etc). FF thrives on sharing. The country clubs can't be completely open. - Kevin D. White

You cant comment in FeedReaders on blog postings. FriendFeed understands that...the blog platforms do not. I can't even see comments in the feed when I read a blog posting in a feed reader. Yes, you can get the individual comments in an RSS feed, but the conversational experience is lost. This seems like a simple fix for the RSS generator code of a platform...Wordpress listening? - Brandon Watson

I don't have a blog, so maybe that's why I don't get it, but why is it necessary to have the comments in the blog? You still have the control over the design, the length of the posts and the kind of topics you talk about. Why do you need the comments there? I really like how FriendFeed works. You have the links to everything, and you can comment right here. I even think the "what are you doing?" question is better answered here, because you can comment below the post no matter when it was made. - Alejandro

I think people are too scattered. They have too much content all over the place. Loic had a good idea when he said he wants his blog to be the central place of all things internet. - The Dude Abides

Safe travels Robert. I left a bigger comment on your blog itself. - Elliott Ng

makes total sense. if we're going to preach distributed content to media folks, etc., then why shouldn't we ahve distributed community? also, i agree...blogging a ton less because of flickr, twitter, link sharing, etc. - don loeb

Do you think the filtering all these other services have done makes your blogging more focused and effective? - VibeMetrix from twhirl

but no way to import from KeePassX :( - Naor Mark

If KeepPassX can export to a CSV or something, you can import into PassPack - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

Glad to see other people are finding Passpack. I've been singing their praises forever. :) - Cyndy

I noticed, Cyndy. Your recommendation when I googled them actually gave me more faith to choose them :) - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

never heard of it... cool thanks - Susan Beebe

I found passpack a little less impressive on my first try, I am addicted to 1Password from Macheist though. - VibeMetrix from twhirl

I looked into 1Password, but it's for MAC, not free, and I can't take it with me. That excludes it from being remotely helpful to me. PassPack is just the thing if I want to switch computers (I have multiple here) or even just play with Chromium for the day. - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

Understood. A big difference between a desktop client and web based service too. I'm not sure I want to clear with everyone of my clients using a web based service though. (I'm also a virtual assistant part time!) - VibeMetrix from twhirl

If it weren't for that.... - VibeMetrix from twhirl

"Clear" meaning verify with them that it's cool for you to use it? - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

I've been using Passpack for a couple and months and would recommend it to others. - Alan Le

meaning verify that it's okay for me to save their passwords to various accounts on it. - VibeMetrix from twhirl

@Naor - yep, you can import your passwords from Keepass: http://tinyurl.com/2bklt3. - Markingegno - Donato

@VibeMetrix - interesting, what type of concerns do you think your client would have? You could try our desktop application, but you would have to give up the convenience of 1 click login ;) - Markingegno - Donato

Ouch... not for me. - Daniel Schildt

I have been using lastpass.com, FREE and no limit on # of entries. It is available online and off. Install on system, USB drive, or use via the internet. Windows, Mac and Linux. Imports from keepass and others as well as exports. - RAD Moose

Not for me either. I'll stick with Roboform. The login handling is awesome and my data stays on my drive, where it belongs. If I need to I tuck the portable version into a truecrypted usb stick. In a clod world your passwords are EVERYTHING, no way am I putting them online with a company I know almost nothing about. No offense. - Soulhuntre

I find this kind of services to be huge security risk as no one knows what would happen if someone would stole all of the account information from them (or service provider doing something odd themselves). - Daniel Schildt

Barring the service provider themselves doing something weird, I don't see how anyone's home computer is any safer than a service that was created explicitly for the purpose of securing passwords. RoboForm is aight, but as I state in the article, it messes up FireFox and isn't free. But, of course, everyone has an opinion :) - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

I have had no issues with Roboform and Firefox. The thing is, Passpack adds a point of failure I don't need. If my home machine is compromised, I am done for (they will packet sniff / mirror/ keylog me and get it all anyway). With Passpack I am STILL vulnerable at home, and now additionally vulnerable outside my home. Passpack is a central weak point that is very attractive to attackers. - Soulhuntre

Actually, if you're using it correctly, you are simply moving the point of attack to PassPack :) - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

That did make me smile. - Unruly Media

lipstick. you're forgetting lipstick. - Karim

Spot on. And it holds true for items well under the $2800 price point too. Consider also that last year's model is still pretty darn nice... Want? Hell yeah. Need and can justify? Erm... - Rob Kramer

And the Android phone comes out today....ooooh shiny. - VibeMetrix from twhirl

Slobber, Slobber, Slobber...er nice camera! I like your transition from Slobber --> Save, Save, Save ...nice finish! Excellent point, we all need to re-assess our gadget needs for sure, especially avoid any more debt for goodness sake! - Susan Beebe

A great deal of it comes down to budgeting. I budget for a new laptop every two years and a new desktop every two years (alternating) for example. A new SLR is on a five year budget, and mobile phones are every two years. Shiny new things (Chumby's, Slingbox's, etc) come out of another fund that ends up at about $600 a year ($50 a month). It's a lot easier to budget with dollars than it is 'number of shiny things'. - Andrew Leyden

As an Android developer this is almost good news from my perspective. Why choose Android? Because different applications can compete, rather than first-to-market (or Apple native) always wins. - Reto Meier from fftogo

I mostly wish they would allow 3rd party podcasting apps on the iPhone. I hate that I have to sync to my laptop to get my podcasts. Everything else comes via the "cloud". - Cyrus Lendvay

Kevin, don't you think they would? I bet Firefox and Chrome would be blocked as well. - Louis Gray

Okay this astonishes me. Apple could do so much to work with the community and yet they are banging into walls instead. - VibeMetrix from twhirl

Re: Firefox/Chrome, the SDK agreement already effectively forbids them with this clause: "No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple's Published APIs." Depending on how you define "code," this definitely covers JavaScript, and possibly HTML and CSS. Hard to make a web browser without those. At least here Apple is being upfront about restrictions. With Podcaster and MailWrangler, the rejection was ater a lot of code had been written. - Mihai Parparita

surprised ... Pay me to explain why ... ROTFLMAO - Scott Moskowitz

dear Apple, you suck. let competition flourish and let your users decide which apps are best. - Jon Price

Hopefully my unpublished works will be found in a Google Docs file and will be sold by my family for millions of dollars. - Shawn Farner

I read an article about this a while ago. My understanding is MySpace leaves the account up regardless of take-down requests (so they become wall spam targets), while some sites such as LinkedIn (or was it FB?) will take down or 'freeze' the account in memorium. - FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

Robert, you've just worked out the 3.0 business model for Digital Biographer dot com - I will becomez your digital ghost. Mail the logins to me@also.cc - David Petherick from twhirl

I figured on including my passwords as a condition of my will and insisting that my kids periodically sign on as me to confuse the heck out of people. - Walter Neary

+10 Walter! - Yolanda

I think some of these sites ought to offer lifetime accounts or at least 100 year accounts. I hope that all of the photos that I post to the web stay online well after I'm dead and gone. - Thomas Hawk

I'd prefer some vig on search & associated transactions attributable to my time & bandwidth in this life - in the meanwhile - I'll stick to good deeds - Scott Moskowitz

I have left instructions with details regarding how my accounts should be maintained and notifications to be handled. Email password left in the hands of two good friends and lawyer. - VibeMetrix from twhirl

If you run WordPress, there's the Next of Kin plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend... - Brent Logan

My question there, Robert, is that if you put hundreds of bloggers at an event with good discussion and potentially news, that there should be "recaps" or "highlights". Journalists do this all the time, reporting panels and speakers. It's what I did for Bret and Loic's panel the other week. Using only Twitter and FriendFeed are the easy way out. - Louis Gray

There are a few of those here: http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsea... - Robert Scoble

what a good question and ironic answer. - jeneane sessum

Jeneane: is Twittering blogging? In my mind it is. - Robert Scoble

hello - Virtualgoodz

Robert, no twittering isn't blogging. it's ubiquitous IM. - jeneane sessum

jeneane: I disagree. Who wrote the rule book that said that a blog needed to be longer than 140 characters? :-) - Robert Scoble

And yes, Robert's link to Google Blog Search does find some good ones. - Louis Gray

@Robert, a tweet is not a blog post. It's a tweet. Louis' point was that for a blogging conference, the lack of blog posts (reflective, substantive, and I have more adjectives if you want them) covering the goings-on is noteworthy. - jeneane sessum

Jeneane: and exactly what is the difference other than one is limited to 140 characters? A blog is an individual voice of a person. My Tweets are my voice. - Robert Scoble

So then if anyone other than those who were there care about BWE, they can search Twitter and sort through idle chatter, meet-up organization, and weblebrity sitings, Jeneane. Otherwise, the information presented there is only for those cool enough to have been there. ;) - Cyndy

Robert - again: substance. If blogging is the same as twitter and friendfeed, then quit your blog and just use those formats. Consider yourself dared. Cyndy +1. - jeneane sessum

jeneane: I use the right tool for the job. A lot of times it's Twitter. Sometimes I have more to say, that's when my Wordpress-powered blog comes into play. Sometimes I want to post a picture to communicate with you, that's gonna be up on Flickr. Sometimes I want to do a video. etc etc. Personally I go to conferences nowadays to enjoy myself, not to be a reporter or a PR person for the conference. I don't get paid to go to conferences, when that starts maybe I'll start doing work at them. :-) - Robert Scoble

wasn't twittering originally called "microblogging"? I'm still struggling to know when the right tool is for the right job, but I use FF for most discussions ABOUT posts, twitter for microblogging casual stuff in under 140 chars, and my blog for anything that's longer than a few paragraphs (which I try to post at least once a day). - Justin Long

It's funny that we haven't talked about the real reason why this conference didn't get blogged about that much: every blogger knows that anytime you blog about blogging your traffic goes down by 10x. Unless you are problogger. So there's actually an anti-incentive to covering a conference about blogging! Interesting that no one posted that yet. - Robert Scoble

Robert, I don't find that to be true. Blogging about blogging trends can at times be as engaging as blogging about services. - Louis Gray

Actually I think it depends on audience. I've been writing in part about using blogging as a tool for missionaries trying to explain their purpose and vision, and I've seen my traffic go up steadily over the past week. But if your readers ARE existing bloggers, then traffic would probably go down? unless you have something new and powerful to say. - Justin Long

Louis: well, you are sort of in the same bucket as problogger. Among other circles they know they are losing their audience when they do that. Imagine you have a blog on, say, Alzheimers. Why would you write about a blogging conference to your audience? (I met a lot of people who blog on topics like alzheimers or quilting there). - Robert Scoble

Would be nice to here a summary of trends, or thoughts on how things have changed or where they are going (from those "creating" the industry)...ACEdge - Alan Edgett

I agree the live tweets were valuable. I probably should write up my insights, but I probably fear they'd seem trite once I put 'em down. - Paul Rodriguez

Alan: trends. Video up. Blogging steady. Microblogging big up. Aggregators up. Monetization mixed. Mobile video: new on scene, expected to be way up. :-) - Robert Scoble

Robert, you think the reason that there weren't more posts about BWE from bloggers is that bloggers didn't want to lose traffic? ("It's funny that we haven't talked about the real reason why this conference didn't get blogged about that much: every blogger knows that anytime you blog about blogging your traffic goes down by 10x.") I doubt that's the case. Your point about people wanting to enjoy conferences instead of blogging them these days is well taken. But you sound defensive. - jeneane sessum

Alan: more trends. Watch networks of bloggers. Way up. Oh, and watch them to become media companies and move away from blogs. - Robert Scoble

jeneane: I don't have a bet on this table. So, I don't really care and if I'm defensive it's cause the info is already out there and those who complain about it are in a position to gather the info together and bundle it and add some value. The world is changing and conferences won't be blogged all the time. I know I hate writing about conferences or covering them. Other people make the money and I get less traffic thanks to competing with others for the same stories. - Robert Scoble

For instance, Louis was there. Where's his "coverage?" I only attended one or two things, but hung out with my friends most of the time (or my wife). I followed a lot on Twitter, though, and didn't see any real news that made me say "oh, I have to write about that." The few things I saw I liked on FF so my readers would see them. - Robert Scoble

maybe all the good bloggers were on the panels ;) - Owen from twhirl

maybe all the good bloggers stayed home. ;) - Cyndy

Robert: I'm now siding with you on Micro-blogging = blogging. Thanks for the summary, hugely helpful for a Corporate soc med guy like me to hear your take on trends (even in 140 bits)! - Alan Edgett

Maybe all the good bloggers ate roast beef, or maybe they had none, or maybe they went wee wee wee all the way home. - Jason Carreira

I think conferences like these are mostly useful in the way that they connect different bloggers in real world so that they can share experiences and even more like get feeling of community. Also, could be great way to get new friends and learn about different things. As for topics of blogging, many people write about wide range of topics but still have some specific things that they mostly cover. It's about what you and your readers are mostly interested and that depends on what type of blog writer does. - Daniel Schildt

And does it really matter if conference had or did not had some more of really popular megastars of blogging? Events like this don't always have to be hyper. The most important thing is people, whoever they happen to be. Everyone learns something when talking to different people interested of writing about different subjects even if there wouldn't have been any of the panels. - Daniel Schildt

Robert, I wrote a blog post about blogging a little while ago for LouisGray.com and it ended up on the front page of Techmeme, so I disagree as well that blogging about blogging reduces traffic. It's all about learning to write good posts - you can really write about anything with good content. - Jesse Stay

Robert, the last few posts I've put on the site have mentioned findings from the panels I attended or participated in, and referenced them. But no, I didn't recap the panels myself, so partially guilty as charged. - Louis Gray

I've got notes from Louis's panel I'll be posting tonight, btw - Jesse Stay from twhirl

I blogged about on one ourI blogged about on one our daily vibe today. The panel with Tim Ferris was blogged by daily vibe today. The panel with Tim Ferris was blogged by Rohit Bhargava. http://blog.vibemetrix.com/2008... - VibeMetrix from twhirl

I'm finding it to unobtrusively show me new things. Very cool. - Stu Andrews from twhirl

I have to agree, it's the most essential part of my internet day. - Mike Lewis

Google Reader is it, period. Most efficient tool for surfing the World Mind. - Sean McBride

My problem is, even after excessive pruning, that people write too much good stuff! - Stu Andrews from twhirl

Robert - Have you tried Feedly.com? - Russellreno

Here's my Google Reader shared item feed: http://www.google.com/reader... - Robert Scoble

Fully agree. Google Reader combined with Gmail and my hacks are how I wrangle information. - Steve Rubel

I would love to know not just what some people are sharing, but what they actually subscribe to. That would be pretty interesting. - Shawn Farner

Completely agree. I would never know all of the information I know today if I had never used Google Reader. - Brian Sloane

So: what about combining the best features of Google Reader and Friendfeed into a single online app? With vastly amped up features for recommending personalized news, of course. - Sean McBride

not a fan of all-in-one apps for some reason. I like my feeds separated from my microstreams. it's probably why I'm not in love w FF and am merely in a platonic relationship. - Victor Ganata

Shawn, you can find that out on Toluu.com. Otherwise, I'm signed up to 300 science, health and cancer journals/blogs but doubt many others would be interested. - Sally Church

FriendFeed+Google Reader is perfect for me - Steve Chou

I wish there was a middle ground between Star and Read items. I "read" everything, can't stand having unread email or posts (149 feeds, 4700+ items in last 30 days), and only Star the stuff I absolutely want to find in 10 seconds or less. I'd like a way to Like other things. - Chris Stevenson

Robert, I absolutely agree, shared items are a great way to learn. I have actually taken my subscriptions and made them a page on my blog (http://regulargeek.com/blog-ro...). - Rob Diana

Google Reader + Google Alerts + RSS Feed = Self designed MBA for me - Michael VanDervort

It's like having courses and courses of information on your computer screen for free. I've learned more from google reader than I did from college. Heh. - VibeMetrix from twhirl

Are there any feedly users who can comment on if that replaces their google reader use? - Sonya Smith

As a Google Reader newbie, what is it that makes Google Reader so much better than a regular RSS reader? I like NewFox, but if there are some "killer app" features of GR I'd switch. - Kenton

Kenton, GR is no more special than many other RSS readers, its just what you are familiar with. I use it (and Feedly) extensively, and echo Robert's endorsement of the concept making one smarter. That said, its the one I am most familiar with, its easy to use, and easy to share from a social perspective. The important thing is absorption of knowledge, and there are several tools that can help. Give it a try, you may be hooked too. - jcunwired

The key features of Reader that I don't believe any other feed reader has: (1) sharing, with notes (2) suggestions for feeds I might be interested (3) trend charting. - Victor Ganata

Same here. Google Reader has become my primary research tool for the industries I follow. - Glenn Batuyong from twhirl

Robert, totally. I know some people were startign to think of FriendFeed as a replacement but it can never be. They are complimentary and GReader adds more to my knowledge than FF anyday. FF fulfills my need to know *now* but GReader fulfills my need for depth. - Kamath (नमः)

have you tried Feedly? It's a FF extension which makes Greader even better... I highly recommend it - Luca Filigheddu

Going to try Greader *and* Feedly... - Kenton

Really, I think that if someday you could query google with your mind, I think that would probably be the best situation. Although, your friends may get tired of you spouting adwords when you answer their questions. - Trevor Lee

Google Reader makes me smarter too. But it also makes me [more] addicted to 'the internet' (rather than games). - TiTi