Firefox only: (Win/Mac/Linux): Firefox extension KwiClick opens a dedicated search dialog that finds results from Google, YouTube, Wikipedia, Twitter, and more without having to leave the page. It's a search box on steroids. Once you've installed the extension, you can access KwiClick from the new button on the toolbar, which will open up the dedicated search dialog. You can drag this window around your screen anywhere you want, choose the providers you want to search with, and load the results directly in your browser window without having to close the dialog. The search box has autocomplete, the next and previous buttons page through results, and you can easily pick the search providers you'd like to use. Where the extension really shines is searching YouTube, Wikipedia, or Twitter—just type in your search terms and pick from the results, and you can watch a video directly in the standalone window, read the Wikipedia article, or access a twitter stream just by typing in a keyword....
KwiClick delivers search results from your favorite services directly to you, so there is no need to open new tabs or go back and forth between pages. KwiClick helps you complete tasks more efficiently.
- tamaki hayashi
First, FriendFeed is _not_ going away. (in fact, we're working on switching it to new servers) Second, I know everyone wants to know what the team is working on, but we don't pre-announce things, so for now all I can say is that there's good stuff on the way. Re: http://friendfeed.com/jworthi...
Paul, working on friendfeed.com stuff or facebook.com?
- Kol Tregaskes
I like the first sentence. The rest is just gravy.
- Derek Coward
I'm totally happy if we just reside on decent servers, and get occasional IT help... We'll keep the rest of the ship running :)
- Christopher Galtenberg
Paul - is that why it's been slower lately vs.pre-fb ?
- Allen Stern
Paul please repeat it in re-phrased form: Friendfeed is NOT going to repeat destiny of Jaiku? Y/N
- A.T.
Can't wait... **Fingers tapping desk impatiently**
- AJ Batac
But what does "going away" mean, Paul? And what does "team" mean? And when you say "pre-announce", are you talking about the Palm Pre?
- Ken Sheppardson
Allen, the slowness is due to growth (more users and more data), but I put in a few fixes yesterday that should speed things up a bit.
- Paul Buchheit
Paul, sometimes when I open up threads I get the Opps... error. Is that related? It has been happening more and more these last few days.
- Kol Tregaskes
Still better than twitter and facebook. Thanks for the update!
- Mike Nencetti
Paul, thanks for the incredible work with FriendFeed. Please, keep it alive! and most importantly keep it FriendFeed!
- Ciro
as long as FF doesn't go dark or fall to pieces due to lack of maintenance, i think most ppl would be appeased.
- Joe Silence
Does this mean that the sky is not falling and we should stop running around screaming GODZILLA! and pointing in the direction of FB?
- Tony C (Unrated)
from fftogo
also, thank you for making such a great service in the first place!
- Joe Silence
Thanks for the update! Would like to know if there will be actual development done on FriendFeed in the future (other than bug fixes/minor updates) but I understand if you can't really talk about that too much.
- Brandon Titus
Paul: so still no answer from you as to if your 'good stuff' is being developed for FB or FF? The silence suggests it's FaceBook you're working on, or at least transferring FF into an 'add on' for Facebook?
- Jim Connolly
Kol, fb platform and openness, primarily.
- Paul Buchheit
i made a post here - http://www.centernetworks.com/friendf... - one interesting note - maybe FB keeps FF running nice and smooth to keep the early adopters happy as it's a great way to get new features out to them via this channel... just a thought.
- Allen Stern
Wow. I've had to eat my words before but these are the best-tasting ones yet!
- Akiva Moskovitz
from BuddyFeed
Akiva, just add salt. You know which kind :)
- Micah Wittman
These are the best words I could have expected by Paul. There is obviously a cultural difference between the two platforms and audience and I'm assuming both the former FF team and the FB team recognize that and are sensitive to the community. Thank you Paul and I hope you are feeling better....
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
Allen, you're in good company on that thought - there were musings on that concept right after the buyout.
- Micah Wittman
Damn, 20+ likes within a matter of 2 minutes.
- Itachi
I feel a few "I told you so's" coming though... :-)
- Jesse Stay
Thanks Paul. Glad you're working on maintaining/improving performance. I've definitely seen issues here. Looking forward towards your influence and changes over at the blue giant.
- Mark Krynsky
Paul - thank you for letting us know, and I do hope you feel better!
- Jennifer Dittrich
The big question though is will FriendFeed continue to add new features? There's a difference between that and it going away. (and hence my argument w/ Scoble the other day)
- Jesse Stay
Paul: Seriously weird that you're there reading this, and totally ignoring each relevant, yes no question. No one's asking you to pre announce anything - just genuinely concerned (and increasingly so) that they do NOT include developing for FF.
- Jim Connolly
Jesse: Paul answers that question - BOOM - rumour mill dies and we finally get something positive to say. Ya know what - we won;t get an answer though. He's reading this, he knows the answer, but he won't.
- Jim Connolly
Jesse: For now, FF has more features than any other platform for this type of niche. There's some catching up to do before I'm worried about new features.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
AWESOME!! Thanks for helping to quell some concerns Paul. Looking forward to what comes next, but hope that FF never dissappears also.
- Travis Koger
from iPhone
Shouldn't we be asking the facebook guys, and let Paul keep working? Or is he wearing many hats (friendfeed head honcho and facebook openess builder)?
- Mark Essel
from iPhone
Paul: I'm right, right? There's something stopping you from saying that you are no longer adding new features to what 'we' know as Friendfeed?
- Jim Connolly
Not for nothing, but I took my friendfeed embed off my tiny blog for a few weeks after the facebook buy out. There was just this empty spot on my eyesore of a website, so I put the embed back. We care because we like the connections we've made here and don't want to lose them. It's personal for us to.
- Mark Essel
from iPhone
Paul: Amazing how quickly you guys have adopted the Facebook attitude to silence. Pity.
- Jim Connolly
Paul: blink twice if you will add new features to FF. I won't tell anyone, honest.
- Edward Zwart
FWIW he did just upgrade servers. My e-mail notifications are almost real-time. Sounds to me like they're still improving the service.
- Jesse Stay
Jim: Don't blame Paul on that, it's not fair. He's only allowed to say so much at this point but I'm very satisfied on what he said.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
Jesse: The questions not if they keep the servers running - we want to know if this is a dead platform.
- Jim Connolly
Jim: in Paul's defense Facebook's PR is more controlling than FriendFeed's was. I'm sure he's having to consider the effects his words will have on other people inside Facebook. But, I'm VERY HAPPY that Paul is here giving us hints as to what's coming. I wish it had happened six weeks ago so we wouldn't have lost so many people, but maybe that would happen anyway.
- Robert Scoble
Jim, there may be a few new things, but as I said, the team is mainly working on fb platform and openness, so it's unlikely that there will be any big new features of ff (except maybe one that I've been thinking about for a while...).
- Paul Buchheit
Did the Walrus think about Feed Splicing? :-)
- Robert Scoble
Paul: Finally - THAT'S what we were wondering.
- Jim Connolly
Cool Dude: Need it to have a classier forum than the parent; Parent is still good but the options here make it just a bit nicer.
- ThatDBD
Paul: Pity. At least we now know not to expect any developments or improvements. Thanks for answering the question. Whilst it confirmed my fears, it's good to know what's happening.
- Jim Connolly
I have no problem with FB integration (notice my drool above). Hoping for good friend conversion tools to bring subscribers over as friends or fans on Facebook from FriendFeed. (Connect.registerUsers FTW!)
- Jesse Stay
As a result - Jim has left the platform.
- Jim Connolly
Jim: this is a change from last week, by the way. My sources were telling me that we weren't going to get any new features and now Paul is refuting that and saying we might get one new feature here.
- Robert Scoble
I'm still drooling - anyone have a towel?
- Jesse Stay
Jesse: I'll buy you a virtual one over on Ning.
- Robert Scoble
personally, i would be happy just to have FF not fall apart and die. given the post-acquisition situation, anything beyond that is gravy!
- Joe Silence
Robert, I heard Ning is dead - care to send me one on Facebook? ;-)
- Jesse Stay
Robert, think of it as 20% time. If there's a feature I want, I'll just add it :)
- Paul Buchheit
Thank you for the clarification, Paul, and hope you are feeling better.
- WorldofHiglet
a communication channel that will be around and getting improved no matter what happens, our blogs :D I'll be commenting on yours Jim. 20%, that's a helluva light better than 0%, that's actually much more than I expected. Could we crowd source funding to buy you more %?
- Mark Essel
Even if there no new features in Friendfeed, I am happy with Friendfeed just staying on.
- ashish
how many users are there on friendfeed is there any chance we could buy it out (and get a full time dev staff back)? This platform rules, the dev team is incredible (albeit on facebook stuff now).
- Mark Essel
Paul, if you wanted me to bake you some cookies, all you had to do was ask, GEEZ.
- Derrick
Question: how many facebook bucks do we have to buy in total to get Paul and team working on friendfeed more of the time (100% ;)
- Mark Essel
Twitter doesn't accept cupcakes any more (just check Foursquare when at their offices). How about FriendFeed? :-)
- Jesse Stay
Mark, I'm okay with better Facebook integration. There's a lot of power in that (hence my drooling).
- Jesse Stay
I've got mixed feelings Jesse. I have friends on facebook. Then I have people that get excited by the same stuff that I do on friendfeed
- Mark Essel
Mark, I'm really hoping it ends up the best of both worlds - that would be really cool
- Jesse Stay
im going back to efnet - i got a bus for 7pm - anyone want on? :-P
- Allen Stern
I don't think you can mix the two sites at all. This has been repeated over and over. FriendFeed's technology might be portable, the concept, no.
- Jorge Escobar
Is it too late to do something about it. If it's a question of funds, can't we raise some? I mean this is the best communication platform I've come across yet. Facebook could be, if they just handed over the reigns to Paul, but its unlikely that sort of shift could happen.
- Mark Essel
Is the user perceived need of a full time devoted dev staff a fallacy?
- Mark Essel
I think you could make the case that some sites and services can in fact be "done" at some point, and simply require resources to keep them up and running.
- Ken Sheppardson
Ken: That's a potential advantage of turnkey application-level hosting such as App Engine: the resources to keep them up and running are almost entirely outsourced. ~All costs are variable costs, monetization improves over time, variable costs decline over time, so services that are "done" can literally just coast.
- Daniel Dulitz
They could open up something like friendfeed. Distributed social networks, with many servers would make search more challenging (search like status could help). The Internet keeps on chugging, it's a distributed information network that's been alive for many years. Our social networks should live, as does the underlying Internet.
- Mark Essel
Nice Daniel, I've been having fun playing around there (frankensearch.appspot.com). I'm using it to get to learn a little more about scala and lift now.
- Mark Essel
might be a full-time job times 2 or 3 for any fresh devs - safe to say Paul's got a bit of a head-start which changes that equation significantly! .... Also maybe almost as important is simply keeping spammers in check - that makes the difference between a ghost town vs the happy place here we want to keep coming back to enjoy ...
- Dan Freeman
Istanbuldan buyuk bir eferimi hakketti bu cocuklar, bizim icin calisiyorlar
- MobilAdam
from fftogo
Yes, this helps a lot. Thank you, Paul. We were beginning to fight amongst ourselves over these things.
- Kamilah Gill
I bet a good contextual advertising box off to the side could generate 35-50million dollars in 6 months with a user base of 1 million people. The assumption is that the average user spends 100-200 bucks on the site making purchases they'd normally make anyway and the affiliate percentage goes to the social host.
- Mark Essel
Friendfeed's health needn't be measured by the team's willingness to add new features. Shovels haven't changed in hundreds of years, but nobody is running around saying shovels are dying. A shovel is a great tool --a simple one, at that. If anything, I'd take away features on FF, but that's just me. Thanks for jumping in, Paul.
- Chris Baskind
Chris: the problem is that a shovel doesn't get more utility the more people that use it. FriendFeed does.
- Robert Scoble
I think the problem is that some people feel extra messianic some days (which is perfectly okay), and then refuse to see/believe/accept when others don't feel the same way AND point it out. The refusing part is not really okay, I guess.
- Michael Bravo
Thanks for these reassuring words Paul. Have been working hard to get more Flickr users over here after the recent rash of censorship there. Friendfeed's TOS and lack of censorship is a breath of fresh air compared to Flickr.
- Thomas Hawk
I wouldn't say lack of censorship, but community moderated filters. ;)
- CW™
I think you're unnecessarily complicating the discussion by adding new vocabulary, Robert. Now you're talking scale, not features. A product needn't expand its feature set to remain useful. Feature creep is the devil, anyway. ;-)
- Chris Baskind
You can’t predict what the future of technology will bring; so trying is a fool’s game. You can only adapt to the new realities as best you can. Paul's word is that it is still worth the time to invest in FF the tool. The tool may stay in this form but that's still a better design for me than Twitter. If FF is a shovel, Twitter is a spoon feature-wise. Audience volume-wise, it is the reverse.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
"Feature creep is the devil." truer words!
- Joe Silence
Ok here's an example of what the social media + contextual ads could like like (sorry can't embed iframe twitter they go full screen so I showed it with friendfeed). But the idea is clear: http://victusmedia.com/social-... This works by sending your tweet stream to zemanta, and then does some backend stuff (which we're working on improving) to get relevant ads from amazon
- Mark Essel
I've been rough on you guys in some comments around, but I'm VERY encouraged to see that you guys see a future for FF. Thanks for shining some light, Paul.
- Scott of Two Countries
A respectable amount of information. Thank you.
- Matthew DeVries
Chris: Pownce had more "features" than Twitter did, yet it died. So did other aggregators like Jaiku. It's not "features" that matter in social software. Well, at least not completely. It's a combination of features with crowds that matter. If the crowds leave FriendFeed has a lot less utility to everyone than if they flow in. Look at this item here. Why is it interesting? Because there's people here talking about it.
- Robert Scoble
take your time PB Bear take your time
- Thomas Power
This is definitely more of the answer we were looking for. Thanks, Paul.
- Alex Scoble
All I can say is "thank you" for letting us know what's going on. I'm glad to hear FF will be around for the foreseeable future. :-) LONG LIVE FRIENDFEED!
- Jason is Sassy
I can't find any wave that is even remotely comparable with friendfeed's conversation, if you found one will you invite me? (muzzle at googlewave)
- Emme Ci
Great news, I await the new functions eagerly
- Mo Kargas
YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is the best thing I've seen ALL day!! woo hoo!! Thanks Paul :) {{{ HUG }}}
- Susan Beebe
Just a few words of assurance go a long way, Paul. Thank you for finally giving us something more solid to stand on. It's been frustrating for a lot of us waiting for the other shoe to drop and this news makes it much easier to keep investing time in FriendFeed. Please don't be shy about reaffirming that it's not going away on a regular basis because it's always good to hear.
- Lindsay is in 20-ten
I will say it for the least time! Friendfeed kicks ass :). The rest who is saying friendfeed is dying. please SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!
- alfred westerveld
Tnx Paul, people just want to see that are not "alone"
- CantorJF
from FreshFeed
"As a result - Jim has left the platform. - Jim Connolly" - Was this guy ever on the platform?! A quick glance at his most recent posts [first page] show pretty much 100% of posts made from other platforms. Cut him and his blood runs blue. Twitter blue :)
- 1x29
IF you glance over the Right Wing guys publications-there is some serious Terrorism encouragement from those sociopaths. This looked like a real strong example of what they are encouraging their followers to do??? Been saying we need to pay attention they are respectable foes to intelligence and their agenda is to win at all costs. Dudes they are great foes, need to,got to, have to pay attention to what they are doing. Peace love your neighbors dudes.
- ThatDBD
@ThatDBD I think you're responding to the wrong thread...
- Lindsay is in 20-ten
It's fascinating that so many people seem worried about new features. Until recently Twitter added almost no features at all and yet it continued to grow in popularity. FriendFeed's recent slump is all about perception, not tech.
- Eoghann Irving
these conversations take too much time for narcisists with tight schedules (stars). Publicity skyrocketed Twitter to the limelight. Friendfeeds champions are tech geeks, and folks that love chatting and sharing. There aren't many of us though. Give us time, or let us own the platform with a public ipo /buyin from facebook. Free friendfeed!
- Mark Essel
from iPhone
Looks like it's official then: FriendFeed lives! On new servers, even! (At least for now...)
- Dennis Jernberg
This is great news! Thanks, Paul, for the update, and if you get a hankering for a feature, great! I'm fine with the tech being your personal sandbox in exchange for keeping the service alive. Robert, I hope this means we'll see more of you and your family - and hear from the ones who have mastered the art of rolling over. Johnny, thanks for having the courage to ask the hard questions (and Louis for helping you frame the issues.) wow - life feels good again!
- MaryB, BrandingBroadOfFF
from iPhone
This is brilliant news from Paul! Now can we put this FriendFeed is dying business to rest please? It's a self fullfilling prophecy because by saying FF is dying, folks begin leaving, causing a downward spiral which would then cause it to come true!
- technogran
Wan't it to stay? Then begin spreading the word! Get others to use it! At the moment its not mainstream so encourage ordinary users to use FF! The more popular it becomes the less likely it is to fold.
- technogran
technogran: sorry, today you see what's going on. Bing? Displays your Facebook and Twitter tweets. Google? Twitter. Where's FriendFeed in this equation? Now do you get why FriendFeed is destined to be a tiny niche player and why the real action is on Facebook?
- Robert Scoble
Robert, if FF gives me what I'm looking for, why do I care where "the real action" is? If FF serves its niche well, what's the downside?
- Scott of Two Countries
Robert, do you mean that Google doesn't index Friendfeed posts? Friendfeed is the first site that comes up if you search for my name.
- Victor Ganata
Excellent point Victor - but FF only imports a small % of twitter's posts. Ergo Google is still not getting Twitter.
- Roberto Bonini
@Scobleizer - this item is not interesting because of the conversation. it's interesting because of who it's from, and what he said. The fact that there's a conversation around it and that conversation is easy to find and read is a bonus (a feature) that sets this service head and shoulders above others (IMHO). There's really not much interesting in the comments here, if you ask me. You could get rid of all the comments that aren't Paul's and the value of the entry doesn't diminish that much.
- Chris Heath
That isn't to say that conversations around items aren't ever useful or valuable (or interesting as robert says)... but in this case i would say it's who it's from and what he said.
- Chris Heath
Chris: you nailed, in a single paragraph, why Twitter is winning. You now can choose who shows up on your screen and under what context. Well, I can because I have list support. Everyone else will get that next month. Victor: Roberto is right. I barely see ANY of the good stuff I see on Twitter come over here. Well, it comes here because of my favorites feed, but that isn't in nearly as useful a form as it is over at http://www.twitter.com/scoblei...
- Robert Scoble
Robert, you keep saying that's the reason Twitter's winning - I can do that in Facebook and FriendFeed as well.
- Jesse Stay
Well, the problem is that Google doesn't seem to index tweets as well as it indexes Friendfeed posts. And Google has never been able go inside Facebook's walled garden. Hopefully that will change.
- Victor Ganata
(and I have been able to for the last year or so)
- Jesse Stay
Victor, that changed today - see ReadWriteWeb's post. Facebook is opening up public status messages to search engines now.
- Jesse Stay
Why is Twitter/Facebook/FriendFeed a zero sum game? I use both Twitter and FriendFeed a lot - they have different strengths - and they feed into each other. Facebook I use less, but that's a personal issue because I simply like it less. Why does there have to be a winner? And +1 Scott, if I'm in the niche market that FF is serving and I'm happy with it, why should I care if "the real action" is on Facebook? If that's the case, I'll take FF's "fake action," thank you very much.
- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
Paul: Thank you for letting us know status as much as you are able. The fact that you took time to write anything says a lot. So thank you for that. And thank you for FriendFeed in general. It truly does rock. Have a great day.
- Morgan Haley
Why don't you just give us all Facebook accounts for the one's that don't have them and be done with it. But the Turbocharged FF/FB accounts!!
- Gene Williams
@Gene, sorry, you'll have to wait for a FB invite like everyone else!
- Andrew C
@Andrew Oh that sucks, I'm still waiting for my Facebook invite. Do you have one to spare?
- Patrik Johansson
Kol: That's pretty neat. Wish it was shorter like wave.com or gwave.com (Google owns gwave.com anyway) or something.
- Nick Humphries
i think this @googlewave.com email address is a temporary thing during testing. after it goes live you should be able to just use it with your google account. at least that's what i think:)
- Taylan Aydınlı
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 aka. Slick
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
Karoli -- It appears as if there's a batch of emails going out now. Keep checking.
- Christopher A Carr
<- Waves hello! :) I'm at holger.eilhard@googlewave.com
- Holger Eilhard
hello holger, can you pls send me invite? fatihkurtoglu@gmail.com
- Mehmet Fatih Kurtoglu
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
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... ;-)
- Walt Ruppar
I agree with you on this. Been playing with it in the dev preview and now in the released version and until I get people I know on there and reasons to discuss or collaborate then I don't see the value. The concept is excellent, the execution is excellent, I just don't think the product is what people are expecting.
- Keith Bennett
When I first saw the release video of Wave it was clear this wasn't something that would be for you to invite all your friends to. I'm surprised at your harsh review in such a fast manner -- you opened it up to the world of your "friends" to play in the sandbox -- but did you actually have a mission? You actually point out that this has great potential for group work. It's about...
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- Elaine Young, Ph.D
Writing off Wave at this point is a bit like walking into a hardware store, picking up a hammer, walking around the store looking for stuff to hit and declaring "Why would I ever want a hammer? This is a waste of time." For teams and workgroups looking to improve the way they communicate and collaborate, Wave might be a great tool. For others, not so much.
- Ken Sheppardson
Elaine: you are hoping for something more in depth? Come back in a month after things settle out and developers ship some real tools for it. Welcome to our real time world. Why do you assume that normal people will give ANY tool more than an hour before they decide whether it sucks or not?
- Robert Scoble
The amount of hype this thing got will NOT be realized by a collaboration scenario. I had this years ago with Ray Ozzie's tools. Geesh.
- Robert Scoble
Oh, I'm not arguing that it's over-hyped. That's the nature of the real time social media hype echo chamber we live in these days. :-) That's not to say it isn't a cool tool. BTW, I really miss Groove. :-(
- Ken Sheppardson
I won't believe for a second that Google created Wave to be anything less than an entrance into competition with Facebook for mass users. Google does one thing very well for mass usage, Search. The other things are great tools and have a base, but this was a Social Networking play, disguised as a collaboration tool. I think Robert is right, this is NEVER going to match the hype.
- Patrick Boegel
I think you're absolutely right, Robert. I got my invite, all excited, signed up, added a friend, and.... *fizzle*... it's chat, it's IM, it's a bad twitter client... I hope it will evolve into something worthwhile.
- Jan Ole Peek
I always understood wave as the next evolution of xmpp - something google envisaged when they first got their hands on jabber. Something distributed merging the features of instant messaging, forum and newsgroup. It was not aimed at twitter or facebook, it was more aimed at some of the live features of Notes and Groupwise and forums. PS: the hype it got is the same as every time google...
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- Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)
I've been a wavesandbox user for months and today I got both my wave invite and as it just so happens I also got my threadsy invite. Suffice to say I'm much more excited about threadsy! Why? because it's actually helpful.
- Bob Stewart
It's clearly not a 1:1 replacement for email and its early yet. This platform is made for customization. As soon as the development community catches up with concern/demand then I think Wave will be far more refined and valuable as a productivity tool. I think it's way too early to say its overhyped but it certainly makes for a great blog title :) Have a great time out in HMB with Chase today.
- Jim Goldstein
How about that, you're absolutely right Robert.
- Peter Kruit
I think I mentioned a month ago that people were going to be overwhelmed by this and it may be too soon to launch to the public.
- Jesse Stay
This is one of those times where I'm happy to let the gang of 2000 beat it up before getting in.
- Stuart Miniman
You are in the gang of 2000. Sorry, Stu.
- Louis Gray
Imagine a Twitter network with five people on it, none of whom actually work on any of the same projects you need to finish this week.
- Daniel J. Pritchett
Am I the only one who has been puzzled when people started saying "this is gonna be the new facebook/twitter"? I watched the whole 1.5 hour demo video and that thought never crossed my mind, nor did using it with dozens upon dozens of people at a time. The only things I saw them demo was a variety of tasks between a handful of friends or colleagues. Robert's right, when you've got a ton...
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- brendan
I collaborate with others to actually do things. Yes, Wave is young, but damn! I see its potential and I declare it awesome.
- ‘-.-’ Tutivillus Grift
Google Wave passes the twitter test. Lots of folks didn't get twitter (and still don't) when it first appeared. GW will follow a similar trajectory..geek early adoption and later mass adoption. I like it that people don't quite get GW which means that people will use it in multiple ways, as they do twitter. I project that it will live up to the hype much like the iPhone.
- Jim Posner
Or it'll follow the FriendFeed curve: a few geeks will get it, use it, become dedicated to it, it'll never see mass adoption, then the engineers will get recruited to work on other projects and the technology will just get folded into other systems...
- Ken Sheppardson
My understanding is the intent was to re-invent email. So I see the gmail population eventually ending up on GW. Google as a rule has had few bombs. Certainly the GW platform will evolve (filters) to address some of the concerns Robert has.
- Jim Posner
interesting review, i will have to check it out for myself! twitter(at)locspoc
- Loc
Can't wait to see how the users evolve ways of using it that help to moderate the wave. Appreciate the fact that Robert and others (some of you) are sharing this experience and these diverse reactions.
- Holly Rae
Agreed, Scoble. I don't see this as a good friendfeed replacement anymore.
- Ahsan Ali aka. Slick
There is Etherpad and Zenbe ShareFlow. I would wait and see how GoogleWave evolves.
- Wins Fern
Nice to see you present some critical thoughts on this, and I must say that your comments seem very sensible! I would also like to point to services like Etherpad when it comes to real-time collaboration on documents, and I also think there seems to be (potentially) a lot of noise in Google Wave. It will be interesting to see though :-)
- Reidar
It’s time to get information in a faster and more efficient way. With KwiClick, you don’t need to go back and forth between pages to find the right search result
- Thierry
Yeah, I finally figured out that this isn't brand new. Just for some reason it took almost two weeks for my version to want to update.
- Mathew™ one of a kind
Digsby helps you save time by letting you manage all your IM, email, and social network accounts from one easy-to-use free application. http://www.digsby.com
- Mitchell McKenna
from Bookmarklet
In the end, they're a company, they gotta make money. I like that their trying different ways to still offer the software for free. You can always just click no to the crapware, or turn off the option to donate cpu cycles.
- Mitchell McKenna
I agree that they need to make money, I don't dispute that, and the crapware thing is fine, but until the lifehacker article (and a few others) they were mum about the CPU cycles. Don't get me wrong, I think Digsby is a great app, I just don't think it was a good move on their part to do what they did. I know they have since come clean on it, I just wish they had been up front about if from the getgo.
- cmiper
agreed, they posted about it on their blog, but that's not enough, it should be more visible in the installer than just putting it deep in the TOS
- Mitchell McKenna
Right, they now have it as a check box during the install steps "Allow Digsby to use CPU cycles for grid computing" or something similar, along with an explanation as to what it will do. It was a step in the right direction.
- cmiper