For some favorite pics from the past 3 days, try http://friendfeed.com/mitchell.... My teeth are super-lousy with very weak tooth enamel. If I don't take care of them, my next dentist visit has 4-6 cavities. :-( - Mitchell Tsai
I *JUST* saw the same sign at a bar in Key West last week. - Gary Bacon II
I didn't know it was called an Oxford comma either, thanks. Wikipedia tells me it's called an Oxford comma, a Harvard comma, or a serial comma :) - Michael C. Harris
Grammar humour? You guys are wonderful! ;) - Abby Martin
I can't wait for the next time at work when I ask someone, "Could you send me that file in Oxford comma delimited format?" - Kevin Shannon
One, of, the, many, things, i've, learnt, on, friendfeed. - Gordon Swaby
I didn't realize it had its own name, either. I always use it. In fact, I tend to list three items out of compulsion to use it... heh - Michael W. May
I will drop this quote and move on. The differences of opinion on the use of the serial comma are well characterized by Lynne Truss in her popularized style guide Eats, Shoots & Leaves: "There are people who embrace the Oxford comma, and people who don't, and I'll just say this, never get between these people when drink has been taken."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...http://snipurl.com/2u2sp - Russellreno
I'm with you Edythe, with a whole lot of reverence to the Comma, and; I also pay due obeisance to the Semicolon. - Parth Awasthi
The semicolon is, alas, woefully under-appreciated. - Joanmarie via NoiseRiver
I overuse the colon and semicolon; at least that is what I am told. ;) - Michael W. May via twhirl
Most punctuation doesn't get its proper due: people over-use the comma when they really should use a colon or a semicolon. Don't even get me started on the lack of em dashes and en dashes; they happen to be perfectly valid and useful punctuation marks that nobody uses anymore. - Mark Trapp
Michael, I want to say you should've used a colon instead of a semicolon there :) - Mark Trapp
I've seen those English dramas too
They're cruel
So if there's any other way
To spell the word
It's fine with me, with me - Joe Dawson
I am yepping this 100%. Although I allow myself little creative leeway with commas, colons, and semi-colons, I am otherwise mortally strict when it comes to proper, classic punctuation and grammar. Yep, I am the guy who has no problem with the em-dash and a semi-colon meeting. - Akiva Moskovitz
I'm a big fan of the semicolon and the serial comma. I suspect publishers wanting to save ink are responsible for dropping the serial comma :) - steplow
Joe Dawson: :) and, yes, I also love the semicolon. - edythe
I worked at a marketing department where they had a policy of not using an Oxford comma - Bjorn Tipling
I will cut some slack where the Oxford Comma (never knew it had a name) is concerned, but NO SLACK for the "apostrophe mistakenly used for plural" crowd. That makes me feel like Conan the Grammarian. - Harvey Simmons
"The speed limit was repealed in 1995 when crude oil dipped to $17 a barrel and gasoline cost $1.10 a gallon ... this Fourth of July weekend, gasoline averaged $4.10 a gallon nationwide, with oil hovering around $145 a barrel. " - Wow, that puts it in perspective. - Gary Bacon II
I read an article before which said at $4/gallon, every 5 MPH over 60 MPH essentially adds 20 cents to the price of gas. - Scott Watermasysk
Funny thread comment re: the constitution in there. I can hear Jimmy Carter's energy crisis speech now..."by 1981 this nation will be free of it's dependence on foreign oil..." Er, I think not. - BISQ
In the words of Sammy Haggar, "I can't drive 55." - alanoakes
Is 55 some magic number? None of the changes in engine technology or whatever in the past 30 years affects that point of efficiency? Just curious and a little surprised. - felix
Want some real perspective? My 2000 Pontiac Grand Am averaged 26 MPG. The Model A Ford... 26 MPG. Figure that one out. - Brian Norwood
55 is actually a magic number, felix. Actually 60mph. In wind tunnel tests, most cars' fuel efficiency drops off severely over 60mph. - J. Phil
I find this statistic slightly depressing actually. I wonder what the bell curve is for global weight in terms of body mass index or something. - J. Phil
Clearly we need a better fat distribution algorithm. - felix
kind of reminds me of the Digg algorithm.... we try and fix the hunger algorithm and promote people to the well fed page and we clearly over do it. - Stefan Hayden
Mike, of the voice to text companies out there, which do you use? And if you don't - can I offer you a SpinVox account, on me? :) Mail me at james.whatley@spinvox.com - James Whatley
I actually do no allow reception to pass my calls to VM at Wexler. They must IM them to me. Have not worked out the Cell Phone end yet but SpinVox looks like it might be worth a try. - Joel Ordesky
Yes. Think before you record a video comment - Andy Roberts
voicemail is for your mom. And i mean that quite literally and warmly. - Marko
The voicemail issue is not really about you - it should be about your customers. I prefer email to voice mail but I have clients who prefer the phone. For me to tell them how to reach me would be somewhat arrogant. Sure, I prefer email but whatever communications methods my clients and partners are comfortable with is what I need to use. - Barry Graubart via twhirl
I don't find it so bad now with the iphone. In the UK, orange used to have a service where a human operator would take a message and txt it to you. That was great. - Robin Barooah via MojiPage Bot
It all just rolls to my email inbox (and my mobile), so still has value. - Norman Guadagno
It's a must for me. I spend too much time in meetings not to have it since I'm an IT Consultant/Systems Integrator. For some people, I suppose it's not really useful anymore though. - Jason Huebel
only use it as an answering machine now... email has crushed it as a medium for group informing IMO - Tim Elliott via twhirl
I use YouMail, which sends me an email, sms and transcribes it. Yes, I use it. - Vince DeGeorge
Anymore? I have successfully avoided using it for many years. I never liked it to begin with. - Tom Harrison
Almost 100% email - why leave a voicemail when most people are instantly connected to email throughout the day. - Wayne Schulz
Voice mail is essential, because the most useful feature of a cell phone is the OFF button. - Dewald Pretorius
I find it most useful when I'm out and about in an area of poor coverage - Robin Barooah via MojiPage Bot
I have a friend who has forwarded his phone to his wife and lets her be his voicemail. He has done this more than once for weeks at a time, and loves it very much. - Tim Wright
@Dewald I couldn't agree more with you. Cellphones are electronic leeches. Voicemail allows us to disconnect ourselves from them when necessary. - Jason Huebel
I use it on my mobile phone. We don't have landlines at the office anymore. I also have it on my home landline, but that's hardly ever used now. People know the best way to get me is via mobile - voice or text, or even twitter DM, which goes to sms anyway. IM is another good way to get my attention. - jjprojects
completely turned it off and I tell people not to leave me a voice mail. been like this for years. - Loic Le Meur
does YouMail have ads or anything? I have a account but not sure if I want to switch?? - Aaron Myers
Coverage is so bad in south Louisiana that I can't go without it or I'd miss too much. - Garrett Guillotte
i use spinvox, i believe you covered it - converts voicemail to text messages & email - Zee from WeDoCreative
Visual Voicemail has made it bearable again but generally I try to avoid it all together. - David Recordon
Call my phone and you will get your answer: I hate voice mail. - Robert Scoble
I hope all the voice mail naysayers aren't the same rude people taking calls in the middle of a face to face conversation, or in a restaurant or any of the other places where calls annoy everybody around? - Brian Sullivan
my voice mail tells you to send me an email. :-) - Robert Scoble
I don't usually use the word 'never', so we'll just say that I 'hardly ever' listen to vm. - Sonciary Honnoll
No one actually calls me, although I might add that I don't personally like leaving voicemail messages. I e-mail people and people e-mail me - so much easier. - Cyvros/fyc
It gets emailed to me as an mp3. If I don't have your number in my phone, or you use Skype that comes up Unknown Numer or 0000012345 - you go to VM and I'll get an mp3 a minute later. - Aaron Brazell
Love YouMail. Let's you customize message to specific caller, as well as choose from many vanity messages, also selectable by caller. I spend at least 50% of my work day in meetings or conference calls so I have to have VM. - Kevin Shannon
You people are sad ;) Don't you have family members that call you? Doctors confirming appointments? The car repair place? The kids' school? I mean really, I'd prefer to talk to my grandparents on the phone, and if I didn't have voicemail (or if they didn't), I'd miss a lot of things... - Gabe Wachob via twhirl
@Aaron, there is a small ad with the email and transcript - at least I think - it's small enough or non-intrusive enough that I couldn't say for sure. For the voicemail portion, there are no ads that I've ever "heard." I've always been 100% satisfied with it - though please stay away from the corny greetings they offer and do your own. - Vince DeGeorge
Gabe if one of those people calls I call them back. No VM needed. - Robert Scoble
@Vince Some of the vanity messages are OK. I'm partial to the one with Pam and Michael from "The Office". I was considering the one that says "Due to the recent earthquake this call can not be completed", but it might scare the cr@p out of my mother.. - Kevin Shannon
We don't have a concept of voicemail in India.. and I hope VM doesn't catch up here. - Muthu Ramadoss
Of course I use voicemail. It's becuase I don't pick up the phone. - Gerard Barberi via twhirl
Text messages. They are faster and I get them when I'm in meetings. - Travis Murdock
I do have voicemail on my phone but everyone knows I never check it. They text or e-mail me if they really need me. I think I check my voicemail when I realize that I have about 10. - Candace Holly
I use email but a few of my clients still use my Grand Central number. - kre8 via twhirl
I don't mind voicemail, most people don't bother and text me. Trick is to stay on top of it and not let them pile up, unified messaging is nice. Visual Voicemail is one iPhone feature I did appreciate, when it worked. - Andrew Feinberg
I am completely off of voicemail at work and home, but still access it on my mobile, of course - John McCrea
I use youmail for my cell phone. I would use GrandCentral more if more people called me. - Christian Burns
I stll have it on cell and office but office forwards to email. Cell vm, I forget to check so most people don't bother. - Karen Swim via Alert Thingy
Using PhoneTag (was Simulscribe) so just get emails and sms with transcript. Hardly ever need to listen to them and they just come in with the rest of my comms. Saves a heap of time. - Jed White
Likewise - Rolls to my inbox. Instantly screened .... delete ... delete .... :) - Charlie Anzman
I hate hate hate voicemail. Waste of time. Interface sucks. - Andy Wibbels
I get voice mail now and then and it sort of annoys me. I find email so much better for leaving messages. There's a place for phone conversations but voicemail ... I dunno. - AJ Kohn
I am trying to push people towards sending me text, but - Gabe Wachob via twhirl
Rarely does anything go to voice mail any more. Reading these comments makes me wonder why mine are note forwarded to my inbox. I need to do that. - Sal Distefano
I HATE voicemail, but it is a necessary evil for me. Visual Voicemail on the iPhone 3G should make things easier to manage for me, but I look forward to a voicemail-free future someday soon. - Granteezy
I don't use voice mail, I have a hearing difficulty... - Jack
I use voicemail but simply for work purposes! - Joe Dawson
i hate voicemail - why can´t people just send me an email? - Dieter Schwarz
i find it very useful with skype and also enjoy my cellular provider's free vm service. let's my buddies async messages pretty much like e-mail. greatly reduces callbacks on missed calls. time and money saver for me. - Berk D. Demir via twhirl
I use VM at work so little that I have to "refresh" my memory of the system. Consequently, I usually have about 18 or so messages in the hopper. Anyone important emails me. Most of the VM are from sales or recruiters - Robb via twhirl
if a person is not reachable, send SMS/email.. never felt the need for voicemail! - Rakesh
All my voicemail messages ask people to email me, as I'll be slow in responding to email. - Jeremiah Owyang
haha jeremiah - re-read what you wrote :) - Allen Stern
It sounds like Jeremiah is telling callers/emailers -- "Piss off I don't want to talk to you" ? or is it a typo ;-) - Brian Sullivan
all my friends know not to leave a msg and just hang up. We can see who called and if we want to know why, we will call back. - Jack Scalfani
iPhone and SpinVox are both great solutions. but truthfully I hate voicemail. - Sam Pullara
GrandCentral was a great concept but Google doesn't seem to have done anything with it since they bought it. A combination of their web-based voicemail and iphone-style voicemail would be ideal. - Charlie via twhirl
I use GrandCentral with email notifications that someone called me. If they're in my address book, it tells me who it was and I just call them back. I rarely actually log in to listen to the voicemails! - Kenneth LeFebvre
Come to think of it, I haven't used voicemail in months. - Carolyn
Visual Voicemail on the iPhone actually makes it very efficient for me. - James
for years now I have switched off voice mail and asked everybody I know to so the same, for two reasons: (1) it always ends up making users pay for more phone time: leaving the message + reading the message + calling back. Also, when a friend calls you and you are using voicemail, they are transferred to voicemail: more money for the phone company, less for your friend. And (2) with the existance of email and (if you want to pay extra) SMS, it just doesn't make sense to use voicemail anyway . - µnauta
Wow theres a lot. ...a lot of a lot ... the likely cause was the other day when what's his name pointed his Nokia at his monitor, giving an infinite picture-in-picture of the stream he was running on qik - Dan Covington
All: an API client malfunctioned or intentionally spammed with these comments. We disabled that API client to prevent the problem, and we are reaching out to the developer. - Bret Taylor
"There has been much talk of Twitter users moving over to FriendFeed since Twitter replies were down for the majority of last week. Twitter announced that they were back on Saturday in their blog, but seeing as the outage may have inspired some users to flock to FriendFeed, I decided to take a look at the 3rd-party applications and scripts that enhance the FriendFeed functionality.
For those of you moving on to FriendFeed’s greener pastures, here are 13 essential tools for an organized, “noise”-free experience." - Russellreno via Bookmarklet
I thought about making NoiseRiver a closed alpha (by invites) actually. But then told to myself: to hell with hesitation, let's make it and face bugs together! ;-) - directeur via NoiseRiver
Directeur: Have you check you inbox for all your new followers lately? - Russellreno
@Russellreno : ouch! It's full! I'm subscribing to many of them, maybe I'm skipping some but I'll definitely see that again :) - directeur via NoiseRiver
Thanks Patrick! Actually without the great feedback from you folks that wouldn't happen... The first 20 minutes of the launch were really HOT :) - directeur via NoiseRiver
D: BTW there is a GM script that will help you subscribe. Google "Better Friendfeed Subscribe to me". After you load it you go into your "People who scribe to me" tab. It adds a superscribe button. - Russellreno
Thanks for the info Russellreno! I'll download it now :) - directeur via NoiseRiver
Actually it helped me a lot these last days, I needed some filtering and I found it funny that the whole thing was colored ;-) - directeur via NoiseRiver
Michael : Nice to have you back then! It's your turn to make something without your wife blaming you ;-) - directeur via NoiseRiver
Robert: The more I worked on this, the more I was amazed by the whole work the FF staff is doing. Seriously it's intuitive, simple and clean and this is thanks to their efforts :) - directeur via NoiseRiver
This looks like it might be pretty cool once the bugs are worked out. - Jason Wehmhoener
Had problems logging in with my email but was able to login with my username. Will give this a spin, cool idea! - Mike Reynolds
looks good, I'll test it out in a bit, as soon as you have the initial kinks worked out :) - Tim Hoeck
Tim: I was stupid, and supposed everyone will use their nicks, some are using their emails while logging in :) Now instead of those 404 I redirect to the login form - directeur via NoiseRiver
Just trying it out now. Like using delicious tags for keywords. - Tom Landini
seems like some gr8 talent is aggregating itself around FF.. is it a culture thing or just b'coz its a kewl project to be working on ? What the true EQ data points for talent attraction at FF ? - Peter Dawson
Wish you a good career with FriendFeed. Any specific thing Gary will work on? - seman
Welcome aboard Gary! Happy FriendFeeding! :*) Hey i LOVE your Mail2FF app! totally cool concept! - Susan Beebe
Cool! (BTW, looks like you folks don't need to buy chairs any time soon) - Ken Sheppardson
Very cool. Nice to see FF growing. Hi Gary...<subscribe> - Mark Krynsky
E just scanned the last day of my FriendFeed output to see if I was getting whiny myself and discovered, except for a couple of joke-y references, I didn't mention Twitter at all. I probably spent more time talking about an fftogo problem (which Benjamin Golub promptly fixed). I suspect that eventually (if not already), the reaction of a few people to Twittter will be - silence... - Ontario Emperor via fftogo
neither, it's the people whining about whining users :) - Jeff Quinton
I hide all Twitter whining threads because it's such a played out conversation. What more is there to say about it? - Mike Doeff
@Ontario Emperor - I guess I was whining about him whining about other people whining too. How far can this go? :) - Jeff Quinton
Will someone explain to me why anyone is complaining about a service that they don't pay for being down? Supreme Court said we have the right to bear arms not the right to bare our souls on Twitter 24/7 - Cathleen Rittereiser
@cathleenritt - even if twitter is free, there is a time investment. after some number of whales the effort isn't worth it. - Ontario Emperor via fftogo
yes it was down :( apparently the web host is still having problems and I'm getting fed up but can't do much about it at this time - Steven Hodson
The best way to stop twitter whining - stop using twitter. I gave up on it about a month ago, and don't even notice the outages (or the whining) anymore. The whining comes from the wishy-washy who can't commit to supporting them or quitting. Just pick a side and move on! - Jason Kaneshiro
Whining users. And here's why: FF has been available and functional since the failwhale started appearing on a daily basis. While I've never suggested anybody ditch Twitter for FF, it has served as a productive and functional alternative. I'm not "done" with Twitter (and *do* sometimes complain about the ongoing problems) but we have a viable choice here so people might as well just use it. - melmcbride
I have offered similar comments as @Cathleen. I can't bring myself to complain about a service that charges nothing. Here's some numbers to put things in perspective 303 million americans 1.9 mil twitter users (so let's say that's 1mil US users) Only 1 in 303 Americans know what Twitter is. If the early adoptersand abusers who have 20,000+ followers or follow 20,0000+ leave the service that means the remaining 1.8 million will once again have a service that works. So go already and stop complaining. - Kevin Shannon
at least twitter realizes what a problem this is. just buy summize please. - MG Siegler
srsly. i hate having to rely on the web version of twitter, first of all, then having the reply tab bork, and then having to go to summize, and hit reply there and pray that twitter works. It's why I only check Twitter once or twice a day now. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
!["Sorry we're OPEN" sign [Luckyred, Pixdaus]](http://pixdaus.com/pics/1215178892eFGuLbq.jpg "\"Sorry we're OPEN\" sign [Luckyred, Pixdaus]")
