Wego Wego

Hmm... Interesting. I think I know how that could happen. I can probably fix it quickly with a hack, or just go ahead and write the code to fix it for real. - DeWitt Clinton

Go for the real fix. - Michael R. Bernstein

Incidentally, how *is* this happening? - Michael R. Bernstein

*Bump* - Michael R. Bernstein

Short answer is that one of your friends listed Digg in their services, and I don't do much to special case the various service profile URLs when feeding them into the CSE. There are some basic heuristics to add wildcards, but apparently that's too broad for Digg urls. The long term fix is to write code and/or patterns on a service-by-service basis. - DeWitt Clinton

@DC: how much more work would it be to turn service-handlers into plug-ins that folks could author up for the project? then you could 'off-load' the server heuristics. - MikeAmundsen

That's similar to what bradfitz did with the social graph api normalization. It uses an open source javascript implementation which people can embed via Rhino. Contributors can add new normalizations to the project. See http://code.google.com/p.... This particular problem is even more mundane though, and it depends on so many idiosyncrasies of the CSE that I'm not sure it is worth the time. - DeWitt Clinton

i suspected as much.no worries. - MikeAmundsen

Does wego-wego respect the 'hiding' preferences I've established? - Michael R. Bernstein

It only uses what it can get via the public, unauthenticated API. But if you subscribed to someone and 'blocked' them, then I suppose it might show up in the API and end up in the index. Take a look here and see if you think the right things are showing up: http://json-indent.appspot.com/indent... - DeWitt Clinton

/me *smiles* at the use of json-indent. you're building a handy lego kit, eh? - MikeAmundsen

DeWitt: no need for json-indent at FriendFeed http://friendfeed.com/api... :) - Benjamin Golub

Forgot about that. I was looking at the page of json results and hit the handy bookmarklet that Gary thought of to format it. I use that bookmarklet all the time now. - DeWitt Clinton

I meant if I hide a service, either for one user or globally. That information does not seem to be evident in the public API. - Michael R. Bernstein

In the current architecture, it would be difficult to honor that. The FF API lists a user's subscriptions or their services or both. The ego-ego backend exposes a CSE for the services side with no knowledge of the subscribers, and the wego-wego backend aggregates that across a user's subscriptions list. Filtering would require the FF API to expose the tuple (subscription, service, hidden), and then wego-wego would need a way to override on a per (subscription, service) basis. - DeWitt Clinton

CSE "ELIMINATE" labels that appear sequentially later than a "BOOST" or "FILTER" label in the cref file might do the trick. I can add this to the list of things to test out. - DeWitt Clinton

Sounds good. - Michael R. Bernstein

But meanwhile, even if wego-wego could show me where that digg subscription is coming from (which was also going to be a feature request) and I hid it in FF, it wouldn't do me any good, correct? - Michael R. Bernstein

Right. Until I implement the ELIMINATE labels, which I wouldn't be able to do with the current data in the FF API anyway, it wouldn't make a difference if you hid a (subscription, service) or not. - DeWitt Clinton

OK, that's what I thought. Out of curiosity though, *can* WW show me where that subscription is coming into the search mix? - Michael R. Bernstein

No, not really because of the way it includes remote files without re-parsing them. If I wanted to maintain more state, which I've thus far avoided but will likely have to relent on, I could make a queryable interface to determine where and how a particular site was included. - DeWitt Clinton

I've been thinking about replacing the current front-end, which was designed quickly using YUI grids, with one built expressly for the iPhone / Android browser. I figure if it works there then it will work fine anywhere. - DeWitt Clinton

The wego-wego site itself -- I plan on tackling the results page later. - DeWitt Clinton

Works well enough for me. Sparse and utilitarian, but then, it *is* a utility. - Michael R. Bernstein

yeah, i see. i think doing an iphone/mobile UI is smart. there's not a lot of dependent UI here, so it would be cool. does jquery play well w/ iphone/win-mobile? - MikeAmundsen

btw - nice trick to preload the CSE using an img tag. - MikeAmundsen

Thanks, though that was probably unnecessary in the end. It doesn't seem to help much -- the first search still blocks loading the CSE, and I'm not 100% sure why. I can rip out jquery easily if needed. Otherwise, jquery does work splendidly on mobile webkit -- the only concern I'd have is the extra DNS lookups (I use the googleapis CDN) and the extra net requests over Edge or 3G, etc. - DeWitt Clinton

i just checked and things work fine on win-mobile. extra requests? - MikeAmundsen

The extra request for the jquery.js file. If I'm not using jquery for anything more than putting the focus in the search box, then I may as well just include the necessary script for that inline in the page. - DeWitt Clinton

Found it. Invalid URL in http://wego-wego.appspot.com/friendf.... Will write a work around. Thanks for the catch! - DeWitt Clinton

I checked in a fix; it will take about an hour to wait for the cache to expire and then I'll retest. - DeWitt Clinton

Please try again now, Tom. Thanks much for the bug report! - DeWitt Clinton

Yeah, didn't catch that on my staging server because of the conditional. Funny thing was that I knew when I added it a few days ago that the conditional debugging would trip me up eventually, and sure enough, it did. - DeWitt Clinton

These are all easy enough to avoid if I took the time to avoid them. I could deploy to an app engine staging server, rather than live, for example. I planned to start behaving better once this is widely released, but I should get in that habit now. - DeWitt Clinton

DeWitt can't you make use of the version number? When I deploy something experimental I deploy it as version 2 which isn't live and can only be accessed by a url like http://2.latest.wego-wego.appspot.com/ - Benjamin Golub

hey, it's all cool - actually *very* cool that the code base is small enough that folks can scan it all in a single page. having so many folks staring over your shoulder might kinda bug you out a bit, eh<g>? - MikeAmundsen

@Mike - no, I'd love it if people read it. That's how Joe caught my use of Main() rather than main() for example. Please feel free to add comments/review to the changelog on code.google.com. - DeWitt Clinton

@Ben - yup -- that's what I meant by "deploy to an app engine staging server" but our comments probably overlapped. - DeWitt Clinton

Yes, we need a Gmail style "this thread has been updated" message. - Benjamin Golub

Every time you see this page a unicorn weeps a little. Seriously though, you found a 404 error. Congrats! - Amani

Did you see the 404 error by exploring and changing one of the URLs or in the normal course of using the app? If it is the latter then I probably have a bug -- can you share what URL caused the 404 page, please? - DeWitt Clinton

I try to type in a persons nickname and I get that error EXCEPT for when I type in Casey as a nickname. - Amani from IM

Okay, that's weird. I can't reproduce the 404, but I'll keep trying. - DeWitt Clinton

Just to be sure i am doing it correcttly, I enter someone nickname (after clicking on the link) and see what the search shows, correct? - Amani from IM

When things go as planned, it starts at http://wego-wego.appspot.com/, you enter a friendfeed username (usually your own), which takes you to http://wego-wego.appspot.com/friendf..., and then you could perform a sample search, like: http://www.google.com/cse.... - DeWitt Clinton

Ran search using a friend's nickname as my profile is private. I can email you info to replicate, if needed.) Update: not seeing same problem when run same searches with different friend's nickname and get multiple pages of (active) results. Odd. - Casey

Ahh, this only works on public profiles. I *definitely* need to make that more clear in the error page! - DeWitt Clinton

Oh, got that it was only for public profiles, am using friend's nicknames to help test. (figured not really an issue since they def know they're part of social graph and info is out there) Yes, saw the warning and was curious what message would come up on private profiles, just the standard unicorn weeping. But the public profile mention upfront seems standard, don't think you need to tend to that vs more substantive features. Know that I'm in minority and limiting myself by having a private feed. - Casey

URL for the weird results bermuda triangle:... more... - Casey

once again i'm reminded that there is an important 'standard' measure for new social apps - the 'Scobleizer Test.' i figure it's the new 'slashdot effect.' devs, take note. if you want to save your unicorns, build your apps so that they pass the 'Scobleizer Test!' [g] - MikeAmundsen

I tested on Scoble while writing the app. I knew that it wouldn't work for this demo, but I figured that it would be an easy win down the road. Like removing all the sleep(1000) calls I stuck in there. ; ) - DeWitt Clinton

"Like removing all the sleep(1000) calls..." LOL - MikeAmundsen