It makes one feel a bit leery of handing out business cards, if only for a second :-) - Ranjit Mathoda

now i also feel bad about handing out my moo cards! ;) - Dieter Schwarz

Looks like I need new cards. :) Mine have never made anyone sweat. - Harvey Simmons

this has to be one of the greatest scenes ever! - Morgan via twhirl

Loved this scene in the book. But couldn't watch the film actually. Don't know why - I didn't like it after reading the book. But this scene is just great! - Anton Nekipelov

Hardly Working's NSFW spoof in this scene: http://www.collegehumor.com/vi... - Ryan Kaisoglus

best scene ever. I'm voting for satire here. The fact that all 3 cards pretty much look the same and they are getting worked up about subtle coloring... can't be serious. - Tsega D

yeah easily one of my favorite scenes ever. when i saw american psycho in theaters i was maybe the only person laughing throughout the whole thing. many people walked out. - MG Siegler

I got so worked up about this scene, I went and bought some cards from Smythson. They were beautiful, but the per-card cost was so high, I didn't like to hand them out. Oh - and they look *nothing* alike. Two are in serif, two in sans, for God's sake. Even the corporate marque is different, and each card has a different margin. - Mat Morrison

this movie is so underrated it's an outrage. the fact that I can't tell with certainty if this movie is satire or not gives it loads of respect in my book. christian bale should've got serious award consideration too. - grant

interesting how relevant the idea of fawning over the business card (80's) is still today. - Brad Coy

I should have it released in the next hour or two - engtech

It lives: http://internetducttape.com/20... - engtech

You are a coding machine! - Phil Ashman

haven't been able to get it to work. it installs fine, but when i open the "friend feed importer console", after a few seconds it displays a bunch of errors ...via AlertThingy - David Adam

I'll try installing it on a clean machine and see what happens... I might have a missing dependency - engtech

Ah, it breaks on machines that don't have the HOME environment variable set. I'll release a fix. - engtech

We have a winner: http://internet-duct-tape.goog... - engtech

w00t it works :) Installed fine, and is currently doing its thing. Thanks a bunch I was just thinking the other day how useful a tool like this would be. Whats it mean when it says "Can't find social graph" though? ...via AlertThingy - David Adam

I put more discussion about the social graph stuff in the blog post. I'm using XFN/FOAF stuff to find the connections between people... doesn't always work well. - engtech

it is running now but is there a way to produce a simple output instead of subscribing? I am now subsribing to some people I really did not want to subscribe to. ;) or better, if that thing could just produce two lists (twitter friend / friend feed twitter list) i could do a very neat comparison in excel myself. ;) - Nicole Simon

hm okay. ran it but have no idea if it aborted or not, but given the amount of friends i haev in both, it seems like it. a pause button at the end might be a good idea. :) waiting for the next version. ;) - Nicole Simon

Alas, Greasemonkey can't work with FF3. - Roger Chen

Looks cool. Where does it store the data to retrieve items marked for later? - Voyagerfan5761

Greasemonkey storage (ie. GM_setValue). Next release will have the option to store it on FF (hack on top of the imaginary friends feature) - Aviv

very cool! I do something similar with google reader using the star system - Nathan Manley

Great idea and I'm sure some users will like it. I almost never revisit backwards so not sure that it's for me. In any case, I'll still install it because the execution looks beautiful. - Mike Reynolds

@Aviv: Ooh, I'll be sure to examine your source code in that case. I'm working on a GM script for my school webmail system, which is infinitely inferior to Gmail yet they insist we use it. (POP is disabled, otherwise I would just pull it into Gmail anyway.) I want a notification of new mail, so the storage should come in handy. Perhaps a hash of the page content... :D - Voyagerfan5761

Way cool! But how come FF doesn't have this as a feature. I think its a must have - Christopher Yeo

Christopher's suggestion ++ - Voyagerfan5761

Thanks Aviv, now I can stop using "like" as a bookmark - Devin Anderson

Regarding the founder's comment: Unbelievable. I think I found why you find fav.or.it so hostile; it looks like it comes from the founder's attitude. [EDIT] And I've never used it, either. Never really saw a use for YANR (yet another news river). Oh no, now someone will steal that acronym and use it as a service name without crediting me! :P - Voyagerfan5761

ouch. Gentlemen, put away your handbags. I saw a pre alpha - a mere concept of fav.or.it back in June last year so I know how far Nick has travelled with this project. At the time he wasn't even sure he had a market for his idea. After kicking him to get it out there, the likes of twine and friendfeed have turned up. Fav.or.it is a really interesting swing on 'conversational media products' and is learning, like everyone else, how to grow up in public... - David Bausola

It's a lot easier to write positive reviews than rough ones, but I've had a real hard time with this product. It was in my "to like a lot" pile for a long time, but it's been quite disappointing. I'd offer anybody here invites, to see if I'm the one dripping with arrogance, but I can't! - Louis Gray

@louis Nick is asking why you blanked some of the core features of the service http://blog.fav.or.it/2008/04/... - David Bausola

Whether Louis is right or wrong is irrelevant in my mind. His reaction spells failure for the project to me. I haven't even used it yet and I don't think I will since he can't even take criticism. If I get frustrated with using a product, it doesn't matter what the features are. If I can't use it, then it's garbage. It's not the features, it's the implementation. I hope for the project's sake he doesn't react this way to all criticism or it's curtains. - Bwana McCall

This is exactly the purpose of a beta product. Throw it in the water and see if it floats. Clearly whether the founder likes it or not, right now it doesn't float.That's fine, it's in testing...Hopefully, they will see how to make it function better... - Anthony Farrior

Sounds like the founder is still in beta too - j1m

I'd just like to point out that Robert Scoble just tried the product here at thenextweb - he LOVED it - its on video, he loves how we are trying to make the blogosphere more accessible to the mass market. - Nick Halstead

There are definitely good aspects to Fav.or.it. But go back to what Paul has discussed around pushing a million features into a product and confusing the heck out of it versus focusing on the user experience through simplicity and getting it right. @David, I did try to find the MemeTracker and focus on that as it's one of the more recent updates, but I was feeling the post was a bit long as it was already, and the core elements contributing to a good user experience had already failed. - Louis Gray

That's a good question Chris. I'm not sure, but a lot of people weren't finding it there. - Paul Buchheit

It's still got the scary-scary factor: will clicking this button make the item go away forever? It doesn't, of course, but maybe if it had a little down-arrow (like More does), and the choices were in a little menu (like More has), then it would be less dangerous-seeming. On the other hand, maybe this isn't a big deal for posts I truly just want to disappear, and once I've used it once I'll know what I'm getting into. I could see being annoyed by the pop-up on repeated use, though. - ⓞnor

My only complaint is that it's right where I keep expecting the "Like" link to be, right to the left of "More". I'll get used to it. I think ⓞnor is on to something with the drop-down idea, though. BTW, when will those menus detect when they're at the bottom of the window and flip up to avoid it? - Voyagerfan5761

Seems to me there could be just three buttons/icons: a pen, a plus, and a minus. Under pen, that's comment. Plus would include Link and Like. Minus would include Unsubscribe and Mute. - Adam Lasnik

I think it would be right to add ... near Hide link to indicate that is will show a dialog. Or make presentation similar to More link, with popup, and show same arrow. And I believe it is right step to extract Hide link to top level, thanks! - Kirill Maximov

thanks for this feature! it will help keep the page tidy and remove the ones we are not interested in reading further. Hope the prompt, after clicking hide, won't be necessary though. - Janette Toral

I don't have a strong use for it. I'd rather have an "I've Read This" feature that hides a post, but will reappear if it gets commented on. Because even posts I don't care about might get comments that I do care about. - Bill Bittner

I'd also like to put in a vote against icons. I think FF has a good balance of icons and text. Very...dare I say...Google-ish. - Bill Bittner

I'd like to second Bill's vote for a link that tells FriendFeed, in effect, that "I'm done with this" and removes it from my feed unless someone makes a new comment on it. - Voyagerfan5761

Looks like an improvement, but here are my comments. 1) You don't know whether clicking Hide will immediately do something. The three dots following the entry as you did it previously was a subtle indicator for "another dialog pops up with furter questions, don't worry." May be OK to ignore that downside, tho, dunno. 2) Please hide all the explanations in the dialog in an expandable "+ Tell me more?" link *below* the action button. 3) May wanna put cancel action into top right of the dialog as X (additionally, or exclusively). - Philipp Lenssen

I like it here. It is one of the more important features for filtering the "noise". I've told people time and time again how to filter data and almost everyone I talked to didn't know it was under "More". (or "Options" before that) Now it's about as obvious as it can get. I also like the wording in the dialogue and that the default behavior will NOT hide entries that have comments and likes. This is definitely a better behavior overall imho. Great job as usual guys. - Bwana McCall

Actually, I kinda like this HIDE feature, however I do feel a bit insecure. What if someone made a great comment ... i will miss that. Perhaps HIDE could just hide the comments and the pictures but leave the headlines. What do you all think? - Christopher Yeo

Christopher: The default behavior will "unhide" entries once they are commented or liked. That's the beauty of it, you won't miss the great comments. - Bwana McCall

Bwana, this was the default behavior, but it's not anymore. The new dialog seems to make "even if it has comments or likes" selection the default (if you opt to hide these types of entries, that is). - Philipp Lenssen

PS (unrelated): Ouch, when you type a comment and then accidentally hit the "Comment" link (before posting) your typed stuff will disappear, and won't come back if you click "comment" again. - Philipp Lenssen

Hide does not appear on http://friendfeed.com/paul tab - Shakeel Mahate

Doesn't work on Google.com/ig very well. - Sam Davyson

Phillip: It isn't the default behavior if the entry already has comments or likes, which in that case it shouldn't be :) FF detects if the entry has comments or likes and changes the default checkbox appropriately. - Bwana McCall

It seems to me that there are three steps to hiding: 1) When you hide something, it gets replaced with the message: "Entry hidden..." Also, at the bottom, there is a link that says "Refresh to view hidden entries." Then if you click on Refresh, this happens... 2) All the "Entry hidden messages..." are hidden as well. Then a link appears at the bottom "Show (number) hidden entries. Clicking on this does this... 3) Shows the hidden entries at the bottom of the page, under a separating line. It works, in a fashion, but may be just a bit more complicated than it could be. - Bill Bittner

And I guess there's another way to accomplish what "Hide" does. Choose "Like" for every post that seems interesting. Then, add a quick link to the "both" link (shows posted that you liked or commented on) under the "Discussion" section in your "Me" tab in your browser bookmarks. That's what I do. I have both the basic FF view and the "both" view in my browser links and toggle between both. - Bill Bittner

I like what Bill Bittner has said. - Mike Reynolds

I notice that the position of the pop up seems to update with JS on browser window scroll (hence a bit of a delay). Why don't you use CSS position: fixed to keep the pop up in the centre of the browser? Is it an issue. I only ask cos I'm using it ;-) - Alex Gawley

I like it, and will probably use it more often now - Aviv

I am amazed at your speed I am now hiding all the twitters - Varun Mahajan

ⓞnor - I imagine the down-arrow will come when they add lots more "hide" options. Paul, how about some popup mouseover text on the hide button that says "don't worry, it's not dangerous, and it's easily undone"...lol - Slippy Lane

I cannot hide this entry! lol - Russellreno

Same here, hide stopped working. Can't hide anything anymore. Halp! :( - Bwana McCall

I found one. I like it. - Russellreno

Paul, is there a limit to the # of hidden items? It seems I've hit a limit. I can't hide anything else unless I unhide a previous hidden entry. - Bwana McCall

I like! Although I'm still holding out for a "only show stuff from my friends, never my friends' friends" mode... - Benjy Weinberger

Too afraid of miss something good unfortunately. - Vince DeGeorge

Oh, and this bit - [Entry hidden - Undo Hidden entries can be found in "show hidden items" at the bottom of the page] - sheer brilliance. - Slippy Lane

@Benjy - well, it appears you can do that for each of your friends individually. I don't imagine a global option will be far behind :-) - Slippy Lane

hide should also exist when on a comment page (oddly enough, comment does appear). I often get pulled from an rss feed to the comment page and hide is often the option that I'm looking for. - Ashton

Bwana, try again, it should be working. Sorry for the trouble. - Paul Buchheit

Yup, it's working again. Thanks! - Bwana McCall

I like Bill Bittner's workaround. I found myself doing that more and more - Christopher Yeo

how about filter view? rather than hide. As in how do I show it again? - martin ollman

may i see who hides me? : ) - Erhan Erdogan

I'm looking for a 'read' function - Joel

Love it! I second the "read" function stated above. Will the RSS feed reflect these settings? If not, then that would be a cool next step. - Phil Ashman

Did you decide to remove the Mute feature under More? - Turker Keskinpala

I hide no one... - Anthony Farrior

How about a "time span" setting if i want to see just the activity in one or more hours? - Anthony Farrior

Thing is, I love the simple web-based FF interface. Too slick to make the switch. FF + Fluid + Fluid plug-ins = winner - Aviv

I don't feel the need to abandon the FF interface. In fact, I see myself doing other activities from within FF - http://ffapps.com/tabs/ - Aviv

Can't wait for this! It's going to be awesome. - Brandon Titus

Its about frackin' time. What took so long? :) - Tony Hung

Yes! My continuous partial attention does a little jig! - Ashton

I don't like the msgs popping up... - terababy

I sure hope it runs better then TWIRL - Noah David Simon

@Noah: Better than twhirl? I've never had issues with it. - Voyagerfan5761

Twirl has not has issues, it just happens to rely on the twitter api being up, which is the unreliable part. As long as the FF API can keep up with demand an Adobe Air app that works as good as twirl would be sweet. - Christian Burns

I'll wait for a non AIR app thank you :) - Steven Hodson

An iGoogle gadget would do me fine :)) - ceebee

THX 4 invitatiojn- guess my computerallergy holds me away from all this kind of internet friendship thing. Somehow too much letters...u know what I mean? Maybe it takes some time to come into that stuff. Virtual??? Prefer real air, trees and touch...talk soon NOAH. - Natascha Engelmann

Ceberius: http://www.google.com/ig/adde?... - Philipp Lenssen

@Philipp : oh wow! thanks! - ceebee

I'll be happy once Adobe AIR comes out for Linux. - possible248

@possible248 labs.adobe.com/downloads/air_linux.html btw ive been running adobe air through wine for over a month here is how you install it with wine www.ubuntu-unleashed.com/2008/03/howto-adobe-air-and-xdrive-desktop-lite.html - d e f c o n

@defcon: I'll bet he'll like that link. I pointed it out over Twitter, but you never know; twhirl supposedly has some issues on Linux platforms that aren't fixed yet. Wine might take care of the problems. And BTW, links are automatically, er, linked if you start them off with http:// - Voyagerfan5761

I much prefer my online services to stay in browser windows - it's too confusing for my poor british brain otherwise! - Slippy Lane

@Slippy: I used to think that about Twitter, until I discovered twhirl... But don't let me influence your decision. ;-) - Voyagerfan5761

Just in case anyone wanted an updated screen shot to watch while they are waiting - http://screencast.com/t/oZHpF3... (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

@Jeremy: Sweet program! At least, the looks are good and it appears to have all the functionality of the site. I won't pry for a release date. :-) - Voyagerfan5761

Just got drag and drop image uploading on share... getting real close!! (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

You coders just constantly amaze me with your ability to whip this stuff up! - Phil Ashman

can't wait to see the final product - you don't need some more beta testers by any chance, Jeremy? :) - Frederic

@Frederic: I considered asking, but figured the answer was obvious. @Jeremy: So, do you? :D - Voyagerfan5761

Those lucky enough to be at the adobe AIR Tour - London yesterday would have seen a demo of the app plus a demo of a couple of bugs we need to fix :). The launch is currently being held up by thawte who we are waiting on to issue our digital certificate! Once that is done we are good to go. Thanks for all the offers, we have enough beta testers on windows and mac for now, but would be interested in anyone running AIR on linux! (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

...and if you want to follow me and the kinds of apps we build then please subscribe to me or follow me on twitter (jeremybaines) (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

@Jeremy: Will all comments posted via Alert Thingy have that tagline? Oh, and I believe @possible248 on Twitter (and here) is running AIR on Linux. - Voyagerfan5761

@Voyagerfan5761 yes they will. We think it's ok to ask for a bit of PR if we are giving you an app free. What do you think? It would be nice if there was a proper place to put the "via...." link, like on twitter, but the guys at FriendFeed have not provided anything like that for us yet! Bret.. are you listening??? (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

I would prefer to have the "via Alert Thingy"-tagline independent from the comment itself. I second that request. - sebmos

Ok that is 2 of us - Is that enough to change the API Bret? How many votes do I need? :) - Jeremy Baines

Of course, some of us might feel that reading a few words of advertising along with each comment is, you know, not exciting. - j1m

Adding the source to entries and comments from the API makes a lot of sense. I will think about it and take a look at what Twitter does, and come back with something. - Bret Taylor

@Jeremy - would be happy to try it out on Linux :) - Frederic

I'm so ready for this app, it hurts - Bwana McCall

@bret How are you getting along with the beta we sent you yesterday? (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

WANT. drool... - J. Phil

I seriously seriously want this! but agree w/Adam - combo app would ROCK - Sarah Perez

Regarding the attribution for comments, how about adding a conditional "from %APPNAME%" tag wrapped in <small> tags after the name? It would be displayed only if there was a valid source for that comment. Thumbs-up? -down? - Voyagerfan5761

Get your copy of v1.0 - http://alertthingy.com/ (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

Its up now :) (via Alert Thingy) - Tony Hung

Nice. I have it up and running (via Alert Thingy) - Bwana McCall

If you like it so far so us your digg love - http://digg.com/software/Frien... (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

sounds cool - shandiz

Just installed! Could do with customizable opacity, but otherwise it's just figuring out how to use it right now. w00t! (And making Enter save the comment...) (via Alert Thingy) - Voyagerfan5761

Is there a central location for feedback/suggestions? (via Alert Thingy) - Bwana McCall

you can send us email - help@alertthingy.com (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

Yeah, seriously way too transparent with no settings control. Other than that looks great. - Marston Alfred

Shameless blog comment fishing: http://voyagerfan5761.blogspot... I figured this was an appropriate venue for that link. :-) - Voyagerfan5761

preeeeeeetty good (via Alert Thingy) - David Bausola

I like it! (via Alert Thingy) - Tibor Paulsch

AT works okay but needs user prefs editable. Opacity is a must. (via Alert Thingy) - Jay Gilmore

It's great! (via Alert Thingy) - Dennis Leung

Agreed on opacity. I'm slouching to read it properly. A font size control would be nice, too (tad small for my dodgy eyes). Something I've noticed - when a new thing comes in, the Alerts page is scrolled all the way to the top. Problems with this: A) I lose my reading place; and B) if I'm writing a comment (as here), I lose what I've already written. (via Alert Thingy) - Cyvros/fyc

We hear you on the opacity thing. Good point about scroling up when writing a comment (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

Anybody for marking items as seen, a la twhirl? It seems that would be useful for keeping one's place. - Voyagerfan5761

tried it out; seems just like a web browser... NEEEEDS functionality for me to re-consider using it - The Product Guy

@Voyagerfan5761: Aye. - Cyvros/fyc

It is cool. But: turned off sounds and they are back. Window scales, but not the text size. very small! oh, and while I was writing a comment in a tiny box an update came in and my comment so far just vanished... (via Alert Thingy) - Alex von Halem

@ Alex von Halem thanks I have added those to my list :) (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

@Jeremy Baines thanx. restarting stopped the sounds (perhaps just a note, that saving settings is not enough). Liking it more and more. Just a wee thing: when you hit the "comment" button: shouldn't your cursor start flashing in that field instead of having to click into it as well? Keep it up, it's going to be a winner! (via Alert Thingy) - Alex von Halem

Couple more trivial things with the comments: the comment box doesn't expand like the site's does and 'Enter' doesn't send - you have to click the Submit button. Nice to have a Cancel button there in AT, though. - Cyvros/fyc

Also good! they make the list ;) - not actually sure when we will have time to finish everything on the list! but nice to have one so we know what needs doing ;) (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

nice! - Sandosh Vasudevan

Just installed it. I don't like it (alert thingy)... much prefer the FF interface. But kudos to you on the "remote key" -- solid idea. - Michael Leggett

I don't think it hides the entries set to be hidden on FF. Anyone else can confirm this? - Turker Keskinpala

@Turker: I wrote about that this morning, so yeah, I can confirm. It's still showing my hidden stuff as I type this. I think the fault lies with the FriendFeed API, though. So far as I know, there's no indication of hiding status available. - Voyagerfan5761

Turkey and Voyagerfan5761: I will work on this today. We are not passing the "hidden" bit through to the API properly. - Bret Taylor

@Bret - can you look at the hide issue.. we are getting the hidden stuff showing in the API - Jeremy Baines

Thanks Bret. FF web interface is so fast and usable that it is not easy to switch to a desktop application. Nevertheless, good work Jeremy Baines. - Turker Keskinpala

It really is a nice piece of work, but I find the whole dark/translucent thing too hard to read. I also miss the collapsing of long comment threads (like this one). In fact, I didn't realize how nice a feature that was until I didn't have it and had to scroll and scroll to get to a new comment. - Chris Johnson

Can someone explain to me, in 42 words or less, why an app like this is better than just accessing FF over the web? Color me seriously confused. I'd try it myself, but I get an error anytime I try to download it (and yes, I have Air installed). - Adam Lasnik

@Adam Lasnik - Firefox can't handle a lot of tabs (non beta) and I'd rather use Alert Thingy or bTittleTattle then leave FriendFeed open in Firefox. (via Alert Thingy) - Corvida

@corvida ahh but, FF3 beta is solid and handles a wealth of tabs with great aplomb. :) I've got my eye on AT, but for now it taketh more functionality than it giveth. I suspect with all this attention, though, it will soon giveth a lot more! - felix

Corvida, or you could do what I do when I want to keep one or two tabs open persistently and easy-to-switch-to (e.g., Pandora): open them in Internet Exploder. What I was hoping to hear was that this Air app offered intriguing / helpful "extras" that one doesn't innately get in the web version. For instance, I use Twhirl because it aurally alerts me to direct messages AND displays all messages to me in chron order on one scrolling page -- something not offered on the Twitter web page. - Adam Lasnik

@Felix I FF Betas crash on me way more than FF2 and that's more important to me. @Lasnik I don't have IE installed =P Don't want to keep 2 browsers open anways, it's defeating the point in a way. I'm still wasting resources, though I think Alert Thingy is less of a waste. - Corvida

Okay, just tried it on another computer. Not for me. I find it much harder to read/scan stuff on it vs. the web page. - Adam Lasnik

Restart your copies of AlertThingy v1.1 is here! ...via AlertThingy - Jeremy Baines

search not working for unicode content? o_O ...via AlertThingy - minus-one

Nice, but my hidden stuff's showing up in Friendfeed so all the duplicate twitter action is annoying me. ...via AlertThingy - brad sucks

Yup! that is anoying! But a FreindFeed API issue not AT ...via AlertThingy - Jeremy Baines

i love this application and can't live without it. ...via AlertThingy - Kevin

Alertthingy's coming along nicely! I'll post a couple of suggestions on your site. ...via AlertThingy - Phil Ashman

http://shegeeks.net/feedalizr-... - John Kotsaftis

Thwirl now offering FF integration on AIR - Steaprok

Just installed Twhirl 0.7.9 with FF support. Anyone care to tell me why AlertThingy is better? I'm kinda Twitter centric which is why I choose Twhirl. - Elliott Ng