My son also loves Dr. Pepper and I think it's because I was so addicted I couldn't give it up entirely when I was pregnant and used to have one glass a day. - Trish R
Oh wow... the blue cans! I remember those... I was fascinated as a kid by the color reversal... I'm easily amused. - Lindsay Donaghe
so, everybody here knows that "Dr. Pepper" was a name made up to mask the fact that this is really Prune Crush, right? - Trent Olson
prunes are just dried plums and I like plums. - Lindsay Donaghe
@Trent. I knew that, isn't that why the clock is on the bottle? hahahaha - Trish R
i'm a plummer, she a plummer, he's a plummer, won't cha like to be a plummer too? - Nathan Eckenrode
@Trish...good point! @Lindsay...hey, nothing wrong with it...just wanted to make sure the news was known... - Trent Olson via twhirl
greeaat news for all involved. congrsts. - Alex Gawley
Congrats Ben! I could see that coming at some point - Dobromir Hadzhiev
Congratulations! I knew it was coming when I noticed you'd been making changes and even had a FF email address... and there was no denial: http://beta.friendfeed.com/e/5... - Tony Ruscoe
This is recognition for his great work! Congrats! - Winston Teo
Satellite image showing a very foggy day in California. Yes, most of the white is fog, not snow! The entire central valley is filled with fog. Click the links on the right to see the big image. - Amit Patel via Bookmarklet
And to think I've driven through it going to LA. On I-5. I deserve to get weeded out of the motorist gene pool for that one. - Richard Chen
So this guy This (hah) wants you to cook the eggs for an hour instead of 10 minutes? That's not going to go over easy. I'd say the yolk's on him. Let me know if you agree, I'm walking on eggshells here. It's a fertile area for discussion, though, and he may be eggsactly right. - Stephen Mack
Stephen, I'm sure you meant say that wouldn't go 'ova easy' right? - Kevin Fox
From the source: "
Next, This turns up the oven thermostat to 67°C, or 153°F, and after waiting a while for the eggs inside to reach that temperature—again, he's casual about the timing—he retrieves a second one: "The 67-degree egg!" At this temperature the yolk has just started thickening up—some of its proteins have coagulated, but the majority have not. "Look, you can mold it," he says, scooping out the yolk and manipulating the pliable orangey-yellow ball like fresh Play-Doh. He tries to mold a heart, then settles for a cube.
"Try one," he says, taking a third egg from the oven for me to play with before turning up the heat to 158°F (70°C). The 70-degree egg, when it is finally done, has a moistly set yolk and a very tender white. "So you see, you can adjust the temperature depending on what you want," says This. If you prefer a firmer egg, cook it at 167°F or 176°F. Bear in mind, though, that the most copious of the egg-white proteins sets at 184°F—hence the rubbery results of the 212-degree bath." - Erica Baker
Given the information above, I want to see pictures of what each egg looks like at each temp. Kevin, can you post photos of your results? - Erica Baker
"For example, if a site such as FriendFeed switched from polling feeds every 30 minutes to polling every 300 minutes (5 hours), and also monitored the appropriate SUP feed every 3 minutes, the total amount of feed polling would be reduced by about 90%, and new updates would typically appear 10 times as fast." - Paul Buchheit
That's a very interesting idea! I think that for the case of push-generated feeds it will show nice improvements over the current polling approach (which is definitely not scalable). I am wondering if there would be a way to employ the same idea for poll-generated feeds (feeds that are retrieved on request only) though. - Alex Popescu
That's correct Alex. SUP works very well for most common feeds, but it's not ideal for more dynamic feeds such as a search (e.g. http://friendfeed.com/search?q... ). However, the vast majority of the feeds consumed by FriendFeed and others map into the SUP model very easily. SUP does not solve all problems, but it provides a very simple solution that should work for 90% of feed publishers. - Paul Buchheit
Alex, a conditional GET applies only to a single URL. SUP allows feed consumers to simultaneously monitor many thousands of feeds with a single GET. - Paul Buchheit
I've told you I might not be fully functional :-). You're right SUP is a container for updated feeds. Should I post any other questions directly to the room? - Alex Popescu
Paul this SUP technology is HOT!! I am totally awed by this disruptive innovative idea.... very impressive and incredibly brilliant!! wow!! - Susan Beebe
Your welcome Paul, you guys inspire the heck out me...American techie dream in real time...neat! - Susan Beebe
my flickr upload appeared much faster just now... are you guys using XMPP for flickr? - Travis Parsons
and written in .py :)- but if we throttle "generate_sup_update(db, 120)" and "SUP feed:
{"since_time": "2008-08-12T01:44:49Z", "period": 120," [[..|..]]" , so if we take "120" and make it lets say "30", wont this make the load even more to both sides ? - Peter Dawson
It's nice to see FF innovating things... its what I miss about livejournal back when it was just danga interactive. - Dave Dash
just curious, how to read SUP? pronounce sap or soup or syoop? - huixing
'sup, like the shortened version of "what's up?" - Tudor Bosman
So, where's the "omg it's not XML you idiots" backlash? - ⓞnor
Atom streams look more effective performance-wise and just a little bit harder to implement on both sides. See SixApart's: http://updates.sixapart.com/ - Alex Kapranoff
More than a little bit harder! Dealing with never-ending XML streams is a massive pain (see: XMPP), and keeping connections open is trouble. Also, the sixapart updates stream is a firehose that gives you all of the content being posted, you have no opportunity to filter out only those feeds you care about. The FF design is pretty much totally more awesome. - ⓞnor
work with feedburner to give you a ping every time one of the feeds changes and you can replace 5h with 'whenever it occurs' ;) - Nicole Simon
I can't wait for a DUDE or YO companion protocol. - abacab
Nice idea, one thing to include would be the information if a resource (feed) has been deleted, whereby one can build a mirroring system over RSS. - Christian Sonntag
Christian: no need; "deleted" is a special case of "updated". If a feed is listed as modified in SUP, the feed consumer will try to refetch the feed, and notice that it no longer exists. - Tudor Bosman
"FriendFeed Inc. is enhancing its service in order to fulfill a critical requirement on the Internet today: immediacy. The highly publicized startup is weeks away from boosting the frequency of its updates from social networks" - Louis Gray via Bookmarklet
What does SUP (Simple Update Protocol) do exactly, it's more than a http header last-modified check? - Philipp Lenssen
I'm interested in learning the details, too. my guess is some type of callback scheme that was discussed on ff a while back when ff was (gently) called out for polling flickr millions of times/day. - David Vasileff
also perhaps batching multiple feed requests into a single call - David Vasileff
That's it ... no more hikes in the afternoon! (Sharing .... ) - Charlie Anzman
theory 1: a single "meta feed" which you can poll to get a list of other feeds that have changed recently. (would it cover all feeds on the service, or would FF somehow supply a list of all the feeds they're interested in?) theory 2: a callback/ping/PIMP notification when a feed or feeds change (HTTP? XMPP?). theory 3: a formalization of the "public feed" concept, where you roll every (public) update on the service into a single (rapidly rolling!) feed which FF polls and gets updates for. - ⓞnor
Someone has to talk to someone to indicate a change occurred, so you can't skip that step, be it push or pull. So my guess is it's a way to get a larger aggregated chunk of what has changed and an idea of the size of the change. What might work is a bulk push of what has changed and then a pull of the changes at FF's leisure. - todd
Providing facts is just cheating. Now there's no room for rampant speculation :-) Add a sequence number and you could know if you missed an update which would indicate polling needed to occur or perhaps a download of the old change notices. - todd
great stuff. imho, when adopted, SUP will be - to the organic growth of services updates - like traffic lights to crowded intersections. or like how gps navigation is to asking people for directions :P - Dani Radu
Sounds like it's a protocol that others will need to implement and support so friendfeed can process feeds more efficiently. alot of the issues could be fixed if if-modified-since was used and rss feeds were treated more like a web service rather then a static html page, most are generated from a db real-time anyway. Read RFC 977, NNTP fixed this issue by setting up an easy way to poll what's new back in the 80's. - Shawn McCollum
WOWOWOWOW...this technology is huge! Disruptive and fantastic!! If I had VC level cash, I'd throw it at FF brainiacs and be rich... this idea is unbelievably SMART! - Susan Beebe
Shawn, we actually already use If-Modified-Since and many sites do properly support it. The key difference with SUP is that it allows feed consumers to monitor many thousands of URLs with a single GET, which is not possible using If-Modified-Since. - Paul Buchheit
If anything, it shares a few similarities with Sitemaps (which enable webmasters to notify search engines of modified URLs, etc.) Great work on SUP! - Aviv
This is one of those simple ideas that one wonders why no one thought of before. It's a good proposal and a required one in the rapidly growing aggregation/Lifestreaming world. I am sure the proposal will be widely and quickly SUPported. Well done folks. - Vinay | विनय
paul, I found and read the ff blog post, and I understand the meta-feed approach. Interesting but I think sup-id storage adds a bit of complexity. Even though the sup-id keeps the size of the feed down, full uri would be better. I think the concern about exposing usernames is a little overdone, I mean it's not going to really stop someone who wants the usernames from getting them. - Shawn McCollum
Love it. We've used a different approach to interface with "friendly" crawlers, one that is based on the ability to fetch older items in the feeds by request. But it requires a public "recent" feed, and does not work solve the private URLs issue. This is so much better. We'll be experimenting with SUP and would love to help it mature into a well defined spec. - Yaniv Golan
Excerpt: "I hope the Android folks aren't hoping that a slick UI and great user experience will sell itself, because phones ain't the web. The cognitive and financial switching costs for mobile phones are greater than for almost any other device you can buy. Helio and Sidekick are two great examples of how slick mobile products can fail to gain traction because they rely on carriers and customers to generate demand. Take a page from the Book of Jobs and tell the story to the people. Tell them why they want it. Show it to them. Educate them so well that they can proselytize another person to buy a product that neither of them has ever seen in the flesh." - Kevin Fox
Apple is great at marketing, but I think Helio failed because the devices suck, Danger was on a good ramp but fizzled because they failed to keep up or to open the platform, the Blackberry succeeded because people liked what the devices did, and the iPhone is a big success because it's an awesome product. Jobsian marketing is an accelerator -- it means they can sell millions of iPhones now, instead of in two years once everyone figures out how awesome they are -- but it's not the key enabler of uptake. - ⓞnor
Also, I have switched phones probably five times in the last decade, but I have switched search engines basically never in the last decade. So I disagree that cell phones are way stickier than web sites. - ⓞnor
They may not be stickier, but they're a lot easier to try out. I would argue that you've stayed with the same search engine because it's maintained a lead in quality/experience, rather than habit. - Kevin Fox
ⓞnor, would you agree that Apple's marketing generates a certain media narrative, and that narrative has lead to a (very large) amount of free ads? It seems like Kevin is arguing that that same thing happens by word of mouth. - j1m
OMG... showed that to Jason and he said "SWEET!" Spot the children who grew up in the 80s. - Cyndy
Still at my parents place (from one of my younger brothers) , grandkids ( now 15-28) still play with it. Wasn't there a baseball one as well? - Brian Sullivan
My brother had a football game with a green outer shell. It was more a one player game. This one was for head to head. I remember having a few of those old Nintendo Game & Watch games too. We may have gotten rid of them in a garage sale years ago. - Rodfather
Coleco games I think? Anybody ever own an "Adam"? - Brian Sullivan
That takes me back I think I cried when the game died. - Jason Bellew
It is based upon what was re-released as Mattel Classic Football (and the green case was Football II) They even had a keychain version =) also baseball, basketball, and car racing. http://linkfeed.com/am?B0011WI... - RAD Moose
I've switched and don't know that I'll be going back. Someone lemme know when beta is live so I can hit the normal site! =) - Stupid Blogger (aka Tina)
Mona, poster names are still links they're just styled differently so they don't look like the other links. - Stupid Blogger (aka Tina)
beta.friendfeed is my new friend !! lots of new stuff to play with.. 8-10hrs lag with list data ..but a very very powerful feature. !! Way to GO TEAM FF !! - Peter Dawson
Love it. If this does not go mainstream, I don't know what will. - Vinay | विनय
This could be very good... but where 's the Rick Roll? - Bill Sodeman
OK: That's a long enough beta period. Let's do it live! - Chris Baskind
I want to start a pool -- (a) first blog to hit techmeme with an article on the re-design, (b) blog with most articles about the re-design (within 2 days starting now) - Wayne Schulz
Michael: if you're viewing your feed from the main address, there is a 'sharing' box up at the top, and the options (comment, photo, link) appear once you begin typing. - Stupid Blogger (aka Tina)
click on your name Jennifer, above right - Tibor Holoda
@Jennifer "My Feed" in the sidebar replaces the "me" tab. And like Tibor said, your name works too. - Dan Hsiao
you launch this right after takeoff from scoble to berlin - coinkydink? :) - Allen Stern
@Stupid Blogger: Thanks, I'd figured that out, was just pointing out what seems like a bug in the current UI. - Michael Nielsen
Looks nice on first glance, and it seems easier now to reach rooms. The friend lists should be a great way to organize my imaginary friends which are basically topic subscriptions. The "Add/ Remove friends" link is confusing at first because when you don't have any friends in the list yet, clicking it will result in nothing (making you wonder if it's broken). The message sharing post form is also confusing because you don't quite know what to enter into it; a link, or a message, or...? The fact that it says "Share a link, message, or photos" doesn't really help. Also wasn't sure how to remove a friend from the home feed after moving them to a special list feed. Took me some seconds to find the Delete List icon, because I was looking near the "Add/ remove friends" link navigation. Wasn't sure if I like you created so many default friend lists for me (personal, favorites, professional), though I guess it may be useful to get the point across. I think I'm liking how names aren't underlined, though not so sure a - Philipp Lenssen
I love the new info bubble. Super better than the old one :) - AJ Batac
Looks like the logo now clicks to the Friends view, as you'd expect. Same as You + Friends. - Chris Baskind
can't seem to access the beta site: Service Unavailable
We encountered an error on your last request. Our service is new, and we are just working out the kinks. We apologize for the inconvenience. - Thomas Hawk
Awesomeness, very useful, and solves the biggest problem of noise reduction! great! - Aditya Kothadiya
