I was on this site a while before I posted... all of those pictures = mesmerizing. Agreed, Lindsay. It's amazing how photographs can conjure so much emotion :) - Mona N.
Lindsay: You don't even know.. I spent a five weeks in rural Philippines. I pumped water from a well and 'showered' from a water bucket... I've seen starvation and poverty. Some of these things we complain about, is seriously nothing lol - Mona N.
Kevin Carter won a Pulitzer for his photo of the child and the vulture. The sad thing is that as good a photographer as Carter was he ended up killing himself. In his suicide note he wrote, "I am depressed ... without phone ... money for rent ... money for child support ... money for debts ... money!!! ... I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain ... of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners...I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky." - Thomas Hawk
Oh, I missed it. Thanks mwm :) Funny how we both posted the same link, but chose completely different pictures.@Thomas: The irony =\ - Mona N.
The Palestinian Father photo has been shown to be fake. - Victor Ryden
@Thomas Some people suffer for most of us. Photographers such as Kevin Carter wouldn't fit the typical 'Hero' template but I wouldn't be who I am if I wasn't gifted perspective by images such as these from people such as Kevin. A more cheerful story from a photographer : Rick Smolan's story of a girl : http://tinyurl.com/669yvd - Kamath
Some of those photos I've seen many times before and they're still very powerful. - Candace Holly
Thanks for your comment on Kevin Carter, Thomas. It puts it all into a perspective. - Roberto Bonini
Agreed. Thomas' insight really made an impact, too :) - Mona N.
in the fist picture what womans do? they shooting to some one? or they only practice? - Mahdi Ebrahimi
Caption for the pic is: Veiled Women Men Shoot
In 1986, Iranian men dressed as women shoot using guns in the outskirts of the capital city Tehran. Nothing much is said about this photograph, but it raised important issues to the steps Iranian fighters would take to mingle in with innocent people. - Lindsey Smith
For some unexplainable reason, that's the only Lynch film I haven't seen. (Looking at DVDs: Eraserhead? Check. Blue Velvet? Check. Fire Walk With Me? Check. But no Lost Highway. Must change that. - wyclif
I'm working on Twin Peaks; haven't seen Eraserhead or Wild at Heart, either, but I'm planning on fixing that soon. - Jandy Stone
Eraserhead is not for the faint of heart. - wyclif
In what sense? I loved INLAND EMPIRE inordinately... - Jandy Stone
I think Lynch himself described it as "A Philadelphia Story, as written by Nietzsche." Dark and painful to watch. - wyclif
"I had both FFComments and Disqus running together for a while, but now I can't get FFComments to show up. Is that something to do with Disqus's new version? I happened to also redesign my site about the same time as the new Disqus plugin came out, so I'm not sure exactly what the culprit is." - Jandy Stone
I'd also like to see Disqus comments to be treated as comments, which by implementing Louis suggestion in point 2, will make more sense i guess. Comments are comments, posts are posts. In case there will be no link to which the comment is added, it could work like posting a link with the Disqus comment under. Btw, @Robert, you don't have Disqus hooked up in FF ;) - Tibor Holoda
Excellent post Louis. You are pretty much spot on with those 10 suggestions. - Mike Fruchter
Tibor: I don't like Disqus pulling in comments here. Often I want different communities to remain separate. I'll manually pull in comments or point out when I've made comments that FriendFeeder's should be aware of. Like I did here. - Robert Scoble
FriendFeed is a lifestream aggregator and I use it to aggregate all my various 'outputs'. Disqus comments are just one category of my 'outputs'. Therefore, Disqus comments are perfectly valid and *do* belong in my FriendFeed stream The fact, that such comments may be out of context to people bending FF into a Social Media Forum is an unfortunate consequence. - Andy C
11. add user definable font size. the new beta makes me squint :) - h1ro
#9! I hide things liberally and it does bug me, when I click on page 2, I'm seeing page 1 all over again. - Yolanda
Great suggestions Louis,
I would also add:
The Ability to Hide Specific RSS Feeds and
Search All Entries by URL - Shey
and go-faster stripes, a background of babes in bikinis, and intermittant embedded hilarious fart noises. - john conroy
I have to so that FF has been growing well with the current feature set. Like all areas of activity contraints can sometimes be helpful. FF needs to innovate itself, rather than copy straight from Twitter (DM's), Facebook (profiles) etc. 2,4,10 are most important. The issue here is not so much what features we want as how can FF grow into a mature platform. - Roberto Bonini
Robert: I see your point, but i still think it would be a good thing to handle Disqus comments as comments, not as posts. User decides, if he wants them appear in his FF stream or not - like in your case. - Tibor Holoda
Great List Louis! #2 is my favorite one. - Peter Hoffmann
Tibor, I agree with you (Robert, when are you going to enable Disqus on your blog?). For the blog owner it's much easier to consolidate into one place if they can tie your comments straight to the FriendFeed post itself instead of an entirely new post. - Jesse Stay via twhirl
One more suggestion - tagging. I want to be able to tag individuals, both in my posts, *and* my comments if I'm talking about them or something they might be interested in. - Jesse Stay via twhirl
Excellent list. My top priority though, isn't on there - (as per Shey) renaming or separating "Blog" posts, so individuals can hide your blog vs. another "blog" .. I'd also like it easier to determine which services I am/am not showing per individual. Just give me some enable/disable checkboxes on the users page. Strands did this right. - Tim Hoeck
Great suggestions Louis. One clarification on #4 -- most people never see this "default" list because they were either invited by another user, or they import friends from email or facebook. The recommendations are then based entirely on who their other friends are, and will make a lot more sense. - Paul Buchheit
Indeed some good suggestions. My guess is that the reason that #2 (duplicates) has not been implemented yet, is that it is very tricky to do right. If they do manage to implement it and get it right, I will be very impressed. I would not be too surprised though, since Friendfeed has some really sharp people working there. - Robert Felty
Excellent List and some good suggestions in comments as well. I really would like to see 2,3,5,6, & 10. The share on FF bookmarklet should be more like Tumblr's. I would also like to be able to filter my feed to prevent duplicates. I would like to cross post my tumblr to my main blog and twitter but in doing so I create more noise for my FF stream. If I could filter out posts from blog or twitter that started with "XYZ" then I could cross post freely without worrying about FF noise. - tsudohnimh
@Paul, thanks for the comment. I did test by signing up to just one individual, as if they had invited me, and by changing the one person I subscribed to, the recommended friends did change. That said, if you check out recommended friends in Facebook, there's the option to "X" out people you don't want and provide more. Plaxo also does this well. - Louis Gray
Re: #1 and #8 I would like to see profile information that I can search, so I can find FF folks who are geographically near me or who are in my profession or who share a common interest with me. Great post - thanks! - Courtney McGough
Pownce should worry about #10. FF will soon have to worry about cannibalizing its data suppliers, and what that means for ongoing openness. #! & #2 are the big ones with me, and I just don't see why FF enabled fake followers. - Logical Extremes
being 1st or 2nd is all that matters in that particular field.... 3rd placings and below would normally whither away - Mark L via twhirl
I am really getting confused. I just commented on the post. Now I see the comments here as posts. Totally agree with Tibor, messing posts together with comments, be it from Disqus or anywhere else, does not increase transparency. - Jan Horna
#7 - want to make sure i understand that concept of "fake follow" - home feed contains all friends by default & you can then add them to a list/grouping to subdivide them for easier readability - to remove them from the home feed you have to actually de-select them when you add them to a list and then never go to that list again - is that what "fake follow" is - if so, way to much work for no return and only lame*ss self absorbed status mongers will be doing it - imho of course :) - mike "glemak" dunn
#5 - My thought would be to make an invitation-only private room. Wouldn't this solve the partial-distribution problem? - Mitchell Tsai
Mitchell, it could, and some do, but that's a room, and not a feed. Unless the room data permeates the feed, it could get missed. - Louis Gray
I like your list. One other feature I'd like to see is to filter by service in whatever view I am in. - Jeff P. Henderson
The absolute killer feature for me would be, if FF will recognize languages of the posts, or at least to differentiate between english vs. non-english and allow filtering. Would that even be possible or did my brain just farted? :) - Tibor Holoda
(sorry for cross posting) Firstly, I'd like to add to Louis' list the capability to search rooms and then to search inside rooms. Secondly, I must confess that support for a basic profile would be useful. But as always I'd encourage the reuse of data (so importing it from whatever source the user decides). DMs might be usefull, but I haven't felt the need for them so far. - Alex Popescu
I usually don't like to speak about things that are not ready, but this post was catchy. I currently have a prototype that deals with de-duping the resource links. I haven't looked into de-duping pure messages, but my gut feeling is that this might be even easier. I hope to find the time to deploy this app sometime soon. - Alex Popescu
"Yeah, "mother's maiden name" is far too easy. I only use it if there's no other option. If I had EVER had a favorite movie that I could definitively point to, I might use it...but I'd have to go as far back as Hans Christian Anderson or Justin Morgan Had a Horse! (i.e., my favorite movies when I was, like, six).
A comment on my livejournal pointed out that the best was when the site lets you make up your own question and answer. When they do that, I tend to use something like "what's the full name of your horse [or dog]". Since we never use their full names, it's not likely someone would be able to figure it out (particularly with Cim, since his registered name is different from what I call him - someone could probably dig up Rebel's full registered name if they wanted)." - Jandy Stone
I think it's funny that the title of the article is "80 percent of Facebook users still using old site design" -- not that they hate the site's redesign. @Mike, was that your editorial change? - Marko
They hated the newsfeed, too. Facebook users need time to get used to change, is all. I like the redesign, but I'm not 100% acclimated to it yet. - Jandy Stone
Hey, look, sensationalism! :P On the train to work this morning, a bunch of students near me were talking about the Facebook redesign. They didn't like it and some of the people I know on FB don't like it, but I do. Perhaps I'm just one of those weird people who likes change every so often. - Cyvros/fyc
Who pays any attention to the opinions of the majority anyway? - Jack Carlson
The majority, that's who. Damned normals. *shakes fist* - Cyvros/fyc
I'm not a huge fan of the redesign but the bigger problem to me is that ever since the new design launched I find that random pages fail inexplicably. - Jauder Ho
Frankly I wouldn't use Facebook if it weren't for the iPhone interface. Removes unnecessary cruft from the UI and makes the damn thing useable. - Anthony Baker
Wow! just this evening I went back to the old facebook and it felt all cramped.. the new facebook feels more functional with its nice ajaxy feel... im surprised - James Cooper
You called it demo of the year in 2006 and it was just released? - Kyle Lacy
It was a research project back then. Back then it took two to four days to build one Photosynth. They've been working on it to make it work for consumer photos. - Robert Scoble
would love to try it. but "Unfortunately, we're not cool enough to run on your OS yet. We really wish we had a version of Photosynth that worked cross platform, but for now it only runs on Windows." thanks for the heads up though. - ~C4Chaos
yeah, i had that OS problem too. Unfortunately. - Johnny Sewell
Bummer. Can't run it on my Mac... Didn't bother to install boot camp. :-( - Mitchell Tsai
At this point, I'm afriad to install anything else under Vista 64 until the next SP. - Chris Weiss via twhirl
Wow you can use your own photos now. I tried the demo about a year ago and it was awesome. It even ran on a slow UMPC. - Rodfather
I can't wait to go out in the desert and take a whole ton of shots! This is huge, super cool stuff! - Tad - just Tad
A lot more jerky than I thought it would be. Also it seems to take a long time for the server to download full resolution versions of all of the images. Cool, but not quite there yet in my eyes. Robert, how did the demos you saw at MS compare to your demo? Were they smoother? - Jeff P. Henderson
Jeff: they are pretty smooth here. I think the 3D models were more complete in the demo I saw. But I might be wrong. I just uploaded one of my family room and it works pretty well here. I'm running Vista, though. Not sure that matters. - Robert Scoble
Robert, I'm looking at your family room demo, that is what I was commenting on. I'm running XP. The slow loading of full res photos may be due to a sporadic Comcast connection problem I'm having tonight, although other web pages seem to load reasonably quickly. I guess I'll have to create one of my own to see how it all works. In any event, it really is cool technology. - Jeff P. Henderson
BTY I like your baby proofing, looks like my house. Also noticed you still have Xmas card photos on your frig.. Time to print out some photos on Milan and hang them on the frig :P - Jeff P. Henderson
Don;t worry about installing this on Vista x64 - it works like a champ (then again, Vista x64 is rock stable here so I have no worries anyway). I am really looking forward to playing with this stuff at DragonCon if I can score a good camera. - Soulhuntre
I love and use both pandora and last.fm...not sure if there's room for a 3rd. - Hal Rottenberg via twhirl
The main thing I use Last.FM for is audioscrobbling my local tunes. I only rarely listen to streaming "radio", so Winamp and the Last.fm scrobbler plugin work just fine for me. - Richard Miles
no, no, Lisa, those who are less filling... - Trent Olson
Thank you, Trent. My work here is finished. Still no takers on my first comment, though. Am I the only one who grew up in the land of White Hen?? - Lisa L. Seifert
I get a little bit concerned with the talk of "mainstream" folks, but to me there is a VERY clear delineation between us early adopters and "most folks." We're digital - they're analog. We're 21st century - they're 20th century. I work in a building FULL of programmers and other technically adept folks, but I'd wager that not a single one of them is aware of FriendFeed, and no more than 10% has Twitter accounts, and for most of them the closest they get to social media is Fantasy Football leagues. - Tad - just Tad
I think the difference is those who are satisfied with meatspace communication and those who aren't. Those who aren't have had an alternative till now... and most of them didn't really understand they wanted one... - Lindsay Donaghe
Lindsay, I enjoyed this piece. I'm thinking about FF a lot lately and did a piece a couple days ago about how it was changing my blogging habits. This ties in nicely, and advances my thinking further... thanks! - Anthony Citrano
Thanks, Hao and Anthony. I think I get too long winded which is why I only get a post out so infrequently! But maybe sometimes they're worth the wait. - Lindsay Donaghe
Lindsay, that was SUCH an awesome post :) - Mona N.
I am the same way, which is why I think FF is helping me be a better writer (among other things.) I sent you mine too. - Anthony Citrano
I do want to comment that possibly the most famous user of Social Media, Robert Scoble, seems to be a hard core flaming extrovert. (flaming meaning so screamingly obvious) - Tad - just Tad
@Tad, I didn't say that all early adopters or social-media mavens are meatspace introverts, just that I would guess that the majority of them are because we're drawn to these means of communication. Extroverted, from my point of view, means adept at meatspace communication (and probably less likely to seek alternatives because they're satisfied with that). Some people, like Robert, who's a self-declared noise addict, need/crave communication in whatever form they can get it. - Lindsay Donaghe
That has to be one of the greatest posts I've read lately. You really hit the nail on the head. - Donato (ricin)
and I'll be damned if negativity isn't the new power of positive thinking. - rambn via twhirl
@rambn - ♫ always look on the bright-side of life.♫ - Lindsay Donaghe
I have become all more introverted over the last year as I've become more integrated into social media, in spite of the fact that I have become a much better portrait photographer over that time. - Phillip Jeffrey
Lindsay I'm borderline extrovert / introvert, slightly more introverted. But if you met me you might not think so. I enjoy being with people in meatspace - love it - but it does tire me out. Would prefer to be home FFing. ;) - Anthony Citrano
Great post, Lindsay. I'm a strong introvert and have long felt that it's a large part of the reason I feel so much more comfortable in online communication than face-to-face. In fact, if I had heard you say this live and I didn't know you (as I don't), I wouldn't be telling you that I appreciated it. But I am. - Jandy Stone
@Anthony, I would think most introverts prefer meatspace company of their close friends/family over virtual connections. But I think a lot of us can get the satisfaction of extended connections virtually. And sometimes those connections turn into meatspace friendships, especially if you happen to be physically located in the same place as those you've met virtually. - Lindsay Donaghe
yep, lindsay, sounds about right to me! :) - Anthony Citrano
@faithx5 - missed your comment before but I know exactly what you mean. I made a conscious effort a couple years ago to learn how to be more extroverted (took a position where I had to conduct training classes for technical people) and it was really hard to get up in front of people and be the center of attention. I still have to force myself most of the time but I'm glad when I do. I'm still totally an introvert by nature and revert to it by default. - Lindsay Donaghe
Great Post Lindsay! I resemble some of that model. I seem to be more like Anthony's description. Life of the party can get extremely tiring. - Mathew A. Koeneker
Thanks, Matthew. :) Yeah, I don't have the need to be the constant center of attention either. Too exhausting to perform that much. - Lindsay Donaghe
Fantastic post- really thoughtful and dead on. Thanks for a great read! - Abby Martin
I've been having that problem on and off since I "upgraded" to Firefox3.0.1. Closing and reopening the tab doesn't seem to help, but I haven't tried logging in and out. - Jandy Stone
Aliens, the only real answer here, they control your screen. Be somewhat afraid. - Dave Martin
They were probably eaten. Everyone must be really hungry with all these food pictures being posted tonight. - Patricia(Trish not Patty)
"I agree with you, Ed, but let's not get upset over it.
Hall and Cruz blow me away in everything, so I wasn't surprised they were outstanding in this. The variety of performances worked really well - Cruz is so high-strung, and yet perfect, and Hall is so subtle, and yet perfect, and Bardem and Johansson are somewhere in the middle...it's quite a feat to manage so many different levels of character and performances and still have it work as an ensemble.
Great description of the end, too. That nails exactly what I was feeling at the end - the final scene and shot felt right, but I couldn't really explain why." - Jandy Stone
"1992, that was. I make no excuses for Woody's personal life...he's pretty much a dirty old man. Although he is married to Soon-Yi Previn now (Mia Farrow's adopted daughter), something you can't say for either Mia Farrow or Diane Keaton... But the man has made four or five, at least, of the greatest films between 1970 and now, and that has nothing to do with his off-screen life, for me.
Batman Begins...Tom Cruise...? Oh, because of Katie Holmes? It's less the cradle-robbing that bothers me about that and more the cult indoctrination. But again, on-screen, off-screen, two different places." - Jandy Stone
"ReplyFeed is a free tool that will aggregate all of your replies from your various communities (blogs included) into one place. Now you can monitor replies, answer them and have them sent back to the community from whence they came in one convenient location." - Louis Gray via Bookmarklet
This is always a good sign: "Thank you fro your interest in private BETA." :-) - Louis Gray
I haven't tried this site yet but had the same idea a few months back. If someone executes on this well, they'll have the summize equivalent plus plus plus - Jason Goldberg
@repleyfeed , thank you for the invite, can't get in without code ..pls post code alongwith invite !! - Peter Dawson
Louis - I'm still trying to get back to four others .... Help!!! (Signed up :) - Charlie Anzman
I was just saying last week that I need this service, I was trying to a get friend to build it - guess I don't need to worry about that anymore :) - Jennifer Van Grove via twhirl
LOL @Louis_Gray! Just hope the code is lint-free, it sounds like a good idea! - Chris Kim A
seems like we have "Sunfish" on this one :)- check the address ..no more fail whale ? - Peter Dawson
ping.fm incorporate this asap and u will rule all - adolfo foronda
seems 'neat', but it feels like taking aspirin to get over a brain tumor. the problem needs some deeper work... - Jeremy Toeman
If this goes any further we will need a new aggregation service that aggregates all the tools that aggregate all the web services that aggregate all the discussions into one place (I may have missed a few aggregation layers here and there). - Alexander van Elsas
@Alex van elsas LOL you are right about that! - Colide81
yes, alexander is completely right ./.. this will end when an entire new ecosystem is invented .. and then will begin again - gregory lent
LOL yeah but that is the way of culture and even sorta like a ever growing forest. - Colide81
Not sure if anyone from ReplyFeed is reading this but their blurb above says "from whence". Doesn't "whence" mean "from where/from what place", making the "from" redundant? - Richard Crocker
i started writing a blog post this morning entitled something like " 5 new technologies that solve problems you didn't knew you had", but I never got around finishing that with all the comment fragmentation floating around ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
David LOL, the whole point is that I'm a normal human being that has no need whatsoever for aggregators that agregate ..... and so on. You do know someone out there is already building an aggregator that includes friendfeedfeed. Don't see the value, and I sure can't explain any of it to non-tech friends or family ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
RF reminds me more of "Republique Francaise" :) - Loic Le Meur via twhirl
@Gregor, Really it's 2/3 spectacular roads from throughout the world, with 1/3 plain old rural us roads mixed in, except those all have spectacular skies. Yeah, I don't know what they're doing mixed in. - j1m
I recognize that stretch of Greenwich Township, Berks County. It's a great road for bicycling. - Jeremy Hylton
