James Polley - Likes

Jeremy Zawodny bookmarked a page on delicious

Palin spent more on clothes than previously reported, McCain aides furious at her ‘outrageous profligacy.’

November 5 at 12:27 pm - Link

Charles Nadeau, James Polley, Cale Teeter and 8 other people liked this

I'm sure she was just trying to stimulate the economy... - Jeremy Zawodny

I am overjoyed to say that I don't care one whit about Sarah Palin today. Have fun in Alaska reachin' across all those bridges you've now burned. - Carla Thompson

Obama spent over $700,000 in campaign money on stage lights in Berlin. What's a bigger waste of money? - Spencer

Nice. "One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family — clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent ‘tens of thousands’ more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. - Paul Buchheit

Well, it was pretty clear John and Sarah didn't get along when you saw them up there at the end of his concession speech. Can you say icy? - AJ Kohn

Spencer: that $700,000 was for the stage, lights, sound, etc. Large productions require lots of staff and equipment, so they're expensive. Palin just went on a massive shopping spree. And the biggest reason people are complaining is because the Republicans mocked Edwards's $400 haircut in the last campaign. - Gabe

What Palin allegedly did was wrong but come on anyone that pays $400 for a haircut deserves what ever anyone said about him. Besides I don't think that was the only trim he was getting - gfurry

Details about the $400 haircut(s!): http://www.slate.com/id/216452... - Stephen Foskett

Can we get over the stupid things both sides have done this last election and move on?!? You know, post-partisan, post-racial, post-sexist and all that? - Robert Worstell

She was trying to stimulate something... - Gautam Guliani

Jason Shellen bookmarked a page on delicious

LockTight for Mac OS X Intel

November 6 at 2:15 am - Link

James Polley, Tudor Bosman, Rob Schonberger and 2 other people liked this

Great utility for OS X that allows adding a quick keyboard command to lock your machine, something I've been missing since I 'switched' from Windows 4 years ago. I've even mapped the lock to Ctrl-Alt-Del [via Grant Shellen] - Jason Shellen

2 more comments

I've been using it for months and love it. Just perfect for day to day. - Rob Schonberger

What's wrong with option +  + eject? I guess I prefer sleep. - Joel

Nothing is wrong with that but I hate sleeping my machine, this is for occasions when I just want to lock and walk away. - Jason Shellen

@Joel, option +  + eject sleeps the computer. Sometimes you just want to lock it (a la the Windows+L key-combo). I use the screensaver/password+hot_corners option to quickly lock it by throwing my mouse pointer at a screen corner, but some people don't want to have a screen saver password. - Carlos Granier-Phelps

darren posted a message

“Someone out there must know - how do you fix a Macbook Pro that loses its ability to lock the screen, without rebooting?”

September 16 at 10:30 pm - Link

James Polley and Paul Buchheit liked this

Killing the loginwindow is also an unacceptable answer. - darren

Best answer thus far for getting around the problem (but not fixing it): /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu\ Extras/User.menu/Contents/Resources/CGSession -suspend - darren

Mine is doing this to me right now! I get around it by going to the login window from the quick user switching menu... - James Polley

Shannon Jiménez posted a link

The Nature of Glass Remains Anything but Clear - NYTimes.com

July 29 at 1:56 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link

ژنرال فرهاد, Mahdi Ebrahimi, James Polley and 12 other people liked this

"It is well known that panes of stained glass in old European churches are thicker at the bottom because glass is a slow-moving liquid that flows downward over centuries. Well known, but wrong. Medieval stained glass makers were simply unable to make perfectly flat panes, and the windows were just as unevenly thick when new. The tale contains a grain of truth about glass resembling a liquid, however. The arrangement of atoms and molecules in glass is indistinguishable from that of a liquid. But how can a liquid be as strikingly hard as glass?" - Shannon Jiménez via Bookmarklet

Tessa MacDuff shared an item on Google Reader

Thought Experiment

July 20 at 8:02 pm - Link

James Polley liked this

The analogy is not apt. Education is not a consumer product. With food (and cellphones and so on) you are able to exercise consumer choice repeatably, frequently and meaningfully, so the market is likely to achieve a desirable goal (subject to appropriate regulation). With education (and healthcare and so on) this is simply untrue. Consider the costs (to the individual and to society) of bad market choices in each case... Market forces are like gravity. Sometimes their effects are good (like when it keeps us on the ground) and sometimes bad (like when we fall down the stairs). But first you decide what outcome you want, then you see what will get you there. You cannot reasonably *define* the desired outcome as "whatever the market desires". Replace the word "market" with "force of gravity" to see why... - Benjy Weinberger

2 more comments

I'm with Benjy - Piaw Na

Benjy, are you suggesting that it's not possible to tell if children are enjoying school or learning anything until the very end? Cell phone plans lock you in for two years, but kids usually get a new teacher every year (whether they want to or not :) - Paul Buchheit

Btw, the market forces also work quite well for health care when there is normal consumer behavior, such as laser eye surgery. - Paul Buchheit

*like* Benjy's commeny - James Polley

Louis Gray shared an item on Google Reader

iPhones sold out everywhere except 3 stores in the US!

July 20 at 10:20 pm - Link

Anne Bouey, Alex Barbara, Jamie and 2 other people liked this

Rob Schonberger posted a link

Evans v State of New South Wales [2008] FCAFC 130 (15 July 2008)

July 15 at 5:49 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link

James Polley liked this

Philipp Lenssen posted a link

"Cornstarch, water and bass video proves conclusive awesomeness of physics"

July 12 at 8:47 am - Link

Shannon Jiménez, Jake Eakle, Josh Staiger and 10 other people liked this

(via Boing Boing, Cory's headline.) - Philipp Lenssen

Wow, reminds me of Venom from Spiderman 3 :p - Charles Bihis

yirimyah posted a link

Fox news caught photoshopping photos to make people look crazy

July 12 at 7:08 pm - via twhirl - Link

James Polley liked this

Bindu Reddy posted a link

Ex-Googler blog post about mgmt at Google. Comments?

July 2 at 11:44 am - Link

Wayne, Turker Keskinpala, James Polley and 9 other people liked this

If everyone from MS liked working at Google, I think that would be a worse sign for Google :). A good company should repel the wrong people as much as it attracts the right people (not that I know anything about this one guy in particular). - Paul Buchheit

28 more comments

Everyone has different values and, as Paul says, no place can be right for everyone. As I mentioned last week, this guy's values are pretty different from my own, judging from this excerpt: "I need to know that the code is useful for others, and the only way to measure the usefulness is by the amount of money that the people are willing to part with to have access to my work." - Kevin Fox

Ah, it seems like this topic was already discussed here. Should have figured :) - Bindu Reddy

Another possible way to read that statement is "MS offered a boatload more money than GOOG" :). Which isn't a bad thing. I think that good engineers are underpaid in general. - Sanjeev Singh

He has a good point: when all of your products are "free", the users aren't the customers. - Gabe

I disagree with his his code being useful only when people pay for it comment... However, I do think he has some some interesting but exaggerated points about the role of middle management/managers being very ill-defined at Google. The question is should we have any middle-mgmt in corporations and if so, how best to structure it? I am not sure I have a good answer to that question. - Bindu Reddy

Bindu: he's not saying that his code is only useful when paid for, merely that he judges its usefulness by how much people are willing to pay. That makes some sense; as a photographer I consider my best photos to be the ones people order rather than those that just get the most views on my web site. - Gabe

He didn't say code was only useful when people paid for it. Rather, he said that the only way he knew how to *measure* the usefulness of his code was by the amount of money people were willing to pay for it. It is kind of an interesting economic question. - Karim

When I first read this post, I thought he was simply saying that Microsoft was paying him more than Google. :) - Chris White

His arguments are kind of "light". Look pretty much an afterthought. - Martin Añazco

I wonder how he came up with this observation? - "Google as an organization is not geared - culturally - to delivering enterprise class reliability to its user applications." - Edward Ho

Those types of statements seem like a classic case of denial by an established player being disrupted by a new competitor. They'll keep telling themselves that Google can't "deliver enterprise class reliability", and meanwhile their business will be eaten from below. (not that MS reliability is all that anyway, but obviously they think it is, and need some way to rationalize a lot of heavyweight process) - Paul Buchheit

One year seems a short time to fully understand the culture, particularly since it seems he was moved around (different projects, managers). I'm no Google fan-boy, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of there there. Seems more like he didn't like customer facing 'cool' product development. - AJ Kohn

Google is just like any other company in that it's made up of employees, many of whom have different opinions. This guy decided it wasn't the place for him. The media picks it up because they are bored with the "Google is great" stories, and are looking for some "Google sucks" stories. It's all kind of boring really. - Chris White

Not sure how much I'd pay for Gmail but I would pay heck of a lot more than for Hotmail. - Philipp Lenssen

AJ: a "customer" is somebody who buys something. I've never bought anything from Google, and neither have most of its users. Presumably this guy prefers to work on products where the customer is the user. It's like working for a cable station like Showtime instead of a commercial network like Fox. - Gabe

That's a pretty limited view Gabe. If anything, Google cares about their users more than MS, because enterprise purchasing decisions are made by IT managers and not end users. MS is failing at search because the end users don't like their product and are continuing to abandon it. - Paul Buchheit

Paul, nobody ever said that Google cares less about customers, just that there is a fundamental difference in writing software where the user pays for it and software where the user does not pay for it. Of course a lot of MS software isn't paid for by the user because it came preloaded or was purchased by their employer, but somebody is still paying for it. In this guy's mind, that means it's good. I certainly care more about which of my photos get the most orders versus which get the most views. - Gabe

@Gabe: I don't agree with your definition of a customer being someone who buys something. Blog readers are customers. You are a customer of FriendFeed. If you get utility out of a product, you are a customer. The strength of that relationship could be marked by how much you pay, but you are a customer nonetheless IMO. - AJ Kohn

Gabe, you personally may feel differently based on who pays, but what matters the most in product terms is who chooses, not who pays, because that is the person who has to be satisfied. For Google and Apple, the end user chooses the product, and for MS it's typically someone in IT, and that reality is reflected in their product decisions. - Paul Buchheit

Ideas are like good people. The Right People have good ideas , that needs to fit into the ideology of a corporation. Just like right people need to fit into the right culture. There is the fine difference between good and right.. watch the words and the way that we think about such things.. its important :)- - Peter Dawson

Paul, I think you are right when you say it sounds like "Innovator's Dilemma" denial, but I'm not sure the reliability observation should be dismissed on those grounds. I still think ISPs that have an older telco background (e.g. Verizon) have much better reliability cultures than those that don't (e.g. Comcast). While Google services have always been very reliable for me, I've also seen more than one FF thread in the last few days from people having problems with them... That *can* matter. - Karim

That *can* matter. - @Karim - it will matter when yo pay for it .. till then it really does not pinch its just an inconvenience only - Peter Dawson

I don't know about yours, AJ, but my dictionary defines customer as "One that buys goods or services." I consider myself to be a FriendFeed user, or possibly consumer or patron -- but definitely not a customer. This guy's problem with Google is that while their products (a few of them) are highly popular, they are not highly valuable. He wants to work on a product that has measurable value, so he has to work for some place that charges for their products. Maybe one day micropayments will become easy and I can pay Google per search, but in the mean time Google isn't that valuable to me. - Gabe

@Gabe: Dictionary version of customer is too narrow. Splitting hairs on user, consumer, patron IMO. Should I assume that you'll no longer use Google search or Gmail or anything else that is free? I view value as the utility you derive from that product, not strictly purchases of goods and services. Clean air is valuable, any of the free search engines are valuable. Wouldn't the logical extension of your argument be to equate value of a profession to salary. I find teachers valuable, but not based on salary. - AJ Kohn

The definition may be splitting hairs, but to this guy it's an important distinction. He didn't want to work at Google anymore in part because he wanted to work for a company that sells a product to its users (which by definition makes them customers). It doesn't mean that he didn't want to work on user-facing products; it means that he wanted to work on paying-user-facing products. And I use Google's products particularly because they have no value (i.e. they're free). - Gabe

Okay, I totally grok that Google may be a good job fit for some, not for others (and so, too, Microsoft). But this value/no-value thing has me totally confuzzled. Dude, Gabe... if products have "no value" then why on earth would you use them? Clearly they have value to YOU, and clearly they have value to Google, or Google wouldn't offer them. This isn't radical new think, it's just different types of value! :-) - Adam Lasnik

He says Google produces products that wastes people's time and he then goes on to use it to explain the rationale behind one of the important decisions of his life. Yeah, right!! Also, with his philosophy, he can only work at Microsoft and nowhere else. - Krishnan Hussein Subraman

Sorry, Adam, I tend to think like an engineer. A value is some quantity; in this case it's something's price -- not to be confused with worth, which is how much you're willing to pay for something. For example, an old silver dollar might be worth $50, but its value is only $1. - Gabe

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree re: the definition(s) of value, but now I can better see where you're coming from. - Adam Lasnik

His is one way to measure the value of software. This week I was thinking about a different, larger cost that the user is willing to pay to use software: the amount of time she spends using it, multiplied by the value of time (e.g. her salary). That number is usually a lot more than what the user would have paid for the software in $, and I try to minimize it, because really my job is to get users what they want, not to use up their time getting it. Probably the most valuable thing, though, is to maximize the value you provide, and to try to measure that directly. - j1m

FriendFeed Feedback: Tony Ruscoe posted a link

“The one thing stopping me using Friendfeed more is that it requires my gmail password to import my contacts. If anyone was going to implement the contacts API, you'd have thought it's be a bunch of ex-Googlers :-)”

June 27 at 1:21 am - via Reshare - Link

James Polley, Benjamin Kudria, Hao Chen and 3 other people liked this

Stuart Grimshaw posted a message

“The one thing stopping me using Friendfeed more is that it requires my gmail password to import my contacts. If anyone was going to implement the contacts API, you'd have thought it's be a bunch of ex-Googlers :-)”

June 27 at 12:52 am - via twhirl - Link

James Polley and Tony Ruscoe liked this

Reshared in the FriendFeed Feedback room: http://friendfeed.com/e/4150ab... - Tony Ruscoe

I don't understand why you would want to import all gmail contacts, but maybe that's just me. I have a gazillion contacts but like having just a handful of people on my friendfeed :). - John Mueller

I'd want to import them and see which of them also use FF, rather than spam them all to join me. - Stuart Grimshaw via twhirl

FriendFeed Feedback: Mike Reynolds posted a message

“FriendFeed feature request: Would like to be able to flag a post for "tracking". I like/comment on so many things (perhaps 20-40/day) but find there are 1-5 topics/day I want to track. Would love for this to be on its on tab or link.”

June 25 at 10:13 am - Link

James Polley, Charlie Anzman, Marty Smith and 8 other people liked this

How about bookmarks, and maybe search alerts? - Tanath

6 more comments

Yup -- I've been feeling the need for a "track" command since I first started exploring Friendfeed. - Sean McBride

id love this too - Ruben Llibre

yes - give us gmail stars! :) - Dieter Schwarz

That would be an excellent idea - David W

Totally! - Franklin Pettit

In the interim, there's the "Read Later" Greasemonkey script: http://ffapps.com/readlater/ - Mark Trapp

There was talk of Stars before, but it would get confused with Likes. - Tanath

You could also put track in a comment. - Russellreno

FriendFeed Feedback: Joe Lazarus posted a message

“I'd like a feed that just shows comments and / or likes other people made on my FriendFeed posts. Shouldn't that be a basic feature?”

June 25 at 4:29 pm - Link

xero, Steve Isaacs, Jonathon and James Polley liked this

FriendFeed Feedback: Tsega Dinka posted a message

“When quoting source text via the bookmarklet, the quote shows up as the first comment but is credited as a posters comment. Anyway to differentiate a quote from a real comment?”

June 25 at 12:02 am - Link

xero, James Polley, d@vid seaward and 2 other people liked this

actually it is a comment... - Alessandro

2 more comments

Personally, I'd like to set this as the default for my delicious comments too. - d@vid seaward

Alessandro: if I quote a passage from an article, it shouldn't be attributed me. Right now the treatment is too similar to user comments. That's all I'm saying. - Tsega Dinka

Agree with Tsega. I want a way to show a quote and make it obvious it's a quote. - James Polley

Yes, sorry, you are right Tsega. Didn't read the "quoting" part :) - Alessandro via fftogo

FriendFeed Feedback: Tim Hoeck posted a message

“Most Needed Feature! Ability to name "blogs", so people can filter unwanted items. I know this has been mentioned, but we need it soon. I don't want to block some blogs, but I may have to if this isn't implemented.”

June 21 at 6:06 pm - Link

James Polley, d@vid seaward, flammable and 6 other people liked this

A stop-gap measure may be to run your blog feed through Yahoo! Pipes - d@vid seaward

FriendFeed Feedback: Pat Hawks posted a message

“What if instead of hiding all items like this unless they have comments, I could hide all items like this unless they have 5 comments?”

June 23 at 7:39 am - Link

d@vid seaward, James Polley, Derek and 2 other people liked this

FriendFeed Feedback: Tim Hoeck posted a message

“why is there no hide for rooms?”

June 21 at 5:55 pm - Link

Hao Chen, James Polley, Derek and 3 other people liked this

there is also no hide on individuals pages. - Tim Hoeck

and also no hide on the world stream - dekay

Paul Buchheit posted a link

Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant

June 24 at 7:58 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link

hank, saku7up, Luigi Centenaro and 87 other people liked this

"I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don't drive usability issues. Let me give you my experience from yesterday. I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack ... so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went there. The first 5 times I used the site it timed out while trying to bring up the download page. Then after an 8 second delay I got it to come up. This site is so slow it is unusable. It wasn't in the top 5 so I expanded the other 45..." - Paul Buchheit via Bookmarklet

16 more comments

This email nails it. So I wonder, if Bill Gates knew and experience the flaws of his own product in 2003, why no action has been taken to improve it? The Microsoft website is still a mess and Windows is still Windows. - fbrunel

"I reboot every night," Priceless... - Christian Sonntag

Christian, I noticed that, too. But it's strange. I never reboot XP, just put it to sleep at night and it works perfectly. - Sprague D

This is real? I can't believe this is real. This is like every user experience with Windows ever: if the Chairman of the company who makes the software has the problems (and is pissed off about it), and most of the issues he's talking about haven't been fixed after five years, 1) how much power did Gates really wield, and 2) what the hell? - Mark Trapp

http://www.betterdesktop.org/ - If Bill Gates actually sent mail like that every day, there is no way Windows would work the way it does now. Want some cool insight on usability - check the link out. - Tim Hoeck

Pwned! - Ashwin Bharambe

Here's another article about Microsoft executives and their troubles with WIndows: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03... - Gary Burd

I'm sure it's real, this is classic BillG. But getting flamed by the CEO is one thing, actually making a giant complicated mess of an organization and a giant complicated mess of an operating system work in a nice simple way is hard. - ⓞnor

If he truely sends emails like this every they, then I think they are falling on deaf ears. - Ryan McCutchen via twhirl

And Gates should be praised for actually USING his products. Some executives don't. - Ontario Emperor via fftogo

I respect Bill Gates a lot more for reading this. Now all they have to do is do something about it. - Stuart Woodward

@stuart: They did fix some. Try going to microsoft.com and downloading movie maker via downloads. My main annoyance was two pop-ups, one for silverlight and another for a survey. The e-mail is from 5 years ago. - nadim

I wonder what he thinks of Windows usability in general. I feel it's getting worse. - Philipp Lenssen

@Stuart Woodward I completely agree with you. I'm a Microsoft solutions architect and my respect for MS has just leapt ten-fold - Jonathan Nguyen

it is good to know that Gates has similar issues as me... to bad for him he can't ditch MS for Linux or Mac like I did. - nick carrasco

I'm not entirely sure this email is genuine - but even if it is almost every issue raised has been dealt with... if it was even true in 2003. As someone who uses and supports Linux, OSX and Windows Vista systems both personally and for clients the simple reality is that Vista is a good desktop OS and Server 2008 is a SUPERB server OS. - Soulhuntre

I am not sure how Linux and OSX have better usability than windows.. not the case for me and a lot of people I know.. - Adriano Gonçalves

@Soulhuntre - It's real. What people don't understand is that it's his *job* (okay it _was_ his job) to send emails like that all day. - Jordan Hofker

FriendFeed Feedback: Phil Glockner posted a message

“Request: A "Catch Up" tab that is populated with recently conversations that user has contributed to, or recent friendfeed or other entries with new comments, so that user can get 'caught-up' on conversations they may have missed.”

June 21 at 10:51 am - Link

James Polley, Jonathon and bill giltner liked this

http://friendfeed.com/jigarme/... Replace jigarme with your username.. - Jigar Mehta

I realize that going to the 'me' tab, then the 'see both' link does this, but combining these two and weighting the list toward putting popular or recent comments near the top would be helpful. - Phil Glockner

FriendFeed Feedback: Sean McBride posted a message

“In the cause of reducing noise and clutter, and streamlining the Friendfeed experience for maximum speed and efficiency in the style of Google Reader, I still would like this option: mark entries as read as you scroll by them; next time show only new entries or new comments for old entries. ”

June 19 at 9:13 am - Link

James Polley, Tanath, roamin and 3 other people liked this

Perhaps not as you scroll by. Maybe marking things you click or perform an action on as seen and then have a way to mark all as read, like GReader or Twhirl? - Voyagerfan5761

4 more comments

Perhaps scroll by could be an option, as it is now in Google Reader for items in expanded view. Some of us wish to reduce our clicks to an absolute minimum -- more information, less effort. - Sean McBride

Yeah, options would be a good thing. Let's hope this one gets implemented. :-) - Voyagerfan5761

Ohhh, mark all read then only show new bits. - Ashton

Sean: Thanks for the thought. Lets drop the old stuff... - Ansgar Wollnik

I still think scrolling past wouldn't work. It's too much. What if I'm looking for something I read a minute ago but 5 new things have come in. I haven't ready them yet but I have to scroll past them to get to the older item. Now they're read when they weren't. I'd still rather have a "new items since last visit/refresh" option, maybe couple that with a "read later" option. - xero

xero -- I was suggesting the automatic mark as read while viewing/scrolling merely as an option for people who like to process information really, really fast, at lightning speed, with minimum friction and redundancy -- definitely not for everyone, I know. Another possibility is manually marking individual items as read, or manually marking all the items on a page as read with a single user click. A simple toggle click should make read items visible again, so you needn't worry about items disappearing for good. - Sean McBride

FriendFeed Feedback: Jigar Mehta posted a message

“better notification system for comments and replies..”

June 21 at 4:52 am - Link

Michael Collins, Glenn Slaven, Tanath and 8 other people liked this

FF is doing very poor right now on notifying users about 'conversations'.. Say I posted some entry (top level) and have got few replies (my ff page is still open) but I have to refresh the page and look for my entry (which would be down 2 pages if its taken a while!) and see if there are any replies.. Maintaining conversation on FF is a pain today. - Jigar Mehta

14 more comments

Take another example, If I commented on some entry.. and somebody replied to that comment specifically by writing my handle/name, still I dont get notified.. - Jigar Mehta

An example of notification would be something like GMail does ("Updated Conversation small hyperlink") or something like Orkut does (if you have got scrap from somebody when you have orkut page opened [which is not your scrapbook page] - they show a small popup saying a new scrap has come).. - Jigar Mehta

Actually I would love Jabber notification as well (on my IM).. - Jigar Mehta

If someone replies, your original message with the reply is moved to the top. If you have to search two pages down for your message, then there are no new replies. So what is the problem? - Peter

Personally, I'd like to know if someone replied back to me when I posted a comment. - Araceli

Well, looks like you dont have scoble in your friend list.. when people are active on friendfeed, somebody has replied on your post and its already been 5 minutes that you refreshed the page, I am sure your reply would have reached 2 pages down.. haven't you faced that issue? - Jigar Mehta

I haven't, no, I'm glad. With that much activity, I wouldn't have time left for a life. By the way, you do know you can get all replies by rss? You don't have to miss a thing. - Peter

wow, I dont know that.. How to get that RSS feed? What does URL look like? Though RSS notification is still not instant.. but would work till they do something concrete.. Hope you dont miss this reply!! - Jigar Mehta

It looks something like this: http://friendfeed.com/jigarme/... But I think I was wrong. This only lists an item if you made a new comment to it. Then you will see all comments to that item. But if someone posts a new comment after that, that doesn't show in rss. You can get an rss feed of everything on your friends page, though. If comments are added, this should give an updated item. A feed of just comments, not including the comments you made yourself, that would be a useful thing. - Peter

Yes, I agree.. Problem with this RSS feed in terms of tracking comments is, once you read an item from RSS feed, no matter how many comments that item gets, you never know! Its for the main item updates.. not for comments.. - Jigar Mehta

Plus there's always the problem that the RSS feed refresh rate is pretty slow in comparison to instantaneous reply using something like Twhirl :-( But to bring something else to the conversation, I would like to see better threading of the comments and replies so that it's easier at a glance to see who's replying to what. I'm sure there's probably a Greasemonkey script out there that does this though. - CannonGod

Yes, threaded comments are discussed a lot on FriendFeed and its my next highly awaited feature on friendfeed.. UI modifications for this would be interesting.. (something like Digg would be awesome!) - Jigar Mehta

@Jigar Definitely. Lots of people have said they wish they could 'digg or like' comments made more, not just the posts. I think FriendFeed could implement a good system for this much like Reddit. There the UI is quite simple, but has all the comment/post digging features - plus the heirachical threaded replies. - CannonGod via twhirl

I have been thinking about this. Some suggestions to improve on follow-ups. First, there should be a link "set bookmark". Once clicked, all content posted before the last page refresh should be hidden. When there is new content, there should be a link "show bookmarked entries" or something at the end, to undo the hiding (but without moving or removing the bookmark). Second, when an old entry gets a new comment, the entry should be moved to the top, but only its comments that are newer than the bookmark should be visible, initially (with a link to make older comments visible too). Third, from the moment on, when an entry gets a comment a day or more after the posting of the entry, all comments to that entry should display the date and time they were posted (as an extra help to see what is old and what is new). - Peter

Jigar: but you can always go to your "me" page (http://friendfeed.com/jigarme). If someone comments/likes one of your entries, it moves to the top. No need to scroll down to page 2 unless you are involved in dozens of active conversations at a time. It's no notification but it's quite accessible IMHO. Same goes for new activity on things you liked/commented on: http://friendfeed.com/jigarme/... - Ole Begemann

Keeping one bookmark would not be enough. If you set a bookmark on your friends page that doesn't show a room you are subscribed to, that bookmark should not apply to that room. This may mean you'd need (internally) one bookmark per source stream. - Peter

Thomas Hawk published photos on Flickr

A Series of Complementary Contradictions

May 18 at 12:36 pm - Link

Silver, Lisa L. Seifert, Roger Chen and James Polley liked this

DeWitt Clinton posted a link

"We are happy to announce that the Google Contacts Data API now supports OAuth. This is our first step towards OAuth enabling all Google Data APIs." -Wei

April 25 at 2:40 pm - Link

Olivier Tharan, Xavi, Adewale Oshineye and 14 other people liked this

It is worth more than Jaiku, esp. if GOOG wants a real, viable service in this niche - Michael VanDervort via Alert Thingy

this is one API that really needed it - Daniel Feygin

Paul Buchheit posted a message

“"Google. I was factually and materially wrong at every level." -- Eric Schmidt”

April 18 at 2:47 pm - Link

Ian, Keith Coleman, Adam Barker and 7 other people liked this

Eric's reply to, "What idea did you initially dismiss and now realize was brilliant?" - Paul Buchheit

Tony Hung posted a message

“Friendfeed request: Twitters have the permalink back to the original twitter "status", not just the person twittering.”

April 17 at 6:38 pm - Link

James Polley liked this

There's a 'link to this entry' link under the more menu, is that what you were after? - Glenn Slaven

@Glenn -- not really. The 'link to this entry' provides a link to FF -- I want a link to the original tweet. - Tony Hung

Ahh, right - Glenn Slaven

Yeah, I wish that was there too. It makes it hard to link into services like Quotably. - engtech

Jess Lee posted a link

Warmth And Privacy While Using Your Laptop - Geekologie

April 18 at 12:44 am - Link

msnoulten, Carlo Maglinao, mojay and 38 other people liked this

Haha, this picture makes me laugh every time I see it. I wanna use it on a plane! - Roshan Vyas

7 more comments

They just need to make it a bit bigger and you can watch porn in public. - engtech

hahaha...how creative. ...via twhirl - Tina K.J

lol :-)) (via sobees) - PlaTyPuS

om nom nom nom - Jim Norris

I want to get one of those for the movie theater :) - Mike Reynolds

awe. some. - Sarah Vela

it's fun :) ...via AlertThingy - freeman

haha - nouhad

it's so stupid... - Vincent Chu

engtech posted a link

alert_thingy_to_bed.png (image)

April 16 at 3:36 pm - Link

Russellreno, Shey, Steven Hodson and 5 other people liked this

Converting all the "via alerty thingy" messages to "in bed" makes me laugh. - engtech

Is this a greasemonkey script? It should be. - Paul Buchheit

@paul: Yup, that's a Greasemonkey script. Supports "via twhirl" messages as well now. :) - engtech

Aviv posted a message

“test please ignore”

April 10 at 6:53 pm - Link

James Polley liked this

one more -- - Aviv

Sorry, EPIC FAIL. - Adam Lasnik

duly ignored. - James Polley

Aviv posted a message

“I don't like seeing via Alert Thingy all over FF now”

April 13 at 7:53 pm - Link

Anthony Farrior, Jeremy, Janet Tokerud and 8 other people liked this

^ sent via FriendFeed's already-gorgeous-not-looking-for-a-replacement UI ;-) - Aviv

17 more comments

Understandable. (via Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071127 Firefox/2.0.0.11) - Paul Buchheit

Didn't even realize Alert Thingy tagged this on the post. That's unfortunate. Think I'll stick to the FriendFeed page a little more than Alert Thingy (although I think it has some great potential). - Brandon Titus

=Aviv (via Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_4_11; en) AppleWebKit/526.1+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0.4 Safari/523.12) - j1m

Glad to see I'm not the only one :) - Shannon Jiménez

Yeah, I hope Bret, Paul, and the rest get a Twitter-style "from" tag working so Alert Thingy doesn't have to put that in the comment text. (via Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.13) Gecko/20080311 Firefox/2.0.0.13) - Voyagerfan5761

I hope that they *don't* get a "from" tag working. I don't need your commercial nagging. Seeing your spamvertising only makes me less likely to try your product. If your product is any good, I'll hear about it other ways. - James Polley

"Like" James Polley's comment - Shannon Jiménez

I don't think it's that serious. ...via AlertThingy - Corvida

Well I think you're biased ;-) - Aviv

lol how could I possibly be biased? ...via AlertThingy - Corvida

By using it? :) It's great that people find use for Alert Thingy, but I don't think it should compromise my FF experience.. - Aviv

Then you're biased because you're not using it. It's a tab saver =P ...via AlertThingy - Corvida

Andy, which ones? via Safari - Aviv

ya which ones? -via FeedDemon via Vista via The Internet - Steven Hodson

You guys are the worst lol Now I'll just continue to spam. ...via AlertThingy - Corvida

Yes - but that's using a Twitter feature - FF has no such capability, yet. - Aviv

Corvida, we're your reality check :) - Aviv

@Aviv lol like hell you are Neo! This is not the Matrix. I'll spare you this time. - Corvida

One solution would be to have Engtech write yet another FF Greasemonkey script. - Mark Krynsky