FriendFeed Watch

10/04/2008 In General by Steven

Just posted to the FriendFeed blog is the most recent changelog of things the team has done to make our little community work better. This is just a partial as usual but you can read the full list over here

Changelog

changeset:   4f0ef6f9bc70
user:        paul
date:        2008-04-09 18:27:05
description: kill more workers

changeset:   138493caa489
user:        paul
date:        2008-04-09 17:40:49
description: crawl on multiple interfaces

changeset:   6a0827f37180
user:        sanjeev
date:        2008-04-09 16:48:58
description: kill more workers

changeset:   78d6aa0fe6eb
parent:      b52185bbd4da
user:        jim
date:        2008-04-09 16:29:49
description: merge

changeset:   d1b0bf65ce0b
user:        jim
date:        2008-04-09 16:29:40
description: add tool to futz with google talk roster/subscriptions

changeset:   e1fb1ccf66ac
parent:      9080c8569ed4
user:        jim
date:        2008-04-09 16:29:18
description: move BinAscii to root package, play with useless jabber stuff

changeset:   b52185bbd4da
parent:      9de4af3bd261
user:        sanjeev
date:        2008-04-09 15:52:10
description: merge

changeset:   32d0c7089a47
user:        sanjeev
date:        2008-04-09 15:51:56
description: I long for the day we are UTC everywhere

changeset:   124fe6a43556
user:        sanjeev
date:        2008-04-09 15:50:33
description: also populate summary table when importing access log

changeset:   4104a59704e5
user:        sanjeev
date:        2008-04-09 15:49:18
description: forgot invites

changeset:   6e70134b64b1
user:        sanjeev
date:        2008-04-09 15:48:58
description: speed up mysql query by doing it in python

changeset:   503f0a99aa9f
parent:      817345cbc1f0
user:        sanjeev
date:        2008-04-09 05:47:27
description: merge

changeset:   caa46e5e0e44
user:        sanjeev
date:        2008-04-09 05:47:15
description: generate persistent stats summary table

changeset:   2d109a0e0f6a
parent:      b36e8df98433
user:        sanjeev
date:        2008-04-08 16:23:27
description: merge

changeset:   262c1787d613
parent:      ac02a4b94115
user:        sanjeev
date:        2008-04-08 16:23:17
description: merge

changeset:   66376c5de162
parent:      f0fd977475dc
user:        sanjeev
date:        2008-04-04 17:46:18
description: rescale month graphs

Conversation Tags: FriendFeed, changelog

Post viewed:  152 views |

09/04/2008 In Web Goodies by Steven

It appears that the second of our two favorite FriendFeed Greasemonkey jockeys has come out with a new addition called Sticky Search which is a Greasemonkey script that will let you ave your favorite search queries that you use on FriendFeed.

So head over to Aviv’s FriendFeed Apps page and grab yourself a copy before they are all gone

Conversation Tags: FriendFeed, search, Greasemonkey, Firefox

Post viewed:  344 views |

09/04/2008 In General by Steven

Over on his blog Alexander van Elsas has taken some time and wrung some FriendFeed usage stats. He says his reasons for doing this were fairly straightforward. He wanted to see if that actions of users are shared with others without intent, that is the person performing the action is intentionally sharing, the content that gets shared is usually less valuable.

Alexander’s conclusion once he had sliced and diced the data that FriendFeed was really nothing more than a techie bloggers echo chamber. Although not all doom and gloom about the service he does have some suggestions that even make FriendFeed a serious contender for Techmeme’s spot as the leading resource for bloggers.

All in all it is an interesting read and well worth taking some time to look it over.

Conversation Tags: FriendFeed, statistics

Post viewed:  612 views |

09/04/2008 In mobile by Steven

I first got notified about this project via email from Frederic from The Last Podcast which has been reported on Mashable by Stan Schroeder. Currently there is no public beta available although Stan reports that there is a video of the application.

According to the post on Mashable the application author Shane Vitarana is planning on implementing the ability to post to FriendFeed along with the possibility to directly post photos taken with the iPhone camera.

This will definitely be a FriendFeed application to keep an eye as I am sure that it will be an instant hit with the iPhone crew.

[picture credit to Mashable]

Conversation Tags: FriendFeed, iPhone, Mashable

Post viewed:  345 views |

05/04/2008 In mobile by SeekGround

MojiPage appears to be the first available effort to use FriendFeed’s API to provide a mobile interface to FriendFeed.  The question is “what value does MojiPage add to the user community?”

First a little about me:  I was asked to provide input here on FriendFeedWatch because Steven does not have a cell phone therefore does not feel like he can talk about the mobile space whereas I have been fairly vocal about being a heavy mobile web browsing user.  I currently use a Sprint MotoQ on Microsoft Windows Mobile Version 5.0.  Therefore, until I state otherwise, please assume that my reviews are based upon this smartphone platform. I am not a developer, programmer, nor otherwise credentialed technical geek.  However, I am a user, consumer, and often early adopter of new technology and services. I have been frequently viewing the FriendFeed pages using both the MotoQ and the Desktop computer monitor.  They are just as readable on the MotoQ as on the desktop computer screen.  However, I have been perpetually frustrated by the inability to comment or respond in anyway back through FriendFeed when using the MotoQ.  This in essence is the missing component: the ability to participate in and interact with the FriendFeed community while mobile. 

Now then, to answer the question: 

• This afternoon (Friday April 4th) I signed up for MojiPage.
• I initially had difficulty with registering for MojiPage and creating the FriendFeed Widget.  I tried a couple of different email addresses to create accounts but received the same widget errors on each each account.  I reviewed the FriendFeed procedures and ended up adding the FriendFeed widget more than once even going so far as to reset my FriendFeed remote key at one point.  I finally used the MojiPage Feedback link to ask for help.
• At 7:26 PM CST Will Tan responded by email with advice for properly using the “FriendFeed remote key.” He also apologized with the following statement:  “I apologize for the uninformative error. It should have been more clear, and will be fixed over the weekend.”
• Believing that I had used the remote key correctly, I sent back an email to that effect. (I am after all the typical user. “User error? Couldn’t be!  I know what I’m doing.” Famous last words.)
• At 9:09 PM CST Will Tan responded once again in what I thought was a very diplomatic manner “The error that we got from FF for those widgets is: 401 Unauthorized. After some testing, I found that friendfeed nickname is case-sensitive and the first widget probably failed because the nickname was “SeekGround” instead of the all-lowercase version. I’m not sure what the error is on the second widget, since the nickname seems to be correct. Have you ever reset the friendfeed remote key?  At least the one that is good seems to be fine. ”
• “One’s working?”, I asked myself.  How did I miss that?  Sure enough it was.  I checked out the shiny new widget on the MotoQ.  The user interface that I see on the mobile phone is bare bones and simple just like I like it.  It looks in fact very much like the screenshot that Steven provided on his review.  However what must appear dreary on a desktop computer, simply works for me on a cell phone.  I would say that they need to work on their grouping and spacing to help with the readability.  I would also say that I was extemely dissapointed by the lack of the ability to interact with FriendFeed (comment/like).
• At 10:11 PM CST I sent the following question back to Will Tan: “Do you plan to integrate the friendfeed features involving the > ability to comment or ‘like’ an entry?”
• At 10:42 PM CST I received the following response:  “Absolutely! I’m working on it right now. Should have it up by tomorrow. ”

In conclusion, my overall impression is one of excellent custom service and an overall sense of rapid development to meet the needs expressed by the user community.  Should they successfully give me the ability to interact with the FriendFeed community and continue with this winning attitude then I believe they will have a gigantic leg up on the competition.  Even without the coming enhancements, they are well on their way to being the mobile start page that they want to be.  However, without the enhancements, they will not be adding value to the FriendFeed mobile user community.

Conversation Tags: FriendFeed, MjiLabs, mobile, MojiPage

Post viewed:  260 views |

04/04/2008 In Site News by Steven

With my post last night about MojiPage for FriendFeed I realized that when it comes to reporting on stuff in the mobile arena - especially with regards to FriendFeed I was at a big disadvantage because I lack a requirement for being able to talk about the mobile space - I don’t own a cell phone of any time.

So besides placing myself at a disadvantage in this regards I was also doing my readers a disservice because of this. So I decided to do what I could to rectify the problems and emailed one of the people I had met through FriendFeed who from what I had read of their posts had an interested in the mobile space.

The end result is that I would like to welcome SeekGround, a fellow FriendFeed user to the fold here at FriendFeed Watch. SG’s job will be to monitor and report on any developments; software or otherwise, that relates to the mobile space and FriendFeed.

So if you are a developer working on a FriendFeed related project for the mobile space or have any information relating to FriendFeed and our mobile lifestyle feel free to give a holler to SeekGround at seekground @ friendfeedwatch . com

Welcome aboard SeekGround and thanks for joining in on the fun.

Conversation Tags: FriendFeed, mobile, SeekGround

Post viewed:  227 views |

04/04/2008 In Web Goodies by Steven

This story was passed along to me by Corvida and it is about a mobile service from MjiLabs called MojiPage which among other things lets you get your FriendFeed fix via your mobile phone. Now not having a cell phone I can only go by the web interface displayed in the browser.

When you first select to have FriendFeed added as a feed on you mobile page you’ll see the public timeline along with a section at the top where you can enter in your FriendFeed username along with your FriendFeed Remote key. When you enter in the information the display will change to display your personal friends timeline.

From that point you will be able to view your FriendFeed activity on your mobile device. AS I’ve said before I don’t own a cell phone so I can’t say nay or yea for the service but what I can say is that a plain and simple as the original FriendFeed page is on the web the version on MojiPage is downright dreary. Personally I couldn’t be bothered to even use the FriendFeed service if this is what I had to look forward to.

I am sure that some will gladly suffer through the bland plain jane approach but for me it just wouldn’t cut it. Maybe having a cell phone changes one’s perspective but I somehow doubt it.

Conversation Tags: FriendFeed, mobile, MjiLabs, MojiPages

Post viewed:  328 views |

04/04/2008 In Web Goodies by Steven

just got word from Eric (aka engtech) over at Internet Duct Tape that he has upgraded three of this Greasemonkey scripts for Firefox and users of FriendFeed

FriendFeed: By Service 0.5

Dynamically grabs the list of services once per day. It should always display the latest services.

When you’re on a users’ page, it’ll add options to filter by the specific services they use.

When your one the main page it will hover in place in the sidebar

Includes optional "Help promote" links to share the script

FriendFeed: Remove Visited Links 0.4

• Hides the visited links using Friend Feed’s "hide entry" function.
• The entry will be hidden across multiple computers.
• You can see the hidden entry at the bottom of the page using the normal "show hidden entries" mechanism.

FriendFeed: Twitter Client 0.4

• Will show the correct character count when tweeting from FF (count down from 140 instead of 104 )
• Will show tweets as being from ‘idt’ once Twitter deploys again.

So if you are a Firefox user and love your FriendFeed goodness head over to IDT-Labs and grab the freshest builds before they are all gone

Conversation Tags: FriendFeed, Greasemonkey, Firefox, Internet Duct Tape

Post viewed:  147 views |

03/04/2008 In Web Goodies by Steven

Along with engtech from Internet Duck Tape aviv from FriendFeed Apps is slowly putting together a nice collection of Greasemonkey scripts for Firefox for users of FriendFeed. Now if this post in FriendFeed is any indication aviv has another one coming our way that will let you mark a post in FriendFeed for reading at a later time - much like the bookmarking feature I have been asking for.

Currently though we only have the screenshot to go by but as soon as he makes it available I’ll let you know.

UPDATE: aviv just emailed me with the download page link for this script htp://ffapps.com/readlater/

Conversation Tags: FriendFeed, engtech, aviv, Greasemonkey, Firefox

Post viewed:  230 views |

03/04/2008 In General by Steven

One of the nice things about FriendFeed; especially at this relatively early point of development, is some of the friend groups that can develop within the FriendFeed ecosphere; and it is responses from those trusted friends that we as fellow members should really listen to if we want to make FriendFeed an even better service.

I bring this up because of a post by Louis where he asked what on one level was a very simple question about a FriendFeed feature that would allow for the blocking / hiding of one blog out of a bunch of blogs that a person might have listed on their FriendFeed profile. While the question could have been looked upon on a larger service wide basis it was one I took personally; and not in a bad way Louis, because it was one of my post on FriendFeed that sparked the question.

The blog in question is my braincell soup which admittedly isn’t a blog for everyone’s taste since it deals with more of WTF and down right strange things and obviously the subject matter could be NSFW or even distasteful for some.

As you can see from the screen capture Louis was asking for a way to be able to block a specific blog while not hurting other blogs from the same person. Now I could have easily tossed off the comment and kept on posting links to posts on the braincell soup blog but instead I took some time an thought about the reasons why such a request was asked in the first place. Sure it could be that braincell soup content doesn’t always have that much to do with tech but the fact was that one man’s blog isn’t always another persons reading enjoyment.

The end result is that I removed the braincell soup blog from my FriendFeed importing. This was done in my opinion out of any self-censorship but rather than wanting to include content that could be enjoyed by everyone - in other words it was done out of common courtesy which for me doesn’t even come close to self-censorship.

It was done out of common courtesy for my fellow members of the FriendFeed service and sometimes that is more important than trying to use WTF type of content in order to improve one’s readership.

Conversation Tags: FriendFeed, posts, readership

Post viewed:  203 views |