A while ago I began keeping track of Twitter quirks, and the idea originally began with the strange ‘replies’ behaviour. Here’s an explanation straight from the horses mouth.
Well this sucks.
Anyone who puts anything on a computer screen that they want hidden from public view should think again.
The information stored on social networks doesn’t belong to them, because it is not theirs in the first place; it is the people’s, who use the network. That said, I agree with Scoble. Facebook is taking measures to uphold their terms of use. But I think if you’re going to keep people coming back to your site, it should not be because their data is trapped with you.
We’ve found that it redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users’ knowledge, which doesn’t respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect and is a violation of our Terms of Service.
I wonder how it keeps track of violations from applications (which they say have also been blocked or fixed). Also, if Google misuses the data, shouldn’t Google be held accountable and not Facebook? Looks like they just needed a reason to break the data portability initiative off.
John Resign talks about the “hidden, additions: A Google-released JavaScript library and an Open Web test suite.”
Very good write-up analysing Facebook’s move to create a Jabber/XMPP integration for it’s Chat. Lots of information and links to further reading.
Thrift is a software framework for scalable cross-language services development. It combines a powerful software stack with a code generation engine to build services that work efficiently and seamlessly between C++, Java, Python, PHP, and Ruby.
It was released quite a while ago, but I’ve just seen it. Definitely a looky and try-er.
There is a very nice saying from the movie The Dead Pool:
Opinions are like assholes. Everybody’s got one and everyone thinks everyone else’s stinks.
Blogging is a glamorous way of sharing your opinion. On the big stage. Where many people can come and read what you have to say. If they agree with you, they link to you. If they don’t, they blog about it and link to you. Either way, your opinion is reaching more people. If you’re influential, your opinion can push people into action. But that’s the keyword, isn’t it? Influential.
Every where you read on the rise of blogs as a medium of communication, you will see the word ‘personal’ attached to the list. There is nothing personal about journalism. That deals with stating hard facts and speculating on the future based on past facts and present scenario. Nowhere do you see a “Personally, I think that’s wrong”, because personal opinion is not allowed in journalism which is supposed to remain unbiased and neutral. We read newspapers every, and I’ve made my case rather clearly in the past.
Over at #indiawits, what started as a ranting and defending session quickly became a debate on the technicalities of the concept of “blogging”. I stick to the notion of opinionated blogging being the best kind, because it’s not (always) decorated to get more people to read what you write. I agree with @hiway that there is a civilised way of sharing opinions that does not resort to name calling. John Gruber does that (a writer I admire), and so does Wired; it still doesn’t make them any less bloggers or influential. It just means they have an opinion which people don’t agree with. That’s a part of the word, that not everybody will agree with you.
A diplomatic, neutral blogger will never be influential. Simply because he has no opinion which might influence others. They will read, informed (since there is nothing to agree or disagree) and move on. He might get a ‘Well said Jack’ mail from a few of his readers, but that’s probably the crux of it.
I’ll restate something I said from the chat that, on retrospection, was pretty apt:
If you don’t have an opinion, you don’t belong to your blog
Wednesday, 14 May '08
My first Python escapade is an IRC bot for #indiatwits at <irc.freenode.org>, which is a semi-bridge between IRC and Twitter, and an administrator bot which handles channel tasks such as op-ing, voice-ing, as well as logs, favourite clips. Full feature list and source code is now available at Google Code.
AppleInsider:
… will feature the first ever iPhone track for mobile developers with in-depth sessions and hands-on labs to fully explore the capabilities of the OS X iPhone 2.0 [ … ] this year’s Mac track is being organized to give newcomers and seasoned veterans alike the technical foundation and techniques needed to develop world-class OS X Leopard applications with sessions that discuss every level of the system, including interface design and implementation, application frameworks, security, localization and networking.
Interesting figures, and even more interesting comparison. I really do wonder if Microsoft did the right thing by giving up on Yahoo!.
You knew that was coming, didn’t you?
Facebook will be (sometime in the future) opening up their Chat to be usable by Jabber/XMPP clients. Current aims at supported features are viewing online friends (and talking to them) and changing Facebook statuses — which is somehow more exciting than the former.
Tuesday, 13 May '08
You’d think they would cook up a proprietary platform to allow the sharing. Typical.
Apple differentiates itself on design. Their products feel right. And to their customers, “good enough” design will never be compelling, regardless of how high Apple sets the bar.
To even compare Apple and Dell is a sin. Seriously.
Friday, 9 May '08
… take the question, “does this program complete?” I.e., will it not go into an infinite loop. How would you answer this question, given an arbitrary piece of code? You could try running it. But what if it takes a long time? How long are you willing to wait?
A good option, until Meebo or the likes come out with one of their own. You can use this to join our #indiatwits channel on Freenode (irc.freenode.org).
The previous one was a gem graphics and game-play wise. The story could have been polished a little. Doom 4 will hopefully be a better overall experience.
The non-distracting, non-focus stealing notification application for OS X is now available (bare bones at the moment) for Windows.
Thursday, 8 May '08
If Facebook was open to negotiations, it would have been bought a long time ago (remember Y! offering $1 billion?). Gates said that after all that’s happened the past 3 weeks, Microsoft is looking to go independent for a while. Even if Zuckerberg and Gates are Harvard chums, Facebook doesn’t have a revenue model that can be advanced and that’s what Microsoft needs right now.
My reaction to the rumour is, nonetheless, not changing. But I don’t see this offer actually being made. Just a little post-breakup-ride-the-wave hype.
I’ll start with the punch-line: Decentralisation is not the solution to scale a service like Twitter. Those who suggest it are not getting the bigger issue. Twitter is not about the service, but the experience. Its ability to initiate conversation between people is amazing. It’s been defined in many ways. Some call it micro-blogging, while others call it life-streaming. In fact, Those who call it a social “network” are not that far off. Twitter leads the services supported by the lifestreaming aggregators, which shows that socially, it’s the most used on the web.
Twitter, the evolution
I see Twitter as a natural successor to weblogs. One that cuts out the noise and actually focuses on the point at hand. You don’t need to specifically go to a person’s blog to see their updates, because those updates come to you. You don’t need to read through long posts of 400+ words to understand what they are trying to say - they come to you in 140 characters or less. You don’t need to fill out forms to give your comment on what they said - an @reply is all it takes. It is moderately analogous to social networks because your Twitter page acts like a normal “profile” on sites such as Facebook. The only difference being that your profile changes with every update, and because these updates are spontaneous people always get the “correct” view of you. No pretence, no put-ons to get more people to connect and show off your network of “friends”. Here, followers follow you if they want to (similar to feed subscribers) but don’t get in your way unless you follow them back. People can see who you follow and judge your interests from that list as well. Twitter truly brings the human factor back into digital social networks today.
Decentralising such a simple yet effective concept will not only reduce it’s value, it will effectively kill it. People might argue that with Twitter’s scaling issues it will actually be a welcome change from the downtimes and freedom from dependence on fragile servers. As has been noted, there is no relation between a solution to Twitter’s scaling issue and decentralisation. Social networks in general might even if broken apart and spread throughout the Internet, but Twitter won’t.
One main reason is that, like I said, Twitter is the natural successor to weblogs. It is so because it brings all the conversation together, instead of having people jump from page to page, link to link to keep up with the discussion. If Twitter were to get decentralised, we would be going back to that same model. It would take one party - like a Friendfeed or Socialthing - to aggregate the different conversation feeds and make sense of it all. Or the individual person would need to subscribe to the feed of each person he wants to follow (which is what we do with blogs today). My point is, a decentralised Twitter is what we left behind 2 years ago. Decentralised Twitter is what Tumblogs (kinda) are1.
Being a part of Twitter is like being in a room always filled with people you want to listen to and talk to. If someone shouts at you from the other corner, you can still hear it, because you’re in the same room. Decentralising it will be the equivalent of putting each person in their own room, and having the people you want to talk to on conference on your phone. It’ll make it easier to be in your room, but harder to follow conversations.
Laissez faire
Twitter needs optimisations to scale properly, which are constantly being done in the background. The system is so large, that by the time one problem is solved, a couple of more pop-up. You’d think getting acquired and being boosted by servers like Google’s and Yahoo’s would be the answer to their problems, but I hope they don’t get bought.
Twitter is perfect the way it is, downtimes and all. Use their APIs to pull your data out or push them in if you’re are worried about losing out when they bonk. It’s an awesome service the way it is. I’d say just leave them alone and let them do their thing.
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They are actually closer to blogs than they are to Twitter, but you can think of them as a Twitter version of a blog. They are just posts on a page which don’t ask for any conversation. ↩
Wednesday, 7 May '08
Yea, the company that blew their big moment in history. They finally signed Universal Music Group, but quietly this time.
Don’t use the same stereotypes either. John Welch takes on Matt Freestone (of Windows Connected) on his ridiculous claims about Macs.
It looks almost the same, and works almost the same. Except for the data transfer’s speed (where it beats it), the “3G” HTC Diamond looks like a worthy competitor to the “original” iPhone. I’m very sure the 3G iPhone will trump many of the features, and include the enterprise solutions as well.
Marc Andreessen is the co-founder of Ning, and many other web related companies. If he were to join, he would bring years of experience with him to a relatively new company. Good move.
Tuesday, 6 May '08
Explanations from a real doctor about how situations shown in House M.D. episodes would be handled by real doctors. Interesting read. There are spoilers to all episodes though, so be wary.
Interesting visualisation of Twitter conversations.
Google Reader caches the feeds that you subscribe to, not from the time you’ve subscribed to it, but from the time the first person (to ever subscribe to that feed) subscribed to it. I am guessing this works the other way around, with the feed remaining in the cache until there are no subscribers left.
This is annoying because updated posts are not updated in the cache — I don’t think Google Reader likes or understands the RSS last modified tag. Deleted posts are not removed from the cache either, so be careful of what you put up, in case you make a mistake. You could use this as a positive though. And if you ever want to remove all trace of your blog from the Internet, you can’t; unless you track down each and every one of your subscribers and make them un-subscribe to your feed.
Guess they can’t get everything right.
While the discussions continue about decentralizing Twitter, developer-friend Stephen has gone ahead and implemented the symbolic feature of Twitter - @replies - in a plug-in that allows its users to have cross blog conversations. Awesome. (!)
