Disqus - Latest Comments for guruvan

Re: The Android and iOS War Is Not Mac vs Windows Part 2

guruvan — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 09:05:49 -0000

I think the big reason that we're starting to compare Google & Android to Microsoft & Windows is the way that Google has so quickly moved to provide a platform for the masses (of manufacturers, and people in general) - While Google isn't putting the stranglehold on the manufacturers that Microsoft has, they have assured dominance through sheer numbers as Microsoft did. Apple may be the incumbent, but everyone sees the writing on the wall. Apple, once upon a time, could have gone down the road that produced hardware & software, and allowed other companies to clone hardware and license software. Microsoft chose more of that route, and dominated the market. Apple has made the same types of choices in the mobile marketplace as in the pc market, and Google will reap the rewards.

You've hit the nail on the head in the last paragraph though, Louis. The beauty of this market battle is that we have much more evenly matched players. And, no matter which "wins" we are all better off than we were under the tyranny of Windows (on everything). While what Johnny says above is correct, let's remember that 25% of the market is still nothing to jeer at; developers are still going to choose to develop for iOS, sometimes first, sometimes only for iOS. I just had a meeting with a game developer, and their numbers still suggest developing for iOS first, and ignoring Android for the time being. 25% of a billion or two people is a lot of phones. That will change in time, but what we aren't going to see is the level of disparity between the offerings for either platform as we did in the Windows days.

With no Microsoft forcing manufacturers to pay for a license for every cpu sold, manufacturers are free to roll out devices with several different OSes. There's enough competition to keep it interesting, and plenty of market to keep shops developing for single platforms, and plenty of motivation for other shops to develop for all platforms. This is the biggest reason that this battle isn't the same as the battles of the past. Manufacturer choice.

(And, Johnny, this is also the big reason that Android isn't likely to repeat the level of security nightmare that is Windows - there isn't the degree of hatred for Google as there is for Microsoft. And, with Apple, RIM, Nokia still showing large user bases, there's no where near the economy of scale yet for the malware developers to just hit Android, there's way too much to gain from hitting BB & iOS users.)

Re: RSS or RIP, The Results Are More Important than the Methods

guruvan — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 09:22:23 -0000

The title says it all, Louis. Results are what matter. We spend so much time focusing on, and debating the value of the tools that we sometimes forget that what we're really interested in is sharing information.

Re: One More Time: Iran Isn’t Using Deep Packet Inspection

guruvan — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 11:58:16 -0000

It's pretty trivial to put a sniffer on at traffic aggregation points. from there it's pretty easy to track any interesting plain text tcp conversation. most emails and chats and even web get/post routines are tranmitted in plain text.

Sniffing traffic isn't the same as making routing decisions based on the DPI.

Re: Changing the World, One Tweet at a Time #IranElection #Neda

guruvan — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:39:05 -0000

Please View Some of these Links:

Iranian GreenWave room on FriendFeed

IranWatch room on FriendFeed

IRAN on Facebook

Mir Hossein Mousavi on Facebook

100million Facebook Users for Democracy in Iran

CitizenTube

For Live Updates follow these #hashtags on Twitter

#iranelection #gr88 #neda #tehran

And please, remember when watching the Twitter stream. Not everything is what it appears to be. Do not jump in causing alarm when there need be none. Do not retweet what you do not know for a fact. Do not retweet languages you do not speak. Remember that real people's lives are truly at stake, and they need this service to communicate.

Re: Curing Spam on Twitter With Better Follow Limits

guruvan — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:07:34 -0000

But to add one more point. I really don't think that any kind of limits on following or unfollowing will kill or even reduce Twitter spam. The entire system of Twitter lends itself to spam, and the management of Twitter fundamentally doesn't care.

Re: Curing Spam on Twitter With Better Follow Limits

guruvan — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 20:59:20 -0000

I've said several times that allowing a new user to follow 1000 per day is extremely spammy. People create accounts simply to do this. I've said also that I think the follow limits should be a ratio Period.

I do wholeheartedly support your 2 ideas in here: Unfollow limits. and return-follows not counting against follow limits.

But, in Twitter's defense, some of the stars that would like to do this, probably put a fair strain on the systems when they follow 10s or 100s of thousands back per day. So, there should perhaps be a limitation of how many you can return-follow in one day (again a ration, and not a hard number). This should be based simply on Twitter's actual ability to support the process.

Re: Twitter a Ubiquitous Utility? Open Up a Little!

guruvan — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 07:06:16 -0000

Jesse, I don't think that Twitter is likely to do any of these things, nor is it likely to innovate in time to rise to the challenge of Wave. We'll still use it, but I think primarily for it's simple, SMS capable, limitations. As you well know there already is a federation of servers based on the nearly identical API to Twitter, and those aren't taking off either. The truth is, people don't actually /want/ to be limited like they are with Twitter (140characters, etc) They want to have the same services everywhere, like they do with Twitter. But it's only a matter of time before most of us have access to mobile data and can give up SMS.

Meanwhile, Twitter will be a part of our more rich realtime environment, but only a slight part. The rock stars will come home and realize that while they were out partying, the rest of us were at work innovating. And they'll realize that they should have sold long ago, rather than waiting for their billion dollar offer.

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/06/rumors-are-true-i-bought-robert-scobles.html

guruvan — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 10:39:13 -0000

I love my beamer (cant wait to get it rolling again! it's 4000 miles away!) I think you'll love that car. Can hardly find a more comfortable car to drive in that a BMW.

Re: Look out Facebook! Its a Bing, its a Wave! Realtime Search & Targeting is on the way.

guruvan — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:11:37 -0000

Jay,

Quite right. As the volume increases, and waves feed into, and fork from, other waves, sorting, and filtering and thus, vetting the data in them will become more important.

I think that one of the big potentials will be for "public" waves being searched, and this is where a great deal of what you're talking about will come into the equation.

Re: Look out Facebook! Its a Bing, its a Wave! Realtime Search & Targeting is on the way.

guruvan — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:08:59 -0000

Peter, while I think in general you're correct that the Wave is a threat more to email and IM, I see it as eclipsing other means of communications as well. Twitter is one that I see, as I said, participating at first, but then being eclipsed by people's deisre for the actual real time communications, and this includes real time in broadcasting.

I also think that an enormous aspect to Wave is the bot extension. The opportunity for bot based broadcasting is, in my opinion, huge.

Re: Cut Down on Spam With Lists and Filters on SocialToo

guruvan — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:56:03 -0000

Great new features Jesse! Very impressed!

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/05/10-people-to-follow-on-friendfeed-for.html

guruvan — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:37:34 -0000

There were a few on this list that I didn't recognize. Thanks Louis & Mike for bringing these folks to our attention. I have to concur with the inclusion on the list of those people I did recognize. They are all very active FriendFeeders, with valuable points of view.

Thanks again!!

Re: Social Media includes the poor and homeless

guruvan — Sun, 31 May 2009 17:05:34 -0000

Great post! Having relied on social media in the same situations, and to keep me from being homeless I can tell you what a great equalizer.

And, having recently moved here to NYC, not knowing a soul, it was comforting to know I could participate with all my old friends from around the world, and meet new ones. When it came do to it, I wasn't able to find a job in time to keep the apartment that I had in Queens. Social media saved the day. Within 12 hours of deciding I needed to ask for help, I had 2 offers.

Yes, get the laptop that's gathering dust over in the corner and get online. And tell your friends to do it too. There's really no excuse not to, and you never know when the network you build online will come in handy. And in the meantime, you're sure to meet some really interesting people that you probably would have passed on by had you seen them in real life. Who knows where that could lead? A couple of my best friends in the whole world are people I've met online. You never know.

And there's some kind of extra excitement you can get from checking in on your Facebook or FriendFeed, or tweeting from around the campfire, or from your tent on the beach. ;-)

Re: Discussions in Twitter, day 2 (Scripting News)

guruvan — Sun, 31 May 2009 12:38:17 -0000

because if it's the twdsc.us link on the page referenced above, it sure doesn't like Chrome3. Won't drag to the bookmark bar as far as I can tell.

Re: Discussions in Twitter, day 2 (Scripting News)

guruvan — Sun, 31 May 2009 12:36:29 -0000

Ok, I must be blind this afternoon. Where is the bookmarlet?

Re: Search Nation: In Search of a King

guruvan — Sat, 30 May 2009 14:28:12 -0000

Courtney. Sorry for the long delay. Been very time consuming starting at a new job. I'd love to hear some more about what OneRiot is doing, especially with the news of Bing and Wave released this week. Love to know how you see OneRiot fitting in with the changes that those two products are going to bring about.

Re: Look out Facebook! Its a Bing, its a Wave! Realtime Search & Targeting is on the way.

guruvan — Sat, 30 May 2009 14:25:07 -0000

I know FriendFeed will do what's necessary to compete. I think this is their big opportunity to get the jump on Twitter, and Facebook. I think both of those two companies, and Tweetdeck, have the most to worry about in this change.

And, yes, he microblogging federation could easily embrace the Wave, and if they do, that effort could surpass Twitter (not necessarily any one of the OMB servers, but all of them together).

Re: twdsc.us: @arrington

guruvan — Thu, 28 May 2009 18:36:09 -0000

Well, wasn't too far off with the Google realtime search engine. It's google's realtime search-engine-fodder ;-)

Wave looks very cool.

You should slap together an RSS plugin for Wave, Dave. That would be really cool.

And you're exactly right. Most of the internet that lasts and stands the test of time is built that way.

Re: twdsc.us: @arrington

guruvan — Thu, 28 May 2009 10:31:03 -0000

The web drive would be very cool to have, but it would be way bigger news to see an announcement from MSFT.

Google announces a real time search engine deal?

Re: Three reasons you need to stay far away from FriendFeed - a contrarian view

guruvan — Tue, 26 May 2009 17:45:15 -0000

Pretty thin reasoning here, IMO.

1) "No one" Is a very relative idea. There are plenty of people on FriendFeed, and from all walks of life. There is plenty of stimulating conversation, on a very wide variety of topics.

2)The Bad Features of Twitter. No, quite simply FriendFeed doesn't have them all.

a) Even the big telecom companies have occasional outages. And electric companies, and so on. I'm quite certain that FriendFeed has a better record for uptime than your local power company. It certainly has a better record for uptime than many cable and phone companies I have had service from. And it SURE beats Twitter's uptime record.

b) FriendFeed gives plent of advance notice to planned maintenance, changes and so on. You have to actually pay attention. Nobody can say that they didn't warn their users that the beta would take over. It ran for nearly a month, iwth a huge percentage of the most active FriendFeeders using it and talking about it. FriendFeed's staff regularly communicates with users, and was out actively helping people during the beta period, and was out In Full Force when the beta went live - it was an "all-hands-on-deck" roll-out for them. I saw FriendFeed staff everywhere on FriendFeed for that. When was the last time you saw a Twitter employee publicly (or privately) answer a question? Do you know how long it takes to get a support request answered on Twitter? More than months. Every single one of my support requests on FriendFeed have been answered personally by one of their staff.

c) API - while no new API has been announced, fundamentally there is little need to do so. FriendFeed is a simple service, and very few features are not available in the API today.

d) monetization - it has been a long standing tradition in the internet industry to wait to announce a monetization strategy until a dedicated userbase has been established. Why should FriendFeed be any different than, say, Google? (from which the founders come!)

3) Mobile apps.

Guess what? Most of the Twitter applications for mobile phones (except maybe the iPhone) are crippled. The jibjib that I have to use on my mobile phone to access Twitter is certainly less than idea, or full featured.

Compare this to the mobile solutions that allow me to use FriendFeed:

iPhone runs the FriendFeed site in realtime if so desired. (I understand the realtime may make the iPhone run too hot, but the full site is available)

f2p ( http://dev.ctor.org/f2p ) Written by FriendFeed user NaHi ( http://friendfeed.com/nahi ) This is a fullfeatured mobile website, suitable for use on any phone. It is a vast improvement on the features available in fftogo, and as far as I can see, lacks only the real time capability.

email - Basically the entire operation of FriendFeed is available to you through email. What decent mobile phone doesn't give you access to your email these days?

IM - the same features that are available through email are available through the IM interface as well. XMPP is a wonderfull thing indeed, and certainly supported by Gtalk.

So, you see, if these are truly the best reasons to not join FriendFeed, and they seem to me to be invalid reasons as I have shown, then the only reason to not join Friendfeed is not being truly educated about FriendFeed.

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/05/personal-heresy-what-os-you-use-is-no.html

guruvan — Sun, 24 May 2009 00:28:25 -0000

I've used VMware since just about the day that it came out. Most of the time to provide windows on a Linux platform. My current laptop is mostly for communications, and as such has to work for skype, but the drivers in current linux kernels won't shut my speakers off. So I use linux on this machine in a VM. I can't get along without VMware of some flavor on the machine. And though the machine runs faster in the opposite configuration, right now I need the drivers to work more than I need the speed and better memory utilization. (The linux and Windows are both installed on the hard drive, boot natively, or in VMware. - the best of all possible worlds)

Most of the time I use VMware the other way around, running the Windows on Linux. I started doing this in a cybercafe I had in northern California. We finally got sick of all the malware, and other problems inherent in public terminals. I ripped out all the windows, and put Linux/Gnome up. The customers were confused. It didn't look like Windows, so they "didn't know what to do" We put VMware 1.0 online, and fired up some Windows on that, locked all the special Xwindows keyboard shortcuts out, ran VMware full screen and wala- Windows. But what I loved so much about it was the ability "Revert to Snapshot" on close of the VM. That meant I would never have Windows malware again. Load the OS once, save it as a snapshot, and done.

No, you aren't crazy, Louis. But I am surprised that you've taken till now to jump on this bandwagon. And you are correct that this really does eliminate a lot of the OS war, but not all. It just moves the OS war down to a hypervisor war. The OS will have less and less direct contact with the hardware, and be more and more virtualized, and thus become just another application on the machine, paving the way for the browser to become more and more of the OS.

Re: Twitter's Search Engine Is Very, Very, Broken

guruvan — Fri, 22 May 2009 00:51:36 -0000

I have completely given up on twitter's search. I find that it's much more effective to search at FriendFeed and/or Google. search.twitter.com can't find tweets that I sent out an hour ago.

I have noticed this for months, but always figured "well, nothing else there is reliable, why should search be?" But that seems out of line with what they think they're going to be able to sell, and it's unfortunate that it's not, because it could be a valuable source of data. The only real hope for Twitter's data (IMO) is to have more companies attach "firehoses" like the one that FriendFeed has.

Twitter is still a valuable source of data - Lots of people post tons of useful tidbits there. Surely the links to these blog articles go there, mine do. And FriendFeed is a huge resource for finding that data. But we will find flaws in their systems too. Just not as huge. And even if FriendFeed would be flawless, they can't index everything the right way for everyone to find everything they want.

Hopefully Twitter doesn't see their way to being "greedy" with their data, and in the process lose it, and its value. The way to prevent this loss is to hook up more hoses that receive the entire Twitter stream. That, in my opinion, is how Twitter should be monetizing. Not building tools to use against the data that they can't keep straight. I think that there will be no lack of companies to buy hoses either, people want tweets.

Data is only of any use if it's shared.

Re: Gaming Twitter For Followers – How do YOU feel about it?

guruvan — Wed, 20 May 2009 13:13:55 -0000

Great post. My feelings exactly. I wrote similar in comments on Seth's blog about his mass unfollowing, and has posted on FriendFeed about the subject as well.

I think that what he did was rude, wrong, and in a manner of speaking, lying, and disingenuous.

I'm glad you've called him out on this.

Re: Taking off the training wheels (Scripting News)

guruvan — Tue, 19 May 2009 20:17:45 -0000

Interesting that your 5 stages of technological advancement seem to correspond directly to Louis Gray's 5 stages of early adopter behavior.

It's also interesting to see how many of the innovators of the original technologies get left behind in the break out period. Google's a prime example of a company that didn't really innovate the technology that made them a huge success, and trounced the innovators.

I find it unlikely that anything different will happen in the microblogging phenomenon.

Re: On deck with Tweetdeck? The Power is in the Browser! PeopleBrowsr FTW!

guruvan — Tue, 19 May 2009 01:55:43 -0000

I don't have a link at this moment, but I will get one to you tomorrow.