DISQUS

"he slit his wrists and had taken a large amount of sleeping bills."

hope you're not trying to be funny.

I love the Know Your Meme series and LisaNova's videos. Congrats!

I agree with Robert on this one. My iGoogle home page has a column for Google Reader and a column for FriendFeed. I effectively treat FriendFeed as a second RSS reader alongside Google Reader. I still visit Techmeme but its rare that I need to click through on any stories because I'd already read about it from someone on FriendFeed.

However, the value of Techmeme for me at least, has always been the cluster of commentary around its headlines. It's one of the main reasons I visit Techmeme so many times throughout the day and FriendFeed has yet to change that. In fact, if a story is interesting enough on FriendFeed, I head to Techmeme to see who else is talking about it. And if that fails, Google Blog Search.

Hrmm...The "pod"safe music network is still alive and kicking, as clunky as ever (http://music.podshow.com).

Sorry that was typed in a rush...it's kind of incoherent.

I'm in college and I think Twitter serves no purpose. Why not use IM for realtime communication? Facebook is different since it actually serves a purpose (finding old friends, organizing events, etc.)

I'm still of the opinion that only the older generation uses Twitter, and moreso if they're 'A list' bloggers.

Here's a test - I can convince my mom to join Facebook since she may be able to contact old school friend. How do I sell her on Twitter? Tell the world what you're doing right now? Seriously, is that important?

To me, twitter is simply a feature that's already part of IM, Facebook, etc.

Engadget is in the right here, as long as the email did in fact originate from Apple HQ. It's up to Apple to figure out who sent out the hoax email, and whether or not explain this to their investors/public.

Leaks happen - it's a fact of journalism. If Engadget completely made up the story then they would have had a serious problem on their hands.

I wish someone would do a study on the average age group on Twitter. I'm willing to bet it's a largely older crowd.

The younger crowd is on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, IM, and a variety of other platforms that provide much more utility than Twitter. IM, Facebook, and Bebo even include Twitter-like functionality. All these applications provide SMS functionality, infact IM services were first. The older generation is simply discovering ways to use tools that the younger generation has grasped for ages. How do you sell Twitter to a teen who's been using IM et al their entire life?

And for the older generation, here's a good test. When I got my parents on MSN, I sold them on the fact that we could chat back and forth in real time. If I were to ask my parents to join Facebook, I'd tell them they could network with past high school and work collegues. I'd probably have a hard time selling MySpace or Bebo. But, why would they want to join Twitter? So they broadcast their lives to the entire world? They would probably be more comfortable using Facebook to broadcast information to their closed group of friends and family. In my opinion, if an application can pass the 'parent test', there's something amazingly powerful. Facebook was incredibly smart not to sell.

As for Truemors, it's very strange that Kawasaki is involved. He's usually very adamant, especially in his talks, about avoiding the latest social network wannabees.

Relatedly, Jason has decided to take a month off blogging, but will still be posting to Twitter:
http://www.calacanis.com/2007/05/08/taking-a-mo...

Well, let's see. When you post on your blog, you usually have meaningful things to requires time to translate thoughts to words. And there's usually lots of meaningful responses.

On the other hand 'tweets' on Twitter require no thought whatsoever. They're short one-lines that are usually pointless to all your followers/friends. Looking at your recent updates, apparently you think Steve Rubel called you fat...and I'm supposed to care? Twitter is essentially a persistent chatroom viewable to the public at large.

So let's see - you've got an activity that requires more thought and time to produce something meaningful vs. another activity where you can things off the tip of your mind without context or making it meaningful. I know it's kind of mean, but you being on Twitter probably means better posts for subscribers to your blog, even if they come less often.

Your video shows are part of your job, so I'm not sure why it's part of the discussion. That argument of being too fatigue due to work can be made for any blogger or techie who's still a techie at home.

Your link blog on the other hand is just RSS addiction, which I'm also victim to. The real issue at hand, is of course, Twitter vs. Blogging.

As an aside, there was (still is?) a somewhat similar issue when podcasting was just getting off the ground. Many podcasters would put out a few episodes, realize that podcasting takes up a lot of time and slowly stop podcasting.

I was one of her early subscribers. I found her channel while browsing around YouTube last year for jazz and it's been fantastic to see more people discovering her.

After the whole lonelygirl15 thing, I guess it's human nature to be skeptical. But honestly, it's not that hard to do a bit of investigation - the bottom portion of left column on her website has links to "more" videos about her. In these videos, she answers tons of questions fans have about her.

And she's super easy to get in touch with via email. This is a completely different scenario from lonelygirl15 where people were trying to solve a mystery. In this case, information is readily available.

It's kind of annoying to seeing you jump on this sensationalist bandwagon. She was also be at the SF YouTube gathering yesterday. Think Jessica Rose would come out to something like that?

Do journalists/bloggers even try to contact people these days? Or do just feed off of Techmeme or other blogs or publically air people out?

I complained before as well. Can someone please point me a study or explain to me the benefits of being preview a site I've probably never been to in my life?

I think everyone has the conversation wrong - it's not command line vs. visually oriented people. It's first and forthmost what are the benefits of snap.

Like I said above, I'm having a hard time figuring out why any blogger would want to provide a website preview to their readers. I think your readers trust that you won't link to goatse or something. And if I'm interested in a topic I don't see myself skipping out on a website because it looks like it has too many ads - my motivation to see the site probably comes second to whether or not there are too many ads.

A few weeks ago Alex Faaborg proposed a visual element for firefox's history: http://blog.mozilla.com/faaborg/2007/01/13/basi...

THAT's where visualization makes a great deal of sense! To serve as memory aid.

If there's something I'm missing about the usefulness of Snap, can someone enlighten me?

Thank You! I've never understood the benefit. Why would I not trust your links? You've got such a fantastic reputation. And bandwidth is obviously not an issue these days (maybe for mobile devices but javascript is essentially non-existent in that space).

I recently made a comment about this at Digg, actually - but about their RSS feeds:

"On of the biggest annoyances at Digg is that they don't include a link to the actual article in their RSS feed (or any links for that matter). The point of RSS is that I can avoid visiting the site just to get my news. It's even worse on my BlackBerry since I have to load tons of useless data. DiggRiver.com is great but there no F&%*%&# RSS feed there. We all know it's to keep pageviews up at Digg...not very user friendly. Come to think of it, Digg is probably the only site that doesn't include links in their RSS feed. Reddit gives you the option of visiting the actual site with the story or visiting reddit for the comments. But the best by far is Techmeme which gives you the description, link to the story, link to the source, and link to techmeme."

My only question is, will there ever be a case where we won't label a new web company as "Web 2.0?" If I decide to build a site without community interaction, that makes me my site a non-Web 2.0 site? Google Maps doesn't have community interaction - is it Web 2.0 or not? What is community interaction anyway? Message boards have been around for ages. What kind of community interaction do you need to have to qualify as Web 2.0?

From what I can tell, the only purpose "Web 2.0" serves is as a marketing term for startups to get VC/TC attention and a buzzword for non-techies appear tech-savvy.

Seriously, just have a read over what you just wrote: "Many geeks hate the name Web 2.0 although it’s starting to stick as a descriptor for a wide range of sites that have community interaction and new-style technology and layout."

What on earth is "new-style technology". AJAX? It's fun when non-developers think they know what they're talking about. What else besides AJAX? And "layout"? Are you serious? Somehow the "layout" of a site determines whether or not it's Web 2.0? What if has a non-Web 2.0 layout (whatever that is) and community interaction (whatever that is). Is it still Web 2.0? Or is it Web 1.5?

I honestly have yet to see a clear, crisp definition of the term. To me, it just looks like its thrown around arbitrarily.

So, "Web 2.0" followers, help me out here. I'm a software developer and as tech-savvy as I am, I really have no idea what Web 2.0 really means.

Since when is boobs a swear word?

Hehe, it's funny when non-geeks see the light. People often question why I use vi and instead of a full blown graphical text editor.

I can see Robert falling in love with vi if he invests the time to learn it.

They say it supports J2ME phones, yet it doesn't work on my BlackBerry. The application downloads and installs fine. When I launch the app, I can type information into the search bar, but that's about it.

I can't navigate to the "GO" or "MENU" buttons and the only option in the menu when I click the jog-wheel is "Close". Additionally, deleting entered text doesn't work. In a nutshell, the app is completely unusable for me.

Makes me wonder, did they even bother testing this app on a variety of J2ME phones? I mean, BlackBerry is a pretty big brand for them to miss.

Anyway, because the app doesn't work, Google wins by default. And Gizmodo is wrong - Google Maps does indeed have directions and traffic (U.S. only). I wonder what version of Google Maps they were trying.

Andy, take a look at this search result page:
http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?as_q=&a...

I can get snippets of every single one of your posts without subscribing to your site. I can simply subscribe to the Google Blog Search result.

And I can do something similar on Technorati (but I have to select at least one keyword):
http://technorati.com/search/rss?from=http://an...

Is there a list of people who have shared their Google Reader feeds? I'd love to subscribe to even more of them.

I love Scoble's shared feed because it means I didn't have to find and subscribe to such great content myself. Sure we have some overlap, but that's fine.

I use Google Reader religiously on my BlackBerry. Anytime I have a spare moment, I keep scrolling through the various headlines for something interesting. The more headlines, the better!

I only wish Google didn't limit it to 10 feeds on a page for mobile devices. Clicking more multiple times sucks. We need AJAX on mobile devices so we can get infinite scroll wheels like on Live.com (and lower data rates, of course) :)

What Robert is doing is fine. It's not like he's publishing every single post in a feed. If people love a certain feed, they'll go subscribe to it.

Besides, how is this any different from Technorati or Google Blog Search other syndication engines? For example, I could subscribe to the "Andy Beal" RSS Feed from Google Blog Search and get every single one of his posts. I could even go further and say I only want posts from blogs with "Andy Beal" in the title. I could even say I want all posts from a specific blog and subscribe to those search results instead of the blog itself.

There's no way of regulating where your blog can/cannot be syndicated. Such is the open nature of RSS. If you care so much about how many subscribers you have (and not so much about traffic), you should make your blog private.

I hate the design of most of Gawker sites now. I was so pissed when they ruined Lifehacker. Now Valleywag. And the worst thing is they don't listen to their user's feedback. The only great redesign was Gizmodo.

The funny thing is Engadget and the Weblogs Inc. blogs all look fantastic after redesign. Hrmm I guess there's always been a subconscious reason Engagdet comes before Gizmodo in my bookmarks.

Also, very sad that Nick's gone. Double the bad news. Anyway, thank goodness for RSS indeed.

Whoa, scoble, did you miss this memeorandum article?

Need to Find an Xbox 360? Buy a Ticket to Tokyo
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/19/technology/19...

There are a few things about new-age gaming consoles that are driving me nuts.

1. Jack of All Trades, Master of None: Xbox, PSP, PS3 - all try to be an entertainment hub. And I've seen game quality diminish. Think about this: Movies on the PSP are outselling games on the PSP.

2. Focus on Graphics & Hardware: The Xbox 360 & PSP are hardware beasts but I've found one of the most enjoyable games to be Mario Kart on the Nintendo DS.

3. Lack of Quality Games

4. Gaming Music: I predict in a few years game music composers will be largely out of employment. I don't know about you, but when I play video games, the music is part of the experience. It adds so much emotion to the gaming experience. In fact, Chrono Trigger has some of the most well composed music I've ever heard. What do we have now? Consoles that let you plug in your mp3 players, which is fine for racing games.

I'm going to laugh if Apple just takes a detours these gaming consoles and provides a phenomenal living-room box that gets widely adopted. I've always been a fan of simple devices that do what they do well - which explains why I'm a fan of iPods and the Nintendo DS.

Scoble, your blog is definitely more lively when you're talking about Microsoft, Yahoo, or Google. You come across more passionate. Personally I've found some of your latest entries, especially the shorter ones, kinda boring or uninspired. It seems like your blogging to prove a point as opposed to blogging about interesting stuff.

Or maybe it's just me, hehe. Has traffic been more or less the same for you?

This led me to another thought: Is there a Microsoft blog I can subscribe to for information about Microsoft's web products? I started thinking and it seems, I'm usually learning about new Microsoft products through you or the media. Channel 9 does a bit of this, but it seems to have more of a "community discussion" feel than an outlet for informing people of new developments.

Google and Yahoo seem to use blogs to keep people updated on the latest development with their company/products. It almost seems essential to have such blog for web products. I don't want to have to subscribe to the blogs for each individual product, though I probably would for really interesting applications.

Anyway, just my 2 cents. And Apple is sort of unique, people digg around for information about their products continuously. They don't even need a corporate blog with all the hype from fan sites. Kind of amazing, if you think about it.

And here's the million dollar question: Would Scoblizer be a successful blog if you weren't the human interface to Microsoft?

I like it. Alot. Makes Google's feel old...what do you know? Google has some catching up to do. Now if I could only use my Gmail Account here...