Disqus - Latest Comments for Gabe

Re: What’s the connection between ‘Blogger sucks’ and Tech.me-me-orandum?

Gabe — Sun, 19 Feb 2006 04:07:23 -0000

Hi, just saw your post having followed the link from Steve's blog. I give a hand-crafted specification to my software that includes a list of sites from which the software builds a larger source list. The actual posts and "Discussion" links are not selected by hand however --it's fully automated.

But if still you believe otherwise, I'll take that as a compliment, as it suggests my robot is doing a very good job.

Re: Is there an echo in here?

Gabe — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 19:35:46 -0000

Hi, a few thoughts:

- I want Techmeme to be an interesting Tech news site. If the best coverage of stories occurs over a larger number of sites than I currently capture, I would indeed like more diversity than I have now. If not, then I don't need more diversity. Ultimately, I'm about interesting news, not diversity.
- TechCrunch reports lots of interesting and breaking news. I can't see any reasonable scenario where it won't appear very often on Techmeme.
- I do hope to make Techmeme a little less blog insiderish, which I suspect should help the diversity thing, a little.
- I run into a lot of people with criticisms of Techmeme, and while I've heard the point about "X, Y, and Z appear far too often", it's almost always been bloggers who've raised that issue. This is rarely a concern among the non-blogging readers who make up the vast majority. No discernable groundswell there.
- I have noticed a groundswell among the same crowd who echoed each other onto the top of Techmeme a few months back: http://www.techmeme.com/060502/h1400
Sorry, can't please everybody!

Ok, that last point was just a fun, gratuitous slap, no insult intended. Thanks for all your thoughts, and I hope I can make Techmeme better for you while keeping other users' preferences in mind as well.

Re: Why isn’t this on Techmeme?

Gabe — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 13:56:53 -0000

Sure glad A-lister Mathew Ingram wrote about this, thrusting Shel's post onto Techmeme hours ago. :)

Re: Why isn’t this on Techmeme?

Gabe — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 15:48:03 -0000

I'll pass the thank you to my robot Tony!

Re: Techmeme cleans up your language

Gabe — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 14:15:04 -0000

Well, surely we're not all adults, in a literal sense anyway. Though it's not really about "the children" for me.

The asterisks basically help to prevent making certain people irate. (Yes, I do get emails about dirty words.) Because they're not really obscuring the words, as you pointed out, there's not a huge downside to this, in fact some see it as a fun sort of "accent". (I think the South Park creators commented once on the upside of bleeping.)

Re: Google and the wires torpedo newspapers

Gabe — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 15:17:49 -0000

One criticism I haven't seen yet:

Google doesn't permit crawling of its hosted news content, even though Google News relies on crawling news content from other sites. (Recall the same was true for the comments on news stories Google announced a few weeks back.)

E.g., this robots.txt file http://ap.google.com/robots.txt states that nobody may crawl this hosted news article http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gURr_MR-Wtuq...

One consequence: you can use Google Search to find Yahoo News-hosted content, since Yahoo News doesn't block (http://news.yahoo.com/robots.txt is 404), but you won't be able to use Yahoo Search to find Google News-hosted content.

It's nice to be the market leader in search.

Re: Things I noticed #13

Gabe — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 05:11:31 -0000

Well don't forget the possibility that I would launch a science vertical myself! If I ever did, hopefully that would be the "Techmeme" of science. :)

Re: http://www.techwinter.com/2006/09/18/google-gets-told-to-stop-stealing-content-in-belgium/

Gabe — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 05:38:39 -0000

Roger, your quote from CNET News.com is long than the quotes that Techmeme uses when linking to someone. So are you making money off the back of CNET's authors? Why is your quoting OK?

Re: http://www.techwinter.com/2006/09/18/google-gets-told-to-stop-stealing-content-in-belgium/

Gabe — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 00:34:13 -0000

Roger, Techmeme only shows summaries, and always has. I can't speak for other sites, but I'm pretty sure your blanket statment is mostly wrong. Publishers' RSS feeds have nothing to do with anything for Techmeme. Also, Techmeme have never made any money, though I hope it does in the future.

Furthermore, I'm certain publishers are making money because of me. In various ways, but most obviously because many are paid on a CPM basis.

I also disagree on the "adding value" point. If Techmeme wasn't adding value, people wouldn't come to Techmeme in the first place, since it never has the full text anyway. The value is in what it picks, when it picks it, and how items are grouped.

If what I'm doing is syndication, requiring compensation, then the same should be true for any hand-picked link blog, e.g. http://newslinx.com/ . In fact, any kind of list or compilation made mostly of quotes, regardless of the work put into to.

Re: Change your lightbulbs, and more environment news

Gabe — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 14:21:51 -0000

Yes, but fluorescent bulbs make your home feel like a hospital, or a Wal-Mart, which is why I prefer the energy-wasting variety.

Re: Thoof, a news ranking site that wants to serve the masses

Gabe — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 13:55:19 -0000

Why the comparison with Digg but not Findory?

Re: Google licenses AP and other wire content — and stiffs newspapers

Gabe — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 14:11:09 -0000

One thing I noticed over the weekend: like those "comments" announced a few weeks back, these hosted wire stories are not crawlable by other engines. Google blocks this via "robots.txt". So you can use Google Search to find Yahoo News-hosted content, since Yahoo News doesn't block, but you won't be able to use Yahoo Search to find Google News-hosted content...

Re: 2006/05/08/memeorandum-becomes-techmeme/

Gabe — Mon, 08 May 2006 09:23:14 -0000

Thanks Pete. Yeah, Tech-meem is the intended pronunciation, but before the week is though, I'm expecting to hear on several occasions how much better a name Tech-may-may is...

Re: Are you a YABHTU?

Gabe — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 08:16:10 -0000

Yes, I am! Just got a HP tc4200 last week. Wand tapping is a great way to plow through emails and blog entries. Very natural, fast, and gratifying.

Re: Yes, Richard, Jason is nuts (blogs still trump bookmarks)

Gabe — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 21:27:06 -0000

Hey Stefan, you can talk to me too! Thanks for the suggestion. I think what you proprose is a great feature.

Still, it's not like I can just flip a switch to activate it. It will cost man-years of development to make it work well, and for various technical reasons, I think it will benefit a smaller number of people than most believe. I expect to make gradual progress toward that capabilty, but I don't see the business justification for jumping in headfirst...

Re: On the StupidTrain

Gabe — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 03:40:50 -0000

Robert: happy to hear, and great motto suggestion: "more stupid!"

Re: Why don’t you use a memetracker?

Gabe — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 16:45:20 -0000

Wow, this is great thread.

Re: Megite working on personal memetracker

Gabe — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 16:15:49 -0000

I agree with Nik that there's a huge technical chasm to cross before a "personalized meme tracker" gets really useful. I think progress I make on the memeorandum engine is approaching that, but it's still far off enough that I'll pass on hyping it for now.

Richard, I think Nik's comments are valid even for a pre-beta product, especially given the likely difficulty in delivering what's promised.

Re: Apple releases new stuff, new blog search engine opens

Gabe — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 15:55:25 -0000

One result for "Scoble". Hmmm...

Re: The John Dvorakification of the blogosphere (I’m signing off of Memeorandum)

Gabe — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 19:28:38 -0000

Hah, well, you know I spend more time in Bloglines than tech.memeorandum myself. If there really was such a dichotomy, I think t.m would be a really obnoxious proposition. Fortunately everybody is free to read both.

Er, except for you this week. Your memeorandum-free diet should make for an interesting experiment!

BTW, yeah, memeorandum really transforms into something entirely different on the weekends. It's like downtown after hours, a little stranger, a little creepier.

Re: The John Dvorakification of the blogosphere (I’m signing off of Memeorandum)

Gabe — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 21:30:45 -0000

Hi, this is Gabe Rivera again. Though I left a comment already as "Gabe" (#9), "G Man" (#17) isn't me, even though he links to memeorandum.com.

He makes a fair point though. Hey, GMan, please link to a different site, they may think you're me.

Re: The John Dvorakification of the blogosphere (I’m signing off of Memeorandum)

Gabe — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 22:00:03 -0000

Me again. In Trackback #54, Jake Ludington infers that this post was manually blocked from appearing on memeorandum. The problem with this conclusion is that it DID show up on memeorandum. I'm not sure why Jake didn't bother to check the archives. Just thought I would respond here.

Re: 20 minutes in Houston

Gabe — Sun, 12 Mar 2006 23:45:39 -0000

I would trade 1000 link blogs for a blog by Christopher Coulter!

Re: The irritant of the non-credible journalists

Gabe — Sun, 26 Mar 2006 21:22:20 -0000

Actually, if you link to the memeorandum permalink instead of to the article itself, you impart no Google/memeorandum juice to the article, send no direct traffic to the article, and still get your post associated with the article on memeorandum!

Re: My design is my own

Gabe — Wed, 17 May 2006 03:09:25 -0000

Agreed on all points. And I'm all the happier this week for having done my design myself!

Re: Myth correction: TechMeme not seeded by me

Gabe — Tue, 23 May 2006 15:21:17 -0000

Thanks Robert.

Some more mythbusting details: Early on in the search for more sources, I built a quick tool specifically to plow through your feed list, find new blogs, mechanically check for some other qualifying features, and then, if they passed a manual inspection, add them to the seed list. Having done so, I found the tool nifty enough to work well on other huge feed lists, like Susan Mernit's media-heavy subscriptions.

I'd say the intersections between your feeds and the original seed list was substantial (double-digit percentages), but the proportion of feeds added specifically through the above process wasn't huge (maybe single digit percentage), because many of your subscriptions were well-known sites added PRIOR to the Scoble-sweep, and others didn't pass snuff. The facts are probably similar with respect to Susan's feeds.

Re: Myth correction: TechMeme not seeded by me

Gabe — Tue, 23 May 2006 15:40:37 -0000

/pd: if it's of no value to you, why worry about the sourcing process?

Now I do understand why some would appreciate published criteria for inclusion, and regret that the mysteriousness leads to some frustration (largely for bloggers that want to get linked).

But I disagree that I "should" publish criteria. Should Robert have to publish criteria for inclusion in his personal subscriptions?

Re: I’m a Second Life Lawbreaker

Gabe — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 14:03:30 -0000

Children can see R-rated movies, provided their parents accompany them to the theater. SL might want to allow exceptions for adult supervised play. I would think that avoids both the liabilty and the parents' objections problem.

IMO, they really should return your money too.

Re: Brainstorming

Gabe — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 15:06:35 -0000

"A Week Later" sounds great, and may very well spark more reflective and thoughtful discussion in certain corners of the web. Discussion which, ironically or not, should surface again at Techmeme! (Giving rise to "A Week Laterer"? Good call "met"!)

Re: Calling all dead programmers and unemployed videobloggers: Off the Grid Camp starts August 6

Gabe — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 21:53:26 -0000

Is there Wifi?

Re: Calling all dead programmers and unemployed videobloggers: Off the Grid Camp starts August 6

Gabe — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 21:53:45 -0000

(Joke, hehe.)

Re: UK blogger sacked

Gabe — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 06:40:32 -0000

"at work" -> "at will"

Re: New advertising models opening up? (New guy over on Channel 9)

Gabe — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 01:46:46 -0000

Robert, I mostly agree. But I also believe until we've all figured out that efficient ideal (even the toilet paper makers), this is a step in the right direction.

Also, I'd be careful about the suggestion that paid is more intrusive. I loved that Scissor Sisters viral thing but I bet some of your readers found that intrusive.

Oh, and thanks for the kind words!

Re: Best Political News?

Gabe — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 22:26:41 -0000

Drudge?

Re: How to get your company on TechCrunch

Gabe — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 22:01:22 -0000

So getting on the ScobleShow also requires getting up before 10am?! Oh, you A-listers really are insufferable!

Re: Does being on TechMeme improve your sex life?

Gabe — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 02:31:24 -0000

I think complaining about Techmeme can definitely imperil your sex life.

Re: Memetrackers revisited

Gabe — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 17:26:31 -0000

What's a "memetracker"?

Thomas (er, I mean "Scott"), you're welcome to add Techmeme to popurls.

Re: Keeping up with the Sandquists

Gabe — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 06:23:00 -0000

Hah, yeah, the current PodTech post is rather...nonspecific, but I suppose that will change tomorrow.

This is supposed to run for a month in fact.

Re: Help a San Jose Mercury News columnist blog

Gabe — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 16:38:48 -0000

Much of this helps your stuff stand out on Techmeme as well: better post titles, better blog titles, links, images, and...controversy. (I hate contests though, and hope Techmeme does too.)

Re: J, J, J, K, oh, sorry, TWiT talking about Windows Vista

Gabe — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 15:33:50 -0000

I wonder where the choice of "j" and "k" originates. Perhaps it's inspired by the ancient unix text editor vi (that I spend hours in daily), which uses the same.

Re: Drinking from the TechMeme River

Gabe — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 02:24:40 -0000

I don't expect Techmeme River to be used extensively. Only occasionally, for searching and scanning. But it's a power user featured I feel needed to support.

Yes Stefan, I hear you. But not enough to actually do anything yet! :O

Hmm, maybe you have an anti-conflict with Techmeme. Heh.

Re: Google and Technorati blog search rewards sploggers

Gabe — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 04:25:49 -0000

Ah, I'm very familiar with Naik. What's interesting about Naik is he has a self portrait icon in his Technorati profile. And he's smiling!

Re: In TechMeme for only 50 seconds (Update: or more)

Gabe — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 20:20:51 -0000

Hi Robert, just got back from dinner (on pseudo-vacation with friends and family on the East coast).

Nope didn't touch this one. Funny too, because I don't see that post up presently, meaning it arrived, disappeared, arrived, and disappeared again.

Expect to see more and more of this, especially for posts kind of at the margin of postability. Almost every week I introduce some new kind of rule or heuristic that adds humanlike elements of editorial judgement to headline selection, and the result is increasingly complicated behavior.

BTW, several times a week political bloggers send me emails accusing me of intervening with their placement on memeorandum (my political site). What's funny about this is I don't even read what's on that site. Probably give it a 10 second scan every day just to check for major problems.

[I have more to say...just want to save this comment for now.]

Re: In TechMeme for only 50 seconds (Update: or more)

Gabe — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 20:43:47 -0000

[Ok, promised more above. I have lots to say in fact. Will maybe leave a third comment.]

You said something very interesting: "I’ve seen other evidence that a human is changing the results behind the scenes too". Is an individual human changing the results? Absolutely. Individual humans such as yourself, and various other humans on the tech scene.

Lemme explain: I am not sworn to showing popular items. Techmeme is not designed to "track memes". It's designed to use various gestures, big and small, to pick interesting news items. Sometimes the action of a single blogger such as yourself will cause something to appear, depending on other circumstances. Other times many citations are required for something to appear.

Something even more interesting: sometimes new links can contribute to a post NOT appearing. In fact Robert, I recall an short private email thread where we discussed this. Perhaps that effect was a factor affecting your photowalk post. Perhaps not (haven't checked).

Re: In TechMeme for only 50 seconds (Update: or more)

Gabe — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 21:14:41 -0000

[Third installment. Maybe I'm done here. Rather happy to have written this up somewhere.]

You said I claimed not to "mess" with the site in my first comment. Nope, I mess with it.

Here's an example: http://www.techmeme.com/061215/p17#a061215p17

See that "Tribute to Lonelygirl15" post? I removed it almost immediately after spotting it.

Why? Its appearance was a fluke. It was basically a flaw in my system combined with an unusual type of redirection used by the longelgirl15 site that fooled my system into thinking people were discussing that post. They weren't, so I felt best to zap it.

Such examples are uncommon but they arise. Another: a couple times a month my scraper selects the wrong title for a given article url. Whether or not I fix the scraper, I may manually change the title if the erroneous title is awful enough.

Another example, where I need to be deliberately vague (sorry): suppose I see evidence of excessive logrolling that degrades results, and therefore change a particular global system parameter that has an immediate impact on a headline currently live. Is that "messing"? I dunno. But stuff like that has happened once or twice in the past month.

I guess to summarize everything: 1. Direct changes by me personally are rare, and normally to work around bugs. 2. Many, many individuals "mess" with Techmeme. 3. Please recognize my system is always getting smarter and will seem increasingly humanlike over time.

Epilogue: interesting peripheral issue: Would Techmeme be better if editors under my direct control actively messed with the live site? Maybe...I'm undecided myself.

Re: In TechMeme for only 50 seconds (Update: or more)

Gabe — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 12:43:05 -0000

Wow, thanks Thomas.

John, not expecting it to come to that! Anyway, I've always cited gray areas as I have above. And I don't advertise my sites as "fully automated" or anything like that because there's no workable notion of "fully automated". You can't get a tech news vertical without manual configurations to ensure that.

Rex, thanks. Actually, I described it as a "pseudo-vacation" above. I only work half of the time on pseudo-vacation.

Re: Note the NRA’s tactics — does the tech industry have someone looking out for us?

Gabe — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 02:37:19 -0000

Check out TechNet.org . Not sure how influential they are, but here's how they describe themselves:

"TechNet is the bipartisan, political network of CEOs and Senior Executives that promotes the growth of technology and the innovation economy. TechNet focuses on politics and policy by bringing its members together with our nation's policy makers to sustain and advance America's global leadership in innovation. In addition to its offices in Washington, DC and Silicon Valley, TechNet has a presence in the high-tech centers of Southern California, New England, Texas and the Pacific Northwest. TechNet's members represent more than one million employees in the fields of information technology, biotechnology, ecommerce and finance."

Re: 2007 Scoblecars

Gabe — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 02:00:24 -0000

How do you say "Scoble"?

Re: Raising a stink doesn’t bring the traffic

Gabe — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 14:09:18 -0000

Ah, wasn't aware of scoobietron.wordpress.com until looking over your stats. Looks like you're keeping that guy busy. :)

Re: A bug with TechMeme…

Gabe — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 13:49:25 -0000

Robert,

Philippe's post DID make Techmeme, the day before:

http://www.techmeme.com/070208/p56#a070208p56

It later passed because Techmeme's a news site, and old news goes away.

Whether Duncan's post should have received such placement the next day is debatable, but he did offer some more facts and analysis, and actually used a descriptive title, unlike Philippe, who somehow didn't even mention Wikipedia in his title. :)

Re: A bug with TechMeme…

Gabe — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 13:53:08 -0000

Scratch that..."Wikipedia" did appear in the title, but as the very last word in the French subtitle portion. Anywayz, a descriptive title probably would have helped yesterday. Too bad Techmeme can't rewrite your title.

Re: A bug with TechMeme…

Gabe — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 14:37:41 -0000

Robert, in general, to answer your question, no, the "root" article should not always be linked. Because stories evolve over time, the "root" articles tend to lose value for Techmeme's readers. How many days after Google's YouTube acquisition should TechCrunch's original scoop have appeared with Gootube stories? I'm fine with "1 day" as the answer myself.

In this specific case however, I see your point. It's only been a little over one day, and the story hasn't yet evolved much.

TDavid's remark touches on another point: very often non-originating posts tell the story much better. In these cases, it's actually in Techmeme readers' interest when the non-originating post is emphasized, though I can understand why the originator would get frustrated with that outcome.

Anyway, I think it's my job to find the right balance. That job's not done yet.

Re: Do’ers vs. Talkers

Gabe — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 19:15:45 -0000

"I read more feed items in Google Reader than any other human being alive"

So maybe in some respects, you are in fact an "edge case"? http://scobleizer.com/2006/01/26/scoble-im-not-...

P.S. Edge cases are great. And Techmeme loves them.

Re: Do’ers vs. Talkers

Gabe — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 20:42:52 -0000

Robert: I agree. For many key technologies you've been an early and vocal (and even articulate) adopter.

But c'mon, we're approaching a decade of syndication and you remain the world's most voracious feed reader! So to repeat myself, in "some respects" you're an edge case.

Accept it and embrace it. :)

Re: Twitter’s slow and I’m on TechMeme

Gabe — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 19:05:53 -0000

Heh, how DID it get on Techmeme? It almost seems like there was a little engineering on your end... )

Re: Twitter’s slow and I’m on TechMeme

Gabe — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 19:06:14 -0000

) = :)

Re: Visiting Firefox/Mozilla team tomorrow

Gabe — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 01:58:57 -0000

That's it. I broke down and signed up for Twitter: http://twitter.com/gaberivera Warning: entrails.

Re: Trade mag InfoWorld to close

Gabe — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 21:26:26 -0000

I would say Robert's classification for his link blog is somewhat aspirational, but it's a good aspiration, because his link blog is excellent. Exceptional in many ways. Alot of people would be wise to scan it. I'm one of them.

Re: Getting links from A-listers

Gabe — Fri, 25 May 2007 12:06:23 -0000

Your link blog is a marvel, and gives me ideas on how to improve Techmeme. I just promoted it in Techmeme's twitter feed:
http://twitter.com/Techmeme/statuses/78199982

So perhaps threatening to not link works as well as not linking! :)

Re: TechMeme: the anti-linking engine

Gabe — Wed, 30 May 2007 22:19:51 -0000

Hey Robert,

Oh, I always love to read reverse engineering reports...

Techmeme's algorithm is so complicated at this point that I could write a long article on various ways linking can help you and/or hurt you, ranking-wise. Instead, I'll just make the following vague claim: linking to new news in a way that doesn't appear to be an act of quid pro quo should never hurt you.

Remember, so many factors enter Techmeme's rankings lately, that it's easy to attribute to link patterns something that's actually caused by other factors.

BTW, is it just me or is the amount of news today freaking you out?

Re: TechMeme, not quite Google News

Gabe — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 13:53:52 -0000

Techmeme actually wants to be a selection of interesting Tech news stories. A particular take on "what matters", suitable for a particular audience.

In many ways, it wants to be the anti-Google News, though it other ways it needs to be more like it.

I'm agnostic on professional vs. amateur. Ideally, whoever has the best take on the story for Techmeme's readers should be the one appearing.

Techmeme often comes out ahead when people compare it to Google News (recently on Read/Write Web, earlier on eWeek). Though to be fair, these kinds of comparisons are usually done by people who BROWSE tech news. People who do mainly news searches will clearly find Google News superior because Google offers an excellent news search while Techmeme offers none. (And Techmeme indexes fewer sites in the first place.)

BTW, I personally give the advantage to Techmeme on the blade server story, which sounds rather boring, something best passed over. Is the fact that you covered it for Podtech affecting your judgement in this case?

Re: TechMeme not going for most linked blogs anymore

Gabe — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 15:31:32 -0000

Robert, this is essentially your post from 6/6 but with "Plaxo" in place of "Sun blade servers". So I'd like to refer you to my earlier response. :)

BTW, I'm quite pleased with the direction Techmeme is headed. In fact, the nature of this post and the ensuing comments very much reinforces that.

Re: TechMeme not going for most linked blogs anymore

Gabe — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 16:13:13 -0000

Robert: no, most Techmeme readers weren't former Google/Yahoo News readers. (Think about it...even if you happen to be an exception.)

Techmeme readers are people who previously scanned lots or blogs and/or Digg/Delicious/Slashdot for interesting Tech biz/product/issue/trend stories. Maybe Techmeme "competes" with those sites, but only a small minority of their readers were at risk of defecting, and their hold on those readers was tenuous to begin with.

Re: iPhoneMeme: where’s the family plan?

Gabe — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 16:19:27 -0000

iPhone sales begin 6PM Friday, right? So lining up Thursday evening means an all-night and all-day wait. 18+ hours. Are you really up for that?

Re: Application usage changes in the past week

Gabe — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 19:17:53 -0000

You sure about that? I was taking a look today, and I think that figure is just people who installed the application. (Which is still impressive, but doesn't indicate people actually sharing.) Notice the users of the app who haven't specified their shared feed get Mario's items as their default shared feed. That creates the impression that more people are sharing than in actuality...

Re: Covering an Apple press event

Gabe — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 02:46:21 -0000

Hey Robert. Yeah, Techmeme doesn't aggregate all the forms of video as deftly as it could if it were omniscient. But there are some strategies for getting your videos linked to on Techmeme:

Basically, create a BLOG POST that's the clearinghouse for all your video stuff related to that news event. Create the post when the news happens. Give it an appropriate title. Embed any videos in that post. Link to your steaming video in that post. And add as much text as you can. No text is OK as long as there are videos, but the more text the better, for semantic analytical purposes. Just a few sentences will help.

Among other reasons, doing this helps because many/most links from other blogs will go to that one post.

Note this might be a good idea even if Techmeme didn't exist...

Re: Why Google is walling off its news garden

Gabe — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 05:33:57 -0000

Robert, I personally study your link blog. It's in my Google Reader and I learn a lot about tech news trends from it. Almost certainly, I apply that information to what I do.

The idea of attribution is very tricky. Do you know that the vast majority of the time, when a blogger learns something on Techmeme and blogs about it, Techmeme won't get credit for the discovery? That's very similar to the situation you alleged. Is that wrong? I'm not sure. BTW, you're probably among the best bloggers as far as crediting Techmeme goes, but I bet you still don't do it half the time.

Anyhow, for the record, I should state that lately, Techmeme has NOT used your link blog.

Re: Audiences Are NOT Created Equal

Gabe — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 02:56:47 -0000

Interesting discussion. I've been thinking along these lines for a while now, and even have my own solution sketched out. The result won't look too much like memeorandum, though some of the technology may be involved. In anyone wants to talk about this (about the possibility of actually building something) please let me know.

BTW, I'm not too big on personalization like the current crop of "meme trackers" are attempting. I believe it won't be good enough. I think we'll all be sifting through headlines, passing on most of what comes up for years to come.

Re: Memeorandum and Blogniscient

Gabe — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 18:20:09 -0000

Hey Ken, why are there only excerpts and no links on your blog front page? At least provide this for the latest 1 or 2 blog posts! Why? Better indexing on Technorati and, potentially, on memeorandum.

I may get memeorandum to the point where it hits all the entry pages, but I'm not there now...