Disqus - Latest Comments for Philipp Lenssen

Re: Why would Google Web Services cost $0? (Scripting News)

Philipp Lenssen — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 21:56:44 -0000

Would be nice to have this, though Google already cancelled* their SOAP search API (which was very useful, but also very broken, at least in its later month to years) in favor of the AJAX search API (which I find less useful).
*Well, they don't allow new sign-ups, and old sign-ups aren't really supported anymore, though you can still use old API keys... if you are OK to live with an API that has totally flaky response, at least time I checked.

Re: Gillmor Gang food fight (Scripting News)

Philipp Lenssen — Mon, 19 May 2008 04:58:28 -0000

Actually, for Netflix to provide me with movies might be a good start as well (I'm in Germany, and the last times I tried, they either geolocated me to a sorry page or didn't let me pass the registration).

Re: Ultra-immersive, long-form video games from the past or future

Philipp Lenssen — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 06:52:45 -0000

"So what will million-year old people do to manage their boredom?"

I'm reminded of a nice sci-fi short story about a man who can see nothing but darkness for what seems to be eternity, and the way he creates a whole world in his mind. Won't give away the surprise end though!

Re: The most import thing to understand about new products and startups

Philipp Lenssen — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 04:42:20 -0000

> Even if you aren't the smartest person around,
> and your product is kind of ugly and broken,
> you can still be very successful, if you just
> build the right product. YouTube and MySpace
> are both fine examples of this.

You imply that MySpace has succeeded despite it being ugly. But what if the opposite was true -- that it succeeded partly precisely *due* to being ugly? Ugly design can lower the barrier sign-up, identification, feeling like "they're one of us and not a big structured company", etc. Many teens like to have crowded room, it's only their parents who tell them to clean up. Perhaps the clutter -- which we traditionally think of as the enemy of usability -- perfectly expresses the clutter in the teen's mind during that stage of growing up.

But I definitely think you hit the nail on your head with the main point. It's not the greatest design that makes a site a win (in fact, sometimes less perfect design can increase identification, see above), it's not the best algorithms behind it (though yes, speed etc. is important), but it's a whole lot about whether the thing is needed in the first place. And users, as you say, will be great feedback for what they want and need and don't need.
(Though not all user feedback should be taken "as is" and implemented of course -- the site also needs to consolidate and balance feature wishes to not be everything to everybody, as that would make it stop being one good thing to most.)

One thing I think is important for site success added to what you describe is the right marketing, though. (With marketing I don't necessarily mean "get out ads". It may also consist of just knowing how to set the right attributes to trigger more word-of-mouth marketing.)

Re: The most import thing to understand about new products and startups

Philipp Lenssen — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 04:44:06 -0000

[ Funky, the reply link at the end of the thread made me reply nested to the last comment. But that's another issue :) ]

Re: Google: Don’t cross the "activity streams"

Philipp Lenssen — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 04:48:33 -0000

The correct spelling is Maka-Maka, I now have reason to believe (though something called "Mocha" does exist within Google, as I mentioned earlier...)

Re: Real-life experience with the new Google News

Philipp Lenssen — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 11:04:41 -0000

They should really figure out where a story cluster originated, and give continuous preference to that URL. Not necessarily always display it on top -- the story might age after some hours -- but always somewhere visible in the story cluster. Perhaps they should even clarify this with some "source report" link next to a story cluster taking you to the first mention. In fact, they should probably assign "NewsRank" or something for a source known to scoop often :)

Re: How FriendFeed uses MySQL to store schema-less data - Bret Taylor's blog

Philipp Lenssen — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 11:00:32 -0000

How does this compare to Google's datastore system?

Re: Mister Wong takes down logo, International Flame war commences

Philipp Lenssen — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 06:51:11 -0000

> Incidentally, after reading Google Blogoscoped’s article,
> for the record I have NOT accused Mister-Wong.com of racism;

Neither did my Google Blogoscoped article say that :)
The only part containing the word "racism" was a quote from Spiegel (which by the way didn't specifically refer to you).

Re: Who Is the Asian Princess?

Philipp Lenssen — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 10:44:34 -0000

> Philipp, do us all a favor and stfu
> about the whole “colorblind” angle.

Ken, and your argument, reason or rational discussion is where? Or are you merely calling names, trying to silence others by bullying them, and trolling for attention?

Re: Who Is the Asian Princess?

Philipp Lenssen — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 10:50:04 -0000

PS: The assumption that "dating out of your race" is for some reasons shameful, or done only because you can't date "in your race, where you naturally belong", is, by and large, plain old racism. It was even used by Nazi propaganda in children books to shame Jewish men dating Aryan girls. There's nothing revolutionary about it. It happens to me on the street by people far less conscious about race than one would assume the bloggers here to be. If I would have to pick a location to move to than indeed I'd hope to go to a place where people are more colorblind than that. Not completely colorblind, but a little more so that when walking the streets you don't have to wonder if people think these thoughts as expressed here all the time.

Re: louisgray.com: Blogging 2.0 Causing Friction With 1.0 Bloggers

Philipp Lenssen — Mon, 19 May 2008 09:43:13 -0000

One important part of blogging I think is re-including feedback on posts though, either by updating the post or by letting it indirectly influence your future style of posts... so it would be neat to have good search capabilities on Friendfeed and others to search for e.g. [link:louisgray.com]. Furthermore, Friendfeed too should not care too much where their discussions are placed, so it would also be nice to have an RSS feed for such search which bloggers could then re-include to their blog in the form of a widget. (With some spam measures taken by Friendfeed so that it won't be abused too much, I suppose.)

The following result, which is also RSS-ified, seems to be a start but I'm not sure it's exactly like a "who comment on louisgray.com" list.
http://friendfeed.com/search?q=louisgray.com&se...

As for using an external comments system on a blog, that's everyone's decision where to store the data of their blog. One risk is that companies taking it away might one day abuse their hold on your data.

Re: Bomomo Contest Results

Philipp Lenssen — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 18:53:51 -0000

Some nice works up there!

Re: Bomomo, Yo

Philipp Lenssen — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:47:42 -0000

As a small update: now bomomo works in Internet Explorer too, thanks to my friend Niko!

Re: Aaron Meyers tumbls

Philipp Lenssen — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 17:09:35 -0000

This is fun (and I can't quite explain why). One thing: sometimes, some sides of the cube are not loading, i.e. no video plays and it remains black, even after quite a while. I noticed this when preparing and sharing cubes. It happened with embeddable videos, too.

Re: 2008/07/08/google-lively/

Philipp Lenssen — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 21:07:36 -0000

Harold, there were many rumors of this before, check Google for [Google my world], [Google metaverse], [niniane wang project in social space] and more...

Re: I’ve redesigned

Philipp Lenssen — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:53:31 -0000

I clicked on the big header graphic on top expecting to be taken from the permalink to the homepage, but had to click on the scobleizer logo... perhaps accept clicks on both?

Re: Why FriendFeed won’t go mainstream (Part I)

Philipp Lenssen — Mon, 19 May 2008 10:38:42 -0000

> 1. Only early adopters care about gluing together various
> social networks like I do (look at the right side of my blog,
> for instance, and you’ll see travel and schedule and events
> and photos and videos and more all glued together).

I don't really care about social networks (I've cancelled many of them, and never used any particular for real purposes), yet I like Friendfeed... as a way to discover new links, to know what certain people read and find interesting, and to have discussions on these links.

> FriendFeed brings tons of new noise to normal people,

Yes, Friendfeed can add noise, but the great thing, you can ignore the noise any time by not logging in when you don't feel like it. It's not like an email client or an RSS reader where things pile up in unread status. At Friendfeed, no one expects you to reply to something either, unlike with email.

Of course, if you don't like new input, Friendfeed is not the site to go to, and it certainly currently focuses on "quick" input rather than slow, detailed one (e.g. the comment length restriction, if that is still in).

> There isn’t one method of using these services. Some people just
> want to see their closest friend’s baby photos. Other people,
> like me, want to use these services like a chat room to talk
> with large numbers of people about today’s hottest news.

True, Friendfeed is good for many uses, and it can be different things to different people. Whether that'll cause troubles in the long run, let's see. Right now, it seems to be a bonus -- it makes Friendfeed more customized, more flexible to what you want from it.

> FriendFeed is frustrating to use even for advanced users. Here,
> quickly, tell me how you can see only Flickr photos on FriendFeed
> and block everything else.

I find Friendfeed to have great usability, but I also think they have many things to improve and figure out yet. To see only Flickr photos I suppose you could click the Flickr icon next to an entry, which will open a new tab which you might bookmark, but I don't know, I never wanted to do this, actually. I do want a better way to search for backlinks, though :)

> It pisses bloggers off

... some bloggers ...

Would be nice to have a ready-made widget to back integrate these comments though. Which may or may not be possible if we look at the issue of the next point...

> Comments get fragmented, even inside FriendFeed.

This is indeed a huge issue, I agree, and that this fragmentation is in a way the very best feature of Friendfeed (personal discussions), it's also perhaps not easily solved.

Re: Rumor: Google to Offer “Recommended” Sponsored Links

Philipp Lenssen — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 13:47:46 -0000

Andy, do you have more info on what this is exactly? Looks interesting...

Re: Orkut Adds Themes, Officially!

Philipp Lenssen — Tue, 27 May 2008 14:25:27 -0000

Interesting... where in the settings can these be toggled (provided you have the feature already)?