Disqus - Latest Comments for RBA

Re: coRank, lets your trusted sources rank your news

RBA — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 12:13:03 -0000

Zaw, as I mentioned in your blog, here's the thing. If your friends aren't the "submit and/or vote" type, you could still use coRank by selecting active users that either you've identified as people you know (even if they're not your friends), or that you've found to have similar interests to yours - either by looking at the type of stories they're submitting/voting or via the "Like-minded" page under your account (Network tab). That's why when I describe coRank I talk about "sources", not just "friends".

Sure thing, there is no "power of the default" here. It takes some effort to personalize it, and that might slow growth, etc. but again, it's a service for those who feel comfortable spending some time in it.

And of course, nobody argues that Digg works :-)

Re: coRank, lets your trusted sources rank your news

RBA — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 18:07:04 -0000

ALI, have you actually created an account? You can change the "theme" in just one click.

Re: coRank, lets your trusted sources rank your news

RBA — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 19:55:35 -0000

Shredder, coRank is not about having friends, but about selecting people whose opinion you value. You may be alone in the world but believe that Matt Marshall (the owner of this blog) is someone whose opinion you value. If Matt was a coRank user, you could add him as one of your sources, and you're done. And don't worry - Matt doesn't need to agree or become your friend, nor even know you exist.

I happen to have met Matt in person but long before that I was already reading his blog. Why? Because I value his opinion. That's what counts in coRank. I'm not saying is a straight-forward process. It takes some effort, but that's how it works.

And again, this is not to say that you cannot add *friends* as your sources, just making the point that your sources don't need to be people who are friends with you. This isn't a new concept BTW. Del.icio.us's "your network" feature is based on a similar principle.

Re: Roundup: Facebook a major news company, Google’s latest, Imbee and more

RBA — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 14:20:57 -0000

Re.Facebook - What exactly are they calling "news"?

Re: Kontrib, a Digg clone with translation

RBA — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 09:24:20 -0000

Translation from English to Spanish is like every other machine translation I've seen. Not a bad way to showcase their translation technology, but tt's hard, it's VERY hard to create decent machine translacion, and this is another example.

Re: Look at Facebook

RBA — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 17:00:04 -0000

Facebook's growth is really remarkable, but at least today they're still a US-only phenomenon, while most of the other top dogs in the SN space are making great progress there.

Re: Forbes buys social bookmarking site Clipmarks

RBA — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 18:00:38 -0000

"Forbes finds the service useful for helping their reporters collect and share information about articles they are reading "

That's a reason to use the service, not quite to acquire it. Unless the offer was undeniably good, I sense Clipmarks could have benefited more from having Forbes as a client rather than selling their entire business to them, but again, we don't know much about the complete story.

I for one favor selling the service over selling the company, especially at such early stage. Am I crazy?

Re: Forbes buys social bookmarking site Clipmarks

RBA — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 19:26:24 -0000

Thanks Roger. BTW we'd love to have Forbes as a client. Let me know! :-)

Re: Corank comes close

RBA — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 14:22:06 -0000

Paul,

First, thanks for your comments about coRank. What you flag as a problem - the all or nothing approach - is something that we've been considering and I think you should expect soon someting in the lines of what you suggest. The main reason it's not there already probably has to do more with the fact that we would make that something optional but wanted to launch with a minimal set of configurable options, but I agree with you and your suggestion is already in the to-do list.

Re: 2007/06/20/google-to-buy-apple/

RBA — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 23:39:31 -0000

The world's gone mad. Yesterday it was Yahoo + MySpace. Today's Google + Apple... Tomorrow it'll be Microsoft + eBay and the day after, Amazon + Mashable!

Re: 2007/06/20/google-maps-local-reviews/

RBA — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 10:11:07 -0000

Most reviews I'm seeing already are from Yelp, so at least for now, this is giving Yelp more exposure.

Re: 2007/06/22/diggers-revolt-over-new-comment-system-resolved/

RBA — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 18:35:05 -0000

Well, the cool thing about the Internet is that unless you're doing something terribly wrong, you're always going to get some level of feedback proportional to your user base.

If you have millions of users engaged with your service and you do something wrong (or right) you're going to get hundreds, perhaps thousands of people sending you complaints (or taps on the shoulder). If you have thousands of users, you'll probably get a hundred or a bit less. And if you have 50 users, chances are half of them will tell you what sucks or not.

Feedback is always cool. Trying to surprise your users with something you think it's cool and get the opposite response isn't that cool. It's good however to see that they responded promptly.

Re: 2007/06/28/pownce-2/

RBA — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 06:25:35 -0000

Double review witin 24 hours. Sweeeeet!!
Can I get some of that too? :-)

Re: 2007/07/01/mashable-ads/

RBA — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 01:49:20 -0000

Â¿100 news submissions each day? Wow, congratulations!

I'm not a big fan of CPM but in general I think your prices are reasonable. How/where text ads are displayed?

Re: 2007/07/24/365main/

RBA — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 23:56:49 -0000

Bill, I think they "tested" it today and the test kind of... well... failed.

Re: Open Source Social Platforms: 10 of the Best

RBA — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 12:37:15 -0000

Nice article, except that rather than saying Digg/MySpace/Del.icio.us I would have said Social News, Social Networking and Social Bookmarking".

I also have my own theory about the concept "Social News" but I'll leave that for another comment :-)

Re: 2007/07/25/facebook-connectu/

RBA — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 16:46:41 -0000

Actually, the ConnectU guys are after Zuckerberg before Facebook became a multi-million dollar site.

Re: 2007/07/30/beyonce-stair-fall/

RBA — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 23:02:03 -0000

There are hundreds of videos & footage of Beyonce in YouTube. Who is to say that suddenly now, asking to remove a supposedly embarrasing video is because of copyright infringement? Doesn't she realize that it is more embarrasing to claim this is about copyright than if she had fallen and in the fall, ripped her clothes off? Absurd.

Re: 2007/08/10/email-newsletters/

RBA — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 01:32:52 -0000

Well, since you asked I'll add http://www.zoomgroups.com/groups/

It's more like Yahoo! Groups than a pure email newsletters service, but sure enough you can create newsletters there.

The site is probably the #1 in the Spanish speaking world under the names eListas.net/eGrupos.net, but under ZoomGroups it offers the same functionality in English.

Re: 2007/08/12/pligg-sale/

RBA — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 04:28:35 -0000

They're not selling the software. From what I read, they're selling the site pligg.com. There's quite a difference there. EJRaven, be careful what you're bidding on.

Re: INSANITY: Facebook App Sells to TripAdvisor for $3 Million

RBA — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 00:12:52 -0000

Peak? Maybe in insanity but certainly not in apps. I see hundreds of developers starting their own Facebook apps about "whatever" this same night!

Re: 2007/08/17/where-ive-been/

RBA — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 23:38:07 -0000

Well, not many suspects here as for who had the idea to spread this rumor...

In order of probabilities IMHO:

1) The blog where the "news" were first posted
2) The "Where I've Been" guys
3) Facebook
4) TripAdvisor

Chances are that 3 and 4 are the wrong answers, but still, the news don't harm them either.

Re: 2007/08/22/should-do-this/

RBA — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 19:17:23 -0000

Somehow I think their business model is somewhere else, rather than and advanced suggestion box management.

And "Should Do This" should definitely add RSS feeds (if they already have them, sorry, I didn't see them).

Re: The hype about that micro blogging service

RBA — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 20:18:25 -0000

Love/hate is a well known seller :-)

As Kathy Sierra would say (well, sort of), you're not in trouble when people talk crap about you. You're in trouble when people simply do NOT talk about you at all.

Re: Why doesn’t Microsoft Maps get the hype?

RBA — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 13:21:08 -0000

"“Scoble’s links are as good as the links that come out of Digg.”"

Is that a compliment? ;-)

Re: Google to penalize bloggers selling links?

RBA — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 04:12:56 -0000

The PageRank algorithm belongs to the 1.0 world. Fortunately for Google, there's still tons of "1.0" stuff going on today.

If you have to tell people how to publish things on the web (and we're not even talking about purposely using black hat SEO techniques) because otherwise your algorithm will make wrong assumptions, the problem's in your algorithm - you can't 'fix' people, and to tell them that if you don't listen you'll be penalized simply proves my point (remember, these people aren't trying to fool search engines, just want to make a few bucks by writing about something).

Re: Rumors…

RBA — Wed, 02 May 2007 20:10:02 -0000

And I thought you were just a full-time blogger :-)

See you in a bit at the SF NewTech!

Re: Fear of Google

RBA — Sun, 06 May 2007 20:39:44 -0000

Does it make sense to say that perhaps - just perhaps - ad agencies fear Google in a similar way the RIAA & cia. fear p2p? Of course a big difference is that Google is also a business, but I see some similar pattern here. What do you think?

Re: Second Life hitting child porn problems?

RBA — Wed, 09 May 2007 03:04:12 -0000

Limited assistance to a press conference on an insland in a 3d world becomes a problem? Oh my! :-)

Re: aQuantive, stupid or smart purchase by Microsoft?

RBA — Mon, 21 May 2007 00:52:50 -0000

I don't know about aQuantive but I wouldn't buy Huggies. Go with Pampers Cruisers, the elastic ones, the ones in the purple box.

Yup.

:-)

Re: “Zooomr’s down”

RBA — Mon, 21 May 2007 02:05:10 -0000

Zooomr story is called "pay someone else to take care of the hardware at the data center". I mean, you're already paying someone for the conectivity. So do the same for the hardware and save yourself some driving in the middle of the night.

I lived Chris's life for 2-3 years with my first startup, did what I just mentioned (got someone else to take care of that stuff), and I would never ever go back. While you're a startup, you most likely still need to wake up and stay up, but at least you don't have to leave home. Besides, depending on just yourself is an extremely dangerous proposition for this kind of business - what if you're 200 miles away for whatever reason?

Re: I’ve lost control of my comments…

RBA — Mon, 21 May 2007 15:02:39 -0000

You can annoy legit users a bit and add some decent captcha (by decent I mean readable). I know I'm not telling you anything you don't know and yes captcha can be beaten, but I had a blog that I don't even know how it became popular among spammers (because it had very few legit readers) and it was getting over 100 spams a day. I added a simple captcha and the spam went down to zero.

Before closing comments just because of spam, that's something I would certainly consider.

Re: “Zooomr’s down”

RBA — Mon, 21 May 2007 19:52:56 -0000

Neuromancer, if you never delegate certain tasks to someone else "because they don't know about it as much as you do", then you have a very serious "human" escalation problem that will only get worst over time.

It takes skills to delegate and actually not everybody can do it right, but the truth is, the longer you wait, the harder it'll be.

Re: 24 hours of comment spam: 6,607

RBA — Wed, 23 May 2007 03:21:14 -0000

Robert, I was a captcha hater myself for a very long time. I've never liked it and I still don't, to tell you the truth, but what would I rather have? To know that a friend or a blogger I like is wasting so much time dealing with spam on a daily basis, or having to input the stupid 5-6 twisted characters every time I want to send a comment?

I choose the second.

If you ever decide to implement captcha, I'd suggest of course keeping Askimet as well, and also start with an easy to read captcha. Why? Because if you see that with a simple captcha you're already not even seeing 95%+ of the spam you get today, why go for a captcha that even humans cannot understand?

Re: Techcrunch sells out party in 45 minutes

RBA — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 04:07:03 -0000

Aaron... Well, here I can see Robert's cell number.
Where is Mike's? :-)

Re: The invisible audience shows up — on Facebook

RBA — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 18:27:13 -0000

Well' I do comment every once in a while, but actually what I'd like to do is to go photowalking with you guys some day. How's that for being "shy"? :-)

PS: Are you going to the Startup Epicenter conference tomorrow? I saw Podtech listed as a speaker/panelist but no names.

Re: Get on ScobleShow, get fired

RBA — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 06:30:59 -0000

Wow.... Did he actually said something that shouldn't have been said, or they fired him simply for going to your show without consulting with them first? The former is understandable. The later should beg for another chance.

BTW - You can put me in your show. I'll fire our PR guys if they complain :-)

Re: A PR person’s dream

RBA — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 13:47:59 -0000

Great way to get yourself entertained, Robert :-)

So what line will be larger? The one for the iPhone or the one to pitch Mr.Scoble? :-))))

Re: iPhone stops people

RBA — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 00:18:54 -0000

A much bigger leap would have been if something happened that started moving the US into adopting G3, don't you think?

Re: iPhone update rumors cause conversations…

RBA — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 16:59:13 -0000

"Nothing gets people to talk like Apple does"

Today I had lunch with my brother. He doesn't know what the iPhone is (he's 47 yrs old), but didn't stop talking about sports for the entire meal.

Nothing gets people to talk like sports, politics and sex. Not even at the level Apple gets geeks to talk about Apple products :-)

Re: Business plan obfuscation: Twitter style

RBA — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 17:23:34 -0000

Well, you can pitch a VC whatever you like. Once at a VC breakfast from SVASE last year I heard a guy with no BP whatsoever, who was asking for $3M so he could advertise his web site on TV. I'm not kidding. You should see everyone else's faces.

Re: Crowdsourcing the answer to “what conference to attend?”

RBA — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 04:16:54 -0000

No way to sign up for the Facebook-Dev Happy-Lunch. I'm redirected to my Facebook home page. It doesn't even show on the Lunch 2.0 Facebook group. Any idea why is that?

Re: Why Google is walling off its news garden

RBA — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 02:33:05 -0000

I though Google jumped the shark with the evil question a while ago.

Re: Things on my mind…

RBA — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 06:25:09 -0000

It may sound odd to say "I'm happy for you" considering you sound so depressed, but I actually am, just not for you being depressed but for taking a break.

You don't think you're passionate? Heck, if you're not passionate, I don't know anyone who is. Your sin might actually be that you're too passionate about things that perhaps don't matter that much to most people. Now it's time to (also) be passionate about other things, right? Good for you!

Enjoy your family and especially that little one that's coming. Sooner than you think I think you'll be missing logging into your Wordpress account :-)

Re: Facebook Hotel?

RBA — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 01:36:02 -0000

The world should move to more open environments instead of walled gardens. You realize you're evangelizing about one of the most walled gardens out there, right? Their famous API is in fact only useful within Facebook.

Robert, I'm not attacking you, but seriously... Google grew under the mantra "don't do evil" and yet today they scare the shit out of many people. What is Facebook saying today, when they're not nearly the size of Google, so we can trust them now? Not much. And tomorrow?

I hesitate.

Re: Facebook Hotel?

RBA — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 03:48:32 -0000

"RBA: I seem to remember you thinking blogging was a fad when I first started doing those back in 2001"

Robert, are you confusing me with someone else? :-)
In 2001 I had no idea what blogging was, but I was running a YahooGroups-like service (still am) and I was defintely up for user-generated content, conversation, etc. And when I learned about blogging (somewhere in 2004), I launched a blogging platform (zoomblog.com). It's not Wordpress but the point is, I definitely think you're mistaking me for someone else :-)

All in all, I'm not throwing stones at Facebook, all I'm saying is that I do hesitate.

BTW, regarding your bizcard analogy, you know Facebook today is still very much a US-centric app. It may be your business card replacement, but if you go Europe, you'll probably have to leave your "garden" and check Xing out. Or Orkut if you go Brazil, good-ole Friendster if you go to the Phillipines, etc. See what I'm saying?

You build your world in FB and it's cool. As long as you don't leave your world or manage to bring those out of it into it, you're fine. But it's *your* world. Others, especially those outside US, may want to build theirs somewhere else. Would you leave FB tomorrow and join, say, Xing? And there we go with the walled gardens again :-)

These apps (Facebook, Xing, etc) will become the modern business card when they are no longer walled gardens. But they are businesses and they see more value being a walled garden than an open one. If we were to find an analogy with software we'd know that "walled" (propietary, closed) is not necessarily better.

So yeah I hesitate. I have my world somewhere else, and I'm not comfortable every time I get a message alerting me that I need to go to my FB account to see/read/check something out. Just like you might feel if you've got messages from LinkedIn, Xing, Orkut or Ryze...

Re: Facebook Hotel?

RBA — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 02:35:47 -0000

Robert, you might find this interesting reading, or perhaps utopically boring:
http://bradfitz.com/social-graph-problem/

It's 5 days old but it still applies :-)

Re: Why Mahalo, TechMeme, and Facebook are going to kick Google’s butt in four years

RBA — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 21:41:43 -0000

In addition to the comments that point out you're assuming Google is just going to sit pretty and watch, once again you're assuming the world is a piece of land formed by 50 states.

I am one of those who agree that Mahalo's survival depends precisely on implementing good SEO.

Re: The eight ways you can be my friend (or enemy) online

RBA — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 15:42:28 -0000

So if I don't use Facebook, we cannot be friends? Pitty :-P

Re: danah continues the “precious,” er, Facebook conversation…

RBA — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 06:04:03 -0000

Well, you seem to want Facebook to be everything for you and perhaps also to be the best at it, and you know that it will never be. There will always be other tools out there more suitable for such and such task (Jack of all trades...). And the bigger Facebook becomes, the harder it'll be for it to adapt. And of course, it will never be able to please everyone. You know that.

Re: Thanks so much for all the kind words…

RBA — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 01:45:45 -0000

Congratulations! BTW, Milan shares the birthday with my 1st daughter (she turned 5 years old today).

9lbs is no little baby! I also wish Maryam a speedy recovery. Yup, we get the easy part, so now it's the time to give back :-)

Re: Dave Winer says I sound like a monkey

RBA — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 15:48:48 -0000

Social Graph: A term I probably read about 5 times in the last 5 years, and 500 times in the last 7 days. I'm with PXLated. Now what?

Re: Seesmic vs. Hictu: a lesson in bootstrapping

RBA — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 14:42:45 -0000

Building your success on top of an existing network is not risk free. The network itself can, at any time, leverage itself, build what you're doing, and kill you.

Granted that if you get critical mass within the network before they can do what you do, the it would be difficult for them to catch up but remember, you're in their territory, and if they want, they can do really nasty things in order to get their way. Of course, if you have your own network, you can still become obsolete if a large networks starts doing what you're doing, but at least they cannot shut you down. Remember Alexaholic? Or the many widget sites for MySpace?

I guess what I'm saying is that building on top of an existing network has its own set of risks.

Re: My stats from a few minutes ago

RBA — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 17:44:12 -0000

Robert, somehow I think you're trying to make a point about Techmeme's relevance, but perhaps it's a bit too much thinking "inside the box".

I have a site that gets about 10 million pageviews/month whose main source of visitors, besides Google, Yahoo (yes, Yahoo) and direct access, are blogger.com, programas-gratis.net, stumbleupon.com, bloglines.com and msn.com

Blogger, Bloglines? Mind you, it's not a blog nor a blogging platform!

But programas-gratis.net? This is a rustic website with only a 1,500 rating in Alexa (regardless of what it can be said about Alexa). Nonetheless, it scores (at Alexa) much better than Techmeme.

Your stats may show Techmeme as a major source, but in the big picture, I don't think it means much, neither to prove your point nor to disregard it about Techmeme's relevance.

Re: Facebook $100 billion?

RBA — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 17:55:19 -0000

"would you have said that Google wasn’t going to be worth $100 billion back in 1999"

No. Nobody was talking about Google back then. However people did talk very high about other companies such as, you know, Webvan and their friends.

Chances are the company that might be worth 100 billions in 8 years is not in the spotlight today.

Re: Mike’s iPhone

RBA — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 23:49:18 -0000

Is that San Gregorio beach? It's not bad but I'm sure you can think of 'better' ones, right? :-) Have you been there at night on a fog/cloud free night yet?

Re: Hanging out with a fast company (emphasis on fast)

RBA — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 06:00:09 -0000

Ah, rich kids street race tales :-)

Me? I ride an SUV - wife, kids... you know the drill, don't you Robert? :-) and it beats the load capacity of that Tesla anytime of the year :-) Try buying a 80" HDTV and load it inside that puny little car :-)

Have you seen that bumper sticker that goes "You're looking at my other car" :-)

Re: What made me cry: Microsoft’s World Wide Telescope

RBA — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 19:45:53 -0000

I wonder if WWT will render the sky as nice as desktop apps such as Starry Night, TheSky6, etc. Those (especially Starry Night) are really really nice too.

BTW Robert, in my spare time (huh, what's that?) I'm an amateur astrophotographer, and you're welcome to join us in one of our Star Parties :-) Not quite a photowalk because well, rather than walking you've got to stay put :-) but might be a fun experiece for you as well :-) Just drop me a line if interested!

Re: Kodak Moment: Following Ansel Adams footsteps

RBA — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 18:19:11 -0000

It's really good to enjoy mother nature once in a while!! I envy you!

BTW - I know you will cover astrophotography in PhotoCycle at least once, right? :-) We'll be going out day yes/day no this week. If you wanna come, let me know! ;-)

Re: I’ve redesigned

RBA — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:59:54 -0000

Man, you REALLY like that picture holding the camera and pointing at me :-)

Anyway, congrats, I like it. Let's just hope the meat in the sandwich also continues as juicy as usual :-)

Re: The First FriendFeed Event: MSFT and YHOO

RBA — Sun, 04 May 2008 05:25:51 -0000

FriendFeed or Techmeme? Well, I don't really use neither of them :-)

Why? Well... my life doesn't revolve around things like this as much as yours. Besides sleeping/eating/etc.. roughly I spend 60% working (on something I love BTW), 25% with the family, and 15% on hobbies - you might consider that reading blogs (like yours), etc. is a hobby, but fortunately I also have others away from the computer (bless them!!).

And of course, it's really cool to live a life like that too :-). I don't swear against FriendFeed, I just don't use it.

Am I an early adopter? I'd say I'm an "early observer". In other words, I don't go nuts about Twitter, FriendFeed, etc. but I'm very much aware of them and how they're impacting other people's lives (early adopters for now :-). And I'm sure I'm not alone. There probably are a lot more "early observers" than "adopters", don't you think?

Oh and I can't stand the noise :-) You're certainly one of a kind :-)

Re: The First FriendFeed Event: MSFT and YHOO

RBA — Sun, 04 May 2008 15:18:12 -0000

Robert, I don't read The New York Times... Well, unless it shows up in some of my alert feeds :-) Perhaps you misunderstood what I mean by "noise".

I like to read things that matter to me from different sources. To me, that's not noise. Noise is either things that do not matter to me or things that IMO add nothing of value, a distraction, a nuisance... Occasionally - more frequenstly than not - noise gets in the way... And I try to avoid it. ANd yes, by doing that, perhaps every once in a while I miss a really good point of view, details, et. but that's the tradeoff. I don't have the time to dig into the deepest details of every news that pop up. Lukcly those who can. Yet, I survive, and trust me, I'm doing fine :-)

Anyway, I do follow you, so when I miss that really good point, I know good old Scoble will make sure I don't miss it :-)

Re: The First FriendFeed Event: MSFT and YHOO

RBA — Sun, 04 May 2008 15:37:37 -0000

F-Up: I said perhaps you misunderstood what I mean by “noise”. But it could also be that *I* misunderstood what you meant by noise as well :-)

Re: Now you can cry over heavens

RBA — Tue, 13 May 2008 03:21:34 -0000

Robert, after playing with it for a few minutes, I think that the most remarkable feature (other than a nice interface design) is the "community" option. Not from what it can do - it really isn't clear - but from what I think it might be able to do.

The rest of features - again leaving aside a very nice interface - are already present in desktop software apps such as TheSky or the much fancier StarryNight (Pro Plus). For example, do a Image Google search on "starry night pro plus" to see some screenshots.

Of course I don't discount the fact that StarryNight hasn't done a thing to bring astronomy closer to people who otherwise wouldn't care, and WWT might do just that, and that is a *very good thing*.

Re: Now you can cry over heavens

RBA — Tue, 13 May 2008 20:56:37 -0000

Jimconnolly, have you ever seen some really cool fireworks "live"? Have you seen them on TV? BIG difference, isn't it? :-)

Trust me, there's no better view of the sky than looking at the summer Milky Way under really dark skies - you won't even need a telescope! Try it sometime, then come back to your computer, stare at WWT or any other similar program, then you'll re-think what you just said :-) Also, next time you'll look up to the sky from your light polluted town (I'm assuming you don't live in the middle of nowhere), you'll look at it in a different way. Certainly from my city (Sunnyvale), going outside means little when it comes to look at the night sky.

BTW I think this project is really cool. Not because it does something that has never been done before, but because the more the merrier, plus Microsoft has a way to get it into the masses where other more dedicated projects didn't (and it wasn't their goal anyway).

I'm hoping that the social part of WWT is better exploited - that's where this project could really shine.

Re: Now you can cry over heavens

RBA — Wed, 14 May 2008 01:23:31 -0000

Robert, calm down.

I said "There’s no better view of the sky than looking at the summer Milky Way under really dark skies". I repeat, Milky Way.

Yes, the Milky Way is a galaxy, but not the type of galaxy you're talking about. And to me, that view of the Milky Way beats any fireworks, and certainly the very best Hubble picture. But that's me.

Sure, most galaxies and nebulae look faint on a telescope, yet, it is a thrill - at least for me - to actually see them LIVE, even if they're faint (I can assure you however, that the Orion nebula even on just a 11" telescope" is anything but faint, and yes, it IS amazing to see it live, right there above your head. And how many wows and jaw droppings I've seen from people just by staring at Saturn "live" through a telescope the very first time? A lot.

I'm not a wise guy Robert, not by a mile. I'm a guy who loves astronomy. I enjy the Hubble pictures, I enjoy taking pictures myself, and I enjoy observing things "in site". What do I like best? Observing and taking photos myself. Please do not consider that as idiocy. I'm sure most amateur astronomers would agree with me, that's why we run out of the door anytime there's a new moon and no clouds, drive at least 50 miles to darker sites, and freeze in cold winter nights so we can observe and do "that thing we do". I wouldn't change any of that for the best picture from the Hubble. That doesn't make me a wise guy, just a guy who is passionate about this hobby. Something I think you also must be, just by reading the title of this post of yours.

BTW you know I've invited you countess times to spend an astrophotography session with me and the gang. And the invitation is still up. Wait til summer and come up to Fremont Peak when the fog rolls in and leave us up above the fog in complete darkness. You too might think different.

Having said that, under dark skies in the right season, you can even see the Andromeda galaxy with your bare eyes. Sure it might be just a blur, but what an amazing blur it is when you actually see it with your own eyes.

Astronomy may "look" better on TV, just lik ewatching a football game on TV you'll get closeups and follow the action without moving your neck, but nothing beats "live", whether it's a football game, a faint nebula, a concert, or simply staring at the summer Milky Way.

Re: Now you can cry over heavens

RBA — Wed, 14 May 2008 04:23:51 -0000

"Yes, it’s cool to look through a telescope and see things and look around the sky and have a personal experience"

And that's exactly what I was trying to encourage with my first comment, Robert, nothing more.

I agree I used an extreme example (fireworks), but that was mainly to amplify my point. I still think that 15 minutes staring at the Milky Way in really dark skies will be a memorable experience a "city" person will remember for the rest of their lives, while looking at a Hubble picture... chances are ithey won't. That was all I was trying to do with my first comment, Robert. And certainly I didn't get into what's best to learn the skies - for that, nothing beats something like the WWT or other software such as Starry Night, no question about that!!

My rant in my response to your comment is the result of you calling me a wise guy simply for considering that a live view of the Milky Way beats looking at any Hubble picture (I still think that way and I just explained why I think), for saying that all you saw in my original comment was idiocy, and for saying "you don't see shit", because honestly, then we amateur astronomers must be definitely a bunch of idiots for going through that much trouble to stare at "shit" :-/

In that long comment I might have oversold the hobby as you say, probably because I did feel that with your "don't see shit" comment you undersold it, so I went out of my way to "defend" it. Can you blame me? After all, many people think you're always overselling stuff: Facebook (before), FriendFeed (now) and even the WWT :-) Why? Because you're pasionate about it - that doesn't make you a "wise guy" nor an idiot. Same here, Robert. We don't stare at shit and we definitely like it "live" more than on TV (and yes, we also love it on TV :-)

BTW you don't need the Hubble to take amazing astro pictures. I invite you to see what your "cheap" Canon 5D can do :-) See? You can go out, "live" the experience, have fun, and take a really coooool souvenir home!! :-)

Re: New York Times announces Times Machine

RBA — Tue, 20 May 2008 22:27:03 -0000

Where did I see another story about the TImes today? Ah, it was here:
http://images.ucomics.com/comics/nq/2008/nq0805...

:-)

Re: Should services charge “super users”?

RBA — Mon, 26 May 2008 07:23:40 -0000

So it is no secret to say that Twitter wasn't created with scalability in mind - like 90% of all "2.0" projects. After all, Twitter was born and it stayed completely in the dark for over 8 months until it exploded at the SXSW'07. I don't think it went down during those first 8 months (and if it did, not many people noticed anyway).

And ever since the first time it went down, chances are they've been patching and optimizing things here and there, when perhaps what Twitter needs is a complete remake - which shouldn't really be THAT hard considering Twitter is above all, a very simple application - that thing doesn't put a spacecraft in Mars - so the main focus should be scalability. Perhaps they're doing that already. If not, they should.

On the other hand, FF most likely has been created with scalability in mind, and so far, other than throwing hardware at it, as long as they're somewhat ahead of the growth game, it doesn't need anything to stay afloat as it grows. It's not rocket science either - they simply didn't (supposedly) ignore the possibility of growth when they started to write their software. Which is what everyone should do when starting a project, and there's plenty of documentation out there and plenty of great engineers who know how to architect a simple (or complex) app so that it will scale if necessary.

Leaving that aside, the business model is a very interesting and fair question. No, I don't agree with Om. Not because I don't think super-users shouldn't be charged, but because charging super-users doesn't fix anything, scalability-wise. I also don't think Om understands how Twitter works internally. Ok, *I* don't know how Twitter works, but if it does the way Om describes it, then the folks at Twitter absolutely definitely need to rewrite the whole thing from scratch. Personally I didn't like neither Obasanjo's nor Om's articles at all. You? Well, you're talking about Twitter and FriendFeed, and a bit of Facebook. Thank god for that "This is why I love the tech industry" article, because it is for posts like that I'm still reading you. (No offense, I just don't use neither Tw nor FF, so this fun madness you guys have is completely out of my radar...)

Re: Did I harm my blog by FriendFeeding this year?

RBA — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 05:05:00 -0000

I have my own set of obsessions/addictions, and whenever I see myself crossing the line I ask myself: How would I "suffer" more? Staying without X (FriendFeed in your case) for three full days, or not seeing/talking to my wife and/or children for three days?

Depending on your answer, you may or may not need that intervention and may have crossed the line, not between hobby/interest and addiction, but between addiction and obsession. I think being addicted to something is usually not a bad thing (we're not talking drugs here), but being obsessed it often is.

BTW if your answer is that you've been without seeing your family for three days in a row but it was ok because you could contact them via FriendFeed, then I leave to someone else to do the analysis.

Having said that, do what you like doing as long as you know what your priorities are and stick to them.

Re: Pligg to Launch Fraxi, A â€œNingâ€ for Digg Clones

RBA — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 16:13:22 -0000

The model coRank follows is to allow site owners to include their own ads (adSense or whatever), much easier and transparent than the best rev-share module.

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