Disqus - Latest Comments for sidyadav

Re: Memiary + Lessons of a Weekend Entrepreneur

sidyadav — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 03:48:02 -0000

Thanks!

Re: 1) That's an interesting idea. With the 'public diaries' feature, you'd be able to toggle specific items as being public or private, but I guess the 5 item limit would limit your use. Instead, I think what would make it work is an 'upto 10 item' limit as I suggest below, allowing you to click 'add another' 5 more items after you enter 5 items. Couple that with the #hashtags feature I'm working on, and you'd be able to enter 10 items, categorize each however you wish, and toggle their public/private status accordingly. How about that?

Re: 2) It's currently exportable in RSS (see RSS icon in Past pages), and I'm working on building export in the iCal format. Stay tuned!

Re: Memiary + Lessons of a Weekend Entrepreneur

sidyadav — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 03:41:57 -0000

Thanks for your suggestions.

The 'accessing associative arrays' thing has been fixed -- it was a simple case of error handling when no input is given, which has now been turned off.

Re: Number 1. There are a lot of alternative ways to do what you do with Memiary, but the beauty of the service are its constraints, not its features. Similar to the reason you'd want to have a blog AND a Twitter account to write more than 160 characters, I believe Memiary's "5 item limit" is what makes it work for what it is. If it were to be just one item and an "add another" button below, it would fail, because there wouldn't be a given standard to users so they would either be underwhelmed and enter just one thing ("um, I did this today. What am I supposed to write?") or overwhelmed ("how many things do I have to enter?!"). Either way, they would never use the service again because it is simply too broad.

But that said, there are plans in the future to extend the number of entries to 10. So below the 5, you'd have an "add another" button, and you'd be able to go to 10 entries. For most users, 5 should work, and for users who have much to say, 'up to 10' would be their canvas.

Re: Number 2. If you currently press enter after entering a memory, it should automatically jump to the next field.

Re: Number 3. Twitter integration is something I have been working on, but it likely won't be public (i.e. @memiary), because it's rare that you'd want to share your private memories with your Twitter friends. It would instead work through DM messages which is sad because it wouldn't have the viral effect you suggest, but then again, I created the service in the interests of the user in the first place -- not the service itself.

Re: Memiary + Lessons of a Weekend Entrepreneur

sidyadav — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 16:45:15 -0000

Thanks! The data is stored in an ecrypted MySQL database.

Re: Memiary + Lessons of a Weekend Entrepreneur

sidyadav — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 16:43:50 -0000

Thanks guys! I appreciate your smart responses.

Re: http://www.rev2.org/2008/08/15/nowdothis-best-boss-ever/

sidyadav — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 18:28:57 -0000

I've added your e-mail to the list. :-)

Re: http://www.rev2.org/2008/08/15/nowdothis-best-boss-ever/

sidyadav — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 18:16:12 -0000

Thanks. :-) All I can say is that it's based around the idea (or problem) of
sharing stuff on the web and elsewhere, and this may be a little biased, but
I see the idea's usefulness beyond social networks, FTP, e-mail, and crappy
file sharing websites. We're near completion and planning to launch sometime
this fall (Nov/Dec). Would you like to be included in the 1 week pre-launch
private beta?

Re: Why There Won’t Be a Google Killer

sidyadav — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:38:04 -0000

That's a good point, but I think the problem -- if this should happen -- would be in judging those search results. How would you know search results for x on Google are better than the results on GoogleKiller? And if you do happen to make up your mind on the other one, how long would it take for you to completely switch your habits, or would you come crawling back a week later? I'm not completely convinced that people would let go off Google so easily.

Re: Amazon S3 Has Outage (11:00PDT, 20 Jul)

sidyadav — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 15:49:41 -0000

Allen, don't mention it! What's the error say? I signed out of disqus and I still can't see it. Will try other browsers.

Re: Twitter Acquires Summize, Users See Light

sidyadav — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:41:41 -0000

I've always thought Twitter's had a great opportunity in data mining. Essentially, they know what people are thinking right now -- at this minute. And the best thing of all: their 'test audience' OPTS to give them data, and keeps growing and growing and growing.

Re: The money shot

sidyadav — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:51:36 -0000

ZOMG FAP FAP FAP FAP FAP

Re: Back at the dev ranch

sidyadav — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:20:17 -0000

OMG OMG OMG can hardly wait

Re: Mobaganda: For Simple and Minimal Events Organizing

sidyadav — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 04:01:34 -0000

You did not just rick roll me and my 2 readers ;-)

Re: Notches: The Open Reviews Platform

sidyadav — Wed, 28 May 2008 06:57:19 -0000

Ouch, thanks guys! The post was put up in an hourly commute on draining EVDO, so I do have a fine excuse, thanks. :-)

Re: Orgoo: The All-in-One Gmail

sidyadav — Tue, 27 May 2008 04:14:33 -0000

Welcome all to Orgoo! Unfortunately, I'm out of invites at the moment, but if the Orgoo folks would be kind enough, we'd love some more for our readers.

Re: DailyLit Creates a New Way to Read Books

sidyadav — Wed, 21 May 2008 02:54:36 -0000

Yes. Thank you, English teacher.

Re: DailyLit Creates a New Way to Read Books

sidyadav — Thu, 15 May 2008 01:56:36 -0000

That's a great point. Because most book reading is done at night/bed/free time and usually for a long period of time, this doesn't exactly looks sustainable on a mobile device or RSS reader. But content fitted specifically for this form may do well, as will things like daily bite-sized news.

Thanks for the comment!

Re: Tunesbag Puts Your Music In The Cloud

sidyadav — Wed, 14 May 2008 08:43:26 -0000

Blundstone,
Thanks for the comment! The legality issue is definitely interesting, and I'm sure your users are thankful that you're not in the U.S! But I definitely think there is something happening with music and the web, and if you guys are able to balance openness and usefulness and things that are good for the user vs. revenue models and your relationship with the record industry, there is definite opportunity.

Keep me posted with Tunesbag!

Sid

Re: Why Twitter Will Never Reach the Mainstream

sidyadav — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 10:33:10 -0000

And that's the basis of my argument. The difference is: Twitter relies on constant connectivity; it expects the community to be in tune to everything that is happening (at least in their worlds) and adhere to the constant feedback loop. If you're not in tune, the value you add to the Twitterverse is close to nothing, and the "community" aspect is non-existant.

Newsflash: the mainstream is never the kind to be "in tune" with any kind system -- and that's why models like Wikipedia, YouTube, or Google -- where the "connectivity" is really at the user's demise and not a variable -- work well and reach the mainstream.

Put simply, Twitter needs YOU, whereas YOU need Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, Gmail, or the tens of services that have seemed to acquainted 'the curve.'

Re: ReadBurner: What’s Shared on Google Reader

sidyadav — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 02:07:04 -0000

Thanks Adam! You've undoubtedly done something great for the Google Reader community, and given how innovative the idea is, the attention is well-deserved. No pun intended. :-)

Re: Why Twitter Will Never Reach the Mainstream

sidyadav — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 03:49:41 -0000

Point noted.

Re: 7 Hottest Unacquired Web Startups

sidyadav — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:03:43 -0000

Sure. It's a spam blog with a difference: you can live chat with the people behind it from their headquarters in Santa Monica.

http://www.mahalo.com/Live

;-)

Seriously though, it really isn't bad as you think. They pay 30k per year to 60 writers to write content in-house for them. Now I'd like to see a spam blog do that.

Re: 7 Hottest Unacquired Web Startups

sidyadav — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 23:05:05 -0000

Wow -- as bad as it may be (which I don't think it is), I can think of a million worst sites. You have problems, dude... ;-)

Re: Why Twitter Will Never Reach the Mainstream

sidyadav — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 05:21:49 -0000

That's a great point -- and something I really regret not covering in the piece. Today's young generation is as cool, hip, and tech-savvy as can be. And I guess I do lightly imply them with those words -- but perhaps not as much as I should.

Infact, the more I think about it, the more that argument overwrites my argument in my head. The problem with Twitter right now is that the idea is much beyond today's generation of Internet users. But as time passes, it may well be a great utility for the up and coming generation. "What are you doing?" is a question teens I would imagine ask themselves regularly -- and why not have a centralized tool you can answer it to. And of course, the web, IM and SMS is going to be their life -- which fits exactly into Twitter's core idea, and I think even less so into today's other top sites.

So perhaps the title of this post should be, "Why Twitter Will Never Reach Today's Mainstream." Thanks for the comment!

Re: Why Twitter Will Never Reach the Mainstream

sidyadav — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 14:47:05 -0000

But you have to realize, Twitter from the ground up relies on a system with heavy user-input. And the only people that can possibly keep up with the flow of discussions are us "cool, hip, and tech-savvy folks" -- because we're around a computer or phone half the time! Your grandma isn't going to spend her day "following" her followers and adding to the conversations. And because of that, isn't much use to her. Of course, to us, it's useful, cool, and adds value to our brands and lives.

I think the problem with Twitter is that it's a wholly different, brilliant concept -- ahead of the curve. So people's expectations are far beyond what it can satisfy at this time. Of course, you're right in that I should never say never, so I guess meanwhile is what you're looking for. :-)

Re: Booklamp.org: Pandora for Books

sidyadav — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 00:14:38 -0000

Jason,
I realized that, but why not an alphabetical or categoric system (i.e. Amazon, Audible, etc.) -- seems like they spent so much time on the analysis bit that they forgot they weren't limited to just a dropdown box.

Anyhow, yeah, as I said, it's a great demonstration of an idea but not so much a product or a service. I'm hoping they chase it further and really delve into it.