Disqus - Friends of robknight

Re: High Definition at the Scoble Pad

Chris Messina — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 16:19:48 -0000

Hey Jeremiah,

We were bummed that we couldn't make it last night -- I'm sure it would have been a great time. Tara was home sick though and I had the special privilege of taking care of her. ;)

Perhaps next time!

Re: Google PowerPoint Clone Coming

Chris Messina — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 21:26:53 -0000

I hope Jason from Preezo is watching... he's been in private beta for over a year -- would love to see a small business dad make a name for himself before Google steals his thunder.

Re: Intype – Powerful Text Editor for Windows

Chris Messina — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 00:58:03 -0000

Would really be cool if it natively supported TextMate bundles... the number of bundles would explode!

Re: Yahoo Mixd Closes - Peanut Butter Manifesto in Action?

Chris Messina — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 23:15:35 -0000

Mixalina? Seriously?

Re: SXSWi 2007 ical

Chris Messina — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 18:37:31 -0000

It might be a little late, but definitely check out Conferenceer!

Re: Independents Hall starts materializing

Chris Messina — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 13:07:19 -0000

Wow! That site looks awesome! Nice work Alex!!

Re: New Theme, New Look

Chris Messina — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 18:24:34 -0000

Like it, but your link blue and your header blue are different... the text column is also too wide and you need more line-height!

Otherwise, big improvement!

Re: WOW! me

Chris Messina — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 13:56:27 -0000

+1. Bug ups.

Re: Mozilla To Build Social Networking Into Firefox: Bad News For Flock

Chris Messina — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 04:28:47 -0000

It's about time someone built a social browser.

That Mike is using my design is no surprise -- it's been sitting in my Flickr acount for ages along with a bunch of other stuff that was never implemented -- waiting for someone to come along and build it (that's why it's there -- and that' why I design for open source).

Though it might sound bad on the surface for Flock, I'm not sure it makes a difference, other than validating the original vision for Flock (which has yet to materialize) -- and providing a much-needed kick in the ass to get them towards some coherent vision for what Flock should be. The Coop (creative name, there) will have the same problems that lead us down the path to creating a separate browser though -- and that's trying to graft on a fundamentally people-based experience into a primarily page-based experience.

But I welcome their efforts and do hope that it results in something good and that they're able to learn from what progress Flock has made to date.

After all, it was long understood, at least in my mind, that Mozilla would be able to inherit from Flock's existence; much the same as Flock did from the beginning. That's how open source is supposed to work. And now that Mozilla Labs is thawing the pieces of the work that I put on ice when I left Flock, I think we'll see some really good ideas come out of this.

As it is, they've got some of best guys at Mozilla working on this and I've spoken with all of them about what my vision for Flock was. At this point, I'd be thrilled if they built it.

Re: Keep track of your friends with The Coop

Chris Messina — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 04:31:56 -0000

It's curious that you don't mention Flock anywhere but in the name of the extension. I mean, you are using one of my mockups as a depiction of how you think this thing could look....!

Anyway, I'm all for it. If you guys want to pick my brain some more, drop me a line -- let's get a good conversation going about this, eh? ;)

Oh, and make sure that you guys get support for OpenID and microformats in there, stat!

Re: Coworking convert

Chris Messina — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 02:47:54 -0000

Hey, welcome to the club!

Just wanted to make a point of clarification -- coworking is actually a movement to create an *alternative* to cafes... symbiotically I guess, but the hope is to create a worldwide network of spaces (like the Hat Factory and Citizen Space in San Francisco) that vagabond hackers can work out of as they (we) travel the world!

Cafes are great, but they're not made for ongoing, productive working communities to form in... and hey, as a cafe coworking warrior myself, I'd like to be able to go to a cafe and enjoy it as a cafe for a change, instead of a workplace! ;)

Re: Mozilla To Build Social Networking Into Firefox: Bad News For Flock

Chris Messina — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 17:44:01 -0000

@67 webonics:

The use of Chris Messina’s concepts that he developed while at Flock is disturbing. I’m surprised that Flock does not have a non-disclosure/non-compete for this type of work. Its one thing if Flock gives it a green light for use in open source, it is entirely another if it is being ripped off. It also sounds like from Chris’ comment on this post that he has some disgruntlement with Flock and this is a venue for being vindictive to his previous employer. I’d like to hope this is not the case at all.

Just to dispel any uncertainties, the mockup was in my Flickrstream for well over a year; I had no idea that the Mozilla guys were interested in it or were going to use it, nor did they ask for my permission in using it; it's licensed under Creative Commons; their use is questionable, given the commercial nature of Mozilla, but it doesn't offend me.

In terms of my "disgruntlement", I'm simply impatient that much of what I was a part of at Flock has yet to see the light of day and that the Mozilla folks put something out first that was labeled "People the Browser" when clearly these ideas came from someplace else.

I don't think it's a matter of ripping anyone off; that's not how software works, especially in the open source community. The designs I made are next-to-worthless if they don't get built, and I was at Flock to help build a browser that understood that the web is a social place and not just a place for academic HTML papers.

I tried The Coop add-on and it has a long way to go; as such I'm not worried for Flock's sake, but I do hope that it gets the conversation restarted about what a social browser might be like -- and clearly there's a lot of folks in the TechCrunch peanut gallery who fear change and resist the notion that browsers should finally reflect the way the web is actually being used today.

Re: Web Strategy Reading, A Weekly Roundup

Chris Messina — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 17:39:13 -0000

Thanks for the link, Jeremiah! I also set up a Ma.gnolia group to collect resources on the subject:

http://ma.gnolia.com/groups...

Re: OpenYou: The Limits of Privacy on the Social Web

Chris Messina — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 16:19:56 -0000

I think Andrew's point is right on ... to suggest that we even have privacy is a bit disengenous.

I wrote about this some time ago. My thesis is that corporations and the government know more about us and have more information about us than we do as individuals or that people that we care about and consider friends or family have about us. I can't exactly say what the net effect of this is, but, as you suggested in terms of knowledge having power, I think it's the ability to restrict one's access to data about them that becomes powerful... and that's why I'm something of an advocate for personal attention data repositories.

Think about it this way: the more raw information that individuals have about themselves, the greater the need for better tools to help make sense of that data will be. I look at services like Wesabe springing up from a need to understand one's personal banking records, which, to date, are a mess of hieroglyphics and bank codes. For some reason banks don't really work hard at making personal financial trends easy to understand or to inform us in making better decisions... And despite tools like Quicken and Microsoft Money, we're still stuck dealing with proprietary formats that lock up vital information about ourselves that companies have access to but that we don't.

So, this whole notion of privacy that many people get up in arms over is actually a mirage of control -- the only privacy you have is from your neighbors and family and friends. And, in most cases, don't you want them to know you better than the government? Or big companies? And that's why blogging and similar publishing means are really powerful and valuable: they put this information that was once very hard to disseminate into the hands of friends.

Say what you will about who also gets access to that data, but I think having a publicity policy is a lot wiser than a privacy policy; Kathy Sierra did get a lot of support and attention because of how much perceived privacy she's given up... and as such, when some miscreants decided to invade what little space she'd carved out for herself and her family, an army of people took up her defense, much moreso than would have if she's clung to this idea of privacy and anonymity.

Anyway, the choice to be pubic and accessible is a personal one, but it should be made not out of some sense of "being private" but rather, in the sense of proactively sharing information with people that you want to know you better.

Re: Great (web) designers write code

Chris Messina — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 12:56:32 -0000

So are you going to be able to make it down? We'll need your heckling to keep us honest! ;) 
 
Great post.

Re: Five+Ways+to+Mark+Up+the%26nbsp%3BWeb

Chris Messina — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 15:22:45 -0000

Heh, and here I thought you'd discovered a bunch of competitors to microformats and semantic XHTML. ;)

Re: The Web 2.0 Expo experience

Chris Messina — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 05:07:38 -0000

We certainly all had a great time -- and it was good to get to hang out and get a sense for where Viddler's headed -- I definitely dig V2.0 and am glad I got to chat with you about it.

Oh, and thanks for the write up -- I know I won't have time and this captures it really well.

A few points of clarification, Tara Hunt (as well as Tara Anderson -- aka Tara 2.0) did a ton of work behind the scenes as well. Make sure she gets a hat tip.

Our French sponsor was faberNovel/AF83 (not faberLove) though you got the link right.

Anyway, keep us posted about the NYC party! We'll be heading that way soon enough!

Re: 8 Awesome Firefox Plugins for Twitter

Chris Messina — Mon, 07 May 2007 20:32:52 -0000

Don't forget to check out the wiki!

http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Apps

Re: What I've been working on: The New Google Analytics

Chris Messina — Tue, 08 May 2007 16:46:43 -0000

Wow. So totally jealous of your gig man. Congrats -- and can't wait to start playing with Analytics again. So, does this mean the end of Measure Map?

Re: On Mozilla and The Evolution of the Browser

Chris Messina — Thu, 10 May 2007 22:05:52 -0000

Well, I do agree with you -- and said that I'm glad to have folks like Alex and Mike working on microformats in the browser -- that's certainly significant and I applaud their incremental work in this area.

What I don't like about the browser becoming an information broker is that, at least in my case, it still loads to much decision making on my -- the user's -- back. As I said, I want a true "user agent" that is able to arbitrage information for me -- to pull out the events automagically and add them to an internal calendar that I can search through later... like Spotlight on the Mac... This is what I wanted in Flock when we embedded the Lucene browser -- the ability to pull out semantic data and save it for later. Routing that information is certainly useful and pragmatic but IMO is frontloading a lot of functionality that can be tucked away or at least integrated in more innovative ways.

I do like Alex's analogies, but I'd also like to see some new ways of thinking about this stuff... are we only repeating what's already happened but simply accelerating and adding to the density of information flows? I think we're doing much more than that and have yet to come up with a real mental model that represents where we're going... unless you look at the brain, the human body and the planet... ;)

Re: Messina’s Mozifesto

Chris Messina — Fri, 11 May 2007 12:27:09 -0000

I don't think they're doomed... I think I am simply more concerned by the growing threat imposed by Silverlight, Apollo and JavaFX... think about it this way: what are the next generation of college graduates coming out of schools in India and China going to know how to develop? Java apps? Apollo/Flex apps? Silverlight? Or XUL? Without a concerted effort to make XUL, or whatever the Mozilla Future Web Platform is, a more lucrative and easy to build -on and -for platform, I think that we're going to see a migration away from building Addons since you can build a full featured web application using web technologies and get out of browsers entirely -- and stop worrying about debugging your CSS for IE6 since you've chosen to move to a stack that works the same everywhere (see Flash for the past 6 years).

Anyway, my message was not intended as doom and gloom, but more about trying to understand where Mozilla is with regards to a lot of these other new technologies. And, I might add, I'm usually about 6-8 months early in my criticisms and ideas... so a lot of folks can certainly shoot me down on technicalities, but I'm more interested in teasing out some sense of a vision for how we're going to promote and nurture the open web.

And perhaps you're right -- the browser is not dead. But it's certainly changing. Does a Mozilla strategy that focuses 100% on entrenching in such a product make sense when all the majors seem to moving away from a single-app solution? Perhaps it does, if you believe that when the competition zigs, you should zag. If that's ultimately the strategy that the community supports, I'll end up getting behind it too, but for now, I think it's worth having an open debate about whether or not it is, indeed, the best way forward.

Re: Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Chris Messina — Tue, 15 May 2007 05:14:09 -0000

I certainly congratulate you on finding new work. 
 
At the same time, your choice of employer is unfortunate. Or rather, I should say, <a href="http://news.com.com/2100-10..." target="_blank">the actions</a> of your new employer are leading me to consider banning future contributions from Microsoft to the BarCamp community-at least while these kind of actions are still their preferred modus operandi. Funny how one act by Chairman Dickhead Balmer can undo much of the good and generous work that his community ambassadors have done over the last year. 
 
In any case, I still hold a great deal of respect for you, but I cannot say the same thing for Microsoft. I wish you the best of luck-and intend to keep a close eye on you-because ultimately you're still one of us, even if you've decided to play patsy with the Dark Side of the Force.

Re: Messina and Firefox

Chris Messina — Tue, 15 May 2007 21:04:25 -0000

Ah, David, this is a great post, and I hope the folks at Mozilla get a chance to read it. I'll be writing a follow-up post soon, but this really gets at the spirit that my rant was after -- it certainly wasn't aimless anger or indirected frustration, but a plea for answers and for a sense of what's Mozilla next Big Idea™ is!

To be fair, I have received quite a few comments and have had some discussions in the past few days that have enlightened me about the state of things -- and about what's going on.

There is still a great deal of work to be done, all the same, and I think, as a community, we must really take the growing threats seriously (IP law is one of these) and respond to them in due measure. It's not that Mozilla isn't up for it or isn't the organization that I'd want to represent me in the fight, but that I want to make sure that we are doing everything we possibly can to ensure success and that the web stay and become more open.

Re: I’m Joining Adobe

Chris Messina — Fri, 18 May 2007 12:17:09 -0000

Hey Ryan, congrats again -- somehow I had a feeling this would be coming, so good on Adobe for supporting community-based talent!

I do want to underscore the importance of your independence, and the value that your opinions have had in shaping my thoughts on the current landscape. I'll continue reading in that vain and look forward to new insights and inside knowledge.

Just don't rename your blog to Stewartizer mmmkay?

Re: hearts on sleeves

Chris Messina — Wed, 23 May 2007 21:55:45 -0000

Hey John, I think you're right --- for the most part. I certainly could have framed my thoughts in a more productive, less accusatory manner; for better or worse, as I said in the video, I tend to be harshest on the things I care about most. I also threw that video together in those 50 minutes -- no prep beyond the IM conversation I'd had earlier in the day... and I'm glad that I got it out there, "ums" and all since I've been working on a follow-up post and I'm about a week late on that because I'm trying to actually self-edit and be a little more reflective. Ppff. Oh well.

As for folks taking things personally -- I think that's okay as long as they can detach their ego from the feedback. It's not helpful when folks lash out because they don't want to hear the feedback, whether true or not, simply because they have a weak ego. Many folks actually responded directly, in very open, honest and constructive ways, and I was thrilled to have that kind of feedback. It's really changed my thinking and alerted me to things that were invisible to me.

At the same time, now that these issues are out there, I'm still having a hard time tracking the conversation. It's like I feel like a lot of people have been talking about this stuff, but besides a couple dozen posts from a small subset of authors, I've not seen the widespread discussions that I've seen mentioned a number of times. That suggests to me that there is still an underground current of conversation that is not being aired and could be put out there more prominently.

So, I'll attempt to get my post out there sooner than later; the longer I wait, the more stale it gets. And I appreciate all that you've added to the discussion so far; it's certainly been helpful and refreshing.