The Mac has prospered because of quality. Both in terms of Apple themselves and 3rd-parties. The iPhone is at a dangerous point right now. It’s on the verge of becoming commoditized and so is the 3rd-party software on it. And the VCs are right there behind this and will probably drive it if the market lets them.
via LKM’s stuff
A sobering call from Kirby Ferguson to end the use of “the fag bomb” in forum threads everywhere.
FriendFeed is, of course, a clever service that lets you aggregate all the content you create at various sites into one single lifestream. Basic social networking features allow users to follow each others’ streams, and comment on each item in a stream. Simple enough.
Something has bothered me about FriendFeed ever since I began tinkering with the service, and recently it finally clicked: In addition to aggregating all the stuff a user creates at various communities, FriendFeed should also aggregate the conversations happening around these items from those other communities.
A while ago there was a lot of talk about services like FriendFeed and Twitter hijacking “the conversation” because things like comments on blogs and Flickr photos are moving to these new, simple services. As FriendFeed, Twitter, and their lifestreaming and microblogging competitors increasingly become places for discourse about media published elsewhere, they can dramatically increase their value both to users and visitors by bringing all those external conversations along for the ride.
For example: when you publish a photo to Flickr, a thumbnail and link appear in FriendFeed. Perhaps someone shares a link to the photo on Twitter, most likely doing so with a TinyURL to leave room for their own comment in Twitter’s SMS-friendly 140 character count limit.
People can comment on the photo at Flickr, on the FriendFeed entry, or reply to their friend on Twitter who posted the TinyURL link. The conversation about that photo is in at least three places now.
FriendFeed, or a more useful competitor that has yet to emerge, could offer a major value to users (and perhaps charge a nominal “pro” account fee) by harnessing comment RSS, website APIs, and some clever Twitter magic to aggregate all these conversations. They could be syndicated and linked on each content entry, along with any other comments that users leave.
We already have more than enough lifestreaming services to chose from. Which one will be the first to add “convo-streaming” as a feature, and do it right?
The Register points out the differences in the communities that Nokia and Apple have been able to foster with their mobile platforms in Nokia: Our community is the best money can buy:
Many of you find the Apple cult downright creepy - and it is. But there’s no doubt that the enthusiasm exhibited by fanboys (and fangirls) is genuine. There are few sadder sights in London than the “flagship” Nokia Store on Regent Street, almost directly opposite Apple’s temple.
Good quotes from Nokia’s product manager on the issue.
Interesting blog written anonymously by a Starbucks barista in “a big city.” Dig the tagline:
Making your latte, working with the motto “just say yes,” dealing with the hobos, the clueless, the regulars, and amazing(ly dumb) customers. I’m your starbucks barista.
Good wit, and interesting insight into what goes on in front and behind the register. I got trained at Starbucks for a month around 2003, before I had to quit for a multimedia job that I couldn’t pass up. That certainly doesn’t qualify me to know much about the Starbucks culture, but even I recognize some of the strangeness written about here.
147xxxx has been added to Google Reader and my Tumblr follow list.
From the “Things I Never Thought I’d See Advertised on Digg” department.
Probably helps if you’ve seen episode 171 of season 12, “Canada on Strike.”
Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency
Another winner from The Onion. I’m constantly impressed by the high production values of these segments. Definitely a step or two above the rest.
via iRockandRoll
Disqus is an interesting new hosted comment solution for blogs and websites. I’m trying it out here at 1FPS because of some unique features, such as threaded and more interactive comments than you get with WordPress and many of its plug-ins.
A definite downside for users of WordPress and similar platforms is that you no longer get your commenter’s e-mail address sent in comment notifications. If you require those for off-the-record correspondence with readers, you may need to find a workaround or bug the company to add this feature. Off the top of my head, I think a reasonable solution would be to enable this as an option for publishers (probably by default, since it’s the default of every CMS I’ve ever tried), but also allow registered commenters to control whether their e-mail address is sent in Disqus comment notifications to publishers.
Speaking of new features, though, Disqus has been busy. Users can now enable trackbacks, and the company added support for logging in via OpenID (for registered users/commenters at the main website, not logging in at just anyone’s site—yet). There are also now easy-breezy Disqus plug-ins for Joomla and Drupal as well.
If you want to learn more about Disqus you can of course visit the site, but a recent post on the company’s blog titled A Commenter’s Rights also explains more of the philosophy behind the company’s hosted comment approach.
Update: Guillermo Esteves says you actually can see a commenter’s e-mail address in your Disqus dashboard. It may not be as convenient as getting them via e-mail for some users, but at least they’re there if you need them.
Linkblog
2 days ago 
