←

Nels Wadycki

Category: Social web

  • Songs In Code

    Nels W

    Only the obvious ones have been submitted to the SongsInCodeDB.

    worldAsWeKnowIt.end(); self.feel = “fine”;

    Wish skeelo = new Wish[]; skeelo[0] = “taller”; skeelo[1] = “baller”; skeelo[2] = “girl who looked good”;

    if (ready) { hereICome = true; } else { hereICome = true; } you.hide = false;

    if ( !woman ) { cry = false; }

    temperature = temperature + 100; clothes.off();

    Guitar g = new Guitar(); g.color = “#CCCCCC”; if ( picasso.know() ) { buy(g); g.play(); }

    if ( romeo.makelove(juliet) ) { juliet.cry(); }

    public boolean bringDown(landslide) { if ( reflection.see() ) { landslide–; bringDown(landslide); } }

    Problem[] jz = new Problem[99]; for (int p=0; p<jz.length; p++) { if jz[p].equals(Bitch) return true; } #songsincode

    dc = chillin; pg = chillin; if (this.name == wale) { kill(it); }

    if ( me.hasWorld() ) { empire.build(); }

  • Life Is Beautiful

    Nels W

    lifeisbeautiful(Sometimes coming up with a post title is the hardest part)

    Lifestream Blog has an article on a new – ahem – lifestreaming application called Amplifeeder. I’d prefer just Amplifeed without the last syllable, but who am I to nitpick?

    Something that is not a nitpick, though, is that Amplifeeder (basically a good-looking, self-hosted lifestreamm app) it requires Microsoft technology. For someone who runs his blogs on a cheap-as-heck LAMP shared server, that’s very disappointing. Amplifeeder is Open Source though, so if I had any free time, and felt like doing even more coding in said free time, I’d take a stab at porting it to PHP. But I don’t really have that kind of free time, and when I do have that kind of free time, I like doing stuff that is more outside of the scope of the job that I spend 8-10 hours a day doing. Like, y’know, studying Java for Certification, or holding my own Browser Battle Royale, or watching Dollhouse, which – like Terminator – started to get ever-so-slightly better at the end of the first season (hopefully the second season will be as good as that of Terminator).

  • Gmail’s Magic Inbox

    Nels W

    Google Operating System has found some Gmail code that indicates the coming of a social inbox!

    So, not only will we have one inbox for Everything, but it’ll be organized by importance (or at least how important Google thinks things are).

  • Does FriendFeed Know Kim Kardashian? (Not In The Biblical Sense)

    Nels W

    Kim KardashianHere’s Kim Kardashian’s alleged FriendFeed page. It would be easy enough for a simple name squatter to do something like that, especially since FriendFeed allows you to import not just a Twitter feed, but Twitter followers without a password.

    I’m leaning towards about 75% that it’s not really her. I’d give her about a 25% chance that her crew is smart enough to realize how popular the Ashton/CNN and Oprah things were with Twitter, and they did this to get the jump on the Next Big Thing.

    The other 75% I’d split pretty evenly between a) Squatter and b) Friendfeed. That’s right, I’m giving equal odds to the idea that FriendFeed did this themselves to try to attract some additional publicity to their service. And as I mentioned, with their setup, it wouldn’t be too hard to just pretend you had no idea. I mean, I could go to the nearest public library and in 5 minutes, have a completely anonymous Oprah FriendFeed that looks just like the Kim Kardashian one except probably with more followers (or “subscribers”). They probably figured that doing someone as high profile as Oprah or Ashton would have made it obvious what they were doing. But Kardashian is a pretty good mark: her reputation is a little questionable (furthering the speculation that it might actually be her), and she has a lot of crazy people who are obsessed with her (furthering the squatting idea).

    Kim Kardashian in a Halloween Costume?Plus, by choosing Kardashian, you get not only someone whose Google Trends indicate she’s actually competitive with Oprah terms of search, but you also get bloggers like me (and TechCrunch) posting pictures of her, which is probably what most people are searching for when they look for her anyway, which will attract attention from people outside of the technocrats.

    Finally, let me add the possibility that FriendFeed contacted celebrities to import their Twitter accounts to FF for a little bit of spending money or Cristal. I’m sure they know that links are the currency of the internet and nothing brings links like geeks and hot (or at least supposedly hot) women.

    And so as not to disappoint the people who are inevitably going to end up here looking for Kardashian booty… there’s a couple more pictures are the jump.

    (more…)

  • So, is it Opposite Day at Google?

    Nels W

    From the Official Google Reader blog, a post about sharing with friends and making new friends. Now, I don’t have a lot of “Google Reader Friends” and I use my Shared Items to feed into a sidebar widget over here, so maybe I’m just not into the whole “sharing” thing enough, but this part seems really overly complicated to me:

    By hovering over the name of an unfamiliar commenter you can see their profile picture and the links they’ve added to their Google Profile. Furthermore, you can click the “Start sharing” link to start sharing your shared items with that person!

    This is a great way to add new people to your friends list. When that person next logs in, they’ll see an option to view your shared items as well as the option to start sharing with you. If they reciprocate, you’ll have a new friend in your Reader.

    I mean, I guess they’re erring on the side of privacy but really, is a thing called Shared Items supposed to be all that private? It seems to me that it would make a lot more sense to do the Twitter-style follow for this one, and send The Sharer an email when The Follower starts viewing their shared items. Then The Sharer can reciprocate if they want by following The Follower, and if they don’t want to follow The Follower back, they don’t have to do anything (as opposed to having to make a decision in Google’s model). Yes, this means that The Sharer has to be willing to share their items publicly to start with, but that seems to have worked out pretty well for Twitter. And I’d argue that sharing and commenting on items via Google Reader is orders of magnitude less personal than the kind of things people put on Twitter. All this “privacy” thing means is that Google has to add this kind of disclaimer to make sure people can understand how it is going to work:

    Note: You can stop sharing your items with someone at any time by visiting the Sharing settings link in your left sidebar. Also, if someone chooses to share with you, your shared items are not visible to that person unless you consent. Finally, the “start sharing” link in profile cards will also only appear to those users sharing with friends, and not those sharing only with chat buddies.

    It just seems like a real backwards way of doing it.