Nels Wadycki

…but I may never know.

Part 1: Shock and Awe

I made a decision to try to just focus on positive things with this blog, but given my previous obsession with Lifestreaming, I can’t help but comment on this.

I read about AOL’s Lifestream earlier today on TechCrunch who, rightfully, said that it might be what Google Buzz should have been. From what Michael Arrington says, it may be all that and more.

The problem is, when I tried to sign in using Facebook Connect (which I would normally say is a great use of social network integration by AOL), I get this:

Whawhawhat? Really? No, really?

I’ve never seen that permission asked for before, and I hope I never see it again. While Facebook may be the Walled Garden with Reinforced Steel and Concrete Walls, I kind of like it that way. I can post stuff that I know only people I’ve friended will see.
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Nels Diatribes, Facebook, Lifestreaming, Twitter AOL, Facebook, Facebook Connect, Fail, Lifestreaming, Twitter

From a (sort of) recent Facebook status update:

While I agree for the most part with the “Tumblr > Twitter” sentiment, well, that’s kind of obvious. Twitter is definitely good for some things (mostly sharing short fleeting thoughts, but also sometimes for sharing links, and conversing with people who use Twitter as their main form of communication). I did not see “being a blog” in that list, though. And as Commenter #1 points out, you can view Twitter updates on your Tumblr dashboard while posting slightly longer commentaries on Tumblr. Of course, Commenter #1 also makes the fatal mistake of saying that he (or she) wishes they knew HTML.
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Nels Blogging, Diatribes, RSS, Social web, The New Web, Twitter Blogging, Diatribes, RSS, Social web, Tumblr, Twitter

I’m so famous that all of Chicago is following me on Twitter! What up!

Nels Twitter Chicago, Twitter

From Read/Write Web.

I just still feel like I’m missing something. I can’t get past the fact that Twitter is not a feed reader, yet people insist on using it as one. I mean, if I were following all the people whose feeds I read on Twitter instead of using Google Reader, I don’t feel like I would see even half the posts that I do now. Granted, I skip over half of them anyway, but at least I know that I’m consciously skipping things I don’t want to see instead of just losing them to a Devil’s Kettle whirlpool of information.

Here’s the Top 5 Reasons I Still Use An RSS Reader:
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Nels Diatribes, RSS, Twitter Diatribes, RSS, Twitter

I tried making this into a Facebook Status Update but it kept trying to expand itself into something more. So, here we are.

The beginning goes: Do I lose geek points because I don’t like real-time communication?

Of course, my friends on Facebook would need some explanation because most of them aren’t anywhere close to as geeky as I am… and I didn’t feel like trying to cram it all in to the Facebook character count. And even if I did post it on Facebook, well, how many people are going to see it? And there in lies the first crux of the post. The second crux is that I don’t like (and I’m sure many people can relate to this) the Information Overload that comes with real time communications.

First Crux

When you have something like Facebook that currently shows either a) everything all your friends have posted, or b) an algorithmically selected subset of the firehose, well, most people are going to opt for the second because trying to look at everything is pretty much impossible (especially without an RSS feed – even if most people still don’t know what RSS actually is).

Second Crux

Have you ever tried to follow your Facebook feed (or Twitter Stream) in real-time? It’s like watching a TV show that you really want to be good, but is mostly just crap punctuated by a good moment every once in a while. Me, I don’t watch TV shows like that. I want ones that are good all the time. Or, I want to be able to speed through the parts that suck, to read (and respond to) the parts that are actually funny/fascinating. Maybe it’s fun to watch, say, on Christmas or New Year’s Eve when all your friends are updating with what they’re doing. But then, guess what? Your status update becomes: I’m watching my real-time Facebook feed, because you guys are doing cool stuff and I’m sitting in front of my computer. Awesome.

Nels Diatribes, Facebook Facebook, Real-Time Communication, Twitter

Not only can you now use the Lite Facebook Interface – i.e., the Twitter Facebook Interface – but Facebook is also said to be (slowly) rolling out @ tagging of people in Status Updates. I actually posted a Status Update a while back pondering if Facebook were to add that feature, thereby eliminating my need to ever use Twitter again. And now my dream (yes, it’s a pretty lame dream) has come true. Now I can just use Facebook for my “mass” communications until I’m famous enough that thousands of random people will want to read my thoughts 140 characters at a time. (Or they could just read my blog, I suppose)

Nels Facebook, Twitter Copycheating, Facebook, Twitter

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

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

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

Nels Memes, Social web, Twitter, Uncategorized Songs In Code, Twitter

1. Cash Money Life says you should sharpen your soft skills.

2. The Simple Dollar compares Makers and Managers and tells you how knowing which one you are can help your career.

3. Gina Trapani says that when you put data in, you should be able to get it out.

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Nels Link Roundups Productivity, Self Improvement, Twitter

First up: ReadWriteWeb calls out Facebook’s Twitter envy. I’m with them… Why does Facebook want to be Twitter? There is already Twitter. Twitter has a totally different core competency than Facebook. Why is Facebook trying to change their own core competency to compete with something that has such an unproven revenue model?

On the other hand, competing with Twitter has forced Facebook to open up it’s Stream with an API. Now, can I start liking my friends posts in the iPhone app? Okay, I know, really this move was made so that 3rd parties can develop (or add onto) their own apps to help Facebook be as cool as Twitter is with their API.

But beyond the arms race with Twitter, the stream API will open up the possibility for many new applications both within Facebook and outside its walls. An obvious one would be better filtering options for your activity stream. It would be simple to create an app that shows you the most liked or most commented on items in your stream, for example. Or now that stream can be plugged into various social search engines to give you socialized real-time results. Hell, if I could just search my own activity stream, I’d consider that a giant leap forward. But Facebook still only allows developers to cache data for 24 hours, so you wouldn’t be able to build a very powerful search engine or return results from more than a day ago.

Facebook has also become not just an OpenID provider (issuing party), but also a relying party. I believe they’re the first big site out there to do that. I’m not sure why all the others haven’t, because honestly, it’s kind of annoying to have 20 different sites that provide OpenIDs but if no one accepts anyone elses OpenID then it’s pretty much useless.

I’m glad that Facebook is opening up, but here’s a couple more things they can do to compete with Twitter (and/or make me happy):

• Allow tagging of friends in status updates
• Allow users to view a feed with ALL updates from ALL friends
• Try to make more content viewable on a single screen of the iPhone app
• Start rolling out vanity URLs to users in order of when they joined Facebook

Nels Facebook, Social web, Twitter Facebook, openid, Twitter

Mzng hw y cn ndrstnd ths wth n vwls rght?

Anyway, haven’t posted in 10 days, so what better way to rectify that than by posting videos?

Nels Blogging, Lifestreaming, Social web Blogging, Flutter, Lifestreaming, Microblogging, Social web, The New Web, Twitter, Videos, YouTube