Archive for June, 2008

Toluu Refines UI; Adds Features

Monday, June 30th, 2008

Last week, Toluu rolled out some big features.  Today, we are seeing a couple of more subtle but no less welcome improvements to our favorite feed subscription-matching service.

First up, Caleb reports via the Toluu Blog, that the feed-matching page has undergone some refinement, adding three selectable filters.  The new filters let you choose a time window for best matches, adding this month and this week to the matching algorithm.

Finally, in-line contact management as been implemented pretty much everywhere.  What this means is wherever you see another user, whether it be on your contacts list, matches, or a feed’s subscribers, you can now add or remove them from your contact list right there.  No more needing to go to a special page!

These tweaks will improve an already unique and useful (and free) service even further.  As always, you can ask for a Toluu invite here in a comment, in an email to me (phil@scribkin.com) or from Caleb at Toluu (.com .. get it?)

Are You Really Using FriendFeed, or are You a Poser?

Friday, June 27th, 2008

Steve Gillmor on FriendFeed Ok, for today’s rant, I’m going to pick on those folks that signed up for FriendFeed, added a few services, and then never logged back in. More specifically, I am going to pick on Steve Gillmor.

Take a look at my headline shot. That’s Steve Gillmor, famous writer and technology news pundit. Talking head on the Gillmor Gang radio show. Insightful, critical, and accomplished.

Also, a poser!

Sorry to pick on Steve here, but when I saw his name in the FriendFeed recommendations it inspired this post.

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Instant Social Media – Just Add People

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

I was burning some time online a few days ago, and I came across this discussion on FriendFeed about last.fm versus Pandora.  In the thread, this was my contribution:

.. last.fm and Pandora are both great but, like Twitter and FriendFeed, have completely different goals. Pandora works behind the scenes to tailor a stream to you. last.fm throws everything together in a huge pot and gives you the sliders to make a great listening experience. They call this "scrobbling" (actually, the AS in LAST stand for "Audio Scrobbler") .. anyway, like a stew, the more stuff you put in it the better it is. Add a bunch of people, hook up last.fm to your itunes, go nuts!

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Why I Flip-Flopped on Yahoo! Buzz

Wednesday, June 25th, 2008

buzz-up-button Do you have a Yahoo! login?  I bet you do.  Everyone has one.  And if you do, you have everything you need in order to participate in Yahoo! Buzz

I used to be really down on the service, with its exclusivity and the huge hype that led up to its unveiling.  But recently, I’ve changed my mind. 

In fact, I’m ready to turn 180 degrees.  Why?  Read on.

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ReadBurner Feeds the NewsGator

Tuesday, June 24th, 2008

readburner-logo That is probably the punniest headline I’ve written to date.  Sorry for the groan.

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RSSmeme Learns to Speak Social Bookmarking

Monday, June 23rd, 2008

rssmeme-logo Recently, I wrote about an update to RSSmeme where the developer, Benjamin Golub, had added FriendFeed as a source to track shared stores.  Just tapping in to this API gave his app an instant crawl speed increase, recognition of shares would start to appear within minutes instead of hours.

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