How many of you made the switch from Windows 3.11 (or WFW 3.1) to Windows 95? Come on.. I know there’s more of a couple of you that have. What was one of the biggest difference between the two OSs? Better network drivers?  Improved memory management?  Unified driver model?

I would hazard to say that one of the biggest differences was the ability to do most operations in the OS in more than one way.  Sure, now we take it for granted; but back then it was huge.  There were a lot more right-click context menus.  The control panel was completely overhauled.  For the first time in Windows, you were able to tasks such as changing your background image either from the control panel or directly from a right-click on the desktop.

Keep this in mind as we explore Diigo, the web bookmarking research tool and community.  As I researched it for this review, I got the same feeling of having multiple paths to a goal.  The developers tried very hard to let you use the service the way that best fits your workflow.  And that isn’t a bad thing!

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It was with complete surprise that I learned tonight that this blog was chosen to be the very first on WinExtra’s new series, the Sunday Blog Review! 

I was looking forward to seeing the review, as Steven Hodson had promoted the series earlier in the day.  I just happened to be on FriendFeed when it picked up Steven’s tweet about the new article:

Of course, I replied immediately in utter disbelief, and rushed over to check out the article.

Overall, I am completely flattered and honored that Steven chose my site to be reviewed.  This attention really helps reinforce my resolve to continue writing solid, helpful posts and news into the future.  And with that resolve comes a new awareness of networking. 

While each of our blogs may be an island, its important to remember that when reading something interesting or useful, link it up if you write about that subject later.  It will add depth to your article and raise awareness for the other site.

Now, head over to WinExtra and check out the article!

I know what you are thinking…

This is the 35th FriendFeed post I have read in the past week!

And you are absolutely correct.

I Need A Fix

FriendFeed has been a big news item for a while and especially recently as a result of Twitter downtime.  Apparently, when (to use a crude metaphor) the heroin runs out, people start glumly looking at methadone, but not with any real sense of excitement.  Sure, it takes the edge off, but it just isn’t the same.*

In any case, this post isn’t going to be comparing the two services at all.  My goal with this post is to raise some questions I had about FriendFeed when I first started using it, and what I learned to address those questions.

So, on to the questions.

Why Use FriendFeed?

This is the elephant in the room.  Why, indeed?

Ok, let me turn it around: Why use Twitter?

Because it is paradigm changing? The future of the internet?
Web 3.0?

The answer is the same: Why indeed?

So basically, I can’t answer this one for everybody.  We all have a different reason for using Twitter.   Similarly, everyone has a different reason for using FriendFeed.

From personal experience, my reasons for using both services have changed over time, and respectively my involvement in both have fluctuated.

FriendFeed Doesn’t Consolidate Similar Items

Yuvi (also known as The Stat Bot) recently wrote a post grumbling about the fact that FriendFeed will not consolidate identical links from different sources, a major issue perceived by most who use the service.

Basically, it has a clever algorithm for consolidating all the posts on the same service within a certain small window (for example if you send a bunch of tweets you might get something like below.)  But, if you bookmark the same article in 3 different services, it shows up three times in FriendFeed.

Consolidated	Not Consolidated
	shamelessly stolen from Yuvi

I have to admit, this was a cause for quite a bit of consternation for me when I started using FriendFeed as well.  But now I am not as worried about it.  Not because it isn’t a problem, but because of a handy filtering feature FriendFeed has called hide.

See, what I wasn’t taking into account originally is that other people are smart enough to see what they want to see.  In Twitter, you don’t have a choice.. you are either following someone or you aren’t.  But in FriendFeed, you have a very flexible way of only seeing what you want to:

• View everything
• Hide an entry
• Hide all x service entries that don’t have any likes or comments from a specific user
• Hide all x service entries from a specific user
• Hide all x service entries from everybody with no likes or comments
• Hide all x service entries from everybody

This means all the power is in the hands of the FriendFeed user.  I should not need to care if I use 9 different social bookmarking services, because eventually my followers will notice that I bookmark everything to all of them, and filter out all but the one (or more) that they use.

And in fact, it could actually actually hurt me!  If I consistently link up the same URL to the same 9 sites, my followers will learn that they aren’t missing anything by hiding the other services.  If, on the other hand, I share one article to del.icio.us, another to tumblr, and a third in Pownce, my followers have to follow everything, and the moment I use more than one service to promote something.. what happens?  Annoying redundancy!

I Can’t Keep Track of It All!

This does indeed take some getting used to.  The key thing to remember here is that the flow of new links and updates is not set it stone.  It’s not like listing a directory or even watching tweets float past.

In FriendFeed, any entry that has a like or comment (that isn’t hidden) jumps to the top of the feed.

So there are actually two observations you can take away from this fact:

1. You don’t have to read everything the first time. For a number of reasons, actually, which I will go into below.
2. If you have seen the same entry more than once, it’s been noticed by someone. This is actually a good thing.  With time, you will get skilled at noticing where the conversations are happening.

Where Are the Conversations Happening?

That question has a complex answer that has just gotten more complex with the advent of FriendFeed rooms. Before late last week, I could have given you some fairly simple instructions to make the most out of conversation-hunting in FriendFeed.  Well heck, let’s start there anyway.

• The default method of (hopefully) getting some enjoyment or value out of FriendFeed is to follow a bunch of people and just refresh the main (friends) tab.  You will see a combined lifestream of what your friends are doing online.  Now, just look out for the postings that have a yellow smilie face (like) or dialog bubble icon (comment) under them.
• If you want to filter by service, the easiest way to get started is wait until you see the icon for the service you want appear, and click on it.  FriendFeed will refresh, only showing you items from that service, from the people you follow.
• If you notice someone posting some very interesting things, or making some insightful comments, click on their name.  This will bring you to a filtered feed specific to this user.  You can actually click on anyone, not only people you follow.  Also, you can hover over a name to get more info about that person and if you are following them (and they you).
• If you want to see who has liked/commented on your stuff, click on the me tab at the top of the window.  That will show you everything you have posted.  Unfortunately, there isn’t a way of showing just your entries with likes or comments.
• If you want to see what you have liked or commented on, or the same for someone else, look for the discussion links in the right-hand nav bar.  Click on see both.  Alternatively, you can add the word discussion to the end of any user’s URL except for rooms.

What Are Rooms?

A very good question, and one that is still being answered.  Rooms have just been added.  Currently, I can give you what I know about them, but you will have to draw your own conclusion about their usefulness.

• Rooms can be public or private.  If a room is private, a user will have to be invited to the room in order to join it and participate.
• Rooms have their own history and conversation space.  You will not see updates from a specific room unless you join it and check the box to see the updates on your home page.
• If you click on the rooms tab you will see a combined updated feed of all the rooms you have joined.
• Rooms use the same namespace as users.  This means you will never have a room and a user with the same nickname.  Think of a nickname as a handle.. just like your login name (or handle) is unique and often different than your name, a rooms nickname is unique.  However, the room name can be anything at all, including the same name as a different room or even a user’s name.
• If you use the bookmarklet to share an item in FriendFeed, you can choose where to put the link.. either in your main feed, or a room you subscribe to.

Random Stuff

I’m going to wrap with some other useful FriendFeed tips:

• If you want to follow a friend who is not on FriendFeed, you can make an imaginary friend with links to the services you want to follow.  That way, you can share or discussion things they have found in FriendFeed.
• Every page you see on FriendFeed has its own RSS feed. If you want an RSS feed with just the stuff that Joe Blow marked as liked, pull up that view and subscribe.
• FriendFeed has its own API and already there some enterprising developers making sites that take advantage of it.  For example, FF To Go or the FriendFeed Comments Wordpress Plugin.
• If you hide somebody’s FriendFeed entries, you will hide both links and comment-only entries.  Currently FriendFeed thinks of FriendFeed entries of all types as a single type.
• There is no way of blacklisting or blocking someone completely.  Even if you stop following someone, and hide everything they post, you will still see their comments.  If they comment on your updates, however, you can delete those.
• Your name appears as a link on every lifestream update, friendfeed post, comment or like.  Why does this matter? Read my article on FriendFeed and your personal brand over at SheGeeks.

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh Read more about this book…

* I have never taken IV drugs but I have read Trainspotting. And I am sure that’s about as close to taking heroin as I want to get.

This isn’t going to be just any run-of-the-mill review from me. Why? Because the application I am going to review is different in several substantial ways:

• It isn’t a piece of software you install on your PC
• It isn’t a web application like Gmail or YouTube
• It really isn’t exactly meant to be a destination page like My Yahoo! or iGoogle

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You’re on AIM, MSN and Yahoo! Messenger. You have Google Talk through Gmail and you still have that old ICQ account lying around.

You think you have it covered with Trillian or Pidgin.

Perhaps you think you are a step ahead of your coworkers because you are using Meebo.

Think again.

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In the course of reviewing different Twitter add-ons to Firefox yesterday, I noticed there was an entire page of betas that required a login to install. One of the betas that I noticed was called TwitKit. Apparently, I’m too lazy to create a login, but I did find the link to the developer site in the details.

I couldn’t find any screenshots of the app anywhere. But I shrugged and went ahead and installed it. You can see a thumbnail of what it looks like over there. I have to say, I’m impressed, even with this beta.

First, it has a nice, clean interface reminiscent of TweetBar (which I reviewed here), in a pleasant brown color (or is that colour) scheme. There are 6 tabs, and it defaults to the 2nd, user.

Public shows you everyone’s tweets. User shows you the latest tweets from your friends. Friends gives you a list of the people are you following. Followers shows you who is following you. @s are messages directed toward you and me gives you a handy stat page similar to the “about” page on Twitter.

Also on the interface page, you have self-explanatory refresh and clear buttons. Below that is your list of tweets. Now this is what gets my excited — as opposed to TweetBar, TwitKit has a tiny reply and favorite icon below each user picture. Perfect! Also, not shown, there is a red dot on the right side of your own tweets, which can be used to ‘hide’ an update. This feature doesn’t seem to work consistently, or well. But this is a beta so I am not too worried.

Aside from the main interface, there is also an options page that allows you to add the from application to each tweet, a refresh timer setting, the ability to change how names are shown, and a pull-down selection of 4 different color themes.

After using this add-on for a couple of days, I have to say that I find it fully as enjoyable to use as TwitterFox, but in a full sidebar form factor. It is stable and responsive. There are a couple of drawbacks, but they aren’t major: First, you cannot install TwitKit on Firefox Beta 3, it only works with FF2. Also, TwitterFox supports multiple Twitter logins in the interface, and with TwitKit you would need to sign out, and then sign back in to a different log in, which would be a pain.

Otherwise, it is stable and easy to use. I can definitely recommend this product!

Update: If you already have Tweetbar installed and active, disable or uninstall it before installing TwitKit.  Apparently the two plugins don’t like each other much.  Thanks tw3nty3ight for the heads-up!