Disqus - Latest Comments for BlueCockatoo

Re: The intent/purpose problem (& an appeal to @scobleizer)

BlueCockatoo — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:31:29 -0000

I get your point about Tweetups and don't deny that conversation and connections are possible on Twitter, just that they are a lot more difficult to participate in, IMO. You can barely complete a thought in 140 characters (or less if it's an @reply or DM). To have a conversation is slow, confusing and disconnected... It's a very masochistic way to try to build relationships with people. That doesn't stop people from trying and succeeding in a lot of circumstances. I would guess that a lot of the people who connect via Twitter actually build that relationship via other more accommodating tools like blog comments or email or they are forced to resort to physical meetups like Tweetups to get to know people better. I would imagine (in my inexperience) that most Tweetups are more like a convention where everyone is meeting everyone else, but when I've meet with my FriendFeed friends it's more like we're just old friends getting together.

Re: The intent/purpose problem (& an appeal to @scobleizer)

BlueCockatoo — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:59:16 -0000

*blush* Thanks, Micah! Glad you enjoyed it. I just wanted to say my peace on the whole "FF is dead" thing. It's kind of funny that the only time I seem to post to my blog anymore is when I'm really excited or pretty pissed off. HAH! I'd rather just spend time on FriendFeed where the conversation is.

Re: 25 things you may or may not know about me

BlueCockatoo — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:48:28 -0000

Thanks for stopping by and dropping off that gem of insight, youdontmind.

I never implied that I coined the term, but simply that it was what I happen to use to refer to the phenotype implementation of the genotype of my thumb. Whether or not some official body that oversees "genetics" also refers to it that way is inconsequential in the context of my post. Also whether or not the aforementioned body began doing so before or after my birth. You are also incorrect in the statement that I do not call it that, because, obviously, I do.

But thanks for playing! Hope spewing that unsolicited venom made you feel a little better about yourself. Hugs and kisses.

Re: She’s a swimmer now

BlueCockatoo — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:47:44 -0000

I was terrified of the water when I was a kid... I remember taking swimming lessons and not wanting to go under water. We did "ring around the rosie" every class but I'd never go down. Then one time the instructor made sure she was next to me when we did it and kicked my feet out from under me and I went under. I was SO MAD and betrayed. But it wasn't long after that that I finally took to it. I went on to taking lessons up to the point where the next step was lifeguarding (I was too young or I would have done that). I was also on the swim team (pretty successfully) and doing backflips off the high dive board. It is amazing how that "switch" just turns on. I bet Ilia will amaze you with all the stuff she does in the pool!!

Re: The Point You’re Missing About Google Wave

BlueCockatoo — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 12:19:23 -0000

I agree that the interface needs a LOT of work. I still think the reason they let non-devs in at this point is to figure out what the interface SHOULD be. What do people want from it? What is too much information and what is the best way to give people information without overloading them? How should it be organized and what UI elements/standards need to be created to make it all efficient? Honestly, this is such an general framework that there are so many possibilities it's overwhelming. I don't think any set of UX people could just sit and brainstorm it without actually watching people to see what they do. Again, they're not trying to polish the UI at this stage, they are designing it.

It's not like this is public either. They sent out 100K invites on Wednesday and I'll bet even with the "nominations" they've approved that number probably hasn't hit 500K yet. That's a lot of people but it's not THAT many considering how many use the internet. If they were going to make it beta like Gmail was "beta" then I would be more critical. They're trying to work out the kinks and develop a useful client for it so that it actually will be something that solves problems for us when it's ready to come out of beta. That's a good strategy in my opinion.

Re: The Point You’re Missing About Google Wave

BlueCockatoo — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:29:55 -0000

Thanks for your thoughts, Otto. I agree that it is very soon, possibly too soon for the expectations that have been placed on it it, but I also think that those expectations are misguided.

If the platform is never exposed then (as you indicated) it never will take off. But by giving people the chance to see what it's capable of and what possibilities are there to build on top of it, there are plenty of them who will take off and run with it.

Platforms are not sexy (except to hardcore geeks). No one got excited by TCP/IP until someone figured out how to create the WWW, which solved a lot of problems that many people didn't even know they had at the time. Just because you can't currently think of any problems that Wave solves for people now doesn't mean that there aren't problems out there for it to solve, or be part of the solution for.

Most of the people who are being let in the beta now are not developers, but they're there to give the developers who were already testing an example of what kind of load the platform can bear and how it deals with things for a larger group of people. It will eventually bear fruit.

I don't think that Google is pushing too hard... I think that people outside are expecting too much, especially at this stage. I can't imagine Wave being a failure. But I can imagine it becoming so much of a background technology that it seems to have faded away (because it's no longer a novelty, it just does what it's supposed to do).

Re: ETech 06 - Monday Notes - Next Gen Web Apps

BlueCockatoo — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:50:21 -0000

Thanks for the tip, Jerry. It would be more helpful if you could tell me if
that's a general statement or you have specific issues with the design of my
site, since, personally (and contrary to your opinion) I find it rather
pleasing to look at. Constructive criticism is welcome. Trolls, however
are not.

Re: louisgray.com: 10 People To Follow On FriendFeed For The Month Of February

BlueCockatoo — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 19:13:12 -0000

Wow, thanks, Mike! Tad sent me a link (I've been swamped at work and haven't checked FF today) and I'm blushing now. :)

You were one of the first people I subscribed to on FF as well and still one of my favorites. :)
Thanks again for making my day!

Re: louisgray.com: I Fear I Can Only Burn the Candle From One End Now

BlueCockatoo — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 19:54:36 -0000

Totally empathize with your sleep dilemma. I am a night-owl by nature as well, and would love to have my sleep schedule be about 1am to 8am (maybe 9am ;)). I have an especially hard time in the winter when the sun doesn't come up till around 7am and I have to be up at 6.

Unfortunately, having a job that wants you in the office "at normal hours" and a kid in school where I have no influence over the schedule means I don't have much choice in the matter. One day I will have a work from home job again or work for myself and make my own hours... Or, more likely, my kid will go to college and I will retire and get to make my own schedule then. Just have to wait a "few years". ;)

Re: SocialWhois » isthisstupid's Public Inbox

BlueCockatoo — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 16:56:00 -0000

Hey Tina! I got Disqus working on here too. :) That's a very cool feature!

Re: Flicktions

BlueCockatoo — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 01:36:23 -0000

Thanks, Phil. I customized the theme myself. Made the background originally for my Android G1 phone (http://androidstuff.tumblr.com/post/58250375/ra...) but liked it and turned it into a background. :)

Re: Posting and Pulling Comments From FriendFeed

BlueCockatoo — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 00:37:02 -0000

Hi Guys! I'm excited to see this feature, but it doesn't seem to be pulling in comments that were made on FriendFeed on my posts that have been there a while. Is it only going to work for posts that are commented on after you enable the service?

Re: Twitter and FriendFeed spring cleaning comes early

BlueCockatoo — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 15:30:00 -0000

I can empathize with you on how you get to that conclusion, but I guess it just doesn't really matter to me whether I am following someone or they're following me. I think the difference is that I'm so much more active on FriendFeed than Twitter, and in FriendFeed it's about FoaF. I can interact with people who aren't subscribed to me and they can interact with me if they're not subscribed.

I don't really monitor my add notifications for FriendFeed or really pay attention if I'm subscribed to the author of the post that just showed up in my feed. I guess that might piss some people off who've subscribed to me if I'm not subscribing back, but eventually I DO subscribe to people if I've interacted with them enough. If they post something that entertains or enlightens me or make comments to my posts or others that I'm involved in the discussion on, and I see their name more than a few times, I'm likely to subscribe. I would rather choose who I subscribe to by their interactions with me than the fact that they have subscribed to me. I want to follow the people who make it interesting for me.

Maybe my approach is really not a lot different from yours, I just do the pruning BEFORE I ever subscribe, instead of having to figure it out later and unsubscribe. For Twitter, it's different because you have no voice or conversation if you have no followers and my subscription selection method won't work. I guess that's why I just like FF so much more than Twitter.

Re: Flicktions

BlueCockatoo — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:30:02 -0000

This one is for Akiva and Rochelle! http://friendfeed.com/e/8d408268-5a29-9f43-eb74...

Re: Get it while it’s hot: Evernote Web Quickstart for C#

BlueCockatoo — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 02:10:47 -0000

Thanks for stopping by, Daniel!

I've been thinking about your problem and going through scenarios but I haven't been able to figure out how to prevent users who haven't gone through the authorization process with Evernote previously from inadvertently authorizing your application for the last person who logged in to Evernote.

I'm pretty sure there's not a way to log the user out of Evernote, at least not through the API they provide. Browsers have security measures to prevent cross-site scripting and access to another domain's cookies (which keep users logged into Evernote) would compromise that. Perhaps there's a way around it that I'm not aware of but if there is it would probably be opening a lot of security holes.

I can see a way to figure out whether the user logged in to your application is the user who last logged into Evernote on that machine (using the UserStore.getUser method) but it would require you to keep track of the last user who logged into Evernote on that computer in your own cookie, and it wouldn't let you know if any user was currently logged into Evernote or not.

The only option I can think of is, since you guys have a good relationship with the Evernote developers, to ask them if they would add the ability to the API to either 1) log the user out or 2) provide a method to test if there is user currently logged in on that machine. They might not want to do this for similar security reasons as browsers prevent it... it gives 3rd party developers a lot of control over a user's account.

Sorry for not being more helpful. I think you have found a flaw in general with OAuth authorization. Though OAuth proponents would probably say it's not intended for things like public shared terminals. It's not a use-case that I've had to think of before.

If I have any revelations I'll let you know!

Re: High on Evernote: Cloud Storage for Consumers

BlueCockatoo — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 18:59:34 -0000

I agree Jeff. It was a pretty useful app when I started using it back in late May, and each new feature-set has been something worth getting excited over. Of course there is still a lot of room for improvement, but considering the scope of the effort (how many platforms it needs to support), I am pleased with their rate of progress as well. The next major feature I hope they tackle is private sharing. If they can fix that and give users an option to increase their monthly bandwidth then I think it has the potential to explode in popularity.

Re: louisgray.com: 10 Things I Wish I Would Do Better On the Web Come 2009

BlueCockatoo — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 13:11:03 -0000

Dang Louis, you're too hard on yourself. I know you love blogging and participating in social media but no one is keeping score on your participation (except maybe you). It's ok to not expect so much from yourself. You already do an amazing job, especially considering you have TWO infants in your life now. We all appreciate your contributions, so don't feel obligated to bump it up to please anyone but yourself.

Re: The Internet hive and a new kind of privacy

BlueCockatoo — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 21:31:27 -0000

I don't deny that privacy is an important thing and a lot of people don't really take it as seriously as they probably should. For a long time I was very careful about what information I put on the internet. The problem became, though, that there were huge compromises to be made between maintaining privacy and ease of sharing information...

For example: I wanted to start a blog about family news so that I could share things with my parents and in-laws and other extended family members about what we were up to, and that potentially make connections with other Donaghes once Google found the site. My mother made some points about revealing too much to strangers about our family life: what if someone took advantage of information I thought was harmless to, say, figure out our address or something? But I still want to share that kind of stuff with my family. They're mostly techno-phobes or at least not very saavy... they are still getting the hang of logging into email and not using the Google search text box to type in URLs so the idea of creating a private social network is not going to fly... And by walling it up, then there's no chance other long lost family members could stumble onto it.

So I've struggled with the privacy issue because there is no easy way to designate levels of privacy and specify who should see what, especially if they're not willing/able to participate in whatever mechanism for controlling privacy levels I might choose. Solve that problem and you've fixed the internet.

Re: The Internet hive and a new kind of privacy

BlueCockatoo — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 10:19:03 -0000

Provoking article, Steven. I found myself thinking about the way things work in Second Life which I still believe is the prototype for the next incarnation of the internet and this is especially true there:

"In some ways it was a way to create a new identity for ourselves in this new world as well as a way to protect ourselves. Then we could interact with others and experiment with different parts of our individuality without putting our real world personas in danger. We could be a part of something larger but yet still be separate from it."

You adopt a new name (a full name: first and last) when you create an account in SL. I had good friends there who never told me their real names. I even contracted out a small bit of Photoshop graphics work to someone there with email exchanges outside of SL and payment in Linden dollars and still never found out their real name.

A lot of people in SL experiment with things they never would in real life so that barrier of privacy is very important to them. Possibly that's because the risk is a lot more obvious, or possibly it's because since Linden Labs made adopting a new persona mandatory to enter people felt liberated from the beginning and realized later what it implied. And maybe that's something that we should adopt for our regular internet interactions. The difference in accountability is that since you can "see" someone in SL, even though it's not them, it feels like you're interacting with them directly and it's not anonymous, even though it is!

The difficulty in using an alias on the internet is that there are parts of our life that we do want to share with people we know offline (like photographs) and we can't do that without showing ourselves. And things that are time sensitive like tweets that are intended for offline acquaintances. There is also sharing things that give us credibility in our careers like blog posts related to our thoughts and discoveries about what we do for a living: if we put those under an alias then it can't be tracked back to us. It's hard to fragment your personality or constantly debate about what goes where. In the end it's just easier to be who you are online and I think that's why most people don't fret over privacy.

Re: Flicktions

BlueCockatoo — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:17:57 -0000

Thanks, Polly. I had thought about setting up a group blog were several people could contribute stuff, as long as it was the same "rules" (inspired by a picture found on Tad's Flickr Toy that day). Would you be interested?

Re: louisgray.com: After Monkeying Around, I'm Not Going Bananas for Chi.mp

BlueCockatoo — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:02:53 -0000

Is there already functionality in place to use your own domain? I couldn't find it... I understand that may be a feature in progress since you're still in alpha but if it's there, I'd like to see it.

Also is there eventually going to be more user-based control over what my Chi.mp profile looks like (theming, even CSS styling ability)? If I were going to use it to represent "me" online then I would want more control over that that looks like, especially in a professional context and in the context of personal branding.

Re: louisgray.com: After Monkeying Around, I'm Not Going Bananas for Chi.mp

BlueCockatoo — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:43:00 -0000

I think the ability to choose who sees your information by group is an interesting feature, but really only applicable to the information that you enter on the Chi.mp site itself like your phone number. For choosing who gets to see your various services, there's no point in really trying to hide it from people... Google search will bring it all to light if someone is interested. I would love a way to be able to limit things on those other services as well, but don't see how it's possible unless the services offer me that themselves.

Re: louisgray.com: After Monkeying Around, I'm Not Going Bananas for Chi.mp

BlueCockatoo — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:38:25 -0000

Not that I'm planning to, but if I were to want to "move my .mp domain" to another provider, how would I go about that? As far as I could tell, I don't really "own" it in the same way I do if I go buy a domain from a registrar, so effectively I'm still tied to Chi.mp. Again, I have no desire at this point to move it but I am just curious about your analogy with phone numbers and how that actually works.

And also, what if I have a domain I've registered elsewhere that I'd like to "hook up" to Chi.mp's services? Is that a possibility? Maybe it's something with a more well known tld like .com.

Re: Magnolia goes open source? That’s great, I guess.

BlueCockatoo — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 01:01:13 -0000

Thank you for this analysis of the Ma.gnolia news. It's basically what I had been thinking but hadn't put into words...

Ning can basically be used as a group bookmarking service now, so other than putting the code on my own server (which I think you can actually do with Ning if you export your site), I'm just not sure where the benefit of having my own personal instance of Ma.gnolia comes in.

On the surface it seems like an exciting thing but when I try to figure out how I'd apply it I keep asking myself why I'd want to isolate myself from the hub where everyone else is.
Bookmarking is a lot different from publishing. The value is in being able to share and compare with others, basically to build a human powered relevancy engine. The smaller you make the group collecting the bookmarks the less apparent it is what's worth paying attention to because the pool of "votes" is so small.

It's also not really a matter of being able to "backup" my link data... I can do that easily through Del.icio.us export features, and I also have my links auto posted to my blog daily so they're all there anyway. The only worthwhile use I've come up with is being able to set up something in-house for my company. That's nice, but may or may not be worth the effort.

Re: Introversion is the New Extroversion

BlueCockatoo — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:37:55 -0000

Thanks for your input, klecu.

For the "norm" vs the "oddity" I meant that the act of doing the majority of our communications with others virtually will become the standard in the future. Those of us who are already accustomed to and enjoy that (who are currently oddities) will no longer be in the minority at that point because everyone else will have to adjust to that standard if they want to be successful in society and life.

I never said that there wouldn't be a need for meatspace intimacy... most introverts do have a small group of close friends and family they are intimate with and everyone needs that. But because we are also suited for meaningful relationships virtually we have a lot more options available to us as "online extroverts" than those who spend all their time and attention in meatspace.