Disqus - Latest Comments for crabasa

Re: Boxee

crabasa — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:52:49 -0000

Thanks, Fred!

Unlike people who are trying these tools out for fun, I am a graduate student who has chosen (for cost and time-killing reasons) not to own a TV or subscribe to cable. I just have an Internet connection and a handful of home computers, so I'm really excited about Boxee.

Re: Boxee

crabasa — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 17:36:52 -0000

I left a comment on FF, but should have commented here (as I pray for integration). I would love to give Boxee a spin.

Re: Why The iTouch Is Inevitable

crabasa — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 16:57:07 -0000

I think that you're probably overstating the cost savings of removing the iPod components. The main cost of the device are the components you're likely to keep (touch screen, battery, Wi-fi, etc).

More to the point, I think the benefits of creating niche extensions of the iPhone/iTouch are outweighed by the costs. Developers don't want different targets to code against. Apple wants to evolve the concept of mobile computing, not slide backwards into creating super remotes.

Re: cubanlinks - Time to Buy?

crabasa — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 01:54:25 -0000

Wow, that's such a great idea. Anyone with a rock-solid job (government employees, etc) should be doing this. Pre-tax money buying assets at rock-bottom prices. Ka-ching!

Re: cubanlinks - Styling Your FriendFeed Badge

crabasa — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 22:44:47 -0000

I did a "view source" on Scoble's page. Also, you can always use Firefox to view the DOM that gets created by Javascript after the page has fully loaded.

Re: Photos From Austin | iSeanReiser

crabasa — Wed, 21 May 2008 04:43:54 -0000

I can't begin to guess what you might be looking for, so here are some highlights:

Amazing burgers: Counter Cafe (N Lamar Blvd, Tues-Sun)
Relax, drinks and Wii: Tiniest Bar in Texas (W 5th St)
Sushi: Uchi (S Lamar Blvd)

None of this includes simply walking up and down S. Congress. Enjoy!

Re: Photos From Austin | iSeanReiser

crabasa — Wed, 21 May 2008 04:22:32 -0000

Hope you enjoyed Austin. I've been living there for the past year and, having spent time on both coasts, really feel like it has a lot to offer.

Re: cubanlinks - Pretty Embarassing...

crabasa — Wed, 14 May 2008 13:41:18 -0000

You know what, this might have been a blessing in disguise. I am now implementing a temporary switch to Feedburner, so we'll see if that solves the problem. While I'm fixing bugs, I'll get to see what the fuss with Feedburner is all about.

Re: cubanlinks - Pretty Embarassing...

crabasa — Wed, 14 May 2008 13:15:24 -0000

Wow, this is a much harder nut to crack than I thought. Thanks for letting me know!

Re: A Venezuelan Moment: The Gillmor Gang considers nationalizing Twitter

crabasa — Sun, 11 May 2008 17:46:14 -0000

I agree with Blaine. I'm constantly surprised at how over-stated the functionality of Twitter is. When you boil it down to its essentials, I think it's clear that a distributed replica is quite viable.

I've suggested a few times that tracking could be implemented much the way SixApart implemented TrackBack back in the early days of blogging. All micro-blogging tools/sites would implement a commmon API for receiving "follow" pings from their readership.

Re: cubanlinks - I've Added Disqus

crabasa — Sat, 10 May 2008 20:36:11 -0000

Testing!

Re: If the Dems didn't have Superdelegates... (Scripting News)

crabasa — Mon, 05 May 2008 22:06:32 -0000

I think your point about Clinton needing 70% of the remaining delegates illustrated why it IS over. It's the same statistical principle that is used when calling elections, despite only a fraction of the votes having been counted. It is impossible (statistically, very close to zero probability) for Clinton to regain the lead.

Re: Why decentralizing Twitter is so important (Scripting News)

crabasa — Sun, 04 May 2008 22:29:05 -0000

I just had a conversation with a buddy in the Bay Area about Twitter. He had some interesting insights into the sweet deal they got on SMS integration from the wireless carries (it's capped at a reasonable figure per month). This, of course, is one of the differentiators that Twitter has that can't simply be replicated by decentralizing.

But SMS notifications aside, caching feeds requires a much smarter client. Right now Twitter clients can call a single method (friends_timeline) to get updates for a user and those she or he follows. The caching solution means that a Twitter client will have to know who you are following, so that it can get the proper feeds and splice them together into a coherent time line.

Which kind of bring me back around to my feeling that Twitter is kind of a walled-garden of blogging and blog-reading, where you "follow" instead of subscribe, etc. I feel like the better long-term solution is for bloggers to create RSS feeds for their micro-blogging and provide an open API that blogging tools can implement (remember Trackback?) to notify blogger that people are "following" them.

More: http://cubanlinks.org/articles/2008/4/22/twitte...

Re: How to decouple from Twitter, now (Scripting News)

crabasa — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:56:21 -0000

Dave, as much as I like FriendFeed, I think it is vulnerable in the same way Twitter is. And cloning the API, while a good idea, just creates a small number of failure points rather than one. That's an improvement, but has high switching costs in the event of outages (assuming you can even reliably detect an outage).

I think an interesting and distributed solution would be to clone part of Twitter's API not for centralized services (Pownce, FriendFeed, etc) but for ALL blogging software. If blogger A subscribes to blogger B, let the subscription tool for A notify the blogging tool for B. It requires (or is at least expedited) by the idea of mashing reading and writing blogs.

http://cubanlinks.org/articles/2008/4/22/twitte...