Disqus - Latest Comments for dewaldp

Re: Thinking Systemically About the Impending Death of Twitter Auto-DMs

dewaldp — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 21:22:53 -0000

Scott,

I own TweetLater.com and I firmly believe in choice.

TweetLater will continue to offer its auto-DM feature to its users. It's anyone's prerogative and right to automate repetitive tasks and thereby free up part of their day for other tasks.

On the flipside, I fully understand that some folks, especially those who follow many new people each day, may get inundated with welcome messages.

I have not ignored them or their plea. I have put in place an extremely easy way of saying to TweetLater, "Please, do not send me any auto DMs." To opt-out, a person does not even need a TweetLater account. You do it from within your Twitter account. The full instructions are here: http://www.tweetlater.com/optout

What is little known in this discussion around auto-DMs, is that several folks who have opted out, have contacted me via the TweetLater Help Desk and asked to be removed from the opt-out list. Their primary reason was that they felt the DMs gave them a good sense of the kind of person they had just followed, and they missed that aspect after they had opted out.

In keeping with my personal belief in choice, I will continue to offer TweetLater users the ability to automate their welcome messages, and I will continue to offer anyone in the Twitterverse the ability to opt-out and not receive automated DMs.

Best regards,

Dewald Pretorius
http://twitter.com/dewaldp

Re: This is a test (Scripting News)

dewaldp — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:07:23 -0000

This is a test reply. *echo* Hello

(Sorry Dave, couldn't resist. My weird sense of humor took over.)

Re: louisgray.com: Identi.ca and the Power of Microbranded Communities

jessestay — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:56:59 -0000

Dewald, just be patient and keep promoting it - it will happen if you do. I think people are still trying to figure out the whole "microblogging" thing. You should get one of the big mommy bloggers using it and they'll promote it for you :-)

Re: louisgray.com: Identi.ca and the Power of Microbranded Communities

dewaldp — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 06:43:17 -0000

Jesse,

I was one of the very early adopters of Laconi.ca and have created http://wheremomschat.com using the software. Not a lot of activity on the site yet, but it's there ready to be used. :)

Dewald

Re: Identi.ca/ Laconi.ca moving at the speed of light

dewaldp — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 19:49:30 -0000

Duncan,

My http://wheremomschat.com/ site is one of the first niche implementations of Laconi.ca, focused on mothers.

I've also created a federated microblogging directory, where owners of Laconi.ca sites can list their sites in the appropriate categories, to make finding them a bit easier. The directory is located at http://www.microblogindex.com/.

Best regards,

Dewald

Re: Quick Laconi.ca update

ahynes1 — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:27:11 -0000

Random thoughts.

Hmm, I'll have to see if I can run Laconica on a Windows based server. Since it uses db abstaction, maybe I can even try it with Microsoft SQL Server.

I did find that I had updated an old htaccess file, so I've redone it and it looks like it is working nicely now. For anyone interested, the tarball has been updated.

However, Drupal/Disqus seems to be acting a bit weird right now, so some people might not see this comment.

Re: Quick Laconi.ca update

dewaldp — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:55:41 -0000

Aldon, I guess the \d+ and \w+ is unique to a particular Unix flavor. The [^/.]+ says, take everything that's not a . or a / between the character that preceeds the ( and the character that follows the ). It's more general and should work on all Unix flavors.

Re: Upgrading to Laconi.ca 0.4.3

dewaldp — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:19:17 -0000

That's good to know. I almost had an asthma attack when I saw that my database credentials could be read by anyone.

Re: Upgrading to Laconi.ca 0.4.3

dewaldp — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:18:09 -0000

I agree. I just sent Evan a note asking if the source could be put on Subversion somewhere. Then it will be so much easier to contribute code by simply sending him the DIFF files. I've seen the code on Google Code, but I'm not sure how actively that copy is being used and updated.

Re: Upgrading to Laconi.ca 0.4.3

ahynes1 — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:53:42 -0000

I would much rather see my changes in the central tarball. I submitted my changes on the laconi.ca developers list and they were ignored. Instead of simply discarding them, I saved them here.

There is also another reason for my tarball being different from the central tarball. Mine includes all the dependencies. This helps out people who can't install PEAR or load code from other sources. My understanding is that the central repository doesn't want to include dependent code. I can understand this since for some the code would be redundant, or perhaps even conflicting.

Since it seems like there isn't a very active developer community for laconi.ca yet, the procedures and tools for submitting an managing changes doesn't seem to be in place yet.

I'm holding off on any serious or significant development until those issues are resolved.

Re: Upgrading to Laconi.ca 0.4.3

ahynes1 — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:49:24 -0000

Actually, as far as I can tell, dataobject.ini is not used. I've never changed it so it has default values from the original darcs....

I've deleted the file altogether and it doesn't change things.

Re: Upgrading to Laconi.ca 0.4.3

dewaldp — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:43:57 -0000

Also, it will be really helpful for us who don't actively contribute code, if you could stick to one central tarball. I downloaded 0.4.3 from laconi.ca, and therefore missed the enhancements that you've made.

Not complaining at all. Thank you for your great work. I'm just recommending something that I think would make life easier for everyone who is very excited about this software.

Re: Upgrading to Laconi.ca 0.4.3

dewaldp — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:35:30 -0000

Thank you for the instructions. There's something VERY important to add to the instructions, in big bold letters.

Folks must change the permissions on dataobject.ini to 640, otherwise anyone can browse to that file with their browser and get your database credentials. Actually, one should change the permissions on all the .ini files.

Alternatively, you guys should change the .ini files to .ini.php.

Re: The inevitable ticking time bomb awaiting Friendfeed.

dewaldp — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 00:19:46 -0000

Michael, first off, I don't understand why people criticize you for writing this post. You've raised a valid concern.

I've noticed that when someone invites you to a room, not only do you receive an email from FriendFeed, the invite is also stuck on the right-hand side of your FriendFeed page.

That's one feature that I won't lose sleep over if they removed it.

I trust that FriendFeed folks are working on anti-spam measures, because FriendFeed has the potential to be a spammer's wet-dream.

Not only can spammers very easily push their content in the faces of FriendFeed members, they can also abuse the service for getting additional "followed" backlinks to their sites and pages.

Re: The Agony of Developing on Someone’s Web API

dewaldp — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 18:56:16 -0000

Steven, you said, "when the originating service goes down and as a result their applications aren’t working guess who’s going to have to deal with the angry users."

Amen to that! With my TweetLater service, http://www.tweetlater.com, I've been getting more than a few folks saying that TweetLater didn't do this or TweetLater didn't do that.

All the while, TweetLater has been working 100% on its side of the API fence. What the users were really experiencing were API outages on the Twitter side. But, they don't see that and often don't understand what goes on behind the scenes.

I see the same happening with Twhirl as well. Folks complain about being paused for 5 minutes in Twhirl. When they complain, they complain about Twhirl, not about the real reason, the Twitter API rate limit that's preventing Twhirl from providing a more responsive service to its users.

I'm not putting any effort into developing any additional add-on services for Twitter until such time that one can again depend on the API. There are far better things to focus on.

Re: Laughing Squid Comments Now Using Disqus

dewaldp — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 17:31:28 -0000

I was a bit skeptical about Disqus, but after seeing what they're planning, and after running it on my blog for a while I'm completely sold.

Re: Which dies first - Twitter or Fail Whale?

MarkDykeman — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:19:42 -0000

Dewald, I don't disagree with your comments, but it would be nice to have more insight into the process, including steps and timelines. They first got word of $15 million venture capital almost a month ago but other than crippling parts of their service, plus the Fail Whale image, and surviving Apple's WWDC, haven't seen a whole lot of improvement yet.

I agree that they'll shoot themselves in the foot if they set inaccurate expectations, but they should be saying something more substantive, IMHO.

Re: Which dies first - Twitter or Fail Whale?

dewaldp — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:03:18 -0000

Mark, it's understandable that folks would get a bit impatient. However, I'm sure that if it were easy to fix the scalability issues, they would have been fixed already. It's highly complex, and I think they realize they have only one chance to get it right.

If Twitter rushes the fixing and announce to the world they are now scalable, imagine the outcry of anyone sees a fail whale again.

I'd rather be patient (try to be), and give them time to get it right.

Re: Listening? – Hell we’re not even on the radar

StevenHodson — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 23:33:33 -0000

The thing is Dewald that in some ways that has become my brand (do a Google search for cranky old fart and see where you find me :)

I am glad that you think what you do about my writing - it makes it worthwhile.

Re: Listening? – Hell we’re not even on the radar

dewaldp — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 20:58:42 -0000

Steve, even though I'm in the 1%, here I am commenting on your blog.

*pauses* *blinks* *ponders*

"What, you meant the top 1%? Shoot, I'm in the bottom 1%."

Anyway...

The very first thing that struck me about your blog was your tagline, "a cranky old fart wandering the internet causing mayhem as he goes".

Perhaps you should step back and consider if that really is the first impression you want a brand-new visitor to have of you. It's marginally funny, but it's way out of whack with the awesome content of your blog.

Re: If Twitter Went Down For A Month

miketempleton — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 15:26:04 -0000

I think the source of users' loyalty to Twitter is because the application
itself is so simple, yet at the same time its effective. Twitter opens up an
entire new way of communicating with others. Also, the number of useful
developments that have been created through the Twitter API is almost
unbelievable. To me, that in and of itself shows how loyal and dedicated
people are to this service.

Pownce, Jaiku and Plurk have all tried to break into Twitter's space, but
although some go over to check the other guy out, they always come back to
Twitter.

Re: If Twitter Went Down For A Month

dewaldp — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 15:12:51 -0000

No insider information here. I was just trying to judge the loyalty to Twitter that users have.

Re: If Twitter Went Down For A Month

dewaldp — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 15:11:44 -0000

The video recording capability is native to the Disqus system. It's just an option that you enable.

Re: Where's your data? (Scripting News)

dewaldp — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 22:02:00 -0000

Dave, that's a good point.

If Gmail ever tanked or became unavailable I would be in a world of trouble because there's so much information in my account it's not funny. I aggregate all my other email accounts into one Gmail account. Can't even remember the passwords of some of those other accounts.

I'm more protective of files. Those stay local. However, even the external hard disk used for backups could become unreadable with a future OS upgrade.

And yes, I also remember the 8-inch floppies. If I dig deep enough I might even dig up one or two. Probably only good for tossing them in the air to scare away the crows in the backyard.

Re: louisgray.com: Feedly Brings New Social Experience to Start Page, Leveraging RSS

dewaldp — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 21:31:11 -0000

Louis, Feedly looks like a very interesting and useful service. The ability to discover new feeds and content based on one's reading habits stand out for me.

I just don't know where one can find the time to do all this, plus FriendFeed, plus Twitter, plus whatever else.

When I visited the Feedly site, my first question was, "Where am I going to find the time to properly check this out?"

Without careful time management, online social interaction can easily become an all-consuming activity, at the expense of other very important 3D life activities.