Disqus - Latest Comments for meryn

Re: Enterprise 2.0 Needs a FriendFeed

meryn — Tue, 19 May 2009 16:55:19 -0000

Tac, have you heard of Socialcast? It has likes, comments, and a live activity stream. (at least it claims to, I haven't seen it working) http://www.socialcast.com/

Re: Twitter Sign In Comes to Disqus: Try It Now on Mashable!

meryn — Sat, 16 May 2009 09:37:38 -0000

I think it's much more natural to use Twitter as ID in social media then Facebook. Great new feature for Disqus.

Re: Designing to Sell

meryn — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 15:52:45 -0000

Nice visual overview!

Re: The Blogroll I Want For AVC

meryn — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 10:59:41 -0000

To automate blog submission to Toluu, one could write a Greasemonkey script that triggers the Toluu bookmarklet code (really simple) in the background. Again, only thing that wouldn't work is "scrobbling" the same blog twice. But I think Caleb could easily change that in his schema.

Re: The Blogroll I Want For AVC

meryn — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:42:33 -0000

This is what Toluu does in its most basic use case.

Re: The Blogroll I Want For AVC

meryn — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:38:32 -0000

You know what's funny? Because of you I see a whole new use-case for Toluu. I always wanted it to be an exact replica of what I had in Google Reader (and it fails in that, because it lacks syncing options). But just as a way for "scrobbling" feeds, it works perfectly. If you don't want the Twitter integration, you can add your "toluu feeds" rss feed to Friendfeed. It works much like last.fm "loved tracks" then I think. With the exception that you can't add a feed to your Toluu account twice I think... You'd have to remove it from your Toluu list first.

Re: The Blogroll I Want For AVC

meryn — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:27:13 -0000

Toluu can also generate a Tweet when you add a feed. Like this you can share your favorite blogs with your twitter following.

Re: The Blogroll I Want For AVC

meryn — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:23:35 -0000

Fred, you don't even have to use a reader. For reach feed (say http://www.toluu.com/feeds/175542563 ) you can just click "Add Feed", and it will be added to your Toluu list. The feed reader integration is optional. If you select a feed reader, the "add feed" page will redirect you to your feed reader, but if you don't select a feed reader, Toluu will only act as a database.

Maybe you should talk to Caleb: http://friendfeed.com/calebelston (Caleb is the founder and lead developer of Toluu)

Re: The Blogroll I Want For AVC

meryn — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 07:52:53 -0000

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Toluu: Toluu was designed for exactly this. Sadly, it's not getting the attention it deserves. http://www.toluu.com/ . The design is a little awkward but the "seed" is there. A last.fm for blogs. With a special bookmarklet provided by Toluu, everything you subscribe to gets added to your Toluu before it's added to your favorite feed reader.

Re: louisgray.com: Are We Missing Something By Reading An RSS Feed?

meryn — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 08:02:11 -0000

I think a good blogger will try to learn from all conversation his post has sparked, and include this in future posts. A blogger could demonstrate the "consensus opinion" of him and people who engage in conversation with him. Even better - but not suitable for all blogs I think - might be to also include "dissenting voices". E.g. : "Last week, I wrote that all swans are white, but Nicholas (Taleb :P) didn't think so, as expressed in his comment on my post."

Re: Toluu launches Tagging!

meryn — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 11:16:38 -0000

Great feature. I think it'd be nice if the "top tags" view for a user also would incorporate the tags used by other persons for the feeds the user is subscribed to. This way, people get an automatic "tag-profile", whether they tag themselves or not.

I think it'd be interesting to see at a glance what kind of feeds *other people* think I'm reading. That what these tags would tell me.

Re: We need to change the system

meryn — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 06:41:51 -0000

I'm curious. What do you think Yahoo should have done differently? Do you still have improvements in mind over the new version?

Re: We need to change the system

meryn — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 08:00:09 -0000

I just saw an earlier post of you which confirms that you've already been thinking about how to bootstrap scientific communities. Ever read The Del.icio.us Lesson?

Re: We need to change the system

meryn — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 05:26:27 -0000

Swivel shows a bit of what's possible, though it's only for simple charts.
I'm imagiining a really bad-ass tool. It would take a lot of effort to produce it. But I think it'd be worth it.

Re: We need to change the system

meryn — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 05:21:33 -0000

I may have been thinking a little ahead of you here. I was thinking how we could empower scientists who already have the "open" mindset. I think a kind of generic tool would be best, but I'm personally not fond of wikis. The advantage of "personal" tools like blogs and Delicous is that each bit of data is always linked to the creator, which gives each user the ability to view purely their own data, and do completely their own thing, but it still enables them to share the content.

I personally don't have a clue about how typical science workflows look like, but let's say some social scientists does statistical analysis. At first, you'd want the dataset in the cloud. It doesn't have to be public, but at least online. Then there could be an web-based alternative to SPSS, which enables you to share each "test" you do on the data, but doesn't force you so. Having a web-based tool would make sharing the procedure you took very easy. It would be directly shared together with the results.

The reason why I named Delicous is that I think it's the perfect model for online cooperation. It doesn't take too much effort. You could use it in complete isolation if you wish, while still contributing to the "collective intelligence".

Too have privacy options in such tool would be natural. Even Delicous has a "private" bookmark option. A online tool which forces you to share every piece of data you produce wouldn't gain much traction in the scientific community I guess.

Re: We need to change the system

meryn — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 13:07:52 -0000

Maybe such a tool should default to keeping things private, while allowing to share things either public or with your network (semi-public) in a granular fashion. In any case, I think research findings should be stored granular, so they can be shared and retrieved in small bits.

Re: We need to change the system

meryn — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 12:57:36 -0000

Is there no platform comparable to Delicious that supports open science, e.g. just doing your job (like bookmarking on Delicious) while doing it in public, and in a way that is somehow better accessible/searchable than blogs?

If not, some should make something like that.

Re: No, You Shouldn’t Create Your Own Social Network

meryn — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 07:30:41 -0000

I think starting your own social network is justified if you're going to add unique functionality. Just spreading a message and connecting like-minded people is done fine via myspace, facebook, digg, friendfeed, blogs, etc. Yet, the new functionality must be truly worth it. Mixx hasn't be able to convince me it's better than Digg, for example.

Also, if your target demographic is likely to be all on Facebook, a Facebook app may suffice. Though I still like stand-alone apps better than Facebook apps. I think they will always have an edge.

So indeed, if you're not trying to be a game changer in terms of functionality, don't bother with your own network.

Things like Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect could be nice, but if your launching something new (say: something of the importance of Digg) it may be that not all of the people you're targeting have an account on facebook or google. I think that if you provide enough value, users will be happy to enter a few personal details. Just keep it light. Don't ask for more than you need.

Re: Architect for innovation

meryn — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 12:15:51 -0000

Old, but still interesting: The architecture of participation

Re: louisgray.com: The Five Stages Of Early Adopter Behavior

meryn — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 12:34:13 -0000

I'm impressed by your analysis, certainly given the fact that you're an early adopter yourself.

However, I question your idea that there are different (e.g. self-serving) motivations other than the (justified) excitement and hope of something better. I think services pushed by early adopters always deserve the excitement, but the creators can't always live up to the (infinite?) hopes of the early adopter, either because of lack of flexibility on their part or the commercial interests of shareholders in a later stage of the service.

For example: Maybe Facebook sucks (in 2008, "post-FriendFeed" terms) because of the fact that Mark Zuckerberg is not as smart as we thought he would be, or maybe because he can't open it up because of the interests of shareholders. (I'm being explicitly harsh against Facebook for the sake of the argument)

Also, a company like Apple shows that you can keep users being excited for one brand. It could mean that the main problem is that early adopters think company founders have some kind of infinite creativity, while in fact they just had one or two well-executed ideas.

In this case, I think there's nothing wrong to cheer for someone who decides to take over the lead. Even if the can't sustain that lead. Improving up on others is hard enough, always being the best is even harder.

Right now, I think Friendfeed has taken the lead in a certain dimension, so I think they deserve the cheering. But this doesn't perse means that they'll always have the lead. It is yet unclear if they have someone as adaptive as Steve Jobs. Of course I don't mean to say Apple will always have the lead in consumer electronics - one could argue about if they have right now - but, again, it's nice to use as an example.

Re: louisgray.com: Are Blog Comments Really Conversations, or Are They Just Replies?

meryn — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 06:35:22 -0000

I think that blog comments are not intrinsically anything more than their technical definition.
A blog comment can be seen both as a reply, literally a "comment" on someone else's post, to take note of by the blogger, or they could be seen as a continuation of the conversation.

Come to think of it, the same holds true for blog posts. Some people write their posts as part of a large conversation, some are more or less teaching or writing field reports. This post by you is clearly conversational: You ask a question.

I think there are two important influences on how blog posts or comments are seen:
- What the reader expects. If he sees himself as a passive reader, or as a participant in the conversation
- How the post or comment is written. Does the author seem open to new ideas, or is everything set in stone. Does he pose a question to the group or to a specific person, etc etc.

Much of this depends on community norms and expectations, and they differ from place to place.
I guess the bloggers who are also very active on friendfeed generally write as part of a conversation, and also hope their comments will be seen as such. Most people who read this blogs and comments in turn feel an invitation to respond with a comment or a blog post of their own, to extend the conversation.

Re: Thread / post search

meryn — Sat, 31 May 2008 13:04:17 -0000

Uhm yes that's why I was asking. Are you building it, or planning to build it?

Re: A Commenter’s Rights

meryn — Fri, 30 May 2008 14:25:54 -0000

I only just noticed that Disqus allows editing of posts after someone has posted them. Can a blog owner switch this features off on his blog? As it is now, it's a far deviation from how comments work on a regular Wordpress install.

Re: A Commenter’s Rights

meryn — Fri, 30 May 2008 10:20:37 -0000

First of all, I applaud this initiative to talk about ethics regarding comments.

However, I do not think that this will anytime soon be set in stone. For example, I think there will be many situations in which "discussion moderators" (someone who has admin rights to a blog or a forum could be said to have become implicitly a moderator of any discussion there) would want comments to be non-retractable, which technically comes down to being non-deletable by the comment poster. I think this will be highly situtation-specific.

There could be many more nuances which would apply in different situations.
All in all, this is certainly a good begin for discussion. I guess most of this will remain never spoken-out though. I think it would be best to investigate and formalize existing implicit norms.

Re: Web Discussions: Leaving The Instigator Out

meryn — Thu, 29 May 2008 16:31:31 -0000

Rather than centralizing everything, I think it would be wonderful to have technology where you can easily search in what different places of the web your post has generated discussion. Just like a Digg counter on each page. I think people are quite proud of their diggs and comments on digg, even if there posts don't hit the front page.

It would be nice to be able to place an uberwidget on a page which would include digg, reddit, friendfeed etc. Not only focussed on sharing, like ShareThis but also on showing the discussion in various places.

I don't the conversation will ever get centralized again.
AideRSS already listens to Twitter for example.