Facebook Chat Is A Great Addition, Implemented Well

When Facebook's chat functionality debuted at the beginning of the month, I wasn't immediately interested. After all, adding a chatroom-like function to a social network largely comprised of students, family and casual friends isn't exactly a world premiere of revolutionary innovation. But, this evening, it wasn't Twitter or FriendFeed that helped me directly connect to a colleague, but Facebook's chat to the rescue. Its simple design, offering basic functionality, is, in my opinion, a real win for the site.

Now, when logging in to Facebook, a small horizontal bar fills the bottom of the browser window, showing Online Friends and a (#) showing the number who are online at the same time as you and are ready for chat. To start a chat is simple, by clicking the Online Friends tab, click a friend and a small mini-window extends from the chat bar.

This evening, a colleague and I walked through the demo of a new site, traded ideas, and quickly accomplished what usually would have taken a phone call, or a series of e-mails. Facebook's ability to know that I was logged in, and cross-reference my status with those of my Facebook friends, made the conversation possible, and has me thinking other sites, like Twitter or FriendFeed, would be wise to consider adding similar functionality that displays what other friends are online and ready to strike up conversation.

I'm still not a huge Facebook fan, and probably use about 5% of the network's features, but now, when logging in, one of the first things I'll be doing is checking the "Online Friends" tab and seeing who would be interesting to talk to. It just works, simply and cleanly, the way it should.

louisgray.com Reader Survey (April 2008)

As the site has grown over the last year or so, the content on louisgray.com has changed. (Go directly to survey)

Sometimes, friends tell me the blog isn't as fun as it once was, while newer readers tell me it's a must-read. I'm sure the answer lies somewhere in between. So if you wouldn't mind, it'd be great to learn how you first learned about louisgray.com, what you're most interested in reading, and where you want the site to go. We are listening.

Questions:
1. How long have you read louisgray.com?
2. How do you access louisgray.com?
3. How did you first hear about louisgray.com?
4. What topics do you look for?
5. Should we focus more or less on certain topics?
6. What do you like or dislike?

It's anonymous, and only takes a minute, so, get your voice heard, and take the first louisgray.com survey!

Click Here to take the louisgray.com survey! (And thanks in advance)

FriendFeedMachine Debuts New Approach to FriendFeed

While not everyone agreed with my early, glowing, assessments of FriendFeed, there is now no question the social Web activities aggregation site is among the fastest-growing on the Internet, amassing not only some of the biggest names in the tech blogosphere as its most active members, but, with the addition of an API, becoming a new platform for development, much like Facebook was in 2007. The newest approach to handling the data flow from FriendFeed is a service called FriendFeedMachine, which lets helps you filter between your true "Close Friends" and those you just want to follow, and gives a new approach to making comments, open items within the Web page, and even marking items as previously read.

Designed by Scott Goldie in Melbourne, Australia (Web site | Twitter), FriendFeedMachine was inspired by the very real problem some FriendFeed users have found through the site's growth, as "real life" friends are being drowned out by the noisier, more active participants, including Robert Scoble, Mike Arrington, and as some have let me know... me. Goldie also found that as the "real life" friends' activity would fall off his radar, items would go unread, and a new approach was needed.

"I wanted to see what my friends were doing by service (i.e. grouped by Twitter, Blog, etc.)," he wrote in an e-mail Saturday night. "I also wanted a way to view items without leaving the page where the feed info was."

While some on FriendFeed, Twitter and other communications mediums have opted to unsubscribe from the more active users, Goldie agrees with Scoble's assertation that "it's not who follows you but who you follow that's important." FriendFeedMachine is an attempt to organize the resulting noise and make it more useful.

You can login to FriendFeedMachine at www.friendfeedmachine.com, by entering your FriendFeed ID and your remote key. At first, you can see those individuals who are on your home feed, as you would with FriendFeed's main page, as well as the service they used to generate activity, be it Google Reader, Blog, Twitter, Digg, Del.icio.us or any of the other few dozen FriendFeed supports.

Clicking on the "Friends" button at the top lists all your friends you are subscribed to and the services they use. Even my 266 that I follow came up, though I'd assume the more friends you have, the slower the browser interface will be. Unlike FriendFeed, which organizes activity chronologically, including items most recently commented on or liked at the top, FriendFeedMachine organizes by individual. I can click on Frederic Lardinois' Twitter entries and see them all at once. I can click on Kevin Fox's favorite YouTube videos, or select Dave Winer's blog posts, for instance. From this window, I can either read each item individually, mark them as read, or close and return to the "Friends" area.


This example shows Kevin Fox's FriendFeed posts
But the most interesting element to FriendFeedMachine is the concept of "Close Friends". By clicking on the profile picture of any friend within FriendFeedMachine, I have a checkbox to name them a "Good friend". When I do that, their data is now shown not just in the aggregate feed, but under the "Close Friends" button. And yes, Good = Close as far as FriendFeedMachine is concerned. Now, the issue of separating "Real life" friends and all FriendFeed contacts is solved. If I choose, I can whittle down my 266 followed contacts in FriendFeed and have a "Close Friends" list of 3, 10 or 30... whatever I like. And the "Close Friends" button activity is just as the "Friends" stream operates, showing me their services, and letting me view each of the activities my friends have made on their individual services.


Viewing an item in FriendFeedMachine.
(Click for larger screenshot)
And don't get the idea that FriendFeedMachine is passive, as it's not. Like other FriendFeed API services that have debuted in recent weeks, you can make comments or like items directly from within FriendFeedMachine, by hitting the green arrow to go to the item, where you see it in full, and have the option to hit "I like it!" or make a comment and hit "Post". FriendFeedMachine also displays whether or not the item already has likes or comments, so you're not left out of the conversation.

Unlike some of the recent entrants approaching FriendFeed from a new angle, FriendFeedMachine is not an AIR application, or a GreaseMonkey script. It's a new, unique, Web interface for viewing and interacting with the FriendFeed activity - all of it. But now, you don't risk missing updates from your real friends.

Banning by Computer, Repairing by Hand, Google KOs TechWag

For many blogs, Google traffic sends the overwhelming majority of visitors. TechWag, a technology blog authored by Dan Morrill, claims Google constitutes upwards of 80 percent of traffic. Or it did... because earlier this week, Google identified his site as harmful, and instead of sending people to his site, would-be visitors are instead warned that by visiting TechWag, their computer could be harmed (See why). As a result, traffic has, as you would expect, evaporated.

Dan walked through his site, contacted his hosting company, and resolved the issue, before April 16th. But by the 19th, the issues still have not been resolved. As he writes in a post today (We are not a Malware Site), "Google is going to take its own sweet time cleaning up the disaster in their index. It does not matter how fast you clean it up... what matters is how fast Google can clear an erroneous flag in their database."


Google Warns Visitors to TechWag.com
Dan estimates it took five hours for Google to block his site, and another five hours to resolve the initial issue. But Google's Webmaster tools claim resolving the block will take "several weeks", and they "unfortunately ... can't reply individually to each request."

Google's not being evil, and was well-intended to steer would-be victims from what could have been seen as untrusted code. But the disparity of time taken to block and that taken to fix is going to have a real toll on Dan and his site. And while I may not be the biggest fan of ads on blogs, Dan does have them, and if he was looking to get any kind of paycheck off this week's activity, he's going to be sorely disappointed.


After Clicking the Link in Google...
As he writes, "Come on Google, if you are going to kill off a web site, at least have the courtesy to respond at Internet speed. Taking two weeks to check to see if we are “ok” is absolutely unacceptable."

Why can I read his site? Because I trust him and TechWag. It's a great blog. (Also I use a Mac, so I'm not too worried...) Too bad most visitors from Google are likely going to be scared away. I dare you to take the risk. Go to www.techwag.com and sign up for his RSS feed. It won't hurt. I promise.

Missing a Few A's Games this Year, and Turning to MLB.TV

For the last two baseball seasons, my wife and I had signed up to approximately 40 games a year. We didn't make all of them, but we made a good amount. We spent a lot of Friday evenings and Saturday mornings going up and down I-880 in the East Bay, headed to Oakland. But when news of the twins hit, we knew we had to adjust, taking the total package down to what we thought would be a more manageable 20 games a year. I even planned ahead by leaving a big gap in our ticket schedule around when the kids are expected to show up.

Even this looks like it may have been optimistic. Now that my wife and I have passed the 26-weeks mark, her fatigue level is very real. The idea of going to games on back to back days is unreasonable now - something along the lines of approved marital torture, with every stair step or stand up/sit down routine. So tonight, we're eating the price of our tickets, and staying home.

But to fill the baseball void, we're going online. I've been chairing the Thursday activity on Athletics Nation (See from yesterday's activity: How Do You Help Convert the Casual Fan? and One Can Be The Loneliest Number). Also, during last week's trip to Florida, I invested in MLB.com's video package, letting me watch any major league game in fairly good quality live, so long as the contest is not blacked out.


A scene from tonight's games (and the available schedule)
Last night, part of why I was up so late, blogging at almost 2 a.m., was due a marathon 22-inning game between the Colorado Rockies and the San Diego Padres. Hearing the game had gone to the 18th, I logged on to MLB.TV and saw the game unfold, inning after inning, stretching deep into the night.

The quality of MLB.TV is remarkably better than the jittery, buffering, versions I remember from previous years. I can stream any game on one side of my monitor, and keep working on the other side, without parallel apps slowing down. With family looking like it just might get in the way of some of our in-person sports, MLB.TV is a great alternative. Soon, hopefully, I can start talking about taking our kids to their first ballgames.