Whoa! I Just Got Feedly Results in My Google Search Results

Apparently, I missed this little update on the Feedly blog: “feedly + google search experiment.” It read:

One of the first pieces of feedback we received when we launched beta 1 was to extend feedly’s search capabilities. Paul was the first to raise this issue but many more requested a similar feature. We chewed on the idea for a few weeks, experimenting will multiple approaches. We will over the next two weeks push out some of the proof of concepts and listen to what people think.

The first proof of concept is integration with Google Search. Here is an example: when you go on Google and search for iphone 3G, you have the option to see the feedly search results for iphone 3G:

 

This approach tries to add a pinch of personalization and social filtering to the search experience.

I’ve been googling for awhile since that blog post about the update, so I don’t know how I didn’t see this in action until now, but it’s…well frankly, it’s incredible. Check it out:

Hmmm, I think I have to go blog this for RWW now. It’s just too good.

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Over the weekend, Louis Gray posted on his blog “Roll Your Own Blog Leaderboard With Google Reader Trends.” After seeing his article, of course I had to look at My Google Reader trends, too. A couple of things immediately jumped out at me. One, I’m guilty of self-promotion and My Google Reader trends certainly reveal that. Two, some of my top shared items are from other people’s shared items. I’m a re-sharer!

Let’s take a look at whose items made my list. Here is the stuff I share:

1. Rob Diana’s Recommendations (wow, go Rob!)
2. Read/WriteWeb (guilty!)
3. Items shared by louisgray
4. Corvida Raven’s Recommendations 
5. (jeff)isageek’s recommendations
6. Franklin P’s recommendations
7. louisgray.com
8. Caleb Elston’s Recommendations
9. Shey Smith’s Recommendations
10. SheGeeks
11. Mashable! (I believe this is Steven’s doing)
12. WinExtra (see?)
13. Items shared by Robert Scoble (no list is complete without Scoble)
14. SitePoint Blogs (I miss Josh on RWW, but he’s still his awesome self here)
15. chrisbrogan.com’s recommendations
16. Silicon Alley Insider
17. Adam Ostrow’s Recommendations
18. MG Siegler’s Recommendations
19. Profy.Com (I told you to read this blog)
20. sarahintampa (guilty again!)
21. The Inquisitr » Tech
22. CenterNetworks (a one-man blogging machine!)
23. VentureBeat
24. TechCrunch
25. Alexander van Elsas’s Recommendations
26. LiveSide - Windows Live news and interviews
27. The Social Times
28. ParisLemon
29. Steve Spalding’s Recommendations
30. David Risley
31. AppScout
32. Lifehacker
33. I’m Not Actually a Geek
34. Regular Geek
35. Inside Facebook
36. Marshall Kirkpatrick
37. MediaPost | Online Media News
38. Download Squad
39. Alexander van Elsas’s Weblog on new media & technologies and their effect on social behavior
40. SEO and Tech Daily
41. CrackBerry.com blogs
42. Mark Evans
43. The Social Networker
44. ZDNet Blogs
45. Stay N’ Alive

The reason why some of these items say “Recommendations” and some say “Items Shared” is due to the Feedly Firefox plugin. If you haven’t already heard, the Feedly plugin taps into Google Reader and gives you access to anyone’s Shared Items, even if they don’t appear in your Google Friends list. This is extremely useful since the only way to be “Google Friends” with someone is to either email with them or chat with them. But with Feedly, you get immediate access to anyone’s shares, just by following them on Feedly.

For example, if you want to see my shares, follow me here: http://www.feedly.com/feedly#preview/user/15218633955327620808/state/com.google/broadcast

If you’re using Feedly and share tech/social media stuff, I would like to follow you too, so please leave your Feedly profile URL in the comments.

Today, Microsoft’s new viral campaign, “The Mojave Experiment” launched. The site, designed to help combat the negative perception of Windows Vista, shows videos of real people being shown a brand-new OS code-named “Mojave.” Of course, what they don’t know is that “Mojave” is really Vista. After the 10-minute demo, the computer users, a collection of 120 folks who ran either Mac, Linux, or another version of Windows, are asked for their opinions. Not surprisingly, they liked what they saw.

The point of the “Mojave Experiment,” of course, is to show how negative marketing tactics (cough Apple cough) have affected people’s opinions of Vista…perhaps unfairly so. Vista, especially now after SP1 and numerous driver updates from manufacturers, is just not that bad. Does it have its issues? Yes. And let’s be honest, XP was a darned good OS – maybe even one that didn’t need improving. That made it hard for people to want to upgrade. Vista also embraced change, sometimes seemingly for the sake of change, and that wasn’t always a popular choice. Still, it did not deserve the incredible bashing it took in the tech community. It was far from perfect, mind you, but the hatred expelled towards Vista was not in proportion to its faults.

What’s even more interesting than the Mojave Experiment itself, are the new Microsoft defenders now coming out of the woodworks. Take, for example, this post on Engadget. It’s a somewhat hateful take on the whole “Mojave” endeavor that ended with the question: “What are you trying to say, Microsoft? That people heard really bad things from their friends and co-workers, but a slick 10 minute sales presentation showed them the light?”

Apparently, Engadget commenters on the post didn’t like the post’s negative tone since it was soon updated with an explanation: “We’re hearing you guys loud and clear in comments. We’ll admit, we hate senseless Microsoft / Vista bashing just as much as the next guy, and that’s not what this is about.”

What? Apologies for Microsoft-bashing? I thought that was the tech blogosphere’s favorite pastime?

As far as what I think about the new Microsoft campaign – well, it’s about time. Microsoft should have never let those “Mac guy” ads continue on as long as they did with no response. It got so bad that people actually started to feel sorry for the poor, sad PC guy who was constantly picked on. Yet, in many ways, both the Mac and PC guys were representative of those they used them. Maligned PC users who care about spreadsheets vs. the smug contingent of Apple fanboys. (OK, Mary Jo doesn’t think it’s a direct response to the Apple ads, but I think it’s the beginning of one). 

But no reaction is just of typical of Microsoft – the company has never really gotten a grip on the importance of marketing in forming consumer opinion. Yes, on one hand, we know we’re being marketed to, but on the other, let’s face it, we’re a sucker for a shiny ad and a pretty package. If Microsoft dropped the ball at all, it was not acknowledging the mistakes they made with Vista’s launch by using marketing as a tool to counteract them.

The takeaway from this new campaign, and the $300 million plus one yet to be revealed, is that Microsoft is finally learning their lesson. And yes, there is a small portion of the community that will still rally behind their efforts. Believe it or not, the community as a whole doesn’t hate Vista. We just never loved it. As Tim Anderson says, “there’s not much wrong with the core of Vista, as demonstrated by the generally solid performance of Server 2008, and now by Mojave.”

And when I refer to “the community,” you need to understand that I speak of the people who exist outside this blogosphere, too. This, the poorly named “tech blogosphere,”  is not a “tech” blogosphere at all, actually, but one that is simply the social media blogosphere, the internet startup blogosphere, the web 2.0 blogosphere, and the “whatever’s next” blogosphere. Don’t be fooled into thinking that we’re all that matters when it comes to “tech.” Real tech happens everyday beyond these walls. As far as I.T. goes, yes, I know Vista’s enterprise adoption is low, but I also know there are a myriad of reasons for this, too. But the bottom line there was cost and no compelling reason to upgrade. No compelling reason. Again, we didn’t hate it, we just didn’t love it.

I realize that I’m one of the last people that still care about anything Blackberry-related right now, but that’s because I’m having to wait for my contract to run out with T-Mobile. Believe me, when it does, I’m all over the 3G iPhone. Unfortunately, until then I’m stuck with my Blackberry Pearl. That’s why I was thrilled to discover that there’s a new version of the Blackberry Twitter client, TwitterBerry, now available. This new version adds a few more features including, at long last, the ability to view DMs. Yes!

In addition, you’re also able to view your friends list and they’ve added shortcuts to send replies and direct messages to friends – also a desperately needed feature. This news completely made my day. I’m off to download it now.

I’ll admit, I never was deeply involved in the Digg community. Sure, I enjoyed reading through the news and digging items I liked, but I didn’t have any goals to become a super-digger or form more intimate with relationships with any of the site’s users. Perhaps this lack of involvement made me a little naive. Because back when I started receiving friend requests on Digg, I accepted them. I actually believed that the people “friending” me on Digg were doing so because they saw that we shared similar interests and enjoyed digging the same stories. I was so wrong.

Thanks to this unfortunate choice I made in accepting these friendships, my shout box went from an inbox filled with interesting news from my friends to something that more closely resembles my Gmail spam folder than anything else.

My new “friends” were asking me to digg articles on personal finance, mortgages, celebrity gossip, gross pictures, girls posing in Playboy, and even shouts that aren’t even in a language I read! Did my profile not read “I digg tech news?” Why on earth do they think I would be interested in these stories?

The problem is that I had made a major mistake – I had “over-friended.” I essentially diluted my social graph with the spammiest of digg spammers and thanks to this, Digg lost value for me. I was missing good shouts from my friends. I missing the stories I really did want to read and help promote.

Obviously, I’ve realized my mistake, but it has been hard to find the time to clean up my large friend list. Today though, I’m finally biting the bullet and cleaning it up for good…and Facebook might be next.

If we used to be friends on Digg and all of a sudden we’re not, you’re welcome to re-send your request for me to evaluate – I may accidentally remove people I don’t mean to with my trigger-happy fingers. But be warned, I will evaluate it. If you don’t digg tech news, I’m just not that into you. Nothing personal, OK? But I want my old Digg back again and this is how I’m going to get it*.

That being said, I do want to fill my Digg friends list with people who also digg social media and tech news, too, so if that’s you, please friend me here: http://digg.com/users/sarahintampa.

* Note: Well that, and I’m using the new recommendation engine, too. It’s pretty sweet.

After the initial rush to try out Identi.ca, not everyone stuck around. Why? Maybe it’s because Twitter started stabilizing and no longer was Identi.ca needed as a backup to Twitter. Or maybe it was a shiny new thing for some, but after playing with it, the shininess wore off. Whatever the reason, it seemed that the land rush was over. But then, Identi.ca was integrated with Twhirl and all of a sudden, it was happening again. It’s great to see. 

The identi.ca community is active, friendly, and fun. They’re quick to answer each other’s questions and they enjoy tech-related conversations. And don’t worry, identi.ca is still far from the mainstream if that’s what you’re looking for - you won’t see Obama posting “dents” here anytime soon. (Well, there is a user, but he’s not active). 

But why identi.ca and not Twitter? When I asked identi.ca users why they were here, for a lot of them it was about supporting the fact that identi.ca is open source (and federated):

(Of course, Evan said it’s because I’m there, but I’m pretty sure he was just sucking up.)

David asked why even bother with Identi.ca earlier today, so I guess that’s your answer.

Also, for me personally, I have to add that the Twitter community has gotten so large that being on Identi.ca just feels smaller and more intimate. I’m sure this is partly my fault for following so many people on Twitter, but there you have it. 

What’s New

A lot of people were discussing the recent changes on Identi.ca today. It goes without saying that the community is thrilled for the Identi.ca/Twhirl integration, but there were a few other updates too, including:

• Auto-follow your followers: a checkbox in your settings –> profile tab lets you automatically follow those that follow you. It’s recommended for “non-humans,” but I’m giving it a go.
• SMS: Another tab in your settings lets you get your dents via SMS. Just enter your phone number and carrier.
• IM Replies Update: Although you could get IM updates via Jabber/GTalk before, there appears to be a new checkbox that lets you select whether or not you want replies from those you aren’t subscribed to. (Is that new? Or did I miss that before?)
• Greasemonkey Fun: If you haven’t already added “Identica Reply” to give each dent a reply option, do so now. Next, add “Identi.send” which lets you send a message by pressing <enter>. For FriendFeed users, “FriendFeed Identi.ca” lets you add a tab to FriendFeed for Identi.ca.

Spaz & Posty

Two other AIR clients besides Twhirl now also support identi.ca. Spaz, the open-source client is one. The other is Posty, whose identi.ca support is still in beta. (You can download the Posty beta from here.) I hear Twitterfox might be next.

Have I missed anything? Help me fill in the blanks, if so.

Update: I have just been pointed to Identifox, a modified version of TwitterFox which works with Identi.ca!

Yesterday, I asked the question “Who do you follow on Twitter?” This all started because @chrissieb was looking for recommendations – from @corvida, who is definitely the Twiter maven. (She’s actually the queen of all social media, but you knew that already). Well, I made it on @corvida’s list, so I responded to both of them. One thing led to another and next thing you know, I was blogging it.  

Anyway, her tweet reminded me of an older post I did on RWW called 5 Ways to Find More Friends on Twitter. One of the ways I recommended was the website at Twitter Local. The service helps you find people using Twitter in or around a certain area. You can enter a city, state, or zip, and the range of miles around the area to search, and Twitter Local will display the rests generated as an RSS or XML feed or you can click to see the latest tweets coming from that area and just subscribe to people from there.

What I completely forgot about until now was that Twitter Local had an Adobe AIR app available. I discovered that when writing the post, but it slipped my mind and I never went back to download it. Well, now I have. And guess what? The app is broken. I’m so disappointed. Actually, it sort of works – I mean, I do have a stream of local tweets – but it keeps popping up this authentication box:

No matter how many times I enter my info (and check “remember my password”), the box reappears. Can someone fix this please? I would really like to use it.

You know how this goes – you mark it for later and then don’t get around to it. Maybe these wouldn’t have filled out an entire blog post or maybe there’s not that much to say about them, but they’re worth a mention nonetheless. They’re kind of awesome. This is no spliced in del.icio.us link list – I killed that long ago, please go do the same. This is a list of worthy links.

I’ve done this before, but it’s not a regular feature. Anyway, here we go:

• I found some hacker’s blog with a tip on how to get a 3G iPhone for $199 without a contract. Totally exploiting a loophole. My guess is that loophole is closed now, but I’m not certain. Anyone want to try it? It’s sort of a lot of work and probably illegal, so I think I’ll just wait to buy one later. 
• From CNet, a post on gAttach: “gAttach is a small utility that reassigns Gmail as the default mail account from Windows documents. With gAttach installed, selecting Send from Windows Explorer, Firefox, and Microsoft Office automatically attaches the files to a Gmail composition instead of opening a new e-mail in your mail client.” Oh hello! I totally needed that.
• From DownloadSquad: Last.fm integration into geeky media player, VLC. The pre-release of VLC 0.9.0 Media Player for both Windows and Mac now supports Last.fm (Audioscrobbler). To enable Last.fm support in the 0.9.0 release, enter your username in the preferences pane under Audioscrobber.
• You’ve seen FriendZone but have you seen FriendVenn? FriendVenn is a FriendFeed app that divides your relationships into a venn diagram of people who you subscribe to who don’t subscribe to you, people who both subscribe to you and who you subscribe to, and people who only subscribe to you.
• Another excellent FriendFeed script from the man who brought you the better recommended page and the better subscribed to me script. It’s the FriendFeed Profile. This script adds a user profile section on FF user pages. It retrieves Twitter and LinkedIn info if available and allows customization of which fields to display by editing the script and setting the variables at the top. Now I can figure out who all of you people really are. Nice!

Chrissie Brodigan (@chrissieb) was looking for recommendations about who to follow on Twitter. It’s sort of a hard thing to say because determining who’s “best” is so subjective. If you’re a web designer, you’ll want to follow other designers; if you’re a tech geek, you’ll want to follow other tech geeks; etc. etc. There are so many micro-communities on Twitter, a definitive “best of” list is difficult. I started to do this, but I’ll admit – I got tired. Here’s what I said so far. I already see people I missed – friends of mine! So please, help me finish this list:

Also, I decided to go through everyone on MyTweeple – which is handy, but not entirely accurate. It will say that I’m not following people that I know for a fact that I am- like @corvida! (Update: got to the E’s…taking a break).

Oh, and by the way, @corvida started the list by listing these folks, which is why they weren’t on mine. I agree with her choices, but of course!

UPDATE: Who else has posted a list?

Here is @chrissieb’s list:

 http://chrissiebrodigan.wordpress.com/2008/07/18/who-do-you-follow/

Here is @IslandDog’s list:

http://www.theislanddog.com/2008/07/who-do-you-follow-islanddog/

Here is Shey’s list:

20 Obscure People You Can Follow on Twitter and FriendFeed and Not Get Bored

I’ll admit, it’s literally killing me to not have an iPhone right now. I can’t afford the extra $200 for the early termination of my T-Mobile contract which doesn’t expire until January. I know I’m being practical by waiting – I’m not a rich girl and I have bills to pay, but I’m ranking this higher than quitting smoking in terms of how hard it is for me.

I’m trying to console myself with Blackberry apps. Yesterday, I told you about Zumobi. It’s not bad – I’ve been making new tiles for various blogs and sending them to my phone from the PC. The only thing that’s slow about it is my slow non-3G connection.

(However, I looked at the AT&T iPhone 3G map and it appears that I don’t have AT&T 3G service at my house either, so at least that’s some consolation.)

Anyway, if you’re stuck with a Blackberry like me – or maybe you use one for work – you might enjoy these apps too. Not nearly as much as an iPhone, but we have to survive somehow, don’t we?

Wattpad

Read and share books on your Blackberry. Go to m.wattpad.com and download the reader. Once installed, you can download books to your phone – there are currently 75,000 available. You can also search books by category, rate books, submit your own, leave comments, and see what other Wattpad users are reading. 

Wattpad

Poynt Beta

Poynt Beta brings local search to Blackberry. The app offers Yellow Pages, movies information, and directions. For Blackberry devices with GPS, the directions are even faster and easier to use, but non-GPS phones still work. You can get turn-by-turn directions or a map. Download from http://m.mypoynt.com.

Live Search

Still, the best mobile companion for Blackberry has got to be Live Search. You can get directions, search for businesses, get movie showtimes, get directions, and get traffic information. What makes it better than Poynt is the UI – it’s so easy to go from screen to screen. Just click and all the locations of the business you searched for can display on a map. Click to call, click to zoom. It’s so fast! Download from m.live.com.

BlackBerry MediaSync

This one might not exactly be legal. It was on RIM’s servers for awhile but was then removed. It can now be found here. Apparently, this lets you sync your iTunes to your Blackberry – including album artwork.