Add Profiles to Friendfeed

Friendfeed doesn’t have user profiles, yet. The second best thing to do? Use this Greasemonkey script to see people’s Twitter bio on their FF user page. You can download it from userscripts.org. Also check out my other Friendfeed GM scripts, including better recommended and better subscribed to me.

Download script

Identi.ca, Not Perfect, But Good Enough

This is a response to everyone complaining about identi.ca being yet another microblogging service.

In today’s world, time is a luxury you don’t have. Release your product too early, it’s featureless or users don’t understand it, they won’t come back. Release too late, and someone else has surely beat you to the punch. Being a web developer, I understand that it’s okay to release something that is not perfect. You want to release something that is just good enough. Good enough to give users a reason to join and come back. You want to be agile, transparent, and open. Let the users know when the next release is and what to expect. Iterate quickly, fixing those bugs and adding more key features as you build up your core user base. Speed is key. That is the ingenuity of Web 2.0.

Identi.ca is not perfect, but it’s good enough. Now is the perfect time to release, when Twitter is failing, and people are looking for refuge. Also, it’s open source, which means the best and the brightest software engineers in the world will have a chance at creating a scalable, decentralized Twitter clone. Even on Day 0, so much happened. There was an issue with RSS that people pointed out when importing to other services like Friendfeed, and evan fixed it within an hour. There were no Replies, so people took it onto themselves to write a Greasemonkey script and a Yahoo Pipe. Many people already started looking at the code.

Much work is needed to be done, but I, for one, have high hopes for Identi.ca.

Follow me on http://identi.ca/detect and http://friendfeed.com/bitfaker.

What do you think? Join the conversation in the identi.ca Friendfeed room.

Other related articles:

http://www.winextra.com/2008/07/03/omg-look-out-everyone-its-a-twitter-clone-omg/
http://www.sarahintampa.com/sarah/2008/07/02/identica-early-adopter-tips.html
http://mashable.com/2008/07/02/identica/
http://www.inquisitr.com/1424/could-identica-be-a-fail-whale-killer/
http://shegeeks.net/identica-apps-why-it-could-blow-twitter-away/
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/indentica_federated_twitter.php
http://www.bwana.org/2008/07/02/an-open-sourced-twitter-emerges-identica/

Fail Whale Fail

Friendfeed Greasemonkey Scripts

New! From the creator of Better Friendfeed “subscribed to me” is an even potentially cooler script, Better Friendfeed “recommended”. Sick of Friendfeed’s dull, static recommended page? Use “better recommended” to ACTUALLY find some interesting friends! How does it work, you ask? It loads up your subscriptions, then loads up your subscriptions’ subscriptions, and lists in order the most popular subscriptions that your subscriptions are subscribed to! WTH did you just say, you ask? I have no clue; it’s 5am on a Sunday! YAY!

Anyway, you can install Better Recommended here.

…or Better Subscribed To Me here.

…or Add Favicon to FriendFeed Room links here.

…or Add FriendFeed Profile here.

Plurk Mobile Greasemonkey Script to Display Your Karma And More

I use Plurk mobile rather than the regular site on my computer because it’s cleaner and more readable, but it’s missing a bunch of features. I started writing a greasemonkey script to add in some of those missing features.

Version 0.1 displays your karma, karma change, and a “Me” link in the top nav that displays just your own plurks.

Updated 6/24/08: Version 0.11 adds Emoticons.

You can download the script from userscripts.org.

The Real Rick Roll

Inspired by Jessica Hagy’s indexed blog and the Fail Whale.

Google Charts Rick Roll

Code:

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?
cht=p3
&chd=t:35,30,12,9,8,6
&chtt=Rick%20Astley%20Would%20Never
&chs=600×200
&chl=Give%20you%20up|Let%20you%20down|Run%20around%20and%20desert%20you|Make%20you%20cry|Say%20goodbye|Tell%20a%20lie%20and%20hurt%20you


Rick Roll using the Google Charts API.

Full Size Pie Chart

Redbox Greasemonkey Script Adds Movie Rating, Ranking, and Quantity Left

I updated my Redbox greasemonkey script tonight with a fix, so it works again. In addition to adding the movies’ Yahoo ranking, I’ve also added its movie rating (G, PG, PG-13, R, etc) and quantity of DVDs left for each movie. Just make sure you select your location/kiosk for the Qty to show up.

Here’s a screenshot of the mod.

You can install the script from userscripts.org.

Remove Dupes from Google Reader using Greasemonkey

I find it annoying to see the same stories duplicated in my Google Reader, especially now that I subscribe to many popular/recommended feeds (RSSmeme, del.icio.us, TwitBuzz, Twitt(url)y, ReadBurner, Hacker News) along with my regular feeds.

So, I started a Remove Dupes from Google Reader greasemonkey script back in February. Greasemonkey is a Firefox addon that allows you to customize the way a webpage displays using small bits of JavaScript.

I just updated it to version 0.2 today with a couple of changes:

• moved Remove Dupes button next to the Refresh button
• dupes: mark as read, but no longer hides them (fix keyboard j,k bug)
• finds more dupes by splitting symbols (-, |) this is really helpful if you subscribe to Twitt(url)y
• more helpful firebug console output (ie. # dupes removed)

You can install this script from userscripts.org.

My other greasemonkey script is for adding ratings to the RedBox website.

Let me know what you think!

My Takeaways from IgniteBoston3

Update 6/2/08: Presentation slideshows now available on SlideShare.

Ignite Boston 3 had over 15 five minute keynote presentations. Here are some of my takeaways from it.

iPhone Open Application Development - Jonathan Zdziarski

• iPhone stores way more information than you think (ie. every time you press the home button it takes a screenshot, every word you type gets added to the keyboard cache, every time you use google maps the map tiles are stored, deleted photos, contacts, web objects can all be recovered)
• Detectives have access to iPhone forensics toolkits
• iPhone needs to be more open/transparent, so keep on hacking
• If you are a drug dealer, don’t take photos of your stash with your iPhone

PS. Thanks for the book!

Distributed Twitter - Joe Cascio

• Twitter can be made more reliable if it’s distributed
• If you’re interested in helping, join their google group and attend the Thursday meeting at Berkman

The Open Source Marketing Checklist - Jeff Whatcott

• Selling open source is hard (1 in 1000 people who download actually pay)

Web 2.0 is Sharecropping - Jesse Vincent

• Web 2.0 tools are everywhere, don’t just rely on other people’s tools or you might get screwed

Digital Goods, The Future of Online Communities - Ravi Mehta

• Virtual goods = $
• Tencent makes 5x more per user than Facebook and has 4x higher operating margin than Yahoo

Photo: Lewis County Herald