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Embed Your Real-time FriendFeed Activity On Your Blog

Bwana — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:13:30 +0000

The real-time web is the buzzword of 2009. As technology advances, we become more impatient. We want our information and we want it 5 minutes ago. If a story is reported 2 hours after it happens, it’s ancient history in the age of Twitter and FriendFeed. I’m a big user of FriendFeed not only for the information it brings, but the interesting discussions that occur surrounding them. It’s a great dashboard of the social web.

FriendFeed has a real-time feature that some are not aware of. This feature is available for FriendFeed lists, rooms, and your friend streams. It shows FriendFeed activity as it happens and can be addictive if you let it Today, I found (through FriendFeed of course) a little nugget that allows you to embed your friends real-time activity right on your blog. To do so:

Navigate to your page by clicking “Me” on the left sidebar. Then click “Yourname + Friends” on the top tab bar
Next, click the “Real time” link, and then click embed in web page
You can then configure the embed width, height, and title. Copy and paste the HTML to your blog and you’re set.

I was aware you could embed real-time FriendFeed through rooms, as I wrote about back in May, but I didn’t know you could also embed your friend stream. Here’s what mine looks like:

As of now, you cannot embed your main feed, or your discussion feed which consists of your comments and likes. That would be the next logical feature to add since the FriendFeed discussion feed is rich with content that you are interested in. Take a look at mine to get an idea. I’m glad FriendFeed is continuing to improve and if you want the world to know what you’re doing on FriendFeed at any given moment, go ahead and embed your FriendFeed activity. See you on FriendFeed.

Intense Debate Is the Easy Choice

Bwana — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 18:24:40 +0000

A while ago, I wrote about my difficult decision between choosing from the commenting systems, Disqus and Intense Debate. Much has changed since that post, including Disqus’s support of video comments and now, Intense Debate’s support of FriendFeed. At this moment, the only benefit I see of using Disqus over Intense Debate is its support of video comments. This makes the decision a lot easier for me. Now that Intense Debate supports FriendFeed, it becomes a no-brainer:

The ability to import and export existing comments with ease propels Intense Debate as the clear winner.

Both Disqus and Intense Debate now support FriendFeed, both have great moderation options, both have a decent reputation system. The huge difference here is that my existing data is safe AND my future data is easily accessible. I realize Disqus has data portability options available, but Intense Debate’s are much simpler in my mind. I also realize, with Disqus, you can keep your existing comments on your blog and only use Disqus for new posts. (Intense Debate has the same option) While this workaround may be sufficient for some, I’m not a big fan of keeping two separate commenting systems on the same blog. Intense Debate’s solution is more elegant, seamless, and easier for the user to use and maintain.

I commend the folks over at Intense Debate and FriendFeed for making this happen, and I’m glad I was patient with Intense Debate. I’m quite confident I’ve made the right choice. Take a look at the Intense Debate comments on FriendFeed.

Why I Like Intense Debate

Bwana — Wed, 07 May 2008 05:08:26 +0000

Intense Debate aims to improve comments on your blog. I’ll make this short and sweet:

It imports all my old WordPress comments
It allows me to easily export my comments from Intense Debate if I choose to move my data
And this:

Nuff said.

I’m going to try it out for a week or so and see how it goes. I’ll miss Seesmic comments but I haven’t received a video comment in a while so I doubt it will affect anything.