Bwana.org » friendfeed

Google+ Revitalizes Online Discussions

Bwana — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 19:01:21 +0000

Ever since FriendFeed was consumed by Facebook, online discussions have been dominated by Quora, Twitter and Facebook. Without getting into my opinions about those three services, let me say, I wasn’t motivated to have discussions using them. I really enjoyed the time I had with FriendFeed and the ease of contributing to a topic.

Enter Google+.

Google has been dabbling in social networking for quite some time and in my opinion, has been a bit out of focus. We’ve seen orkut, social bars, and of course Google Buzz, but we really haven’t seen a robust, solid solution. With Google+, I can say that Google is serious about making online discussions easily accessible. Google has made engagement with existing and new contacts about as easy as one could ask. I find myself more willing to talk about technology on Google+ than I ever did on Quora, Twitter and Facebook. That’s enough for me to consider Google+ as a success.

Is it perfect? I don’t think so. There are still a lot of issues to work out with the Circles implementation of managing information streams. The hangouts feature is somewhat unstable and prone to crash, while sparks is sort of just out there without a real underlining purpose. Google+ definitely has room to grow.

I’m happy to have a place on the web to have discussions much like the days of FriendFeed. Click here to view my Google+ profile.

Twitter Trending Topics: Are They Useful?

Bwana — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 17:46:55 +0000

The usefulness of Twitter trending topics has declined for me personally. All too often, I see people trying to “game” or “manipulate” the system to gain popularity. To me, the whole thing is null and void if it is contrived. Now that Twitter has brought these terms to the forefront, it seems the quest to make “the list” has a renewed purpose. I asked my Twitter followers if they utilized Twitter trends and here’s what they said:

Bwana: How many of you utilize Twitter trending topics? [I don't]

about 21 hours ago

Tue Aug 04 19:30:00 +0000 2009

wanyal: Not me.

about 21 hours ago

Tue Aug 04 19:30:44 +0000 2009

mattbebich: I don't even look at them

about 21 hours ago

Tue Aug 04 19:31:03 +0000 2009

tchachra: They are useless since they provide no valuable information…its usually people just trying to get followers.

about 21 hours ago

Tue Aug 04 19:32:22 +0000 2009

EricJD: I don't use them either. Usually when I do glance at them, I'm thinking to myself, “why in the world is that a trending topic?”

about 21 hours ago

Tue Aug 04 19:32:47 +0000 2009

Seshan: I don't. president #iranelection Bill Clinton Wal-Mart AT&T Google Voice White House Jay-Z

about 21 hours ago

Tue Aug 04 19:34:46 +0000 2009

shardayyy: I utilize the trending topics this way http://twitter.com/shardayyy/status/3129450085

about 21 hours ago

Tue Aug 04 19:34:48 +0000 2009

iPhoneMacUser: I do not

about 21 hours ago

Tue Aug 04 19:36:58 +0000 2009

muchobueno: i do.

about 21 hours ago

Tue Aug 04 19:41:17 +0000 2009

applemacprofan: i dont.

about 21 hours ago

Tue Aug 04 19:42:40 +0000 2009

cluteman: Trending topics aren't fun anymore with spam and “Why is ____ trending?” tweets.

about 21 hours ago

Tue Aug 04 19:53:54 +0000 2009

D_Ames: “How many of you utilize Twitter trending topics? [I don't]” Me neither! For the same reason I don't follow Ashton Kutcher.

about 21 hours ago

Tue Aug 04 19:55:52 +0000 2009

dcfemella: I don't, but I have been thinking more and more that maybe I should.

about 21 hours ago

Tue Aug 04 20:04:31 +0000 2009

jcdeuce: i have not used the trending topic search

about 20 hours ago

Tue Aug 04 20:50:19 +0000 2009

lhuxley: I never do, maybe sometimes if its a movie or something but normally its just crap.

about 20 hours ago

Tue Aug 04 21:00:08 +0000 2009

rfrontuto: I take a look at the trending topics every so often, but I don't use them on a regular basis.

about 18 hours ago

Tue Aug 04 23:22:16 +0000 2009

This begs the question: “How can we easily get value out of Twitter’s data?” It’s hard to say now that Twitter has officially become a spam platform. I’m looking for new and innovative ways to quickly find nuggets of info from Twitter. Each time, I’m led back to FriendFeed.

Yes, you knew it was coming.

It’s no secret that tweets supply a great deal of FriendFeed’s potent database. I’ve found that FriendFeed’s real-time search, plus the community, provide a great way to quickly get value out of Twitter’s data:

The above search considers all tweets in FriendFeed and only shows those which have the word “disagree” in the comments. It’s a juicy search I set the like and comment thresholds to 2, but that’s easily adjustable.

Now, you might be thinking “You have to be on FriendFeed in order for your tweets to be considered“. This is true, but I’d rather have a subset of Twitter’s database on FriendFeed, than Twitter’s full database with a lackluster search and spammy trending terms. The data is richer.

The downside of this? There is no date or language filtering. In some cases, you have to wade through languages you don’t know and sometimes older posts which you’ve already read. As you can see from the results, some of the results are older than desired. The point of Twitter trends (at least to me) is to get a snapshot of what’s happening now. So while I have a make-shift solution to get the valuable data from Twitter, it’s not a replacement for an effective trends search.

So what do you use? How do you get value out of Twitter’s data? Let me know. You can find me on Twitter as @Bwana.

FriendFeed Still Reigns As Conversation King

Bwana — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 14:12:09 +0000

Today, I found yet another reason why I prefer discussing tech topics on FriendFeed over another popular social site, Twitter.

FriendFeed’s search is a big reason why you should move your Twitter conversations there. The above example shows the value in retaining search data. Twitter search only goes back a few days (I don’t know how many exactly, but it’s not that much) while FriendFeed retains much more data.

If you find yourself in need of data retrieval, I hope your data resides on FriendFeed. So how do you take advantage of this? It’s actually quite simple. You simply post a new FriendFeed entry and “CC Twitter”.

This will broadcast your your new topic to all your Twitter followers, and invite them to join the conversation on FriendFeed with a link. Some people hate this because they have to click through and go to yet another web page. Part of me understands this frustration in this “right now, do it yesterday” atmosphere, but the payoff is tremendous. Not only do you get a rich, single threaded conversation out of the deal, but the contents will be searchable a year from now. You can’t say the same about Twitter.

Robert Scoble has championed this technique for quite some time and is getting a lot of ridicule from his massive Twitter follower list. I believe he has a valid point. Your data is lost on Twitter, it isn’t on FriendFeed. It’s that simple.

What do you think? Comment here or on FriendFeed and it’ll all show up

The Challenge Of The Realistic Real-Time Web

Bwana — Thu, 07 May 2009 05:19:41 +0000

Robert Scoble shared his desktop screens to give us a glimpse of how he consumes much of the information out there. It’s kind of scary:

Do you think you could follow that? A lot of people see that and are intimidated. I believe this is going to be obstacle that the “real-time web” is going to have to surpass. I’m glad that tools like FriendFeed are enabling us to search this massive amount of information for the stuff we care about. Read my post on how to use FriendFeed filters (now called “Saved Searches”) for more information.

Let’s just hope the “real-time” web is not faster than “realistic” time. At some point, it becomes overwhelming and a waste of time if not implemented properly. It’s going to be interesting to watch this whole thing grow. What do you think? Is this real-time web feasible?

Guest Host On TPN Weekly Episode 3

Bwana — Mon, 04 May 2009 05:13:43 +0000

This week, I’m the guest host on the brand new podcast from the Techpodcast network called TPN Weekly. If you’re into podcasts, you really should subscribe to our show over there. We’ll be sampling new hosts every week so you can get a new flavor. I think it’s an awesome idea because you’ll get fresh content from a fresh host.

On this week’s show, I do a “social media special“. I talk for 25 minutes about Twitter, Facebook, Rejaw and FriendFeed. Here’s a video of my live taping from Saturday:

Also, here is the information for the Podcast if you wish to listen via audio (and subscribe):

I’ll update you all via Twitter when I’ll be hosting again. Enjoy!

FriendFeed Filters Are The Star Of The Beta

Bwana — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 23:41:25 +0000

Yesterday, the team over at FriendFeed made a radical move to their popular website, friendfeed.com. They turned the website into a giant river of ever-flowing information. For those of us who are familiar with the term, “real-time web”, we saw this as a positive step towards it becoming a reality. I’ve already blogged about ways to truly harness the power of real-time FriendFeed, and this new beta emboldens my tips. While there is much controversy on the implementation of the feature, I found myself enthralled by something else they added: filters.

As many have realized, FriendFeed provides a rich source of information for all kinds of interests. Since it aggregates data from social services which originate from all over the web, there is little that you can’t find on FriendFeed. Now with filters, FriendFeed has empowered us to save powerful queries for later usage. While these filters are not real-time like other parts of the site, they will be eventually (and what a day that will be)

Here’s my video walkthrough of the FriendFeed beta:

What is a FriendFeed filter? My loose definition is that it’s a set of defined criteria configured by the user in order to obtain desired data from FriendFeed. The criteria looks like the following:

Name – This is the desired name of the FriendFeed Filter
Include entries from – This is the source of the data you wish filter. The choices are all friendFeed users, your friend and group subscriptions, a specific pre-defined friendfeed list of friends/groups, and names of friendfeed users and groups.
Keyword/quality filters – This is the filter criteria of the source data. There are several fields to utilize, but it should be noted that the “contain the words” field can utilize any FriendFeed search query string. I’ll explain later.

I found myself playing with these filters for most of the day yesterday and had a blast. I want to share with you some of the more powerful ones, but before I do, I will tell you the best way to create new filters. The basic steps are fairly straight forward:

Perform a search on the beta FriendFeed site – First, go here: http://beta.friendfeed.com/search/advanced and fill in the desired criteria. Perform the search and massage the search as needed. Some searches can be improved by updating the number of required comments and likes, so play with that a little bit.
Save the search as a filter – After a search is performed, you’ll notice a link that reads “make a filter”

Click the “make a filter” link
Update the filter name and adjust as needed – Change the filter name to something more descriptive than the default text. Click Save filter to commit the filter

This is a basic, yet powerful approach to creating filters. Once you become more advanced, you’ll recognize the search syntax and perform boolean operands. Here are some of my favorite FriendFeed searches that you can save as filters by using the technique above. I’ll start with the search string, explain what it means, and provide a hyperlink (note: most of these search ALL of FriendFeed:

Name: The FriendFeed Team

Search String: comments:5 likes:5 from:tudor, bgolub, ana, gburd, kfury, jim, casey, sanjeev, paul, bret, dhsiao

Meaning: Searches for all entries by the FriendFeed development team with at least 5 comments and 5 likes

Link: Click here to use this FriendFeed Search
Name: Hot Comments

Search String: service:(intensedebate) OR service:(backtype) OR service:(disqus) comments:1 likes:5

Meaning: Searches all blog commenting services for entries with at least 1 comment and 5 likes

Link: Click here to use this FriendFeed Search
Name: Hot FriendFeed Posts

Search String: service:(friendfeed) comments:50 likes:30

Meaning: Searches all native FriendFeed posts for entries with at least 50 comments and 30 likes

Link: Click here to use this FriendFeed Search
Name: Hot Web Links

Search String: service:(twine) OR service:(stumbleupon) OR service:(misterwong) OR service:(magnolia) OR service:(furl) OR service:(delicious) OR service:(diigo) comments:5 likes:10

Meaning: Searches social bookmarking services for entries with at least 5 comments and 10 likes

Link: Click here to use this FriendFeed Search
Name: Hot Photos

Search String: service:(smugmug) OR service:(flickr) OR service:(fotolog) OR service:(photobucket) OR service:(zooomr) OR service:(picasa) comments:5 likes:10

Meaning: Searches photo services for entries with at least 5 comments and 10 likes

Link: Click here to use this FriendFeed Search
Name: Thomas Hawk’s Liked Photos

Search String: service:(flickr) OR service:(smugmug) OR service:(fotolog) OR service:(photobucket) OR service:(picasa) OR service:(zooomr) like:thomashawk

Meaning: Searches for photo entries liked by Thomas Hawk

Link: Click here to use this FriendFeed Search
Name: Hot Videos

Search String: service:(youtube) OR service:(vimeo) OR service:(12seconds) OR service:(dailymotion) OR service:(joost) comments:5 likes:10

Meaning: Searches for popular videos with at least 5 comments and 10 likes

Link: Click here to use this FriendFeed Search

You get the idea? You can get very creative with these filters. I highly recommend you also review the advanced search operators as it will allow you to venture further:

If you have any questions relative to the FriendFeed beta, I recommend checking out their beta FAQ. Of course, you’ll find me on FriendFeed at http://friendfeed.com/bwana.

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.

Socialmedian Improves User Experience With Filters

Bwana — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 16:39:18 +0000

The folks over at Socialmedian have listened to their users and have improved their user experience by implementing news filters:

Users can now filter news by the following services: Twitter, Blogs, Google Reader, Youtube, Flickr, Digg, and FriendFeed. To filter a service, simply click the desired service icon, and it will toggle it grey. If you wish to filter out all the above services, simply click the “s|m” icon. Users can also filter news by popularity. Socialmedian’s popularity filters are very similar to FriendFeed‘s “Best of” feature which quickly shows you the best posts of the day or week.

These updates are a welcomed change especially for seasoned Socialmedian users who have established many networks and have grown their newsmaker database. New users will also be happy to see only the most popular stories for the week or the day. Combined with the new s|m Today page, these new filters propel Socialmedian into a fantastic way to see the best of the best, user filtered news from the web.

Are you new to Socialmedian? Check out my tutorial on the basics and how to get started and follow me on Socialmedian.

Stickrz.info – From Tweet To Reality

Bwana — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 21:05:11 +0000

Earlier today, I tweeted the following:

I wanted to find a site that gives me information about cool and preferably free stickers on the internet. If you search for “free stickers” on Google, be prepared to wade through a sea of spam. Rather than wait for someone to do it, I decided to spend $0.99 at Godaddy.com and build it myself.

Behold: Stickrz.info

Stickrz.info is now a reality. I’ve used some of my social media snazzle, and setup a FriendFeed room and a Twitter account. I’ve also embedded a live version of the FriendFeed room on the frontpage. This site is primarily user driven. I’m looking to solicit user submissions of great sticker offers and use positive word of mouth as a quality filter. While this may decrease the number of submissions, it will definitely increase the quality which I believe is more important.

I love stickers and I’ve quickly created a basic site to aggregate information about them. Utilizing WordPress, Twitter, and FriendFeed, I believe this will be a fun project.

More stickers please!!

Tweetree’s Value Is Embedded Media

Bwana — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 15:56:13 +0000

I’ll admit, when I first saw Robert Scoble‘s Tweet on FriendFeed about Tweetree, I was immediately skeptical. Robert posted that it was a decent app, but not going to replace TweetDeck for him. I saw the name, and I thought: “Great, another Twitter application that’s going to try to hack conversation context“. You may recall, I wrote about Quotably back in March 2008, and their attempt to capture Twitter conversations in a nice format.

I went over to tweetree.com and saw threaded conversations which met my expectations, but I also saw something else:

Embedded media.

Dave Winer has been begging Twitter to do something like this for quite some time. Dave has went on record to state Tweetree is on the right track:

This is brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant. And exactly what I asked for, which of course makes me happy!!

These guys are brilliant. Great stuff. They’ll be rich next week so be nice to them

We’ve seen threaded Twitter before. Heck, even Twitter search has a “Show conversation” link which tries to give the complete conversation context. What we haven’t seen (or at least I haven’t seen) on Twitter is embedded media.

Tweetree supports the following:

Youtube
Flickr
TwitPic
FriendFeed (Yup!)
Seesmic
Qik
Lala
Blip.fm
xkcd

So if you link to any of the above, Tweetree shows you the associated media right on the website. If you would like to see examples, just search for the service in Tweetree’s search box.

Now I know we saw very similar functionality in Pownce (may it rest in peace), Rejaw, Plurk, and others, but this is Twitter. The big kahuna. The main squeeze. That’s the reason why it’s a big deal. I’ve been using Tweetree for less than a day, and what keeps me coming back is the embedded media.

I’ll be following this one closely. You can check out my timeline on Tweetree at http://tweetree.com/bwana.

*** UPDATE: I’ve asked FriendFeed what they think is more valuable at Tweetree. Join the conversation here.

*** UPDATE 2 I’ve performed a quick walkthrough of the interface in this video:

What Is Your Favorite Video Game Of All Time?

Bwana — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 20:18:03 +0000

It’s like the hardest question one could ask a gamer. I’ve been asked this so many times by my viewers and I’ve always had difficulty answering it. So, instead of trying to do it on my own, I solicited my FriendFeed and Twitter followers to see what they thought. It turns out, I’m not the only one who has difficulty narrowing it down:

Twitter:

dunnfann @Bwana madden xbox360

pcmacsmackdown @Bwana mine would be Unreall tournament 3

otherbayarea @Bwana resident evil 4 ftw

MikeNally @Bwana Pole Position (old school baby)

pcubed @Bwana Final Fantasy VII. No question.

GvLPunisher @Bwana that’s a tough one but I would have to say military madness for the TG16.

Beonarri @Bwana Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES)

Dualbo @Bwana Abe’s Oddysee- PS1 though the DS lite is my top pick for best console/platform.

ultimatejosh @Bwana Deus Ex for PC

MichaelMidnight @Bwana favorite video game of all time: SNES’s (and just currently released on the DS) Chrono Trigger!

kenGe @Bwana Super Mario Bros 3 for NES

therealchris @bwana i think descent 2 was the best in its time & still a great game

terpkristin @Bwana Of course, it really is Final Fantasy VI, as it was in Japan

terpkristin @Bwana Tough question! Final Fantasy III on the SNES was what really drew me into JRPG’s, and one I still go back to, so that’s my vote.

HeyEddie @Bwana Mario! What else?

fiveofeight @Bwana Half Life 2 for the PC

kyleve @bwana Super Mario Galaxy

FriendFeed:

DS Lite: Animal Crossing (in Japanese). Wait – SNES: The Legend of Zelda. No – PS: Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo. Hold on – Gameboy: Metroid II. Nono, Nintendo: Super Mario Brothers II… wait Mario Kart… Mortal Kombat II… Bwana, please don’t make me choose. My head hurts. :\ – Mona N.

GTA – Ali.Atrvash

Sonic / Puzzle Bobble / Peggle / Bewjeled 2 / Quake 3 Arena / Puzzle Quest / CoD 2 / Max Payne / Need For Speed Hot Pursuit – Underground – Milan Luca aka Vibes

Donkey Kong, arcade version. Many quarters died in the making of my fascination of that game. I’d buy a standing version and keep it in my house if I had room for it. – Derrick

I remember how much I loved the Atari game Adventure- it was one of the first games I ever played. But my daughter and I have been playing a lot of Cooking Mama so I’ll go with that because it makes her happy. – Abby Martin

Civilization – I’ve lost track of how many evenings “disappeared” to that game – Mike Taylor

Here’s a few or mine: Arcade – Missile Command | PC – Quake Series, Battlefield Series, Half-Life Series | Atari 8-bit – Spelunker, Jumpman, Lode Runner | Atari ST – Midimaze, Dungeon Master, Stunt Car Racer, Populous | C-64 – Below the Root | Atari 2600 – Breakout | Playstation 3 – FIFA, Motor Storm | Wii – Sports, Fit – Mark Krynsky

The Legend of Zelda, Punchout, Metroid, Final Fantasy, all on NES. I couldn’t think of any others until Is aw Mona mention Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo on the Playstation, I have that sitting on my desk I’ve played it so recently! – Joe Pierce

(Nintendo) Mario Bros., Zelda, Mario Kart (PC) Half-Life Series (XBox) Halo Series (GameBoy/DS) Tetris – Jeffrey Blais

Ultima VII & Ultima VII Part 2. – Akiva Moskovitz

Super Tecmo Bowl, Ultima I-IV, Knockout (? – game with Glass Joe as the first boxer), – Amani

Call of Duty – World at War – iCombine

Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri. – Mark Trapp

Final Fantasy II (The US Version) – Matt M.

Deus Ex or Portal – Richard Bradshaw

Old school, but Artillery/Scorched Earth and variants http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A… – Micah Wittman

Final Fantasy VII and Super Mario Brothers. – Jason Huebel

Starcraft & Fallout (1) – Squirrel Girl

Animal Crossing on the DS and any Burnout on the 360. – Michelle Martinez

Mario Kart. – Steven Perez

Bwana, if I have to I could narrow it down to 1 for each platform but it will take me all afternoon to decide based on a thorough process of elimination which I have yet to devise so please don’t make me do it. - Mark Krynsky

Hands down…Mario Kart…loved it as a child & still love it now. A close second would be The Sims. I wasted a few straight months of my life before reentering the real world. – Jennifer Van Grove

I’d have to go with 007 Golden Eye for N64 =) – John

Final Fantasy 12, Descent, Myst. – tehKenny

Ico – Robert Haas

Ocarina of time – N64 – Dominic Dale

god of war, gta san andreas, nintendo kung fu, megaman – Cardeen Martinez

Our family spent many hours with Lego Star Wars The Complete Saga on the Wii but I liked it more on the PSP. It went everywhere I went. – ZenGiraffe

Can’t pick one but Super Mario Kart (SNES), Final Fantasy VI (SNES), Final Fantasy VII (PSOne), Super Metroid (SNES), Grand Theft Auto San Andreas (PS2) and Street Fighter II Turbo Hyper Fighting (Arcade) are up there. – Martin Bryant

C64 – Wasteland – Nick

Hmm…tie between Final Fantasy VII and Gran Turismo… – Alex Scoble

Too many categories. There’s no way to pin down even just a few. KaBoom, World of Warcraft, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Ms. Pacman, Galaga, Lode Runner, Donkey Kong Jr, Archon, Starcraft, Ultima III, Super Mario Bros. 3, Grand Theft Auto 3, Scramble, Choplifter, Qix, Rally X, Tetris, Tempest, Military Madness. Included old stand-ups as a platform since their all playable now through emulation. I’m probably missing dozens of others. In every case, i’m talking about originals, not remakes. – ·[▪_▪]·

Grim Fandango – invariant

Ocarina of Time on the N64 – Michael Perschbacher

Phantasy Star for the SEGA Master System. – Percival Carti3r

WoW, starcraft, CounterStrike – Alan Le

I have two…1. 007 Golden Eye for the N64 and 2. Diablo 2 for the PC – Rob

1. The Legend of Zelda (NES), 2. Metroid (NES), 3. Halo (XBox), 4. Zelda: The Ocarina of Time (N64), Grand Theft Auto III, 6. 007: Goldeneye (N64). Those are my personal favorites. I remember just having a lot of fun and enjoying playing these games more than others. There are probably other games that I may like as well that I have not played yet. It’s hard to beat Nintendo for plain old fun in the game play. – Rolf Schewe

Ah, man… How could I have forgotten this: World of Warcraft. I’ve been playing it for a couple of years now. - Jason Huebel

Splinter Cell Chaos Theory (Xbox), The Legend of Zelda The Windwaker (GameCube), Half-Life 2 (PC), The Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion (Xbox360) just to name a few. – dbz

Metroid – NES. Wizards and Warriors and Zelda get honorable mention. – ChangeForge | Ken Stewart

Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda. – David Cook

We <3 Katamari, ps2. SMB3, nes. Zelda Ocarina of Time, n64. - Kamilah Gill

Chrono Trigger (SNES) – John Long

As you can see, these results indicate a high level of uncertainty, but I’ve tallied the responses and declared the top response is Mario Kart.

Results sorted by number of users and top 10 graphed

This non-scientific method of determining the best video game of all time is surprisingly close to other sites. I believe The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remains the highest rated game of all time, and it’s near the top of our list.

So what about you, Bwana? What is your favorite video game of all time?

Well gather around children, and let me break it down for you. I, too, have trouble narrowing it down to one single game, so I’ll list my top 5 based on number of hours enjoyed, and replay counts. Then, I’ll attempt to pick a winner.

Super Mario Brothers (NES)
RC Pro Am (NES)
Dune II (PC)
Starcraft (PC)
Street Fighter II: Turbo (SNES)

Ok, now that my brain hurts, I might as well continue this non-scientific method of determining my favorite. I think of the top 5 listed, I would say my favorite would be Super Mario Brothers (NES). This is a game that I enjoyed both at the arcade and on my Nintendo at home. This was the one game I could finish with my eyes closed and to this day, I enjoy playing it. It’s such a hard task to pick one favorite, but that’s a testament to the many, many wonderful game titles we’ve all been exposed to for the past 30 years.

So what’s your favorite video game of all time? If you didn’t respond via Twitter or FriendFeed, let me know in the comments.

My Top 10 Websites of 2008

Bwana — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 23:07:30 +0000

It’s coming to the end of 2008, and along with the holidays, vacation, shopping, we also tend to find a lot of “best of 2008″ tv shows, specials, and even blog posts. I’d rather not go into why I’m doing this, I just find that it’s a fun activity. Last year, I did a video on my top 5 console games of 2007. It was met with a potpourri of comments that mostly disagreed with my choices. I didn’t care obviously, but I found that it’s something people like to be a part of. So, I’m going to do a few of these this year. The first, is my top websites of 2008. These sites will range all over the place, but I’ve found these (web) sites to be my best of the best for 2008. Let’s count it down.

Posterous – Blogs are commonplace now and there are so many platforms out there, that it’s hard to really decide on one. When one does decide, there is usually a fairly steep learning curve for new users. Posterous is one of those sites that I just like. I don’t know if it’s because of the ease of use (no sign-up blogging is very cool), or if it’s the look and feel, but I just like it. I’ve been using it as a ramble blog that I can post to from my iPhone (via email). Very handy for when something interesting pops in my head and I just want a quick post. There are lots of other features that make it awesome, but this is why I like it
Socialmedian – Socialmedian shocked me when I found news on it that I didn’t find anywhere else. Usually, there is a huge amount of overlap on the internet and if you find a news aggregation site, you’ll notice some stories you’ve seen elsewhere. This was not the case with Socialmedian as I found a new set of users and with it, a fresh set of news. I did a video about Socialmedian being a refreshing take on news aggregation.
Ustream.TV – Live streaming really boomed in 2008 and sites like Ustream.TV hit the mainstream during the 2008 elections. Barack Obama and John McCain both had live streams on ustream.tv that brought in thousands of simultaneous users. Ustream has always been my favorite live streaming site for their feature set and community. Ustream has not always been the most stable of platforms, but I’ve looked past this shortcoming and enjoyed the site nonetheless. I utilize Ustream.TV for my live streaming show, Bwana.TV Live, where I live stream the recording of my videos as well as my audio podcast.
Youtube – What can I say? Youtube is the biggest and baddest video sharing community on the web. If it’s a popular video on the internets, there’s a big chance that it’s on Youtube. There are tons of videos to explore and you can waste hours there if you’re not careful. I host my Bwana.TV videos on Youtube and through their partner service, I have generated enough adsense to pay for my hosting and other costs. Not only is it fun, but if you’re serious, you can make some serious cash through Youtube.
Twitter – Twitter is the most intriguing site of them all. To say I have a love/hate relationship with Twitter would be an understatement. Here’s a site that I’ve gotten so much value and information from that frustrates me to no end. There’s so much potential with Twitter that it’s impossible to put into words. Much of the web is starting to recognize the power and Twitter is definitely picking up steam. You may recall, I was one of the organizers of a Twitter boycott called the “Twit-Out” which was aimed at taking a day off from Twitter to discuss all the issues and concerns we had with it. We didn’t expect Twitter to make any noticeable changes due to this event, but we got some great discussions out of it, and it gave us time to reflect on why we love/hate Twitter so much. Once Twitter balked on the IM/Track feature, I left the service for a few months out of frustration, but decided to return once I accepted the fact that IM and Track were essentially dead. Since then, I’ve revamped the way I use Twitter and am finding TweetDeck to be an acceptable experience (but no where near what I had with IM/Track). Follow @Bwana at Twitter to see my rants.
FriendFeed – FriendFeed is where it’s at. If you’re not signed up for FriendFeed, then I urge you to join today. Most would call FriendFeed an aggregator with community discussion capability, but I would call it a community discussion platform that has aggregation capability. I find that the best discussions take place on FriendFeed, not only because of the people, but because of the technology. The way the site is built, it encourages you to comment. It doesn’t load a separate page, or load a popup window, but simply expands a nice little box for you to ramble your thoughts in. I love it. The other features add to this, but I believe this is why FriendFeed stuck with me. You can follow me at http://friendfeed.com/bwana
Gmail (Google Apps Mail) – Webmail has been popular since the 90s, but personally, I had been going back and forth between desktop clients (such as Apple’s Mail.app) and using the web interfaces. I signed up for Google Apps For Your Domain (GAFYD) and pointed my bwana.org domain to it to use for email. This gives me Gmail’s interface with my own domain for no cost at all. Since I’ve mastered (somewhat) Gmail’s keyboard shortcuts, I can tear through hundreds of emails in a matter of minutes. In 2008, Gmail was definitely a valuable site for me.
Hulu – I’ll admit, I was skeptical at first. I didn’t believe Hulu would take off. I saw it as Universal’s tantrum against Apple and iTunes. Needless to say, I was very very wrong about Hulu. Hulu started small, but eventually grew to the one stop shop for premium online video. If there’s a TV show you like and you’ve missed an episode, your first reaction would be to check if Hulu has it. I’ve watched House, Terminator (the new series), and The Office solely on Hulu. These are shows I used to record on my DVR, but I’ve since moved to Hulu for that content. The experience is great, the commericals are tolerable, and the quality is consistent. If you’re not a part of Hulu, you need to become a part of it today.
Google (Search) – It’s now a verb. To Google something means you are searching the internet for something. It’s become part of our vocabulary. In 2008, Google solidified it’s dominance as the search engine of choice. All other search engines are a distant second to the almighty Google. It’s amazing that 10 years ago, this site was barely off the ground and today’s it #1. When someone asks me a question about tech, the first thought that comes to my mind is “Did you google it yet?”. There’s even a site called “Here, let me google that for you“. You can type in a simple question and it, *gasp*, searches Google for that question. It literally shows an animation of the question being typed in Google, and the search button clicked. It’s a little bit harsh, but it makes a valid point. If there’s something out on the internet that you’re searching for, Google is a great place to start looking.
Google Reader – My number 1 site for 2008 is definitely Google Reader. This is my information hub. This where everything comes in and I’m able to digest it and possibly share it. I use it on my mobile phone (iPhone) and on all my computers, no matter the operating system. Google added features to Reader that allow you to view your contacts shared items. When my friends share news from Google Reader, I can see them in my view. Google also added notes so that I can add my own commentary to shared items to help spark conversation. These notes can be imported into other sites that I love such as Socialmedian and FriendFeed. RSS is a wonderful thing and as I discover new sites on the web, I can syndicate them all in one place, and that one place is Google Reader. It is definitely my most valuable player in 2008.

Honorable mentions: Feedly, Remember the Milk, Toluu, Strands

What were your top sites this year?

FFHolic Provides The Best Of FriendFeed

Bwana — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 18:16:07 +0000

The popular online discussion/aggregation service FriendFeed has a great deal of fans who swear by the service. Most of these fans have found the secret sauce in the sea of updates, duplicates, and as some would say, “noise”. This is great and everything, but it’s not an easy process to learn how to utilize the tools FriendFeed provides to see the things you want. I’ve posted a couple of articles on how to best filter the massive fire hose of information, but it’s definitely not for everyone. What about those who just want to peruse FriendFeed to see what the most popular entries are? FriendFeed added a feature a few months ago which shows the “best of” FriendFeed by day, week and month. This is great if you want to be limited to your social circle, but what about the rest of FriendFeed?

This is where a great service called FFHolic comes in and saves the day. FFHolic groks all of FriendFeed and displays the most popular stories grouped in many ways. FFHolic shows you:

Most discussed entries
Most liked entries
Most commented entries
Most popular users and rooms
Most active users and rooms

These are just some of the ones to start with. You can also show some of these entries by type such as videos, photos, and music. It doesn’t stop there. FFHolic provides a rich set of tools to get the best from FriendFeed. There’s the FFHolic toolbar which puts all of the site right in your Firefox browser:

FFHolic also provides widgets to embed on your own website. These widgets give you the option of showing your “best of” information or all of FriendFeed.

Finally, FFHolic has RSS feeds for all of its data so you can subscribe to your favorite criteria. If you use tools like Google Reader, Bloglines, Netvibes, iGoogle, or My Yahoo, then this may be a good option for you.

For new users of FriendFeed, FFHolic provides a fantastic springboard to see the best that FriendFeed has to offer. It encourages those who are squeamish about filtering the massive amount of information FriendFeed provides, to continue to use FriendFeed to fit their needs. If you’re on FriendFeed and enjoy FFHolic, join the FFHolic FriendFeed room to discuss it and provide feedback.

See you on FriendFeed.

7 Ways To Harness The Power Of Real-time FriendFeed

Bwana — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 20:00:45 +0000

If you follow me, you know I’m a sucker for real-time communication technology such as IRC, IM/Jabber, AJAX. Twitter recently made me happy with their real-time election coverage over at election.twitter.com. Real-time is great for live events such as political debates, apple keynotes, or even watching a TV show or sports event. Yesterday, FriendFeed announced a similar feature for their service.

As you might expect, it shows real-time updates of FriendFeed pages that we had to manually refresh in the past. It not only shows aggregated items such as FriendFeed posts, Twitter posts, RSS imports, and Google Reader shared items, but it displays comments on those items as well. FriendFeed was smart enough to allow you to join the discussion right within the thick of things. There is a comment and “like” link below each post, and “comment” links below comments.

FriendFeed took it a step further and allows one to embed the real-time conversation anywhere. (from public-rooms) This is a huge value-add in my opinion, not only because no one else offers it, but it gives an incredible amount of flexibility for its usage. Now, let me suggest some ways to utilize this new feature:

Use FriendFeed lists. I can’t emphasize this point enough. Without FriendFeed lists, this feature would be fairly useless. While it could be useful for some FriendFeed rooms, the lists feature provides an incredible amount of flexibility on what to display. For example, I could create an “A-listers” list which consists of the heavy news makers on FriendFeed. Once you have these lists, I could view the real-time updates in one spot. I could also fashion lists to follow certain interesting people and view their updates in real-time.
Consolidate similar FriendFeed Rooms into a FriendFeed list. The rooms feature has been getting mixed reactions from the social community, but I believe there is a huge value in them. By consolidating similar rooms , you are given a one-stop shop to view their real-time updates. Here’s a use case: We can find Social media rooms from 500 FriendFeed Rooms list. At first glance there is the Social Media room, Social Computing Strategist room, and the Social Media Enthusiasts room. We would join all those rooms, create a list called “Social Media rooms”, and then view their real-time updates. That is just one example, I’m quite sure there are a lot more.
Create custom rooms for your blog. FriendFeed gives you the option to embed a public room’s live feed on your blog. If you’ve ever considered setting up a forum for your website, this is a great feature to have. In my previous post about utilizing FriendFeed rooms, I talked about using rooms for discussion forums or live-blogging. With real-time updates, you can now create these rooms, and instantly have the power to embed a live version of it on your blog.

Use the Mini-window. This feature is useful for those of us who multi-task and like to have dedicated windows for streaming news. Also, if you’re a Fluid.app user for Mac (see my video), or use another Site Specific Browser (SSB), this new feature is perfect for dedicated apps and widgets. Also, don’t be afraid to open multiple mini-windows!
Use the “Pause updates” feature. If you’re already addicted to FriendFeed, then you know it can really be a distraction. Now with real-time updates, we all fear our productivity will fall into the abyss. To alleviate this situation, I highly recommend using the “Pause updates” feature to halt the flow of FriendFeed goodness, so you can get your work done. Part of the power of this feature, is not to overuse it, and pausing the updates is one way to do that. Also, if things are moving too fast, don’t be afraid to pause!
Participate! Participate! Participate! FriendFeed makes it dead simple to comment or like entries as they flow. Don’t be afraid to join in a discussion! Use the like button for those entries you like. If you smile at an entry, like it! If you contribute more than one or two comments to a post, like it! The value of real-time update increases with participation.
Manage the noise. If you find the updates are too fast and overwhelming, utilize and tweak FriendFeed lists to decrease the amount of volume. Don’t be afraid to create dedicated lists just for real-time updates. Heck, I’ve created a list just for Robert Scoble’s posts since they can really overwhelm a stream!

These are just some of the ways you can harness the power of this cool new feature from FriendFeed. Remember, lists are key, leverage rooms, and manage the noise up front. See you on FriendFeed.

Socialmedian Provides A Refreshing Take On News Aggregation

Bwana — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 23:21:40 +0000

Today, I made my fourth attempt to understand and utilize the new social network, Socialmedian. I’ve tried in the past with failed results. Why? I believe it may be due to laziness and also some social media burnout that I’m fighting through. Thankfully, this time around, I was able to dig deep and find some cool features. Check out my walkthrough video:

Click To Play

Socialmedian gives you the tools to effectively track and discover people who share your interests. They’ve taken some of the most powerful features of popular sites like Digg, FriendFeed, and Twitter and given us all the good stuff while leaving out the bad. For example, FriendFeed has a nifty “like” system, where you can elevate stories and let your friends know that you really enjoyed it. The word “like” presents a stumbling block if the story is tragic or full of hatred and violence. Socialmedian, took this concept and added a feature called “Mood” where you can state whether you like OR dislike a story, but still elevate it for your friends while letting them know how you feel about it.

Discovery is easy with Socialmedian through the “networks” feature. I recommend new users get started by tapping into the established networks on Socialmedian. Once you’ve discovered a network that interests you (there’s a high chance you will), then participate. Comment, add moods, use sharing mechanisms, and find new people to follow. This is the magical formula of Socialmedian. It’s not obvious by a long shot (hey, it took me four tries), but now that I know the ties with Google Reader, Twitter, and Facebook, it’s easier to contribute and participate in discussion.

If you choose to use Socialmedian, follow me at http://www.socialmedian.com/bwana