Bwana.org » real-time

Twitter User Streams: Real-Time Is Back?

Bwana — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 19:24:20 +0000

At Twitter’s developer conference, Chirp, they announced a new (or old) feature that has caught my interest: User streams. This new API will allow developers to stream twitter activity to end-users in real-time. This was demonstrated at the conference using the web version of Twitter and TweetDeck. As activity occured in the web browser, TweetDeck updated automatically without polling or refreshing.

Seems cool right?

I thought so too since Twitter neutered real-time tracking a while ago and I thought it was back. Then they did a quick segment on the “firehose” and kind of glossed over it. This segment mentioned partners like Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo, but said nothing about how it could possibly tie to this User Stream API.

I got to wondering: Is the User Stream API using the firehose or some sub-set of it? Hmmmm.

At any rate, the technology does look good from the demo, but as with anything Twitter, I will wait and see the final implementation before making a judgement call. You can continue to watch Chirp live on http://justin.tv/twitterchirp.

Update: Added a video of the demonstration at Chirp for you all to enjoy!

RSS Cloud Is Exciting News

Bwana — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 12:59:58 +0000

I’ve always been a big fan of real-time information on the internet. Ever since the early days of IRC and Usenet, I would prefer IRC since the entire experience was live and real-time. Usenet and forums had the delay factor.

Yesterday, I read about the decision WordPress made to support RSS Cloud. What is RSS Cloud? It’s essentially modifications to the existing RSS specification to enable real-time publishing via RSS feeds. That’s my take on it anyways. That means if you use a supported RSS reader like Dave Winer’s River2 or Lazyfeed, you’ll receive a “instant” notification when a RSS cloud supported blog is updated.

This blog is supported by PubSubHubbub via Feedburner, but I’ve installed the WordPress RSS Cloud plugin anyways.

Why is all this exciting?

Those who claim RSS is dead don’t realize their newfound love for Twitter would be moot if it were not for RSS. Breaking news on Twitter comes from two main sources in my mind: websites and personal experience. For tech news, I doubt there is much personal experience for news unless there’s a conference or an event. Most juicy, 0-day news comes from websites. These websites often have a… wait for it… RSS feed. The race to post tech news first on Twitter usually stems from who can refresh their RSS reader the fastest.

This is exciting because RSS has been empowered to update us all in real-time and have less dependence on others reposting and retweeting stuff they found first. Tools like LazyFeed are leading the way in this charge and more will come thanks to open standards.

RSS is hardly dead, it’s becoming more useful.

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.

BingTweets Mashes Up Twitter Trends And Search Results

Bwana — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 17:37:05 +0000

Microsoft and Federated Media have partnered to create an interesting mashup called BingTweets. This site is in beta and offers a hands free experience on the latest trending topics on the web. After seeing this, I have a bit more respect for the efforts Microsoft is putting behind Bing and can only wonder how and if Google will respond.

BingTweets pulls in trends from Twitter and filters into categories such as “Popular Now,” “People,” “Places” and “Products” enabling easier navigation of the ever changing trends on the Web. You can also fire off a search on any topic of your choosing to see the related search results from Bing and Twitter discussion.

I have the site open in a dedicated tab right now and am happy with the choice of trends, tweets and search results. It has a great animation option which moves between topics on its own and gives you a taste of everything.

I like this.

It’s not perfect, but it gives us a glimpse of how real-time can intertwine with traditional search. I commend Microsoft and Federated Media on a bold approach towards the real-time web.

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?

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.

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.