Behind the Times - Latest Comments in Why Identi.ca is important

Re: Why Identi.ca is important

Edd Dumbill — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 13:36:46 -0000

There's now a Belorussian translation of this article, provided by Ucallweconn. Tools like identi.ca are important to fight state censorship.

Re: Why Identi.ca is important

of mesothelioma — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 16:09:44 -0000

You write very interestingly. I think Google is becoming very smart. It can sense which website has interesting posts.

Re: Why Identi.ca is important

buy youtube views — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 02:04:18 -0000

I sometimes wonder why TinyURL/snurl/whoever hasn’t used their data to give us indices of the most social URLs that day, etc. It’s the kind of thing O’Reilly has been looking for for ages.part of the identi.ca conglomerate is an open url shortener, http://ur1.ca which plans to make that data available… so one hopes that it’ll go in the direction you suggest.

Re: Why Identi.ca is important

rpcutts — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 16:31:35 -0000

Couldn't have said it better. All the reasons anyone could ever need are right here.
Most of all I've been amazed at the pace of development. Evan is a machine.

Re: Why Identi.ca is important

jansegers — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:16:35 -0000

http://identi.ca is nice, but quite basic.

I would rather use http://meemi.com (or http://khaces.com ) to replace the void of twitter.

Or http://kwippy.com (but this one is still in invite only modus).

http://twoorl.com and http://yonkly.com are two other possibilities...

Pieter Jansegers
http://microblogs.ning.com

Re: Why Identi.ca is important

gwalter — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 08:57:27 -0000

Yes I do - I sent you an invite last night.

Re: Why Identi.ca is important

tjgillies — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 22:21:46 -0000

do you have gmail/jabber?

Re: Why Identi.ca is important

Pete Prodoehl — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:23:20 -0000

Well said, I am in complete agreement.

Re: Why Identi.ca is important

exador23 — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 18:59:04 -0000

sorry for the delay in getting back to you. thanks! egg-chair philosopher sums it up best (remember those?) here's an out-of-date bio: http://ur1.ca/58

out of date because I no longer live in the Argosy, and the landscaping biz has been a little sporadic. pattern literacy is a permaculture concept http://patternliteracy.com/...

where are you located?

Re: Why Identi.ca is important

Andy C — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 15:41:39 -0000

Great post, Edd. At last someone who sees beyond the Twitter clone headline.

I now have a local Laconica install running on Bluehost which would have been slightly difficult with Twitter/Jaiku/Pownce.

Yes - it needs more functionality but it's OpenSource so 'patches welcome' :-)

Yes - it will hit teething problems but it is a really interesting development.

Re: Why Identi.ca is important

exador23 — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 20:37:49 -0000

Amen Edd. Check out a major difference between Twitter & Identi.ca: http://twitpic.com/348r/full

This is the kind of transparency we've ~Begged for~... begging that resulted in ~blogs~ of meaningless talk about load balancers and database failures. That's politician-speak. Here's a man who stayed up all night tweaking things, responding to questions, and letting everyone know what he was doing.... You know, the PURPOSE of micro-blogging.

"What are you doing?" It's the question that lured me to Twitter. Ironically it's the question we've been asking of Twitter for aeons. and we're still waiting for an answer. To me, it looks like @evan has an answer, and has given you the software to create your own answer if you don't like his.

@evan makes full use of the service he's created and ~gifted~ to the world through Open Source. Take a look at @Ev's "with others" Twitter timeline http://twitter.com/ev *** and compare it to @evan's http://hewitt.controlezvous.... Up to date information about what he's doing! sometimes even why, and what to expect. That's decidedly NOT "just like twitter" - that's working towards "winning" by allowing every user to contribute and be a part of a collective WIN.

My money is on ~social~ venture capital investments in identi.ca FTW.
Money alone isn't going to unbeach a bloated fail whale.

peace,
http://identi.ca/exador23

The journey is more important than the destination - it's where the course corrections happen.

***Oh right, they took that feature away - I guess insight into what kinds of information a person is swimming in is of no use. Who would want to know that before deciding to follow? Who would find "with others" a great way to discover new people to add to your social network? Who would want to see what might have triggered that strange post from a friend or see the full context of a conversation?

Re: Why Identi.ca is important

Hex — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 09:02:42 -0000

That's called making a stand for one believes in. You're entitled not to agree with it, and subsequently not use the service. But you're not entitled to complain about it being "wrong". Using someone else's (free) service is a privilege, granted by them to you - not a right. If you don't like how they choose to operate, go elsewhere.

Re: Why Identi.ca is important

Luc — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 03:05:07 -0000

Yeah I'm enjoying identi.ca and look forward to seeing how it develops! People seem to be finding it useful enough to sign up that's for sure! I can't believe how many people are talking about it already. We've been quick to add it to the list of networks we support on numixi.com after seeing its popularity soar so quickly!

Re: Why Identi.ca is important

Hex — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 02:57:17 -0000

(duplicate comment removed)

Re: Why Identi.ca is important

Yule Heibel — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 02:51:27 -0000

That's a brilliant summing up... Really. I think you limned the scene quite vividly. So who the hell are you, exador23? "Hippy Steve"? "...pattern literate human being"? I'm totally intrigued!

Re: Why Identi.ca is important

Leo — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:16:19 -0000

[...]Si tratta dell’articolo Why Identi.ca is important di Edd, che ha spiegato il perché secondo lui Identi.ca è un servizio “degno di nota”. Ve ne consiglio una lettura, è davvero interessante.[...]

Re: Why Identi.ca is important

Edd Dumbill — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:58:28 -0000

Sorry, that's just not helpful. Take a look at what I wrote, what it means. Identi.ca's slow right now because a one-man company is funding and scaling EC2 instances from his own pocket, and going without sleep to do it since a bunch of Twitter-refugees jumped on the site over the last 24 hours.

Re: Why Identi.ca is important

blue — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:55:19 -0000

It's failing just like Twitter.

Re: Why Identi.ca is important

Edd Dumbill — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:19:55 -0000

Try again a bit later. The attention spike has meant Evan's moving servers around, with some DNS snags in the process.

Re: Why Identi.ca is important

Avery — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:18:31 -0000

"Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at identi.ca."

Well, that was fun while it lasted.

Re: Why Identi.ca is important

Edd Dumbill — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:12:28 -0000

Seems to me it's the same principle as using GPL software. In which case, we may remain ideologically irreconcilable.

Also, see the bug list. There's enlightening explanation at http://greyowl.controlezvou...

Re: Why Identi.ca is important

rabble — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:07:23 -0000

The CC license is not optional. If you refuse to click the release all of my tweets under a cc license the system refuses to give you an account. That's such the wrong way to go about things i'm not sure where to start.

Re: Why Identi.ca is important

exador23 — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:02:05 -0000

I actually think micro-blogging ~is~ revolutionary. It is a brand new "sixth sense" of sorts.

Each of us sees/feels/experiences a small piece of the world, accompanied in most people by a robust internal chatter. It is that internal chatter that forms the basis of our daily decisions.

Micro-blogging connects all these little sensed pieces of experience in near real-time. The important elements of our internal dialogue "bubble up" as posts, and give a sense of the world as each of us experiences it. Yes, much of it is inane, just as much of our internal dialogue is. But it gives us a human sense of others and their problems. I follow a conservative representative, progressive feminine bloggers, conspiracy nuts, a farmer in Iowa, and people in India, Australia, the Netherlands... I could go on. My world is richer for it, but more importantly, tolerance, understanding, & even compassion for those ~thought~ to be different is growing (if ever so subtly.)

Most of the time, this idle chatter is about simple, perhaps unimportant things, and it's constrained to a relatively small network. But when something important (or really interesting) happens, it bubbles up, then ripples through networks so fast that if, say, a major earthquake happens or a journalist is arrested, the whole network can learn of it in a matter of minutes. How is that not revolutionary? When have we ever had a technology/protocol able to achieve that?

Prior technologies have allowed that only for limited numbers of people, and so we've needed to have representatives to fulfill the global sensing, communication, & decision-making tasks of the world. Governments will never go away, but now we have access to more information, more quickly than our leaders. And we can talk about that information ourselves, and large numbers of people can decide to do what they can to fix the problem or convince others to. (Just like with Open Source Software)

Like any tool, it comes down to how you wield it. So perhaps I should rephrase the thesis: Micro-blogging has the ~potential~ to be every bit as significant as the printing press (I'm sure it also had nay-sayers).

I'm hyper-excited about identi.ca because it brings a missing ingredient to the mix: Complaining gets you nowhere. If you aren't happy with something, FIX IT! Write a script like http://identi.ca/4fthawaiian. Host the Laconica software on your server. Write some code, or convince someone who can that it's for the greater good. And be patient. If YOU can't fix it today, why should THEY? Open Source + Micro-blogging = there is no more "they." It's you and I. If WE care about it and if WE have the skills, then WE can fix our problems quicker, better, and more humanely than any centralized hierarchy. That's why Twitter should be shaking in their boots.

Peace,
http://identi.ca/exador23
global identican

"The medium is the message" - Marshall McLuhan

Re: Why Identi.ca is important

gwalter — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 06:52:20 -0000

I don't experience much asymmetry in my Twitter network, as far as followers to followees goes. However, I do experience asymmetry in memes and occupations. While IRC has primarily been a techies venue, chatrooms and forums don't allow me, the user, control of who I "listen" to, and regular IM requires real-time collaboration and cannot scale the way a microblogging site can.

Sheegeek @corvida, from RWW, put it very well in a recent blog post. Twitter, and now identica, allow for conversation hopping. Given the range of personalities, memes, and career fields represented, it often feels like walking through the lobby of a large hotel lobby during a multi-disciplinary conference. Seeing old friends, catching up with colleagues, and making new friends along the way.

Here's hoping that identica can scale and that lobby grows.

Re: Why Identi.ca is important

gwalter — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 06:46:13 -0000

Nice post explaining the tech stuff, in an understandable way for non-techies, and helping me/us to see why identi.ca is a winner. I knew it was a winner from a user's standpoint. We like Twitter. We like the simplicity, the ease of use, and the community of Twitter. But the supposed Twitter-killers (eg; Jaiku, Pownce, Plurk <choke>, and others) added too many features to make it an effective real time community conversation.

As soon as I saw the interface - I said, "This is it. This is what I've been waiting for."

Good post and good job @evan!