Milkshakes for...

So is Twitter dying? Seems to be suffering from increasing twitter- spam attacks. For instance #applescript now has lots of porn "like" links.

All things Apple seem to be getting spammed, both in hashtags and in bot-follows.

Hashtags are a poor search solution by themselves and Twitter will just have to offer a better way to filter noise (a problem G+ has right now too).

I rarely search for anything on Twitter. If a person I'm currently following doesn't tweet or retweet it, I'm not going to see it.

Ditto. It's just a social feed for me. What do you search for, that you wouldn't just Google?

Not that I do much successful Twitter searching right now, but...

1) Google doesn't index Twitter conversations anymore.
2) hashtag-like groupings have the potential to put context around results (iow 'the conversation') rather than traditional search results
3) The potential for the (buzzword alert!) 'realtime web' temporal context is quite large

For me, it's a social feed based on the hashtag. I use #filemaker, #filemakergo, #applescript, #omnigraffle, a few others. Rapidly getting more useless and annoying.

Not that this is a happy example, but there was an interesting story in On the Media about http://homicidewatch.org/ -- the journalist there has learned through practice what terms and hashtags give hints in the aggregate to activities she needs to investigate.

ddt

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johnny k
Ditto. It's just a social feed for me. What do you search for, that you wouldn't just Google?

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13563460701485706

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While internet users celebrate the ‘freedom’ of information offered by ‘Googling’, it is worth asking what kind of world of information Google creates. To internet users, ‘Googlisation’ of information seems to be a matter of concern. A comparison of the search results for the query term ‘China’ from Google and its main competitors, Yahoo! and Microsoft MSN, demonstrates the extent to which information search is ‘Googlised’: merely one out of the first 10 returned items, namely ‘www.china.org.cn’, was common to the three search engines.17 While Google gave American government source (the Central Intelligence Angency (CIA)) on China top ranking, both Yahoo! and MSN gave Chinese official sources top ranking and MSN did not even include the CIA source within its top ten items. Both Google and MSN listed independent media sources, such as the BBC and Guardian Unlimited, whilst Yahoo! made no refer- ence to these sources at all.

Use www.dogpile.com for a non-googlised world...

If you're concerned with how google, learning from your past habits, is tailoring what it shows you, check out "The Filter Bubble". I also know a rhetoric prof who is studying how google search results create narratives and how the same search terms end up creating different narratives for different users.

ddt

I posted this in the book thread:

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“I ACTUALLY think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions,” said the search giant’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, in a recent and controversial interview. “They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/opinion/01gibson.html

I want google to 'suck it' and give me a very straight-forward, syntax-rich, boolean search with no dirtying the water with what THEY think I should want to see.

Yeah, I don't mind them putting context-relative adds at the top of the returned results (if clearly labelled as such), but I don't want them monkeying with the order of results. A checkbox to remove sites that Google has determined are gaming their algorithm would be nice.

Skype.

Even after 7 months and 4 releases (including the 5.4 beta) they haven't been able to fix Skype. No, they've made it worse, Facebok integration...

Once they switch off support for the 2.8 version, that will be the day that I switch off Skype.

Ah, and they've changed the blog's commenting system. Comments critical of the Mac release are no longer posted, needs approval by an Admin.

Sheesh, shows that you're at least a bit insecure about your product...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/17/2011 12:32PM by tliet.

Facebok Choy?

lol, it was late for me yesterday evening...

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

The Mac Store implements sandboxing. What's next? Will I have to jailbreak my Mac to install programs?

http://blog.boastr.net/?p=2698

I fully expect the App Store for OS X to be used by Apple to force their will eventually. For now it's still possible to download outside the store, but a few iterations down the line it will be virtually unknown to new users that software for the Mac could at some point also be downloaded straight from within a browser.

Edit; it's ironic that I once thought; I'll buy one last Macintosh, once Intel and Microsoft implement their Trusted Computing initiative. Ironic that it'll be Apple that is implementing it for Intel.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/29/2011 11:52AM by tliet.

...TNT

I ordered my iPad this time last week (the 12th) and got a shipping notice that it left China on the 15th. It arrived in Sydney on the 17th and then Brisbane at 7am on the 18th.

It's now the afternoon of the 19th and still no sign. The intercom to my building is a little flaky so I thought it best to wait at home to avoid mixups. I've now wasted two days doing that.

I called yesterday afternoon where I was assured it would be delivered today. I called today to be told it won't be until tomorrow. When queried why they said "the order doesn't have to be shipped until the 20th". When asked why they'd intentionally leave a parcel sitting at their warehouse (like, 10 Km from where I live) for two days I get the above spiel and some waffle about "customs processing".

Perhaps I'm naive but wouldn't any customs processing be done at the first point of entry into the country (ie Sydney 2 & 1/2 days ago)?

And I've never heard the "we don't have to ship it until blah blah..." excuse before. Even if that's valid why would you intentionally clog up a storage depot?

Bah!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/18/2012 06:49PM by Tony Leggett.

US Customs usually processes my Apple stuff in Anchorage, which is its US point-of-entry.

Customs can delay shipments, but I often see domestic packages sit in a sorting factility near my house for several days if they arrive before the posted delivery date.