Month: November 2011

Day in brief – 2011-11-07

Twitter Stories

The other day, Twitter announced a new website of theirs – Twitter Stories.  Yes, of course, that’s a part of their marketing effort and they are promoting their own services.  But it’s not just that.  It is an excellent compilation of stories which show kindness, compassion and humanity – things that unfortunately aren’t so popular in the modern world of mass media and dirty politics.

A few of my friends and coworkers still doubt the usefulness of social networks.  They often see social networks as time wasters that prevent people from actually doing something good with their lives.  I always disagree with that.  Social networks are just another set of tools, like knives and hammers.  What is done with them depends entirely on people using them.  If people are wasting time of their lives, then they would be doing so regardless of the availability of social networks.  And on the contrary, if people are to do great things, social networks will be just another tool for them to find the need and the way to help it.  Showcasing that is what Twitter Stories is all about.

 

 

 

Brian Shih on the new Google Reader interface

Brian Shih, an ex-project manager for Google Reader shares his thoughts on the new interface. I agree a lot with him. I also think that Google Reader should be integrated with Google+ and other Google projects, but the current version hurts that goal more than it helps it.

new sharing flow around the +1 button has actually made it harder to share. Where you used to be able to click one button, or hit shift-s to one-click share to your audience, you now need to:

  • Click +1 (no keyboard shortcuts for you)
  • Click the text box that appears that says “Share to G+”
  • Then choose your circle you want to share to (or let it default to public)
  • Then click Share

Keep in mind that on top of requiring 3-4 times as many clicks, you also now must +1 a post publicly to share it, even if it’s shared to a private circle. That bears repeating. The next time you want to share some sexy halloween costumes with your private set of friends, you first must publicly +1 the post, which means it shows up on your profile, plus wherever the hell G+ decides to use +1 data.

While I’m not too much concerned about privacy, I too find the new sharing way more difficult, time-consuming, and confusing.

Fedora 16 dedicated to Dennis Ritchie

According to the release notes of Fedora 16 (work in progress), this release of the popular Linux distribution is dedicated to Dennis Ritchie, who passed away recently. I think this is an excellent idea.

During the preparation of Fedora 16, the computing world lost one of its great contributors: Dennis Ritchie. Ritchie co-invented Unix and the C language. He also co-authored “The C Programming Language”, a book that taught many programmers just at the time personal computing was exploding. Without Ritchie computing would be nothing like it is today.
A humble man, not well-known outside his field, Dennis will always be remembered by those of us who practice the craft. Thank you Dennis.