Web Services – Page 4

‘Flow’ – day 7 – My Twitter thousands

Posted on March 30, 2008March 30, 2008 by Sol Young with 3 Comments

Day 7 – The flow rises, but as it gets faster I just want more… I wonder what Scoble‘s flow is like…

Here are my previous flow entries so you’re up to speed:

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
~~Day 6~~ (no post)

I’m visiting my in-laws this weekend so haven’t been spending much time in the flow this weekend. However, even with short stints I’m finding a recurrent issue. Each day I think I’m going to hit a maximum number of people I can pay attention to. Each day I’m proven wrong. There’s an adaptation that takes place.

I’m following almost 3,400 and it’s working very well. I could imagine 5,000 being more than comfortable. Even on a standard IM client, the data flow is manageable. Most IM clients don’t smooth scroll, so it’s annoying to have each incoming tweet snap prior tweets upwards.

I’ve been thinking of the outline for a high-traffic Twitter client spec:

XMPP for tweet flow.
Web Services harnessed for contact management.
RSS/Atom integration for pulling articles from Twitterer.
Caching of existing Twitter contacts to embed information in to the XMPP traffic.
Search and real-time filtering.
Ability to only show tweets with links.
Additional filters based on: Age of Twitter of account, Location, number of tweets, ratio of following/friends, has non-default avatar, has non-default twitter design… with real-time color-coding of tweets.
Ability to favorite a tweet that came through XMPP.
Auto-pull of a Twitterer’s most recent blog entries (requires a scan for RSS feeds on the Twitterer’s home page, then pulling/parsing those items).
Auto-addition of Twitterer’s RSS in to Google Reader or other items.

With the above, one would have a complete Twitter news-room. One could immediately see what’s flowing and have access to a Twitterer’s additional information. This may be possible with a Flash or Java application, though I’d prefer a highly portable objective-C or C++ app. Maybe even ported to mobile clients (maybe, maybe).

Posted in Education, Flow, iofy, Prediction, Social Networking, Software Development, Twitter, Web Services, XMPP

‘Flow’ – day 3 – the volume is up

Posted on March 26, 2008March 26, 2008 by Sol Young with 2 Comments

The flow is going and it’s time for plumbing improvements and deeper details on this process…

Day 1
Day 2

Image courtesy of Komax Systems

Day 3

The question most people have been asking is, “What is the flow like?” Many have described this amount of flow as unmanageable and anti-social. Here’s what I’ve learned first-hand by Day 3…

After wrapping up yesterday’s post and promising to add 500+ friends per day, I destroyed my sleep cycle by obsessively discovering more than 1,000 new people. Since I’m a developer and VP of Engineering at iofy, I focused on developers and technology gurus. I’m also fond of the marketing and sales spaces as they relate to social networks, so spent some time beefing up that area of the flow too.

I do this by finding the most intelligent/witty/interesting people I can and spider through to their friends. Unlike a spammer, I only add a person if their tweets have been interesting and intelligent and I feel they’ll contribute to my education.

I woke this morning to a faster flow. At times today it closed in on my maximum reading speed, especially 9-5. With ~2,200 friends I’m now able to see instant changes in volume based on time of day, news, etc. Last night at 1:00am EDT, it was trickling. Before getting to the office it was still slow. Later, it drastically picked up. I’m getting metrics now and will share them tomorrow.

Our company president, @cart, supplied me with Steve Gillmor’s “Swarmtracking” this morning. Steve has a very similar approach but instead of using a Jabber client he uses the built in GMail web app and has search criteria. His article describes some good methods for tuning and searching, but the methods are distracting and require action (clicks). I also disagree with comparing this to a tracking system. One can use it that way, but it’s so much more powerful as a system for being fed valuable information.

What is the flow?

Reading and consuming the flow is like streaming a Google Search of the latest happenings that relate to you. Imagine a constant stream of somewhat relevant information. You scan as links and tidbits pass by. When something catches your eye, you click a link or respond with insight. Depending on one’s popularity, the flow splashes, much like a rock tossed in a river. One can see multiple splashes as multiple topics hit your flow at the same time.

The “Replies” page on Twitter.com works as an automatic net so I can listen to anyone speaking directly to me. It’s an automatic net and no further filtering is needed.

Unlike an RSS reader, this is real-time. My preference is to have an RSS reader open in 3/4 of my monitor and the flow open in the other 1/4. It’s immersion.

Additional thoughts and how-to (after the jump):

Posted in Education, Etiquette, Flow, iPhone, Swarmtracking, Twitter, Web Services

Scoble’s Secret to Twitter – I call it ‘flow’

Posted on March 24, 2008March 24, 2008 by Sol Young with 13 Comments

I completely dig Scoble’s method of using Twitter. I’ve been wanting to consume mass tweets and watch information pass… It’s simply not possible to ‘flow’ when you’re using apps like Twitterific and only follow a hundred people (this setup is great for smaller numbers).

I’d been using Twitterific for a while, but it was clunky and limited to an update every few minutes. This required scrolling backwards in time and seeing what people had written as I broke one hundred friends. It was neither real-time or indicitive of a large enough audience.

Twitter supports XMPP (Jabber/GTalk). I’ve set up Adium with a GTalk account and switched my Twitter connections to update to the IM account. This has made it so all tweets are in real-time. Suddenly Twitter seems terribly slow as tweets scroll by as a trickle.

I’ve gone from a hundred to five hundred connections and it still seems slow – I’ll keep growing it. The major drawback to this setup is that you can’t consume it at all times. Your phone would blow up if you had this traffic going to SMS (it’d be great if Twitter offered separate SMS and IM settings). My personal preference is to follow the flow in the mornings during RSS reading and in the evenings while writing a blog post or other catch-up activities.

Wild thought… I wonder if the number of simultanious connections in the ‘flow’ will become a sign of one’s intelligence?

Posted in Blogging, Twitter, Uncategorized, Web Services

Installing tile – real developers do it themselves

Posted on March 23, 2008 by Sol Young with 5 Comments

This weekend my wife and I got an early start Friday to finish off our bathroom’s tile. I’ve been photo-blogging it to Flickr and periodically putting up notes on Twitter. The last couple weekends have been similar, doing plumbing, floor tile, prep work, etc.

Though there is so much to do (more blog posts, tons of iofy priorities, and building in a certain web service), this is still satisfying work… Something everyone 1/2 interested in real estate should do at least once. I’m a software engineer and dev team manager because I love to build things. I think other developers should feel this way too.

More pics after the jump…

Posted in Blogging, Flickr, Hiring, Managing, Photography, Real Estate, Remodeling, Software Development, Twitter, Web Services

iofy is hiring

Posted on February 28, 2008 by Sol Young with 1 Comment

iofy

We need a PHP programmer to join the dev team at iofy corporation. This is a full-time, based in Philadelphia, position.

The corporate version of the ad is on Craig’s List (also available after the jump).

If you’ve read this far you’ve probably laughed your ass off double-taked, “Philadelphia!?” … You’re right to do so. But seriously, we’ve grown in to a fast and agile web technology company in the heart of 19112.

Our work environment makes for a great life experience. We hire intelligent people capable of solving problems and enhancing the skills of those around them. People working at iofy are treated very well, with plenty of snacks and gadgets to keep mind and body entertained. The challenges we address both answer a need to paying partners and expand the knowledge of our teams.

In case you haven’t been following my blog, iofy builds web services to deliver media on the web. We harness our own services with AJAX and client applications on nearly every platform.

Drop a note with your resume and a unique statement of talent to developer@iofy.com if you’re the right fit. We love smart people.

Posted in Hiring, iofy, Managing, Web Services