[This won’t make much sense to people who don’t use Twitter. If you do, you probably know that Twitter made a significant change to their service on Tuesday (May 12) by removing a setting that allowed users to choose which “@ replies” appeared in their stream. This is a response to that change. @chrismessina posted screenshots showing the change (see his first comment, too). Also, this response to the change makes some good points.]
From the Twitter blog:
This morning we received lots of great info about the replies setting we changed yesterday. Folks loved this feature because it allowed them to discover new people and participate serendipitously in various conversations. The problem with the setting was that it didn’t scale and even if we rebuilt it, the feature was blunt. It was confusing and caused a sense of inconsistency. We felt we could do much better. [emphasis added — Todd]
Perhaps, but when that setting has been around as long as @ replies, you could also do better than ripping it away from a lot of users who enjoyed it the way it was. You might be able to shrug and say, “Well, we had no way of knowing how strongly some people felt about this setting.” Balderdash. Presumably you can determine how many users of your own service have chosen “all @ replies” as their preference. And just as importantly, you already asked users for their opinion on this subject in a blog post a year ago. The response was not ambiguous. While 66 comments is not a significant percentage of Twitter users, the fact that most if not all comments were in favor of keeping the setting says a lot. Why was this ignored a year later?
So here’s what we’re planning to do. First, we’re making a change such that any updates beginning with @username (that are not explicitly created by clicking on the reply icon) will be seen by everyone following that account. This will bring back some serendipity and discovery and we can do this very soon.
If I’m not mistaken, this means all users will now see all replies with the seemingly arbitrary distinction of having been manually addressed to a particular user. Won’t this just upset everyone who wasn’t upset by your last change? I’m curious how this is somehow more scalable than just leaving the setting as it was and perhaps changing the default to “@ replies to the people I’m following” if that’s not what it already was.
And so I made one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever faced: I walked away from the licensing deals. They had become too complex for a site founded on simplicity, too restrictive and hostile to continue to innovate the way I wanted to. They’d already taken so much attention away from development that I started to question my own motivations. I didn’t get into this to build a big company as fast as I could no matter what the cost, I got into this to make something simple and beautiful for people who love music, and I plan to continue doing that. As promised, the site is coming back, but not as you’ve known. I’m taking a feature that was in development in the early stages and making it the new central focus. Muxtape is relaunching as a service exclusively for bands…
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MuxtapeAnother sad story of innovation being quashed by a music industry stuck in the
stone LP-age. Good luck with the new incarnation, Justin, but it just won’t be the same.
The MP3 fools the ear by eliminating the least essential parts of a music file…To create MP3 [Karl-Heinz] Brandenberg had to appreciate how the human ear perceives sound. A key assist in this effort came from Suzanne Vega. ‘I was ready to fine-tune my compression algorithm,’ Brandenberg recalls. ‘Somewhere down the corridor a radio was playing “Tom’s Diner.” I was electrified. I knew it would be nearly impossible to compress this warm a cappella voice.’” So Mr. Brandenberg gets a copy of the song, and puts it through the newly created MP3. But instead of the “warm human voice” there are monstrous distortions, as though the Exorcist has somehow gotten into the system, shadowing every phrase.
You have an audiobook in MP3 format, perhaps of the public domain variety. Notice how your player doesn’t remember where you left off? So annoying. Here’s a quick and easy way to convert such MP3s into an audiobook format that won’t drive you batty. Assumptions: You know your way around iTunes and your computer’s file system.
- Import the MP3 file into iTunes.
- Find the audiobook in your library. At this point you may want to make sure the title is in the track name, not just the album name as it sometimes is. Might as well change the genre to “Audiobook” while you’re at it.
- Right-click the track and select “Convert Selection to AAC.” Churn, churn, ploop! Duplicate track.
- Right-click one of the two versions of your audiobook and select “Show in Finder.”†
- Keep that window open and return to iTunes. Delete both files and confirm, but be sure to click the “Keep Files” button.
- Go back to the Finder/Explorer window showing the files. Delete the one with the .mp3 extension.
- Change the extension on the remaining file from .m4a to .m4b.
- Import the file back into iTunes.
Your audiobook should now show up under, yes, Audiobooks in your iTunes Library. Enjoy the bookmarky goodness!
* That’s Control-click for you Mac users without a right mouse button, but you should know that by now. Oh, and get a decent mouse, already.
† Or “Show in Explorer” for Windows, I imagine. Not really interested enough to find out. People still use Windows?
Can we just NOT fight with Pakistan? They have nuclear weapons & Islamic militant schools that churn out suicide bombers.
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Lorna Li on Twitter Not that we should declare war on Pakistan itself, but all of the above look like reasons
for taking on the militants there. Or is better to just let them keep doing their blow-people-up-in-the-name-of-Allah thing? To each their own, right?
I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.
I’m also given to understand that the rules of science begin to bend and even break at the extremes of the universe’s scale. Down where everything is subatomic-sized, things tend to be a bit random with mesons, leptons, quarks, brilligs, slithy toves, etc., subjected to Strong Force, Weak Force, Force of Habit, and so on. Meanwhile, in the farthest reaches of outer space, matter, antimatter, dark matter, and whatsamatter are tripping over string theory and falling into black holes. God is not like that. He’s famously there in the details, and He is the big picture.
If he values his life, Mr. McCartney must not come to Israel,” [Omar] Bakri [an Islamic preacher] was quoted as saying. “He will not be safe there. The sacrifice operatives will be waiting for him.
The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
I think the way to “solve” the problem of procrastination is to let delight pull you instead of making a to-do list push you. Work on an ambitious project you really enjoy, and sail as close to the wind as you can, and you’ll leave the right things undone.
