2009/06/25 by Ray Marr
While doing research on Linux by exploring John Steinbeck Library, here in Salinas, I came across this amazing book Free For All ; How Linux and the Free Software Movement Undercut the High-Tech Titans
that became the best book of the eight plus books I checked out on and about Linux. It caught my attention because simply in the story on the flaps it intrigued me, even if it was dated it also spoke to how Linux in it’s early versions has always been a solid option. The idea that Linux in and of itself started as only a thought, of one person Linus Torvalds, to make a cost effective and solid operating system for himself for the purpose of being able to afford what otherwise would of been his. What Peter Wayner does is first draw you into the story because he is a great writer, and throughout the story he adds bits and pieces that by the end all come together. His look at the history of Linux is amazing going back to the very early days.
He also speaks to the possibilities of the not to distant future, of what Linux is becoming from home to home piece by piece replacing Microsoft as Linux on just about every front is already way ahead of what Microsoft will have ever a chance to catch up. As I read this story I was glad to have found it at my local library and for his story technique and in depth analysis I score Free For All as one of the great stories of this wondrous open source movement. To rate it I would give it 10/10 seeing as it goes into much detail while flowing like even the best book’s read.
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2009/06/23 by Ray Marr
As there was a specific request from a good friend of mine @malcolmbastien via Friendfeed and he had asked me about using friendfeed with im. Now I am relatively new to this idea and the question was specific to how I deal with im bot in my day to day experiences as he was appreciative of the fact I usually keep up with anything #linux #Ubuntu and the like because I am interested in Open Source.
Really you have most of the same control often prefaced with @ sign to send a message to friendfeed you would type @me this is a message and then it would post to your feed. When it goes beyond that, where you are liking and making comments it is relatively easy. Primarily reference is the number shown before the message as they scroll past, below is a simple key that explains generally how it is designed to work.
*@me text* – post to your feed
*@group text* – post to group
*@N text* – comment on entry N
*like N* – like entry N
*pause* – Pause notifications
*resume* – Resume notifications
*list* – List recent entries
More help: http://ff.im/about/im
Friendfeed IM is a great option to explore though it may not be as good as it could or should be, as it is in the most basic form a bot, you can only expect so much, which is often why it is not surprising for all it’s good there is also not so good as par for the course. Some of the benefits of ff.im is that it gives you a primary location for all the information that often flows through many peoples feeds. As really that is what friendfeed is, simply an interactive aggregator but with this technology and living in a conveniently connected world it is also a means to communicate with people around the world, to share information to explore the possibilities and grow through it. When I first started experimenting with Friendfeed over my IM the process was not so simple as you would hope but it was a learning experience, and really once you get the hange of it, pretty simple. As it uses the same familiar @ sign often a part of an email account and of course Twitter along with many other services. The interesting thing is what the programmers of the ff.im bot used the similar functionality even in there bot commands as a differentiator depending on the content you wanted to send. As simple as plain text that could do so much, like keywords on a website bringing the idea to the forefront of a simple way to interact with friendfeed via your chosen im client. Whether it is Pidgin, Empathy, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk even Meebo and a host of others. Even for those of you who use iphone, or what have you any web enabled device, you are able to use the friendfeed im bot to communicate to those who are a part of your network. The learning curve is not so steep, as the best way to learn as always is to take the time to do it. To try and fail if necessary at least then you know more about it and can do it right the next time. So though Friendfeed Instant Messenger is a novel idea there are still some things to work out, but then again it is not always the softwares fault as each system is different. The point being those who are regular users of Friendfeed will see that ff.im is not so dissimilar as you may of thought in the first place just simple commands typed out and it works with you to access information and resources wherever you may be just as long as there is an im client live and your have access to the wonders of the worldwide web why not explore it fully? Take the steps to try it out today, simple as using Friendfeed Settings > Notifications and setting the im aspect of it to true, then simply add chat.friendfeed.com to your buddy list and you should be set.
As I myself am still learning I offered what I could but with anything your mileage may vary, overall the experience with FF IM has been a good one and I make use of it on a regular basis, because it’s simplicity is hard to match and with Friendfeed overtaking the users of Twitter who knows what will be coming next.
Tags: FF, FF.IM, Friendfeed, IM Clients
Posted in Tutorials | Leave a Comment »
