As a matter of fact, people do care whether FriendFeed lives or dies, and it is to serve that community of brilliant, innovative individuals that I created the site, Is FriendFeed dead yet?. Using a patent-pending “death checker” algorithm, plus some math, I am able to determine with a high degree of certainty whether or not FriendFeed is still alive. Now, with this site, you do not even need to visit FriendFeed.com to determine if it’s dead yet—you can do this entirely from my site.

Let me know if you’d like to donate to support its continued development.

Actually, the site uses PHP and its CURL library to retrieve the FriendFeed home page, check the HTTP status code, and determine if it’s returning enough data.

It will also verify the deadness of an individual FriendFeed user, like this:

http://isfriendfeeddeadyet.com/glenc

Check out the online help for more details.

This is the ranch where we went on vacation last week.

Yahoo! announced today that Yahoo! Tech will be closing on March 11, 2010. This has a very personal resonance for me, because I was the lead engineer for the construction of Yahoo! Tech.

Yahoo! Tech represented an important milestone, not only in my personal career, but also in the history of Yahoo! At the time it was launched (April, 2006), it was the first new property launched by the Yahoo! Media group in over five years. It was one of Yahoo!’s first forays into original content, and one of the first Yahoo! sites where video (the online show Hook Me Up) was a primary factor. It was one of the first, if not the first, sites at Yahoo! to rely primarily upon original content (bloggers) rather than aggregating content that was created elsewhere. And, it was considered very “cutting edge” in its design and frontend features—the rounded corners and bold colors (green and orange? seriously?) were very much in vogue at the time (an early review called it “an explosion in the web 2.0 factory”) and a wild change from the traditional Yahoo! designs. See the Wikipedia article for more details.

From a web technology standpoint, Yahoo! Tech was also groundbreaking. It was the first site at Yahoo! to be built entirely on a service-oriented architecture, meaning that all of the content for the site was accessed via web services (mostly REST-style HTTP requests) instead of older, more traditional methods. The front-end was rendered entirely using XSLT; another cutting-edge technology that had been little-used in Yahoo! before then (and little used afterwards, too, I might add).

During the development of Tech, we had some huge problems in building what was essentially an unknown architecture on a novel platform using brand-new tools and integrating content from multiple services (original content from bloggers, ratings and reviews from an internal platform, product data from Yahoo! Shopping, and so forth). Many of those services had never been intended to integrate with anything else, and were thus somewhat surprised to discover that things didn’t fit nicely together.

Pat Houston, the original general manager of Yahoo! Tech, was the visionary who convinced Yahoo!’s upper management to invest in the idea. It was a bit radical at the time, but definitely groundbreaking. The original slogan, “Tech Made Easy,” was based on extensive research showing that technology content targeted at Yahoo!’s widespread demographic audience (as opposed to the gadget-head techies and early adopters) would be valuable to users as well as interesting to advertisers.

The initial launch was hilarious—the bloggers (the public face of Yahoo! Tech) appeared on various TV shows such as Today and Good Morning, America. There was a tent in Central Park in New York City were passers-by were invited to try their skills against a trained chimpanzee—the contest was to put a memory card in a digital camera, take a picture, take the card out, put it in a printer, and print out the photograph. Most people could not do it as well as the chimp (which was, of course, the point—these things are never as easy as they seem).

The night that Tech went live, I lifted my glass of champagne and thanked everyone else in the room for helping me build my website. It did feel like mine—I was intimately familiar with nearly every line of code in it, and could probably reproduce much of it from scratch if I wanted to. Even though I moved onto other jobs and other sites, I still retain a fondness for “my baby.” So, hail and farewell, dear Tech! It was fun while it lasted.

All these responses are probably valid, in some way or another, and I’m not going to try to argue against any of the charges made. But, in response to the statement, “this is all too abstract for me,” I’ll try to clarify the particular issue:

People behave far worse online than they ever would in person.

Frankly, as I said earlier, I’m tired of it. Every time I sign on, it seems like someone is spewing hate-filled comments. For some people, it seems like it’s not enough to believe that you’re right; you must also crush, humiliate, and ridicule anyone who holds any sort of opposing opinion. And you must do it vehemently, loudly, and repeatedly.

Maybe I do need to grow a backbone and learn how to take it. On the other hand, if this happened in a “real world” establishment like a restaurant, church, or gym—imagine someone walking up to your table, telling you that your family is contemptible and poking fun of your hair and clothing—most civilized people would not sit there and either take it or debate the point for days on end; once they’d expressed their viewpoint, they’d simply take their business elsewhere.

For me, I’ve fought the fight. I’ve tried to convince people to see reason. I’ve attempted to persuade, cajole, influence, moderate, and every other verb I can think of. Note that I don’t care if you hold a different opinion than I do—the world is full of people with different opinions, and that’s a wonderful thing. What I object to is seeing people being treated with disrespect, with downright hostility and abuse, in a very public setting—so much so that many people take this sort of behavior for granted.

So I’m taking a break. I’m tired, and I need a rest. I’ll stick check in on things, and maybe I’ll be back some day, but, for now, you can find me here or in one of the numerous other online haunts that I frequent.

Thanks to everyone whose kind words and comments are so uplifting—you folks are amazing, and I’m very blessed to get to know you.

FriendFeed was like a comfortable pub. I could show up any time of the day or night and find people that I liked, who liked me, and who would have something interesting to discuss. Imagine visiting that pub for years, growing comfortable, watching new people come and old ones die or merely fade away. Imagine showing up one day to find that every person you knew had decided to humiliate you by attacking the things you hold most dear—your home. Imagine hearing them carry on and on about how awful a place it is, how stupid the people are there, and how they don’t really understand it, but they really hate that place.

Would you come back? Is that the sort of place where you want to find your friends? Guess what, my “friends?” I shop at Wal-mart. My family shops at Wal-mart. They mostly vote Republican. They worship Jesus Christ and don’t fully understand foreign cultures, though they’re open and friendly and loving, especially once you get to know them. They like country music and bass fishing and they don’t like pretentious assholes from other states telling them how they should spend their money. They read Reader’s Digest and Shakespeare and ancient Greek. Some of them drive Priuses and others drive big, gas-hogging SUVs because that’s what they need to pull their boat or simply to protect their loved ones in a crash.

I’m torn between two worlds, having grown up in the deepest parts of east Texas, and living now in Silicon Valley. I’ve also lived in Ascot, England, and worked in Wuppertal, Germany. Fundamentally, “my people” are not all that different than those of you who like to poke fun at them. One of the few differences is that they teach their children manners. When I visit Texas, the children there, with few exceptions, say “Yes, Sir,” and “No, Sir,” and “Hello, Mr. Campbell.” In pretentious, sophisticated, highly-educated Silicon Valley, the sixth-graders that my wife teaches call her “Stupid,” “Dumbo,” and a “Crack Whore.” When asked to remove their hoods in class, they say, “Why don’t you make me?” It’s obvious when those manners carry over into their online lives.

I’m tired of the pretense. I’m tired of the holier-than-thou attitudes, the disrespectful, hateful “conversations.” I’m tired of trying to walk a middle group, trying to get people to see each other’s points of view. I’m just tired.

I don’t want to cut all ties with my friends. I want to hear about Akiva & Rochelle’s next baby; I want to find out what’s going to happen with Scott and Mary Carmen; I want to hear the next tune from Josh Haley, and I want to see if Marissa makes better decisions than my son, who’s also a freshman in college. But you’ll forgive me, I hope, if I don’t hang out there much any more.

Maybe someday I’ll return, but right now it’s not the sort of place I want to be associated with.

(Note: your company’s process is most likely somewhat different than mine, so feel free to adapt this to your particular situation. I do think, however, that the general principles are common to most business settings.)

The first rule of thumb is: be on time! A review or self-assessment that arrives before my deadline for reporting on you is infinitely more valuable than one that arrives later. When I have to tell my manager about your performance, I’m going to have to rely on my (imperfect) memory about your work if you don’t give me your self-assessment to remind me. Six sentences scrawled on the back of an envelope (who uses envelopes any more, any way?) is far, far better than a dozen pages that arrive 24 hours too late.

Second: nouns are better than verbs. Which of these sounds better?

1. Bob was an excellent performer whose efficient work was creative and elegant. or
2. During the First Widget project, Bob’s design for the left-hand invigorator was delivered early and was used as an example for all the remaining invigorators.

The first one has glowing adjectives (“excellent,” “efficient,” “creative,” etc.) but no details. The second example gives specific examples of the work that Bob did to justify his performance. When you write a review, think of specific examples and specific value that the other employee (or yourself) has provided to the company: “Jane solved the XYZ problem and saved the company $12 gazillion per year” is much better than “Jane’s creativity was a great benefit to the project.”

Finally, be honest. The most common example of this is, “I can’t see any possible room for improvement in Jill’s performance.” Really? Jill is absolutely perfect and cannot be improved in any way? What that tells me is that you didn’t take the review seriously enough to put in a little effort to think about Jill’s performance. Not only does it give me nothing to discuss with Jill, it also reflects badly on you.

Dishonesty appears in other guises as well: “Matthew was always an eager participant at meetings.” Superlatives like “always” are very difficult to justify—maybe Matthew is an exception, and he was “always an eager participant,” but a few examples of his eagerness would be better than an overeager statement like this that’s difficult to justify.

Because links perform better with pictures, here’s another doughnut.

Go to the store and get some steak. It doesn’t have to be great steak, because you’re going to cook the heck out of it, but you should have about 2 pounds’ worth of beef once you’ve trimmed away the bones and the excess fat. No, don’t trim away all the fat, silly; that’s where God put the flavor, and you’ll want some of that later on. Get out your Wusthof™ Classic Hollow-Ground Santoku knife and trim it into bite-sized chunks, about 1/2″ to 1″ in size.

Put a big, gleaming Le Creuset™ dutch oven on the stove and get it searing hot. Toss in some olive oil and sauté the steak for about five minutes, turning it frequently to prevent burning. While it’s cooking, chop up an onion and 3-4 cloves or garlic. Toss those in along with some powdered cumin (about a tablespoon) and chili powder. Start off with about 3-4 tablespoons and add more if it ain’t spicy enough. If you add too much, just take some out. Ha ha, you can’t, so you’ll have to go get some more steak or, better yet, don’t add too much in the first place. Like it to really have a kick? Add a teaspoon of ground cayenne pepper (or more to taste).

Smell that? It’s the chili making love to the beef and creating all sorts of wonderful little nuggets of goodness.

There should be enough fat from the steak to keep it moist; if not, add a bit of water. You don’t want it watery, but a thick, velvety texture. Cover it with the heavy, cast-iron lid of your Le Creuset™ dutch oven and turn the heat down to “simmer” and leave it alone for at least 30 minutes. Check on it to make sure the liquid hasn’t evaporated; if so, add a teensy bit more. You can leave it on the stove all day if you like; just don’t let it scorch.

About 10 minutes before you serve it, mix 3 tablespoons of masa harena (masa flour) with enough water to make a thick paste, then stir that into the chili; it will create a lovely, smooth texture to the liquid part of the chili. Let it cook for 5-10 minutes before serving, or it will taste like raw flour, and that’s not a good thing.

Serve by itself, over rice, or over Fritos™ brand corn chips (this is called a Frito pie). If you’re into that sort of thing, top with grated cheddar cheese, chopped onions, or sour cream.

If you like, serve with beans on the side. Don’t fucking ruin the chili by putting the beans into it. Chili is a duet between the chilis and the beef; threesomes are uncomfortable and gaseous.

Serves two. Sometimes more if you’re weenies.

Inspired by this discussion over at FriendFeed.

I am arguably the greatest writer of our (or any) generation. So much potential confounded by so much apathy, laziness, and lack of time management skills.

I, too, suffer from the same motivational discord when it comes to blogging (though not from the apparent overconfidence). I have tried, in the past, to force myself to write daily, with often disastrous consequences. Those posts were trite, meaningless, and ultimately forgettable (though, thanks to the long-term memory of the Internet, they will hang around my neck forever like the hickeys of a long-forgotten fling).

What was I saying?

Oh, yes, of course: more blog, less tweet. The fantastic success of Twitter has led me down the merry path of instant gratification and rapid response. FriendFeed has sated my thirst for recognition and relevance. And, yet, I remain frustrated by the limits—absolutely artificial limits—imposed by those tools. 120 characters is not enough to say anything of particular importance, especially if it involves some level of analysis. Even the lengthier threads of FriendFeed still fail when it comes to many topics.

Thus, I find myself deleting, hiding, or simply ignoring many posts, simply because I recognize that any substantive contribution will be lost in the overwhelming noise of the mob. My own intelligence and charm go unnoticed, and I’ve gained a reputation as a humorist, mainly because I can say something funny in 120 characters, but not something important (usually—it’s the exception that proves the rule, of course). Even this blog post, which started out as simply a, “Yeah, I hear you, man,” to Akiva, has lengthened beyond anything reasonable.

Blog more, tweet less. I’ll try to keep that in mind.

Here is a doughnut: