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Announcements Apr 30, 2010 at 7:00 PM

blog.listnook -- now this is how you pitch your product to an open source company

Posted by KeyserSosa



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[deleted] Apr 30, 2010 +44
I... I have no idea what this post is about?
44
KeyserSosa Apr 30, 2010 +31
Sorry. Added: > TLDR: open source is great, and embed.ly has helped us double the number of sites our media scraper knows about (so you can watch more videos in listnook from more sources by clicking the play button).
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[deleted] Apr 30, 2010 +10
The problem is more that not very many know what your media scraper *is*. I had to read the linked source to figure it out.
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starkinter Apr 30, 2010 +43
In case anyone else is wondering, and couldn't be bothered reading the linked source, a media scraper is a device which scrapes media.
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SupYall_ImATroll Apr 30, 2010 +4
Can you please rephrase this in Englihs...
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starkinter Apr 30, 2010 +14
It's like an ice scraper. It scrapes the ice (media) off the windshield (internet?)
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creaothceann Apr 30, 2010 +1
Webpage.
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[deleted] Apr 30, 2010 +1
Webbage.
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sayitloud May 1, 2010 +5
cabbage
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arjie May 1, 2010 +1
Charles Babbage.
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raldi May 1, 2010 +1
on.
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KeyserSosa Apr 30, 2010 +8
Point taken. I'll amend the post to make it clearer.
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Superdude22 Apr 30, 2010 +5
Maybe add a video?
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WhiteMouse Apr 30, 2010 +7
Maybe we can scrape the video with Listnook's API!
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Samus_ May 2, 2010 +2
unrelated but why do I have to wait ten minutes to post a damn comment now? it's very annoying, can you at least lower it to a minute please?
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raldi May 2, 2010 +2
There was no change to that part of the code; whenever you post for the first time in a new listnook there's a once-every-ten-minutes limit that goes away as soon as you get even a tiny handful of upvotes. Sorry for the annoyance, but it's been that way for years. We'll discuss in the office on Monday, though, to see if it might be time to rethink it.
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Samus_ May 2, 2010 +1
huh? what's the point of doing that? it certainly looks new to me because this sublistnook is also relatively new (and low traffic) but again what's the point of throttling discussion on newly created sublistnooks? doesn't that *hurt* them, since people won't be able to participate and get things rolling? anyway, another question also unrelated since the last few weeks I've noticed that every time I try to read my messages I get a "gateway timeout" error, it sounds reasonable to give priority to other pages but maybe you need to calibrate that a bit (it works fine after a reload but even so isn't "normal" behaviour).
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raldi May 2, 2010 +2
Otherwise, a spammer could make their own listnook (or go to circlejerk), get some karma, and bypass all the throttles sitewide.
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Samus_ May 2, 2010 +1
I thought that was filtered based on the message contents, in fact I could sell my account and bypass all those filters you mention (it's a one-time deal, but filtering by content would work on both situations).
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[deleted] May 1, 2010 +2
where is the source code for embed.ly?
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Samus_ May 2, 2010 +1
can you tell this guys their http://api.embed.ly/about and http://api.embed.ly/contact pages linked from http://api.embed.ly/ are 404s? and to also put them on the frontpage once they're fixed. thanks.
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agibby May 2, 2010 +2
Thanks, we took those links down for now. Plan to do something on the main site soon. If you are interested in some info drop us your email or throw in a support ticket. Thanks for finding this.
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tesseracter Apr 30, 2010 +2
removing all doubt, as always.
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drtyfrnk Apr 30, 2010 +2
Yep, I'm in the same upboat as you.
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peokuk Apr 30, 2010 +4
Which embeds did you have before? besides YouTube?
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KeyserSosa Apr 30, 2010 +13
This is our previous list of test urls: http://code.listnook.com/browser/r2/r2/lib/scraper.py#L688 They've been a pain to maintain as a lot of those embed codes aren't really set in stone and require a certain amount of upkeep. We're glad that we can offload the work to some guys who specialize in it.
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gpojd Apr 30, 2010 +12
So you guys rickrolled yourselves every time you tested this feature?
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KeyserSosa Apr 30, 2010 +20
We set our test suites for maximum snark.
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raldi Apr 30, 2010 +12
It's a good song.
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Ilyanep Apr 30, 2010 +5
I love how many of those test URLs are Rick Roll related.
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The_Hegemon Apr 30, 2010 +2
Damnitt I just got meta rick-rolled!
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tesseracter Apr 30, 2010 +1
vimeo, escapist, ted, audio stuff... probably some more.
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[deleted] Apr 30, 2010 -8
> contributions aren't yet reflected in the repository Is this why my comment history disappeared?
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KeyserSosa Apr 30, 2010 +6
No that's an unrelated data integrity problem we had surprise us yesterday morning at the crack of dawn. We're recomputing profile pages from the db now and, in fact, I just did yours.
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[deleted] Apr 30, 2010 +3
[deleted]
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KeyserSosa May 1, 2010 +1
I rebuilt your page from scratch. Did that take care of it?
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screeley Apr 30, 2010 +28
Let us know what video/image providers you want to on Listnook. We'll add them to Embedly.
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[deleted] Apr 30, 2010 +32
[deleted]
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jedberg Apr 30, 2010 +30
Your friend forgot about p****** and x******.
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skerit Apr 30, 2010 +9
No love for xtube? A friend of mine wants to know...
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[deleted] May 1, 2010 +11
I just want to clarify that I'm the friend that echochamber, jedberg, and skerit are referring to
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[deleted] May 1, 2010 +2
And the plethora of other p*** streamers.
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screeley Apr 30, 2010 +3
We are getting into a deep dive there. Generally Brightcove is only embedded in pages. We are starting to work with some news organizations to expose those videos in a better manner. I think there might be a market for a embedporn.ly or redembed.ly someone go register it.
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nextofpumpkin May 1, 2010 +2
Can you just use your existing infrastructure for it? It seems like a lot of work for someone to start all over on. P*** is big; you obviously don't want to ignore the market, but your sponsors will drop you if you get into the market. Cant you guys just start a side operation to leverage your expertise?
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[deleted] Apr 30, 2010 +3
Ugh Brightcove.
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[deleted] Apr 30, 2010 +4
[deleted]
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screeley Apr 30, 2010 +5
I'll take a look at it. Thanks.
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[deleted] May 1, 2010 +4
Edited: Should mention that everyone recommending links should check here first: http://api.embed.ly/
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f8andbethere May 4, 2010 +1
Funny Or Die. There is a video on the front page right now that isn't being picked up by Embed.ly / Listnook even though they have a prominent embed tag.
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f8andbethere May 4, 2010 +1
edit: it is on your list of supported content providers but it isn't being picked up right now as an embeddable video (see White Women Workout on front page).
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Poop_is_Food Apr 30, 2010 +1
Just curious, are you getting paid for this?
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bostonvaulter May 1, 2010 +5
Well, it's a startup, so define "paid"
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Poop_is_Food May 1, 2010 +1
receiving money in exchange for product or service. even startups charge their customers
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[deleted] May 1, 2010 +3
>even startups charge their customers Oh. So that's why my startups keep failing.
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Yserbius Apr 30, 2010 +111
Before you know it, some guy will fix the search!
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jaggederest Apr 30, 2010 +54
Doing that right now. We'll see if they accept my patch...
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raldi Apr 30, 2010 +51
Just [make sure it scales](http://www.listnook.com/r/programming/comments/bcqhi/listnooks_now_running_on_cassandra/c0m3rxx?context=1).
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jaggederest Apr 30, 2010 +41
I'm pretty sure it scales.... From d7ab9b9b8fa765d78a2511718b9e42dd855cae4d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Jaggederest Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2010 12:55:40 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] Fix the search function --- r2/r2/templates/searchform.html | 3 ++- 1 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-) diff --git a/r2/r2/templates/searchform.html b/r2/r2/templates/searchform.html index aa67be4..20cd768 100644 --- a/r2/r2/templates/searchform.html +++ b/r2/r2/templates/searchform.html @@ -24,7 +24,8 @@ from r2.lib.template_helpers import add_sr, static %> -
nextofpumpkin May 1, 2010 +3
Okay raldi, suppose *someone* with a background in information retrieval (cough), search engine tech deployment (cough), and distributed systems engineering (cough) wanted to *start* hacking away at a better search option. Obviously this is a very non-trivial problem, but are there any guidelines or high-level design principles you'd want such a person to follow? Any potential design docs or specs to start with? There's little chance one person could get it all done, but if you had some sort of guiding document or spec maybe several experienced contributors could pile stuff on over time?
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raldi May 1, 2010 +3
The problem is really just one of money. Right now I think it would be better for the admins to focus not on coordinating a crowdsourced search redesign, but rather on getting our revenue up so we can simply purchase a better search solution. I don't think with our current budget we can program our way out of the problem.
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nextofpumpkin May 2, 2010 +1
Makes sense; thanks for the transparency! :)
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jedberg Apr 30, 2010 +5
That's the idea.
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[deleted] Apr 30, 2010 +2
Upvoted for optimism!
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jwegan Apr 30, 2010 +7
Have you guys tried using [autoembed](http://autoembed.com/)? Its a open source package that supports embedding video from over 160 sites. If you guys have checked it out and decided not to use it, I'm curious why.
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THE_PUN_STOPS_HERE Apr 30, 2010 +2
Well, judging by the blog post, they wanted a service they wouldn't have to deal with themselves to update. Also, I'm guessing embed.ly is more scalable than autoembed.
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jwegan Apr 30, 2010 +5
AutoEmbed is open source so they don't need to do the updating themselves. Also it is pretty well maintained, the last update to it was a couple months ago which isn't bad considering new video sites with a large enough following to be relevant aren't popping up every day. Also scalability isn't really an issue. For 95% of the websites sites you just need to parse the video id out of the URL. Embed.ly is actually probably less scalable for listnook since they need to make a request to the embed.ly servers each time rather than just parsing the URL locally.
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[deleted] May 1, 2010 +1
The difference is that the listnook developers would have to take time to integrate autoembed with existing code, but the embed.ly guys did that work themselves. Convenience trumps open-source, especially if you are busy working on more urgent issues.
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jwegan May 1, 2010 +1
Its not that hard, I integrated auto embed with my code in literally like 5 minutes including testing. It took all of 3 lines of code. It looks like this $AE = new AutoEmbed(); $AE->parseUrl($url); $code = $AE->getEmbedCode();
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hobophobe Apr 30, 2010 +7
Sounds like a very cool product. Is this why submissions to Youtube videos that disable embedding no longer get a video button? Very nice, either way.
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mrzubi Apr 30, 2010 +2
But they did run the risk of wasting time/money on something that wasn't a sure thing. If you did this for every client in the graphic design/web design business, where would you be? and what is stopping you from just stealing the idea after the pitch?! It's just me being paranoid, or hearing not to work to hard on a finished product until you have a contract. Good work embed.ly, thanks for making listnook happy. :)
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oldegg Apr 30, 2010 +5
"tldr" annoys me. Why does it always appear *after* the text? By the time I finish reading, I don't need the summary! What's wrong with writing a good thesis statement?
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polyGone Apr 30, 2010 +2
Obviously, you're not too lazy! :)
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[deleted] May 1, 2010 +3
I've often wondered how some listnooks receive downvotes. Like, how could you be AGAINST this announcement?
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[deleted] Apr 30, 2010 +2
You still need to allow the submitter to select the thumbnail and the video (when there is more than one choice), or whether to not include a thumbnail or video (when none of the choices are relevant to the submission).
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tell_me_more May 1, 2010 +2
Thanks for linking their logo to a picture of their logo. I was totally expecting to see a picture of their logo, and not, you know, their website.
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agibby Apr 30, 2010 +2
Just want to make sure we give some credit to the creators of oEmbed (http://oembed.com), can be used anywhere you want content for links.
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jck Apr 30, 2010 +3
how about embedding images too, like videos?
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jjmclane Apr 30, 2010 +2
Thank you very much! i was about to build my own media scrapper in PHP for a site i'm programming.
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[deleted] Apr 30, 2010 +3
We developing alright!
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[deleted] May 1, 2010 +3
[deleted]
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[deleted] May 1, 2010 +3
I just wanted to add support to this comment, because it seems no one else cares about this. Damn it, it's been well over a year now. Unfortunately, I can't go through my old comments to find a more accurate date.
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[deleted] May 3, 2010 +1
[removed]
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tvshopceo May 3, 2010 +1
I don't like the noisy thumbnails either, but the embedded media only opens and plays if you actively let it. What's the problem with that? It also shouldn't be hard to make a gray play-icon that is the same height as one line of text to make it fit the low-key design.
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gustavopr Apr 30, 2010 +2
The link for the comments on the blog entry is broken...
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A-punk May 1, 2010 +2
Really Listnook? 604 upvotes for witchcraft?
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[deleted] Apr 30, 2010 +1
[deleted]
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jedberg Apr 30, 2010 +7
The updates are already live. We're just making them public.
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[deleted] Apr 30, 2010 +1
Ah, all right then. Misinterpreted.
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aftli Apr 30, 2010 +1
> (so you can watch more videos from more sources in listnook by clicking the play button). I rarely use that as it sometimes takes upwards of 10 seconds (even slower than the front page) to load the pop-up. It's faster to middle-click to a new tab and watch in YouTube.
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polyGone Apr 30, 2010 +2
Really? I'd imagine loading just the swf, via js, would be quicker than loading the entire site. What are you working with?
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aftli Apr 30, 2010 +1
My browser always hangs waiting to load the embedding code from "listnookmedia.com". I might have been exaggerating about the 10 seconds, it's more like 5 usually. Still quicker to load the YouTube page.
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polyGone May 1, 2010 +2
I do get an error in both the dev tools on Chrome/Safari and in Firebug, but it still seems to load quickly. Seems to be bitching about, what appears to be, an XSS request.
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lalaland4711 Apr 30, 2010 +3
So... have you found the comments you lost yet?
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jedberg Apr 30, 2010 +5
The splines are reticulating now.
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lalaland4711 May 1, 2010 +1
> The splines are reticulating now. [Roger that, alert the agents](http://www.xkcd.com/733/) (saw explanation below. Goody!)
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[deleted] May 1, 2010 +1
[deleted]
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jedberg May 1, 2010 +3
It means yes. We are recalculating the lost cache data now. We hope to be done sometime this weekend.
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kefs Apr 30, 2010 +2
mines are still missing
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barfolomew May 1, 2010 +1
That's great! Now can you make www.listnookmedia.com less laggy? It shouldn't take 20s to display an embedded youtube clip. PS - it is sad that a three-paragraph article requires a TLDR.
1
sirbruce Apr 30, 2010 -1
> Their contributions aren't yet reflected in the repository because, as you may have noticed, the repository is still a little bit behind our production branch. We're sorry about that, and we're going to merge up next week as we have a bunch of long term projects coming to a conclusion. In addition to the new media scraper, the updated version will include our move to Cassandra, the new spam control measures, and all of our new sponsored link code. Bad idea. Never roll out multiple major changes at once. When something breaks, you won't know which part was the cause.
-1
jedberg Apr 30, 2010 +15
No no. *We* roll out one change at a time. Then we publish a couple of them together for the public source, but they have all be deployed and tested independently by us.
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sirbruce Apr 30, 2010 +7
Ohhh. Yeah, I read that backwards.
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DerelicteMyBalls May 1, 2010 +1
So this is the official comment page for the blog post? If you've got experience with DataTypes, please reply here.
1
[deleted] Apr 30, 2010 +1
Man, can't you guys hold off on making this site even cooler until *after* my finals are over? Maybe if I created an AskListnook thread about getting my work done...I wonder how many replies I'd get....
1
ToddPacker May 1, 2010 +1
This companies product is actually relevant to my interests, thanks for bringing them to my attention!
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rseymour Apr 30, 2010 +1
Yay, the one thing I ever tried to commit to trac (bug 708) has been majorly squashed!!! nice!
1
[deleted] May 1, 2010 +1
Free software is stupid. Why would anyone make ones work available for free, is beyond my understanding. *Sent from my Chrome Browser running on Ubuntu 10.04*
1
efrique May 1, 2010 +1
I have upvoted you , but only ironically
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blackyoda May 1, 2010 +1
Yay! Now we can all experience 4chan with better code! Congratz!
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newbie82 Apr 30, 2010 +1
This is very cool! Go the listnook community
1
[deleted] May 1, 2010
Just one suggestion and I'm not going to read every comment before saying this. The play button is popping up under text posts instead of the plus button. Maybe they can fix that too.
0
Poop_is_Food Apr 30, 2010 -1
Yeah Open Source is great!!! Please tell me that they'll be receiving regular checks from Conde Nast for this service. Otherwise, working on spec for a large corporation in return for a pat on the back and cute icons sounds kinda lame and exploitative.
-1
Durrok Apr 30, 2010 +2
They did it because they wanted to. It's not like they kidnapped them, held guns to their heads, and forced them to code it in. Plus it's free advertising.
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Poop_is_Food May 1, 2010 -1
Good for them . I just think this headline is kinda stupid. How do you pitch your product to an open source company? Give it to them for free. Woohoo, BFD.
-1
[deleted] Apr 30, 2010 -1
[deleted]
-1
agibby Apr 30, 2010 +3
We plan on providing oEmbed Discovery, right now a lot of sites are not implementing it correctly, that has been a common theme that we are trying to fix with our service As well supporting we also enhance them when we can, providing re-sizing, and the required attributes that follow the oEmbed spec (http://oembed.com)
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Samus_ May 2, 2010 +1
are you from embed.ly? if so check this: http://www.listnook.com/r/announcements/comments/bygpz/bloglistnook_now_this_is_how_you_pitch_your_product/c0p96rk
1
jedberg Apr 30, 2010 +1
> a YCombinator start-up called embed.ly who, as you might have guessed, specialize in providing embeddable media using the open oEmbed standard.
1
[deleted] Apr 30, 2010 +1
[deleted]
1
agibby Apr 30, 2010 +2
Thats what I was referring to above, a lot of problems we see come from bad implementations and even bad discovery tags. We want to change that.
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kubutulur Apr 30, 2010 -2
problem with many products is that they haven't been engineered for expansion. Design patterns FTW
-2
alephip Apr 30, 2010
embedible.
0