After finding that Twitter and most of the large blogs were unresponsive during Steve Jobs’ MacWorld keynote last night, while lying in bed down here in Australia, I found the best (and most reliable – ie: it worked) source was macrumorslive.com (the main macrumors.com site was borked though).
It worked mainly because it had a very simple page, with a simple ajax script updating *just* the posted text and photos every minute or so – ie: not the whole page.
All I had to do was watch the updates as they came in. It worked perfectly during the hour or so of the keynote. Every ten updates or so, a small sponsor message flowed through advertising a deal from MacHeist offering a bundle of 11 OSX apps for $49. I didn’t mind seeing this at all. Much better than the approach taken it TechCrunch, which required the whole blog entry page being refreshed (along with all those relatively heavy ads).
Next time there’s an Apple Keynote, I plan to build a similar page, utilising ajax to create an iPhone/iPod Touch browser optimised version of the same principle: keep it light – only update the bit of the page you need. It’s pretty easy. People can then sit and watch the page auto-update, a bit like a chat/IM page. Maybe even use some IRC technology on the back-end to send stuff to it.
In fact, Apple should provide this. It’s crazy that they don’t get an official to provide these updates.
I also expected CoverItLive.com’s new system to shine in this area: it didn’t. It kept telling me to update my browser to the latest version. I was there with the latest version of Firefox installed. They really missed a trick here – especially given the recent coverage they have had.
Update: CoverItLive have now issued an apology. But it’s a bit late now. Good luck next time 
They’re taking the right approach at least.
Keep it simple.
ps: I am I the only one the gets completely irritated by the phrase “bring that beat back”? Does anyone ever use it? I’ve never heard it before Twitter used it. And it’s not just that I see it when Twitter breaks, it’s just.. I dunno.. just really *wanky* 
Bring back the lolcats, I say.
Arghhhhhhh!!!!
I hate the “bring that beat back” too… What does it even mean? You’re so right, LOLCATS are so much better. And at least they’re funny.
But at least it spread me the pain of having to listen to incessant chatter from the Mac addicts. I’m only a lowly Mac bigot. Having said that – a great idea as always. And while we’re talking about those, have you seen Odigio – holy schmoly – it’s auto serving ads from my place but in a nice friendly manner. And yes bring back the Lolcats, the cartoon sux. If they need a carton, get Hugh MacLeod to do one. At least we’d likely have a laugh.
I used to hate Macs. Mostly because I couldn’t build one from parts – as I like to do with my desktop machines. Also hated the lack of right-click (I used to say Macs are for people who can’t use more than one finger at once). I’m not a huge fan of OSX. but I use it now and again for testing sites I build.
Then they switched to Intel. Suddenly I could run Windows and OSX on one machine. I love that about my MacBook Pros. (15 and 17 inch – one personal – one for official business)
Fastest Windows notebook I’ve ever had.
. i’ve been a “native mac user / mac-born user” or whatever, and never had to complain about this superiority ( “lolCAT” ) ; that said, having seen the video of the keynote this morning (in europe) , i must say, that eventhough Jobs still has this quality of delivering “Great” speeches & keynotes, well what was presented was not “”"thattt much of a milestone”"” i mean there were really good great enjoyable things and even more than we could expect from the rumors in quality; but still i had a feeling of “okay, what now”, and te crowd praising as strong as always non regarding (almost) whats presented is sort of irritating, in a way.
So okay great news, but used to expect more from them.
MacBook Pros only “con” : i would have loved that black backlit keyboard that the MacBook Air has been given
Thumbs up for the seesmic search experiment
just found this quite funny actually http://www.oculture.com/2008/01/steve_jobs_90_minute_keynote_boiled_down_to_60_seconds.html
It’s a Public Enemy lyric, probably heavily sampled in the house era. Twitter did not invent everything.
hah!!! is it? Tiwtter didn’t “invent” much.
Well, I like Public Enemy, but I bloody hate reading that bloody line on Twitter!!
Public Enema, more like!!