This week is one of the few opportunities where my work life and my blog life are intersecting. I have the chance to participate at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, and while the show exhibition doesn't start in earnest until tomorrow, I've already had the opportunity to make face to face connections with people who I respect, but until today, had only met online, through Twitter, through blogs, e-mail or FriendFeed. And I continue to be amazed how easy it is to meet somebody for the first time, and feel like we're close friends, solely due to our online connections.

One highlight of the day was meeting Caleb Elston, the creator of Toluu. Caleb, based in Miami, Florida, is far from home, but was nice enough to step out of a session he was attending so we could catch up. In the thirty minutes or so that we talked, he expressed excitement over how rapidly Web users have taken to his RSS feed matching and recommendation service, saying thousands had signed up, with the only limitation being how many beta invites he has offered.

In fact, the early buzz over Toluu, both here and elsewhere, led to some curiosity from colleagues at his day job, where he said he was getting more and better PR than his company. Some friends at the office even thought he might jump ship, to focus solely on Toluu. Yet, he reassured me, that wasn't in the plans. For him, developing and enhancing Toluu is done when he otherwise would be less productive, watching TV or movies, and has helped to keep him sharp and focused.

Eager to keep the Toluu buzz going, I even lobbed a call to Robert Scoble, hoping I could connect the two, but his dance card is full. He said he'd love to meet up, but it's no surprise he has interviews lined up every hour on the hour throughout the show from entrepreneurs trying to gain his attention. I don't exactly envy his schedule.

Wandering up to the press room, as my exhibitor pass wouldn't let me crash any of the sessions, I found Marshall Kirkpatrick and Josh Catone of ReadWriteWeb, as well as Brian Solis of Bub.blicio.us and PR 2.0. As Marshall has been one of my more vocal advocates since the turn of the calendar year, and as I respect RWW's efforts, it seemed natural to pull alongside and start trading stories. We talked about what was making news today at the show (not too much), and looked at the latest FriendFeed apps, MySocial 24x7 and FriendFeedMachine, which I covered yesterday. Marshall really likes MySocial 24x7 a lot, and showed me how he had it sitting in his FireFox browser sidebar, but I haven't yet installed it. That led to him teasing me about getting to a FriendFeed app before I did, which I can live with. In turn, I gave him grief for Sarah Perez' continued success at RWW, which I suggested was putting a little more pressure on him to produce. We both agreed she was doing a great job, but I don't know that she's at the show. I certainly didn't see her today.

Richard MacManus joined us at the table just as I had to leave, but I was able to introduce myself and shake hands.

On tap for tomorrow? The exhibition gets started. So, after putting in labor today, we'll be looking forward to meeting more people, both in my virtual address book, and my real world directory. We'll be at booth #115 all day, and can be reached by the contact information on the right hand side of the blog. I'm already looking forward to meeting Susan Mernit, hope to track down the Mashable team, and maybe you too! Send me a note, or drop by booth #115, and we can get connected.

When Facebook's chat functionality debuted at the beginning of the month, I wasn't immediately interested. After all, adding a chatroom-like function to a social network largely comprised of students, family and casual friends isn't exactly a world premiere of revolutionary innovation. But, this evening, it wasn't Twitter or FriendFeed that helped me directly connect to a colleague, but Facebook's chat to the rescue. Its simple design, offering basic functionality, is, in my opinion, a real win for the site.

Now, when logging in to Facebook, a small horizontal bar fills the bottom of the browser window, showing Online Friends and a (#) showing the number who are online at the same time as you and are ready for chat. To start a chat is simple, by clicking the Online Friends tab, click a friend and a small mini-window extends from the chat bar.

This evening, a colleague and I walked through the demo of a new site, traded ideas, and quickly accomplished what usually would have taken a phone call, or a series of e-mails. Facebook's ability to know that I was logged in, and cross-reference my status with those of my Facebook friends, made the conversation possible, and has me thinking other sites, like Twitter or FriendFeed, would be wise to consider adding similar functionality that displays what other friends are online and ready to strike up conversation.

I'm still not a huge Facebook fan, and probably use about 5% of the network's features, but now, when logging in, one of the first things I'll be doing is checking the "Online Friends" tab and seeing who would be interesting to talk to. It just works, simply and cleanly, the way it should.

As the site has grown over the last year or so, the content on louisgray.com has changed. (Go directly to survey)

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While not everyone agreed with my early, glowing, assessments of FriendFeed, there is now no question the social Web activities aggregation site is among the fastest-growing on the Internet, amassing not only some of the biggest names in the tech blogosphere as its most active members, but, with the addition of an API, becoming a new platform for development, much like Facebook was in 2007. The newest approach to handling the data flow from FriendFeed is a service called FriendFeedMachine, which lets helps you filter between your true "Close Friends" and those you just want to follow, and gives a new approach to making comments, open items within the Web page, and even marking items as previously read.

Designed by Scott Goldie in Melbourne, Australia (Web site | Twitter), FriendFeedMachine was inspired by the very real problem some FriendFeed users have found through the site's growth, as "real life" friends are being drowned out by the noisier, more active participants, including Robert Scoble, Mike Arrington, and as some have let me know... me. Goldie also found that as the "real life" friends' activity would fall off his radar, items would go unread, and a new approach was needed.

"I wanted to see what my friends were doing by service (i.e. grouped by Twitter, Blog, etc.)," he wrote in an e-mail Saturday night. "I also wanted a way to view items without leaving the page where the feed info was."

While some on FriendFeed, Twitter and other communications mediums have opted to unsubscribe from the more active users, Goldie agrees with Scoble's assertation that "it's not who follows you but who you follow that's important." FriendFeedMachine is an attempt to organize the resulting noise and make it more useful.

You can login to FriendFeedMachine at www.friendfeedmachine.com, by entering your FriendFeed ID and your remote key. At first, you can see those individuals who are on your home feed, as you would with FriendFeed's main page, as well as the service they used to generate activity, be it Google Reader, Blog, Twitter, Digg, Del.icio.us or any of the other few dozen FriendFeed supports.

Clicking on the "Friends" button at the top lists all your friends you are subscribed to and the services they use. Even my 266 that I follow came up, though I'd assume the more friends you have, the slower the browser interface will be. Unlike FriendFeed, which organizes activity chronologically, including items most recently commented on or liked at the top, FriendFeedMachine organizes by individual. I can click on Frederic Lardinois' Twitter entries and see them all at once. I can click on Kevin Fox's favorite YouTube videos, or select Dave Winer's blog posts, for instance. From this window, I can either read each item individually, mark them as read, or close and return to the "Friends" area.


This example shows Kevin Fox's FriendFeed posts
But the most interesting element to FriendFeedMachine is the concept of "Close Friends". By clicking on the profile picture of any friend within FriendFeedMachine, I have a checkbox to name them a "Good friend". When I do that, their data is now shown not just in the aggregate feed, but under the "Close Friends" button. And yes, Good = Close as far as FriendFeedMachine is concerned. Now, the issue of separating "Real life" friends and all FriendFeed contacts is solved. If I choose, I can whittle down my 266 followed contacts in FriendFeed and have a "Close Friends" list of 3, 10 or 30... whatever I like. And the "Close Friends" button activity is just as the "Friends" stream operates, showing me their services, and letting me view each of the activities my friends have made on their individual services.


Viewing an item in FriendFeedMachine.
(Click for larger screenshot)
And don't get the idea that FriendFeedMachine is passive, as it's not. Like other FriendFeed API services that have debuted in recent weeks, you can make comments or like items directly from within FriendFeedMachine, by hitting the green arrow to go to the item, where you see it in full, and have the option to hit "I like it!" or make a comment and hit "Post". FriendFeedMachine also displays whether or not the item already has likes or comments, so you're not left out of the conversation.

Unlike some of the recent entrants approaching FriendFeed from a new angle, FriendFeedMachine is not an AIR application, or a GreaseMonkey script. It's a new, unique, Web interface for viewing and interacting with the FriendFeed activity - all of it. But now, you don't risk missing updates from your real friends.