Now I think it would be cool if we got to use some of those tools together, for example, taking a screen capture and then using the sketch tool to highlight something important.

Could someone buy an account, follow everyone, and collect data? Could someone get RSS feeds of nearly 74,000 user accounts? I suppose it’s possible. It would be interesting to say what @dalton thinks about that.

What you won’t see are “Sponsored Tweets” that show up from accounts you aren’t following. If you aren’t getting those in your Twitter feed now, you’re lucky. I don’t know how I got selected for @barackobama sponsored tweets; it’s fairly obvious I don’t agree with a lot of what he’s doing. You also won’t see those crazy Facebook ads asking if you want to download another app or play another game.

What are you looking for when you say “truly integrate a cloud-based experience”? Where would you like to see it go?

Also for (1), who’s to say that in the future, some company won’t buy a membership to ADN and start data mining and marketing the way it’s currently being done on Twitter? I don’t like this on Twitter, but it’s not horribly intrusive, and ADN makes it sound like this will never happen there when it fact it absolutely could under the right circumstances.

Also for (3), if ADN apps can get beyond the self-referential and truly integrate a cloud-based experience, I’d be more interested. But when apps are supposedly one of the major selling points of ADN, but most of the apps are just tools for posting things to ADN, and many of them cost more money on top of the subscription fee, then it’s not really a selling point. (Why not charge an even $50 a year and give $15 in credit for purchasing apps when you join?)

I get that ADN is a young ecosystem, and I’m staying on to see where it goes. I think there’s potential there but it has a long way to go.

The running joke, you know, is that only Google employees use Google’s products. Perhaps that is true, in part, because Google is the only one whom Google lets develop on Google+.

I can’t wait to cut Twitter out, for sure, and I’m saying this just as Todd Wilken posts his 8th tweet on the system. Heh. I’ve tried cutting Facebook out before, and unfortunately it is still treading that line to where it hasn’t fully alienated its userbase yet. Man, Zuckerberg keeps trying, though.

Yeah, our “little smokies” are little smoked sausages, about 3-4 cm (how’s that for being international) in length. Usually we put them in a slow cooker with cocktail sauce and grape jelly, which melt together to make a nice sauce, and we serve them over New Year’s.

One user had a personal iPhone to go along with the company iPhone, but most opted for Android phones.

That works until a higher-up actually demands that the software be used, and the programmer is still doing it over.

I was actually surprised to see that a replacement battery in Canada had a higher price than in the States. I would have expected that the exchange rate and being in the country of manufacture would have helped.

I love my Torch. I hope your newest Bold works out for you.

WordPress hates me. No matter how many times I try to login, and make sure my password and so forth is correct by having the information emailed to me, I get an error message. Very frustrating for sites that only accept WordPress accounts.

I certainly did not intend to suggest that your child was misdiagnosed. If I gave that impression, I am very sorry. I was speaking only from my own experience with doctors and special ed teachers who make snap judgments rather than referring people to professionals who really know what they’re doing. Sadly, there is a whole segment of the medical community that follows fads instead of hard science when it comes to behavioral issues in children, and I fear that a lot of them are jumping on an ASD bandwagon right now–which is not good for anyone.

2nd comment – I don’t know anybody that takes diagnosis lightly. In fact, autism diagnosis is taken with quite a heavy heart I would guess in a large majority of cases. If you daughter “clearly does not have AS” – what exactly were you looking for at the doctor’s visit?

It took 15 months before we were able to get our child diagnosed. It was pages and pages of paperwork as well as 3 multiple hour long appointments with MD and PhD level professionals.

However, if you go to your pediatrician at your child’s 12 month appt. and there are red flags including no eye contact or no pointing than your doctor would be remiss in not sending you on to a further appointment. This external behavior should be enough to require follow-up. We NEED early diagnosis, so we can get our kiddos in therapies as early as possible for the best possible outcome.

I have two daughters, and one has Asperger Syndrome–which for those who don’t know, is considered an ASD (though there is actually some debate about this).

When you spend a lot of time with someone who has Asperger, you pick up on the kind of thought process that is at work. But to recognize it in other people, you have to know them *really* well, because you have to know how they think. External behavior alone is not a good indicator.

My other daughter clearly does not have AS, and probably doesn’t have any ASD at all; and yet a doctor decided she probably had AS, based on her failure to make eye contact with him. (He didn’t know about her sister’s diagnosis.) Of course this is just silly: There are all kinds of reasons why someone might fail to make eye contact. But because this doctor jumped to conclusions, my NT daughter will probably be counted among the 1 in 88 in statistics like these.

I believe we’re seeing a problem similar to what happened with ADD and ADHD in the 90s: There is so much publicity about ASD that people are hypersensitive to the warning signs. ASD has become the go-to diagnosis for any issues someone might be having. It’s a real disservice both to the kids who are wrongly diagnosed, and to the kids who really have an ASD and are lumped in with every problem student imaginable.

Diagnosis in high-functioning cases should not be taken lightly. My AS daughter’s diagnosis came after a months-long exhaustive study of both her personal history and our entire family history, including many hours interviewing her and observing her behavior and interactions across a variety of settings. Any diagnosis of a high-functioning ASD without this kind of evaluation is highly suspect.

I’ll pray for your family, and you pray for ours — especially since some of the autism pathologies currently under research connect very closely to Chron’s and autoimmune disease.

We have gifts, and we can and should use them where we are able.

Depending on the government for our research seems pointless and wasteful to me. It ends up that Peter ends up paying for Paul’s research, and Paul pays for Peter’s research. Let’s cut out the government middle man and support the causes we want.

I believe we should support the neighbors that God gives us, as we find them. We all suffer.

With respect to your second: Definitely!

Second, might not governmental prohibition of public acts of Christian mercy indeed be an instance of the Church having to bear the cross?