6 Things Rich People Need to Stop Saying

Thanks to mindways for the pointer to this long screed in Cracked about the irritating self-justifications of the upper class. It's uncomfortably funny in a rather Carlin-esque way: that is, it is rude, over the top, occasionally a bit nasty and, by and large, correct. Frankly, it's worthwhile reading for us various affluent techie types (who may not be the 1%, but a lot of us are at least 10%), as a fairly good guide to how not to be an asshole about it...

And somehow, they didn't mention the incredibly *important* change

There I am today, skimming through my friends list as usual. I click on one of the posts that has new comments since I last looked. (I always set up my flist so that I can tell at a glance when there are new comments -- that's an old feature, but is a client-side cheat). And there, in the comments, next to each comment I haven't read yet, is a tiny "New Comment" token.

Whoa.

I mean, this looks minor to most people, but from a usability perspective it is big. It means that LJ is actually tracking when you last read a thread, and which comments came in since then. And *that*, in turn, means that it's a very small step to implement "Show me all of the flist entries *that are actively being discussed*." It allows you to do client-side stuff to de-emphasize the bits I've already read, so that I can quickly focus on the new material. It's basically the poor man's version of a key feature of CommYou, the ability to track where the interesting conversations are happening.

I wonder if they have any clue how important this one is, or what to do with it? (And now I wonder whether DW already has this feature -- I haven't been paying much attention over there...)