November, 2019 | Chris Aldrich

Read E-books at libraries are a huge hit, leading to long waits, reader hacks and worried publishers by Heather Kelly (Washington Post)

While some people are scrambling to collect log-ins for Netflix, HBO Go, Hulu and, now, Disney Plus, Sarah Jacobsson Purewal is working on a different kind of hustle. She signs up for any public library that will have her to find and reserve available e-books.

I’ve always had a dozen or so library cards at any one time, so I guess I’ve never really bothered to go out of my way to collect more for the digital games people are playing here with books. I have however very naturally checked several library systems for books in this way, however I find that many libraries just don’t have the titles I’m looking for anywhere.

I liked the tip about putting one’s e-reader into airplane mode to keep it from updating and removing overdue books. Of course there are some more technical methods of stripping DRM or even pirating books which I was a bit surprised they didn’t delve into, but which are frequently mentioned with respect to college textbook related articles.

Replied to Show conditional Twitter intents with Eleventy by

Sia Karamalegos (sia.codes)

Encourage users to retweet or share a post based on whether a Tweet already exists for your blog post.

This reminds me that I had done a portion of this sort of work for my site a while back as a proof of concept and particularly with relation to Threaded conversations between WordPress and Twitter. I had meant to finish the sketch and turn it into a WordPress plugin or possibly roll it up into the Syndication Links plugin. Perhaps that makes sense as I’m already using it to show where I’ve syndicated copies of my content and it will contain the appropriate tweet ID data. Similar UI could be added for content sent to Flickr, Instagram, and Mastodon presuming the provide similar actions. Perhaps this will be a mini project I can circle back around to during the pending holidays?

I love how Sia has implemented it on her static Eleventy site where she’s kept the UI nice and clean. I particularly like the way she’s done the design and layout and made it more like a call to action.

To take the Twitter actions a half-step further, she could URL wrap the word “liked” with the like action on Twitter.

In general, this reminds me a lot of the idea of webactions, though I don’t think that many have been experimenting with them as of late. Perhaps it’s because of the growth of Microsub-based feed readers that have built-in Micropub support?

Hat-tip:

Encourage users to retweet or share a post based on whether a Tweet already exists for your blog post. By me! #webdev #webmentions @eleven_ty https://t.co/00YZWlrXJO

— Sia Karamalegos (@TheGreenGreek) November 26, 2019