IndieWeb | Chris Aldrich

What I wouldn’t give for a web browser feature wherein I could log into it with my URL and have the browser query my website to show me when I’ve previously read, liked, favorited, replied, etc. to the content on a particular URL. #IndieWeb

Learning Paths Annotations and Highlights to One’s Website Using ThreadReaderApp

Some small pieces, loosely joined for owning one’s highlights online.

I ran across a Chrome extension for highlights, annotations, and tagging tonight. It’s called Learning Paths. It works roughly as advertised for creating and saving highlights and annotations online. With a social silo log in process (I didn’t see an email login option), you’ve quickly got an account on the service.

You can then use the extension to highlight, tag, and annotate web pages. One can export their data as a .csv file which is nice. They’ve also got an online dashboard which displays all your data and has the ability to see public data from other users as well.

Screencapture of the Learning Paths UI for their Chrome extension

One of the interesting pieces they support is allowing users to tweet a thread from all their highlights of a piece online. Upon seeing this I thought it might make a useful feature for getting data into one’s personal wiki, website, or digital garden, particularly now that ThreadReaderApp supports posting unrolled Twitter threads to one’s Micropub enabled website.

So the workflow goes something like this (with links to examples of my having tried it along the way):

Use Learning Paths to highlight an article;
Use the sharing interface to share the highlights as a Twitter thread;
Make any modifications to the Twitter thread and then post;
- Example: https://twitter.com/ChrisAldrich/status/1282863853802405888
Go to the thread and reply to one of the tweets with “@ThreadReaderApp unroll”;
Log into your ThreadReaderApp account to see the thread;
- Example: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1282863853802405888.html
Go to your “My Authored Threads” tab;
Click on the “Publish n Tweets to Blog” button for the appropriate thread (and handle any authentication/authorization workflow);
The thread of highlights should now be on your website;
- Example: https://boffosocko.com/2020/07/13/55773547/

Screencapture example of ThreadReaderApp’s Authored Threads tab interface

While this works relatively well, there are a few drawbacks:

The UI for the annotations is a bit flaky at times and in my experience often disappears before you’ve had a chance to save them.
The workflow misses out on any of the annotations and tags you might add to each of the highlights (unless you manually add them to the thread, and even then you may run out of space/characters).
The appearance of the thread on your site is simply what you get.

While the idea works roughly in practice, it isn’t as optimal as the workflow or data fidelity I’ve found in using more robust tooling like that found in Hypothes.is for which I’ve also built a better UI on my website.

Still others, might appreciate the idea, so have at it! I’d love to see others’ ideas about owning their highlights, annotations, and related data in a place they control.

Posting an event and RSVPing to it at the same time

Yesterday I had created an event post for an upcoming DoOO Meetup I’m hosting and syndicated a copy to Meetable. The sad, but predictable, result was a webmention being displayed on Meetable that duplicated all of the details including all of the invitations. This felt annoying to me, and I simultaneously thought that as the host, I also ought to officially RSVP for the event itself so that it didn’t appear like no one was going. Rather than go to the trouble of creating a stand-alone RSVP reply post, I thought, why not create a two-for-one bargain? So I naïvely added a class="u-in-reply-to" to the Meetable URL in my event and threw on a data tag to the front of the post like so:

<data class="p-rsvp" value="yes">I'll be hosting</data>

And of course, wouldn’t you know: it worked! The duplication of all the data on the syndicated copy disappeared, and in its place a smiling photo of me indicating that I’m attending.

Sadly, I’ve noticed that the WordPress Webmention plugin doesn’t seem to allow me to self-RSVP to my own original post within the same post. I thought I might try forcing it manually only to discover that Telegraph won’t allow the source and target to be the same URL. I also tried mention-tech which will apparently send it and report a success, but my site doesn’t seem to actually receive and display it. I will say this may be the only case I’ve run across in 5 years that I’d want to self-mention the same post and actually display the result.

A Domain of One’s Own Meetup | July 23, 2020

I’ll be hosting a Domain of One’s Own meetup on Thursday, July 23, 2020 at at 10:30 AM Pacific / 1:30 PM Eastern / 7:30 PM CEST. Everyone who is interested in the topic is welcome to attend. We expect there will be students, teachers, designers, web developers, technologists, and people of all ages and ranges of ability from those just starting out with a domain to those running DoOO programs at colleges or even people running their own hosting companies.

We’ll use Zoom for this online meetup (here’s the link to the room which should be active about 15 minutes before we start). We’re planning on using an Etherpad for real-time chat and note taking for the event.

Attendees will be expected to have read and agree to the IndieWeb Code of Conduct which will apply to the meetup.

We will

Have discussions about A Domain of One’s Own and the independent web;
Get to know other colleagues in the space;
Ask colleagues for help/advice on problems or issues you’re having with your domain;
Find potential collaborators for domains-related projects you’re working on;
Explore new and interesting ideas about what one can do or accomplish with a personal domain;
Create or update your domain

Agenda

Welcome
Introductions: short 2 minute introductions of attendees with an optional brief demonstration of something you’ve done on your domain or purpose for which you’re using your domain.
Group photo for those who wish to participate
Main meetup: Ideally everyone should bring a topic, demonstration, question, or problem to discuss with the group. Depending on time and interest, we can try to spend 5-10 minutes discussing and providing feedback on each of these. If questions go over this time limitation, we can extend the conversation in smaller groups as necessary after the meetup.

RSVP

To RSVP to the meetup, please do one of the following:

Make a comment to indicate your attendance below;
Tweet your RSVP reply to this Tweet;
Comment your RSVP on the Reclaim Hosting Community post about the event;
RSVP to the event on events.indieweb.org
Publish an indie RSVP on your own website/domain and send a webmention to this post

Future meetups

While the time frame for this inaugural meetup may work best for some in the Americas, everyone with interest is most welcome. If there are others in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, or other locales who are interested, do let us know what dates/times might work for you in the future and we can try to organize a time to maximize some attendance there. I’m happy to help anyone who’d like to take the leadership of other time zones or locales to leverage some of the resources of the IndieWeb community to assist in starting future meetings to cover other areas of the world.

🎉 Invitations 🎉

Tim Owens, Aaron Davis, Cathie LeBlanc, Kartik Prabhu, Amber Case, Amy Guy, Greg McVerry, William Ian O’Byrne, Jim Groom, Kimberly Hirsh, John Johnston, Robin DeRosa, Audrey Watters, Ken Bauer, Will Monroe, Jeremy Dean, Nate Angell, Jon Udell, Adam Procter, Amy Guy, Kris Shaffer, Anelise H. Shrout, John Johnston, Mark Grabe, Rick Wysocki, Doug Holton, Jeffrey Keefer, Rayna M. Harris, Davey Moloney, Vicki Boykis, John Carlos Baez, Dan Scott, Taylor Jadin, Kathleen Fitzpatrick (mb), Blair MacIntyre (mb), Doug Belshaw, Adam Procter, Dan Cohen (mb), Dave Cormier, Scott Gruber, Kay Oddone, Kin Lane, Martha Burtis, Lee Skallerup Bessette, Adam Croom, Sean Michael Morris, Jesse Stommel, Cassie Nooyen, Stephen Downes, Ben Werdmüller, Erin Jo Richey, Jack Jamieson, Grant Potter, Ryan Boren (mb), Paul Hibbits, Maha Bali, Alan Levine, John Stewart, Teodora Petkova, Lora Taub-Pervizpour, Clint Lalonde, Clint Lalonde, Sonja Burrows, Jonathan Poritz, Chris Long, Mo Pelzel, Michelle S. Hagerman, Anne-Marie Scott, Tim Clarke, Amy Collier, Laura Pasquini, Martin Hawksey, Zach Whalen, Daniel Lynds, Tom Woodward, Mark A. Matienzo, Laura Gibbs, Autumn Caines, Chris Lott, Jess Reingold, Terry Green, Erin Rose Glass, Trip Kirkpatrick, Meredith Fierro, Lauren Brumfield, Helen DeWaard, Keegan Long-Wheeler, Irene Stewart, Christina Hendricks, Bill Kronholm, Xinli Wang, Tineke D’Haeseleer, Martin Weller, Jeremy Felt, Jane Van Galen, Tanis Morgan, Library Carpentry

Know someone who would be interested in joining? Please forward this event, or one of the syndicated copies (linked below) to them on your platform or modality of choice.

Hashtags: #phdchat, #DoOO, #edtechchat, #literacies, #higherED, #dh, #ds106, #educolor, #WPCampus, #openscience, #clmooc, #digped, #altc

Featured image: Hard Drive Repair flickr photo by wwarby shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

Sarah, (@practicing_dsgn) there are a few Homebrew Website Clubs coming up on July 15, 22, and 29. Would you like to co-host one of them with me? We could also use another co-organizer to help get a Gardens & Streams II pop-up session up and running if you’re interested in helping out there.

Getting Started with WordPress, an IndieWebCamp Pop-up Session

I’ll be hosting an introduction to IndieWeb using WordPress and invite everyone to join me via Zoom (link to come).

Saturday, August 1, 2020 9:30 – 11:30am (America/Los_Angeles)

This will be a broad-based introduction to the IndieWeb session specifically focused on using WordPress. Our aim is to help people get set up and running a self-hosted IndieWeb-based website with WordPress though some of our discussion will work for WordPress.com versions as well.

Grab a cup of coffee and get an IndieWeb site up and running in just a few hours.
Have questions or problems with your current WordPress IndieWeb site? Stop by and get some help.
Just figuring out what IndieWeb is about? Much of what we’ll discuss is applicable to other platforms and may be useful to other beginners as well.
All levels of experience welcome
(Note: for those without a domain registered or web hosting, we may have a brief pre-session to help you out so we can be more productive during the main session.)

Notes for the session will take place at: https://etherpad.indieweb.org/WordPressQuickStart
Create week: Following the session, we’ll give people a chance to create something for their site to do remote demos.
Demos: When we’re done, we’ll have a short online demo session so people can show off the new sites and maybe demo their favorite functionality.

Would you like to volunteer to help manage the session? Add yourself to the list on the IndieWeb wiki or contact the organizers in chat.

Code of Conduct: indieweb.org/code-of-conduct

I’m planning on setting up up a regularly recurring Domain of One’s Own focused online meetup in the mold of Homebrew Website Clubs or WordPress meetups. People can ask questions, get help, collaborate, demo technology and ways they’re using their domains.

I’m thinking monthly to start, but I’m curious what days of the week and times might work best for people, especially across time zones?

Let me know if you’re interested in helping to organize or would like to join us to participate.

Featured image: Hard Drive Repair flickr photo by wwarby shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

Syndicating my IndieWeb Wiki edits to my personal website

I don’t have a specific “Edit” post kind on my website (yet!), but I’ve set things up–using a prior recipe–so that edits I make to the IndieWeb wiki are syndicated (via PESOS) to the Micropub endpoint on my website to create draft posts on my personal website!

Presently they were easiest to map to my website as bookmarks until I can create the UI to indicate edits, but changing the UI piece, and retroactively modifying some data for posts, should be fairly simple and straightforward for me.

I’m not sure I’ll keep the entire diff content in the future, but may just keep the direct text added depending on the edit and the potential context. We’ll play around and see what comes of it. It’s reasonably sure that I may not post everything publicly either, but keep it as either a draft or private post on my website. In some cases, I may just add the edit syndication link on an original bookmark, read, watch, or other post type, a pattern which I’ve done in the past for articles I’ve read/bookmarked in the past and simply syndicated manually to the wiki.

I’ll also need to tinker with how to save edits I make directly in the chat channels via Loqi, though I think that is straightforward as well, now that the “easy” part has been done.

I only wish I had thought to do this before I made the thousands of edits to the wiki earlier this week. Both IndieWebCamp West 2020 and the edits for part of organizing that were the inspiration for finally getting around to doing this.

This isn’t as slick as the process Angelo Gladding recently did a demo of and is doing to syndicate his edits to the wiki from his website using a POSSE syndication workflow, but I’ll guarantee my method was way less work!

Also, since my edits to the wiki are made as CC0 contributions, the POSSE/PESOS flow doesn’t make as much difference to me as it might on other social silos.

I don’t edit Wikipedia incredibly often, but perhaps I set that functionality up shortly too.

Here’s the first example (public) post: https://boffosocko.com/2020/06/30/55772818/

I’ll get around to fixing the remainder of the presentation and UI shortly, but it’s not a horrific first pass. It’s at least allowing me to own copies of the data I’m putting out on the Internet.