I am working at the Technische Universität Wien developing in house software solutions. I studied French and German as foreign languages at university in the UK and lived in France, Germany and Austria as part of my degree program. I now live and work in Vienna, Austria.
Ben Werdmüller (groups.google.com)Before we begin -
- Hi! I'm going to return to spending more time on Known. As you may know, I was Director of Investments at Matter Ventures for the last two years or so, which occupied a disproportionate amount of my time. This is no longer the case. While I'm working on another open source project - Unlock - during the day, I'll be able to devote more attention to Known.
- Known deserves a 1.0 release, and will get one. Marcus and I have spoken quite a bit about the route forward.
- Commercial enhancements to Known, like the hosted service and Convoy, will get their own update. Going forward, any commercial ambitions or support for Known will be secondary to the open source project, if they exist at all.
Okay. With all of that said, I'd like to put the following out for discussion. Replies, questions, and criticisms are welcome!
The runner up awesome news is that Reclaim Hosting is very likely to revamp their installatron version of it.
This past week, I finally pulled the plug and deleted my Facebook account. Or, rather, I scheduled my Facebook to be deleted in two weeks since, apparently, the company doesn’t allow users to delete accounts without giving itself a grace period. A lot of friends have pointed out real things I might miss by not being on the platform, but I feel so much lighter without the Facebook echo chamber in my head. I don’t judge people who stay on the platform–I’m not an evangelist–but it just wasn’t working for me.
Thanks David Shanske for the Refbacks plugin. Thanks Tantek for what I think is my first incoming “mention” from chat.
The chat has some reasonable microformats markup, so I suppose the parser could do a more solid job, but this is a pretty great start. Sadly, Refback isn’t as real-time as Webmention, but it’s better than nothing.
I suppose we could all be posting chats on our own sites and syndicating into places like IRC to own our two directional conversations, but until I get around to the other half… (or at least for WordPress, I recall having gotten syndication to IRC for WithKnown working a while back via plugin.)
Are rituals still needed in a world mediated through digital devices?
We tend to think of rituals as solemn ceremonies, usually associated with religion. But rituals exist in our everyday life, as a way of helping us to make sense of the world. They can be communal or solitary. But how are they changing as we become increasing digital? Can rituals still have power and relevance in a world mediated through digital devices?
Guests
Michael Norton – Professor, Harvard Business School
Vanessa Ochs – Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and Member of the Jewish Studies Program, University of Virginia
Viktor Lysell Smalanning – Ritual designer
Alexandra Samuel – digital columnist for JSTOR Daily and regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal
Nicolas Nova – Associate Professor, Geneva School of Art and Design
What types of rituals can we create to help mark the leaving behind of the old social world and becoming a fully fledged member of the indie web by registering one’s own domain and having one’s own website? Perhaps a ritual to celebrate not only this but the addition of standards like Webmention, Micropub, and Microsub? In some small sense, this is what we’re celebrating in the use of displaying buttons (or badges) on our sites.
This is definitely worth listening to again and brainstorming ideas for extending the concept. Perhaps at an upcoming IWC??
hat tip: Aaron Davis
This weekend, I attended part of Oxford’s first ever IndieWebCamp! As a long (long, long) time proponent of IndieWeb philosophy (since long before anybody said “IndieWeb”, at least) I’ve got my personal web presence pretty-well sorted out. Still, I loved the idea of attending and pushing some of my own tools even further: after all, a personal website isn’t “finished” until its owner says it is! One of the things I ended up hacking on was pretty-predictable: enhancements to my recently-open-sourced geocaching PESOS tools… but the other’s worth sharing too, I think.
The Indie Web movement is a movement all about content ownership, in the current times of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and so on. It has been something I’ve been interested in ever since hearing Jeremy Keith talk about it at a conference last year. So I was super excited to hear that the wonderful Garrett was organising an Indie Web Camp in Oxford! Here’s a summary of what I did over the two days:
Henry James Blyth (henryblyth.com)This weekend, the lovely and amazing Garrett put together an IndieWeb camp for two days, for free, in Oxford! After hearing about it through Garrett a few months back, just before an amazing talk at Oxford Geek Nights by Jeremy Keith, I thought: This is cool, but… how… how does it??? How does it...
Marcus Povey (Marcus Povey)This weekend I attended the first Oxford Indieweb camp, kindly organised by Garrett. Day 1 Due to an early start, and not enough coffee, I had left my phone at home, and so couldn’t log into anything. Two factor auth on things ...
Belle B. Cooper (blog.bellebcooper.com)I've come and gone from Micro.blog several times before. I joined long before the Kickstarter, when barely anyone was there. I tried it again after the Kickstarter, when the community looked more like it does today. And I came back again a few weeks ago for the most fun, if not the longest, period of time I've spent there.
Bridget Willard (Twitter)Setting up a new #WordPress site for a friend, her first blog. Installing #Gutenberg right now, curious what a more or less newbie to blogging thinks about it vs. previous experiences with WP.
— Roy Sivan (@royboy789) September 20, 2018I bet a newbie loves it.
— Bridget Willard (@YouTooCanBeGuru) September 20, 2018You don't need to be a newbie to love #gutenberg but it helps.
— Joseph Dickson (@joe4ska) September 20, 2018Well, I don't love it at all.
— Bridget Willard (@YouTooCanBeGuru) September 20, 2018
I’ve been using Micropub more and more over the past couple of years and I love the convenience and simplicity for a huge variety of posting needs including custom apps like Teacup and Screech for audio/podcasting.
It is with deep regret that we announce that we will stop providing our beloved service, Path.
We started Path in 2010 as a small team of passionate and experienced designers and engineers. Over the years we have tried to lay out our mission: through technology and design we aim to be a source of happiness, meaning, and connection to our users. Along our journey we have laughed and cried with you, and learned valuable lessons. And it is now inevitable to wind down the service to prioritize our work to serve you with better products and services. It has been a long journey and we sincerely thank each one of you for your years of love and support for Path.
The specific shutdown schedule is as below:
- 9.17.2018 : Notice on Path service discontinuation
- 10.1.2018: Unable to download/update the app in iTunes and Google Play
- 10.18.2018: Termination of the Service (Unable to access to Path)
- 11.15.2018: Path related customer service will be closedThe Path service and Terms of Use governing your use of Path will terminate on [10.18.2018].
Prior to [10.18.2018], you can restore retrieve a copy of your data (i.e. your images, text, videos) by following below steps:
1. Visit https://path.com/settings/backups
2. Log in with your Path account
3. Click the button and enter email address that you wish to receive the backup files
OR
1. Open your Path app and go to Setting
2. Click the button and enter your email address that you would like to receive the backup files.
*Please make sure that your Path app is the latest ver.Please note that you will not be able to access the backup service site after [10.18.2018]. We may not retain copies of any of your data on and from that date. Accordingly, you are encouraged to download and keep copies of your data if you wish to have access from [10.18.2018].
I do notice that because part of the service’s cachet was either private or limited audience posts, that a lot of my early posting (from 11/29/10 to around December 2014) included photographs that I posted directly to Path and didn’t share very widely. As a result, a lot of my early posting wasn’t done from my own website, so I’m requesting a downloadable backup of all my data before the service goes under. If you used the service, I hope you’re requesting your download as well.
It’s kind of sad that amidst the toxicity of Twitter which gamifies following that a service that limited following and focused on the small and personal is collapsing.
Thanks for all the laughs and fun Path, and thanks for giving at least some warning before shutting down all your servers with all of that user data.
Mostly I’m glad that I’m able to post most of my content to my own site now without the reliance on third party social networks to save and maintain my data. If you’re worried about how social services use and abuse your data or may disappear with it altogether–Path will not be the last–and want more control over it, stop by IndieWeb.org to see how you can take back your online identity and data. I and many others are always happy to help those who are interested.
Huffduff
October 1st will be the 43 anniversary of the Ali/Frazer fight, so this week’s title is apropos after David spent a month in Manila working on many IndieWeb related projects including the Micropub plugin, client discovery in IndieAuth, Post Kinds, etc.
In this week’s episode, we discuss new developments in WordPress and what David has wanted to accomplish for all these years in the IndieWeb community: the ability to read something on his phone, store it on his website to either share or just save, as appropriate.
Kevin Hodgson (dogtrax.edublogs.org)I am dipping into Equity Unbound, a new online course/collaboration with Mia Zamora, Maha Bali and Catherine Cronin. They will be working with university students as well as opening things up to other spaces where folks, like you and me, can jump in. (The Twitter tag is here: #unboundeq) I am always interested in seeing how new offerings can be riffs off previous open learning networks, such as NetNarr, Rhizo, Digiwrimo, CLMOOC, and others.
It reminds me of a line I wrote a few months back in an article about the IndieWeb idea of Webmentions for A List Apart entitled Webmentions: Enabling Better Communication on the Internet:
Possibly worst of all, your personal identity on the internet can end up fragmented like so many horcruxes across multiple websites over which you have little, if any, control.
Inherent in this idea is that corporate interests and others who run social sites can disappear, delete, or moderate out of existence any of my writing, photos, audio, video, or other content into the memory hole at any time and for almost any reason. And just like a destroyed horcrux, their doing so takes a bit of my soul (identity) with it each time.
A few years back, I decided to take back my own identity on the web and post everything of interest to me on my own website on my own domain first–a digital commonplace book if you will. Only then do I syndicate it into other communities, websites, or areas as needed. (Even this reply is on my own site before I syndicate it to yours.) As a result, I own a tremendously large part of my online identity (though even at that, a lot of it is published privately for myself or select small audiences).
I hope that as Equity Unbound continues and we explore the ideas of identity, public/private, and related topics, people might consider some of these ideas and implications and potentially work on expanding solutions for students, teachers, and the rest of the world.
