reply | Chris Aldrich

Some thoughts on silos, divisions, and bridges

Replied to a tweet by

Instead of 'eliminating' divisions, or 'blowing up' silos....let's use metaphors about bridging, connecting, unifying, transcending, collaborating across borders.... connecting all of the groups within an organization in a coherent way so that they all work seemlessly together.
— Cruce Saunders (@mrcruce) July 31, 2018

The #IndieWeb community has been working on this for a while. There’s even a service called Brid.gy to help enact it. At the same time, as Ben Werdmüller indicates, we need to be careful not to put too much reliance on silos’ APIs which can, and obviously will, be pulled out from underneath us at any moment.

As any kindergartner can tell you, “It’s difficult to play ball when the local bully owns the ball and wants to make up their own rules or leave in a huff.”

One of the things I love about IndieWeb is that we’re all trying to create a way for balls to be roughly standardized and mass manufactured so that everyone can play regardless of what the bully wants to do or what equipment people bring to the game.¹

And as Nikhil Sonnad has reminded us very recently, we also need more than just connections, we need actual caring and thinking human interaction.²

References

Aldrich C. Webmentions: Enabling Better Communication on the Internet. A List Apart. https://alistapart.com/article/webmentions-enabling-better-communication-on-the-internet. Published July 19, 2018. Accessed July 31, 2018.

Sonnad N. Everything bad about Facebook is bad for the same reason. Quartz. https://qz.com/1342757/everything-bad-about-facebook-is-bad-for-the-same-reason/. Published July 30, 2018. Accessed July 31, 2018.

Reply to Brad Enslen about The Future of Blog Snoop

Replied to Memo: Announcement: The Future of Blog Snoop Blog Directory by

Brad Enslen (Brad Enslen)

I’m hitting a fork in the road with this site and the experiment of using a blog as a directory of blogs. The problem here is me: I’m running out of time. I’m duplicating a lot … Source: Announcement: The Future of Blog Snoop – Blog Snoop Weblog Directory We’ll see what happens. It...

Brad, much like Kicks Condor, I think you’re making a laudable effort, and one of the ways our work grows is to both keep up with it and experiment around.

If I recall, programming wasn’t necessarily your strong suit, but like many in the IndieWeb will say: “Manual until it hurts!” By doing things manually, you’ll more easily figure out what might work and what might not, and then when you’ve found the thing that does, then you spend some time programming it to automate the whole thing to make it easier. It’s quite similar to designing a college campus: let the students walk around naturally for a bit then pave the natural walkways that they’ve created. This means you won’t have both the nicely grided and unused sidewalks in addition to the ugly grass-less beaten paths. It’s also the broader generalization of paving the cow paths.

In addition to my Following page I’ve also been doing some experimenting with following posts using the Post Kinds Plugin. It is definitely a lot more manual than I’d like it to be. It does help to have made a bookmarklet to more quickly create follow posts, but until I’ve got it to a place that I really want it, it’s not (yet) worth automating taking the data from those follow posts to dump them into my Follow page for output there as well. Of course the fact that my follow posts have h-entry and h-feed mark up means that someone might also decide to build a parser that will extract my posts into a feed which could then be plugged into something else like a microsub-based reader so that I could make a follow post on my own site and the source is automatically added to my subscription list in my reader automatically.

In addition to Kicks Condor, I’me seeing others start to kick the tires of these things as well. David Shanske recently wrote Brainstorming on Implementing Vouch, Following, and Blogrolls, but I think he’s got a lot more going on in his thinking than he’s indicated in his post which barely scratches the surface.

I also still often think back to a post from Dave Winer in 2016: Are you ready to share your OPML? This too has some experimental discovery features that only scratch the surface of the adjacent possible.

And of course just yesterday, Kevin Marks (previously of Technorati) reminded us about rel=”directory” which could have some interesting implications for discovery and following. Think for a bit of how one might build a decentralized Technorati or something along the lines of Ryan Barrett’s indie map.

As things continue to grow, I’m seeing some of all of our decisions and experiments begin to effect others as these are all functionality and discovery mechanisms that we’ll all need in the very near future. I hope you’ll continue to experiment and make cow paths that can eventually be paved.

Featured Image: Cows on the path flickr photo by Reading Tom shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license⁮

Reply to Kevin Marks et al on Webmention and Annotations

Replied to a tweet by Kevin Marks (Twitter)

Need to read more about webmentions. I like https://t.co/OZ8c3cSblj style annotations. Wonder if something like that but run by trusted journos would be interesting
— Jason Cartwright (@jasoncartwright) July 23, 2018

There have been some experiments https://t.co/hwJqQwYB0A
— Kevin Marks (@kevinmarks) July 23, 2018

@dangillmore, @froomkin and other journos have played around with @hypothes_is (which has private group functionality):

Interesting use of annotation (notably using open-source hypothes.is instead of a proprietary product) in journalism. https://t.co/yAWEWXfJLN

— Dan Gillmor (@dangillmor) July 23, 2017

@dwhly et al have started discussing adding webmentions as well:

Join the conversation with myself @ChrisAldrich, @wiobyrne, @kfitz and @heatherstaines about annotations and web mentions here https://t.co/TnPcFSzk6S and here https://t.co/xZ7c6CyzTd

— Dan Whaley (@dwhly) July 24, 2018

There’s also a lot of potential useful overlap of the broader area of IndieWeb technologies with journalism I think.

👓 How to pack your library: A guide | Chris Adami

Replied to How to pack your library: A guide by

Chris Adami (Spherical Harmonics)

That's right folks, this is not a science post. After 45 posts about information, quanta, intelligence, and what not, a how-to guide? Well I only have one blog, and I didn't know where to put this stuff, that I think could be helpful to others, because I've done this several times and I learned a bunch. So now you get to read about how to move your library of precious books from one house to another.

I like your method and did much the same myself this past September. The smallest “book box” one can find is certainly the key.

One thing you’re missing, at least in several of the photographs, that would help for both general shelf wear as well as for packing/moving is to have all of your dust jackets covered with book jacket covers. This will help protect your dust jackets from wear and tear and help increase their long term value, particularly for rarer first editions.

I notice that some of your collection likely already has these, à la the Heinlein, though it’s obvious in that case that a book seller likely jacketed it far too late to protect the pristine original. At least it’s protected from further future wear. If you think it’s worth the time and protection, it may be a worthwhile thing to do when you’re unpacking and reshelving them on the other end.

Brodart is one of the larger sellers of dust jacket covers and they make a huge variety of shapes, sizes, and types. I’ve found that their Advantage I covers are pretty solid and versatile for most of the book sizes you’ve got. Though fair warning: you can go down the rabbit hole and lose a few hours researching dust cover materials and archival types. In the end you want to look for something that covers the jacket, but doesn’t stick to it. This will allow you to replace the jacket cover with a new one if necessary without causing damage to the dust jacket itself.

Reply to Greg McVerry about #IndieWebEdu

Replied to a post by

Greg McVerry (jgregorymcverry.com)

@kfitz Realized I can just use the list here to make my #IndieWebEdu feed: https://indieweb.org/Indieweb_for_Education Its okay about iOS..nobody is perfect.

For fun and not to need to reinvent the wheel:

Educators in (or aware of IndieWeb) with a subscribe-able OPML link (or you should be able to save the OPML as a file and import it into your reader)
Related Educators in IndieWeb Twitter List

My following page may have other feeds of interest as well.

📑 Connections by Kathleen Fitzpatrick — A reply to heatherstains annotation

Replied to an annotation on Connections by Kathleen Fitzpatrick by

Heather Staines (Hypothesis)

Social media networks provided immediate solutions to a few problems with those early blogging networks: they relieved the moderately heavy lift in getting started and they created the possibility of connections that were immediate, dense, and growing. But as those networks expanded, they both pulled authors away from their own domains — so much quicker to tweet than to blog, and with a much speedier potential response — and they privatized and scattered conversations. ❧
Exactly the use case that annotation is hoping to solve! Enabling the connection between different sites.

While I’m pondering on this, I can’t help but feel like your annotation here is somewhat meant as a reply to Kathleen. I’m left searching to see if you tweeted it with an @mention to notify her. Otherwise, your annotation seems like a cry into the void, which I’ve happened to come across.

I say this because I know that her website now supports sending and receiving Webmentions (she notes as much and references a recent article I wrote on the topic within her text.) If Hypothes.is supported sending Webmentions (a W3C recommendation) for highlights and other annotations on the page they occurred on, then the author of the post would get a notification and could potentially show it on the site (as an inline annotation) or in their comment section, which might also in turn encourage others to open up the annotation layer to do the same. Hypothesis could then not only be an annotation system, but also serve as an ad hoc commenting/conversation tool as well.

You may notice in her comment section that there are 60+ reactions/comments on her site. One or two are done within her native comment interface, and one directly from my website, but the majority are comments, likes, reshares, and mentions which are coming from Twitter by webmention. Imagine if many of them were coming from Hypothesis instead… (try clicking on one of the “@ twitter.com” links following one of the commenter’s avatars and names. What if some of those links looked like:

instead?

Reply to Taylor Jadin about podcasting networks

Replied to a tweet by

Taylor Jadin (Twitter)

I'm tossing around the idea of starting a podcast network. Not some much for ad revenue but to make it easy and cheap for people who want to start a podcast to get hosting.
— Taylor Jadin (@TaylorJadin) July 22, 2018

Basically I'd cover the hosting and standing up the site + RSS feed for people. Then I'd offer guides on equipment to buy and give editing tutorials for newbies.
— Taylor Jadin (@TaylorJadin) July 22, 2018

Registered a domain: https://t.co/nDDlCSHopP
— Taylor Jadin (@TaylorJadin) July 22, 2018

Taylor, If it helps a bit, Manton Reece [(@manton), (@manton)] fairly recently created a microcast network and some tools to help people create, host, and distribute short podcasts with micro.blog. It’s an interesting model and one which could eventually be built upon as a minimal product for adding additional features and tools.

Additionally Aaron Parecki had some thoughts a while back on his microcast (episode 9: Streamlining My Microcast Workflow) about improving his production workflow. Earlier today he also created a discovery website (with subtle hints of a webring) that acts as a discovery mechanism and network of sorts for microcasts which you might find interesting in light of your plans.

I might also submit that if you’re doing it for students, starting with small, short microcasts are always a quick way to get started.

All this to remind me that I just got a Yeti Blue for my birthday and I need to fire it up to continue on with both my microcast and my longer format podcast.

👓 Connections | Kathleen Fitzpatrick

Replied to Connections by Kathleen Fitzpatrick (kfitz.info)

There are still some wrinkles to be ironed out in getting the various platforms we use today to play well with Webmentions, but it’s a real step toward the goal of that decentralized, distributed, interconnected future for scholarly communication. ❧

...the upshot is that this relatively new web standard allows for round-tripped connections among discrete domains, enabling the conversation about an individual post to be represented on that post, wherever it might actually take place. ❧

The fun, secret part is that Kathleen hasn’t (yet?) discovered IndieAuth so that she can authenticate/authorize micropub clients like Quill to publish content to her own site from various clients by means of a potential micropub endpoint.

I’ll suspect she’ll be even more impressed when she realizes that there’s a forthcoming wave of feed readers^1,2 that will allow her to read others’ content in a reader which has an integrated micropub client in it so that she can reply to posts directly in her feed reader, then the responses get posted directly to her own website which then, in turn, send webmentions to the sites she’s responding to so that the conversational loop can be completely closed.

She and Lee will also be glad to know that work has already started on private posts and conversations and posting to limited audiences as well. Eventually there will be no functionality that a social web site/silo can do that a distributed set of independent sites can’t. There’s certainly work to be done to round off the edges, but we’re getting closer and closer every day.

I know how it all works, but even I’m (still) impressed at the apparent magic that allows round-trip conversations between her website and Twitter and Micro.blog. And she hasn’t really delved into website to website conversations yet. I suppose we’ll have to help IndieWebify some of her colleague’s web presences to make that portion easier. Suddenly “academic Twitter” will be the “academic blogosphere” she misses from not too many years ago. 🙂

If there are academics out thee who are interested in what Kathleen has done, but may need a little technical help, I’m happy to set up some tools for them to get them started. (We’re also hosing occasional Homebrew Website Clubs, including a virtual one this coming week, which people are welcome to join.)

References

Aldrich C. Feed reader revolution: it’s time to embrace open & disrupt social media. BoffoSocko. https://boffosocko.com/2017/06/09/how-feed-readers-can-grow-market-share-and-take-over-social-media/. Published June 9, 2017. Accessed July 20, 2018.

Parecki A. Building an IndieWeb Reader. Aaron Parecki. https://aaronparecki.com/2018/03/12/17/building-an-indieweb-reader. Published March 21, 2018. Accessed July 20, 2018.

Reply to Sara Soueidan about front end development feeds

Replied to a tweet by

Sara Soueidan (Twitter)

If you have a blog and write/share useful things (big or small) about Web design / front-end dev and you provide an RSS feed to the blog, please respond to this tweet w/ the URL for it — I’d like to add more useful content feeds to my reader.
— Sara Soueidan (@SaraSoueidan) July 20, 2018

I tinker on my own website and frequently write about IndieWeb related technologies because the web is my social media platform. The feed you might appreciate most is https://boffosocko.com/category/indieweb/feed/.

I have feeds for nearly every tag/category or post type on my site for convenience (just add /feed/ to almost anything). You could subscribe to my firehose feed, but I suspect even my mother would tire of it quickly.

I’m curious if you have OPML files or similar bundles of feeds you follow that are shareable or subscribe-able?

Reply to zeldman about ALA article on webmention

Replied to a tweet by

Jeffrey Zeldman (Twitter)

☛ Listen up, designers & developers: our walled gardens are ripe for disruption. Learn how W3C Webmentions smash silos & free up cross-platform content & communication, ℅ @chrisaldrich in @AListApart:https://t.co/bB9B8LiS3A pic.twitter.com/2VxBPB1u8P
— zeldman (@zeldman) July 20, 2018

As I prep for DrupalCamp LA this weekend I’m considering how fun and impressive it’s been watching folks like Kristof De Jaeger (t) & Dries Buytaert (t) bring Webmention and other #IndieWeb philosophies to Drupal since February.
https://www.drupal.org/project/indieweb

Additional details and documentation can be found on the Drupal page of the IndieWeb wiki.