@Mentions

This page collects (mostly Twitter) @mentions and homepage webmentions of Chris Aldrich, @chrisaldrich, or www.boffosocko.com which don’t otherwise directly relate to specific content on this site.

If you like, you can also think of this as a guestbook or my personal (non-)Facebook Wall. Go ahead and write something about me on your own website and webmention this page.

Your site doesn’t support sending webmentions yet?! You can send me one manually.

And of course if you want to, you can leave a manual comment as well too.

764 thoughts on “@Mentions”

  1. Beitragsfoto: Stunde Null auf einem Wecker | © Shutterstock

    … oder einfach nur, wie alles begann. Inspiriert vom Blogger Chris Aldrich, wird mein chronologisch erster Blog-Beitrag hier auf Kümmerles Weblog nun auf den Tag meiner Geburt datiert.

    Mein Vater stammt ursprünglich aus Brackenheim (Opa) und ist in Weinsberg (Uroma) wie auch Heilbronn (Oma) aufgewachsen. Meine Mutter ist in Essen geboren, wobei der Vater (Opa) aus Baden und die Mutter (Oma) aus Königsberg stammt, und in Sontheim sowie später in Heilbronn aufgewachsen.

    Und so habe ich, was meine Heilbronner Oma betrifft, Wurzeln, die bis nach Altböckingen (Westfranken) reichen, aber auch ostpreußische von der Oma aus Königsberg. Die Großväter sorgen dafür, dass sowohl badische als auch württembergische Einflüsse mit hinzukommen und so dürfte ich als direkt in der Stadt Heilbronn (nicht Sontheim!) Geborener schon von Geburt an die richtige Heilbronner Melange mitbekommen haben.

    Gerne würde ich vom Tag meiner Geburt berichten können, leider aber datieren meine eigenen Erinnerungen im Bestfall auf mein drittes Lebensjahr. Deshalb wird der chronologisch folgende Blog-Beitrag noch etwas auf sich warten lassen müssen.

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  2. Designer/Artist William Morris once said, “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” My Zojirushi stainless steel mug is one of the few things I’ve ever owned that I feel truly meets both of these criteria.

    The design, materials, manufacturing and workmanship of the mug are nothing short of outstanding; the aesthetics and heft in the hand are truly fantastic. I really could not want for more out of such a product. I love looking at it, I love holding it, and I love using it.
    I hope one day to come back and write a review worthy of how truly great this travel mug is, but for now, suffice it to say that I’m in love. I spent a LOT of time reading reviews on Amazon and elsewhere, and searching stores and vendors to find the best thermos/mug on the planet and settled on this one. Not only is it easy and intuitive to take completely apart and wash thoroughly (too many I’ve come across are impossible to take apart and clean properly, if at all), but it seals completely and doesn’t spill.

    Even better it keeps my beverages piping hot or cold for far longer than I wish it would. There have been days that I’ve filled it with hot coffee or tea and come back several times to drink it hoping that it had cooled a bit only to find it still too hot to consume. After several rounds with this over an eight hour span, I finally opened it up and put in some ice so I could finally drink my coffee. Now I often just leave the cap open (or off) to let it cool a bit more quickly, although even this is a fairly slow process. Now I try to put my beverages in at the temperature I want to drink them knowing that that’s generally the temperature they’ll be when I get around to drinking them.
    I love the fact that the cap is designed with a two stage opening mechanism (which probably won’t be noticed by most users because it’s so subtle). One pushes the button and the top opens just a few millimeters. Then letting go of the button allows the top to spring back and click neatly into place so that it doesn’t fall forward and bonk one on the nose when attempting to take a drink.
    When I first came across it, I will admit I was a bit reticent at it’s relatively high price (particularly in comparison with cheaper mugs on the market, many of which I’ve tried and been highly disappointed with), but the Zojirushi is certainly worth ever penny; I would not hesitate for a moment to buy more of these.
    As a small aside, I will mention that due to physics and the design of the mug that it can occasionally leak a bit when filled with carbonated beverages and then shaken. Doing this creates additional interior pressure that pushes up the internal seal mechanism on the cap that allows a small amount of liquid to escape. Beyond this small category of fluids, which I infrequently use with the mug (and I’m sure others probably won’t either), it has been absolutely airtight and worry-free.
    Rating 5 out of 5 stars.
    Review by Chris Aldrich

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  3. For several years, I’ve hosted my personal blog at http://chrisaldrich.wordpress.com. This week I’ve moved everything over to a new address at http://boffosocko.com.
    Those who have previously been subscribed by email will continue to receive email notifications of new posts as before.  WordPress.com followers will only see new posts in the Reader. You will not receive email updates unless you subscribe to receive those on the new site.  Some older subscribers may have missed one or two recent posts in the transition this week, so feel free to take a moment to catch up.
    Others subscribed via RSS may potentially need to update their RSS feeds to reflect the change.
    I’ve set up 301 page redirects so that those visiting old URL pages should automatically be redirected to the appropriate pages, but some may need to use the search box functionality to find the article or notes they were looking for.
    If you have any issues/problems in this transition that you can’t seem to remedy directly, please email me directly; I’m happy to help.
    Thanks for reading!
     

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  6. Replied to Support » Theme: Academica » Surprised by all the bad reviews..! by Adam_Murphy (@adam_murphy) (WordPress.org)

    Wow, I came on here to download this theme for a second time – only to see that all the reviews given were 1 stars. I have used it with great success on my website vondt.net (sorry, its in norwegian – but you should be able to see that the design works flawlessly). I haven’t used the slideshow function though, as I see most negatives are aimed at that function.

    Yes, it did have some hickups in the original source code, but these were quite easy to fix.. feel free to contact me via the website or otherwise and maybe I can help you out.

    I agree wholeheartedly with Adam, though I don’t think I’d really seen any small issues except perhaps for an odd CSS issue in formatting an <h2> tag somewhere. (Note: This comment applies to v1.2.3 of Academica as on 4/2/15, the theme publisher made a DRASTIC change to the theme, so take caution in upgrading!!)
    I have created a child-theme with one or two small customizations (slightly larger headings in side widgets and some color/text size changes), but otherwise have v1.2.3 working as perfectly as it was intended to. This includes the slideshow functionality on the homepage. See BoffoSocko as an example.
    For those, perhaps including Adam, wanting to get the slider to work properly:

    Go to your WP Dashboard hover on the menu tab “appearance” and click on “customize”
    On the “Featured Content” tab, enter a tag you want to use to feature content on the homepage of your site. (In my case, I chose “featured” and also clicked “Hide tag from displaying in post meta and tag clouds”.)
    Go to one or more posts (I think it works on up to 10 featurable posts) and tag them with the word you just used in the featured content setting (in my case “featured”
    Next be sure to actually set a “Featured photo” for the post–930×300 pixels is the optimal photo size if I recall.
    Now when you visit your home page, the slider should work properly and include arrows to scroll through them (these aren’t as obvious on featured photos with white backgrounds).
    Note that on individual pages, you’ll still have static header image(s) which are also customizable in the “customize” section of the WP dashboard, which was mentioned in step 1.

    I hope this helps.

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  36. I think I have the code fixed now. Yes, that’s right, it is meant to be more generic so it wont include a link back to the permalink in WordPress.
    I’m now using the Bridgy Publish plugin instead of doing it this way it seems to work much more reliably if you are using WordPress.

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  60. The IndieWeb movement is a global community that is building an open set of principles and methods that empower people to take back ownership of their online identity and data instead of relying on 3rd party websites. Come learn more about the next generation of the Web.

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  85. Putting my house in order: Phase 1

    5 min read

    For a while now I’ve been concerned about owning my own data, in the spirit of IndieWeb. In June 2015 I started an experiment in the indieweb using a CMS called Known, and bits of that worked well enough. Trouble is, I actually have almost no control over the details of the CMS, which has meant that whenever I come across a little problem that might be within my capacity to solve, I generally can’t even try. This frustration has finally reached the point where I’m prepared to do something about it, like host my own copy of Known rather than rely on Indiehosters.
    I’ve also been hanging around in the Indieweb Slack channel, where I’m both amazed at what people are doing and increasingly convinced that it is beyond me. But I’m determined to give it a proper try.
    The first step is to figure out just how to organise myself, and this post is intended to describe how things are currently and why, in an effort to clarify my own thoughts and maybe get some advice from the indieweb gurus.
    The properties
    jeremycherfas.net
    This is the site I currently view as the mothership. It has been through many incarnations, from NucleusCMS to WordPress to Octopress to its current platform Grav. I dumped WordPress because it was just too complex, slow and hard to fix for what was essentially a very simple site. I’m only about 10% of the way through transferring old posts from Octopress to Grav, because I insist on doing it by hand to catch broken links and stuff. The big downside of being on Grav is there doesn’t seem to be a huge amount of indieweb interest in that community.
    There’s nothing really social associated with this site; I have the same username on ADN (for now) and on Flickr (maybe also not long for this world) and on 10Centuries. Also Facebook, but I hardly use that except for promoting episodes of …
    eatthispodcast.com
    Where my food podcasts live. This is a WordPress site. Why? Because it was relatively easy to set up for podcasting, and that part of it works very well. Why a separate domain? Because I think it is quite likely that people who are interested in that podcast might not be that interested in everything else I do, and it seems a natural to keep it separate. The vast majority of posts are podcast episodes, although there are also copies of the email newsletter and occasional other posts related to topics that have been covered in podcast episodes. I doubt that it would be worth moving this to another CMS.
    This site has accounts at Twitter and Instagram. Posts there go beyond the strict confines of the podcast, but generally stay in the area of food studies in the widest sense.
    http://www.fornacalia.com
    (Got to fix that www thing.)
    Like Eat This Podcast, this is a WordPress site. It is dedicated to my various breadmaking activities, again kept separate because I wasn’t sure whether people interested in my breadmaking would be interested in my other activities.
    No social activity, except that I post breadmaking things to the Eat This Podcast account at Instagram.
    This is the site that could most easily become a category of jeremycherfas.net if I wanted to get rid of sites, but I rather like the URI.
    vaviblog.com
    The indiweb experiment, running on Known CMS but hosted at Indiehosters, which gives me very little freedom to tinker. [^1] Bits of this work, and work well. Now, however, I think I’m ready to declare an end to the first experimental phase and start to embrace the indieweb in earnest.
    I should note that vaviblog.com used to have a much more interesting website associated with it, and that I would eventually like to get that back (I have all the content). I used this domain for my experiment because it was one I already owned. In retrospect, that was a mistake. There is a Twitter account called Vaviblog but I have used it very little recently. If I got the old content back, I might use it more often.
    [^1]: That’s perhaps not fair. It doesn’t give me any kind of FTP access, so I can’t use that route to add a new plug-in or fiddle beneath the hood. I recently learned that there is a way I could use Git to make changes and have Indiehosters pull those changes, but I haven’t actually bitten that bullet. If I’m going to go that route, I may as well save myself a bit of cash and host it where I host other sites.
    potp.it
    The site for a short-lived project, hosted at 10Centuries. Although I’ve almost stopped posting longer things there, it is possibly my most active social site, but for a small society.
    What I’m thinking
    One approach I’ve seen and liked is the way Chris Aldrich has implemented his “primary hub” in WordPress with his “social stream” in Known in a sub-domain (though I’m not entirely sure what makes a post there different from a post in the hub). I don’t really want to migrate my main site back to WordPress, but maybe I can achieve a similar sort of thing in Grav. Mind you, I still haven’t enabled comments on Grav; how on Earth am I going to manage pulling them in from other sites? My main worry there is that because Grav developers are not all that interested in indieweb, it will be beyond my abilities. So maybe back to WordPress really is the best option.
    I’m open to any and all suggestions, and I’m going to crosspost to vaviblog.com because that should be able to receive replies from elsewhere.

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  89. While I’ve been using my live-noting (well, OK, live-tweeting mostly) site noterlive.com fairly regularly to post live notes to my website, I haven’t pushed out a new release for many months.I’m off to the microservices summit tomorrow, so I thought I’d tidy up the feature requests and bug reports beforehand.Several of these were helpfully added by Chris Aldrich, including the newly-linked Instructions page and the suggestion to clear the logs and cached speaker list separately.I also made the site handle blank twitter names better, which means it can now be used as a tweetstorming tool more easily.I also added a ‘New Thread’ button that starts a new thread of comments on twitter before the next tweet, which should be useful to break up live tweeting of multiple sessionsDo try it out, and send me any further issues#100DaysOfIndieWeb

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  90. While I’ve been using my live-noting (well, OK, live-tweeting mostly) site noterlive.com fairly regularly to post live notes to my website, I haven’t pushed out a new release for many months.I’m off to the microservices summit tomorrow, so I thought I’d tidy up the feature requests and bug reports beforehand.Several of these were helpfully added by Chris Aldrich, including the newly-linked Instructions page and the suggestion to clear the logs and cached speaker list separately.I also made the site handle blank twitter names better, which means it can now be used as a tweetstorming tool more easily.I also added a ‘New Thread’ button that starts a new thread of comments on twitter before the next tweet, which should be useful to break up live tweeting of multiple sessionsDo try it out, and send me any further issues#100DaysOfIndieWeb

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  99. I happened upon this tweet from my friend Whitney the other day:

    Another good read from the Hot Garbage newsletter: t.co/GtVOPhhXjQ
    — blorp (@WhitneyEllenB) March 17, 2017

    http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
    It links to Vicki Boykis’s post, Fix the internet by writing good stuff and being nice to people. Boykis articulates a problem that I’ve been chafing against recently, that I had chalked up to nostalgia. In the early days of the web, and even as the web came into what I consider its adolescence, she writes:

    People used to write blogs. Long blogs. Rambling blogs. Blogs they weren’t sure anyone was reading. There was a LOT of noise. But there were also blogs that had fun stories, long posts about how to do something, analyses of government issues, of cooking techniques, of the Civil War. People used to write stuff other people wanted to read.

    And then traces the process of consolidation of content and the move of the web from a medium where content was the product to a medium where content is the wrapper and eyes on ads are the product:

    Whereas before content used to be spread out on numerous domains in numerous ways, content now mostly makes its home on the three domains that are most hostile to thoughtful human discussion: Twitter, Medium, and Facebook.

    Now, she says, those of us who use these services are generating content that they are leveraging to make money off of us. Theoretically, we’re getting their services in trade for this content, but we aren’t where they make their money. We trade our content to them, and they trade our attention to advertisers.
    The internet is broken; this is how it is broken. And, she insists, it is in our power to fix it. She identifies five steps we can take to do so:

    Write your own blog on your own platform.
    Share good content.
    Acknowledge creators by paying them.
    Use adblockers.
    Engage in dialogue with people who are different from you.

    In the comments on the post, Chris Aldrich mentions that this advice aligns well with the IndieWeb movement. Well, I fell down that rabbit hole, and here we are: I have put all the tech in place that I need to, I think, for my publishing to happen here at kimberlyhirsh.com, go out to my various social places, and then have responses come back here. This post will serve as sort of a test to find out.
    So tell me: are you seeing this post somewhere in the world? Where? 
    Of course, that process really only addresses Boykis’s first step. I took a social media hiatus recently and tried to remember how I used to use the internet. And it really was blogs, forums, and LiveJournal. I’m certainly not going back to LJ, and so far I haven’t found forums that satisfy me, but good blogging is still happening, so I loaded a bunch into Feedly. Then I returned to social media a bit more consciously, and I do think I’ve been sharing good content then. But – you guessed it – now, I’m going to share that good content here.
    As for the third step, I do this a little bit already, via Patreon. There I support Kim Werker, Emm Roy, and Kate Allan. I keep an eye out for other creators I like to support directly. Serendipitously enough, two posts came across my radar on Feedly from Geek and Sundry introducing their new partnership with Nerdist, Project Alpha. It’s a subscription platform providing exclusive content and other content in advance, and I think I’m going to try it out. I’m also probably going to try Seeso, too.
    I have been taking a break from adblockers, but I definitely feel it’s time to get them back into my life.
    As for number five, here’s where things get tricky. I can track down good blogs and engage in conversations there. But some of the most important conversations in my life are happening in proprietary spaces: Facebook Groups, Twitter, and Tumblr. As a new mom, Facebook Groups are an invaluable resource. As an academic and professional, Twitter is where many of the important conversations in my areas of interest happen. And fandom, well – it kind of lives on Tumblr these days, doesn’t it? If you have managed to move to engaging these platforms almost exclusively via your own hosted platform, how are you doing that? And are you doing it on mobile devices? Because that’s where a lot of my internetting needs to happen.
    For the time being, I think my long form writing will happen exclusively here, but it will probably be a process to move short-form here.

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  100. Chris Aldrich:

    I’ve posted an article about Indieweb and Education on the #Indieweb wiki at https://indieweb.org/Indieweb_for_Education
    I’ve posted an article about Academic Samizdat on the #Indieweb wiki at https://indieweb.org/academic_samizdat
    I’ve also posted an article about commonplace books on the #Indieweb wiki at https://indieweb.org/commonplace_book
    I’m writing a multi-part series for academics on #Indieweb & Education based on these links.
    Perhaps @profhacker might be interested in running such a series of articles? #Indieweb
    I’m contemplating a proposal to @osbridge on #Inieweb and Education based on @t‘s recommendation ‏http://opensourcebridge.org/call-for-proposals/
    May have to come up with something related for @mattervc based on @benwerd‘s tweet https://twitter.com/benwerd/status/847115083318607872

    I’d really love to see someone from the #indieweb community working on a venture. https://t.co/pMMam0gk23
    — Ben Werdmuller (@benwerd) March 29, 2017

    In #Indieweb fashion, I’ve archived this tweetstorm using NoterLive.com on my own site: http://boffosocko.com/2017/03/29/indieweb-and-education-tweetstorm/

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  127. I’ve decided to re-design my personal website, richardmacmanus.com. My primary reason is to become a full-fledged member of the IndieWeb community. If I’m writing about Open Web technologies here on AltPlatform, then I ought to be eating my own dog food. Another reason is to discover – likely by trial and error – how to route around Walled Gardens like Facebook and Twitter, which host so much of our content these days. In other words, my goal is to make my personal website the hub for my Web presence. Finally, I want to re-discover blogging in 2017 – what it can do in this era, who’s doing interesting things and how, and what opportunities there might be for the Open Web to cross into the mainstream.
    So in a series of posts on AltPlatform, I’m going to document my re-design and see where it takes me.
    Goals
    With any website re-design, you need to know what you’re trying to achieve. I’ve touched on some of that already, but here’s how I wrote it out in my Evernote:
    My goals for my website in 2017:

    Author website: promote my books and other activities as a professional writer (e.g. my tech column).
    Blogging circa 17: participate in the Open Web and experiment like I did in 2003/04 [when I was starting ReadWriteWeb].
    Make my website my central hub / identity on the Web.

    The first goal is purely professional: ensuring my website supports and promotes my career as a writer. So my books, columns and any other writing I do should be front and center.
    The second goal is the most exciting one; and the reason for this post. I’m keen to experiment with interacting with other indie bloggers – through comments, likes, social streams, and whatever else I find that connects people together on the Indie Web.
    If I accomplish the second goal, that will go a long way to making the third goal a reality: making my website the central hub for my Web activity.
    Principles
    In addition to these goals, I have started jotting down some principles. These are personal to me, so they may not be relevant to others. One of my principles is to maintain my privacy about certain things. The Social Web is great, but I have come to really dislike the oversharing aspect of it. So, for example, I don’t wish to share what books I read or what music I listen to. Those are things I prefer to keep to myself.
    In other words I will be selective about which social streams I aggregate on my blog. The stuff I share on Facebook with my friends and family, for example, will stay on Facebook where it belongs. I may aggregate my Mastodon stream, perhaps even my Twitter, but if I do it will be for experimental reasons. It’ll be to see what value it has on my website (perhaps none, in which case the experiment will end).
    Let’s now get to the re-design…
    Getting started
    My website runs on WordPress.org and is hosted at InMotion. Here’s what my website looked like just before I began IndieWebifying it:

    It was an okay design, based on the Tortuga theme. But it didn’t really connect me to other people, or help sell many books for that matter. So it was ripe for disruption!
    The first thing I did was go to the IndieWeb community wiki. Over the years, it has built up a number of tools to help you create a personal website that not only communicates your online presence, but also connects you to other blogs – as well as social media (such as Twitter and Mastodon). There’s a Getting Started page, which is of course a great place to start. That pointed me to IndieWebify.Me, which has a step-by-step guide. Even better for my purposes was the Getting Started on WordPress page, much of which was written by AltPlatform’s own Chris Aldrich.
    Before I got stuck in, I wanted further inspiration from other indie bloggers. After all, the beauty of the early Web was its “view source” nature – the ability to re-use other peoples innovations to build your own place on the Web.
    Chris Aldrich’s website looks to be the quintessential IndieWeb site. He has all kinds of content streaming into and out of his site – check out the post types listed below. I resolved to ‘copy’ the way he does things, at least until I’m knowledgeable and confident enough to try my own ways.

    I then came across Jonathan LaCour’s website, after he left a comment on a recent AltPlatform post. “I have a website that supports Webmention and Micropub,” he wrote in that comment, “and I’ve created a plugin for Nextcloud News, my feed reader of choice, that enables interactions.”
    Alan Levine also has a fun-looking indie blog, which features his own photography amongst other things.
    The re-design begins
    During my initial research, I discovered the fastest way to get up to speed was install an IndieWeb recommended WordPress theme. So I switched from my old theme to one called SemPress, designed by Matthias Pfefferle. It’s a brilliant design from a technical point of view, since it supports all the latest Open Web standards. The design isn’t as colourful as my previous one, but I’ll work on personalizing it later.

    I then installed the IndieWeb family of plugins, which you can find by simply searching “IndieWeb” in the WordPress.org plugin directory. Here are the individual plugins you get, and what each one enables:

    Webmention – allows you to send and receive by adding webmention support to WordPress. Mentions show up as comments on your site.
    Semantic Linkbacks  – makes IndieWeb comments and mentions look better on your site.
    Post Kinds – Allows you to reply/like/RSVP etc to another site from your own, by adding support for kinds of posts to WordPress.
    Bridgy Publish – Adds a user interface for using Bridgy to publish to other sites
    Syndication Links – Adds fields to a post to allow manual entry of syndication links as well as automatically from a supported syndication plugin.

    In a nutshell, those five plugins allow you to a) send and receive responses with your site; and b) syndicate your content to other sites.
    After installing these and playing around, I tested the Post Kinds plugin by posting a reply to a post Chris wrote. Essentially I created a new post on my site, which looked like this:

    Eventually my reply showed up on Chris’ original post. Of course it reminded me of trackbacks from the 03/04 era.
    After I saw how easy it was to post all kinds of social content to one’s own site, I re-designed my menu to include “Social Streams” – with the sub-categories “Reply,” “Like,” and “Note.” I may add other types of social streams, like Chris has done on his site, as I continue my experiments.
    So, I’ve made a start re-designing my website into an IndieWeb one. I still have a lot to do, including adding my own design. But I’ll continue to document my progress in the next post. In the meantime, any tips or feedback appreciated!
    Image credit: Tantek

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  128. I’ve decided to re-design my personal website, richardmacmanus.com. My primary reason is to become a full-fledged member of the IndieWeb community. If I’m writing about Open Web technologies here on AltPlatform, then I ought to be eating my own dog food. Another reason is to discover – likely by trial and error – how to route around Walled Gardens like Facebook and Twitter, which host so much of our content these days. In other words, my goal is to make my personal website the hub for my Web presence. Finally, I want to re-discover blogging in 2017 – what it can do in this era, who’s doing interesting things and how, and what opportunities there might be for the Open Web to cross into the mainstream.
    So in a series of posts on AltPlatform, I’m going to document my re-design and see where it takes me.
    Goals
    With any website re-design, you need to know what you’re trying to achieve. I’ve touched on some of that already, but here’s how I wrote it out in my Evernote:
    My goals for my website in 2017:

    Author website: promote my books and other activities as a professional writer (e.g. my tech column).
    Blogging circa 17: participate in the Open Web and experiment like I did in 2003/04 [when I was starting ReadWriteWeb].
    Make my website my central hub / identity on the Web.

    The first goal is purely professional: ensuring my website supports and promotes my career as a writer. So my books, columns and any other writing I do should be front and center.
    The second goal is the most exciting one; and the reason for this post. I’m keen to interact with other indie bloggers – through comments, likes, social streams, and whatever else I find that connects people together on the Indie Web.
    If I accomplish the second goal, that will go a long way to making the third goal a reality: making my website the central hub for my Web activity.
    Principles
    In addition to these goals, I have started jotting down some principles. These are personal to me, so they may not be relevant to others. One of my principles is to maintain my privacy about certain things. The Social Web is great, but I have come to really dislike the oversharing aspect of it. So, for example, I don’t wish to share what books I read or what music I listen to. Those are things I prefer to keep to myself.
    In other words I will be selective about which social streams I aggregate on my blog. The stuff I share on Facebook with my friends and family, for example, will stay on Facebook where it belongs. I may aggregate my Mastodon stream, perhaps even my Twitter, but if I do it will be for experimental reasons. It’ll be to see what value it has on my website (perhaps none, in which case the experiment will end).
    Let’s now get to the re-design…
    Getting started
    My website runs on WordPress.org and is hosted at InMotion. Here’s what my website looked like just before I began IndieWebifying it:

    It was an okay design, based on the Tortuga theme. But it didn’t really connect me to other people, or help sell many books for that matter. So it was ripe for disruption!
    The first thing I did was go to the IndieWeb community wiki. Over the years, it has built up a number of tools to help you create a personal website that not only communicates your online presence, but also connects you to other blogs – as well as social media (such as Twitter and Mastodon). There’s a Getting Started page, which is of course a great place to start. That pointed me to IndieWebify.Me, which has a step-by-step guide. Even better for my purposes was the Getting Started on WordPress page, much of which was written by AltPlatform’s own Chris Aldrich.
    Before I got stuck in, I wanted further inspiration from other indie bloggers. After all, the beauty of the early Web was its “view source” nature – the ability to re-use other peoples innovations to build your own place on the Web.
    Chris Aldrich’s website looks to be the quintessential IndieWeb site. He has all kinds of content streaming into and out of his site – check out the post types listed below. I resolved to ‘copy’ the way he does things, at least until I’m knowledgeable and confident enough to try my own ways.

    I then came across Jonathan LaCour’s website, after he left a comment on a recent AltPlatform post. “I have a website that supports Webmention and Micropub,” he wrote in that comment, “and I’ve created a plugin for Nextcloud News, my feed reader of choice, that enables interactions.”
    Alan Levine also has a fun-looking indie blog, which features his own photography amongst other things.
    The re-design begins
    During my initial research, I discovered the fastest way to get up to speed was install an IndieWeb recommended WordPress theme. So I switched from my old theme to one called SemPress, designed by Matthias Pfefferle. It’s a brilliant design from a technical point of view, since it supports all the latest Open Web standards. The design isn’t as colourful as my previous one, but I’ll work on personalizing it later.

    I then installed the IndieWeb family of plugins, which you can find by simply searching “IndieWeb” in the WordPress.org plugin directory. Here are the individual plugins you get, and what each one enables:

    Webmention – allows you to send and receive by adding webmention support to WordPress. Mentions show up as comments on your site.
    Semantic Linkbacks  – makes IndieWeb comments and mentions look better on your site.
    Post Kinds – Allows you to reply/like/RSVP etc to another site from your own, by adding support for kinds of posts to WordPress.
    Bridgy Publish – Adds a user interface for using Bridgy to publish to other sites
    Syndication Links – Adds fields to a post to allow manual entry of syndication links as well as automatically from a supported syndication plugin.

    In a nutshell, those five plugins allow you to a) send and receive responses with your site; and b) syndicate your content to other sites.
    After installing these and playing around, I tested the Post Kinds plugin by posting a reply to a post Chris wrote. Essentially I created a new post on my site, which looked like this:

    Eventually my reply showed up on Chris’ original post. Of course it reminded me of trackbacks from the 03/04 era.
    After I saw how easy it was to post all kinds of social content to one’s own site, I re-designed my menu to include “Social Streams” – with the sub-categories “Reply,” “Like,” and “Note.” I may add other types of social streams, like Chris has done on his site, as I continue my experiments.
    So, I’ve made a start re-designing my website into an IndieWeb one. I still have a lot to do, including adding my own design. But I’ll continue to document my progress in the next post. In the meantime, any tips or feedback appreciated!
    Image credit: Tantek

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  129.  
    AltPlatform is a non-profit tech blog that covers Open Web initiatives.
    Our goal is to explore alternatives to Walled Garden products for developers, entrepreneurs and early adopters.
    Founding bloggers:

    Richard MacManus: founder of tech blog ReadWriteWeb & CEO from 2003-2012. Currently an author & tech columnist.

    Emre Sokullu: founder and CEO of San Jose based social software company, Grou.ps Inc.

    Brian Hendrickson: founder, high-res website imaging engineer at WebImageCapture, and Excel-mapping expert at BatchGeo.

    Chris Aldrich: a Johns Hopkins trained biomedical and electrical engineer, and a strong advocate of the IndieWeb movement.

    Advisors:

    Dominik Grolimund: founder of Refind and previously founded Caleido, Wuala, and Silp; studied computer science at ETH Zurich.

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  130. Welcome everyone to AltPlatform, a non-profit tech blog devoted to Open Web technologies.
    What do we mean by “Open Web”? Firstly, we want to experiment with open source (like this WordPress.org blog) and open standards (like RSS). We’re also using the word open to signify a wider, boundary-less view of the Web. In other words, we want to look for opportunities beyond the Walled Gardens – proprietary platforms like Facebook and Twitter where you don’t own your own data, you have little control over your news feeds, and you have to live by certain rules.
    Our desire to explore the Open Web explains why we’ve created a new blog, rather than simply start a Facebook Page or sign up to Medium. We’re a group blog because we want to create thoughtful, inspiring posts that link liberally to others. We want a proper archive of content, which isn’t possible on Facebook or Medium. We want our feed of content to flow across the Web using RSS. Heck, we might even resurrect trackbacks.
    Another goal of AltPlatform is to reignite the sense of experimentation and community that existed on the Web about a decade ago. As many of you will recall, in 2006-07 a big trend called ‘Web 2.0’ was in full bloom. So-called “social software” services like Flickr, YouTube and Facebook had recently sprouted up, and were making the Web easier to contribute to. It was a wonderfully creative time on the Web, since for the first time people could easily upload and share their photos and videos, and new forms of expression were being enabled by Facebook and (from 2007) Twitter. Sure, these were all commercial companies and they fully intended to make money from all this content sharing. But these services were also undeniably making the Web a more fun, more populated place. It seemed like a win-win: entrepreneurs will make money, and everyone gets to create media and make friends on the Web.
    So why do we need an Open Web now?
    Sadly, over the past decade we’ve slowly lost that spirit of openness and experimentation. We’re now living in an Internet era dominated by Walled Gardens. What’s worse, they’re controlled by just five companies: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft. Farhad Manjoo of the New York Times calls them “the frightful five” – and for good reason, because the prospect of the World Wide Web dominated by just five companies is frightening. It goes against everything Sir Tim Berners-Lee believed in when he invented the Web twenty-eight years ago. As Sir Tim put it in a recent guest article in The Guardian,  “I imagined the web as an open platform that would allow everyone, everywhere to share information, access opportunities, and collaborate across geographic and cultural boundaries.”
    There’s also the cultural implications of living in a world dominated by Walled Gardens. Like many of you, I’ve been frustrated about Twitter’s lack of innovation in recent years and the way Facebook subtly controls us (e.g. its lack of a decent archives or search functionality). It’s also frustrating that social media, as we know it today, is inherently a selfish thing. We’re losing our sense of a collective mission. One could argue, for example, that the Occupy movement failed because it didn’t have a clear, coherent message. Partly that’s because social media encourages us to cater to our egos, not find solutions to pressing problems.
    All that said, our intention isn’t to fight against the incumbents. We like using Facebook, for keeping in touch with our families and non-techie friends. We like the day-to-day chatter on Twitter. And let’s be realistic: those platforms are where people go to on the Internet. So we’re fine with that.
    Our modus operandi
    What we do want to do on AltPlatform is explore alternative ways for the Web to reach its potential as a two-way, collaborative, social medium. We don’t think the Big Five have all the solutions. As just one example: what would Twitter be like today if it hadn’t turned its back on external developers? Most agree that an open version of Twitter would be amazing, and much better than the corporate, closed-off version we currently have.
    There will also be opportunities for the Open Web in newer, still emerging industries – like blockchain, VR/AR, and AI. Emre outlined some of these possibilities in his introductory post.
    So our modus operandi will be to experiment with new, open web technologies. When we find them, we’ll write about them and discuss them. We’ll advocate for them. Who knows, one of them might take off – just like a little service called Twitter did in 2007.
    Who’s our target audience? We hope our posts are highly relevant to entrepreneurs, developers and early adopters who want to explore alternatives to Walled Gardens.
    Who we are
    AltPlatform has five founding members:

    Richard MacManus: founder of tech blog ReadWriteWeb & CEO from 2003-2012. Currently an author & tech columnist.

    Emre Sokullu: founder and CEO of San Jose based social software company, Grou.ps Inc.

    Brian Hendrickson: a founder and high-res website screenshot engineer at WebImageCapture, and Excel-mapping enthusiast at BatchGeo.

    Chris Aldrich: a Johns Hopkins trained biomedical and electrical engineer, and a strong advocate of the IndieWeb movement.

    Dominik Grolimund: founder of Refind and previously founded Caleido, Wuala, and Silp; studied computer science at ETH Zurich.

    We’d love if AltPlatform grew into a hub for Open Web advocates, or at the least becomes a community of Web fans with the indie spirit. My previous blog, ReadWriteWeb, managed to do that about a decade ago. At that point ReadWriteWeb had a small group of regular contributors, including my AltPlatform co-founder Emre Sokullu. What we had in common was a passion for building or experimenting with Open Web technologies, such as RSS (which was hitting its stride around then) and wikis.
    There is one key difference between AltPlatform and the ReadWriteWeb of ten years ago: AltPlatform is non-profit. We’re not doing this to make money or build our own little Walled Garden. We want AltPlatform to be as open as possible. We’re a blog collective and we extend an open invitation to anyone who wants to join us.
    If you’re a sympathetic soul, subscribe to our RSS feed and follow our progress on the blog. And if you have something to say, well then we have the perfect platform for you! Leave a comment here or contact us via email (richard AT altplatform.org).

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  131. Yesterday I wrote a post about blogrolls. I published it on AltPlatform, the new tech blog I recently started with my old ReadWriteWeb friend Emre Sokullu. It was the second post in a series I’m doing about IndieWebifying my personal website. I got some great responses, which I’m going to discuss in this post.
    Firstly, a note about what I’m attempting to do in 2017 with blogging. My goal is to explore the latest social web technologies and learn how to do more on the Open Web. The main impetus is my growing dissatisfaction with Walled Garden social networks, like Facebook and Twitter. My spidey sense is picking up similar vibes across the Web. It’s difficult to define at this point, but there’s a feeling that something needs to change. And that something has a lot to do with openness, inclusivity and not letting powerful corporations dictate what we do and think.
    One of my blogging heroes, Dave Winer, wrote a very nice post in response to mine. He has been thinking about blogrolls too (amongst many other things – he’s always one step ahead of the rest of us). Dave wants to link blogrolls to the “river of news” products he has been developing in recent times. I need to look more closely at this. I downloaded his Electric River product, which he says is “the closest to what Radio UserLand did with aggregation in 2002.” Radio Userland was how I got my start in blogging, so I’m intrigued. I will play with Electric River and put my thoughts into a separate post soon.
    Dave also pointed out the need to be open about which Open Web technologies to try. As he noted, I have been experimenting with the IndieWeb community’s suite of tools – and in particular their WordPress plugins. Also I’ve been following closely what fellow AltPlatform blogger Chris Aldrich has done on his personal website. Chris is a key contributor to the IndieWeb community.
    I’ve found the IndieWeb tools to be tremendously helpful, and the community to be open and friendly. But I think my own goals are a little different. I’m less interested in the technologies themselves (like microformats and webmention) and more interested in how they’re being used in the wider Web community. Not dissimilar to my interests when I started ReadWriteWeb. But of course to do this, I need to stand on the shoulders of the developers who build the tools.
    I think of it this way… The IndieWeb community is a group of tech people who are creating the building blocks, for which I’m very grateful. Dave Winer also creates building blocks, so I’m equally grateful to him. My “job” (although it’s really just my idea of fun, since AltPlatform is a non-profit blog) is to try out the technologies that IndieWeb, Dave and others are building. Ideally I’d like to help smooth the path for Open Web technologies to be used by non-tech people.
    An example perhaps is Tracey Todhunter, who runs a blog called Baking and Making. Tracey left this comment on my AltPlatform post about blogrolls: “I have a list of “blogs I read” – I almost deleted it because someone told me blog rolls were “so last century”! I noticed lots of new visitors to my blog click on these links (and hopefully discover other bloggers, so I’ve kept it.” Tracey’s comment is exactly the type of thing I want to see happen with the Open Web. She has an excellent niche blog and is using the Open Web to connect to other people. This is why blogging is still relevant in 2017.
    A couple of other responses I got…
    Kevin Marks, one of the founders of the IndieWeb movement, wrote a couple of posts overnight my time. Both were syndicated to the comments section of my AltPlatform post, which I was pleased to see (apologies Kevin that it got caught in our spam filter – we’re still dealing with the quirks of a new blog). In one post, Kevin defended the IndieWeb feed reader product Woodwind: “Woodwind’s integrated reading and posting is the thing I like best about it, so I’m sorry that Richard was unimpressed with it.” To clarify, I was mainly put off by the geeky UI. I certainly admire the sophisticated ‘under the hood’ technology of it. Perhaps I’ll give it another try.
    Kevin’s second post was more of a conversation with Dave. The only 2 cents I’d add is… kumbaya, let’s all work together
    Last but not least, Colin Walker also responded to my blogrolls post. He pointed out one problem with blogrolls: “Part of the problem with people based following models on social networks is that you follow the whole person so see everything they post whether it is relevant to you or not. There is no filtering system.” It’s a great point – and one of the reasons I was so interested in topic feeds back in the day. So this is something I’ll need to explore for this era too.

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  184. Of course I have heard of the #IndieWeb paradigm before. But for some reason I never bothered to really dive into it. Until a few days ago, when I decided I want my personal presence on the web to be IndieWeb-style from now on.
    How came that? Partly because I’m currently reading the book Kill Process by William Hertling. It’s about murder, privacy, hacking, high tech surveillance and data mining. The book is great and I can recommend it to everybody who likes tech thrillers. Hertling gets the technical background and hacker stuff of the story really good together. Angie, the heroine, works at Tomo, the largest and quasi-monopoly Facebook-like social network as a database programmer. Part of the story is her ambition to create an alternative to the centralized privacy nightmare the Tomo service became. So she decides to do something about it and plans to build a distributed, federated social network of networks. She also meets and joins with people familiar with the IndieWeb concept. That’s when I was reminded of how good the idea really is.
    I had a simple personal site running on the Grav database-less content-management system. Grav is nice because you can have a Git-based deployment process relying totally on the actual (Markdown) files – since there is zero configuration in the database. It would not have been too complicated to enhance my old site with IndieWeb attributes and protocols but anyway I was excited to discover the fantastic Known CMS this site is now running on. I’m very happy with it, thanks to all of you involved in the development.
    If you want to find out more about the IndieWeb, I can recommend An Introduction to the IndieWeb by Chris Aldrich.

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  190. An outline of how I used Indieweb technology to let Twitter users send @mentions to me on my own website.You can tweet to my website.One of my favorite things about the indieweb is how much less time I spend on silo sites like Facebook and Twitter. In particular, one of my favorite things is not only having the ability to receive comments from many of these sites back on the original post on my own site, but to have the ability for people to @mention me from Twitter to my own site.Yes, you heard that right: if you @mention me in a tweet, I’ll receive it on my own website. And my site will also send me the notification, so I can turn off all the silly and distracting notifications Twitter had been sending me.Below, I’ll detail how I set it up using WordPress, though the details below can certainly be done using other CMSes and platforms.rel=”me”On my homepage, using a text widget, I’ve got an h-card with my photo, some basic information about me, and links to various other sites that relate to me and what I’m doing online.One of these is a link to my Twitter account (see screenshot). On that link I’m using the XFN’s rel=”me” on the link to indicate that this particular link is a profile equivalence of my identity on the web. It essentially says, “this Twitter account is mine and also represents me on the web.”Here’s a simplified version of what my code looks like:<a href=”https://twitter.com/chrisaldrich” rel=”me”>@chrisaldrich</a>If you prefer to have an invisible link on your site that does the same thing you could alternately use:<link href=”https://twitter.com/twitterhandle” rel=”me”>Similarly Twitter also supports rel=”me”, so all I need to do there is to edit my profile and enter my website http://www.boffosocko.com into the “website” field and save it. Now my Twitter profile page indicates, this website belongs to this Twitter account. If you look at the source of the page when it’s done, you’ll see the following:<a class=”u-textUserColor” title=”http://www.boffosocko.com” href=”https://t.co/AbnYvNUOcy” target=”_blank” rel=”me nofollow noopener”>boffosocko.com</a>Though it’s a bit more complicated than what’s on my site, it’s the rel=”me” that’s the important part for our purposes.Now there are links on both sites that indicate reciprocally that each is related to the other as versions of me on the internet. The only way they could point at each other this way is because I have some degree of ownership of both pages. I own my own website outright, and I have access to my profile page on Twitter because I have an account there. (Incidentally, Kevin Marks has built a tool for distributed identity verification based on the reciprocal rel=”me” concept.)Webmention PluginNext I downloaded and installed the Webmention plugin for WordPress. From the plugin interface, I just did a quick search, clicked install, then clicked “activate.” It’s really that easy.It’s easy, but what does it do?Webmention is an open internet protocol (recommended by the W3C) that allows any website to send and receive the equivalent of @mentions on the internet. Unlike sites like Twitter, Facebook, Medium, Google+, Instagram, etc. these mentions aren’t stuck within their own ecosystems, but actually work across website borders anywhere on the web that supports them.The other small difference with webmention is instead of using one’s username (like @chrisaldrich in my case on Twitter) as a trigger, the trigger becomes the permalink URL you’re mentioning. In my case you can webmention either my domain name http://www.boffosocko.com or any other URL on my site. If you really wanted to, you could target even some of the smallest pieces of content on my website–including individual paragraphs, sentences, or even small sentence fragments–using fragmentions, but that’s something for another time.Don’t use WordPress?See if there’s webmention support for your CMS, or ask your CMS provider or community, system administrator, or favorite web developer to add it to your site based on the specification. While it’s nice to support both outgoing and incoming webmentions, for the use we’re outlining here, we only need to support incoming webmentions.Connect Brid.gySadly, I’ll report that Twitter does not support webmentions (yet?!) otherwise we could probably stop here and everything would work like magic. But they do have an open API right? “But wait a second now…” you say, “I don’t know code. I’m not a developer.”Worry not, some brilliant engineers have created a bootstrap called Brid.gy that (among many other useful and brilliant things) forces silos like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, and Flickr to send webmentions for you until they decide to support them natively. Better, it’s a free service, though you could donate to the ASPCA or EFF in their name to pay it forward.So swing your way over to http://brid.gy and under “Get started” click on the Twitter logo. Use OAuth to log into Twitter and authorize the app. You’ll be redirected back to Brid.gy which will then ensure that your website and Twitter each have appropriate and requisite rel=”me”s on your links. You can then enable Brid.gy to “listen for responses.”Now whenever anyone @mentions you (public tweets only) on Twitter, Brid.gy will be watching your account and will automatically format and send a webmention to your website on Twitter’s behalf.On WordPress your site can send you simple email notifications by changing your settings in the Settings >> Discussion dashboard, typically at http://www.exampl.com/wp-admin/options-discussion.php. One can certainly use other plugins to arrange for different types of notifications as well.Exotic WebmentionsA bonus step for those who want more control!In the grand scheme of things webmentions are typically targeted at specific pages or posts on your site. General @mentions on Twitter not related to specific content on your site will usually be sent to your homepage. Over time, this may begin to get a bit overwhelming and may take your page longer to load as a result. An example of this is Kevin Marks’ site which has hundreds and hundreds of webmentions on it. What to do if this isn’t your preference?In my case, I thought it would be wise to collect all these unspecific or general mentions on a special page on my site. I decided to call it “Mentions” and created a page at http://boffosocko.com/mentions/.Then I inserted a small piece of custom code in the functions.php file of my site’s (child) theme like the following:// For allowing exotic webmentions on homepages and archive pagesfunction handle_exotic_webmentions($id, $target) {// If $id is homepage, reset to mentions pageif ($id == 55669927) {return 55672667;}// do nothing if id is setif ($id) {return $id;}// return “default” id if plugin can’t find a post/pagereturn 55672667;}add_filter(“webmention_post_id”, “handle_exotic_webmentions”, 10, 2);This simple filter for the WordPress Webmention plugin essentially looks at incoming webmentions and if they’re for a specific page/post, they get sent to that page/post. If they’re sent to either my homepage or aren’t directed to a particular page, then they get redirected to my /mentions/ page.In my case above, my homepage has an id of 55669927 and my mentions page has an id of 55672667, you should change your numbers to the appropriate ids on your own site when using the code above. (Hint: these id numbers can usually be quickly found by hovering over the “edit” links typically found on such pages and posts and relying on the browser to show where they resolve.)Tip of the IcebergNaturally this is only the tip of the indieweb iceberg. The indieweb movement is MUCH more than just this tiny, but useful, piece of functionality. There’s so much more you can do with not only Webmentions and even Brid.gy functionality. If you’ve come this far and are interested in more of how you can better own your online identity, connect to others, and own your data. Visit the Indieweb.org wiki homepage or try out their getting started page.If you’re on WordPress, there’s some additional step-by-step instructions: Getting Started on WordPress.http://boffosocko.com/2017/04/15/mentions-from-twitter-to-my-website/




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  192. Of course I have heard of the #IndieWeb paradigm before. But for some reason I never bothered to really dive into it. Until a few days ago, when I decided I want my personal presence on the web to be IndieWeb-style from now on.
    How came that? Partly because I’m currently reading the book Kill Process by William Hertling. It’s about murder, privacy, hacking, high tech surveillance and data mining. The book is great and I can recommend it to everybody who likes tech thrillers. Hertling gets the technical background and hacker stuff of the story really good together. Angie, the heroine, works at Tomo, the largest and quasi-monopoly Facebook-like social network as a database programmer. Part of the story is her ambition to create an alternative to the centralized privacy nightmare the Tomo service became. So she decides to do something about it and plans to build a distributed, federated social network of networks. She also meets and joins with people familiar with the IndieWeb concept. That’s when I was reminded of how good the idea really is.
    I had a simple personal site running on the Grav database-less content-management system. Grav is nice because you can have a Git-based deployment process relying totally on the actual (Markdown) files – since there is zero configuration in the database. It would not have been too complicated to enhance my old site with IndieWeb attributes and protocols but anyway I was excited to discover the fantastic Known CMS this site is now running on. I’m very happy with it, thanks to all of you involved in the development.
    If you want to find out more about the IndieWeb, I can recommend An Introduction to the IndieWeb by Chris Aldrich.

    Reply

  196. For those of us wanting to leave Twitter and other silos behind and focus more on microblogging on our own domains, discovering new people to follow can be a little tricky. Manton Reece has a Discover tab on Micro.blog to find people, but the service is still in its infancy.
    Colin Devroe suggested a #FollowFriday movement. I’ll start off with two bloggers I’m enjoying. Feel free to use webmentions for your own lists! Please correct me if anyone else has started this, I haven’t had great connectivity for the last few weeks.

    Colin Walker: I talked to Colin a few times through the Indie Microblogging Slack. Not only is his blog interesting and original, he also helped me out with a few of my own microblog‘s functions and tweaks. I’m also inspired by his microcasting, something I’ve been putting off doing. He recently hit 1000 posts but I missed it until today! Thanks Colin!

    Colin Devroe: The person who suggested a #FollowFriday should definitely be followed! The first thing I noticed about Colin’s blog was his use of Anders Noren’s Davis theme1. It looks like he has done a ton of work to get Davis functional for multiple post formats. Colin’s post about some features in iOS 11 was featured on Jim Dalrymple and Dave Mark’s The Loop.

    I could also write more about a few other microbloggers like Jack Baty, Chris Aldrich, and Craig McClellan, but I’ll leave it to others to highlight theirs and other blogs.
    We could also pick another day, but I love Colin’s idea. What do you all think?

    I’m a former chronic WordPress theme window shopper. ↩

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  213. Is “following” and “liking” fundamentally different than “reading”? (James Shelley)

    Let’s specify the question to get the rub of the issue: whose online writing do you read or subscribe to directly without relying on social media platforms for updates on their work?

    It’s an honest question: who are the people whose ideas and words have so much value for you that you access their writing directly (blogs, newsletters, etc), without depending on your social media channels as your primary conduit to their work?

    I guess another way to put it: if you were going to rebuild a blogroll today, who would it include?

    I have a little over 100 RSS feeds in my Feedbin account. They covers a diverse set of topics around photography, Formula 1 racing, beer, diabetes, philosophy, and technology. Some of the feeds are well-written and feature top-end content. Some are just merely news. But among the chaff are some writers whose content I enjoy…

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  215. My dear Chris, what a response!

    Thank you for taking the time to thoughtfully address my questions in such detail.

    And thank you for the kind offer.

    Let me finish this insane month (travel: Philadelphia, Singapore, Orlando, Minneapolis in 4 weeks; seeing podcast into production; business issues), read through these links, then reach out to you for tutoring.

    Reply

  230. I really the way Naomi Barnes shares her readings and responses via Twitter. This is something that I have done in the past. For example, check my quotes associated with danah boyd’s book It’s Complicated. Beyond replying to the first tweet to create a connected stream of responses, I used a hashtag (#ItsComplicated in the case of boyd’s book) to organise the responses. This is a method often encouraged by authors / publishers more and more. See for example the use of #intentionthebook to collect responses associated with Amy Burvall and Dan Ryder’s book Intention.
    Barnes has taken this a different way and developed a hashtag to collect all her readings (#NBNotes), but rather than tagging each subsequent post, this is just saved for the initial Tweet.
    I really like Barnes’ intent to share. I just wonder if there is a means of owning these notes. Ideally, taking a POSSE approach, she might live blog and post this to Twitter. I vaguely remember Chris Aldrich sharing something about this recently, but the reference escapes me. This is also limited with her blog being located at WP.com. I therefore wondered about the option of pasting the content of the tweets into a blog as an archive.
    Clearly, you can embed Tweets, often by adding the URL. However, there are more and more people deleting their Tweets and if you embed something that is deleted, this content is then lost. (Not sure where this leaves Storify etc.) Another approach is to use Martin Hawksey’s TAGS to create an archive and then use this data to paste into a post. I have documented the steps with gifs here. If each of the tweets included the unique hashtag, the archive could be created using this, however as it is not, the easiest way of capturing the tweets would be to search for ‘@DrNomyn’.
    The problem then is that the archive includes all tweets. Although I could query this, it is easy enough to use the Filter option in the Data menu of Sheets to focus only on tweets from @DrNomyn (Column B) and to organise Tweets in chronological order (Column E). The quickest way to get these Tweets into a post is to highlight the cells in question and copy them.
    Then just paste this text into the post. I would then add blockquotes, but this maybe a personal preference. I guess there are other things that could be done, such as adding blockquotes via the sheets and even removing links to the actual Tweets (if desired), but I think that this offers a start.

    _I just realised that TAGS only captures 140 characters, not the extended length. I guess this solution may not work_ I realised that I needed to downloaded a new copy of TAGS. Here then is a copy of the tweets:

    The current challenge to 2nd wave feminism is what to critique.
    Which understanding of androcentrism?
    Which interpretations of gender justice?
    Which modes of feminist theorising should be incorporated into the current political imaginary?
    Fraser urges feminist to ‘break that unholy alliance’ between feminism and marketisation and forge new ones between ’emancipation’ and ‘social protection’
    The personal became political.
    Boundaries of contestation became more than just the socio-economic
    What happened in homes and was attached to bodies were thrust into the public sphere in order to politicise
    The first issue the New Left focused on was the Vietnam War and the role capitalism was taking in supporting neo-colonialism to support the West.
    Soon attention was turned to other core features of capitalism that had become ‘naturalised’
    Materialism, consumerism, social control, sexual repression, sexism, heteronormativity were all normalised under capitalism.
    Social activists began to organise to break through these normative political routines
    Fraser argues that feminism can no longer ignore economic inequality if it wants to be taken seriously as a politically transformative force. Revive Act1 (redistribution) with the cultural insights of Act2 (recognition)
    Act2 – the feminist imagination turned from redistribution of power/economy to recognition of difference – identity/cultural politics dominated
    Feminism [and I’m going to add on the shoulders of the Civil/Indigenous Rights, LGBTIQ, and independence movements to which it should be eternally thankful] began questioning the exclusions of social democracy
    Attention turned to the politics of recognition.
    Unable to transformatively address the androcentrism of capitalism, feminists began targeting the harms capitalism caused in an effort to transform culture
    Feminism must also integrate transnationalism into its agenda.
    How might feminism foster equal participation transnationally across entrenched power asymmetries and divergent world views?
    Feminism MUST be intersectional if it wants to address the inequalities of capitalism
    The history of 2nd wave feminism:
    Western Europe and North America saw unprecedented prosperity after WW2.
    Keynesian economics showed how to incorporate the unions and built welfare states
    Mass consumption had apparently tamed social conflict
    But the ‘success’ of Keynesian economics ignored the exclusion from the labour market of women and people of colour.
    The ‘Golden Age of Capitalism’ was shattered by the New Left – the radical youth who took to the streets
    Fraser suggests that instead of synergy between redistributive and recognitive agendas, 2nd wave feminism developed a binary where people had to choose which side they thought worked best
    Act3 – still unfolding but we are seeing the reinvigoration of feminist and other emancipatory forces to demand that the runaway markets be subjected to democratic control
    Second wave feminism came out of the New Left after WW2.
    Act1 – Began life as an insurrectionary force that challenged male domination in state organised capitalist societies
    Neoconservative forces have (for a time) defused 2nd wave feminism’s radical currents but we are beginning to see it’s reanimation [Fraser predicted it in 2014, I reckon we can say it’s here in late 2017]
    Fraser argues that, despite good intentions, the emphasis on identity dovetailed too neatly with neoliberal desires to make people forget about egalitarianism and redistribution of capital
    At present 2nd wave feminism is deepening its signature insights
    – critiquing capitalism’s androcentrism
    – analysis of male domination
    – gender -sensitive revisions of democracy and justice
    By the 1980s the political project of feminism had died down due to decades of Conservative governments. The fall of the Communist bloc also didn’t help ‘socialist’ movements
    The book traces the changing focus of the history of second wave feminism over the 20th/21st centuries. Providing essays situated in each of the three ‘Acts’. I’m live tweeting Fraser’s overview of the history and spirit of the wave

    Also on: Twitter

    Reply

  234. Ha! I was actually writing that comment on my site as a test, which I’m using to document my write-up. Since it didn’t actually flow through to your site, I didn’t think you’d see it. Apparently you were subscribed to the comment updates via email? If you did see it on your site (and moderated it out since I didn’t see it) let me know so I can change the report of the results.
    This is hopefully my last test, and I should have all of the current cases covered.

    Reply

  249. Replied Read Write Collect | Aaron Davis (Chris Aldrich | BoffoSocko)

    I’ve been following Aaron Davis for a while at Read Write Respond, but today I noticed a whole new part of his online presence at Read Write Collect that I’ve been missing all along!

    Chris, your bookmark encouraged me to clarify my purpose and intent for developing another site. Like Michael Bishop, I think that the answer to my online presence is in having two distinct spaces, one for my long form posts and the other a collection of my presence on the web. I can see the benefit in consolidating everything into one space, as you do or better using a platform like Known, however it is working for now.

    Reply

  253. At HWC London tonight, I worked on a small thing – figuring out why my avatar was appearing blurry when pulled in to other sites following a webmention I’ve sent to them.
    For example, on this like of one of Chris’ posts at boffosocko.com:
    There’s me at the bottom left, cheerfully blurry.
    I wasn’t quite sure why, because the h-card I added into my WordPress theme links to a profile image on my site that is 654×654.
    Looking at this with Calum we saw that I have multiple h-cards appearing on any given page, and (other than the one I’ve hard coded) they all point to my image on Gravatar.  Not only that, they are specifically pulling out a 40px square version of my gravatar.
    With a little inspection it turns out that every post on my site has a h-card embedded in it.  It’s in the post footer that is added to each post, like this:So the bit that says ‘by’ and my name, also includes h-card microformats.  And in that h-card markup, the image source is my gravatar image, at size 40px.
    I wasn’t sure if having an h-card in every single post even made sense, but a bit of discussion with Barry helped me to understand the places you might have the h-card, and that while there’s various ways of doing it, an explicit h-card per post is certainly fine.  Barry pointed me to the authorship page on the wiki for more details on this.
    OK, so where does the h-card per post come from in my site?  Given that it contains microformats, and I don’t think WordPress has much microformats built in, the most likely candidate is for it to be somewhere in my fork of the Sempress theme.
    A quick search for h-card in the code of my theme for h-card shows yup, that’s where that post footer is being rendered.  It’s in the sempress_posted_on function – there’s a call to get_avatar, a built-in WordPress function.  In that call, the argument for the desired avatar size is being passed in as 40.
    So I’ve bumped that up to 96, and all should now be well.
     
     

    Reply

  256. Oh geez, Chris! Thanks for pointing that out. I never realized WordPress has private published posts! Never even gave that second thought!
    But now that I’ve discovered it, I’ve kinda gone overboard posting private notes to myself there
    Now I’m seriously looking at the Post Kinds plugin. I don’t want it to interfere with the default post types WP has, so I’ll take a look under the hood to make sure that doesn’t happen.
    But other than that, I’d love to have the Bookmarking and Liking functionalities.

    Reply

  257. I use Independent Publisher, which seems to have good integration with these standards.
    Yes, that was what I was looking for. When the plugin got installed, the default post type it selected was ‘note’. I’m more of an article person then
    Thanks for helping me along the way!

    Reply

  260. A reflection on using emojis as a way to provide visual information about blog posts.

    I have dived into my latest #IndieWeb venture of saving links on my own site. I thought that I would simply use the Bookmark post kind to save my links, but I soon realised not every link needed some form of commentary and/or extended quotations. For those where the link and quote/summary was enough, I started labelling as a Like. There were also some links where I would write a Reply to the author. With all these additions, the different kinds of writing were lost in my stream. I was beginning to understand why Chris Aldrich’s site starts with a static page, which guides readers to the different kinds of writing. I was not yet interested in going down the static path, I therefore had to think of some other solution to differentiate between the different content I was adding to the site. After some initial exploration of beginning each title with the kind, I turned to the emoji.
    I came upon the use of emojis in the work of John Johnston, who added them to some of his posts to provide additional information. I think this may be something built into the Micro.Blogs platform. In addition, I like the way that Audrey Watters uses icons to break up information in her Weekly News posts. There has also been a lot written about the use of emojis to define Google Drive folders. Although most of the emojis I use correspond with the post kinds, there are times when I use them to add more nuance for particular tags and categories. Here is a list of my emojis so far:

    for my eLearn and Read Write Respond Newsletters

    for What Ifs?

    for Bookmarks

    for Replies

    for Likes

    for books and articles Read

    for what I am Listening to.
    ️ for microcasts and podcasts Recorded

    for Notes

    As this is a new iteration, I still have a bit of work going back through my posts adding emojis to other kinds and categories, such as events and mentions.
    Beyond the visual, the addition of emojis has had a few interesting side-effects. When I POSSE to Diigo, I have discovered that the title is left blank. My workaround has been to manually create the title for Diigo using the Social Network Auto-Poster (SNAP) plugin. There is no issue with other spaces, such as Twitter, where the emoji is happily embedded.
    Another issue is the permalink. Most options involve adding the name of the post to the end of the URL, this includes emojis. For some reasons, this creates issues with sending webmentions. The answer seems to be to manually ping the site using the post ID or manually edit the permalink before posting to remove the emoji.
    I remember Eric Curts mentioning problems with some emojis:

    Emojis appear differently on different operating systems. Because of this, the images may not look the same on every device. If you are using any modern computer or device (Chromebook, Android, iOS, Mac OS, Windows), the emojis should display well. However if you are using an older version of Windows earlier than Windows 8.1, the emojis do not appear in color and many may be missing.

    Maybe the issues are associated with this?

    So what about you? Do you use any methods for breaking up content within your spaces? Or maybe you use emojis in some other way? As always, comments welcome and webmentions too.

    <!– it is important not to have any white space between

    as it is styles as inline block –>Style
    Grammar
    Overused
    Clichés
    Sticky
    Diction
    Repeats
    Combo
    Length
    Pronoun
    Alliteration
    Homonym
    Transition
    Thesaurus
    House
    Plagiarism

    More
    Settings

    Writing Style Check
    Grammar Check
    Overused Words Check
    Cliches and Redundancies
    Sticky Sentences Check
    Diction and Vague Words
    Repeats Check
    Combo Check
    Sentence Length Check
    Pronoun Report
    Alliteration Report
    Homonym Report
    Transition Report
    Thesaurus Report
    House Style Check
    Plagiarism Report

    open options

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    Also posted on IndieNews

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    About Latest Posts

    Aaron Davis

    I am an Australian educator supporting the integration of technology and innovation. I have an interest in how collectively we can work to creating a better tomorrow.

    Latest posts by Aaron Davis (see all)

    <a href="https://readwriterespond.com/2018/01/emoji/">A Kind of Emoji</a> - January 20, 2018 <a href="https://readwriterespond.com/2018/01/reclaiming-my-bookmarks/">Reclaiming My Bookmarks</a> - January 13, 2018 <a href="https://readwriterespond.com/2018/01/reflecting-voices-village-2017/">Reflecting on the Voices in the Village 2017</a> - January 4, 2018

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    A Kind of Emoji     by Aaron Davis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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  261. This is a collection of code that I often turn to when working with WordPress

    Every time that I feel comfortable with my level of knowledge associated with WordPress, there is a problem that leads me to discover a particular attribute that I don’t know how I lived without. This time it is the code seemingly obfuscated beyond the WYSIWIG editor and the dashboard.
    For some this code is about command line, while others it is about the bashing out the building blocks. My interest here is the everyday code, the little snippets that find there way in here or there while I work with WordPress, many of which have come from wandering through Chris Aldrich’s commonplace blog:
    Webmentions
    Webmentions are the building block for conversations across the web. However, with WordPress, they often get caught in moderation and/or flagged as spam by Akismet and other spam filter plugins. To prevent this, you can add this PHP snippet to your theme’s functions.php file:
    function unspam_webmentions($approved, $commentdata) { return $commentdata['comment_type'] == 'webmention' ? 1 : $approved; } add_filter('pre_comment_approved', 'unspam_webmentions', '99', 2);

    Alan Levine has documented the process of creating a child theme, which is useful when customising the code, while Gregor Morrill has developed code to approve webmentions from domains previously approved.
    Microformats
    Microformats is a data format built upon adopted standards and prior developments. There are a number of specifications, which can be manually added within the existing HTML. It provides the foundation for software to automatically process information. People like David Shanske and Matthias Pfefferle have developed plugins and themes to mark-up content in the backend. You can also use this site to check the microformats on your site, while for a more extensive introduction, listen to Tantek Çelik on the future of web apps.
    Two microformats I have worked with are comments and rel=me.
    Comment
    Although the appropriate microformats are usually built into the Webmentions plugin. The plugin for theaded comments can be a bit more tempremental. Chris Aldrich recommends manually adding the reply class and URL just to make sure:
    <a class="u-in-reply-to" href="http://www.example.com"></a>

    I have come to do this out of habit for replies now.
    Rel-me
    Another microformat incorperated into many Indieweb sites is Rel-me. It is used to consolidate identity, as well as domain sign in.
    <ul> <li><a href="https://twitter.com/aaronpk" rel="me">@aaronpk on Twitter</a></li> <li><a href="https://github.com/aaronpk" rel="me">Github</a></li> <li><a href="https://google.com/+aaronpk" rel="me">Google</a></li> <li><a href="mailto:me@example.com" rel="me">me@example.com</a></li></ul>

    Chris Aldrich has taken rel-me to its extremes by creating a page in which he records all his accounts. I have also started my own. For more on rel-me, watch Ryan Barrett’s keynote at IndieWeb Summit 2017.
    Page Bookmarks
    I remember coming across in plugin in Edublogs that allowed you to add a table of contents. This reminded me of the functionality in Google Docs and one of the things I noticed in both was the presence of a hashtag at the end of the URL. (Interestingly, now every heading in Google Docs has a unique identifier automatically created.) In Docs, this is something that can be added using the Bookmark feature, I wondered if the same could be done in WordPress. I discovered that within the tags, you insert ‘name=”unique-name”‘:
    <a name="unique-name">Target Text</a>

    This can then be used to guide readers to a specific point in your text.
    Custom URLs for Post Kinds
    Using the Post Kinds plugin provides a list a unique urls associated with the kinds of posts on the site. Chris Aldrich provides some guides in how to use these to create custom urls to generate a specific post screen. This can then be used to create a bookmarklet:
    http://example.com/wp-admin/post-new.php?kind=bookmark&kindurl=@url

    Dariusz Kuśnierek provides some other examples of custom URLs, which help in U deratamding the way urls work in general.
    RSS Feeds
    RSS provides a means of following a site without checking in all of the time. To access a feed to follow in WordPress, you simply add ‘/feed/’ to the end:
    http://www.example.com/feed

    As some feeds can contain a range of content, it is possible to hone down to particular categories by adding ‘?cat=[category id]’ to the end.
    http://www.example.com/feed?cat=[category id]

    This can be useful if you only want to follow a specific subject or area.
    Taking this a step further, you can also produce an RSS based on Post Kinds. Although not all blogs use these, for those that do it can be a useful demarcation. Similar to categories, you add ‘?kind=type’ to the end of the feed.
    http://www.example.com/feed/?kind=bookmark

    For more on RSS feeds, see this post from Chris Aldrich.
    OPML
    Where as RSS is used for a single feed, OPML allows a user to aggregate. I have written about them before. It is possible to store an OPML in WordPress. To access this you add the append ‘/wp-links-opml.php’ to the end.
    http://www.example.com/wp-links-opml.php

    In addition to this, Chris Aldrich has documented how to split a file into categories:
    ?link_cat=[category id]

    I have yet to categorise my links, however Aldrich provides an extensive example.

    So what about you? What little bits of code do you use? As always, comments welcome.

    If you enjoy what you read here, feel free to sign up for my monthly newsletter to catch up on all things learning, edtech and storytelling.Share this:EmailRedditTwitterPocketTumblrLinkedInLike this:Like Loading…

    Hidden in the Code by Aaron Davis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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  272. Are you familiar with Reading.am by Jon Mitchell (Everything is ablaze!)

    @brentsimmons Are you familiar with Reading.am and/or the many homespun varieties of feeds people use to share what they′re reading online with minimal friction?

    For me this solved the problem of wanting RSS to have a social component, but it needs no centralized back end. People build a reading bot however they want, and they fire it off when they want to tell the internet “I am reading this.” For example, I trigger mine by using Pinboard just the way I normally would, and its RSS feeds feed the bot.For me this solved the problem of wanting RSS to have a social component, but it needs no centralized back end. People build a reading …

    I like the general idea behind what you’re talking about here Jon, though I may be missing part of the conversation as I came across it via a GitHub issue and it’s taken some time to find even a portion of the conversation on micro.blog, though I suspect I’m missing what I’m sure might be a fragmented conversation.
    I too love the idea of indicating what I’ve been reading online. The problem I see is that very few platforms, social or otherwise are focusing on what people are actually reading. Reading.am is the only one I’m aware of. Pocket and Instapaper let people bookmark things they want to read, but typically don’t present feeds of things after they’ve been checked off as having been read.
    Most others are systems meant for a specific purpose that are being bent to various other purposes and it’s rarely ever explicit so that everyone knows their intention. As an example, I know people who star, like, favorite or do something else on various platforms to indicate what they’re reading. Some also use these to indicate bookmarks. As a personal example, on Twitter, I sometimes “star” a tweet to indicate I “like” it or it’s a “favorite” while most other times I’m really using the functionality to quickly bookmark an article and use an IFTTT.com recipe to automatically add the URLs of these starred posts to my Pocket account for later reading.
    The overarching issue with these is that the general concept is painfully spread out and the meaning isn’t always concrete or explicit. Wouldn’t it be better if it were vastly more specific? In an attempt to do just this, I use my own website, in linkblog-like fashion, to indicate what I’m physically reading. It has an RSS feed that others could subscribe to if they wish to read it elsewhere. I also “syndicate” copies to places like Reading.am or occasionally to Twitter, Facebook, etc. for those who prefer to follow in those locations. Incidentally on Twitter, mine often look a lot like your Twitter feed with visual icons to indicate specific intents.
    For something like Evergreen, or any reader really, I’d much prefer if there was UI and functionality to allow me to directly interact with the content I’m reading and post that interaction to my own website (and own it) in a relatively frictionless way. This would be far better than using things like stars to do something that others may not grasp.
    In the reading case, it would be cool if I could physically mark something explicitly as “read” in Evergreen, and the reader would post to my website that I’ve actually read the thing. While there are many ways to do this (including RSS), perhaps one of the most interesting currently is the open web standard called Micropub. So my WordPress site has a micropub endpoint (via a plugin) and apps that support it could post to my site on my behalf. If the reader could post to my site via micropub, I could use it to collect and create a feed of everything I’m reading. Similarly readers could also do similar things to explicitly indicate that I mean to bookmark something, or I could use the reader to compose a reply directly in the reader and post that reply to my website (which incidentally could send webmentions to the original website to publish those replies as comments on their site.)
    As an example we’re all familiar with, micro.blog has micropub support, so I can use micro.blog’s app to post and micro.blog uses micropub to send the post to my own website.
    With the proper micropub support, a reader could allow me to post explicit bookmarks, likes, favorites, replies, reads, etc. to my own website. All of these could then have individual feeds from my site back out. Thus people could subscribe to any (or all) of them as they choose. Want to know what I’m reading? Easy. Want to know what I’m bookmarking or liking? Which events I’ve RSVP’d to? Shazam!
    My homepage has a full list of post types I’m currently supporting, and each one of them can be subscribed to individually by adding /feed/ onto the end of the URL.
    In summary, let’s try not to impute too much meaning onto a simple star’s functionality when we can be imminently more specific about it. Of course, for completeness, for most readers, we’d also need to change the meaning of the traditional “mark as read” which in reality means, “mark as done” or “don’t show me this anymore”.
    For more detail on how this could work in an advanced reader-based world I’ve written a more explicit set of details here: Feed Reader Revolution
    And to quote Brent back:

    …it’s okay if this is a work in progress and isn’t ready for everybody yet. It’s okay if it takes time. We don’t know how it will all work in the end.
    We’re discovering the future as we build it.

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    Author: Chris Aldrich

    I'm a biomedical and electrical engineer with interests in information theory, complexity, evolution, genetics, signal processing, theoretical mathematics, and big history.

    I’m also a talent manager-producer-publisher in the entertainment industry with expertise in representation, distribution, finance, production, content delivery, and new media.
    View all posts by Chris Aldrich

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  286. 🎧 Listened to “An Indieweb Podcast Episode 0” by David Shanske and Chris Aldrich.
    I really enjoyed this pilot episode! I was particularly interested in some of the discussion around annotations for audio. I think I’ll spend some time noodling on using Jon Udell’s clipping tool to generate shareable snippet URLs, and updating my webmention handling to try and turn mentions with media fragment timestamps into pretty annotations.
    https://david.shanske.com/2018/03/18/an-indieweb-podcast-episode-0/

    Reply

  287. Chris liked a post

    The algorithm narrows the presentation of the content down to very close family. Then my mom’s sister sees it and clicks “like” moments later. Now Facebook’s algorithm has created a self-fulfilling prophesy and further narrows the audience of my post. As a result, my post gets no further exposure on Facebook other than perhaps five people–the circle of family that overlaps in all three of our social graphs. Naturally, none of these people love me enough to click “like” on random technical things I think are cool. I certainly couldn’t blame them for not liking these arcane topics, but shame on Facebook for torturing them for the exposure when I was originally targeting maybe 10 other colleagues to begin with.

    Dang. That describes a lot of what I post! More excellent writing by Chris Aldrich
    Also on:

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  290. Eli Mellen makes some excellent points here. I’ve been slowly chipping away at going full Indieweb for about a year. Only this weekend did I really get all the way there, and it took a lot of advice from Chris Aldrich, some assistance from David Shanske in the IndieWeb chat, and the judicious use of Chrome developer tools (especially the web inspector) and Google to get to where I am today, which is pretty much where I want to be.
    I have WordPress and I installed all the appropriate plug-ins. I followed all of the directions in the Getting Started with WordPress parts of the Wiki. But these were the pieces that were missing that only recently did I get together:

    Sharing links in a POSSE way and having them actually look good
    Posting notes to Facebook and Twitter without weird link previews or my Gravatar popping up
    Sharing on mobile

    I wouldn’t ask your average social media user to do all the things I had to do to make this happen. As Eli says,

    …the IndieWeb is at an exciting inflection point.

    I’m immensely grateful for all the help I’ve received getting started, but I do hope that over time people won’t have to be as dev-headed as me to jump in. I am a far cry from any sort of developer, but I do have a lot more knowledge of how the web works than I think most people do. If it was tricky and took me a year to get it to do what I wanted, I can’t imagine what a challenge it will be for them.

    Reply

  298. Sebastian, first of all, thank you for your detailed write up on this issue. I think much of your roadmap is worthwhile, and of great interest.

    I cannot, however, say that I am convinced by your contentions regarding the effect of GDPR and indieweb sites. In particular, I think your definitions are excessively broad, and you elide much information from both the Regulation itself and the Recitals.

    Take, for instance, your quotation of Recital 18, which is key to the matters here presented. I note that you have chosen not to quote the Recital in full (despite its brevity) and you use it in support of (imo) a wholly erroneous contention regarding what is and is not personal. For the record, Recital 18, in full, is as follows (emphasis mine)

    This Regulation does not apply to the processing of personal data by a natural person in the course of a purely personal or household activity and thus with no connection to a professional or commercial activity. Personal or household activities could include correspondence and the holding of addresses, or social networking and online activity undertaken within the context of such activities. However, this Regulation applies to controllers or processors which provide the means for processing personal data for such personal or household activities.

    It is quite clear, from the highlighted section, that information which is provided in the context of social networking is itself not a subject of the Regulation. I am curious as to why you omitted that second sentence in your article?

    I also do not understand your position that German Legal Literature means that any personal website where someone publishes anything regarding an area related to their professional activity automatically becomes a commercial activity for the purpose of GDPR. The GDPR has not, as yet, become law. There is no precedent support for your position in the corpus of the ECJ (nor could there be). There is disputation at all levels of the ECJ on the question of when an activity ceases to be personal activity (Lindqvist, for example, or Rynes) however it is notable that the Working Group regarding GDPR specifically cited the dictum in Lindqvist as incorrect, and both Article 9 and Recitals surrounding same were designed to place restraint on that dictum. The original intention was to broaden the exemption more dramatically, but this was resisted strongly by a curious alliance of authoritarians and anti-governmental fractions in the European Parliament. Nonetheless, the dictum is significantly broader than that which pertained in 1998. (For a more detailed look at this issue, see for example this article by Brendan Van Elsonoy, legal advisor at the Belgian Data Protection Authority.

    I would be, naturally, happy to be proven wrong, however I simply cannot accept that your various statements regarding the law of the matter are correct in the absence of evidence to support them. Unfortunately, I don’t speak German, and am unable to comment on Dr. Schwenke’s positions in the podcast. All I can comment on is the statements in your bulleted list.

    For example, the first point: “Individuals have to be informed when data about them is pulled in from third sources.”

    Informed by whom? By which site? Consent to the viewing, accessing and storage of public data is provided in the Regulation. What is the basis for this claim?

    Or the second bullet point: “Pulling “likes” and profile images from Twitter in Indieweb manner (in my opinion precisely described by the show host) requires a statement in the privacy notice and the affected persons have to be informed”

    Again – on what basis? Where is the support within the GDPR for this claim?

    I’m sorry if this sounds churlish, but as a lawyer I refuse to take such claims as meaningful in the absence of supporting rationale. Like Dr. Schwenke, I’m a practitioner as opposed to an academic of law. Like most such practitioners, I’ve been undertaking GDPR training in the last two years. Not once in any of that training has there been any support for the type of legal minefield you propose. I’ve spoken about Indieweb components, including backfeed, with legal advisors to the Irish, Dutch and Belgian DPAs. None of them have raised objections of the nature mentioned by you as being required by GDPR.

    GDPR is scary enough as it is. It is also an incredible opportunity, a moment in which we can look to a future absent the abuse visited upon us all by Corporations with a skewed view of rights and values. I look forward to it for those reasons, and I welcome all efforts to secure that future.

    Reply

  299. A little over a year ago, I wrote about how a post by Vicki Boykis and a comment by Chris Aldrich had inspired me to do my part to fix the internet. Since that time, I’ve worked hard to get my WordPress site set up so that I can write content here, send it out to other places where people who want to follow me can see it, and get their responses here. I have, for the past six weeks or so, really succeeded at Vicki’s first mandate:

    …write your own blog on your own platform.

    In that original post, I talked some about her other suggestions, but I haven’t followed through as successfully on those. I think I’m going to take on her second one next:

    Share good content.

    There are several things I’m implementing to help me do that. With respect to sharing in WordPress on mobile with Android, Chris has generously shared one way to do that. I have tried it, and while it works, I’m now content to simply copy and paste a URL from the thing I’m sharing into the relevant field in my WordPress post editor. I keep my New Post page bookmarked, and I’m good to go. (My current setup is enabled by the Post Kinds plugin and made easier by the External URL Featured Image plugin, both of which I am aware of thanks to Chris.)
    But of course, to share good content, I also need to consume good content. I do this by following blogs and subscribing to newsletters. I use Feedly for subscribing to blogs and Pocket for saving articles linked from newsletters for later reading. (Chris has written a great post about another WordPress plugin, PressForward, that can replace both of these services, but my current web hosting plan doesn’t give me the power I need to use it for the amount of content I’m taking in.)
    I’m working on a following page to share what blogs and newsletters I’m subscribing to. (I have one but it isn’t displaying like I want it to, so it’s in draft mode until I figure it out.)
    But I want to fix the internet in other ways, too, which is why I’m going to dust off my recollections of HTML5 and CSS3, learn PHP, and dig into WordPress so I can do things like build my own themes and create plugins that give WordPress the functionality I’m missing from it.
    Would you like to join me in fixing the internet?

    Reply

  300. Hey! My name is Ian O’Byrne.
    I am an educator, researcher, and speaker. My work centers on teaching, learning, and technology. I study literacy practices of individuals in online, and hybrid spaces.
    This website is my digital commonplace book. This is inspired by the website philosophy & structure developed by Chris Aldrich.
    I use this website as my primary hub for online presence and communication. I’m trying to follow the tenets of the IndieWeb movement in owning all of my own data and publishing on my own site and syndicating elsewhere (POSSE).
    On this website you’ll find a trail of my digital breadcrumbs as I consume, curate, and create. I’ll archive all of the things I’ve read online. These could be bookmarks to visit, videos to watch, photos, and quotes that inspired me.
    My main website is where you’ll find all of my longer blog posts, videos, & images. You should subscribe to my weekly newsletter to stay on top of everything.
    I am social. Feel free to contact me.

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  304. I have been following with interest your questions and queries in the IndieWeb chat, especially in regards to WordPress. I thought it might be useful to document my workflow associated with Read Write Collect for you:
    1. Start with a bookmarklet (desktop) or url forwarder (mobile) to begin the process.
    2. Adjust the Post Kind response properties. This might include adding missing information and a quote. Lately – inspired by Chris Aldrich’s posts – I have taken to using HTML to add media or multiple paragraphs into the ‘quote’ box.
    3. Copy the title from the response properties to the post title and slug. I also add an emoji to the title associated with the post kind. I used to just add the title, but had issues with the emoji being added to the permalink, so short of developing a theme-based solution that strips any emoji from the permalink, I have taken to manually creating the link.
    4. Add content to the post, whether it be a reflection or further summary.
    5. Add categories (‘contributions’, ‘creations’ or ‘responses’), tags (usually at least three) and feature images (where applicable)
    6. Choose where to POSSE: G+ (Jetpack), Mastadon (Mastadon Autopost) and Twitter, Flickr and Diigo (SNAP). I tried Bridgy a while ago, but it never seemed to work. I probably should return to it, but like the flexibility to adjust posts using SNAP. I really wish that there was only one spot for all of them, but live with it for now.
    7. If I manually POSSE (usually when replying to other posts), I return and add these to the syndication links.
    I am sure I have missed aspects, but hopefully it helps.

    Reply

  306. David Shanske und Chris Aldrich hosten seit ein paar Monaten einen ganz charmanten IndieWeb Podcast. David hat bei so ziemlich jedem IndieWeb-WordPress-Plugin mit gearbeitet und übernimmt die Rolle des „Erklärers“ und Chris ist Poweruser und versucht den Podcast zu moderieren und die Komplexität etwas heraus zu nehmen.

    Bisher entstanden 5 Folgen und ein Teaser:

    <a href="https://david.shanske.com/2018/03/18/an-indieweb-podcast-episode-0/">Episode 0</a>
    <a href="https://boffosocko.com/2018/04/17/an-indieweb-podcast-episode-1-leaving-facebook/">Episode 1: Leaving Facebook</a>
    <a href="https://david.shanske.com/2018/04/18/an-indieweb-podcast-episode-2-indieauth/">Episode 2: IndieAuth</a>
    <a href="https://boffosocko.com/2018/04/30/an-indieweb-podcast-episode-3-syndication-2/">Episode 3: Syndication</a>
    <a href="https://david.shanske.com/2018/05/08/an-indieweb-podcast-episode-4-webmentions-and-privacy/">Episode 4: Webmentions and Privacy</a>
    <a href="https://david.shanske.com/2018/05/13/an-indieweb-podcast-episode-5-indieweb-summit-and-more/">Episode 5: IndieWeb Summit and More</a>
    <a href="https://boffosocko.com/2018/06/05/an-indieweb-podcast-episode-6-wordpress-and-types-of-posts/">Episode 6: WordPress and Types of Posts</a>
    <a href="https://david.shanske.com/2018/06/17/an-indieweb-podcast-episode-7-the-reverse-salmention/">Episode 7: The Reverse Salmention</a>

    Ich muss zugeben, ich hätte ja schon auch mal wieder Lust zu podcasten…

    Reply

  311. I lost noterlive halfway through but here is our discussion. It is summary and paraphrasing not direct quotes:

    Chris Aldrich:

    Chris shared a blog from a read post that he set up with a newspaper in Colorado

    David Shanske:

    Is hsowing how to change the settings in the

    wiobyrne:

    does a 1-2 posts a week as his new “tick-tock” About a few weeks ago he built up a site to as his book.
    I am trying to have a little breadcrumb site in a meaningful and intentional way. and keep my long form writing on another site.
    I need to really understand this so I can explain it to people who won’t go and try to figure it out.
    now I am trying a set up a process, that isn’t working, about trying to bookmark and summarize and little by little I will fold in more things on my breadcrumbs site.
    I am looking for one good tool to build on my site to be my breadcrumb trail

    Taylor Jadin:

    We are going with a #DOO project. For years teachers have been using wordpress sites, and giving students the rights as authors.

    Tim Clarke:

    Jim discusses his #DOO project at a university in Allentown, PA.

    Gregor Love:

    Gregor has been developing a secret project that is a micropub read/write reader.

    Chris Aldrich:

    Shares coloradobolevard.net which gets his first read posts. It is so cool to see #IndieWeb posts on blogs
    Twitter used to have a nice open API and there were 1,000s of apps. Micropub is an open API that allows you to post anywhere and create a nice API for specific posts
    I uses reading.am and PESOS back to my site and then the other time I am using Press Forward. It is an rss feed reader built in my website. I use that a good bit to read stuff in my WordPress install.

    wiobyrne:

    I would like to pull people up for 20 minutes and just have people go through their site and say this how I work. So you could take half that story like just your mobile workflow. then another on yoru desktop workflo

    Greg McVerry:

    I think @wiobyrne found his #IndieWeb podcast show topic. 10 minute tours

    Chris Aldrich:

    Shares how the #DOO project was very connected in the early days of #indieweb but so much is working better now we need to rehook them in.

    Greg McVerry:

    I share that i think for the #indieweb and #doo to work you would need to start with a turn key template. @chrisaldrich shares the myspace analogy. You tinkered and played.

    wiobyrne:

    You used to start with a template and they would hate it, but if you start with nothing they hate it.

    Taylor Jadin:

    shares stories of giving students a canned template or a blank page

    Tim Clarke:

    shares how his university went real slow and rolled-out a few domains at a time

    wiobyrne:

    We spend a lot of money on e-portfolio systems that is lousy. We are locking it down.

    Gregor Love:

    Wants to slap our wrist for letting the conversation get to badges….Yet I am stoked I he shared: https://indieweb.org/indorsements

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  318. Replied to New Communities Can Be Overwhelming by David Wolfpaw (davidwolfpaw.com)

    I’ve been paying a lot more attention to the IndieWeb space this year, with the intention of revamping my lifelogging site to both include more services that I still use (and remove the fitness tracking that I decided to stop), as well as become a repository for webmentions.

    David, Welcome! Come on in, the water’s fine…
    I remember lurking for over a year and a half before dipping a toe in for the first time myself. Everyone I’ve met has been so kind, thoughtful, supportive, and helpful that I now regret having let so much time pass before jumping in with both feet.
    Since it looks like you’re playing in the WordPress world, feel free to drop into the #WordPress channel (or any of the others for that matter) anytime to ask questions, help others solve problems (we can always use help with UX/UI, and themes especially), talk about what itches you’re working on, or even just to say “hi”. If you haven’t yet, I’m sure you’ll enjoy meeting some of the WP regulars including pfefferle (Germany), GWG (New York), miklb (Florida), snarfed (San Francisco), jgmac1106 (Connecticut), jeremycherfas (Rome), and me: chrisaldrich (Los Angeles).
    I hope that the most overwhelming part isn’t getting to know the community, but the sheer number of things that are becoming possible to do with one’s website that weren’t as easily possible just a few years ago. My biggest problem reading the chat logs usually comes in the form of saying, “That sounds/looks cool, I want that too!” about 8 times a day. My best advice for “eating the whole whale” is to do it one bite at a time.
    I’ll also personally extend an invitation to the upcoming IndieWeb Summit in Portland at the end of the month. If you can’t make it in person, there should be enough support to allow a lot of direct participation via chat and live streaming video–it’s not quite as much fun as attending in person, but you can participate to a level higher than most conferences typically allow.
    Welcome again!
     
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    Author: Chris Aldrich

    I'm a biomedical and electrical engineer with interests in information theory, complexity, evolution, genetics, signal processing, theoretical mathematics, and big history.

    I’m also a talent manager-producer-publisher in the entertainment industry with expertise in representation, distribution, finance, production, content delivery, and new media.
    View all posts by Chris Aldrich


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  319. @DavidWolfpaw We can always use help with plugins and themes (especially!) I’m currently trying to create more IW-friendly fork of some of the annual themes. I’m slowly working on 2012 at the moment.

    If it helps to have live test websites to send responses to, feel free to use any of my sites
    https://www.boffosocko.com
    http://stream.boffosocko.com
    or some of the following (less public) test sites:
    http://iwrabbit.boffosocko.com/
    http://known.boffosocko.com/ (Running Known)
    I suspect that David wouldn’t mind your using https://tiny.n9n.us/ either.

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  320. Replied to

    In reply to: Intertextrevolution
    Thanks for the kind response.
    I’ll answer here your webmention reply didn’t show on my site. I’m sure I probably have a setting for that wrong somewhere. 🙂
    You are right, WordPress is a handful to get set up. If you add in the Indieweb stuff it becomes even more of a handful. In theory you only have to do this once which is good. You folks are on the right track with the Indieweb plugin – it makes things much easier.  All I knew, after doing a lot of reading on Indieweb stuff, then seeing the Webmentions on other blogs, I knew this was what I wanted.
    After writing that post I got to thinking: one approach to documentation is to treat it like cooking recipes and cooking classes. (ie. I’m making a pie crust, the recipe calls for peanut oil which will do this, but can I substitute corn oil and what will that do to the pie crust? etc.)
    Another way is to think like a blogger: “3 Best ways to Syndicate Your Indieweb Blog to Twitter,” type articles.
    I understand the Indieweb eco-system is not yet complete, templates, feed readers are all still being developed.  Someday, this will all be close to plug and play, but in the meantime we need some big FAQ’s and comparison of real world (read WordPress for now) services.  Unfortunately, my trial and error approach burns up too much time.
    Thanks to Chris Aldrich who has been doing a good job of explaining a complex eco system.

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  322. I discovered the IndieWeb about six weeks ago and wrote then about why I think it’s an important movement and community. Since that time, I’ve made a concerted effort to update my web site so that it looks like I want it to look. Although I’m not yet done, I’ve made good progress. I recently read Chris Aldrich‘s excellent post An Introduction to the IndieWeb. Near the end of the post, Chris writes:

    Everyone’s desires and needs will be different. Work on what you find most interesting and useful first (the IndieWeb calls these itches). Make a list of what you use most often on your old social media silos or wish they had and work on that first.

    In a conversation with Greg McVerry last night, I came to realize what I’ve been focusing on and why. To understand my focus, I first need to explain a little bit about how I set my site up.
    I have a Domain of One’s Own site through my university. This means that I can install applications on my web site very easily through a tool called Installatron. Because I was very familiar with WordPress, I first decided to install my own instance of WordPress for my blog. One of the first choices to make when you set up a WordPress site is the theme you want to use. The theme specifies how the site will look. I chose a minimalistic theme called Rebalance. I liked the grid layout of the theme as well as the fact that it would show an excerpt of a post on the main page. I also liked the fact that the main page would show an image associated with my post if I wanted but that I could also post without an image. Here’s the main page of my blog which can also be seen below:

    I then wanted a place to post my photographs. I wanted the photos to be all together but separate from my blog posts. I envisioned a main page with small images and when a viewer clicked on an image, it opens in a larger format. I tried a number of different options (a separate page, a portfolio, a project) and realized that I didn’t like the way the Rebalance theme handles images. But WordPress doesn’t allow multiple themes on a single WordPress site. So I decided to install another instance of WordPress and link it to my blog WordPress instance. I settled on the Pictorico theme for my photography WordPress instance which you can see below (and here). This theme is also minimalistic and is in a grid format. When I post an image, I add it to the text of the post and I don’t add a featured image. Instead, the Pictorico theme uses the first image in a post as the featured image if one is not added. This means the image only shows up once on an individual post.

    Then I learned about the IndieWeb. So I installed yet another instance of WordPress so that I could use one of the three themes that fully supports the IndieWeb plugins. I chose Sempress because it is minimalistic in ways that remind me of the Rebalance and Pictorico themes. I put a link to my blog WordPress instance and to my photography WordPress instance on the menu for my main web site which can be seen below (and here):

    As I learned more about the IndieWeb, I started to think about my work flow on corporate web sites. One of the things I do a lot on Twitter, for example, is retweet stories that I find interesting in order to come back to them later. I thought about how I might do something like this on my own web site instead of on Twitter. (I’ll write about the work flow for this process in my next post.) I had a vision of what I would want such a page to look like and, perhaps not surprisingly, I wanted something that had an appearance that was different than any of the pages that I had created up to that point. So I installed a fourth instance of WordPress and used the Carton theme. This theme is also minimalist and uses a grid layout but it looks great without images which is what I imagined my notes page would look like. You can see it below (and here):


    As I was telling Greg about the four instances of WordPress that I have installed on my web site and why I wanted to use each one, I realized that I use various corporate social media sites for different purposes and the way they look and feel matters to their use. And so as I try to replace the use of the corporate sites with my own site, I want the various pages to look and feel different from each other in ways that are suited to my use of them. It’s a lot of work to set up and maintain four instances of WordPress but it’s worth it to me to get the look and feel that I want. And this realization made me wonder if we could develop a plugin or a theme that allowed one installation of WordPress to have a different look and feel on each page. We already can filter posts by type so that we can have a separate page for each post type. Could we allow those pages to look different from each other based on the type of post that was on each page? I have created a couple of simple themes using a Udemy class that I took in January but I would need a lot more knowledge and experience to begin to develop this idea. I wonder what other people think about it.

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  325. In this last episode before Chris Aldrich and I head to the Indieweb Summit in Portland, Oregon, he and I discuss my continual messing up of people’s Indieweb experience, little things I’ve hidden in plugins, web-signin vs IndieAuth, etc.
    We’re both looking forward to seeing those of you who can join us in Portland.

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  335. Tantek Çelik:

    Can’t believe we are doing this for the 8th time! Welcome to the annual summit.

    There was an explosion of Homebrew Website Club. We also are announcing IndieWeb Camp Berlin November 3rd-4th.

    Chris Aldrich:

    It took me longer to write the post then it id did to start publishing to GitHub from my blog.

    Tantek Çelik:

    The WordPress work has been great as we build a new Getting Started and Plug In page. Drupal gets a build by @swentel. One person can make a difference.
    Shows the iOS web reader built by @eddie. Who knew you would need to ask for a chronological feed?

    Manton Reece:

    Hapy to share three things: user experience, community, …and I pull a
    The goal of micro.blog is about making the web as easy to use and popular as @twitter.
    we need this on the #indieweb apps for everyone, for micro.blog we have a suite of apps focused on the user experience

    The princple of content ownership (second of @mantons three goals) is having your own domain name. It is about the web being like it used to be.
    Owning your content isn’t about portable software. It’s about a portable URL and data.
    Micro.blog is two things: a blog hosting platform and a social network. It doesn’t matter if you use @WordPress or we host it for you. You can move it and get your content out.

    Jean MacDonald:

    We have a responsibility to make sure in the timeline that people feel safe.
    I was really impressed. I have never seen a strecth goal that was about improving the community.

    Greg McVerry:

    This is why I believe Design for Inclusion needs to be a principle and not something just for the Code of Conduct.

    Jean MacDonald:

    Communities NEED caretakers. As shown with Twitter, neglect is not benign.For the good stuff to grow, you have to deal with the bad stuff.
    We also started a microcast to feature a member of the community each week and curate a daily feed of interesting posts.
    The building of community is not all altruistic. When people feel safe and as a member of the community they build stuff for everyone.
    We have a way to go. (Shows their documentation) and said it is too hard for most people still. We don’t want to push people into the deep end.

    Greg McVerry:

    Then make your pool more shallow.

    Jean MacDonald:

    “Let’s start off in the shallow end” @macgenie says the same thing. Many people move from micro.blog to their own domain. Getting people started is our goal.
    Having a community that feels safe allows us to build the biggest community possible.

    Aaron Parecki:

    I am back up here to talk about readers.

    Jonathan LaCour:

    Together is a JavaScript for a client to handle the Social Web. It works as a Progressive Web App on @Android, kind of buggy on iOS but that’s Apple’s fault. @grantcodes did 90% of the work.

    Aaron Parecki:

    Aperture as of this week is now open for public beta: https://aperture.p3k.io
    That’s my announcement for #IndieWeb social readers. Let’s have fun with this.

    William Hertling:

    I am excited to be here because the #indieWeb has been so influential to what I write. (His book about Kill Process actually mentions the #IndieWeb).
    Who owns are data, and how is it processed is critical.
    In Kill Process, Angie uses her job at Tomo to profile domestic abusers, and then kills them. Angie decides her job is to destroy Tomo.
    I tried to weave the princeiples of the #IndieWeb into the decentralized social web Angie built. When I wrote about tapestry I wanted to think about generation4 users.
    There are some important differences between the princeples of IndieWeb and what Angie built. These are important and I want to discuss these.
    If we want to get people off of facebook we need to give them an easy way to share what they want.
    Most of the problems we have today from the corporate web is money. Yet as a writer I like to make money as well. And I hate advertising. So I came up with micropayments in Tapestry.
    This why I like being a writer. I get to invent all this software without writing any code. It is way easier. (said no coder ever).

    Greg McVerry:

    Anythign in parentheses is my thoughts.
    IndieWeb focuses on the individual. Tapestry focus on the whole. IndieWeb doesn’t think about monetization. Making money isn’t bad.

    <
    div class=’notercite h-cite’>William Hertling:
    <
    blockquote class=’e-content’>
    I am a Gen one full stack developer who wants the gen4 experience because I am lazy.
    What Angie realizes that she needs to work with other people to build what she wants. When I come back to #IndieWeb I see a group of committed people and I see the principles., but we desperatley need to get the world off of the big guys
    We need to bring in more people and not talk to just developer (glad we have sessions on rethinking princeples).
    @doctorow compares privacy to water, but we know clean water is the domain of government, and individual can not do it., but what do you do when the government is the enemy of privacy?

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  337. I found Critchlow’s post really intriguing. I personally consider ‘big B’ associated with those who balance between the content and the technology:

    When I think about blogging, there is a cross-over between technology and the way it is used. Big B bloggers are those who take each to their extremes. Content is important. But so is process and product. It is something personal, stemming from our changing circumstances and intent.

    Rather than Byrnes and Kottke, my ‘Big Bs’ are Chris Aldrich and Alan Levine. Sorry Glen, probably not the suggestions you were after.

    Reply

  341. Blogroll
    “It’s an honest question: who are the people whose ideas and words have so much value for you that you access their writing directly (blogs, newsletters, etc), without depending on your social media channels as your primary conduit to their work?” – James Shelley Grab the OPML fileDave WinerThe godfather of blogging, RSS and podcasting, he’s been there, done it and still going. I may not agree with everything he says but his thoughts are always worth reading.
    RSS FeedSeth GodinSeth just turns up, every day no matter what (over 7000 posts on his current site!) and always has something interesting to say. He is the master of saying just the right amount – no more, no less.
    RSS FeedManton ReeceAs the developer of micro.blog Manton has raised the profile of the indieweb and heavily influenced the way I now approach blogging.
    RSS FeedJames ShelleyI only discovered James’ blog recently but like what he’s got to say. His posts have taken me on a familiar journey – what could be more important than that!
    RSS FeedTim NahumckAs someone who reassesses his workflows on a regular basis I enjoy seeing into other people’s worlds. Tim’s posts on productivity and reinventing his own processes are gold.
    RSS FeedJohn GruberWho doesn’t know Daring Fireball! John’s commentary, especially on all matters Apple, is worth the time to read and often accompanied by an entertaining amount of snark.
    RSS FeedDoc SearlsAnother of the old guard of blogging, a real stalwart. Doc writes about anything and everything, just like a personal blog should be.
    RSS FeedChris AldrichChris is a tireless advocate of the indieweb who practices what he preaches and, I have to say, preaches a very good sermon.
    RSS FeedMike CaulfieldI came for his work on Wikity but stayed for his wonderful insights on information and knowledge management.
    RSS FeedJeremy KeithAlso known as Adactio, Jeremy is another proponent of the indieweb but his thoughts on web technologies and design are a delight.
    RSS FeedPatrick RhonePatrick is a wise soul, generous to a fault, and a big inspiration for me. Always ready with excellent quotes and even better advice. His site is what a personal blog should be.
    RSS Feed

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  345. Replied to a tweet by ds106 Daily Create (Twitter)

    reply w/ tag #tdc2380 What does your wall look like? https://t.co/FXzD4zVlOj— ds106 Daily Create (@ds106dc) July 16, 2018

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    I’ve built my own digital (non-)Facebook Wall so that people can write on it. #tdc2380
    https://boffosocko.com/mentions/#If%20you%20like,%20you%20can%20also%20think%20of%20this%20as%20my%20personal%20(non-)Facebook%20Wall.

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  346. I’m loving glitch more and more. It’s a really interesting platform. I’d recommend playing around with it – once you get over the weird branding and the slightly odd workflow and UI around creation the core product is remarkably robust and full-featured. It’s making me want to learn node!

    Reply

  353. Editor’s note: This is a copy of an article that was originally published on A List Apart.
    Over 1 million Webmentions will have been sent across the internet since the specification was made a full Recommendation by the W3C—the standards body that guides the direction of the web—in early January 2017. That number is rising rapidly, and in the last few weeks I’ve seen a growing volume of chatter on social media and the blogosphere about these new “mentions” and the people implementing them.
    So what are Webmentions and why should we care?
    While the technical specification published by the W3C may seem incomprehensible to most, it’s actually a straightforward and extremely useful concept with a relatively simple implementation. Webmentions help to break down some of the artificial walls being built within the internet and so help create a more open and decentralized web. There is also an expanding list of major web platforms already supporting Webmentions either natively or with easy-to-use plugins (more on this later).
    Put simply, Webmention is a (now) standardized protocol that enables one website address (URL) to notify another website address that the former contains a reference to the latter. It also allows the latter to verify the authenticity of the reference and include its own corresponding reference in a reciprocal way. In order to understand what a big step forward this is, a little history is needed.
    The rise of @mentions
    By now most people are familiar with the ubiquitous use of the “@” symbol in front of a username, which originated on Twitter and became known as @mentions and @replies (read “at mentions” and “at replies”). For the vast majority, this is the way that one user communicates with other users on the platform, and over the past decade these @mentions, with their corresponding notification to the receiver, have become a relatively standard way of communicating on the internet.
    Tweet from Wiz Khalifa
    Many other services also use this type of internal notification to indicate to other users that they have been referenced directly or tagged in a post or photograph. Facebook allows it, so does Instagram. Google+ has a variant that uses + instead of @, and even the long-form article platform Medium, whose founder Ev Williams also co-founded Twitter, quickly joined the @mentions party.
    The biggest communications problem on the internet
    If you use Twitter, your friend Alice only uses Facebook, your friend Bob only uses his blog on WordPress, and your pal Chuck is over on Medium, it’s impossible for any one of you to @mention another. You’re all on different and competing platforms, none of which interoperate to send these mentions or notifications of them. The only way to communicate in this way is if you all join the same social media platforms, resulting in the average person being signed up to multiple services just to stay in touch with all their friends and acquaintances.
    Given the issues of privacy and identity protection, different use cases, the burden of additional usernames and passwords, and the time involved, many people don’t want to do this. Possibly worst of all, your personal identity on the internet can end up fragmented like a Horcrux across multiple websites over which you have little, if any, control.
    Imagine if AT&T customers could only speak to other AT&T customers and needed a separate phone, account, and phone number to speak to friends and family on Verizon. And still another to talk to friends on Sprint or T-Mobile. The massive benefit of the telephone system is that if you have a telephone and service (from any one of hundreds or even thousands of providers worldwide), you can potentially reach anyone else using the network. Surely, with a basic architecture based on simple standards, links, and interconnections, the same should apply to the internet?
    The solution? Enter Webmentions!
    As mentioned earlier, Webmentions allow notifications between web addresses. If both sites are set up to send and receive them, the system works like this:

    Alice has a website where she writes an article about her rocket engine hobby.
    Bob has his own website where he writes a reply to Alice’s article. Within his reply, Bob includes the permalink URL of Alice’s article.
    When Bob publishes his reply, his publishing software automatically notifies Alice’s server that her post has been linked to by the URL of Bob’s reply.
    Alice’s publishing software verifies that Bob’s post actually contains a link to her post and then (optionally) includes information about Bob’s post on her site; for example, displaying it as a comment.

    A Webmention is simply an @mention that works from one website to another!
    If she chooses, Alice can include the full text of Bob’s reply—along with his name, photo, and his article’s URL (presuming he’s made these available)—as a comment on her original post. Any new readers of Alice’s article can then see Bob’s reply underneath it. Each can carry on a full conversation from their own websites and in both cases display (if they wish) the full context and content.
    Using Webmentions, both sides can carry on a conversation where each is able to own a copy of the content and provide richer context.
    User behaviors with Webmentions are a little different than they are with @mentions on Twitter and the like in that they work between websites in addition to within a particular website. They enable authors (of both the original content and the responses) to own the content, allowing them to keep a record on the web page where it originated, whether that’s a website they own or the third-party platform from which they chose to send it.
    Interaction examples with Webmention
    Webmentions certainly aren’t limited to creating or displaying “traditional” comments or replies. With the use of simple semantic microformats classes and a variety of parsers written in numerous languages, one can explicitly post bookmarks, likes, favorites, RSVPs, check-ins, listens, follows, reads, reviews, issues, edits, and even purchases. The result? Richer connections and interactions with other content on the web and a genuine two-way conversation instead of a mass of unidirectional links. We’ll take a look at some examples, but you can find more on the IndieWeb wiki page for Webmention alongside some other useful resources.
    Marginalia
    With Webmention support, one could architect a site to allow inline marginalia and highlighting similar to Medium.com’s relatively well-known functionality. With the clever use of URL fragments, which are well supported in major browsers, there are already examples of people who use Webmentions to display word-, sentence-, or paragraph-level marginalia on their sites. After all, aren’t inline annotations just a more targeted version of comments?
    An inline annotation on the post “Hey Ev, what about mentions?,” in which Medium began to roll out their @mention functionality.
    Reads
    As another example, and something that could profoundly impact the online news business, I might post a link on my website indicating I’ve read a particular article on, say, The New York Times. My site sends a “read” Webmention to the article, where a facepile or counter showing the number of read Webmentions received could be implemented. Because of the simplified two-way link between the two web pages, there is now auditable proof of interaction with the content. This could similarly work with microinteractions such as likes, favorites, bookmarks, and reposts, resulting in a clearer representation of the particular types of interaction a piece of content has received. Compared to an array of nebulous social media mini-badges that provide only basic counters, this is a potentially more valuable indicator of a post’s popularity, reach, and ultimate impact.
    Listens
    Building on the idea of using reads, one could extend Webmentions to the podcasting or online music sectors. Many platforms are reasonably good at providing download numbers for podcasts, but it is far more difficult to track the number of actual listens. This can have a profound effect on the advertising market that supports many podcasts. People can post about what they’re actively listening to (either on their personal websites or via podcast apps that could report the percentage of the episode listened to) and send “listen” Webmentions to pages for podcasts or other audio content. These could then be aggregated for demographics on the back end or even shown on the particular episode’s page as social proof of the podcast’s popularity.
    For additional fun, podcasters or musicians might use Webmentions in conjunction with media fragments and audio or video content to add timecode-specific, inline comments to audio/video players to create an open standards version of SoundCloud-like annotations and commenting.
    SoundCloud allows users to insert inline comments that dovetail with specific portions of audio.
    Reviews
    Websites selling products or services could also accept review-based Webmentions that include star-based ratings scales as well as written comments with photos, audio, or even video. Because Webmentions are a two-way protocol, the reverse link to the original provides an auditable path to the reviewer and the opportunity to assess how trustworthy their review may be. Of course, third-party trusted sites might also accept these reviews, so that the receiving sites can’t easily cherry-pick only positive reviews for display. And because the Webmention specification includes the functionality for editing or deletion, the original author has the option to update or remove their reviews at any time.
    Getting started with Webmentions
    Extant platforms with support
    While the specification has only recently become a broad recommendation for use on the internet, there are already an actively growing number of content management systems (CMSs) and platforms that support Webmentions, either natively or with plugins. The simplest option, requiring almost no work, is a relatively new and excellent social media service called Micro.blog, which handles Webmentions out of the box. CMSs like Known and Perch also have Webmention functionality built in. Download and set up the open source software and you’re ready to go.
    If you’re working with WordPress, there’s a simple Webmention plugin that will allow you to begin using Webmentions—just download and activate it. (For additional functionality when displaying Webmentions, there’s also the recommended Semantic Linkbacks plugin.) Other CMSs like Drupal, ProcessWire, Elgg, Nucleus CMS, Craft, Django, and Kirby also have plugins that support the standard. A wide variety of static site generators, like Hugo and Jekyll, have solutions for Webmention technology as well. More are certainly coming.
    If you can compose basic HTML on your website, Aaron Parecki has written an excellent primer on “Sending Your First Webmention from Scratch.”
    A weak form of Webmention support can be bootstrapped for Tumblr, WordPress.com, Blogger, and Medium with help from the free Bridgy service, but the user interface and display would obviously be better if they were supported fully and natively.
    As a last resort, if you’re using Tumblr, WordPress.com, Wix, Squarespace, Ghost, Joomla, Magento, or any of the other systems without Webmention, file tickets asking them to support the standard. It only takes a few days of work for a reasonably experienced developer to build support, and it substantially improves the value of the platform for its users. It also makes them first-class decentralized internet citizens.
    Webmentions for developers
    If you’re a developer or a company able to hire a developer, it is relatively straightforward to build Webmentions into your CMS or project, even potentially open-sourcing the solution as a plugin for others. For anyone familiar with the old specifications for pingback or trackback, you can think of Webmentions as a major iteration of those systems, but with easier implementation and testing, improved performance and display capabilities, and decreased spam vulnerabilities. Because the specification supports editing and deleting Webmentions, it provides individuals with more direct control of their data, which is important in light of new laws like GDPR.
    In addition to reading the specification, as mentioned previously, there are multiple open source implementations already written in a variety of languages that you can use directly, or as examples. There are also a test suite and pre-built services like Webmention.io, Telegraph, mention-tech, and webmention.herokuapp.com that can be quickly leveraged.
    Maybe your company allows employees to spend 20% of their time on non-specific projects, as Google does. If so, I’d encourage you to take the opportunity to fbuild Webmentions support for one or more platforms—let’s spread the love and democratize communication on the web as fast as we can!
    And if you already have a major social platform but don’t want to completely open up to sending and receiving Webmentions, consider using Webmention functionality as a simple post API. I could easily see services like Twitter, Mastodon, or Google+ supporting the receiving of Webmentions, combined with a simple parsing mechanism to allow Webmention senders to publish syndicated content on their platform. There are already several services like IndieNews, with Hacker News-like functionality, that allow posting to them via Webmention.
    If you have problems or questions, I’d recommend joining the IndieWeb chat room online via IRC, web interface, Slack, or Matrix to gain access to further hints, pointers, and resources for implementing a particular Webmention solution.
    The expansion of Webmentions
    The big question many will now have is Will the traditional social media walled gardens like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and the like support the Webmention specification?
    At present, they don’t, and many may never do so. After all, locking you into their services is enabling them to leverage your content and your interactions to generate income. However, I suspect that if one of the major social platforms enabled sending/receiving Webmentions, it would dramatically disrupt the entire social space.
    In the meantime, if your site already has Webmentions enabled, then congratulations on joining the next revolution in web communication! Just make sure you advertise the fact by using a button or badge. You can download a copy here.
    About the Author


    Chris Aldrich is developer and researcher who lives in Los Angeles. When not working on the abstract mathematics of digital communication, he tinkers on the web. An active member of the IndieWeb community, he enjoys replacing his dependency on social silos with his website which doubles as his commonplace book.

    Source: Webmentions: Enabling Better Communication on the Internet · An A List Apart Article
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  356. Chris Aldrich provides an introduction to webmentions. This includes unpacking the specification, the notion of mentions, the idea of kinds and way in which sites are potentially able to connect two-ways. This continues Aldrich’s efforts to document the IndieWeb, which has included a thorough overview of the IndieWeb and the future of feed readers. This introduction is different to Aaron Parecki’s guide to sending your first webmentions or breakdown of the oAuth standard.

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  363. Pingback: Doug Beal
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  367. RSVPed Attending Virtual Homebrew Website Club Meetup on July 25, 2018

    Are you building your own website? Indie reader? Personal publishing web app? Or some other digital magic-cloud proxy? If so, come on by and join a gathering of people with likeminded interests. Bring your friends who want to start a personal web site. Exchange information, swap ideas, talk shop, help work on a project…

    Everyone of every level is welcome to participate! Don’t have a domain yet? Come along and someone can help you get started and provide resources for creating the site you’ve always wanted.

    This virtual HWC meeting is for site builders who either can’t make a regular in-person meeting or don’t yet have critical mass to host one in their area. It will be hosted on Google Hangouts.

    Time: July 25, 2018 7:30 pm PDT to July 25, 2018 9:00 pm PDT
    Location: Google Hangouts (link to Hangout TBD)

    I hope the following can come and join me:
    David Shanske
    gRegor Morrill
    Greg McVerry
    William Ian O’Byrne
    Clint Lalonde
    Aaron Davis
    Doug Beal
    Cathie LeBlanc
    John Johnson
    Taylor Jaydin
    Kathleen Fitzpatrick
    Alan Jacobs
    Dan Cohen
    Asher Silberman
    Micah Cambre
    Michael Kirk
    Scott Gruber
    Chris Bolas
    Michael Bishop
    Khürt Williams
    Eddie Hinkle
    Aaron Parecki
    I’ve never done it before, and I’ve never received one myself, but I’m going to send some invitations (via webmention) to folks to join me. I’m curious how the original post will handle it and what Semantic Linkbacks will do and what it will display. Semantic Linkbacks is set up to display RSVP:Invitations, but I’m not sure what will happen. So this post will serve as a test and we’ll see! Is anyone else supporting invitations (sending or displaying)? In the future I could see supporting an Event Invitations page similar to my Mentions page which displays all the events I’ve been invited to.
    Incidentally I’m noticing that there’s also an issue in the latest update that RSVP’s on prior event posts aren’t facepiling like they should/used to.

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  386. Liked  @c, @chrisaldrich Chris Aldrich’s great list of micro.blog purposes. Micro.blog has been difficult to describe. At the moment I am not using it as a replacement service for twitter or Instagram but in addition to or a way of owning and enriching these services.

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  396. My Month of July
    LinkedIn recently reminded me that it has been two years in my current position. I was shocked, time has flown. As I touched on recently, it has been a whirlwind of an experience as is the nature I imagine of working within a transformational project. The biggest lesson learnt is that in a lean environment (or at least an attempt at a lean environment) you sometimes get stuck doing what needs to be done, rather than what you may prefer to be doing, which in my case is working with teachers and schools. I am currently working on refining a scale-able implementation process associated with student reporting.
    At home, the common cold came back, again. I swear we had overcome it for this season, but no. Also, new term and new song for my daughter’s school. So I think I am up to 20+ listens of Try Everything from Zootopia. Another great growth mindset anthem. Might also say something about the algorithms at play.
    I am learning through practice that the easiest way to learn something is to watch and copy somebody else. Scary how quickly our youngest picks everything up. Understanding Mal Lee and Roger Broadie’s point about the young being digitally proficient by the age of three.
    I attended DigiCon18. Although I went to some interesting sessions and sparktalks, what was great were the conversations in-between. This included discussing the Ultranet with Rachel Crellin, the pedagogy associated to ongoing reporting with Chris Harte, connected learning with Jenny Ashby, parenting and partnerships with Lucas Johnson, implementing the Digital Technologies curriculum with Darrel Branson, purpose and leadership with Riss Leung and direct instruction with Richard Olsen.
    In other areas, I have been listening to Amy Shark, Florence and the Machine, DJ Shadow, The National and Guy Pearce. I started reading Adam Greenfield’s Radical Technologies. I also updated my site, moving back to ZenPress and adding in a new series of header images developed by JustLego101.
    In regards to my writing, here was my month in posts:

    REVIEW: New Dark Age – Technology and the End of the Future

    My Life in Black and White

    Here then are some of the thoughts that have also left me thinking …
    Learning and Teaching

    Teaching Game Design with Bill Cohen (TER Podcast): Cameron Malcher interviews Bill Cohen about game-design through play-based learning. Cohen goes beyond the usual coding and computer-aided approaches to focusing on ‘low-tech’ games. This included engaging with board games and outdoor games. This play-based approach focuses on developing clear metalanguage, feedback for mastery and working with an iterative design process. This reminds me in part of Amy Burvall’s notion of ‘rigorous whimsy‘ and BreakoutEDU. Some resources Cohen shared include Boardgame Geek and Lady Blackbird, while in a seperate post, Clare Rafferty shared a list of games associated with History. For a different take on games, in a recent episode of the IRL Podcast, Veronica Belmont and Ashley Carman take a look at gamification in everyday life. Some examples of this include notifications on smartphones, likes and retweets on Twitter or the endorsements on Linkedin.

    If there is one thing that I have learnt as a teacher is that nothing leaches out fun more than dropping a layer of education over the top of it – Bill Cohen

    Encountering harmful discourses in the classroom: Ian O’Byrne discusses the challenges of engaging in harmful discourses. He provides some ways to responding, as well as a number of ways to be proactive. This touches on what danah boyd describes as the weaponisation of worldviews.

    Howard C. Stevenson from Penn’s Graduate School of Education indicates three steps to address these harmful discourses as they enter your classroom.

    Start with you – Process your own feelings, and address your own vulnerabilities before entering the classroom. Develop a support system with your colleagues.
    Practice – Classroom reactions usually happen in a split second. Prepare yourself for these instances by role-playing with colleagues in your building, or online with your PLN.
    After an incident – Resist the urge to condemn the action or content. First try to understand the motivation if is disseminated through your classroom or building. Allow the school’s code of conduct to address instances where students actively spread this information. Strongly explain to students that these harmful discourses and the messages being spread about individuals and groups are not accepted. You will not accept the silencing of voices.
    Keep talking – After these events, the best course of action is to keep talking. Difficult discussions will often ensue, but children and adults alike need to be able to process their feelings and reactions. This is an opportunity to shut down and be silent, or engage and promote change.

    How well do we ‘face up to’ racism?: Anna Del Conte provides some take-aways from a course on racism. Some of the activities included what racism is, a timeline of diversity in Australia and listening to stories. Another resource I am reminded of is Dan Haesler’s interview with Stan Grant. In part this stemmed from Grant’s speech addressing racism.

    Multiculturalism is not an outcome but a process. Racism may not be deliberate BUT anti-racism is always deliberate.

    Can Reading Make You Happier?: Ceridewn Dovey takes a look at bibliotherapy and the act of reading as a cure. Some argue that readers are more empathetic, while others suggest that it provides pleasure, whatever the particular outcome maybe, reading has shown to provide many health benefits. As Kin Lane suggests, when in doubt, read a book. Zat Rana suggests that this reading is not about being right or wrong, but rather about being open new ideas and lessons.

    So even if you don’t agree that reading fiction makes us treat others better, it is a way of treating ourselves better. Reading has been shown to put our brains into a pleasurable trance-like state, similar to meditation, and it brings the same health benefits of deep relaxation and inner calm. Regular readers sleep better, have lower stress levels, higher self-esteem, and lower rates of depression than non-readers. “Fiction and poetry are doses, medicines,” the author Jeanette Winterson has written. “What they heal is the rupture reality makes on the imagination.”

    Historic Tale Construction Kit – Bayeux: This site allows users to recreate the Bayeux Tapestry. Clearly this is a great resource for history students, but it is also an interesting approach to storytelling.

    Two German students originally wrote the Historic Tale Construction Kit, with Flash. Sadly, their work isn’t available anymore, only remembered. This new application is a tribute, but also an attempt to revive the old medieval meme, with code and availability that won’t get lost.

    Edtech

    Webmentions: Enabling Better Communication on the Internet: Chris Aldrich provides an introduction to webmentions. This includes unpacking the specification, the notion of mentions, the idea of kinds and way in which sites are potentially able to connect two-ways. This continues Aldrich’s efforts to document the IndieWeb, which has included a thorough overview of the IndieWeb, the future of feed readers and reimagining academic research. This introduction is different to Aaron Parecki’s guide to sending your first webmentions or breakdown of the oAuth standard.

    Breaking down the walls between the internet’s many social silos, Webmentions offer a new level of freedom for web interactions.

    Twenty Years of Edtech: Martin Weller looks back at twenty years of EdTech, highlighting the various moments that have stood out across the journey. This brings together many of the pieces that he has written for his 25 years of EdTech series that he has written to celebrate 25 years of ALT. As he points out in his introduction, we are not very good at looking back. This post then offers an opportunity to stop and do so in a structured manner. Another interesting take on history is Ben Francis’ post on the Firefox OS.

    What has changed, what remains the same, and what general patterns can be discerned from the past twenty years in the fast-changing field of edtech?

    Learning To Code By Writing Code Poems: Murat Kemaldar discusses the connections between coding and poetry. He re-imagines the various rules and constructs in a more human form. This continues a conversation started between Darrel Branson, Tony Richards and Ian Guest on Episode 234 of the Ed Tech Team Podcast about whether everyone should learn poetry and coding. This is also something Royan Lee shares.

    In all languages, there is probably a word for love. You kinda know what it means, but not really, because it is so subjective. But still, there is a word for it. But in JavaScript, there is no “love,” until you say there is. It can be whatever you want it to be.

    18 best practices for working with data in Google Sheets: Ben Collins provides a guide for working with data in Google Sheets. Some of the useful steps that stood out were documenting the steps you take, adding an index column for sorting and referencing, creating named ranges for your datasets and telling the story of one row to check the data. This is all in preparation for his new course on data analysis. Another tip I picked up from Jay Atwood has been to import data, if moving from Excel to Sheets, rather than simply copying and pasting.

    This article describes 18 best practices for working with data in Google Sheets, including examples and screenshots to illustrate each concept in action.

    Zuck’s Empire of Oily Rags: Cory Doctorow provides a commentary on the current state of affairs involving Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. Rather than blame the citizens of the web, he argues that the fault exists with the mechanics in the garage and the corruption that they have engaged with. The question that seems to remain is if this is so and we still want our car fixed, where do we go? Doctorow has also recorded a reading of the article.

    It’s fashionable to treat the dysfunctions of social media as the result of the naivete of early technologists, who failed to foresee these outcomes. The truth is that the ability to build Facebook-like services is relatively common. What was rare was the moral recklessness necessary to go through with it.

    How the Blog Broke the Web: Amy Hoy reflects on the early days of publishing on the web, where people would handcraft pages and connect them using a contents page. This was superseded by Moveable Type and the chronological blog, subsequently killing off the non-diariest. I was not really engaged in the web back then so it is hard to comment as Jeremey Keith, Duncan Stephen and Kicks Condor have, but it does remind me of the current debates around blogging. I think that all these spaces are forever changing and developing. Sometimes this is based on wholesale changes, but usually people have their own particular reason. Maybe some people will drop off with Gutenberg, but then again sometimes these things have their day.

    Movable Type didn’t just kill off blog customization. It (and its competitors) actively killed other forms of web production.

    Are We Listening?: Jose Picardo argues that the question about whether we should have more or less technology in schools misses the point. What matters is how it is used. For example, those who argue for more knowledge often fail to put the effort into actually understanding how technology is used in education. This comes back to the importance of why and having a framework to guide you. For a different perspective on technology in the classroom, read David Perry’s thread.

    The very teachers who read William and nod vigorously about the need to know stuff before you can understand or do stuff in the context of curriculum are unable to draw parallels between their dismissal of digital technology and their own lack of knowledge about it. Rather than finding virtuosity and pride in learning about how what technology works best and in what context—so as to be able to discern the best tool for particular tasks—we seem happy to eschew whole new toolkits on the dodgy grounds of ignorance and misconception.

    Storytelling and Reflection

    Throwing Our Own Ideas Under the Bus: Ross Cooper discusses the idea of putting your worst foot forward taken from Adam Grant’s book Originals. This involves trusting the idea at hand and starting with reasons why it might fail. Cooper suggests that this can be useful as it disarms the audience, critique involves effort, helps to build trust and leaves audience with a more favourable assessment. He also looks at this alongside Simon Sinek’s concept of ‘start with why’, highlighting the reason why and the challenges that might be faced. I wonder if the challenge in focusing on the why and why not is about finding balance? This reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell’s discussion of Generous Orthodoxy.

    As an elementary school principal, here’s the approach I’ve been taking with change: “Here’s what we’re doing, here’s why we’re doing it, and here are some of the ways I will support you!” Now I’ll be toying around with the idea of also proactively addressing the elephants in the room. Furthermore, we should allow for teachers and staff to respectfully and honestly discuss these obstacles, as opposed to us trying to sweep them under the rug. After all, flaws will be talked about in one way or another, and critical conversation that gives everyone a voice is preferred to potential venting in the faculty room.

    The future will be dockless: could a city really run on ‘floating transport’?: Alex Hern discusses the rise of floating transport, something that I touched on recently with the demise of oBike in Melbourne. Hern captures a number of stories from around the world of hope for efficiency, but also issues associated with shared spaces. I am taken by Hern’s closing remarks concerning reliability over flexibility. This leaves me thinking that sometimes what is required is community and sometimes that involves patience. What is the cost to the public/private transport industry when everyone relies on private personal transport models like Bird or Uber?

    Ultimately, floating transport is going to have to learn another lesson that conventional transportation bodies have taken to heart: flexible may be fun, but cities run on reliable.

    i am sorry: Pernille Ripe reflects on life as a connected educator. She discusses the stress, anxieties and perceived responsibilities that come with being an educelebrity. Although we often talk about the technicalities associated with being (digitally) literate, what is sometimes overlooked are the social consequences. This is something that Austin Kleon also recently reflected upon.

    So it is time for me to step back a bit. To do less work publicly, to share less, to not be so immediately available. To be just Pernille, the person who doesn’t have all of the answers necessarily. That only creates something because she cannot help it. That gives all of her when she is in a public space, but then steps back when she is private.

    Facebook’s Push for Facial Recognition Prompts Privacy Alarms: Natasha Singer discusses Facebook’s continual push for facial recognition. She traces some of the history associated with Facebook’s push into this area, including various roadblocks such as GDPR. She also looks at some of the patent applications. This made me wonder how many patents actually come to fruition and how many are a form of indirect marketing? Elsewhere, Doug Levin explains why facial recognition has no place in schools, especially the way Curtin University is using it.

    Cameras near checkout counters could capture shoppers’ faces, match them with their social networking profiles and then send purchase confirmation messages to their phones.

    The anti-cottonwool schools where kids stare down risk in favour of nature play: This article from the ABC discusses a couple of schools in Western Australia that have reduced the rules on outdoor play. This reminds me of Narissa Leung’s use of old bricks and Adrian Camm’s use of odd material to engage with play.

    Mr Smith said whereas students would previously come to the office complaining of injury, they are now too busy to make a fuss. “Students are becoming more resilient and getting on with it.” The school has just three rules — no stacking milk creates, no walking on the large wooden spools and no tying rope to yourself.

    The Dangers of Distracted Parenting: Erika Christakis discusses the challenges of parenting in a digital age. This all comes down to distractions and as I have touched on before, this is not always digital. I really like danah boyd’s strategy for dealing with this, that is to say why you are using a device. This openness offers a useful point of reflection. I think that the conclusion to this article says it all though, “put down your damned phone.”

    Parents should give themselves permission to back off from the suffocating pressure to be all things to all people. Put your kid in a playpen, already! Ditch that soccer-game appearance if you feel like it. Your kid will be fine. But when you are with your child, put down your damned phone.

    FOCUS ON … SPACE

    I was recently challenged on the place of space in regards to learning. I recorded a microcast on the topic, but I haven’t had the chance to put all my thoughts together. In the interim, I have collected together a number of posts on the topic. If you have any others to add to the mix, I would love to read them.

    Imagining Different Learning Spaces: Jon Corripo provided his suggestions for redesigning a classroom space which again sparked my imagination.

    Flexible Seating: What’s the Point?: Chris Wejr reflects on his experiences in reviewing flexible learning spaces. This includes the reasons to re-design, as well as a series of thoughts associated with the process of re-imagining.

    Why I Hate Classroom Themes: Emily Fintelman reflects on classroom themes and wonders what impact they are really having on learning. She suggests that our focus should be on how spaces are structured and strategies that can be used to give students more voice.

    Flexible Classrooms: Research Is Scarce, But Promising: What is interesting about this report is that rather than discussing furniture in isolation, it is considered as a part of a wider conversation about learning and environment. The impact of flexible spaces though can be almost incidental at times, as is with the case of Maths. This speaks of agency as much as it does of the chairs in the classroom.

    Adding the Learning Back to Space: A reflection on an outdoor learning space and the potential of technology to increase learning and engagement.

    Benefits of Flexible Learning Spaces #1 Teaching in Teams: Stephen Rowe explains that teachers working in teams is a significant benefit that arises from teaching in an open learning space.

    Designing Learning Spaces – putting the cart before the horse: June Wall and Jonathon Mascorella define learning environments as a set of physical and digital locations, context and cultures in which students learn.

    Learning Space Design Inspiration: Steve Brophy collects together a number of ideas and inspirations associated with learning spaces.

    Beanbags in Space: Matt Esterman suggests that what most teachers want is a more shiny version of what they have, because they are not trained as designers (usually) and are so often hemmed in by the expectations of current reality.

    Inquiry, noticing and the changing seasons… A tribute to the late Frank Ryan: Kath Murdoch reflects on the potential of the environment associated with inquiry.

    Coalescent Spaces: Dave White considers the impact of digital technologies on the creation of coalescent learning spaces.

    Seeing Spaces: Bret Victor reimagines the makerspace built around tinkering and argues that it is in ‘seeing’ that we are able to make this a science.

    Communities, Networks and Connected Learning with Google: Technology enables us to easily develop digital communities and networks inside and outside of the classroom. The reality though is that connected learning is as much about creating spaces for learning and building on that.

    READ WRITE RESPOND #031
    So that is July for me, how about you? As always, interested to hear.
    Also, feel free to forward this on to others if you found anything of interest, maybe you want to subscribe or buy me a coffee? Archives can be found here.

    Cover image via JustLego101.

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  399. For those interested in an alternate avatar approach for their personal sites, several people have indicated to me that the Avatar Privacy plugin for WordPress may help to cover up some of the security issues your own site may allow in terms of leaking the data described above.

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  404. I’ve been reading about the IndieWeb, and particularly about the Webmention internet standard lately. The whole concept of controlling your own content on the internet, “POSSE” (post on your own site, syndicate elsewhere), and making cross site commenting and mentions possible, immediately clicked with me.

    A brief explanation of Webmentions:

    Webmentions allow notifications between web addresses. If both sites are set up to send and receive them, the system works like this:
    1. Alice has a website where she writes an article about her rocket engine hobby.
    2. Bob has his own website where he writes a reply to Alice’s article. Within his reply, Bob includes the permalink URL of Alice’s article.
    3. When Bob publishes his reply, his publishing software automatically notifies Alice’s server that her post has been linked to by the URL of Bob’s reply.
    4. Alice’s publishing software verifies that Bob’s post actually contains a link to her post and then (optionally) includes information about Bob’s post on her site; for example, displaying it as a comment.
    A Webmention is simply an @mention that works from one website to another!
    If she chooses, Alice can include the full text of Bob’s reply—along with his name, photo, and his article’s URL (presuming he’s made these available)—as a comment on her original post. Any new readers of Alice’s article can then see Bob’s reply underneath it. Each can carry on a full conversation from their own websites and in both cases display (if they wish) the full context and content.
    Chris Aldrich – Webmentions: Enabling Better Communication on the Internet

    For the last few days I’ve been trying to implement different elements, like h-cards and webmentions, to make this website IndieWeb compliant. I’ve had to make serious changes to the sites theme, so it isn’t going to look quite the same after I’m done.

    This site uses a self-hosted WordPress site, so I’ve been using this guide on the IndieWebCamp wiki with some limited success. The validating tools found here still throw out some errors, such as “A h-card was found on your site, but it’s not marked up as the representative h-card“, and I haven’t figured out how to add a profile photo. I’ll have to figure out how to fix or properly implement all this using the appropriate plug-ins.

    Beside the proper implementation, there are some minor issues I’ve discovered with some of the plug-ins not interacting quite as expected. For example, WordPress’s new Guggenheim editor doesn’t allow you to set your IndieWeb post kind so you need to revert to the classic editor to set this, and the webmention form didn’t play nice with the comment system I had implemented (they overdrew each other). 

    Overall though, its been an interesting journey.

     

    Reply

  453. Hi Chris
    LaTex examples are some of the examples I give in my Getting Started notebooks. For example: https://notebooks.azure.com/OUsefulInfo/libraries/gettingstarted/html/3.2.0%20Generating%20Embedded%20Diagrams.ipynb
    It becomes more interesting the higher the levels of abstraction you have access to. eg the bloques LaTeX package for control diagrams. On my to do list is trying to provide some higher level blocks for mechanics / trolley drawing etc.
    Generating diagrams from other languages is also attractive. For example, this electronics notebook https://notebooks.azure.com/OUsefulInfo/libraries/gettingstarted/html/3.6.0%20Electronics.ipynb shows how you can define a circuit then render a circuit diagram and analyse the circuit from the model that is created.
    Plugging various tools that work at different levels of abstraction in chemistry topics is also interesting too, I think: https://notebooks.azure.com/OUsefulInfo/libraries/gettingstarted/html/3.1.1%20Chemical%20Equations.ipynb and https://notebooks.azure.com/OUsefulInfo/libraries/gettingstarted/html/3.1.0%20Chemistry%20Packages.ipynb for example.

    Reply

  473. … can I keep it?
    It’s a sorta selfdogfood directory called Indieseek.xyz.  I hope this will encourage others to try their hands at small directories or search engines of the fun web, the Independent Web.
    More from the source in a bit.
     
     
    Special thanks to:
    Kicks Condor – for the discussions on directories, discovery, advice and encouragement.
    Chris Aldrich – for the early encouragement to keep experimenting (complete with cow picture.)

    Reply

  480. Replied to Does anyone else keep their own knowledge wiki? by nikivi (lobste.rs)

    I’ve been extending and improving my personal wiki for 1 year now and it has been one of the best things I’ve done. I found writing blog posts was too high friction and very often didn’t finish things because there is so much you can talk about in any given article. But a wiki is just a living document containing your notes and thoughts on things. I also use it as my public bookmark manager as I collect interesting to me links under each topic.

    For my wiki, I render everything to the web first with GitBook. And I have a macro I run that automatically commits any changes I’ve made with Sublime Text on the mac and Ulysses on the phone so everything is super easy to edit and publish.

    Does anyone else keep their own wiki here? Or you think a blog is enough for you?

    I’ve been considering starting a personal wiki after reading The Garden and the Stream: A Technopastoral by Mike Caulfield a while back. His article has some great set up and philosophy about the wiki versus blog. I’ve been using my own website/blog as a commonplace book for quite a while now to collect everything from what I’m listening to to what I read and even what I’ve highlighted/annotated online. I’ve documented a lot of the pieces I use to create/customize it. (Not everything I write is public either.)
    Ultimately, I think that either way, having a solid search functionality becomes important regardless of which direction one chooses.

    Syndicated copies to:

    Syndicated copies:

    Reply

  490. Another great podcast with yourself and Chris. I am slowly understanding post kinds and how the plugin works. Is the recording of the data outside of the post the reason that the information does not show up within the site search? I have a tendency to include quotes in the quote/summary box, but have trouble surfacing these after the fact. My habit with Diigo was to search quotes and posts. I am guessing the answer might be to include these quotes within the body of the text?

    Reply

  493. Hi Chris, in some ways, the Reader feature of WordPress.com implements some of this. The user can subscribe to websites, read the content, like the content, and respond via comments; all within the Reader.
    I think with a bit of tweaking (and desire), Automattic could add the ability to make those comments available as new posts on the commenter’s website. It would make WordPress.com (and JetPack supported self-hosted WordPress) more like micro.blog.

    Reply

  494. This website makes use of code, content, and ideas from a variety of sources. Even the most DIY endeavor is at least partially based on the work of others!
    Contents

    1 Inspirations
    2 Code
    3 Tools
    4 Media

    InspirationsThe overall idea of this website is based on ideas from the IndieWeb movementThe “Now” page is inspired by nownownowThe “Achievements” page is inspired by the idea of collecting and displaying badges. Specific apps and services that influenced me include Untappd, Foursquare, Habitica, and Micro.blogCodeThis website runs on WordPress. The theme started as Sempress, but I’ve very heavily modified it to taste. The design and content of the following websites have greatly inspired my website’s look and feel:
    Eli.li
    Chris Aldrich
    Aaron Parecki
    Tumblr
    Bandcamp
    For security reasons, I won’t list all the WordPress plugins I use for my site, but here are some that greatly contribute to its utility:

    The IndieWeb collection, especially Post Kinds, Micropub, and Syndication Links
    Gamipress

    Custom Post Type UI (for creating taxonomies like “projects” and “albums”) to organize my content
    ToolsI use many different tools to interact with my website. Some of them are:
    Micropublish
    Quill
    Omnibear
    Shortcuts for iOS
    WordPress for iOS
    Indigenous for iOS
    Icro for iOS
    iTerm for Mac, using ssh to connect to my server and vim to edit text
    Tiny Tiny RSS (for reading articles and sharing to the site via micropub)
    Media
    The image on the front page (me in front of my modular synthesizer) is by Eric Tank. He’s great, check him out!

    most of the badge images used in my gamification project are from the fantastic diy.org

    Some of my album art comes from Wikimedia commons (sources noted when used)
    My reading list comes from GoodReads
    My listening list comes from Last.fm

    Reply

  497. Inspired by Chris Aldrich’s post on his 2018 review of blogging I decided to take a quick peak and see what my productivity looked like this past year.Overall I posted 4,449 times from my website. 2, 529 from my Known site (where I migrated to in December) and 1,920 times from my old WordPress site.All this happened because of #IndieWeb love and adopting (more importantly finally sticking to) a philosophy of the commonplace book. Like Chris noted, documenting what I read, listen, reply to and like led to an explosion of writing.Better yet all of this used to live on some silo and now it lives on my website. 

    Reply

  498. Personally, one of the changes that has made a difference to me is to keep a copy of the comments I make around the web. This is a part of the IndieWeb. Some sites accept comments in the form of webmentions, however those that do not (like your own) I simply cut and paste. I find that this extra effort has made the exercise more meaningful. Someone who might have something to add to this is Chris Aldrich.

    Reply

  500. Hi Chris, That directories page on the wiki is very well done. Thanks for making that, it’s kind of encouraging to think others might find what we are doing and be inspired to build a directory. I added Joe Jenett’s linkport which I think is very significant. I was able to do that much editing because there was a template from the other listings.
    Here are some posts I’ve written. I don’t know if they fit your criteria so you can use your judgement to add them or discard.
    Decentralized Search and the #Indieweb
    Directory Building Just Got: Easier, Cheaper and #Indieweb
    Finding Your Directory Niche

    Reply

  501. This is cool. I think @c
    does incredibly generous work—and a lot of it is
    reading and discovering people out there. I’m shocked at how many people he
    reads and responds to.
    And this wiki page. Taking the time to pitch in on a little niche of the
    Indieweb—I find that very inspiring. I want to look around and contribute
    something like this another niche out there
    (tultywits) that I admire.

    Reply

  509. Below are a list of people who have either sent me explicit notifications (or Webmentions) that they’re following me (via my website) or who have listed me on a blogroll or are using other means on their websites to indicate that they’re following some portion of my posts on this website.
    In some sense, this is a sketch for a Followers page as typically seen on many social media silo websites. Ideally the UI and set up will improve in the future, but since I had some preliminary data, I thought I’d mock up the page to get others thinking about how to begin creating such pages for themselves. Perhaps in the future I’ll modify the page slightly to represent “friends” as well using a similar sort of following set up, but which would ideally take into account XFN data that they include on their links as well.
    If you’d like to follow me and be listed here, feel free to make your follow post on your own website (here’s some examples of my follow posts), or add me to your blogroll or your own following page. If your page has  either my homepage web address or this page’s address (URL) on it, you can add your page’s address in the field below and click “Ping me” to have yourself added to the list. 
    If you’d like to see who I’m following from my website or in my favorite readers, take a look at my personal Following Page.

    Syndicated copies to: WordPress

    Reply

  517. I’ve written up a short sketch (linked below), but I’ll see if I can carve out some time to do a full step by step tutorial, which shouldn’t be too hard for an audience that’s already using WordPress. [more…]
    boffosocko.com/2019/03/05/rad…

    Reply

  540. I once had an editor say things like. “Don’t pay this on the website tonight, we don’t want to scoop ourselves.”
    There is value in free services, as long as they don’t hinder you in any way.
    For instance: I can’t stand how Issuu wraps ads around a paid client’s content.

    Reply

  551. This page collects (mostly Twitter) @mentions and webmentions of Kimberly Hirsh, @kimberlyhirsh, or http://www.kimberlyhirsh.com which don’t otherwise directly relate to specific content on this site.
    If you like, you can also think of this as my personal (non-)Facebook Wall. Go ahead and write something about me on your own website and webmention this page.
    Your site doesn’t support sending webmentions yet?! You can send me one manually.
    Thanks to Chris Aldrich for the text for this page.

    Reply

  561. Episode 14: A loose collective of developers and techno-utopians

    If possible, click to play, otherwise your browser may be unable to play this audio file.
    Running time: 1h 19m 57s | Download (37.5MB) | Subscribe by RSS | Huffduff
    Summary: Our first episode since January. David Shanske and Chris Aldrich get caught up on some recent IndieWebCamps, an article about IndieWeb in The New Yorker, changes within WordPress, and upcoming events.
    Recorded: May 19, 2019
    Shownotes
    6 camps later…
    Austin
    Online
    New Haven
    Berlin
    Düsseldorf
    Utrecht
    National Duckpin Bowling Congress
    Duck Tours
    Streaming rigs for remote participation at IndieWeb Camps
    Ad hoc sessions (🎧 00:11:28)
    Can “Indie” Social Media Save Us? (The New Yorker) by Cal Newport (🎧 00:13:50)
    Swarm Account deletions and posting limits
    New Checkin icon within the Post Kinds Plugin: example https://david.shanske.com/kind/checkin/
    Weather now has microformats mark up in WordPress
    Fatwigoo problems with icons
    IndieWeb Bingo
    Webmention Project
    Project of updating Matthias Pfefferle‘s Webmention and Semantic Linkbacks plugins (🎧 00:26:10)

    https://github.com/pfefferle/wordpress-webmention
    https://github.com/pfefferle/wordpress-semantic-linkbacks
    Parse This
    Ekby Jarpen
    SteelCase Executive Tanker Desk

    Readers & Yarns
    Readers & Yarns update (🎧 00:40:50)
    X-Ray
    Indigenous Replacement: Final Indigenous Log: The Future of the App
    Post Kinds Plugin
    Post Kinds and new exclude functionality (🎧 00:48:15)

    widgets
    titleless posts
    On this day

    David’s list of 24 IndieWebCamps he’s attended
    Looking back at past IndieWebCamp sessions and wiki pages for interesting ideas and new itches
    Date and time stamps on webmentions
    Call for tickets in WordPress
    Subscribing to h-cards with WebSub
    Is Mastodon IndieWeb?
    Fixing IndieAuth
    Improving scoping, particularly for multi-user sites
    Coming up within the community
    IndieWeb Book Club
    IndieWeb Book Club is coming up featuring Mike Monteiro’s book Ruined by Design(🎧 01:13:04)

    More details: https://boffosocko.com/2019/05/04/indieweb-book-club-ruined-by-design/

    https://indieweb.xyz/en/bookclub

    IndieWeb Summit 2019
    9th annual IndieWeb Summit (Portland) is coming up in June. RSVP now.
    Questions?
    Feel free to send us your questions or topic suggestions for upcoming episodes. (Use the comments below or your own site using Webmention). 
    Perhaps a future episode on Micro.blog?

    Syndicated copies to:
    Flipboard icon

    Tumblr icon

    WordPress
    Twitter icon

    Syndicated copies:

    Reply

  562. Summary: Our first episode since January. David Shanske and Chris Aldrich get caught up on some recent IndieWebCamps, an article about IndieWeb in The New Yorker, changes within WordPress, and upcoming events.
    Recorded: May 19, 2019
    Shownotes
    6 camps later…
    Austin
    Online
    New Haven
    Berlin
    Düsseldorf
    Utrecht
    National Duckpin Bowling Congress
    Duck Tours
    Streaming rigs for remote participation at IndieWeb Camps
    Ad hoc sessions (🎧 00:11:28)
    Can “Indie” Social Media Save Us? (The New Yorker) by Cal Newport (🎧 00:13:50)
    Swarm Account deletions and posting limits
    New Checkin icon within the Post Kinds Plugin: example https://david.shanske.com/kind/checkin/
    Weather now has microformats mark up in WordPress
    Fatwigoo problems with icons
    IndieWeb Bingo
    Webmention Project
    Project of updating Matthias Pfefferle‘s Webmention and Semantic Linkbacks plugins (🎧 00:26:10)

    https://github.com/pfefferle/wordpress-webmention
    https://github.com/pfefferle/wordpress-semantic-linkbacks
    Parse This
    Ekby Jarpen
    SteelCase Executive Tanker Desk

    Readers & Yarns
    Readers & Yarns update (🎧 00:40:50)
    X-Ray
    Indigenous Replacement: Final Indigenous Log: The Future of the App
    Post Kinds Plugin
    Post Kinds and new exclude functionality (🎧 00:48:15)

    widgets
    titleless posts
    On this day

    David’s list of 24 IndieWebCamps he’s attended
    Looking back at past IndieWebCamp sessions and wiki pages for interesting ideas and new itches
    Date and time stamps on webmentions
    Call for tickets in WordPress
    Subscribing to h-cards with WebSub
    Is Mastodon IndieWeb?
    Fixing IndieAuth
    Improving scoping, particularly for multi-user sites
    Coming up within the community
    IndieWeb Book Club
    IndieWeb Book Club is coming up featuring Mike Monteiro’s book Ruined by Design(🎧 01:13:04)

    More details: https://boffosocko.com/2019/05/04/indieweb-book-club-ruined-by-design/

    https://indieweb.xyz/en/bookclub

    IndieWeb Summit 2019
    9th annual IndieWeb Summit (Portland) is coming up in June. RSVP now.
    Questions?
    Feel free to send us your questions or topic suggestions for upcoming episodes. (Use the comments below or your own site using Webmention).
    Perhaps a future episode on Micro.blog?

    Reply

  566. I stumbled across this post by Chris Aldrich while lurking through my Twitter feed. Which has inspired me throw back a reply and briefly summarize how I have been increasingly using IndiWeb core ideas and concepts to re-focus how I use the web.More than a websiteRecently I’ve been building a custom WordPress theme to suit my niche web surfing behavior.A custom reading, writing and usability experienceAt the core I selected Rhodium Libre a typeface with heavy serifs that allow me to comfortably lean back as I type or read. I also added accessibility features so I can easily tab through without moving my hands away from the keyboard.A somewhat private digital notebookI’ve created a post and page template requiring the reader to be logged in to view it’s contents. This allows me to take notes at work and not worry about context. It also allows me to use my personal blog in place of a third party note taking app. Currently I do have a few practical limitations.
    Uploaded media and files are public.
    Gutenberg doesn’t have a to-do list checkbox feature
    My IndiWeb to do listReview the various Micropub implementations to replace or use in addition to third party apps such as Goodreads and Untappd. Although I enjoy using these services I don’t have a local copy of their information when and if my account is closed or the service changes or disappears.

    Reply

  567. I stumbled across this post by Chris Aldrich while lurking through my Twitter feed. Which has inspired me throw back a reply and briefly summarize how I have been increasingly using IndiWeb core ideas and concepts to re-focus how I use the web. More than a website Recently I’ve been building a custom WordPress theme […]

    Reply

  570. After my recent posting where I asked people which RSS feeds they read, I received several responses. One of them is Peter’s. Like me he was publishing an OPML file of his feeds already. OPML is a machine readable format that most RSS readers will be able to import, so you can subscribe to blogs I subscribe to. OPML however isn’t easily readable to human eyes.
    Peter describes how he added a style sheet to his OPML file, and then ends with “You can do this too!“.
    I can’t help but feel obliged to respond to that.
    I downloaded Peter’s styling file, hunted for the images mentioned in them and downloaded those too. Then uploaded them into the same folder structure as Peter used, and made changes in the header of my existing OPML file. All according to Peter’s description.
    When I say existing OPML file, that isn’t entirely true. Until now I used TinyTiny RSS to automatically post a OPML file from the feeds I follow in my TT-RSS instance. However, in practice I use Readkit as a feedreader, and every now and then I load an opml export of it into my TT-RSS. This as I use TT-RSS for some experimenting, but not as a ‘production’ environment. So in practical terms uploading my Readkit opml export to my site isn’t any different from uploading it into TT-RSS to have it automatically published on my site. So I will from now upload my Readkit OPML export directly to this blog. Which is what I used to do anyway before I started using TT-RSS.
    The result is, yes I can do this too, and now have a human and machine readable OPML blogroll file in the right hand sidebar as blogroll.
    Machine readable presentation of my opml file
    Human readable presentation of the same opml file
    Now it’s your turn 😉 : You can do this too!

    Reply

  577. David Bowie launched an album on his website in 1999.

    Stop Scrolling Facebook
    Tantek Çelik

    This talk appeared during the live stream at WordCamp US 2019 in room 240. It was fantastic to see so many of my friends mentioned as examples of the power of an open web. David Wolfpaw, Bridget Willard, Chris Aldrich, and Chris Wiegman all as examples of the power of independent websites to share their voice beyond the typical social media platforms 😀

    Common themes discussed were the proprietary control Facebook and other platforms have on curating our voice and content, how it can be fed or hidden from our audience, friends, co-workers clients without our control.
    Current StatusListening to Tantek Çelik talk about the Independent Web

    Reply

  578. Stop Scrolling Facebook Tantek Çelik This talk appeared during the live stream at WordCamp US 2019 in room 240. It was fantastic to see so many of my friends mentioned as examples of the power of an open web. David Wolfpaw, Bridget Willard, Chris Aldrich, and Chris Wiegman all as examples of the power of […]

    Reply

    1. Thanks for letting me know Maxwell. I thought I’d tested it on most major browsers. It’s done in flexbox, so it definitely shouldn’t do that. Do you recall which browser and modality (desktop, mobile, other) you saw it on?

      Reply

  580. I just finished adding OPML export to Dobrado, a.k.a how to get your follow list out of a reader. I’ve been trying to switch my daily reading habits from my old account on unicyclic.com, to my new website at mblaney.xyz, but the new way of reading is via a Microsub client which has been quite buggy up until now!

    I’ve been using both every day for a few weeks to get the kinks out of the new code, and I’m pretty happy with it. The only thing that was missing was that I hadn’t bothered following all the same feeds again, I decided to leave that until I could export them properly from my old account and import them to the new website.

    Around the same time I was chatting with Chris, who has a mammoth following page with links to his OPML files. He recently had a go at importing them into unicyclic.com, which didn’t get very far, but this was good timing as I was already working on it. There are still a few issues with network requests timing out but I think it’s much better.

    Dobrado now exports a similar OPML file to what Chris has created, which groups feeds by category. The import function now checks for categories and will use them to create Microsub channels as required.

    Reply

    1. @aarongarcia the instance you were reading/replying to is actually my WordPress-based website that uses ActivityPub to appear as part of the Fediverse.

      I haven’t gotten replies working properly, so I sometimes write my reply on my site and syndicate it to a separate account on mastodon.social which also has the ability to pull back responses using Brid.gy.

      I use my site a lot for educational purposes as well as a commonplace book. The IndieWeb wiki page on Education has a bunch of interesting examples of people using their sites this way if you’re interested.

      Syndicated copies:

      Reply

  585. Why not, right?

    I shipped a great bug yesterday. A big thanks to Chris Aldrich for catching that and sending me a DM today to let me know.

    With all my cleverness around separating comment types for display below posts, I forgot to check for cases where there was some kind of Webmention, but no regular or reply comments. That resulted in an empty array being passed to the comment__in argument for get_comments(), which then resulted in every single comment! A conversation, indeed.

    In the process of fixing that, I also decided to only show each section—Likes, Mentions, etc…—if that section had at least one action. This makes more sense to me than empty headings. I also added “bookmark” as an accepted type.

    There are a handful of other types left via the Semantic Linkbacks plugin and I should probably decide how to manage them.

    I kind of like the idea of “read” being something I see in the WordPress dashboard, but not on the front-end. I made that the case for now along with all of the RSVP, invited, watch, follow, listen, tag, and repost actions. I’ll revisit those in the future if I think of something fun to do with them. For now, I’ll still get them in my dashboard.

    The idea of “favorite” has become synonymous with “like” for me when I think about it in the context of social networks. I’m going to mirror those for now and continue to think about differences. I could almost see doing the same thing with “bookmark”, but I’ll keep them separate for the time being.

    Now that I’ve adjusted what reactions show up, the get_comments_number() count is not to be trusted. Instead of displaying the number of reactions, I decided to remove the count entirely. For now, I’ll leave the “16 comments” thing alone on archive views just to confuse everyone.

    At some point during the day, I was hoping for custom comment statuses in WordPress as a way to separate public and private comments in some kind of workflow. There’s an open trac ticket that’s had some traction in the past and I left some feedback. I was also happy to see a bit of recent traffic on the custom comment types ticket. I’m not sure how I want to chime in yet, but I think they would be very useful.

    There is a part of me that things comments need to be approached entirely different. The first thing I would consider doing is creating a wp_comment_author table that tracks unique authors in some way. I’ve only thought through the good parts of that and not the bad, so it may be a ridiculous idea. But I would like to do things like “mark author as spam” and have that combination of name/email/website never appear again. To do that in the current data structure, you’d have to store data in strange ways to try and match things when a new comment comes in.

    I’ve been working on a ridiculous plugin, the Self Sustaining Spam Stopper, to see if every day spam blocking is possible without the use of a centralized service and without having to spend a lot of time. It’s already catching most spam, though some tooling around marking words, phrases, and paragraphs as “always spam” from the WordPress admin will be much more interesting.

    Things to dig into next:

    All of these actions are great in the Semantic Linkbacks plugin, but I’ve completely lost track of where they’re standardized. I thought I remembered reading the Webmention spec the other day and not seeing them there. I need to investigate a little bit more and see how they’re created and if there are more specific intentions.I’m not completely sure yet, but I don’t think the “approve & whitelist” option via the Webmention plugin is working for me. I’m still finding myself approving things received from the allowed list of domains. I need to verify / troubleshoot this.Propose that “approve & whitelist” be changed to something like “approve & allowlist” or “always allow”.I think I’d like a “replies” post type I can use to reply to comments on other peoples’ sites. I want to keep my main feed as standard posts without generating a kind of firehose.I may extend on that to my own “likes” so that I can notify people when I like their posts.And I want to make sure I have a clever way of RSVPing to things. I’m headed to the IndieWeb Summit in June and sending an RSVP from this site will be fun. I’m not even linking to it yet just in case it accidentally handles the RSVP for me. 😂

    Reply

  586. Github repository for this theme. This is an IndieWeb friendly forked version of the annual WordPress Twenty Fifteen theme that has improved support for microformats version 2. It is a relatively clean, simple, and responsive design which is well suited for use as a personal website. Child Theme It is recommended that one use this…

    Reply

  587. I just updated my blogroll and thought that it might be a great idea to share my workflow to do exactly that.I use Miniflux a lot. Using Miniflux, I read all the blogs and get all the news, get updates from all the YouTubers and even subscribe to some Mastodon accounts (fediverse microblogs). I use multiple categories to sort the feeds. One of those categories is “Blogs” with all the blogs, which I also list on my blogroll.The list of blogs I follow is always evolving. Sometimes I find new sites to follow, so I add their feeds to the list of subscriptions and put them into the “Blogs” category. Sometimes I also unsubscribe from feeds when they are inactive or if I’m not that much interested into them anymore (it can have multiple reasons).To keep my blogroll up-to-date and to avoid having to manually compare and adjust the list with the list from Miniflux when updating it, it is automatically created using a Hugo shortcode.First, I create an OPML export from my Miniflux subscriptions. This can be easily done by going to “Subscriptions” and then clicking on “Export”. I open the download with a text editor and remove all the categories that aren’t “Blogs”. I copy the remaining OPML code and convert it to JSON using this tool. This JSON I store in a file named opml.json in the data folder of my Hugo-based blog.In the layouts/shortcodes folder, I created a shortcode template named blogroll.html with the following content:<ul>
    {{ $opmlJson := index .Site.Data.opml "opml" "body" "outline" "outline" }}
    {{ range sort $opmlJson "_title" "asc" }}
    <li><a href="{{ ._htmlUrl }}" target="_blank">{{ ._title }}</a></li>
    {{ end }}
    </ul>
    This shortcode is then used by adding Anil DashAral BalkanAsh FurrowBeko PharmBen CongdonBen WerdmüllerBrandon NoletChris AldrichDaniel AleksandersenDanny van KootenDavid Heinemeier HanssonDavid PrandziochDerek SiversDesmond RivetDrew DeVaultEmanuel PinaFlorian AnderiaschGarrett DimonHenrique DiasHrvoje ŠimićJames FennJamie AdamsJamie TannaJan BoddezJeff AtwoodJeremy Keith (Articles)Jeremy Keith (Journal)Jessie FrazelleJohn GruberJonathan BorichevskiyJonathan LaCourJustin VollmerKatharina NocunKev QuirkKyle PiiraLaura KalbagLukas RosenstockMatt BaerMatthias OttMatthias PfefferleMax BöckMike KuketzNikita ProkopovNolan LawsonOwen WilliamsPaul Robert LloydPhilipp WaldhauerRahul ChowdhuryRemy SharpStanislas LangeSteven OvadiaSøren BirkemeyerTim ChambersZugreiseblogŽan Černein the blogroll content file.In the end, all I have to do to update my blogroll is update the opml.json file and update the lastmod frontmatter parameter in the blogroll content file.Check out my blogroll!

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  588. This is going to sound weird, but what about WordPress? There is a movement called “IndieWeb” that has those same goals. Some people use their blogs as a personal knowledge base and commonplace book (for instance https://boffosocko.com/ note the highlighting and citation capabilities) so they can have a quick reference for further research.
    Others use it to track personal analytics for analysis (example https://aaronparecki.com/).
    This solution is super flexible, and there are a lot of WordPress plugins to make it easier.

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  590. Chris Aldrich shares a number of codes, including properties supported by microsub servers:

    The WordPress Micropub server supports experimental properties so you can add &post-status=draft to your IFTTT webhook-based recipes for Micropub PESOS syndication.

    And the ability to save a Tweet to Internet Archive:

    If you want to Internet Archive a tweet, copy the long number (tweet ID) and stick it on the end of this: https://web.archive.org/save/https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?in_reply_to=

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  595. Abstract: With growing support for the W3C Webmention spec, teachers can post assignments on their own websites & students can use their sites to respond and interact. Entire classes can have open discussions from site-to-site owning all their data and eschewing corporate surveillance capitalism.
    Missed my presentation for PressEdConf20 on Twitter earlier and want to read it all bundled up instead? The “article” version appears blow. You can also enjoy the Twitter moment version if you like. 

    ONE
    Chris Aldrich
    Hello everyone! My name is Chris Aldrich. I’m an independent researcher in a variety of areas including the overlap the internet and education. You can find more about me on my website https://boffosocko.com
    Today I’ll be talking about Webmentions for open pedagogy. 

    TWO
    For a variety of reasons (including lack of budget, time, support, and other resources) many educators have been using corporate tools from Google, Twitter, Facebook, and others for their ease-of-use as well as for a range of functionality that hadn’t previously existed in the blogosphere or open source software that many educators use or prefer.
    This leaves us and our students open to the vagaries and abuses that those platforms continually allow including an unhealthy dose of surveillance capitalism.
    Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash

    THREE
    In the intervening years since the blogosphere and the rise of corporate social media, enthusiasts, technologists and open source advocates have continued iterating on web standards and open protocols, so that now there are a handful of web standards that work across a variety of domains, servers, platforms, allowing educators to use smaller building blocks to build and enable the functionalities we need for building, maintaining, and most importantly owning our online courseware.

    FOUR
    Some of these new W3C specs include Webmention, Micropub, WebSub, IndieAuth, and Microsub. Today I’ll talk abut Webmentions which are simply site-to-site @mentions or notifications which don’t involve corporate social media silos.
    For those who’d like more information about Webmentions and how they could be used, I’ve written a primer for A List Apart entitled Webmentions: Enabling Better Communication on the Internet.
    Illustration by Dougal MacPherson
    Image courtesy of A List Apart

    FIVE
    Many common content management systems support Webmention either out of the box or with plugins including: our friend WordPress, Drupal, WithKnown, Grav, and many others.
    Webmention rocks

    SIX
    WordPress can use this new standard with the Webmention plugin. (Surprise!) I also highly recommend the Semantic Linkbacks plugin which upgrades the presentation of these notifications (like Trackback, Pingback, or Webmention) to more user-friendly display so they appear in comments sections much like they do in corporate social media as comments, reposts, likes, and favorites, detected using microformats2 markup from the source of the linkback.

    SEVEN
    Another plugin I love is Post Kinds Plugin (Classic editor only at present) which automatically parses URLs I want to reply to, like, bookmark, etc. and saves the reply context to my website which helps prevent context collapse. My commentary and notes then appear below it.
    (I also use a plugin that saves the content of URLs on my site to the Internet Archive, so I can reference them there later if necessary.)

    EIGHT
    These plugins with WordPress allow teachers to post course content and students can then post their responses on their own sites and send notifications that they’ve read, listened to, or watched that content along with their ideas and commentary.

    NINE
    Examples of webmentions in a course setting: Greg McVerry and I ran an experiment with Webmentions in a class in 2018. 
    Example assignment: https://archive.jgregorymcverry.com/5570-2/
    Notice the replies underneath which came from other sites including my response which is mirrored on my site at https://boffosocko.com/2018/08/04/highlighting-some-of-my-favorite-edtech-tools/
    Example podcast post for a class: https://archive.jgregorymcverry.com/2toponder-episode-one/
    Notice the listen webmention in the comments which links to my listen response at: https://boffosocko.com/2018/08/06/2toponder-episode-one-intertextrevolution/ where I own a copy of the context and my own response. As a student, even if the originals disappear, I’ve got the majority of the important content from the course.

    TEN
    When the course is over, the student has an archive of their readings, work, and participation (portfolio anyone?) on a site they own. They can choose to leave it public or unpublish it and keep private copies.
    [Copies for Facebook, Google+ or Big EdTech Giants? They can ask for them nicely if they want them so desperately instead of taking them surreptitiously.]

    ELEVEN
    As a concrete example, I now have tagged archives for all the work I’ve done for EDU522 with Greg McVerry who also has his related posts in addition to a variety that he subsequently archived.

    TWELVE
    By taking the content AND the conversation around it out of the hands of “big social media” and their constant tracking and leaving it with the active participants, we can effect far more ethical EdTech.

    [No more content farming? What will the corporate social media silos do?]

    THIRTEEN
    Imagine Webmentions being used for referencing journal articles, academic samizdat, or even OER? Suggestions and improvement could accumulate on the original content itself rather than being spread across dozens of social silos on the web.

    [Webmentions + creativity: How might you take their flexibility and use it in your online teaching practices?]

    FOURTEEN
    There’s current research, coding work, and thinking going on within the IndieWeb community to extend ideas like private webmentions and limiting audience so that this sort of interaction can happen in more secluded online spaces.
    I’d welcome everyone who’s interested to join in the effort. Feel free to inquire at an upcoming IndieWebCamp, Homebrew Website Club, event, or in online chat right now.

    FIFTEEN
    I’ve also been able to use my WordPress website to collect posts relating to my participation in conferences like PressEdConf20 or Domains 2019 which included syndicated content to Twitter and the responses from there that have come back to my site using Brid.gy which bootstraps Twitter’s API to send Webmentions back to my website.
    If Twitter were to go away, they may take some of my connections, but the content and the conversations will live on in a place under my own control.

    Thanks for your time and attention! I’m around on Twitter–or better: my own website!–if you have any questions.

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  596. Your screenshot provides the answer directly! There’s no link (URL) to my site or one of my posts you’re responding to in your post. By the way, since you’ve got the Webmention plugin installed, it should find the URL and send the webmention for [more…]
    boffosocko.com/2020/03/19/par…

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  601. Both should be valid and working. Nothing in spam folders either at the server level or within email client. I ended up using Google signup just to get things moving, but thought I’d report the issue, so you’re not losing business.
    boffosocko.com/2020/04/01/557…

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  602. In tonight’s video call, Aaron Strick brought up the Sith Lord Challenge, and produced live laughter. Hours later, Aaron created the sinister Darth Skivin.
    Praise Aaron!
    Aaron showed the page to gRegor, who produced live laughter. Hours later, gRegor created the symbolic Darth ASCII.
    Praise gRegor!
    The thrill of new entries prompted me to challenge Nitzan, who readily agreed. Hours later, Nitzan produced the minatory Seth, the Ancient Sith!
    Praise Nitzan!
    I hear that, even now, Chris and Jackie toil to create their own Challengers…
    Draw your dark side! Take the Sith Lord Challenge!

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  609. @dshanske has done something like this before in Post Kinds Plugin within the admin UI. Perhaps he could add a similar option based on the first n letters of the_body or the_excerpt to set the permalink?
    boffosocko.com/2017/05/04/tit…

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  610. Great playlist, thanks for sharing! I was surprised to find that I can play your playlist on the Spotify mobile app even though I don’t have a subscription. Perhaps it’s because you have so many tracks – it won’t let me play them in order you list em but does fine on shuffle mode

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  611. I love it too. I did find @yachtrockradio but it’s only a couple hours a week. Since @SIRIUSXM bought @pandoramusic do you get it for free with your radio sub? They have a dedicated yacht rock station. #yachtRock #4ever @itsMrCross #isaGod

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  616. Great sleuthing! I am the creator of CurateWP and just saw this thread. Although Nieman Lab is using CurateWP on the website, it’s not currently being used to create this page.
    I saw within the code references to “wwr-” and through my own searching I could not find a related plugin. It could be a custom plugin they created for themselves.
    Regardless, I appreciate the mention! Reading how valuable this kind of page is fuels ideas that I can bring into CurateWP. I’m currently working on a new major release that focuses on the new block editor.

    Reply

  620. I had a great time tonight with an awesome crowd of creatives at the online Zoom pre-party for IndieWebCamp West. If tonight’s turn out is any indicator, we’re going to have a lot of fun and learn a lot this weekend.
    My favorite idea of the night, hopefully coming soon: HTML6, the <login> tag!
    👤: (left to right, top to bottom) David Shanske, Chris Aldrich, Scott Gruber, Beto Dealmeida, Kim, Ana Ulin, Joseph Dickson, Sarah Hibner, Aaron Parecki, Lillian Karabaic, Jason McIntosh, Ki, Jacky Alciné, Steve Williams, Greg McVerry, Ryan Barrett, gRegor Morrill, Fluffy

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  622. Excellent first day yesterday at IndieWebCamp West with site demos that inspired and sessions that informed. I saw several folks with light/dark color theme selectors on their sites so that’s my primary task for today’s “hands-on” project day. I also got some great glimpses at site automation tools that can help me with some of the operational chores I’ve been compensating and which are more difficult to take care of on a statically-generated site like mine. And there was a lot of talk about Webmentions so I have some ideas there too.

    This was, I'm told, the largest IndieWebCamp ever. Yesterday's keynote sessions had forty six folks on-line in Zoom plus an additional (unreported) number viewing the live stream. Here's a Zoom group photo just at the end of the Day 1 Keynotes:
    <a href="https://www.disquisitioner.com/photos/IWCW2020-Day1.jpg"></a>

    Thanks to <a href="https://boffosocko.com/">Chris</a>, <a href="https://aaronparecki.com">Aaron</a>, <a href="https://david.shanske.com/">David</a>, <a href="https://tantek.com/">Tantek</a> and the other organizers/volunteers for an excellent, very smoothly run event, and <a href="https://cassie.codes">Cassie</a>, <a href="https://indieweb.org/User:Snarfed.org">Ryan</a> and <a href="https://indieweb.org/User:Jacky.wtf">Jacky</a> for delightful keynotes (recordings of which are available via the schedule page linked to above).

    Back to work on my color theme selector! Gotta be ready for a demo by 4:30pm...

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  626. I saw a good format for a weekly “week in review” blog post on Michael’s microblog that I’m going to copy. It’s just a bullet list of things that happened, but I hope it will allow me to capture the ideas that are between a status update a full post.
    I figured out why some of my posts weren’t receiving with webmentions with help from the indieweb irc chat. Webmentions are only enabled if trackback/comments are allowed. The posts that weren’t working I drafted initially using MarsEdit, which turns off trackbacks by default. Unfortunately there isn’t a per-post checkbox in my post admin interface, so it was non-obvious why some were working and some weren’t.
    The potential of Micropub finally clicked thanks to a talk by I watched by Chris.
    I finished reading chapter one of the dragon book, though it no longer has a dragon on the cover. There’s no real immediate work or project ideas for me to learn compiler design, but I know the principles will come in handy.
    My Apple Watch has quickly made itself an indispensable part of my routine. The haptic wake up alarms and the reminders to stand while I’m working are the killer features for me so far. Running with it is also a game changer. I’m using the 4 hour weather look ahead on my wrist far more than I had thought I would. But that’s probably because it’s the rainy season.
    I went to St. Marc Cafe for a coffee and chocolate croissant. There wasn’t an empty seat inside, which made me a bit nervous. Everyone was wearing a mask when they weren’t drinking / eating and that location is large enough where there’s plenty of space between tables.

    Also on: Twitter icon

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  628. Sarah, great job last night! & awesome notes!! I’ve archived them on the wiki. When you get a chance, if you ping @aaronpk with your preferred email address, he can add you to the IWC Zoom account so you can login in & start meetings in the future.
    boffosocko.com/2020/07/06/557…

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  640. Homebrew Website Club
    There are lots of things to be excited about in joining the Indie Web, like supporting a more human-centered version of the web and connecting better with others across the web. Joining the Indie Web involves a few steps to set up the tools so you can interact with others, but also a bigger picture shift in how you use the web to fully embrace and make the most use of the tools and system.
    When I first stumbled across the Indie Web last summer, I was intrigued but not sure exactly what joining entailed. I’ve taken my time easing in little by little, starting with installing the IndieWeb plugin on WordPress last year. Others probably adopt all the tools much faster than I have, and I haven’t followed the most efficient process, but I thought I’d share the steps I’ve taken as someone who can install WordPress and do some basic stuff on cPanel but not much more on the technical side 🙂 (“Generation 2” on the IndieWeb)
    My Step by Step Adoption of IndieWeb Elements
    Here’s my experience so far with getting more aligned with Indie Web principles and infrastructure:
    Installing and experimenting with the first pieces on My Website
    1. To set up the basic infrastructure and enable my website to receive notifications from others’ websites (and let me respond to others’ websites), I started by installing the WordPress IndieWeb plugin and activating 3 of its plugins in summer 2019: Webmention, Semantic Linkbacks, and Post Kinds. Those allow me to post things other than articles (what I’ve traditionally used this blog for), and enable better connections between articles if another website links to mine. I didn’t start using the features right away, though, since I wasn’t sharing my articles anywhere for people to see.
    2. Over spring 2020, I started experimenting with posting more kinds of posts on this blog (like quotes and quotes with commentary versus only articles), which has meant more short posts and more posts, period. It’s been a shift in mindset since I’ve had very firm ideas about what should go on this blog in the eight years I’ve been running it.
    I had planned to go to the Indie Web Summit in Portland this summer to learn more about the Indie Web, but that was cancelled due to coronavirus, so I decided I’d been putting off taking more steps long enough.
    Adopting Some IndieWeb Philosophy
    3. In July, I decided I’d like to get this website in front of more eyes. While writing here is useful for me, I’d also like to share my thoughts with others and engage in some more conversations. I don’t track visitation, though I assume my traffic’s probably about the same as before I deleted tracking in summer 2019 (~11,000 unique pageviews a year), unless I did something to anger the Google overlords, who I honestly don’t give any thought to when writing here 😉 About half of the visitors to Cascadia Inspired went to a single article (a good one if I do say so, if getting a bit long in the tooth), another couple chunks of visitors follow links to two other articles from that one, and then the rest of the visits are scattered throughout my archive.
    To kick me off with the Indie Web principle of “publish on your own site and syndicate elsewhere” (POSSE), I posted on Twitter about rejoining for the intention of syndicating my blog content there. I got a friendly and helpful response from Chris Aldrich who’s involved in the Indie Web, inviting me to join in one of their upcoming online events to get some of my questions answered.

    Learning from others in the Indie Web
    4. I attended an IndieWeb Homebrew Website Club meetup to discuss IndieWeb philosophy in July, which was a group of about ten very welcoming and thoughtful people. They shared their approaches to using the IndieWeb, and how they decide how much to post or not. As I absorb this new system, it’s very helpful to hear and see how others use the same tools in the way that works best for them.
    Setting Up More Indie Web Tools
    5. To make sure my site is playing nice with the IndieWeb building blocks, I tested my site with the IndieWebifyMe tool. Based on that, I replaced the bio plugin I had with the IndieWeb H-Card and added my rel-me icons (social media sites) to my footer. I also poked around on the Indie Web wiki and the sites of other people who are participating in the Indie Web to see how other people are using the variety of tools available.
    6. In August I attended a workshop focusing on making your WordPress website Indie Web friendly, hosted by the generous IndieWeb folks. You can watch the session and read the notes. At the workshop, I set up Bridgy to syndicate comments from Twitter back to the blog here, so even if people say something about an article I’ve shared there, their thoughts can be connected with the article. Honestly, that alone is worth the price of admission!
    What’s Next for Indie Web-ifying Myself?
    Big Picture Decisions and Design
    I want to set up tracydurnell.com as my main internet “landing page” that links to my various projects and also serves as a more personal “digital garden” or journal. I think I’ll need to rewatch the micropub section of the workshop, and do a little digging into how exactly to feed multiple streams into one place.
    I want to do some research or possibly discuss how Indie Web fits in with “pen name” projects. I am setting up an identity for my author pen name, and keeping it low-key anonymous for privacy (though anyone who made a little effort could back-trace it). Since I write romance, and lots of people are prejudiced against or have misconceptions about romance, I don’t want it to impact my day job professional life. For that name, I will have separate social media accounts and website. Could I also use Indie Web tools for a persona, or is that not in keeping with the community?
    Remaining Technical Steps
    I need to set up IndieAuth. I’ve been struggling to understand the value of using my own website to log in to other websites, an IndieWeb principle, but finally had an aha! moment when reading through the IndieWeb wiki. I have been trying to wean myself from Google services little by little, but I’ve used the same Gmail account to sign up for services over the past ten years, and it hasn’t seemed worth the effort to switch all those logins to another email address just because – especially since I’m currently using Gmail to serve my emails to my personal domains. But using my own website to log in, I think, opens up a new avenue for easing my dependence on Gmail. For me, this feels like a tool that will make the switch more feasible.
    I have a couple things to troubleshoot on this site, which I’m hoping to find time to hop on IndieChat and get help from the community on:

    what self-webmentions look like (when I link from one article to another on my own site) – I want to configure them to highlight the name of the article where it’s posted instead of putting the emphasis on a generic line of text, which I’m not sure is possible but worth asking 😉
    why user icons are only sometimes getting pulled in from Twitter comments via Bridgy

    I need to wikify myself, but am thinking I should do that from tracydurnell.com, so I’m waiting to do it once I have that set up.
    Commit to the Indie Web
    I haven’t committed to the philosophy of completely owning all the data I post online. I feel like this is something else I can take step by step, getting used to the change as I go. All my longform writing lives here, but my other content – like photos, notes, bookmarks, reads – doesn’t. I still occasionally post unique content on Twitter, and post Instagram stories sometimes (though I’ve started trying to post the photo roundups afterwards to this blog so they’re not lost as they have been in the past). Once I set up my new digital notes home at tracydurnell.com I’ll see what I feel good about shifting.
    As someone who writes social media for work, I am deeply rooted in the practice of writing a unique intro when I share a post to Twitter, not directly syndicating it with whatever text I started the article with. For me that feels good enough (not saving that unique share to my site) since including the link means any likes and comments about the article come back to my blog thanks to Bridgy, but maybe someone will convince me otherwise 😉

    About Tracy DurnellSeattle-area graphic designer and SFF writer inspired by the Pacific Northwest, crafting a sustainable and intentional life. (she/her)

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  650. Chris Aldrich:

    The zoom room is open. We’ll be starting the Domain of One’s Own meetup in a moment. https://events.indieweb.org/2020/09/domain-of-one-s-own-meetup-september-2020–908ut7UmA2T3 @DavidDLaCroix @Cambridgeport90 @bixtra @tElizaRose @EduBabble @MorrisPelzel @jimgroom @willtmonroe @macgenie @KatieHartraft @poritzj @amanda_went_oer
    Thanks to the #IndieWeb community for helping to host our infrastructure for the meetup today. https://indieweb.org/ The notes for today’s meeting can be found at https://etherpad.indieweb.org/2020-09-22-dooo

    timmmmyboy:

    Giving a live demo of Mattermost on the Reclaim Cloud

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  655. This past Tuesday I attended the second Indie WebCamp generously hosted by Chris Aldrich focused on Domain of One’s Own. The format is a more focused 10-15 minute talk around a specific technology, in this meeting Tim gave folks a walk-though of Reclaim Cloud, and then opens up to the 21 attendees for anyone to share something they are working on. Tim shared the Cloud, and not only was I thrilled to see Jon Udell in attendance, but it’s always nice when one of your tech heroes tweets some love for your new project. Even better when you know they’re not one to offer empty interest and/or praise. Thanks Jon!

    https://t.co/6ueOmfk2Li is a huge leap forward. I only just heard of https://t.co/jrJR964WZl today, @timmmmyboy is making excellent use of it to make advanced containerization accessible to edtech. https://t.co/omnjAgIbuR
    — Jon Udell (@judell) September 22, 2020

    It was also very cool to read Will Monroe write-up of the session, and like him I found it a “very friendly group” and I realized while attending that this kind of low-key chatting and sharing is one of the things I have missed these days. Folks like Will who want to explore what’s possible in their classroom with Domains and beyond is a big part of what I miss about the day-to-day work of an edtech in an institution. And while I’m not necessarily chomping at the bit jump back into that game given the current circumstances, the ability to share and chat with folks who are interested in Domains is always a welcome opportunity.

    During the sharing portion of the meetup Jean Macdonald, community manager at mico.blog, turned me on to the Sunlit project while I was bemoaning the dearth of open source alternatives to photo sharing apps like Instagram. Soon after I finally took the leap and signed up for a mico.blog to explore that platform. That platform has been a indieweb cornerstone for many folks I respect like John Johnston, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, and Dan Cohen to name just a few. So I wrote my first post:
    What was even cooler was the fact that while writing this post I logged back into micro.blog and discovered a few folks had welcomed me to the micro.blog community, including Jean Macdonald and Dan Cohen—that makes all the difference.

    I’m sold, so the IndieWeb meetup was a total win for me, and I look forward to the one next month. I am going to start getting serious about headless WordPress development for my new website at jimgroom.net, inspired by Tom Woodward’s talk for #HeyPresstoConf20

    Inspiring, for my new version of https://t.co/bKJeTUAEm3 I am going to try and create something WP headless and play with the wealth of amazing possibilities @twoodwar just casually refers to in his brilliant #HeyPresstoConf20 “talk.” Tom has never stopped living the WP dream https://t.co/fNDYzsM6W5
    — Jim Groom (@jimgroom) September 25, 2020

    So, I’ll have something to share in my journey to learn WordPress headless, which will mean learning javascript, CSS, and some other insanity I am not entirely ready for. I have to give a special thanks to Chris Aldrich for putting this together and working to create a space to talk Domain of One’s Own within the IndieWeb community, and I know Greg McVerry has been pushing hard on this for a while now as well, so it is very much appreciated!

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  658. Chris Aldrich:

    The October Domain of One’s Own meetup is starting in just about 45 minutes. Get your tea or coffee ready and join us for some conversation. #DoOO #EdTech #WordPress #Grav @withknown https://boffosocko.com/2020/10/02/domain-of-ones-own-meetup-october-2020/
    The conference room is open for the meetup for socializing prior to the meetup: https://events.indieweb.org/2020/10/domain-of-one-s-own-meetup-october-2020–GvlqwJBN66xn
    Had a good, but smaller meeting this week and talked with @jbj and others about uses of webmention.

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  659. I can’t speak for every company, but as someone who has worked in a Call Center, the purpose of phone trees is not to offload the burden onto the caller. It is to route the caller to the right people. Everyone who answers the phone at an organization isn’t identically skilled. If you press 0, as so many people do, you could end up going to someone who isn’t qualified to do what you want, which means a poor experience or being transferred again. So, phone trees have callers do the work of telling the company what you want. Now, from your description, it sounds like their setup could use some improvement. I’ve been involved in the past in discussions to change the one at my employer based on the data we have on usage as well as feedback from the employees on how people are confusing the options.

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  660. RSS funktioniert am besten, wenn man nicht genau wissen muss wie es funktioniert und wenn man nicht lange nach einem Feed suchen muss.

    Ich hab mal drei (vermeintliche) Verbesserungen ausprobiert um die Feeds auf meinem Blog etwas sichtbarer und nutzbarer zu gestalten.

    Discovery

    WordPress Posts lassen sich über diverse Mechanismen kategorisieren, sei es über Tags, Kategorien oder über Post-Formats. Gerade bei Blogs auf denen viel und zu unterschielichsten Themen geschrieben wird, kann es sinnvoll sein, nicht den kompletten Blog zu abonnieren.

    Um das zu verbessern hab ich in meinem Theme zwei Dinge gemacht:

    Ich hab Feeds für die verschienen Post-Formats (Quote, Video, Audio, Artikel, …) gebaut.Ich hab rel-alternate Links gebaut, die die verschiedenen Feeds eines Posts (Tag-Feeds, Kategorie-Feeds und Post-Formal-Feeds) verlinken.

    Wenn ihr versucht, die entsprechende Post/Blog-URL in einem gängigen Feed-Reader zu abonniert, sollten euch diese Links in einem dropdown oder ähnlichem vorgeschlagen werden.

    HTML-Feeds

    Chris Aldrich hat sich in einem Kommentar gefragt, ob es nicht möglich ist, den SubToMe Button, auch direkt in einem Feed zu nutzen:

    This [How to style RSS feed] seems like quite a clever way of adding some human readable styling to RSS feeds. While it seems like yet another side-file, it could be a useful one. I think if I were implementing it I’d also want to include a SubToMe universal follow button on it as wellHow to style RSS feed – Let’s create a beautiful RSS feed UI for human before its dead in next year again.

    Also hab ich mir mal die Mühe gemacht, meinen RSS-Feed mit XSLT und CSS zu „stylen“ um dann einen SubToMe Button mit einzubauen. Mal gespannt ob es hilft!?!

    /follow

    Marcus Herrmann hat vor ein paar Monaten vorgeschlagen eine /feeds URL zu etablieren:

    Personal website owners – what do you think about collecting all of the feeds you are producing in one way or the other on a /feeds page? You can put your blog feed there, but also RSS generated from your Twitter account (via RSS Box), Mastodon updates, or even the starred items of the feeds you consume (if you happen to use Feedbin).Making RSS more visible again with a /feeds page

    Ich finde die Idee prinzipiell gut, bevorzuge aber /follow.

    Also schaut mal auf /feeds oder /follow vorbei!

    Ich hoffe das hilft ein bisschen.

    Falls ihr Feedback habt, ich würde mich sehr über eure Ideen freuen!

    Syndicated copies:

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  661. I woke up at 5am—on a Saturday—to participate in my first IndieWebCamp, IndieWebCamp 2020 East, which also happened to be my first online conference ever. As much as it’s fun to joke about getting up so early on a weekend, the schedule worked out really nice. I was able to eat a good breakfast, get the coffee going, and enjoy a full day of tech before the WSU game at 4pm.

    Many of the notes here were written during sessions. I’ve now parsed through them a couple times to editorialize, likely mangle direct quotes I don’t remember, and build out some other thoughts I think I had at the time. I’ve allowed myself full editorial rights throughout, so there’s a chance some of it is my brain talking and not even what happened in the session.

    Hopefully I haven’t mangled intent!

    If you’d like to see the sessions, they’ll be posted on the IndieWebCamp site in the near future.

    Intro and lightning keynotes

    First up was an intro session and a couple of lightning keynotes. The conference as a whole is BarCamp style, so much of the agenda is created on the fly once everyone has had a chance to discuss what they want to talk about. Everyone who attends is also encouraged to propose a session.

    During the intro, Chris mentioned that “getting something out of the camp means putting something into it”, a statement so undeniably accurate that it finally prodded me into proposing a session myself. I’ll expand on that further down.

    I’m not sure what this is in reference to, or who said it, but I like the idea:

    One objective of IndieWeb is to “bring the bar of connectability down to make it easier for people to own their own place on the web.”

    That’s a mission I can get behind!

    David Dylan Thomas

    The first lightning keynote was from David Dylan Thomas, the author of Design for Cognitive Bias, which I happen to have on my desk right now. After watching the talk, I’m looking even more forward to reading his book.

    I captured a handful of thoughts/quotes during his talk and in the discussion afterward:

    If something gets easier to read, we generally think it’s true.If something rhymes, we generally think it’s true.“plain language, pictogram-based intervention” can help communicate a message (hello, could have been pandemic response!) more than dense material.Our jobs (as designers, developers, etc…) are harder than we think. It’s not just “design cool shit”. The things we do have impact on others.I want this Twitter/Facebook feature without knowing why they built it in the first place. Think: Why should you try to reproduce it? Why not do something entirely different.When we assume that human beings are horrible and that if we were to gather them all in a room there will be fighting, “we discount how much design will inform discussion”. Design spaces for communication / conversation.Medium says to “publish” rather than comment. What would it be like to replace “commenting” with a different word? Converse / conversation? I’ve chatted about this somewhere else recently, but I’m not recalling.“Gender equality by design” – talk by Iris Bohnet, also in book form.“Curate a culture of curiosity and challenge your own assumptions”.The (dangerous, flawed) concept of “Internalized capitalism” – if you’re not doing anything right now, then you’re not worth anything.David has a proposed SXSW session titled “Content strategy hacks to save civil discourse“.

    And then! David shared a fantastic list of resources on designing with cognitive bias that I’ll have to parse through at another time.

    One of David’s slides included a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. that stood out as prescient enough to call out in more detail:

    “We must rapidly begin—we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”Martin Luther King Jr., in his Beyond Vietnam speech, April 4, 1967

    Sarah Hibner

    The second lightning keynote was from Sarah Hibner, who gave a great Intro to Variable Fonts. The slides from the presentation make for an excellent sheet to share with others and link off to a series of codepens that show variable fonts in actions. I took many fewer notes because I was busy playing with the codepens during the talk! I also like the outer-outer.space domain.

    Lightning intros

    Everybody says things! We went around the Zoom room doing introductions and showing off personal sites or projects. I forgot to show off my personal site, but that’s okay. 🙂

    Creative Blocks in WordPress

    I’ve been thinking quite a bit about elements of IndieWeb can be used at the block level rather than the full page view level and figured that this weekend would be a good time to explore that a bit more. I proposed a brainstorming session of sorts.

    Overall the session was fun and there was a lot of good discussion. In hindsight, I might have proposed a slightly broader session topic as I still have a lot of catch-up to do in the current support for IndieWeb concepts in WordPress and the existing road blocks.

    I will also admit in hindsight that I should not have chosen the first time slot as a first time facilitator. I was much more familiar with the ins and outs of a collaborative video chat discussion at the end of the day and would have probably been better prepared. Next time!

    Proposal

    The future of WordPress is built on the new block editor, Gutenberg, and an entirely different editing experience than the one we’ve used for years. The next several releases will continue to introduce changes, including some form of full site editing through blocks. What are some creative ways the block editor can be used to create an indie web presence?

    My editorialized discussion notes and takeaways

    Most of our time was spent talking about microformats and the general lack of support or mis-support in WordPress. Many legacy themes use microformat version 1 properties and it is difficult to find general support for microformats 2.

    In general, a question seems to be: How do microformat properties work with how WordPress outputs markup?

    This may be an easier problem to solve as time goes on in the block editor. Themes of the future (this is me editorializing) are ideally less likely to include as much markup as they are required to now. Instead, the majority of the markup will be managed by the block editor itself. Microformat friendly blocks can be created to control the output.

    One major issue now is the way a theme must assume everything output with a post or page is “content” and must be wrapped in a content section. What do we expect, when it is literally output with the_content(). 😁

    The block editor makes it much easier to add a bunch of non-traditionally-recognized-as-content data to a page or a post. One way to approach this is through the grouping of content in the block editor. Unfortunately, the UI for this is a bit clunky, but it is possible to group the majority of your post with a content group and then add additional data in another group below. This would semantically communicate the content to readers.

    There is likely an opportunity to create a series of custom blocks that apply the proper microformat properties. It may be that block patterns can be used to post various types of content, something that is handled now through things like the Post Kinds plugin, which uses a custom taxonomy to separate types of content.

    I have ideas to work on!

    Personal Data Warehouse

    Simon Willison gave a demo of Dogsheep, a tool to track and query basically everything about you that has been collected through a number of online services and stored in a SQLite database. Simon was inspired to build Dogsheep by a Stephen Wolfram essay.

    How to democratize something like Dogsheep to make it more approachable for anyone to fire up their own instance.A previous talk and write-up by Simon. I kind of like this as a nice way to import a bunch of data locally and may give a shot in the near termGyuri Lajos gave an overview of Fission, which is described as “Next-gen serverless apps with user controlled data & great DX”.Some conversation around IPFS as a data store for something built with Fission and the possibilities around searching the IPFS. IPFS Search was mentioned, and I was surprised to see it in my browser history because this is all way above my head right now.Topic 3 is about the “why” of personal data storage.Simon – it’s a bit of a super power.People don’t necessarily want to store everything they’ve done in their head. Having a log ensures that it’s out of their head and opens up what they can do. Via BBC research – Ian ForresterTantek Çelik mentioned memories that you may not be ready for. Eric Meyer’s (very excellent) book, Design for Real Life.Angelo Gladding gave an example of a (Maybe Aaron’s?) site when sending a comment with a sad emoji, the profile changes to display an avatar with a more somber face rather than the happy avatar. Very interesting idea.

    Domain of One’s Own LMS

    Chris – we went from slowly putting educational resources online over 20 years to all of a sudden putting everything online.Odd ethical things happening in education spaceDS106An LMS in the indie web may mean using your own website as a lifelong learner’s LMS

    Chris walked through an open course he had been involved with that was able to use things like webmentions to mark things as read and to comment or annotate them. Question posed at the beginning of the class: what do you want to get out of this, what do you want to learn? Maybe use a unique hashtag to create a feed of public stuff from the class.

    If Moodle had a webmention endpoint, it may be able to exist as a platform but with some IndieWeb building blocks it becomes a hub where everyone can read the conversation in one spot. It could send webmentions back.

    Internal wondering by me: Could a “private” webmention be sent with WordPress? Less discoverable permalink to serve a private post from WordPress. Similar to Public Post Preview.

    Start a class by outlining the syllabus or the chapters of the textbook. Professors who decide to write their text books as they go with the students. Publish the result as OER. It’d be fun to see some examples of that.

    h0p3: peer to peer sharing – resiliosync, hyper, ipfs – students create objects of knowledge on their own devices and transferring to a teacher. Sits on their own hard drives from the beginning, not on a central server somewhere.

    I shared Commons in a Box and my general perspective that faculty are often creatively finding ways around the centrally dictated LMS. Jake’s HYPER Lab is a good example of a show your work textbook in progress, but I forgot to bring it up.

    Chris brings up a good point that even with centralized open source systems, there are ways where the university can remove content or otherwise censor it. Tenure works most ways, but maybe not all ways.

    Drupal’s OpenScholar came up, which I hadn’t seen before.

    Note: My notes are getting sparser as the day went on! 😂

    Discovery: A Trek Through the Indieweb

    Now that we have social readers, how can we discover new sites and feeds to subscriber to in our readers?

    Bring back blogrolls? How do we give blogroll concept more life? – DavidAngelo – one failure with blogrolls was that it wasn’t descriptive enough.Example of formatted OPML: http://petermolnar.net/subscriptions.opmlCategorized following lists – A friend maintains a list, I follow that, so I follow everyone that is on the list. When they update the list, I now follow everyone on that list.How do we create public parks on the web to gather?There are probably some opportunities via aggregator or “temporarily centralized” area which accepts contributions from a certain group of people.Micro.blog mini communities via emoji / discovery as an organic community.How do you provide value signals within a discovery system? – Chris

    “As soon as you try to make it global rather than local, it becomes an attack mechanism” – Kevin Marks, discussing starting with something that seems like a social network at first, but then introduces trending topics, algorithms to feed content to people. Good indicator that local (smaller) communities are better? Split at certain points?

    What is “local”? Curated community. Local to a topic can work, but armies of people can take system over. Brigading rather than spam now. Physical proximity is another option for “local”.

    Chris mentioned the term “tummeling”, which I hadn’t heard of: “the art of creating active social spaces“.

    Whew. I can tell from my notes that my brain was getting a bit overloaded with fun ideas. I may come back and clean some of this up some more in the future.

    Topics to explore

    A general list of things that I need to look into, among others:

    SalmentionfragmentionsMicroformats 2 and the correspondign WordPress pluginCore ticket to add rel-feed link to headerDogsheep cron schedule for importing social dataIndieweb.xyz as aggregator

    Things to work on for day 2 / hack day

    I’m wrapping this post up as part of my hack/create day work on Sunday morning. These are the things I think I’m going to be working on:

    Wrapping up a day 1 blog postThinking about having an actual home page instead of an archive of postsTaking a look at some theme markup, how it aligns (or doesn’t) with block editor markupStart poking at some ideas for block specific web mentions

    Of course, now that I’ve finished the first item on the list, my brain is already wandering to other unfinished projects, so we’ll see. Time to dive in!

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  662. Today is day 2 of IndieWebCamp East Online 2020, a general hack/create day.

    I’m hacking on microformats and implementing them in Gutenberg, which means I’m thinking in blocks.

    Main personal inspirations for this include:

    I write a frequent week’s end series that is composed mostly of individual thoughts or notes. I can imagine a future where someone (me) could link or reply directly to a thought rather than the entire thing. Doing this means that each unique thought likely deserves to be its own h-entry.I want to reply to others’ posts via webmentions. Having a block or pattern dedicated to this would be nice.Yesterday’s conversation during the IndieWebCamp session gave me some initial sparks into how this may all work in the future.

    As I somewhat mentioned in yesterday’s wrap-up post, a default pattern for WordPress themes has been to do something like this:

    <article <?php post_class(); ?>>
    // header info

    &lt;div class="entry-content"&gt;
    &lt;?php the_content(); ?&gt;
    &lt;/div&gt;

    </article>

    The post_class() function outputs a handful of classes for the article wrapper. WordPress includes hentry with this by default, a property of the first microformats version that indicates a general container for the content of an entry.

    The block editor allows for a much greater level of content flexibility, which makes specific markup like this less likely to be appropriate.

    I decided my initial workaround would generally be this:

    if ( has_block( ‘mfblocks/h-entry’ ) ) {
    $has_h_entry = true;
    } else {
    $has_h_entry = false;
    }
    ?>

    <?php if ( $has_entry ) : ?>
    <div class=”entries-content-wrapper”>
    <?php else: ?>
    <article <?php post_class(); ?>>
    <?php endif; ?>

    If my h-entry block is detected, I can assume that the post content itself will take care of describing entries with microformats. If not, then markup the page as normal. I’ll of course screw something up with my CSS here, but I’ll get to it at some point. I’m going to use the same logic to determine if an entry header should be output in a single template.

    And! In reality, I’ll create a content-has-h-entry.php or something that I’ll use for this markup rather than having a bunch of if clauses making it all annoying to work with. 🙂

    Okay, my theme is now wired up to handle what I want to do. Now, for some blocks!

    My initial impression as I’m starting to plan this out is that WYSIWG is fun in theory, but it’s also nice to have an awareness of the structure of the document.

    Gutenberg has a list view that shows you the outline of the current document. I’d kind of like this in a static place so that I don’t lose track of my nested nested group blocks. I imagine this will become an experience problem that is more and more obvious as we get closer to full site editing.

    Having some contextual awareness during editing—which group is this block a part of?—will become more important in the future.

    I started off the day with a couple custom blocks that implemented h-entry and e-content as wrapping containers of Gutenberg’s <InnerBlocks> component. I figured I could create block patterns that started with those groups and allowed someone to fill in the blanks.

    Two problems:

    Discoverability. Adding one of my patterns means taking the mouse up to the + icon, clicking, clicking, clicking to find the right category and pattern that I want to use. It would be so great if I could insert a block pattern with the / command like I do with blocks.I could spend so much time trying to setup placeholder content that has the right microformat class names, but there’s nothing built into the pattern to keep that structure strict. An accidental keystroke removes the e-content section and then I have to start over.

    So, I switched strategies and started building out a custom h-entry block that dictated the structure. This ends up being more opinionated, but we do have a general spec to follow.

    Fast-forward as I started hacking away and stopped keeping notes. 🙂

    I now have a repository setup for Microformat Blocks, a plugin for WordPress that provides an h-entry block along with a structure that supports a handful of other microformat properties:

    p-namep-summarye-contentdt-published

    I’m really close on having author implemented, hopefully in the next few days. I’ll also find an initial way of handling in-reply-to. And I’ll also get it up on the WordPress plugin repo.

    But! The day is over and I’m really hungry.

    Gutenberg aside: I want to implement in-reply-to on specific anchor tags rather than create a whole custom input control for it. Another case where it would be nice to register custom inline blocks.

    Some leftover notes:

    Trying to think through the concept of authorship on a page of thoughts/notes. Will a microformat compatible reader infer authorship from a page level h-card or does u-author need to be included with each distinct entry?I wonder if I can implement indie-auth comments in a way where someone can write a comment or annotation on my site and have it published back to their site?How does the current WP webmention implementation handle my new block configuration?Once I have dt-published actually setup for multiple entries on my site, it would be cool to sort h-entries in a thought post by date, ASC or DESC

    That’s that. I had an excellent time this weekend geeking out on IndieWeb. Big thanks to Chris Aldrich and David Shanske for organizing!

    Reply

  666. I have started tinkering with creating my own site specific plugin to capture things like improved search to include custom fields and stripping out emojis from the slug. This was somewhat inspired by Chris Aldrich and his changes to the Post Kinds plugin. I am also assuming that it is required to add additional kinds. Where I am stumped is the actual difference between dumping these changes in a child theme versus a site specific plugin. Aldrich talks about adding this information to wp-config.php. I am therefore wondering if I need to make a wp-config.php file in my site specific plugin and if this is all that is required? At the moment, I have just created a functions.php file and have placed my snippets there.
    I am sure I just need to spend some more time down this rabbit hole, but right now I have hit the limit to my knowledge.

    Reply

  667. From my side, I’m not bothered by your daily output, on the contrary. It’s very interesting to me to be able to follow you through your daily posts. Especially these days with the lack of real social interactions. Perhaps you could set up granular control over your newsletter subscription, like Chris Aldrich does on his https://boffosocko.com/ site?
    I do hope you keep posting here since I’m not a Medium subscriber. And by the way, I even got a Coil.com subscription so you get a couple of cents from my visits. Not much and probably not financially needed, but it’s more a symbolic token of my appreciation.

    Reply

  668. A workshop proposal for the Domains Track of OERxDomains21 Conference in April 2021
    Corporate social platforms extract a heavy and often hidden price from teachers and students. Lack of privacy, encouraging abuse, context collapse, and surveillance capitalism are a few of the harms we face. They also expose us to a wider variety of publics than we would choose in which to practice and share our learning.
    We must take back ownership and control of our content and interactions online (Çelik 2019). This hands-on workshop will help those with domains of their own expand them into healthier and safer communication tools.
    This session will be code-free. It’s presented at the level of a person who is able to log into their site, write a post, and publish it.
    We’ll outline and install WordPress* plugins (IndieWeb 2021) to allow participants to make the open web their learning network. Participants can use their extended domains in classrooms, with personal and professional learning networks, or in their daily lives. We encourage more technical participants to partner with others for help. Community-based support is available following the conference.
    When we’re done, participants should be able to:
    – subscribe to each others’ websites;
    – read subscriptions in a social reader (Parecki 2018);
    – reply to posts by publishing on their domains using open standards (Parecki 2017a);
    – send notifications to each other (Aldrich 2018) using open standards (Parecki 2017b).
    The session will end with questions and discussion. We’ll focus on how to use our domains in ethical ways that enable an atmosphere of care. We want to ensure this system and its use don’t re-create the toxicity of the platforms it replaces.
    Participants will leave with resources for how they might extend their independent network. Our domains can also interact with other social media using these new tools.
    * This session will focus on WordPress as an example platform. We’ll provide resources for people using other content management systems. Everyone should be able to follow along, ask questions, and take part, either in real time or with follow up after-the-fact.
    To the extent possible, the materials, resources, and video generated will be shared on the author’s domain with a CC0 license. Syndicated copies will be available on the IndieWeb.org community wiki and the Internet Archive.
    References
    Aldrich, C. (2018) “Webmentions: Enabling Better Communication on the Internet.” A List Apart. https://alistapart.com/article/webmentions-enabling-better-communication-on-the-internet/.
    Çelik, T. (2019) Take Back Your Web. Beyond Tellerrand 2019. https://vimeo.com/336343886.
    IndieWeb. (2021) “Getting Started on WordPress – IndieWeb.” Wiki. [online] Accessed February 9, 2021. https://indieweb.org/Getting_Started_on_WordPress.
    Parecki, A. (2018) “An IndieWeb Reader: My New Home on the Internet.” [online] Aaron Parecki (blog). https://aaronparecki.com/2018/04/20/46/indieweb-reader-my-new-home-on-the-internet.
    ———. (2017a) “Micropub.” The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) [online] https://www.w3.org/TR/micropub/.
    ———. (2017b) “Webmention.” The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). [online] https://www.w3.org/TR/webmention/.
    License

    To the extent possible under law, Chris Aldrich has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to A Twitter of Our Own: A workshop proposal for the Domains Track of OERxDomains21 Conference in April 2021. This work is published from: United States.

    Syndicated copies:

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  669. Ik heb vanavond, met een kleine onderbreking voor de Marslanding, naar de IndieWeb popup-sessie over de Garden and the Stream gekeken. Gekeken, want de daadwerkelijke sessie was in april, dus meedoen was er niet meer bij, maar gelukkig was het opgenomen.
    Door de opname zag ik ook dat ik zelf live bij het event ben geweest. Dat wil zeggen: ik zag mijn hoofd in de zoom-call voorbij komen, al heb ik niets gezegd en ben ik ook eerder weggegaan. Soms lijkt een sessie super interessant, maar ben je er gewoon op dat moment niet klaar voor. Nogmaals: gelukkig was het opgenomen.
    De afgelopen maand schrijf ik dus weer meer op mijn weblog. Hoewel de inhoud daarvan allemaal maar matigjes diepgaand is, merk ik dat het me goed doet om met enige regelmaat weer een stukje te typen. Ik lijk overdag weer meer ruimte in mijn hoofd te krijgen om aan andere dingen te denken. (Al hou ‘t nog nie over.)
    Dat voortzettend en geïnspireerd op de popup-sessie, ben ik voornemens iets van een persoonlijke wiki te starten. Het grootste deel daarvan zal vermoedelijk privé zijn, zodat ik wat vrijer gedachten erin durf te stoppen. (Het is gek dat ik dat dan nu uittyp: waarom gaan deze gedachten dan wel straks online staan? Voor wie schrijf ik dit eigenlijk?)
    Bij gebrek aan een persoonlijke wiki dan hier gewoon wat losse flodders die ik interessant vond uit de sessie:
    Naast dus het idee dat blogs het web kapot hebben gemaakt, zorgt de chronologische ordening van stukjes voor weinig structuur. Sarah Hibner legde uit over wat zij noemde ‘short now’ en ‘long now’, waarmee ze dus onderscheid maakt tussen notes die reageren op iets dat in de het heden gebeurt maar buiten die context niet zo interessant zijn, tegenover notes die juist een soort universelere boodschap hebben die wel jaren later nog gelezen kunnen worden voor iets anders dan nostalgie. (Mijn eigen woorden hier.)
    Volgend op de non-structuur van de chronologie, ook het idee dat ‘formele tags’ (zoals die van een biliotheek) minder goed werken dan ‘folkonomy’, tags die door mensen in hun eigen natuurlijke taal bij een onderwerp worden gezet (bijvoorbeeld hashtags op Twitter), maar dat tot slot juist de meeste structuur te halen valt uit het aan elkaar linken van notities door middel van links, die al-dan-niet twee-directioneel zijn. Door dergelijke links kan men dus paden vinden door een wiki, zoals je ook flink verdwaald kan raken als je door Wikipedia heen blijft klikken.
    Daarna dan het idee dat je een wandeling kan maken door een wiki door deze paden langs te gaan, en dat dat dus een manier is om informatie terug te vinden. Ik weet niet meer waar het stond, maar ik weet wel dat op pagina X een link stond naar Y, dat ermee te maken had, dus misschien kom ik zo wel bij Z.
    Chris Aldrich vertelde op het eind ook nog over hoe volken vroeger kennis deelden op verschillende fysieke locaties in hun rondtrekkende bestaan, en dat Stonehenge een vervanging daarvoor was, na het uitvinden van de landbouw: herinneringen werden aan bepaalde stenen gekoppeld om zo door te geven aan toekomstige generaties. (De stenen staan er nog, de herinneringen zijn helaas verloren.)
    En dan tot slot het briljante idee om NFC-tags in je huis op te hangen, die je dan kan scannen (met je iPhone via Shortcuts) om zo naar verschillende pagina’s in je persoonlijke wiki te linken. Ik denk nu aan bij de deur een checklist of bij de koelkast een boodschappenlijstje, maar je kan ook denken: wat weet ik ook weer over de geschiedenis van Zuid Frankrijk? En dan weten dat je voor geschiedenis altijd naar de plant in je kast loopt.
    Enfin, ik weet onder welke categorie van ‘now’ deze blogpost valt, of het eigenlijk wel in de stroom had gemoeten, en waarom ik destijds geen blogpostje heb geschreven over de NFC-tags die ik van Sven kreeg nadat ik in Brighton die functie van mijn iPhone had ontdekt (nog altijd kan ik mijn ov-chipkaart scannen en dan opent de NS-app). Maar het was een interessante sessie om terug te kijken, dat zeker.

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  670. Foreword

    A couple of weeks ago I noticed one of our newer IndieWeb community participants found an example on the IndieWeb wiki that no longer worked, and it was from someone who hasn’t been around for a while.

    I knew that person had various things come up in their personal life, thus left without warning, and was unable to maintain their site (with said example) as well. This wasn’t the first time this has happened. I noted in our community chat that there were community care, repair, and supportiveness issues worth discussing, summarized with: tl;dr: life happens, and expressed a goal:

    I’d like to figure out how we as a community can 1) provide support to folks who have “life happens” events and not feel “guilty” about being absent or abruptly having to stop participating, and 2) do “repair” on our pages in a kind and respectful way that doesn’t exacerbate their guilt/shame, and ideally makes it clear they are welcome back any time

    What followed was my stream of consciousness and braindump on the subject matter, which after seeing it resonated with and being encouraged by several members of the community, I collected into an IndieWeb wiki page:
    life happens. I’m blogging most of what I wrote there because I think it’s worth its own post and wanted to capture my thoughts & feelings on this matters while I remember the context.

    “Life Happens” is an acknowledgement that there are numerous things that people experience in their actual physical lives that suddenly take higher priority than nearly anything else (like participation in volunteer-based communities), and those communities (like the IndieWeb) should acknowledge, accept, and be supportive of community members experiencing such events.

    What Happens

    What kind of events? Off the top of my head I came up with several that I’ve witnessed community members (including a few myself) experience, like:

    getting married — not having experienced this myself, I can only imagine that for some folks it causes a priorities reset

    having a child — from what I’ve seen this pretty much causes nearly everything else that isn’t essential to get dropped, acknowledging that there are many family shapes, without judgment of any

    going through a bad breakup or divorce — the trauma, depression etc. experienced can make you want to not show up for anything, sometimes not even get out of bed

    starting a new job — that takes up all your time, and/or polices what you can say online, or where you may participate

    becoming an essential caregiver — caring for an aging, sick, or critically ill parent, family member, or other person

    buying a house — often associated with a shift in focus of personal project time
    (hat tip: Marty McGuire)

    home repairs or renovations — similar to “new house” project time, or urgent repairs. This is one that I’ve been personally both “dealing with” and somewhat embracing since December 2019 (with maybe a few weeks off at times), due to an infrastructure failure the previous month, which turned into an inspired series of renovations

    death of a family member, friend, pet

    … more examples of
    how life happens on the wiki

    Values, People, and Making It Explicit

    When these things happen, as a community, I feel we should respond with kindness, support, and understanding when someone steps back from community participation or projects. We should not shame or guilt them in any way, and ideally act in such a way that welcomes their return whenever they are able to do so.

    Many projects (especially open source software) often talk about their
    “bus factor” (or more positively worded “lottery factor”). However that framing focuses on the robustness of the project (or company) rather than those contributing to it. Right there in IndieWeb’s motto is an encouragement to reframe: be a “people-focused alternative to the corporate […]”.

    The point of “life happens” is to decenter the corporation or project when it comes to such matters, and instead focus on the good of the people in the community. Resiliency of humanity over resiliency of any particular project or organization.

    Adopting such values and practices explicitly is more robust than depending on accidental good faith or informal cultural support. Such emotional care should be the clearly written default, rather than something everyone has to notice and figure out on their own. I want to encourage more mutual care-taking as a form of community-based resiliency, and make it less work for folks experiencing “life happens” moments. Through such care, I believe you get actually sustainable community resiliency, without having to sacrifice or burn people out.

    Acknowledging Life Happens And You Should Take Care

    It’s important to communicate to community members, and especially new community members that a community believes in mutual care-taking. That yes, if and when “life happens” to you that:

    we want you to take care of what you need to take care of

    you are encouraged to prioritize those things most important to you, and that the community will not judge or shame you in any way

    you should not feel guilty about being absent, or abruptly having to stop participating

    it is ok to ask for help in the community with any of your community projects or areas of participation, no matter what size or importance

    the community will be here for you when you’re able to and want to return

    It’s an incomplete & imperfect list, yet hopefully captures the values and general feeling of support. More suggestions welcome.

    How to Help

    Similarly, if you notice someone active in the community is missing, if you feel you know them well enough, you’re encouraged to reach out and unobtrusively check on them, and ask (within your capacity) if there’s anything you can do to help out with any community projects or areas of participation.

    Thanks to
    Chris Aldrich
    for expanding upon
    How to help and encouraging folks to Keep in mind that on top of these life changes and stresses, the need to make changes to social activities (like decreasing or ceasing participation in the IndieWeb community) can be an added additional compounding stress on top of the others. Our goal should be to mitigate this additional stress as much as possible.

    How to Repair

    Absence(s) from the community can result in shared resources or projects falling behind or breaking. It’s important to provide guidance to the community with how to help repair such things, especially in a caring way without any shame or guilt. Speaking to a second person voice:

    You might notice that one or more projects, wiki pages, or sections appear to be abandoned or in disrepair. This could be for any number of reasons, so it’s best to ask about it in a
    discussion
    channel to see if anyone knows what’s going on. If it appears someone is missing (for any reason), you may do kind and respectful repairs on related pages
    (wikifying),
    in a manner that attempts to minimize or avoid any guilt or shame, and ideally makes it clear they are welcome back any time.

    If you come across an
    IndieWeb Examples section on a page where the links either don’t work (404, broken in some other way, or support appears to have been dropped), move that specific IndieWeb Example to a “Past Examples” section, and fix the links with Internet Archive versions, perhaps at a point in time of when the links were published (e.g. permalinks with dates in their paths), or by viewing history on the wiki page and determining when the broken links were added.

    Encouraging More Communities To Be Supportive When Life Happens

    When I shared these thoughts with the IndieWeb chat and wiki a couple of weeks ago, no one knew of any other open (source, standards, etc.) communities that had such an explicit “Life Happens” statement or otherwise explicitly captured such a sentiment.

    My hope is that the IndieWeb community can set a good example here for making a community more humane and caring (rather than the “just work harder” capitalist default, or quiet unemotional detached neglect of an abandoned GitHub repo).

    That being said, we’re definitely interested in knowing about other intentional creative communities with any similar explicit sentiments or statements of community care, especially those that acknowledge that members of a community may experience things which are more important to them than their participation in that community, and being supportive of that.

    This blog post is a snapshot in time and my own expression, most of which is shared freely on the IndieWeb wiki.

    If this kind of statement resonates with you and your communities, you’re encouraged to write one of your own, borrowing freely from the latest (and CC0 licensed) version on the wiki: life happens. Attribution optional. Either way, let us know, as it would be great to collect other examples of communities with explicit “life happens” statements.

    Thanks

    Thanks to early feedback & review in chat from
    Kevin Marks,
    Jacky Alcine,
    Anthony Ciccarello,
    Ben Werdmüller, and
    gRegor Morrill.
    On the wiki page, thanks for
    excellent additions from
    Chris Aldrich,
    and proofreading & precise fixes from
    Jeremy Cherfas.
    Thanks for the kind tweets
    Ana Rodrigues
    and
    Barry Frost.

    Now back to some current “life happens” things…
    (also posted on IndieNews)

    Syndicated copies:

    Reply

  671. Steps to reproduce

    Annotate any page on https://boffosocko.com
     View https://hypothes.is/search?q=url%3Aboffosocko.com%2F* 
     

    Expected behaviour
    I would expect the titles of the various annotated posts displayed on H to be that of the <h1> tag on the annotated page or some other logical name based on a parsing algorithm.
    Actual behaviour
    The titles for almost all the annotations on my website (since 2016), regardless of the page they’re on, appear to be the incorrect title: “Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2015: Indie Ed-Tech”. The few exceptions seem to be the self-hosted .pdf files on my domain/storage that I’ve annotated.
    Browser/system information
    This appears to be browser and OS independent
    Additional details
    The only post on my website related to the title which appears seems to be https://boffosocko.com/2020/05/16/top-ed-tech-trends-of-2015-indie-ed-tech-audrey-watters/ which contains copies of the annotations I made on Audrey Waters’ page. See: http://hackeducation.com/2015/12/21/trends-indie#annotations:soppjJeoEeq9gccaKJdTtg
    Some time around 2016 Audrey disabled annotations on her site (due to abuse, though it appears she’s since re-enabled them?). Is it possible that the H client has somehow cached the title of her post and is somehow mapping it as the title for all of the annotations made on my site? Having looked at the pages which have been annotated on my site, there’s nothing hiding in or related to the the meta data or rel=”canonical” links that would indicate that they should have the titles that H is finding for them.

    Reply

  674. How can we measure and prefer the content with more intrinsic value?
    I think that there has been an increasing tendency in people to look for information on the web that validates their own opinions. The increasing bipolarization and radicalization seem to indicate this fact. However, I have no scientific data to allow me to validate this trend.
    chrisaldrich annotation on

    You cannot measure the health of journalism simply by looking at the number of editors and reporters on the payroll of newspapers. There are undoubtedly going to be fewer of them. The question is whether that loss is going to be offset by the tremendous increase in textual productivity we get from a connected web. Presuming, of course, that we don’t replace that web with glass boxes.
    in https://stevenberlinjohnson.com/the-glass-box-and-the-commonplace-book-639b16c4f3bb

     

    The value of journalism must take account of the increase in textual productivity gained by the interconnected Internet and not solely by the number of editors, reporters, and size or number of newspapers.
    Of course we also need to account for the signal to noise ratio created by the masses of people who can say anything they like, which can also be compounded by the algorithmic feed of social platforms that give preference to the extremes and content that increases engagement (a measure which doesn’t take into account the intrinsic value of the things which are shared.)
    How can we measure and prefer the content with more intrinsic value? Similar to the idea of fast food and healthier food? How can we help people to know the difference between the types of information they’re consuming.
    in https://hyp.is/b0aQbG8KEeuyDR95VpabGQ/stevenberlinjohnson.com/the-glass-box-and-the-commonplace-book-639b16c4f3bb

    Reply

    1. Glad to meet you! I’ve been following [[anagora]] for a bit. Feel free to note away! (Bonus points if you send Webmentions when you do.)

      Syndicated copies:

      Reply

  679. Episode 005 – Interview with Chris Aldrich

    Links from today’s episode:

    Chris Aldrich web siteGardens & Streams II (Indieweb pop-up event) on September 25, 2021 https://events.indieweb.org/2021/09/gardens-and-streams-ii-pPUbyYME33V4Obsidian (https://obsidian.md/)Hypothesis (https://web.hypothes.is/)Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies: Orality, Memory, and the Transmission of Culture by Lynne Kelly (Cambridge, 2015)Memory Craft by Lynne Kelly (Pegasus, 2019)Anthropology: Why it Matters by Tim Ingold (Polity Press, 2018)How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers by Sönke Ahrens (Create Space, 2017)

    And for the crazy rhetoric and note taking nerds:

    Early Philosophical Texts

    Aristotle, Topica, written about 350 BCE Venice, 1495.Aristotle, Rhetorica, written about 350 BCE. Basel, 1529.Cicero, De Oratore, written about 46 BCE. Northern Italian manuscript about 1450.Cicero, Topica, written about 44 BCE. Florentine manuscript, about 1425-30.Seneca the Younger, Epistulae morales, written 62-65 CE. French manuscript, about 1175.Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, written about 100 CE. Paris, 1542.Macrobius, Saturnalia, written about 430 CE. Central Italian manuscript, about 1475.Boethius, De topicis differentiis, written about 480-526 CD. English manuscript, about 1275.

    Renaissance Handbooks

    Rodolphus Agricola, De formando studio. Antwerp, 1532; composed 1484.Desiderius Erasmus, De ratione studii et instituendi pueros comentarii totidem. [Paris, 1512].Philip Melanchthon, Institutiones rhetoricae. Wittenberg [1536].Philip Melanchthon, Rhetorices elementa. Lyon, 1537.Desiderius Erasmus, De duplici copia verborum ac rerum. Cologne, 1540.Petrus Mosellanus, Tabulae de schematibus et tropis…. In Rhetroica Philippi Melanchthonis. In Erasmi Roterdami libellum De duplici copia. Paris, 1542.Joachim Camerarius, Elementa rhetoricae. Basel, [1545].Henry Peacham, The garden of eloquence: conteyning the figures of grammar and rhetorick. London, 1577.One of the first handbooks in EnglishPhilip Melanchthon, De locis communibus ratio. Augsburg [1593].John Brinsley, Ludus literarius: or, The grammar schoole; shewing how to proceede from the first entrance into learning, to the highest perfection. London, 1612.[Obadiah Walker], Of education: especially of young gentlemen. Oxford, 1673.

    Reply

  681. After my first steps to IndieWeb, I got a really helpful message from Robbi Nespu. Alas, I’ve not (yet) got webmentions working in any real way, and the page he commented on had a broken URL (all my problems, not Robbi’s).

    He said:

    Hello Peter Smith, How going? I also using Hugo, the getting webmention response working is easier if using a javascript called as PlaidWeb/webmention.js

    Some tips from my experience

    Setup the h-card because it important and needed for indieAuth (to use some external services such as https://webmention.io

    You may use https://xray.p3k.io to inspect if the HTML are parse correctly, you can submit the URL or just paste the raw HTML (even with localhost / 127.0.0.1 addressed inside the source code, it working very well). It save my time during debugging.

    I also use [https://telegraph.p3k.io to preview (check) if all link inside h-entry support webmention. You also can manually send webmention by give a source and target from there.

    Lastly, validate published web using https://indiewebify.me/ get your website until level 3.

    Hope this helpful 😀

    Level 1: Become a citizen of the IndieWeb

    Get your own domain name: Done. Many years ago.

    Set up Web Sign In: That was easy. Or it was until I decided to not use <link rel="me" href= ..../>. And once I had that working I too the time to break it again.

    Level 2: Publishing on the IndieWeb

    Check your homepage h-card: I really should read the specs more closely. I bashed my head against a brick wall for a while with this. Even though I used bits of HTML from Aaron Parecki and from Chris Aldrich, it still took too much time.

    Check your posts are marked up with -h-entry: Not so hard, although I have had to tweak the layout of may pages somewhat. Categories, aren’t elegant yet.

    Level 3: Add the ability to send Webmentions to other IndieWeb sites

    This is a work in progress.

    Reply

  682. Thanks, I’m aware of sketchnoting and it never really worked for me. It often seems to become decorative to a point where I’m not sure it supports understanding anymore. I think it’s primarily a technique for capturing others’ ideas. When I draw when listening to a talk it’s more for attention and concentration, i.e. this digital collage of scanned fountain pen drawings: https://i.snap.as/xaP7NecI.png.
    To me Lynda Barry’s work is more interesting in that it’s about visually developing your own awareness, perception, ideas and stories.

    Reply

  685. Poke

    I wanted to send a poke during our initial discussion about poking but I never got around to it.

    (For those of you reading this who have no clue what a poke is, the “poke” was a feature on Facebook that sent a notification to someone. It was mostly useless)

    Reply

  686. Chris Aldrich
    Hello! I’m Chris. I use this website as my primary hub for online identity and communication. It’s also my online commonplace book.
    Below, you’ll find a variety of media types I publish. You’ll also see lists of categories I frequently publish to including IndieWeb, mathematics, information theory, biology, history, economics, humanities, note taking & related topics. If you’re interested in more niche sub-topics, I have a list of tags available for searching and following as well.
    As a member of the IndieWeb movement/community, I follow many of their principles including owning all of my own data by publishing it on my own website. When I participate on most social media sites, I generally post here first and syndicate/cross-post duplicates out to them (POSSE). In some cases, I may post to social services first and then immediately syndicate copies of that content to my own website (PESOS). This site supports the receipt of Webmention notifications and, when possible, will show replies from other websites. If you @mention me on Twitter or link to my posts there, I should receive notifications here and can show those replies as comments on my posts.
    You’re welcome to subscribe to or follow my content in any manner or on any platform you prefer. However, keep in mind that the canonical copies live on this site and are the most complete. You’d have to follow me on a plethora of sites to be able to follow even a small portion of my online content output, and even then you’ll find that this is the only site with complete copies of all of it.

     Firehose
     Microblog
     Linkblog
     

     Articles
     Notes
     Replies
     Photos
     Checkins
     Reads
     Watches
     Listens
     Bookmarks
     Favorites
     Likes
     Reposts
     Itches
     Issues
     RSVPs
     Wishlist
     Books
     Annotation
     Microcast
     Follows
     Jams
     Acquisition
     Audio
     Video
     Quotes
     Chat
     Recipes
     Food Diary
     Eat
     Drink
     Exercise
     Plays
     Chickens
     IndieWeb Podcast
     
     

    Reply

  687. Unfortunately I’ve been struggling with the plugin for quite some time, something that struck me again when I reread my archive. At the end of December 2020 I already ran into the same problems that I still have. In May 2021 I once again expressed my frustration in a blog post, and luckily both Ton and Jan were kind enough to steer me towards possible solutions. I know that Ton is now busy (or ready?) to phase out Post Kinds. And this plugin from Jan also offers possibilities.
    Google translation.

    Reply

  690. Anna Kelsey-Sugg and Julie Street discuss Dennis Duncan research in the index. He explains how the practice evolved separately in Paris and Oxford during 1230. Although the two inventions were not connected, they were both associated with the rise of the university and the lecture.

    In the early 13th century, two things happened to create the perfect time for the invention of the index.
    One was the creation of universities. “Not coincidentally, Paris and Oxford are the places where the universities have just arrived,” Dr Duncan says.
    The other thing was the arrival of preaching or mendicant religious orders, and a new idea to have friars live among the people in big cities to preach and “stop the flock from going astray”.
    @abcnews https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-28/index-history-invention-made-simultaneously-800-years-ago/100690782

    Duncan also makes the case for human curation and says that although the idea of the index is central to the web, it is also something that cannot be completely automated. To demonstrate this, he provides two index for his book, Index, A History Of to demonstrate the differences.
    This has me wondering where this all I wonder where this sits within Chris Aldrich’s research into the history of commonplace books.

    Reply

  691. Yesterday evening I finally made it to my very first IndieWeb event: Personal Libraries Pop Up Session. I’ve had my reading list on my website for quite some time and had used GoodReads and similar services for more than decade now in order to keep track of those books I had already read while also looking into others’ lists to get some inspiration. Over the course of the last couple of weeks and especially with the API change at GoodReads I’ve used them less and less and started looking at alternatives but mostly at moving the tracking of my reading habits completely off there, which made yesterday’s event even more interesting to me.
    Sadly, I wasn’t able to contribute anything mostly due to being rather shy at my first such event and everyone else knowing far more about that subject but I got some great ideas out of it! Even during the event I already started implementing a little OPML exporter for my “currently reading” list for others to consume and decided I wanted to at least add an OpenLibrary identifier to all the entries in my collection so that I could eventually correlate my entries with, for instance, Ton’s list.
    Maggie Appleton also managed to spark my interest in book clubs again. I had been part of, let’s call them, lightweight variants there but never really engaged with others in “proper” book discussions. No idea if I can find the time for something like that but the problems organisers are facing there are definitely interesting!
    Another takeaway for me was that ISBNs and other identifier are even more messy than I had expected! I also noticed that today when I wanted to add some metadata to my library and failed to find ISBNs for some books there.
    As the OPML exporter and other ideas I have for my site, perhaps I can get some more done on the March 9 during the IndieWeb Create Day 😉 In the meantime, though, I want to thank Chris Aldrich for organising yesterday’s event and all attendees!

    Reply

  692. I’m taking the liberty to put three questions before Chris Aldrich about his Hypothes.is experiences, after reading Annotation by Remi Kalir and Antero Garcia. Kalir and Garcia make much of the social affordances that annotation can provide. Where annotation is not an individual activity, jotting down marginalia in solitude, but a dialogue between multiple annotators in the now, or incrementally adding to annotators from the past. Like my blogposts are an ongoing conversation with the world as well. Hypothes.is is one of the mentioned tools that make such social annotating possible. I am much more used to individually annotating (except for shared work documents), where my notes are my own and for my own learning. Yet, I follow Chris Aldrich’s use of Hypothes.is with interest, his RSS feed of annotations is highly interesting, so there’s a clear sign that there can be benefit in social annotation. In order to better understand Chris’s experience I have three questions:
    1. How do you beat the silo?
    Annotations are anchored to the annotated text. Yet in my own note making flow, I lift them away from the source text to my networked set of notions and notes in which emergent structures produce my personal learning. I do maintain a link to the right spot in the source text. Tools like Hypothes.is are designed as silos to ensure that its social features work. How do you get your annotations into the rest of your workflow for notes and learning? How do you prevent that your social annotation tool is yet another separate place where one keeps stuff, cutting off the connections to the rest of one’s work and learning that would make it valuable?
    2. What influence does annotating with an audience have on how you annotate?
    My annotations and notes generally are fragile things, tentative formulations, or shortened formulations that have meaning because of what they point to (in my network of notes and thoughts), not so much because of their wording. Likewise my notes and notions read differently than my blog posts. Because my blog posts have an audience, my notes/notions are half of the internal dialogue with myself. Were I to annotate in the knowledge that it would be public, I would write very differently, it would be more a performance, less probing forwards in my thoughts. I remember that publicly shared bookmarks with notes in Delicious already had that effect for me. Do you annotate differently in public view, self censoring or self editing?
    3. Who are you annotating with?
    Learning usually needs a certain degree of protection, a safe space. Groups can provide that, but public space often less so. In Hypothes.is who are you annotating with? Everybody? Specific groups of learners? Just yourself and one or two others? All of that, depending on the text you’re annotating? How granular is your control over the sharing with groups, so that you can choose your level of learning safety?
    Not just Chris is invited to comment on these questions obviously. You’re all invited.
    Opticks, with marginalia, image by Open Library, license CC BY

    Reply

  694. For those fleeing Twitter, know that I post everything on my personal website first and syndicate it to a number of places including Twitter and Mastodon.
    Much of my short status updates cross post to @chrisaldrich@mastodon.social while everything can be found at the “Mastodon account” @chrisaldrich, which is really just my personal website pretending to be a Mastodon server.
    If you want your own website that acts a lot like traditional social media I also recommend you try out micro.blog where you can follow me @chrisaldrich. 
    If you have difficulty finding/reading my content wherever your new internet home is, let me know and I’ll see what I can do to help. I try to support a number of open standards to be read in many forms and formats.
    Before you leave, do let me know where I might find and stay in touch with you, because it’s the friends and the people that make any of this worthwhile at all.

    Reply

  695. A recipe is special kind of post, that typically has a name, like an articles, a list of ingredients, and a list of instructions for making something, usually food or drink.

    Reply

  696. I just downloaded my instagram data to backfill my photo posts. But I can’t seem to figure out how to map the instagram post data to an instagram link for generating syndication links. Has anyone worked with instagram data export before?

    Reply

  699. Email
    chris@boffosocko.com
    Phone
    +1 (310) 751-0548
    Webmention
    This site supports WebMentions. This means that you can can write me a note or comment on your own site and include the URL of one of my webpages (or even my homepage) in your post. Then, if your site supports webmentions, simply ping me, otherwise you can send one manually by visiting http://boffosocko.com/wp-json/webmention/1.0/endpoint and including the appropriate URLs. If you’re replying to a specific URL, it will show up on that page as a comment, otherwise it will appear on my /mentions page if you want to verify that it was sent.
    Social Media
      Twitter: @chrisaldrich
    Mobile Contact
    In rough order of preference:

     

    Reply

  700. Is it possible to annotate links in Hypothes.is that are in the Internet Archive? My browser bookmarklet for it doesn’t work on such archived pages. I can imagine that there are several javascript or iframe related technical reasons for it. An information related reason may be that bringing together different annotations from different annotators is hard, as they might al be annotating a different archived version of the same page.
    Yet in some cases this would be very useful to be able to do. For instance, Manfred Kuehns blog was discontinued in 2018, and more recently removed entirely from Blogspot where it was hosted. The archived versions are the only current source for those blogpostings. This means there is no ‘original’ page online anymore to gather the annotations around.
    I see Chris Aldrich has annotated posts from that same weblog by Kuehn, maybe he can shed some light on it.

    Reply

  701. Here are some impressions of my increased usage of Hypothes.is, a social annotation tool, in the past few days.
    I follow Chris Aldrich his Hypothes.is RSS feed, and his usage has been both a good example and source of learning in the past months, as well as a nudge to experiment and adopt Hypothes.is myself.
    What follows is a list of some early impressions that I formulated earlier today in an email. I thought I might as well post them here.

    I played with the <a href="http://hypothes.is/api/">API</a> to get a grip of how I might interact with the annotations I make, and with those of others I’m interested in. <a href="https://www.zylstra.org/blog/2022/08/added-hypothes-is-annotations-link-to-posts/">Added the existence of annotations to my blogposts</a> in WordPress through the API too.
    The <a href="https://github.com/weichenw/obsidian-hypothesis-plugin">Obsidian plugin to get annotations</a> into my notes is an absolute prerequisite, because I need those notes in my own workflow.

    I find working in browser for annotations somewhat distracting and uncomfortable (and I need to remind myself that they will end up in my notes, I feel the urge to also download it directly to my notes.)
    I try to add an Archive link to the annotated article as the first link. It is slowly becoming habitual.
    I mention existing notes in my annotations when I make them in Obsidian. Because it is one context that is a matter of starting a link [[ and I have forward search through all note titles. In hypothes.is being browser based this is a bit harder, as it means switching tools to retrieve the correct note titles. They do then work when they end up in Obsidian of course. At the same time, in my earlier use of a <a href="https://github.com/deathau/markdownload">markdown downloader</a> I would just mention those associations in the motivation to save a link, which is worse. Hypothes.is sits in the middle of saving a bookmark with motivation and annotating in Obsidian itself.
    I do have some performative urges when annotating publicly. Maybe they will disappear over time.
    The <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/nl/firefox/addon/hypothes-is-bookmarklet/">firefox hypothes.is bookmarklet</a> I use doesn’t seem to play nice with archive.org. There’s <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/nl/firefox/addon/hypothesify/">another I haven’t tested</a> yet.
    I notice that any public annotations are licensed CC0 (public domain). Not sure what I think about that yet. It’s a logical step as such, but I don’t fully see yet what it may mean for subseqeunt learning processes internally and further down the process of creating insights or outputs. Is CC0 also applied to closed groups (educational settings e.g.)? Private annotations are just that, and don’t have CC0, but then you miss out on the social aspects of annotation.

    My thoughts keep wandering to interacting with hypothes.is without using it directly to annotate webarticles through the browser. Are there any tools or people who build on or share with hypothes.is using the W3C standards / API, but don’t necessarily use hypothes.is themselves? Or run their own instance, which should be possible? I suspect that would open opportunities for a more liquid experience between this blog, my notes, and annotated articles.

    Reply

  702. Chris Aldrich:

    I’ve got an online note collection similar to @JerryMichalski, but mine is more textual and less visual than his: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich (9:19AM)
    If there are folks that want to do collaborative note taking today, here’s a shared etherpad you can use for either raw text or generic wiki markdown if you like: https://etherpad.indieweb.org/ToolsForThinking (09:26AM)
    How can companies like @readwise leverage some sort of standardization of text, images, data in the space to more easily provide their services to more platforms? (09:49AM)

    (((Howard Rheingold))):

    Recommends the book The Extended Mind by @AnnieMurphyPaul (11:54AM)

    Chris Aldrich:

    Linus Lee’s demo looks a bit like Robin Sloan’s AI Writing experiments https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/writing-with-the-machine/ (12:50PM)

    John Borthwick:

    “There’s also drinks (alcohol) over there, so another good tool for thinking!” #ClosingThoughts (02:55PM)

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  703. MenüForum-NavigationForumAktivitätAnmeldenForum-Breadcrumbs – Sie sind hier:ForumAllgemein | Kümmerles Weblog: BlogrollChris AldrichBitte Anmelden, um Beiträge und Themen zu erstellen.Chris AldrichHeinrich Kümmerle@heinrich56 BeiträgeFöderalistForen-NutzerFreier WählerWeblog-Autor#1 · 17. August 2022, 18:47

    Zitat von Heinrich Kümmerle am 17. August 2022, 18:47 UhrChris Aldrichs Blog ist sehr gefährlich, denn, wenn man einmal darin zu lesen angefangen hat, dann kommt man so schnell nicht mehr davon los. Ich selbst wurde durch einen bestimmten Beitrag angelockt und ertappe mich jetzt immer wieder dabei, dass ich durch sämtliche Beiträge und Pages seines Blogs stöbere.
    Er selbst nutzt sein Weblog wie folgt:

    I use this website as my primary hub for online identity and communication. It’s also my online commonplace book.

    Schon alleine damit ist geklärt, warum man so viele Dinge dort entdecken kann.  Ich komme auf alle Fälle weiterhin regelmäßig dort vorbei und einen seiner Feeds — alle wären wohl nicht zu händeln — habe ich in meinem Reader übernommen.

    Chris Aldrichs Blog ist sehr gefährlich, denn, wenn man einmal darin zu lesen angefangen hat, dann kommt man so schnell nicht mehr davon los. Ich selbst wurde durch einen bestimmten Beitrag angelockt und ertappe mich jetzt immer wieder dabei, dass ich durch sämtliche Beiträge und Pages seines Blogs stöbere.
    Er selbst nutzt sein Weblog wie folgt:

    I use this website as my primary hub for online identity and communication. It’s also my online commonplace book.

    Schon alleine damit ist geklärt, warum man so viele Dinge dort entdecken kann.  Ich komme auf alle Fälle weiterhin regelmäßig dort vorbei und einen seiner Feeds — alle wären wohl nicht zu händeln — habe ich in meinem Reader übernommen.
    Anklicken für Daumen nach unten.0Anklicken für Daumen nach oben.0

    Antwort: Chris Aldrich

    Abbrechen

    Reply

  704. One of the (many!) concepts that I learned about at the Tools for Thinking conference last week was “immersion reading”—it’s where one both reads a book and listens to the audio version of it at the same time. It’s often used as a tool in education, especially for foreign languages, and is supposed to aid with both comprehension and recall.
    I’ve found the idea sufficiently intriguing that I’ve decided to give it a try using Annie Murphy Paul’s book, The Extended Mind, mostly because it was mentioned in Jerry Michalski and Howard Rheingold‘s The History and Future of Software as Tools for Thinking session during the day, but also because it was cosigned by Chris Aldrich in the IndieWeb Etherpad notes.
    Should be a fun—and worthwhile—experiment.

    Published to <a href="https://campegg.com/notes/20220824163738">campegg.com/notes/20220824163738</a> by <a href="https://campegg.com/">Cam Pegg</a>.

    Reply

  705. search in the IndieWeb usually refers to searching your personal site for your own content (and/or caches of content you’ve responded to), sometimes searching IndieWeb chat archives or the IndieWeb wiki, or the nascent IndieWeb Search index and service to search across community posts.

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  708. I’ve been working on building up my skills in our post Twitter life by trying to figure out the Indieweb. Many years back I met Chris Aldrich at WordCamp OC and we got to talking about this thing called Indieweb. At the time I was looking for a way to pull in the tweets of people that were mentioning WPwatercooler on Twitter and Facebook and somehow have those mentions show up as comments on the website. After talking with Chris that functionality was realized by incorporating webmentions on the site which made for a lot of comment content being added to the website. Our site didn’t get much comments in their native format so it was fun to be able to collect those social media comments on the site making it easier to see what folks were talking about and allowing our visitors to read and even reply to them as well.

    On my own website(s) I’m looking to write more content and share more of my experiences. I’m at a time in my life that documenting what is going on so I can recall things easier would be helpful, a place to publicly share my notes in hopes that it will help someone else.

    IndieBlocks

    After talking with Jan both on Mastodon and later taking that conversation in part to WPwatercooler EP435 – WordPress Takes Flight: Community in a Post Twitter World I’m finding that IndieBlocks may be the way to go since most of the indieweb plugins that are out there are lacking block editor compatibility and most of them state you need classic editor enabled which isn’t helpful if you are trying to move forward with the way in which WordPress is going with the block editor. Maybe some of these devs haven’t “learn javascript deeply” like Matt Mullenweg suggested and are still stuck in PHP land like many of the people like me are, sadly.

    Friends Plugin

    An intresting plugin came up in my Mastodon feed recently called Friends which states that

    With the Friends Plugin for WordPress you can now consume content your friends (or other blogs) create, and interact with your friends on their blogs with seamless authentication.

    As soon as you become friends, both of you get accounts on each other’s WordPresses that you can then use post comments or read private posts. You’ll use the account on your friend’s server just by clicking on their post on your own Friends page.

    You can also use the Friends plugin as a capable self-hosted feed reader. With added parser support through plugins you can subscribe to all sorts of content, also on other social networks, allowing you to see what your friends do across social network borders.
    https://wordpress.org/plugins/friends/

    This sounds interesting but also sounds like most of the interaction with others happens in WordPress and with the use of bookmarks or bookmarklets.

    The rest of the fediverse

    I’ve been playing with a few other Fediverse solutions such as Pixelfed for sharing photos, Peertube for sharing videos and CastoPod for podcast hosting. I’ll be exploring Castopod sooner than later because I’d love to have WPwatercooler podcast as native a possible to the Fediverse than it is now.

    Reply

  709. On the IndieWeb chat, Chris Aldrich prompted a discussion about people migrating away from Twitter. I started to reply, but I realized it would be better to post a note here — partly as a nudge to myself and partly to get back in the habit of writing.

    I have a moral objection to the way Elon Musk is running Twitter. This post won’t go into all those details, but the short version is that he is allowing racists, antisemites, and outright Nazis back on the platform under the guise of “free speech.” See also: this succinct note by Ben Werdmuller.

    In late 2019, I was pushing myself to get off of Facebook. It was important for me to keep in contact with people from there, so I started setting up a newsletter. I intended to post a farewell notice and let people subscribe to stay in touch. That stalled due to the pandemic, though thankfully I have been successful at not posting on Facebook! With the recent Twitter events, I’m spurred to get this done and quickly.

    My near-term plan is to finish up the newsletter subscription system, publish a How to Follow Me page with details of the newsletter, my feeds, and even Mastodon to follow along. Then I will write an announcement post on Twitter and pin it. I will probably change my display name to “Find me at gregorlove.com.” In the following months, I may make my Twitter account private.

    I have my Twitter export and intend to archive them all on my site and delete them from Twitter, but that is a longer-term project. Eventually my Twitter profile will just be a pointer to my site.

    If you are already on Mastodon and want to follow me now, visit https://fed.brid.gy/user/gregorlove.com and enter your Mastodon username.

    Reply

  710. This is a good nudge for me to figure out what I’ll do after working on Sele and Shock for a bit. I do want to give people a way to keep tabs on me if they’d like. I think I might crib some ideas you have here!

    Reply

  712. I rather like the way Chris Aldrich has check-ins on his website. But my current workflow for posting isn’t friendly enough to do it:Take a photo (or more)Create a Hugo post (in Emacs, which creates the directory as I’m using page bundles)Move the photo(s) into the directoryAdd the details of the photo’s into the postPublish the whole thing. Yes, I don’t have continuous integration going; well I do, but only when I make a commit to git.There is a lot of friction involved; so much that I couldn’t be bothered to do it. But technology is wonderful, ain’t it.I’ve created a new section at check-ins. A pretty obvious name. I toyed with just creating regular blog posts and tagging them as check-ins, but the formatting is a little different to regular posts, and that drove my decision. That said, I think Chris is using ‘regular posts’ (based on the URLs he is using).I spent most of yesterday getting to grips with using Python to access my email provider through IMAP. Which allowed me to create a smoother process.Take a photo or twoEmail them to myself (well, a special email address)My process-email.py script does some magicScan my inbox for the special email addressUse the subject as the title of the postCreate the folderSave the photosCreate a check-in post using the body of the email, and embedding the photosPublish the whole thingThis flow seems to work for me, and I think it is probably just as easy as using an app or similar (especially once I add a tweaks that follow).I’m umm-ing and ah-ing about whether I should run the script periodically from cron or just do it manually once in a while.Things still to do. I have to manually post hoc add tags to the check-in. I think I want to embedded them in the email and parse them out. E.g., Using something like #coffee #travel in the email message, and convert them to tags.I would also like a smarter way to display the photos. Currently I stack them one on top of the other, but I like how Chris has done some of his.Finally, I’d like to surface the location. I have the GPS info from the photo’s exif data and that will just take a little more processing.As an aside, I wondering about using this as an opportunity to create something in Go. I’ve dabbled a little with it in the past, but I’ve never had something ‘real’ to do with it. W

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  714. Your #IndieWeb site can be the home you’ve always wanted on the internet.While posting on a personal site has many^1 advantages^2 over only posting to #socialMedia, maybe you already quit social media silos^3.There are lots of reasons to get a domain name^4 and setup your own homepage on the web.If you’re a web professional, a personal site with your name on it (perhaps also in its domain) can make it easier for potential employers to find you and read your description in your own words.If you’re a web developer, a personal home page is also an opportunity to demonstrate your craft.^5If you’re a writer, you can organize your words, essays, and longer form articles in a form that’s easier for readers to browse, and style them to both be easier to read, and express your style better than any silo.Similarly if you’re an artist, photographer, or any other kind of content creator.See https://indieweb.org/homepage for more reasons why, and what other kinds of things you can put on your home page.Thanks to Chris Aldrich (https://boffosocko.com/) for the header image.This is day 13 of #100DaysOfIndieWeb #100Days.← Day 12: https://tantek.com/2023/012/t1/six-years-webmention-w3c→ 🔮^1 https://tantek.com/2023/001/t1/own-your-notes^2 https://tantek.com/2023/005/t3/indieweb-simpler-approach^3 https://indieweb.org/silo-quits^4 https://tantek.com/2023/004/t1/choosing-domain-name-indieweb^5 https://indieweb.org/creator

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  715. When you publish on your #IndieWeb site, you can decide afterwards where to distribute your content, and when. Figure out how you want to fit into the network of sites & instances.We call this POSSE — for Publish on your Own Site, then Syndicate Elsewhere.^1By prioritizing your own site, you decide whether (and when) you want to syndicate your posts (or a particular post) to a feed, to a fediverse, to a social media silo or silos, and/or to email like a newsletter.You can make it as simple or as detailed as you want. It’s up to you.Choose deliberately. Change your mind when things change. You can opt out of any destination, either by not opting-in, i.e. explicitly not sending your posts to them, or blocking them if necessary.Here are a few of the destination decisions I’ve made, and reasons why.You can delay sending a post to an RSS or Atom feed, say 10 minutes after the time of publication, to give yourself a chance to edit your post, fix typos or links, before a classic feed reader retrieves and perhaps caches your post.You can further delay sending to known uneditable destinations, like Twitter or email, to give yourself even longer to make further edits, corrections, updates, or improvements based on feedback to your original post.Some destination decisions may depend on the type of post.When you post a reply to someone else’s post, in addition to sending a webmention to that other post, it makes sense to also distribute it to where that other post was originally distributed, or a subset thereof, threading your POSSE reply with their original post POSSE copy.https://indieweb.org/reply#POSSE_a_replyFor example, if you reply to someone’s IndieWeb note, and they’ve POSSEd that note to Twitter, you should POSSE your reply to Twitter as well, threading it with their POSSE copy, if you’re still using Twitter that is. If they did not POSSE their original note to Twitter, there may be reasons to POSSE your reply to Twitter anyway, if your reply makes sense there on its own.https://indieweb.org/Twitter#POSSE_Replies_to_TwitterSome destinations have content limitations^2, and you may want to take that into consideration when authoring your content, or not.For example, you may want to more carefully copy-edit the first 256 (for now) characters of a note if you plan to POSSE to Twitter, so that the content that makes it through makes sense as an introduction, or a summary, or a hook, and perhaps has discovery features like hashtags. https://indieweb.org/Twitter#POSSE_Notes_to_TwitterYou can use that POSSE tweet text length limitation strategically, placing content after that 256 character cut-off that you may want to edit or expand in an update, or content Twitter may mess-up, like @-domain mentions I described yesterday (day 14).When you publish a multiphoto^3 post, if you’re POSSEing to Twitter, you may want to re-order your photos to choose which four photos show up in your POSSE tweet, e.g. if you happen to be using Bridgy Publish to cross-post your photos to Twitter. You can always re-order your original multiphoto post after POSSEing it. If you’re POSSEing photos to Instagram, since you can only do that manually, there’s no need to edit your original to fit Instagram’s 10-photo limitation, or 2200 characters caption limit, or 30 hashtags limit, or 20 person-tags limit.https://indieweb.org/multi-photo#How_to_POSSEOr you can reconsider what if anything you get from syndicating to Twitter or Instagram. Are people still seeing and interacting with your posts there? Are your friends?If & when social media algorithms deprioritize your original posts in favor of showing more ads, you can deprioritize posting to social media.If & when your friends quit social media silos^4, you can quit posting copies of your posts to those social media silos.You decide what content goes where, when, why, and can change your decisions any time you want.POSSEing to social media was always a stopgap. As social media silos self-destruct, you can stop syndicating to them.Thanks to Chris Aldrich (https://boffosocko.com/) for the banner image.This is day 15 of #100DaysOfIndieWeb #100Days.← Day 14: https://tantek.com/2023/014/t4/domain-first-federated-atmention→ 🔮^1 https://indieweb.org/POSSE^2 Day 5: https://tantek.com/2023/005/t3/indieweb-simpler-approach^3 https://indieweb.org/multi-photo^4 https://indieweb.org/silo-quits

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  716. Brain Baking never happens in isolation. This page contains a selection of curious websites and fellow bloggers that deserve a shout-out. It is a nostalgic throwback to the nineties links or blogroll pages, like my recently excavated 2007 browser bookmarks.
    Visit blogroll.org for a superior curated list of fine personal & independent blogs. If you’re looking for something specific, consider searching on searchmysite.net which focuses on content created by independent blogs. Both are great ways to get to know new people and sites.
    Programming

    Improved Means for Achieving Deteriorated Ends, Lisp stuff by Brit Butler.
    Jessitron by Jessica Kerr, a symmathecist and enterprise software developer.
    Josh W Comeau, a CSS expert that produces beautiful howtos.
    Programming Digressions by Akram Ahmad, lovely cross-cultural digressions.
    The Pragmatic Engineer newsletters by Gergely Orosz.
    ENOSUCHBLOG by William Woodruff, on programming and philosophy.

    General Blogging & IndieWeb

    Digging The Digital by Frank Meeuwsen, the quintessential Dutch blogger.
    Ana Rodrigues, mixed jottings of tech and personal experiences.
    BoffoSocko by Chris Aldrich, a modern day cybernetics blogging about blogging.
    Obsolete29 by Mike Harley, Privacy-aware posts in-between life.
    Peter Rukavina, Canadian stories on life, journaling, and printing.
    Stefan Imhoff, a German Stoic that also codes in NeoVim.
    Roy Tang, a programmer from the Philippines writing about life and games.
    Henrique Dias, a Portuguese computer scientist living in the Netherlands.

    Psychology & Philosophy

    Winnie Lim, slow inner philosophical thoughts on the fast outer world.
    The Marginalian, an endless search for curiosity by Maria Popova.
    Farnam Street, self-improvement served in digestible bits.
    The School of Life articles that help learn, heal, grow.

    Vintage Computing

    Blake Patterson, a modern day old Byte Cellar junkyard to marvel at.
    Ancient Electronics walkthroughs of old hardware by Justin Wl.
    Rubenerd by Ruben Schade, an active blog on all things nerdy and vintage.

    Retro Gaming

    The CRPG Addict by Chester Bolingbroke.
    Strife Streams by Peter Bridger. Regular nuggets of classic retro gaming.
    Fabien Sanglard, in-depth reverse-engineering articles on game engines.
    Random Battles, A life long level grind story by Justin Wl.
    Virtual Moose, interactive fiction & game history by Michael Klamerus.
    Buried Treasure, John Walker digs up undiscovered indie games.
    Pixelmusement by Kris Asick, weekly videos about DOS shovelware.
    Kemenaran by Pierre Morinerie, Zelda GB hacks in French.

    News sites & clubs

    Hardcore Gaming 101, podcasts and reviews of old and new.
    The DOS Game Club, where we play a DOS game each month.
    Retronauts, the seminal retro gaming podcast by ex-1UP members.

    As for fan sites, too much to mention: The Castlevania Dungeon, Animal Crossing Blogs by JVGS, Albion (1995, BlueByte) by IS4, Flamestryke’s Wizardry and Might & Magic sites, Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together and Knights of Lodis.
    Board Games

    The Tao of Gaming by Brian Bankler, board games and lesser pursuits.
    The 1Player Podcast dedicated to solitare games.
    Shelf Wear by Jonathan Schindler.
    Shut Up & Sit Down videos and podcast, British humor included.
    Stidjen Plays Solo, reviews by Stijn from a solo perspective.

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  720. One of our #IndieWeb principles is Use What You Make^1. We use the metaphor Eat What You Cook^2 to more broadly relate to creators^3 of all kinds, the chefs & cooks of the IndieWeb.Cooks often taste their dishes while cooking, and modify them accordingly. Some even prepare entire dishes or meals to try themselves first, before preparing them for others.On the IndieWeb, some of us do the same by first testing our own code changes in production^4 on our personal sites, before publishing them more widely. Sometimes we let our changes simmer on our own sites for a while, before serving our code for others to consume.I myself have been most recently testing in production my at-mention auto-linking updates^5 on my site for over a week now. They seem to be working well, and I haven’t noticed any errors or regressions, so I’ll likely roll at least some of those changes into the CASSIS GitHub repo soon.While testing in production may be a reasonable & good practice for personal sites, it’s often a bad idea for corporate or critical web sites or services, and there’s no shortage of such examples.I have been wanting to write about our IndieWeb “test in production” practices for a while, and finally created a separate page on the IndieWeb wiki accordingly^4, organizing content from other pages, and adding examples beyond the IndieWeb as well.Do you write code for your website that you test there in production before sharing it more broadly on GitHub etc.? Add yourself to the examples section^6Thanks to Chris Aldrich (https://boffosocko.com/) for the eating what you cook banner image.This is day 20 of #100DaysOfIndieWeb #100Days, written two days after. I have some double days ahead of me.← Day 19: https://tantek.com/2023/020/t2/bridgy-fed-follow-form→ 🔮^1 https://indieweb.org/use_what_you_make^2 https://indieweb.org/eat_what_you_cook, much more palatable than prior “selfdogfood” or “dogfood” metaphors from other open source related communities.^3 https://indieweb.org/creator^4 https://indieweb.org/test_in_production^5 https://tantek.com/2023/011/t1/indieweb-evolving-at-mention^6 https://indieweb.org/test_in_production#IndieWeb_Examples

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  721. The Verge published an article titled “bring back personal blogging”. It starts:

    In the beginning, there were blogs, and they were the original social web. We built community. We found our people. We wrote personally. We wrote frequently. We self-policed, and we linked to each other so that newbies could discover new and good blogs.

    I want to go back there.

    It was published on December 31, 2022, the time of the year when we all feel that energy to look at the compass and at the map, to calibrate, and to course correct. “It’s not too late”, we think.

    Some commenters say that blogging is back with a vengeance. Surreptitiously, it has taken the form of newsletters and substacks.

    I beg to differ.

    Blogs never went extinct and blogging is more than publishing thoughts, essays, and personal stuff.

    Blogging is owning your little corner of the internet. Owning your content, your domain name, the aesthetics of your website (your theme), the freedom to tinker with the front-end and back-end, and much more.

    Substacks and newsletters taste like prepackaged food to me, and look like “this is a post full of commonplaces to lure you into the top of my funnel so I can sell you an online course later on.”

    The packaging in itself is also a glitch. The finest maguro and the cheapest kamaboko come in the same package. Tweets and substacks look pretty much the same, regardless of the aesthetic sensitivity of the creator. We can do better.

    I hope that The Verge is right and we see a return to the happy times. The social media swell is perhaps coming to its end.

    The only social media app that I use is Instagram. This for the strict purpose of staying connected with friends that I wouldn’t be able to contact otherwise (I don’t have their cell numbers or email addresses). I also keep a twitter account for daydreaming purposes: I fantasize about using twitter as a replacement for the comments section of blogs.

    little corners

    Here are two personal sites that I found in the last couple of days. One I find fascinating for its ambition of totalization, the other for its simplicity and design.

    Chris Aldrich

    Andy Bell

    following the white rabbit

    In my explorations of personal blogs, I’ve stumbled upon a few disciples of the IndieWeb movement. Many of their principles are in harmony with my view of the web. But I’m afraid of going down the rabbit hole and joining Cooper in his interstellar voyage.

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  722. I’m pretty sure Chris Aldrich’s site is where I first learned about using ↬ (“rightwards arrow with loop”) for giving credit. (The symbol would then mean something like hat tip. “Via” is something else, still, apparently, although the distinction isn’t super clear to me. Since I already mark up reposts with microformats, I’m going to stick with this one—“hat tip”—for now.)
    Not sure if I should rework the format, use the “h-cite” microformat (or a cite element). cite should really only be used on the title of a cited work—please correct me if I’m wrong—whereas I would prefer to credit the person that lead me to whatever bit of information I stumbled upon, all while still linking, when possible, to a more specific blog post or page.
    Anyhow, I don’t give credit nearly enough—this here is like the third time or so. Let’s change that.
    ↬ Chris Aldrich

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  723. Ниже представлена подборка ресурсов, которые рассказывают о методологии создания базы знаний.

    –––

    https://zettelkasten.de

    Пожалуй, лучший ресурс, развивающий подход Никласа Лумана. Здесь вы найдете полезные видеоматериалы, статьи, форум с обсуждениями различных аспектов системы.

    –––

    https://writingcooperative.com/zettelkasten-how-one-german-scholar-was-so-freakishly-productive-997e4e0ca125

    Статья, где обобщаются идеи и практики с предыдущего сайта. На самом деле, стартовать лучше всего отсюда. Хорошие иллюстрации, ясное изложение.

    –––

    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NfdHG6oHBJ8Qxc26s/the-zettelkasten-method-1

    Длинная статья Абрама Демски на сайте сообщества Lesswrong. Автор уделяет большое внимание принципам работы с аналоговым архивом (реальными бумажными карточками). Даже если вы намерены использовать цифровой подход, прочитать стоит. Хотя бы для того, чтобы понять базовые принципы.

    –––

    https://v4.chriskrycho.com/zettelkasten/index.html

    Сборник заметок Криса Кручо. Есть интересные идеи о технике создания архива.

    –––

    http://www.dansheffler.com/tags/Zettlekasten

    Еще один сборник заметок. На сей раз от Дэна Шеффлера. Разные лайфхаки по созданию электронного архива.

    –––

    https://boffosocko.com

    Блог Криса Алдрича со множеством статей об управлении знаниями. Алдрич невероятно дотошный исследователь. Если вы заинтересованы в серьезном изучении истории вопроса, вам сюда.

    –––

    Разумеется, существует не только подход Лумана.

    Достойна упоминания практика Райна Холидея.

    https://ryanholiday.net/the-notecard-system-the-key-for-remembering-organizing-and-using-everything-you-read

    и Роберта Грина (Cсылка на статью Пауло Рибейро, которые анализирует практику Грина).

    https://medium.com/@paulorrj/the-robert-greene-method-of-writing-books-e175ade04897

    –––

    https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes

    Ресурс, на котором много материалов по поводу того, как организовать базу знаний. Сам ресурс оформлен в виде гипертекстовой энциклопедии.

    –––

    https://www.roambrain.com

    Ресурс посвященный техниками и приёмам работы с Roam research. Большинство советов связано с принципами ведения электронной базы знаний, потому они будут полезны независимо от приложения.
    Bookmark: reddit.com/r/qnnnp/commen…



    http://www.dansheffler.com/tags/Zettlekasten
    https://boffosocko.com
    https://medium.com/@paulorrj/the-robert-greene-method-of-writing-books-e175ade04897
    https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About
    https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes
    https://ryanholiday.net/the-notecard-system-the-key-for-remembering-organizing-and-using-everything-you-read
    https://v4.chriskrycho.com/zettelkasten/index.html
    https://writingcooperative.com/zettelkasten-how-one-german-scholar-was-so-freakishly-productive-997e4e0ca125
    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NfdHG6oHBJ8Qxc26s/the-zettelkasten-method-1
    https://www.roambrain.com
    https://zettelkasten.de

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  728. Indie bloggers I like

    Jeremy Felt – WordPress, indieweb, baking, the Palouse, and family. Weekly life updates.

    Chris Aldrich – Biomedical, indieweb, mathematics, zettlekasten, tools for thought

    Maggie Appleton – Visual essays, design, programming, tools for thought, digital garden

    Tom Critchlow – Indieweb, blogging, wiki, quotebacks

    Jackson Bierfeldt – Motorcycles, travel, polyglot, indie games, programming

    Rich Tabor – WordPress, block and theme development

    Marco Arment – iOS development, podcasting, coffee

    Zach Caceres – Software, learning, startup cities

    Anne McCarthy – Nomadic lifestyle, mental health, and making one’s way in life

    Rob Felty – Programming, linguistics, German, Elastic Search. Has a family blog with great annual reports.

    Matt Mullenweg – WordPress, open source, Automattic

    Artur Piszek – Programming, remote work, psychology

    David Bisset – WordPress, BuddyPress, Post Status

    Ton Zijlstra – Indieweb, knowledge work, networks

    Chris Hardie – WordPress, local journalism

    Kimberly Hirsh – Indieweb, connected learning, parenting

    Alexey Guzey – Science, machine learning, blogging

    Julien Desrosiers – Front-end programming, indieweb, Montréal

    Alan Charlesworth – Programming and weekly life updates

    Jamie Tanna – Indieweb, blogging, software engineering, weekly life updates

    Ben Werdmuller – Indieweb, blogging, online communities, building software

    Tiffany Bridge – WordPress, cooking, recommendations

    Brandon Kraft – Musings on life and technology from a Jetpacker/A12

    Chris Glass – Photos and links, indieweb

    Danny Guo – Tech, startups

    Anne-Laure Le Cunff – Neuroscience, creativity, and productivity

    Chris Johnson – Web and iOS development, movies

    Frank Chimero – Design, blogging

    Gwern – Psychology, statistics, and technology

    Idle Words – Maciej Cegłowski’s blog, the pinboard guy

    Ilya Radchenko – Front-end programming, family

    Interconnected – Matt Webb on technology, since 2000

    Om Malik – Om on tech and photography

    Irrational Exuberance – Will Larson on software engineering leadership and tech

    Jim Nielson – Programming, design, tech in general, readlists

    Kevin Marks – Microformats, indieweb

    Daring Fireball – John Gruber. Tech commentary, occasional link posts

    Marty McGuire – Indieweb, tech

    Simon Willison – Datasette, data science, indieweb

    Bradley Taunt – UX, design, technology

    Mitchell Sipus – creating companies, products, infrastructure

    Paul Ford – Ftrain. Programming, building, tech

    Darius Kazemi – Bots, generators, weird internet stuff

    Kottke – Cool stuff from around the web and commentary

    Fab Fridays – On education and learning by Ana Lorena Fabrega

    Hannah Frankman – Education, learning, coaching

    MidAtlantic Daytrips – Traveling in the midatlantic region of the US

    Art of Noticing – Rob Walker on ideas, creativity, and humanity

    Cal Newport – Thinking, productivity, work

    CMT blog – Dan Knauss on CMT, living with disability

    Eric Meyer – CSS, technology, web standards

    Ali Spittel – Teaching people how to code, career advice in tech

    Jean-Baptiste Audras – WordPress core committer in France

    Erica Sadun – Programmer, author of lots of programming books

    Helen Hou-Sandí – WordPress lead developer. UX, music, software

    Inessential – Brent Simmons on NewNetsWire, software development

    Julia Evans – Technology, programming, zines

    Justin Tadlock – Front-end dev, WordPress, writer, gardener

    Patrick McKenzie – aka patio11 on marketing, engineering, business

    Manton Reece – Software development, micro.blog, feeds, IndieWeb, life, books

    Nadia Asparouhova – How people work and live online. Open source software.

    Cheri Lucas Rowlands – Editor of Longreads

    Bruce Schneier – All things security

    Phil Glyford – Maker of ooh.directory, great weekly blog posts

    anhvn – Designer with a digital garden, sketchbook, media library, project library, and journal/blog. Love the Meta section, too.

    Digital Gardens

    Maggie Appleton’s digital garden

    Tom Critchlow’s wiki

    Jeremy Felt’s foggy garden

    Ton Zijlstra’s wiki

    Chris Johnson’s knowledgebase

    Michael Nielson’s notebook

    Chris Aldrich’s wiki-based commonplace book

    Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s Mental Nodes

    Chuck Grimmett’s Notes – my digital garden

    Art & Design

    Ahmad Moussa/Gorilla Sun – Creative Coding, algorithms, p5.js

    Amy Goodchild – Generative art techniques and algorithms

    Tyler Hobbs – Essays on generative art and algorithms

    Austin Kleon – A writer who draws

    Chris Ried / Generative Collective – Creative coding news

    Flashy Programming – Nat Sarkissian on generative art, with his distinct natural style

    Inconvergent – Generative art and techniques by Anders Hoff

    George Francis – Generative art and programming

    Ben Kovach – Generative art and algorithms

    Immutable Collective – Creative coding news from a French generative art collective, founded by Camille Roux and Matthieu Segret

    Disquiet – Sound, art, and technology since 1996

    Hicks Design Journal – Design, art, tech

    Jeff Palmer – Generative art and data visualization

    Andy Kirk – Data visualization

    The Pudding – Visual essays

    Anders Norén – Designer of beautiful WordPress themes

    Food & Drink

    Jeffrey Morganthaler – Bartending and cocktails since 2004

    Rum Wonk and Cocktail Wonk – Matt Pietrek on rum and cocktails. Also a good tiki book.

    Enid Wine Guy – Mitchell Earl on wine

    Alcademics – The Study of Booze by Camper English

    Alison Roman – Newsletter with great recipes

    A Piece of Cake – Recipes from Bill Clark. Cakes and desserts, occasional meals

    Drinking & Knowing Things – A newsletter to teach you about wine.

    Good Drinks – Alcohol-free cocktails from Julia Bainbridge

    Michael Ruhlman – Recipes, cocktails, and the like. Clevelander ex-pat.

    Modern Tiki – Nicole Weston and Robert Sharp on tropical cocktails

    David Lebovitz – French desserts and cocktails

    Rancho Gordo Blog – On beans and how to cook them

    The Woks of Life – Chinese family exploring their heritage through cooking

    Tiki with Ray – Tiki bar reviews and cocktails

    Books, Literature, and Writing

    The Literary Saloon – M.A.Orthofer daily on literature since 2002

    Lost Art Press – Woodworking

    Transom Bookshop – Blog by Chris Steib at Transom Bookshop in Tarrytown, NY

    Books Read By – What interesting people are reading

    Summer Brennan – Essays, writing, cultural criticism

    Austin Kleon – A writer who draws. Frequent book recommendations

    Epic Magazine – Great true stores

    Longreads – Collections of the best longform writing

    Subtle Maneuvers – Mason Currey on routines, rituals, and wriggling through a creative life

    A Working Library – A blog about work, reading, and tech by Mandy Brown

    Andrew Spittle – Reading notes, thoughts on customer service

    Close Reading – The Slant Books blog

    David Perell – Writing, essays

    Eliot Peper – Book recommendations, writing sci-fi

    Word Hoard – Jane Scharl on writing and the written word

    James Somers – Programmer on writing, technology

    jcreviewsbooks – Jamie Palatnik reviews books and recommends indie bookstores

    Locus Magazine – All things sci-fi

    Claudia Dawson – Poetry, writing, and editing

    Robin Sloan – Writing, novels, short stories

    Econ & Commentary

    Marginal Revolution – Updated daily since 2003. Tyler Cowen & Alex Tabbarok. A treasure.

    Carl Oberg – Alaska, accounting, history, Freemasonry

    ParentData – Emily Oster, evidence-based pregnancy and parenting

    Vitalik Buterin – Crypto, technology, economics

    Ben Casnocha – Entrepreneurship, commentary, often good book recommendations

    Paul Graham – Startups, commentary, working

    Isaac Morehouse – Entrepreneurship, education, freedom

    Julie Fredrickson – Startups, ecommerce, general commentary

    The Technium – Kevin Kelly on life, tech, and trends

    Mitchell Earl – Working, careers, marketing

    Works in Progress – Ideas for improving the world. Science, tech, politics.

    Zak Slayback – Society (progress & regress), technology (deep and light), and exploration

    Woodworking, Cræft, Gardening

    Lost Art Press blog – Woodworking, hand tools, books

    Aspiring Peasant – Dave on gardening, homesteading, and parenting

    Alex Langlands – Craft, history, and archaeology

    Giant Cypress – Wilbur Pan on Japanese woodworking and woodworking

    Growing with the Shumans – Sarah Shuman on homesteading, family, and sustainable living

    Simon Sarris – anecdotes, fables, tales, family, gardening, building

    Modern Farmer – Farm, food, the industry

    Peter Galbert – Notes on chairmaking

    David Fisher – Greenwood carving

    Elia Bizzarri – Hand tool woodworking

    Gareth Branwyn – Tool tips and shop tales

    Paul Sellers – Woodworking, primarily hand tools

    Peter Follansbee – seventeenth-century joined furniture; green wood, hand tools

    Megan Fitzpatrick – Woodworking, editing, publishing

    Product Recommendations

    Cool Tools – Kevin Kelly and Mark Frauenfelder, excellent recommendations

    Caroline Finds It – Caroline Weaver, pencil queen, finds things people ask her about

    The Pen Addict – All about pens and stationary, Brad Dowdy

    Uses This – Interviews with people about the tools they use to do their work

    Other Blogrolls & Linkblogs

    https://blogroll.org/

    https://ooh.directory/

    https://github.com/MaggieAppleton/digital-gardeners

    Longreads – Collections of the best longform writing

    This Week in the IndieWeb

    IndieNews – Aggregator of IndieWeb stuff

    BringBack.blog directory – Indie bloggers who are participating in the Bring Back Blogging challenge

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  729. These index cards provide improvisation prompts. They contain words to use and suggestions for actions to use in a game of improvisation. One grouping of words and actions per index card. Seeing them laid out next to each other obviously reminded me of the use of index cards in personal learning/knowledge systems that are based on physical cards or made digitally (keeping one thing per note file), as well as of flash cards (like for spaced repetition). And it made me think of Chris Aldrich who collects examples of using index cards like these, as well as of Peter who is part of an improv group.
    This set contains 108 cards with ‘nuclei’ of words and actions for improv. They were created by Jackson Mac Low in 1961 as ‘nuclei for Simone Forti‘ after seeing her perform in Yoko Ono’s loft. They were used by her as well as by Trisha Brown.
    I came across this set of cards at the ‘Fondation du doute‘, the institute of doubt, in Blois, in a exhibition on the postmodern ‘Fluxus‘ movement that Jackson Mac Low participated in for some time.

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  737. Peter Addor Chris Aldrich David Anon (Forking Mad +) Assaf Arkin (Lapnotes) Benjamin Birkenhake (anmut und demut) Tim Bray (ongoing) Nico Brunjes (Couchblog) James Cussen…

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  744. Typewriter Market: It may be better if you didn’t get an Olympia SM3 typewriter today (2025-02-18) by @chrisaldrichhttps://boffosocko.com/2025/02/17/typewriter-market-it-may-be-better-if-you-didnt-get-an-olympia-sm3-typewriter-today/?utm_source=indieblog.page&utm_medium=mastodon&utm_campaign=indieblog.page 2bd587921059465831e29f0c47ffe4a4-477272#blog #blogging #blogpost #random blog blogging blogpost…

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