opml | Chris Aldrich

IndieWeb Collection

Over the past several years I've written a broad number of pieces about the IndieWeb. I find that many people are now actively searching for, reading, and implementing various versions of what I've done, particularly on the WordPress Platform. Because of some discussions at IndieWebCamp Baltimore, work I'm doing on my related book, interactions with…

Reply to Aggregating the Decentralized Social Web by Jason Green

Replied to Aggregating the Decentralized Social Web by Jason Green (þoht-hord)

There are actually three problems to solve, reading, which is relatively easy, posting, which is harder, and social graph management, which is quite complex.

Some brief thoughts: There are actually three problems to solve, reading, which is relatively easy, posting, which is harder, and social graph management, which is quite complex. I might submit that posting is possibly the easiest of the three and that the reader problem is the most difficult. This is based on the tremendous number…

A Following Page (aka some significant updates to my Blogroll)

The humble blogroll is long overdue for some updates in form and functionality on the open web.

Reply to Laying the Standards for a Blogging Renaissance by Aaron Davis

Replied to Laying the Standards for a Blogging Renaissance by Aaron Davis (Read Write Respond)

With the potential demise of social media, does this offer a possible rebirth of blogging communities and the standards they are built upon?

Aaron, some excellent thoughts and pointers. A lot of your post also reminds me of Bryan Alexander's relatively recent post I defy the world and to go back to RSS. I completely get the concept of what you're getting at with harkening back to the halcyon days of RSS. I certainly love, use, and rely…

Reply to I defy the world and go back to RSS by Bryan Alexander

Replied to I defy the world and go back to RSS by Bryan Alexander (bryanalexander.org)

It may be perverse, but in this age of Facebook (now 2 billion strong) I’ve decided to rededicate myself to RSS reading. That’s right: old school, Web 2.0 style. Why? A big reason is that Facebook’s front page is so, so massively unreliable. Despite having huge numbers of people that are my friends, clients, and contacts, it’s just not a good reading and writing service. Facebook’s black box algorithm(s) may or may not present a given’s user’s post for reasons generally inscrutable. I’ve missed friends’ news about new jobs, divorces, and deaths because the Zuckerbergmachine deems them unworthy of inclusion in my personalized river of news. In turn, I have little sense of who will see my posts, so it’s hard to get responses and very hard to pitch my writing for an intended audience. Together, this makes the FB experience sketchy at best. To improve our use of it we have to turn to experiments and research that remind me of Cold War Kremlinology.

Bryan, so much of what you're saying is not only not backwards, but truly awesome and inspiring, and not just with respect to RSS. I've lately become more enamored of not only RSS, but new methods for feeds including lighter weight versions like microformats h-feeds. A few months ago I was inspired to embed the…

Favorite Things

Some might consider this a "/uses" page, a "Using" page, a "Recommendations page" or something equivalent. Simply put, it's a list of the tools and things I find incredibly useful and intriguing. Most of them are things I either use on a daily basis or couldn't get along without. They're things I love and have…