Replied to About this site by Dan Mackinlay (danmackinlay.name)

Many ideas about how this site is used and presented are cribbed from the notebooks of Cosma Shalizi, which I find a pleasant format to read. The content is my own, except where otherwise stated. The fiddly details of how it works are here, and the really fiddly in-progress details are on my TODO list.

I love your site Dan and follow many of the same philosophies myself. Your notebook idea is a great one. If you want to extend it a bit, you could go full digital commonplace book to encompass even more.

I notice that in your follow me section you’ve got a handful of buttons that may eventually begin to give you a NASCAR Problem, or prompt others to say “What about feed reader XYZ?”

I’ve run into the issue before and used Julien Genestoux‘s excellent SubToMe follow button. It’s got a simple user interface, allows you to recommend a particular feed reader, but also gives readers the choice of several dozen other common feed readers. Best, it functions relatively well without getting into the whole what-is-RSS-and-how-do-I-use-it-issues. Obviously we have a long way to go to make some of these things simpler and easier to use, but slow iteration will get us there eventually.