Okuna is an ethical social network silo for a brighter tomorrow.
I remember hearing about this when it was Openbook. Interesting to see where they’re at now, though it looks like it’s got a huge way to go.
Tag: silo
👓 Sciencescape Wants To Solve Academic Research Discoverability, Deal With The Noise Problem | TechCrunch
Toronto-based startup Sciencescape came about because of a problem that was significant enough to lure co-founder Sam Molyneux away from a bourgeoning career as a cancer researcher, and into a new venture that wants to tackle the bigger picture issue of fixing the entire system of academic, medical…
Checking in on Sciencescape and it’s fate since I had an account there once upon a time and it’s now no longer resolving.
👓 Medium import for Micro.blog | Manton Reece
Manton Reece (manton.org)Micro.blog can now import blog posts from Medium. You can request a .zip archive of your content from Medium.com, then go to Posts → Import on Micro.blog to upload the file. Because Medium no longer supports custom domain names, we don’t think it’s a good long-term solution for blogging. If yo...
This is some awesome news, particularly for all the people fleeing Medium. Now they can own their own data on their own domain a whole lot easier. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more of the #DoOO crowd joining Micro.blog as an option too.
👓 Luminary. A better way to podcast
Luminary is a podcast streaming platform that gives you access to 500k+ shows, when and where you want. Sign up today and be the first to try @luminary!
Look ma! Another stand alone app-cum silo billing itself as a podcast solution. What do you want to bet there’s no RSS and it won’t work with any other podcatcher?
🔖 Highly: Highlight to share.
Highlight the web to share the important parts.
Signing up for yet-another-silo. This one has some slick-looking UI and lots of social and sharing integrations. Their shares to Twitter look interesting, but I really wish there were some better ways to share so well to my own website. Sadly, unlike Hypothes.is, it doesn’t have any annotation functionality. I didn’t find my Twitter colleagues like Jon Udell, Nate Angell, or Jeremy Dean on the service through their Twitter integration set up.
After a cursory look, I’m worried what their funding and monetization plans are and where my data will be in just a few years. While it’s certainly pretty, I far prefer the functionality (and community) that Hypothes.is offers, so I’m not moving any time soon. Definitely worth taking a look at for some of its UI features and interactions and future functionality.
I’ve seen a lot of people freaking out about the Google+ data leak and even more so about it’s pending shut down. In response many are looking at where they’re planning on going next that will give them the functionality they’re looking for. Sadly, however, almost every one of them is contemplating moving to identical types of platforms which are either incredibly similar to or even worse than Google+ given the criterion by which they are considering. They’re simply looking for and prioritizing the wrong types of functionality.
Quit repeating the mistakes of the past, learn from them, and do something different this time around or I guarantee history will be repeating itself.
While there are a handful of reasonable options (and by this I DO NOT mean Mastodon, Diaspora, Pluspora, MeWe, Vero, Twitter, Facebook, or Solid, etc.) I’d recommend looking at some of the ideas and solutions within the IndieWeb movement. For the less technical minded I highly recommend taking a look at a self-hosted WordPress option or micro.blog.
I’m happy to help people out with making the jump when they’re ready or if they need help.
👓 Custom Domains service deprecation | Medium
Medium is no longer offering new custom domains as a feature. Instead, you can create a publication on Medium that will live on a medium.com/publication-name URL. Existing publications on custom do...
The amount of work required to support this feature should be exceedingly low. It’s probably a good indication that Medium won’t be around within a year or so.
This definitely signals the fact that Medium has moved toward the more silo end of the spectrum from a data ownership standpoint. While I might have recommended it with reservations as a potential IndieWeb solution, this change means I can’t recommend it at all.
Some thoughts on silos, divisions, and bridges
Cruce Saunders (Twitter)Instead of 'eliminating' divisions, or 'blowing up' silos....let's use metaphors about bridging, connecting, unifying, transcending, collaborating across borders.... connecting all of the groups within an organization in a coherent way so that they all work seemlessly together.
— Cruce Saunders (@mrcruce) July 31, 2018
The #IndieWeb community has been working on this for a while. There’s even a service called Brid.gy to help enact it. At the same time, as Ben Werdmüller indicates, we need to be careful not to put too much reliance on silos’ APIs which can, and obviously will, be pulled out from underneath us at any moment.
As any kindergartner can tell you, “It’s difficult to play ball when the local bully owns the ball and wants to make up their own rules or leave in a huff.”
One of the things I love about IndieWeb is that we’re all trying to create a way for balls to be roughly standardized and mass manufactured so that everyone can play regardless of what the bully wants to do or what equipment people bring to the game.1
And as Nikhil Sonnad has reminded us very recently, we also need more than just connections, we need actual caring and thinking human interaction.2
References
1.
Aldrich C. Webmentions: Enabling Better Communication on the Internet. A List Apart. https://alistapart.com/article/webmentions-enabling-better-communication-on-the-internet. Published July 19, 2018. Accessed July 31, 2018.
2.
Sonnad N. Everything bad about Facebook is bad for the same reason. Quartz. https://qz.com/1342757/everything-bad-about-facebook-is-bad-for-the-same-reason/. Published July 30, 2018. Accessed July 31, 2018.
Stepping back from POSSE | Ben Werdmüller
Ben Werdmüller (Ben Werdmüller)Just a quick note: ostensibly to fight algorithmic propaganda, Facebook is shutting off API access to publish to profiles tomorrow. I expect other platforms to follow. That's completely their right. The indieweb has this intrinsic idea of Publishing on your Own Site, Syndicating Elsewhere: automatic...
An IndieWeb Magazine on Flipboard
This morning I set up an IndieWeb Magazine on Flipboard. While it is “yet another silo”, it’s one that I can easily and automatically syndicate content from my site (and others) into. I’ve already seeded it with some recent posts for those who’d like to start reading.
Until more tools and platforms like micro.blog exist to make it easy for other Generation 2+ people to join the IndieWeb, I thought it made at least some sense to have some additional outreach locations to let them know about what the community is doing in a silo that they may be using.
While I’ll syndicate articles of a general and how-to nature there, I’m likely to stay away from posting anything too developer-centric.
If you’d like to contribute to the magazine there are methods for syndicating content into it via POSSE, which I’d recommend if you’re able to do so. Otherwise they have some useful bookmarklets, browser extensions, and other manual methods that you can use to add articles to the magazine. Click this link to join as a contributor. For additional information see also Flipboard Tools.
Nir Zicherman (Medium)Thanks to modern cloud services, the cost of storing and serving content on the internet is incredibly cheap in 2018. With a podcasting platform like Anchor, there is no need for podcasters to pay anymore. So why are traditional podcast companies still charging creators to host files like it’s 2008?
He’s definitely got a major business behind this pitch, and he’s pitching people awfully hard to get them to give away all of their data for a “free” product. There’s the old adage though, “when the product is free, you’re the product.”
I’ve had friends online who’ve noted that this is at least the third time that Anchor.fm has “pivoted”, always seemingly to a larger and larger audience. I find myself wondering when the company is going to finally eat itself? Given that their product seems to change every six months or so, I also wonder if they last another 6 months?
Apparently he’s so bought into the idea of not owning your own data, that at least he’s posting this on one of the worst social silos out there. Just give it all away.
🔖 Timelinely
Create interactive video stories on Timelinely. Timelinely empowers people to go beyond just video.
Highlight interesting parts of a video on a timeline with interactive comments, pictures, links, maps, other videos, and more.
This tool reminds me of a somewhat more commercialized version of Jon Udell’s Clipping tools for HTML5 audio, HTML5 video, and YouTube. I wonder if this is the sort of UI that Hypothes.is might borrow? I can definitely see it being useful functionality in the classroom.
👓 Instapaper is going independent | Instapaper
Today, we’re announcing that Pinterest has entered into an agreement to transfer ownership of Instapaper to Instant Paper, Inc., a new company owned and operated by the...
👓 Instapaper buys itself back from Pinterest | Engadget
Instapaper will now belong to the same people who've been working on it the past five years.
Reply to 50cent tweet about Instagram abuse
I’m leaving IG, I’m going back to Twitter. They take shit down off my page with out notifying me. #censorthesenuts pic.twitter.com/JFEeebpubq
— 50cent (@50cent) May 9, 2018
Why rely on yet another corporation that may do the same? Come join the #IndieWeb!
#silosgonnasilo #ownyourdata
#silosgonnasilo #ownyourdata