👓 Trump startled by cozy Barr-Mueller relationship | CNN

Read Trump startled by cozy Barr-Mueller relationship by Kaitlan Collins, Kevin Liptak and Jeff Zeleny (CNN)
President Donald Trump was startled Tuesday as he watched television coverage of his nominee for attorney general describing a warm relationship with the special counsel Robert Mueller in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, according to three people familiar with the matter.

👓 So, I Got an Email From Matthew Whitaker’s Wife | Slate

Read So, I Got an Email From Matthew Whitaker’s Wife (Slate Magazine)
Marci Whitaker, wife of the acting attorney general, says the Mueller investigation is “wrapping up.”
This is just bizarre. I wonder if she discussed this with her husband before sending? (Not that she needs to, but it just seems so odd that something like this could cause them more trouble than not.)

👓 What is Discourse? | Discourse

Read What is Discourse? (Discourse - Civilized Discussion)
Discourse is the 100% open source discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet.
As I look at this it makes me wonder when small, single-purpose services might allow themselves to be white listed and/or custom styled to live on a users personal domain, yet still look like they’re part and parcel of that user’s native site.

As an example, Disqus and Webmention.io are interesting examples of how a company could specialize into handling comments for user’s sites. These two are both doing things very differently and at much different price points. Disqus is large and bloated and seems to have quite innovating and iterating. I have to wonder what it would look like with more players and more competition in the space?

In fact, I’m still wondering why hasn’t Disqus picked up and run away with the Webmention spec?

👓 Why I’m Leaving Medium | Praxis – Medium

Read Why I’m Leaving Medium by Tiago Forte (Praxis – Medium)
I’ve been writing on Medium for three and a half years.
Some of these reasons are very pragmatic for everyone, but he’s also got some business specific ones that touch on things many small businesses would want control over as well. He additionally points out some very subtle changes in media for people who are reaching out to niche audiences. Some of this is reminiscent to things Leo Laporte has spoken about in the past with respect to leaving television and cable to start a podcast network, except in that case there really wasn’t a huge amount of competing media, so instead of moving to silos (which didn’t exist at the time for his use case) he went straight to using his own platform.

📑 Why I’m Leaving Medium | Praxis – Medium

Annotated Why I’m Leaving Medium by Tiago Forte (Praxis – Medium)
Online media, despite being so different from traditional printed media, is still trying to maximize its potential audience, and in order to do that, going for quantity over quality.  

👓 twenty eighteen | Matthias Pfefferle

Read zwanzigachtzehn by Matthias PfefferleMatthias Pfefferle (notiz.Blog)

2018 war ein durchwachsenes Jahr!

Mein privates „Ich“ hat letztes Jahr sehr viel Raum eingenommen und auch beruflich hat sich viel verändert.

Das heißt ich hatte generell wenig Zeit für mein online „Ich“ und wenn ich doch etwas Zeit hatte, war das Ergebnis meistens eher frustrierend.

My German is atrocious, but it’s well worth stumbling through to see what Matthias is up to lately, particularly with regard to his work on the IndieWeb.

I’ll have to revisit some of his work on OStatus and ActivityPub with respect to WordPress. It would be nice to be able to follow @chrisaldrich on Mastodon wouldn’t it?

Thanks, as always Pfefferle, for keeping the web open!

👓 My New Posting Workflow | grant.codes

Read My New Posting Workflow by Grant RichmondGrant Richmond (grant.codes)
So I have been working away on some new features on my site for quite a while now and it looks like everything is about ready. Honestly I don't particularly enjoy writing long-form content, so it is kind of strange that I have really enjoyed working on this new functionality.The Inspiration I was ra...
This is awesome Grant!

May have been a nice addition to add some links to the browser extensions (or maybe I missed them?) and make it more explicit that they’re publicly available. Can’t wait to try this out!

👓 Now | Christopher Chelpka

Read Now by Christopher ChelpkaChristopher Chelpka (christopherchelpka.com)
This now page was updated on January 11, 2018. I microblog about new updates when I shift my focus. Here’s What I’m Doing Now Because of my amazing church, I’m on a one-week study leave listening to some really smart theologians teach on the Trinity. I’m also researching the office of deacon...
Interesting and brief set up for a now page.

📑 Welcome to my online sandbox. | Joyce Garcia

Annotated Welcome to my online sandbox. by Joyce GarciaJoyce Garcia (Gratuitous Web Presence)
Then I learned about the IndieWeb movement and Micro.blog, and I fell in love with the Internet as I once hoped it would be: a place where people could congregate, converse, and learn from one another with somewhat minimal rancor — and without an overtly overarching need to make a buck with their “content.”  

📑 Contact | Devon Zuegel

Annotated Contact by Devon Zuegel (Devon's Site)

This site is where I can riff on ideas, be wrong, and learn from those mistakes. Of course I try to be correct, and I always write what I believe to be true, but the greatest value most often comes from someone messaging me to point out a body of research I missed or angle I misinterpreted.

In this vein, please don't hesitate to let me know what you think! The whole point is to share what I know and to learn the rest.  

In addition to collecting the quote above, I’ll also note that Devon’s site now has an RSS feed (which I’m positive it didn’t before), so one can now follow her writing there directly.

👓 I don’t want to be a brand. | Cheri Baker

Read I don't want to be a brand. by Cheri BakerCheri Baker (social.cheribaker.com)

I attended a training program on author marketing recently, and while I appreciated most of the advice, and the speaker was excellent, I’m struggling with one piece of it, which I’ll paraphrase here:

“You should write down your brand statement, and then EVERYTHING you communicate online (or around your customers) should be in line with that statement. In short, if it doesn’t advance your brand, don’t share or say it.”

And my heart rose up in revolt and shouted: F@CK THAT SH*T!

Some great sentiment here on just being a person.