stuff tagged with "indieweb"
A Website To End All Websites
š a linked post to
henry.codes »
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originally shared here on
This is a beautifully-designed thesis on why we should all go back to having personal websites, which is a topic I could go off on for days.
I hadnāt heard of Tools For Conviviality before, but I think I need to add that to my list:
In his book Tools For Conviviality, technology philosopher and social critic Ivan Illich identifies these two critical moments, the optimistic arrival & the deadening industrialization, as watersheds of technological advent. Tools are first created to enhance our capacities to spend our energy more freely and in turn spend our days more freely, but as their industrialization increases, their manipulation & usurpation of society increases in tow5.
Illich also describes the concept of radical monopoly, which is that point where a technological tool is so dominant that people are excluded from society unless they become its users. We saw this with the automobile, we saw it with the internet, and we even see it with social media.
Illichās thesis allows us to reframe our adoption and use of the technologies in our life. We can map fairly directly most technological developments in the last 100 (or even 200) years to this framework: a net lift, followed by a push to extract value and subsequent insistence upon the technologyās ubiquity.
WeatherStar 4000+
š a linked post to
weatherstar.netbymatt.com »
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originally shared here on
Someone took the retro Weather Channel interface and turned it into a functioning website. Absolutely brilliant.
It was "Come and visit me again soon!" rather than "like and subscribe."
Blog question challenge
Why did you start blogging in the first place?
Iām drawn to blogging because it makes me happy on several levels. I love sharing what Iāve learned. I love entertaining people and spreading joy. I love having a collection of the topics I was interested in at various points in my life. I love being able to practice honing my writing skills. And I love having a place on the internet that is completely my own.
What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it?
I built my own Ruby on Rails app to handle it. I chose it because I wanted to get better at writing Rails apps.
Iāve had a personal website since 1998. Itās had many iterations and name changes and designs. I miss building websites for fun. So Iām doing it again because hey, itās still fun as hell to do cool things with these computers of ours.
Have you blogged on other platforms before?
Oh yeah. At first, it was all handwritten HTML, but Iāve tried a few different content management systems like Movable Type, LiveJournal, and Wordpress.
How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard thatās part of your blog?
My longer form pieces are often written in TextMate. Iāll launch a locally-running version of my site and test out formatting and whatnot before I copy and paste it into my production site.
My monthly observation posts are mostly a collection of my daily journalistic entries. Around the first day of the month, Iāll slowly re-read what I wrote about the previous month and edit the interesting nuggets down into something coherent.
For my link posts, I use a custom iPhone Shortcut. When I navigate to a URL in Safari that I wanna share here, my shortcut will grab whatever is in the <title>, then grab the URL sans any UTM or tracking params, then drop whatever I may have highlighted into a Markdown quote in a text field. I then type up my thoughts and hit publish.
This approach works great for me because there is almost zero friction to post. It only sucks when I accidentally close out of the text field, or when I write something substantially long1. I also have to remember to navigate to the article to add tags. I should probably add that into the Shortcut process at some point.
When do you feel most inspired to write?
Iām the most inspired to write whenever my thoughts begin to run away. Writing forces me to grab hold of a single thread of my swirling inner dialogue and crystalize it.
When I got laid off last year, I decided to force myself to journal every single night. I didnāt lay any other parameters: I didnāt give myself any word counts or topics or agendas. Simply write.
Now that I have a journaling habit, I find that I write my thoughts down often throughout the day. Iām inspired to write whenever I make myself laugh, or whenever I feel a light bulb go off in my head, or whenever I need a break from my negative self talk.
Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?
Short link posts are almost always published immediately. Longer posts will simmer for a day or two before I eventually force myself to publish. I am pretty diligent about editing things a day or two after that, as well. For this post, Iām gonna publish it as soon as Iām done here.
Whatās your favorite post on your blog?
I donāt have a favorite. Every single post Iāve made on here makes me cringe when I read it back, even if itās only 24 hours later.
Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?
I plan to keep writing. I should probably upgrade the Rails engine here soon.
I also have this idea of building a āgardenā here. I came across the idea of a personal site being more like a garden, and I am really vibing with that sentiment. The first step for me is to build this cool 8-bit landscape entirely in vanilla CSS, HTML, and JS. From there, Iād like to have some self-composed, optimistic lo-fi playing in the background. As one sits in the scene, various phrases and quotes will fade in and out of view.2
I mentioned my journaling habit above, and I think another goal of mine for the year is to keep up the monthly observation posts. Writing down my thoughts is helpful, and getting a bit of distance from those thoughts gives me a fresh perspective of them.
Passing the torch
Despite seeing my own site show up in my feed on other peopleās sites, I still feel like nobody ever reads this blog. So Iāll admit I felt incredibly dorky writing this post because it reminds me of how these sorts of things used to be hella prevalent back on the web when I was growing up.
But also: isnāt the point of doing these things to have fun and learn how other people approach a hobby that youāre interested in? These āchallengesā serve as a collective bonding moment, an opportunity to collectively reflect on why we like this loose-knit community of goofy misfits who know what an RSS feed is.
So hereās how Iāll pass the torch: if youāve seen these kinds of posts pop up in your own feeds these past couple weeks, copy this and do it yourself and shoot me a note when youāre done. I guarantee youāll get at least one other person here who will be interested in your stories! ?āāļø
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When this happens, Iāll write the contents out using the Apple Notes app. Iāll then copy that text, re-run the Shortcut, and paste the edited text into the text field. ↩
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Iām sure next to nobody will want to look at this thing, but I feel empowered and motivated to build something. And until I can acquire my 3D printer and more carpentry tools, Iāll have to settle for making my virtual space more serene and inspirational. Again, if only for myself. ↩
It feels like 2004 again.
š a linked post to
anildash.com »
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originally shared here on
Interestingly, most of the people whoāve heard me say this over the last year or so think that Iām complaining or lamenting the situation, but Iām actually excited about it. That malaise by the big players in tech a generation ago yielded an exciting and inspiring new wave of innovations. While much of the money in big tech was chasing distractions back in 2004, many communities of small, independent creators on the open web were making the new pillars of web culture ā many of which are still standing to this day.
Every year, the batteries in the iPhone get bigger and more capable. Instead of giving those gains back to us, as users, they instead take more and more advantage of the gains so the relative battery life stays the same (about 10 hours).
If you look at the payloads of any major website (letās pick on the New York Times), youāll likely see that less than 1% of the bandwidth goes to the actual text of the article. The rest goes toward ad tracking crap and all kinds of JavaScript nonsense.
The difference between 2004 and 2024 is that we have large amounts of insanely powerful, compact computers spread across the entire planet.
That, combined with more powerful servers and cheap hosting, should really allow us to build the cool stuff people are looking for again.
Which, at a time when it feels like the world around us is imploding, gives me a lot of hope.
We built Geocities pages on IE 4 back then. We can do a lot of good with Rails 8.
Please publish and share more
š a linked post to
micro.webology.dev »
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originally shared here on
Friends, I encourage you to publish more, indirectly meaning you should write more and then share it.
Itād be best to publish your work in some evergreen space where you control the domain and URL. Then publish on masto-sky-formerly-known-as-linked-don and any place you share and comment on.
You donāt have to change the world with every post. You might publish a quick thought or two that helps encourage someone else to try something new, listen to a new song, or binge-watch a new series.
Itās a real gift to see my friends post stuff online. Go post more!
It turns out I'm still excited about the web
š a linked post to
werd.io »
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originally shared here on
I was afraid I had become too cynical to find excitement in technology again. It wasnāt true.
While Iāve grown more cynical about much of tech, movements like the Indieweb and the Fediverse remind me that the ideals I once loved, and that spirit of the early web, arenāt lost. Theyāre evolving, just like everything else.
One thing that excites me about the web is our ability to communicate effortlessly with other people across the world.
It still feels like magic every time I get an instant message from my friend in Uruguay.
Hell, I spent several hours on video chat with my coworker from Brazil today. How insanely cool is that?
I think I just want to find interesting problems to solve using that tech, which feels a bit like āI have a hammer and Iām looking for nails.ā
Iām just grateful that people want to pay me to play with computers all day.
Fighting for our web
š a linked post to
citationneeded.news »
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originally shared here on
Thatās because what really sucks about the web these days, what has us feeling despair and anger, has everything to do with the industry that has formed around the web, but not the web itself. The web is still just a substrate on which anything can be built. Most importantly, the web is the people who use it, not the companies that have established themselves around it.
And the widespread disillusionment that weāre seeing may actually be a good thing. More people than ever have realized that the utopian dreams of a web that could only bring about positive and wonderful things might have been misguided. That tech companies maybe donāt always have our best interests in mind. And that slogans like "donāt be evil" might be more about marketing than about truth.
Once again, Molly White explains how to make the internet fun again in an admirably eloquent way.
Related: I bought a domain with the intention of creating a list of artists who Donald Trump canāt use in his campaign functions. I lost motivation after finding basically what I wanted to assemble on Wikipedia, but reading this article makes me want to give it a go.
Everybody's Free (To Write Websites)
š a linked post to
sarajoy.dev »
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originally shared here on
Enbies and gentlefolk of the class of ā24:
Write websites.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, coding would be it. The long term benefits of coding websites remains unproved by scientists, however the rest of my advice has a basis in the joy of the indie web communityās experiences.
I love the reference to Wear Sunscreen, one of the great commencement speeches.
There is amazing advice and inspiration for building websites in here. It also reminded me of POSSE, meaning āPublish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere.ā
Ā The Internet Is About to Get Weird Again
š a linked post to
rollingstone.com »
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originally shared here on
Thereās not going to be some new killer app that displaces Google or Facebook or Twitter with a love-powered alternative. But thatās because there shouldnāt be. There should be lots of different, human-scale alternative experiences on the internet that offer up home-cooked, locally-grown, ethically-sourced, code-to-table alternatives to the factory-farmed junk food of the internet. And they should be weird.
If you missed this one when it was making the rounds seven months ago, Anil Dash did not disappoint with this think piece about the weird internet.
The Web Is Not Inevitable
š a linked post to
knowler.dev »
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originally shared here on
The Web we have was not born out of neglect. It has taken intentionality to become what it is. The Web we have today will not continue to be what it is and what we envision it to become if we do not involve ourselves.
Yes, itās good to take a break when your burnt out and tired. Yes, itās good to know when to stop or circle back when something isnāt working. Yes, itās good to humbly trust others. These are all healthy, necessary things to do if we want to see the Web thrive, but do not remain extinguished, stalled, or sidelined.
The Web needs you and me.
Instability
š a linked post to
robinrendle.com »
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originally shared here on
The whole point of the web is that weāre not supposed to be dependent on any one company or person or community to make it all work and the only reason why we trusted Google is because the analytics money flowed in our direction. Now that it doesnāt, the whole internet feels unstable. As if all these websites and publishers had set up shop perilously on the edge of an active volcano.
But that instability was always there.
The only social network I post on anymore is LinkedIn. I have close to 2,000 followers there.
Lately, Iāve noticed that the āengagementā on my posts is increasingly sparse. Earlier this year, I was routinely seeing thousands of views per post. These days, Iām only seeing hundreds, and when it comes to sharing links to my newsletter, Iām seeing only dozens.
Meanwhile, here on my rag tag blog, I know my thoughts end up reaching people who matter the most to me.
Itās certainly less than the 2,000 people who follow me on LinkedIn, and substantially less than the tens of thousands of people a week who āengageā with my ācontentā1 thereā¦ but I donāt care.
By posting here, Iām taking the harder route of building an audience without the flashy shortcuts promised by platforms like LinkedIn and Google.
Whenever I try to take shortcuts and play SEO games, I end up doing things to my website which make it feel less authentic.
And these days, I find myself asking, āwhat exactly do I need to take a shortcut for?ā
Robin also quotes this piece by Jeremy Keith where he discusses our need for human curation:
I want a web that empowers people to connect with other people they trust, without any intermediary gatekeepers.
āØThe evangelists of large language models (who may coincidentally have invested heavily in the technology) like to proclaim that a slop-filled future is inevitable, as though we have no choice, as though we must simply accept enshittification as though it were a force of nature.
But we can always walk away.
Itās tough to walk away from the big tech companies, but I can assure you it is possible.
Facebook used to dominate my daily existence, but besides perhaps Marketplace for selling my junk, I do not miss any of Metaās properties since I left several years back.
Google was my portal to my email, search, and maps for years. In the past few years, I have switched to primarily using Fastmail, Ecosia, and Apple Maps. Here in 2024, they all work well.2
I do my best to avoid ordering stuff off of Amazon, and I hardly stream anything on Netflix anymore.3
I havenāt made the move over to the Light Phone yet, and I find it hard to believe that Iāll give up my Apple Watch, Apple TV, or iPad/Macsā¦ but I do find myself questioning the prolific presence of Apple in my life more often than I did, say, ten years ago.
As I continue to experiment with LLMs, Iāve noticed that the locally-run, open source models getting closer to the performance you see in closed source models like GPT-4o and Claude Sonnet 3.5 Sonnet. Itās only a matter of time that theyāre good enough to do the tasks that I find myself turning to ChatGPT to complete today.
Enshittification isnāt inevitable. Like depression, itās an indicator that something in your digital life needs to change.
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Sorry for the obnoxious emphasis on terms like āengagementā and ācontentāā¦ Iāve reached a point where I feel like those words are meaningless. A lot of the themes of this post can be summed up with trust, and in order to accurately engagement, you have to trust that the metrics provided by the platform vendor are accurate (which I do not). And calling our collective knowledge ācontentā as though itās the equivalent of feed for the cattle also upsets me. ↩
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Ecosiaās results are powered by Bing, which traditionally havenāt been that great, but I just consider this to be a benefit of Googleās results becoming terrible. Now both search engines return subpar results, and by using Ecosia, I am helping to plant trees. It aināt much, but itās honest work. ↩
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The last couple weeks have seen my most Netflix action in years, because I did watch Muscles & Mayhem, the American Gladiators documentary, on Netflix last week, and I do highly recommend it. Iām also gonna give the Tour de France documentary a shot as well. ↩
A Link Blog in the Year 2024
š a linked post to
laughingmeme.org »
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originally shared here on
Like many people Iāve been dealing with the collapses of the various systems I relied on for information over the previous decades. After 17 of using Twitter daily and 24 years of using Google daily neither really works anymore. And particular with the collapse of the social spaces many of us grew up with, I feel called back to earlier forms of the Internet, like blogs, and in particular, starting a link blog.
One of us! One of us!
This isnāt a lengthy post, but I damn near quoted the whole thing because Kellan makes great points about the state of information sharing, the collapse of the Web 2.0 social infrastructure we all used for twenty years, and lamenting the fact he doesnāt really consume media from a wide variety of sources (me too, friend).
If youāre reading my link blog here, consider starting one of your own. Make it low effort for yourself, but just start one and stick to it for a month.
I think youāll find your media consumption habits begin to trend toward higher quality sources of information/entertainment.
Personal Website Aesthetics
š a linked post to
tracydurnell.com »
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originally shared here on
I came across this list of various questions for how personal websites reflect social movements these days, and this one got me thinking:
whatās punk online today? whatās the website equivalent of a zine? the photocopy look or the ethic of throw this up fast and cheap?
When I started designing websites in the late 90s, we didnāt have much by way of templates or nice aesthetics to adopt. Everything was looping MIDIs, seven baked-in fonts, and maybe a <marquee> or <blink> tossed in for good measure.
Nowadays, the kids have an incredible amount of templates and tooling available to make websites look really polished and smooth out of the box.
But I guess the point Tracy is trying to make here is that stuff isnāt really punk or counter culture. People expect corporate websites to look polished. Rounded rectangles. Big, bubbly fonts with (shudders) dynamic carousels.
I am feeling the itch to redesign my site again, and I am unsure what direction to take. My personal braaaaand is still being defined, but the elements I can identify off the dome would be inclusive, optimistic, sarcastic, and warm.
Are those elements counter culture these days?
THE 88Ć31 ARCHIVE
š a linked post to
hellnet.work »
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originally shared here on
This site contains 29257 unique* 88x31 buttons that I scraped from the GeoCities archives compiled by the incredible ARCHIVE TEAM before GeoCities' demise in late 2009.
I shouldnāt go through all ~30,000 images to find the ones I made for Timās World or Thatās Unpossible, right?
ā¦right?
The Internet Needs to Change
š a linked post to
youtube.com »
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originally shared here on
I hate the internet.
...that's a lie. I love it, but I hate the algorithms.
That's also a lie... I love the algorithms.
I watched this video on the plane ride back from Nickelodeon Resort yesterday, and I have to say, it got me.
Hank's assessment of how the algorithms deployed by social networks come up short in actually giving us what we want is spot on.
It's why I love how many friends are spinning up their own newsletters. And this new newsletter was a no brainer instasubscribe.
Ever since my buddy Paul gifted me a premium subscription to Garbage Day, I've been a voracious newsletter subscriber. They do a great job of filling the void that Google Reader left in my life.1
This website has been my way of curating the internet, sharing things I've found that interest me, but maybe I should start a newsletter myself and do things in both places.
Should I tell my impostor syndrome to shove it and start my own newsletter, y'all?
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I do need to find a way to get them out of my inbox, though. I really should move all my subscriptions into Feedbin so they show up in my RSS reader app. ↩
How Google made the world go viral
š a linked post to
theverge.com »
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originally shared here on
The question, of course, is when did it all go wrong? How did a site that captured the imagination of the internet and fundamentally changed the way we communicate turn into a burned-out Walmart at the edge of town?Ā
Well, if you ask Anil Dash, it was all the way back in 2003 ā when the company turned on its AdSense program.
āPrior to 2003ā2004, you could have an open comment box on the internet. And nobody would pretty much type in it unless they wanted to leave a comment. No authentication. Nothing. And the reason why was because who the fuck cares what you comment on there. And then instantly, overnight, what happened?ā Dash said. āEvery single comment thread on the internet was instantly spammed. And it happened overnight.ā
Dash has written extensively over the years on the impact platform optimization has had on the way the internet works. As he sees it, Googleās advertising tools gave links a monetary value, killing anything organic on the platform. From that moment forward, Google cared more about the health of its own network than the health of the wider internet.Ā
Iāve been on the internet since before Google came to dominate it, and this feels like an extremely accurate assessment.
It doesnāt seem fair to say āthis is all Googleās fault.ā After all, most of us who work on the internet wouldnāt be able to do so without people commercializing it.
But it comes back to your goals, I guess. I never built a blog to make any sort of money. I lose hundreds of dollars a year by cultivating this little space on the web.
But I donāt regret a single penny. Itās an investment in something that brings me true joy.
I have zero analytics running on this site right now. Itās a bit of a weird flex, sure, but honestly, I donāt care if there is one person reading these words or a million.
The main reason I donāt track people is because I donāt want to start making this something which requires me to keep dancing to get peopleās attention.
I dunnoā¦ I just miss open comment boxes. And while I donāt like what I see on sites like Facebook and Google these days, I can at least hang my hat on the fact that thereās a thriving indie web community that keeps writing on their sites and connecting with each other through RSS feeds.
And also, shout out to Ryan Broderick, the author of this article. Iām a huge fan of Garbage Day and his work dissecting the weirdness of the internet. If you like this piece, youāll love his newsletter.
My website as a home
š a linked post to
nicochilla.com »
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originally shared here on
Iād like to use āhomeā as the operative analogy for my own website.
With any analogy, you choose which properties of the subject to apply to the object of comparison, and which to ignore. What I find significant about homes in this context is that they donāt exist primarily for display: rather, theyāre designed around the habits and values of their occupants.
Analogously, I want to use my website to order and document my own activity, and to interact with things and people that I care about.
Still, a website and a home are importantly different in that the former is intended for public exposure, whereas the latter is grounded in private life. But maybe we can relate the public nature of websites to a public dimension of homes: hosting visitors.
Typically we donāt show our house guests everything ā we keep many things private and clean up before they arrive. Moreover, weāve made prior decisions about our furniture and decor with future guests in mind. So homes can certainly be curated for the public eye; but crucially, they maintain their function as living spaces.
I find it generative to consider websites as a similar conjunction of public and private activity: by thinking about how visitors will receive the things that I publish, Iām compelled to produce more and refine the things that I make. At the same time, the website remains my space and is subservient to no other end.
The joy I get from tweaking my personal site and sharing links like this to it seems to be the exact same joy that my kids get out of meticulously organizing their playhouses.
The Internet Isn't Meant To Be So Small
š a linked post to
defector.com »
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originally shared here on
It is worth remembering that the internet wasn't supposed to be like this. It wasn't supposed to be six boring men with too much money creating spaces that no one likes but everyone is forced to use because those men have driven every other form of online existence into the ground. The internet was supposed to have pockets, to have enchanting forests you could stumble into and dark ravines you knew better than to enter. The internet was supposed to be a place of opportunity, not just for profit but for surprise and connection and delight.
One of my first attempts at building a website occurred in the Enchanted Forest section of GeoCities.
Goodbye to Netflix DVDs, The Last Good Tech Company
š a linked post to
vice.com »
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originally shared here on
Netflix didnāt care what was inside the envelopes, so the only thing that mattered was that we, the customers, were getting what we wanted. Now, Netflixās entire business is to know whatās inside, to make you think everything you want is inside, and to keep you distracted long enough so you never see the big world outside. Netflix went from being content-agnostic, a truly unbiased platform, if you will, to being content-obsessed, preferring to show you only its own content, and always its own content first.
A similar transition has happened at every major tech company, even the social media companies in which Netflix is often grouped as a major tech company emblematic of Silicon Valley. They all do extensive content moderation even as they claim to just be platforms, because they can no longer declare ignorance or ambivalence about whatās inside. And they, too, want you to look away as rarely as possible. They have all rallied around the cause of engagement. Finding ways to maximize it, to retain it, to increase it.Ā
This feels similar to the post I made last week about how you should have a website.
What drew me to the internet in my youth was how raw, honest, and authentic it was. It wasnāt about monetization strategies. It wasnāt about engagement metrics. It was about making cool stuff with other dorks that cared about the same things as me for fun.
I watched so many movies with my Netflix DVD subscription back in the day. Now, with vastly more selection available at the touch of my fingers, I find myself getting to the end of my day, turning on my TV, and rewatching something that Iāve already watched before because I'm just so burned out on these terrible walled garden content platforms that only want to serve me the digital equivalent of junk food.
I know that hosting websites isnāt free. But maybe all this scale and reach is just not really needed. Maybe we just need to keep building the internet we want to see instead of relying on big tech to prescribe it for us.
Oh, and the reason I used this particular pull quote is because itās true... Name any website, app, or SaaS tool out there, and there is undoubtedly an entire team dedicated to figuring out how to exploit it to make as much money as possible.
I really despise this game. It has always made me feel uncomfortable that weāre just cool with it. There has to be a better way to connect each other and derive meaning and value from those connections.
Because the solution of stealing everyoneās attention and addicting us to these worthless platforms canāt possibly be the yard in which we park this train.
You Should Have a Website
š a linked post to
maerk.xyz »
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originally shared here on
Think of the people you actually give a shit about in real life. They would like your website, and you would like their websites. Fuck the person you spoke to one time at a party 4 years ago, they donāt need to get play by play updates about the concert youāre at. Your life is not better because 15 people saw your Snapchat story instead of 14.
I think people online should slow down and scale back. Personal websites are so much more, uh, personal. I think of it like sending a text message to someone versus sending them a letter. Seeing an update of any kind to a friendās website would be so much more interesting than a Facebook status or a profile picture change. Again, maybe Iām the weird one.
Nearly posted this whole article verbatim because itās exactly how I feel about this site. I know Iām supposed to make this site be a direct reflection of my braaaand (apologies to my friend who is helping me with my braaaand at the moment), but I just want this to be a cool place that people who are interested in me can see things that Iām interested in.
Coming soon: probably more shares from this collection of posts about how the internet used to be fun and how we can make it fun again.
Why Japanās internet is weirdly designed
š a linked post to
youtu.be »
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originally shared here on
As Iāve mentioned in the past, this websiteās redesign was specifically the result of me looking back at, and pining for, my old web days.
Itās a shame (but not entirely a surprise) that search engines and slow internet caused us to lose an entire generation of fun websites.
It would be stupid for me to suggest the youths will start getting into web design like I did when I was a youths. But maybe the idea here is to keep looking for how the young people are finding ways to express themselves despite whatever perceived limitations by which they are encumbered.
Also, does this mean I need to try my hand at a redesign again? Or should I find a new hobby?