Sometimes, an article from 18 years ago can still be of great relevance and inspiration. That’s what happened when I encountered Clay Shirky’s essay on “Situated software” (by way of an equally interesting personal project by Robin Sloan) today. […]
#indieweb (1/2)
The Indieweb describes itself as “a people-focused alternative to the ‘corporate web’”. It’s a grassroots movement, with activists all around the globe working on open web solutions to maintain content ownership and control while enabling social interaction between individuals.
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Initially invented as minimalist solutions to circumvent the social media platforms' limitation of external links so-called "link in bio" platforms appear to be slowly evolving into complex tools to build a personal online presence.
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Robin Rendle explores his love for email newsletters vs. his preference for publishing on the web (accessibility warning: scrolljacking; try “Reader view” in your browser). The piece is really worth reading in its entirety, but two slides about half way summarize the key […]
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When I set out to create a Micropub endpoint as flexible as the Kirby CMS itself, this turned out to be a rather complex task. The result, however, opens up opportunities that frankly surprised myself. Once the initial setup is done, publishing content is more flexible than ever. -
I adapted the open source Selfauth server into a Kirby 3 plugin, allowing to log in to IndieAuth-enabled websites using one’s own domain. -
So much this:
Why are over 500 MB of files needed to write a web app that shows a few lists of things and makes some AJAX requests? (Yes I still call them that. I’ll call them XHR too, even though XML is way passé.)
…not even to speak of the headache to update a […] -
Designing and creating my personal Kirby 3 webmentions solution. -
OpenMapTiles allows for efficient self-hosting of embeddable OSM maps without significant resource requirements and with reasonable effort for a web professional. -
Originally intended to showcase a privacy-centred implementation of emerging social web technologies - with the aim to present a solution not initially motivated by legal requirements, but as an example of privacy-aware interaction design - my “social backfeed” design process unveiled […]
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I’d never heard of the Domain of One's Own initiative or similiar before. This is a fantastic, almost revolutionary idea, and actually makes one think whether setting up a personal website with a personal domain shouldn’t be part of media education early on, maybe somewhere during […]
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Marcus Povey describes why a website should not show webmentions with embedded images from the source site (as it could allow the publisher of the source site to track the audience of the cited site). This is not Webmention or Indieweb specific, but a general privacy risk: whenever loading […]
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This is great: while I see (university) teachers and course instructors elsewhere requiring students to join Facebook groups or the like, Howard Rheingold makes the participants in his “social media course” acquire a domain and server space for a self-hosted Wordpress instance as the […]
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An hommage to the web, its freedom and why it still is the superior medium for self-expression online, by Tim Bray:
The great danger is that the Web’s future is mall-like: No space really public, no storefronts but national brands’ […]
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Indie Microblogging Kickstarter Micro.blog Hits Goal & Stretch Goal For Safe Replies! #indieweb
—Tantek Çelik Tantek Çelik comments on the successful crowdfunding of micro.blog:
This is a huge step forward for the creation of an alternative to Twitter, in numerous ways, some obvious, many more subtle.
Reading through the project’s goals and philosophy, this truly […] -
In this read-worthy flaming letter, Joscha Jaeger responds to a claim by Facebook’s director of design Jon Lax that “the web is dying” and highlights how this framing is that of a big corporation who merely sees the web as delivery platform for their business […]
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Solid is an exciting new project led by Prof. Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, taking place at MIT and the Qatar Computing Research Institute. The project aims to radically change the way Web applications work today, resulting in true data ownership as well as improved […]
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One week to go for IndieWebCamp Berlin! Join us: https://indieweb.org/2016/Berlin
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The fifth edition of IndieWebCamp Brighton saw a good two dozen enthusiasts gather for a weekend of debating, brainstorming and prototyping the social web of the future. Amongst a myriad of random inspirations, many of which for sure will find their way into projects of mine in the near future, I would like to summarize three main takeaways from this memorable weekend in Brighton [...] -
I occasionally find myself accused of being overly critical of cloud services. Which I am not - per se. My critique is not about the technology and its undeniable potential, but about the terms at which it is provided …and the prevailing silence with which these are commonly accepted. The […]
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A burning rant by Maciej Cegłowski (aka. Idle Words) on the commercially introduced complexity (“obesity”) of the web. Drawing a bow from ads to assets, the talk also introduces some rather innovative terminology:
Chickenshit Minimalism: the illusion of simplicity backed […]
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In my January post titled Identity, content, audience and the (independent) web, I described the approach of using a self-owned website as the primary place to publish online content, while sending out (“syndicating”) copies of the content to social platforms. My motive was to reflect […]
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My text on “fixing the internet” from two weeks ago triggered an inspiring online discussion with Michael Dlugosch, through which kind of a working hypothesis has started to emerge for me. In a first attempt to paraphrase: The question of how to create/restore a more open web providing control over one’s own representation hovers around three core issues: identity, content, and audience. It needs to be considered how an independent identity is being established, how users control their content and how they can build and cater to an audience despite independent ownership of identities and full control over content. Not quite coincidentally, the discussion has touch points with debates going on in many places. [...] -
The archives reveal it was October 2005 when I started to use Delicious to collect my bookmarks, at a time where I had to use various computers daily. Four years later, competitor Ma.gnolia lost all user data, marking the first occasion that I (along with a shaken community of their users) questioned the value of cloud services for storing personal data. Yet, both for lack of alternatives and for being lazy, I kept using Delicious - though making regular backups a habit. Today, we live 2014 and it is time to move on; more specifically, time to reclaim ownership over my bookmarks and to host them myself. Naturally, having grown used to a cloud service, a suitable web-based replacement had to be found. [...]
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