Excursions

Aha. Twitter tells me I am part of the “selected group of users” for a survey regarding their services. So, how are we supposed to “celebrate” such an honour, again? 🙃

I do not think I like this - the deviation’s may be too high for my liking. Time to rethink things.

It’s Micro Monday time. I’d recommend you to follow @vishae for her distinct point of view, her book recommendations and succinct commentary on varied things. I’ve seen her be part of some fascinating conversations with the community recently that made me really pause and think.

So, there is another leak of pixel 3 XL now that clearly shows the device? I think at this point Google shouldn’t even wait for an event to release this device. Just call the selected folks for exclusives and start selling them — exclusives will also be better marketing wise.

I have two posts in draft, incomplete, for last 5 days - they just need some final thoughts, some commentary. Ah, I hate to look at my drafts posts list. I think I will get off the internet and stare at them for a while, I believe they might go away.

Is it just me who tries to fit replies on micro.blog within the 280 characters, especially from iOS apps? If it goes beyond, it feels like cheating to me. May be I think too much, but the limit should either be there for all posts, even replies or no limits at all 😬

I believe there are some books which just happen to kill your reading spree — and then you just can’t get back to the same book. I am giving up on one such book. I may come back to it again. But currently, I need to move on to something else.

“My precious..”

So the next Windows major update is going to be called “Windows 10 October 2018 Update”? May be declaring Windows 10 to be last version of Windows to be released wasn’t a great decision after all. Why not just start naming them after some thing - other than deserts and places?

I logged out of mastodon today on my browser - a re-login was a deterrent enough to save all the compulsive visits throughout the day. I wish I had more control over when I access these social media accounts. May do the same for micro.blog as @vega had recommended.

Don’t want to brag, but I really find the discover section on Micro.threads helpful. There was otherwise no way I could catch up on posts missed and being discussed on overnight. I wish though I could fetch more posts using API than I can now, a bit limited currently.

Due 3.0 looks nice. Rich custom snooze in notifications is a good addition in itself. Options earlier were too limited. Black theme, well not much interested.

This is one app I use a lot, but mostly in the background. Doesn’t matter what theme it drapes itself in.

So now we have this “Olivery - world’s first smart olive oil bottle”, wtf?

Can we be smart ourselves first and stop making everything out there smart? This trend is crazy - have we not learnt anything from the Juicero episode?

There was a reason I stopped reading news throughout the day, I just didn’t want a constant stream of negativity clouding my mind. I would just visit the tech portals occasionally. Now stream of political sewage is spreading there too - if nothing else, I’d hate Trump for that.

We need a directory of people who are active microbloggers. It needs to group them by interests, geographies and few other aspects. I had started working on one, and then I had stopped - but gained few opinions.

Here are some thoughts on how such a directory should work.

A culture canvased on the wall.

One thing that Google’s scattered focus - multiple start-ups inside, than a cohesive company with multiple products - and culture allows is to steal mindshare from the tech news portal. Just access any and there is always some Google news being discussed. Win-win for both.

Today I decided to remove the Micro.blog app from the dock to a folder on the home screen. Screen Time showed I was hitting the limit for the social media usage almost everyday. Dock makes the access to an app way too easier.

As much as I love the community on the platform, I don’t think accessing the app out of habit, just to check what new things people are talking about since the last 10 mins, is healthy. I would want to use any app on my schedule, not just subconsciously dip in as my mind wanders.

We need a directory of microbloggers. This fact is clear from the sheer number of discussions that happen on the Micro.blog platform asking for recommendations on users by interests, or geography or something else.

I just wanted to put down my thoughts on what such a directory would need to have for it to be helpful and not polluted with mess.

1. Directory needs to have a vouch mechanism. A user mentions some information about himself, his followers vouch for that. And the vouch’s what matters. Without such a mechanism, the system is prone to abuse, where people can pollute it with catchy tags without nothing to back it up with. We know how such systems are gamed. SEO. App Store tag words.
2. Other users should be able to associate more information about a person, an extension of vouch. They only get shown if the concerned person accepts.
3. Group types need to be limited. Possible options for groups need to be predefined. So geography - possibly timezones or countries, interests - sports or tech or writing etc, current events followed. Without this, it’s again prone to abuse. This may also make aggregation/interface easier to manage. Tagmoji is already a good example.
4. As Brad Enslen opined, may be it should not be limited to micro.blog platform. One should be able to provide other details too. May be via IndieAuth signin?
5. An option to add to directory directly from a post would be handy. It may also allow building metadata for the vouch system, if needed.
6. A person’s interests, geography, isn’t it an extension of one’s identity? Can it not be captured as part of one’s h-card?

Can such a directory exist outside of Micro.blog? Sure (I even had basic one running on Micro.threads dev). But for it to be helpful it would need a significant number of users adding their information to such a service. I believe it fits best with the platform, as the list of users is already available. With some metadata added, a directory page, just like there are Tagmoji pages for posts, can be enabled for users. This will avoid creating a parallel user list, which will always be lesser than what would exists with the platform.

Directory can be made as tricky as it can get. But it is sure one is required as the number of microbloggers grow. Blogrolls, personal directories on individual blogs are good starts. We need a place where that can be brought all together. And displayed easily on demand.

More Tagmojis are supported now, so few proposed ones striked from @burk’s list. Hurrah!

That also means more recommendations from the community to be explored - so Micro.threads Explore section is updated with these too.

I won’t disagree with this poster at a Barbeque place nearby.

Reminiscences of the days gone by, when sales were not what these drove.

Rakshabandhan - the celebration of one of the funnest and purest relationships, of a brother and a sister.

So Amazon Echo devices are losing market share to Google Home now? All these devices look to be placeholders for now. Things they do are trivial, they need lot of tricky tweaking to make them helpful.

Post initial few days of newness, they just become music players with voice.

Why do Linode services and offerings look so .. dated? As if people behind just didn’t look around, look what the competition was offering, especially Digital Ocean. DO has really upped the game in hosted VPS with one-click apps and far better integrations.