Every day dawns with a new lesson. There is just so much fun stuff to learn in the IndieWeb world. And play around with. I have booked myself at least a couple of weeks worth of work. Yay(!?)
“What we see here really could be the beginning of a slippery slope towards a horrific ordeal in which any citizen who violates hate speech policies or blatantly spreads lies that cause other individuals to receive death threats will immediately be discredited and, perhaps, even asked to host their demonstrably false content on a website that they actually own.”
After an extremely productive last couple of weeks, it was time to reflect on the days gone by and update the /now page. It is good every now and then to read through your recent posts. To see what worked well and what needs changed.
Micro.blog is the only service that I use which uses email-only authentication. And it is a win-some-lose-some experience. There are times, especially on mobile, when I love that there is no password involved. I open the email in my client, click a link and I am in. But then there are times, especially when I am on a system where I just don’t want to login to my email, I would prefer authenticating via a device I own, I trust - usually my mobile.
On IndieAuth front, I completely agree with Glenn. It is wonderful to login with your own website.
★ Liked “AWS icon quiz”
You use AWS, but how well do you actually know AWS? How many AWS icons can you correctly identify?
Freeing the Web from the Browser
The Web is, without a doubt, the most powerful research tool currently available to man. No longer must researchers comb through endless indices and catalogues to find what they are looking for.
In spite of its tremendous improvements on what came before, however, the Web is frankly a disappointment in comparison to what it could be. Most saddening, perhaps, is the way in which the Web constrains the use of links. For example: although the link is the primary form of reference on the Web, underpinning the tangle of connections that make the system so useful, the ability to create new links is a privilege granted only to content producers. The vast majority of those interested in a piece of work are merely readers, unable to contribute, only to consume.
Even though a bit unrealistic, this work by Joe Savage around open hypermedia is a fascinating exploration of what happens when you take link-based web systems outside of the web browsers. The possibilities are endless as it opens up a completely new paradigm to hyper linking — this takes it across all apps.
And therein lies the biggest friction for this concept. Expecting every app to support this is too much to ask from the developers who are already running thin meeting the changing expectations of the primary platform they are built for.
The simple goal of bringing annotations to the web (which should address some of the concerns the open hypermedia attempts to handle) itself has been attempted so many times, but has failed to stick.
Anyway, for the research community, the prototype system as demonstrated below should work wonders. And they might welcome this. But it is a long shot to expect this to be implemented and accepted anytime soon.
I also believe Bloomberg’s this statement, though accurate, is misguided.
“(…) unless you really love Apple, there aren’t many reasons to buy this expensive phone.”
This is not India specific, that is believed to be Apple’s user base across the world.
India is turning out to be a difficult market to crack for Apple. No surprises — it is a price sensitive market where spec wars are still prevalent amongst sales executives.
Only way Apple can succeed is controlling the sales experience, by launching Apple stores.
★ Liked “Reporter vs Journalist”
I’d love to reserve the term blogger for people who write about their own experiences, not for pay, the “unedited voice of a person.” I think of bloggers as sources in the journalism world.
Blotpub Now Supports Likes and Replies
Since I introduced blotpub a couple of days back, I have been continuously posting to the site from different Micropub clients. And I am happy that the system worked well. Added satisfaction was provided by the community by expressing interest and openness to try the endpoint out.
As I had mentioned in that post, handling “the creation of like and reply post types” was next on the list. I just couldn’t live with the fact that the endpoint didn’t handle these simple post types. So, it had to be addressed. And it is addressed now —The information is added as properties in-reply-to and like-of to the post metadata.
Earlier, file creation date was used as the post date. The enhancement was discussed with @jack as part of this git issue. With this version, if the published date is provided, it would be set in the metadata. Else date-time for post creation request would be used. To enable this, just set SET_DATE environment variable to true. Additionally, you can also set the TZ variable to override default timezones for the server hosting your endpoint. Refer to the README for more details.
I have also fixed some minor issues in handling the post creation via different clients, mainly Micro.blog iOS client.
What’s next? Handling of image files.