Micro.blog is a blogging platform with a social engagement component. We have a timeline where you can follow and interact with other bloggers. Sometimes it feels like Twitter, because of the timeline, mentions, and conversations. But there are key differences, built into Micro.blog, to make it a sa...
Aaron Parecki (aaronparecki.com)I’ve talked about this a lot with @dcwalk_. My sense is that “decentralization” is often so vapid a term that it’s necessary to investigate exactly what is being decentralized and how, and what’s being missed.
@ntnsndr recently published a great article about this. He points out that many decentralized systems lead to centralized outcomes (Bitcoin mining power is a good example) and argues “The rhetoric of decentralization thus obscures other aspects of the re-ordering it claims to describe. It steers attention from where concentrations of power are operating, deferring worthwhile debate about how such power should operate.”
In other words, beyond not meaning anything in particular, “decentralization” can be deceiving. If we think strongly enough of a technical system to believe it can change the world, we owe it to ourselves to be specific about how this change might occur.
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tl;dr: agreed!
Aaron Parecki (aaronparecki.com)
Marty McGuire (martymcgui.re)Marty makes a quirky grin while staring into his phone It looks like I will be speaking at IndieWeb Summit! Specifically, I’ll be giving a keynote about how to “Own Your Mobile Experience”. As a long-time enthusiast for these tiny computers we carry, I try to make most of the things I can do o...
Sounds great! I’ve been trying to find ways to improve my use of IndieWeb building blocks on mobile. Looking forward to getting some new ideas from your talk
Continuing to extend the pathway from easily following websites to having them in your social reader.
Thanks for this writeup, Chris. I probably haven’t thought as much as I should about following posts, so your documentation is really helpful.
You’ve reminded me that I’d like to eventually figure out a good way to have Yarns import and export OPML files. Given that the impetus of Yarns vs a hosted server is to own your feeds, it’s a shame I haven’t implemented better data portability yet.
Another idea your post brings to mind, is that it would nice to have an option to automatically create following posts (and add to the blogroll) when adding a new feed (and subsequently remove following posts when unfollowing). This should be fairly easy to implement, and would take advantage of Parse-This since its integrated into Yarns already.
Additional would be a bookmarklet for adding feeds.
As usual, you’re a fount of good ideas. I won’t have time to implement any of these things before IWS, but one of them might be a nice project for that weekend.
Continuing to extend the pathway from easily following websites to having them in your social reader.
David Shanske (david.shanske.com)Without much critical examination, teachers accept they have to grade, students accept being graded, and none of us spend enough time thinking about the why, when, and whether of grades.