On the latest Core Intuition, we follow up on the Apple Watch’s new ECG feature, hype from last week’s event, and our plans for iOS 12 and Mojave.
On the latest Core Intuition, we follow up on the Apple Watch’s new ECG feature, hype from last week’s event, and our plans for iOS 12 and Mojave.
Google search, Gmail, Google Docs, Android… Those are all fine. But today’s Google Doodle of Mister Rogers may be the best thing Google has ever done. Beautiful.
There’s an update to Sunlit now available. Bug fixes and support for scrolling further back in the timeline.
With Path shutting down, I downloaded my archive. I only had a handful of posts and photos, but I like that it’s a simple HTML archive. Reminds me of my proposal for a blog archive format.
Rolled out some additional improvements to today’s Micro.blog page navigation feature, including editing the page URL. Look for the small “Edit” button when editing an existing page.
New feature for hosted microblogs: you can now hide a page from the main navigation. There’s a checkbox for it when adding or editing a page. Useful if you need some standalone pages (not blog posts) that you can link to as-needed but don’t want to crowd the navigation. Enjoy!
If Jack Dorsey and I ever sat down for a chat over a coffee or beer we would find much to agree on, but the disagreements would be so significant, so fundamental to everything else, there would be no way to reconcile them. Those differences are why Twitter is so difficult to fix.
“One of the descriptions and labels that we had in the past that I always despised was microblogging.” — Jack Dorsey interview on Recode Media (fascinating and revealing discussion that I’m still listening to)
Great write-up (via @blankbaby) on walking from various airports to each city’s downtown, often 5-10 miles. Seems like a unique way to see a new city.
Since I was a fan of the iPhone 5C, no surprise that I really like the colors on the new XR. This video on YouTube from Marques does a great job of showing them off. No new phone for me this year, though. Last year’s X is still really great.
On the latest Core Intuition, Daniel and I react to this week’s Apple announcements — new iPhones and the Apple Watch Series 4 — then wrap-up with our goals for the upcoming OS releases.
I don’t need to see any more AR demos, but the basketball app + Steve Nash appearance was one of my favorite parts of today’s event. Really impressive. 🏀
Really admire Apple’s focus on health with the Apple Watch. Don’t think I need a Series 4 right now, so will probably opt for a battery upgrade or cheaper Series 3 later this year.
More leaks ahead of the Apple announcements. iPhone XS Max, hmm? I don’t need a new phone, but curious to see the size of this one in the real world.
Looking forward to the Apple event tomorrow. No predictions, but @danielpunkass and I will record a new Core Intuition right after the event. Mention “iPhone X” (or XS or XC!) in a blog post tomorrow to unlock the Micro.blog special event pin.
Surprisingly cool, rainy day in Austin. I’ve got my office window open. Love the sound of the rain while I work. 🌧️
If you missed it late last week, I wrote about the 4 parts to solving the problems with social networks.
For today’s Micro Monday, @vasta joins @macgenie to talk about why M.b first interested him, the impact of words, and the challenge in maintaining inclusive communities. It’s an important discussion with a lot for us to think about and improve.
For September each year, @ismh dedicates the month to raising awareness and money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Check out the blog post for his story and how you can help.
We rebooted the Homebrew Website Club meetup in Austin this summer after a break, and last week we met again at Mozart’s Coffee to talk about the IndieWeb. It was raining when I arrived at the coffee shop. Despite the weather we found some tables on the bottom deck and had a good turnout.
The meeting was informal. After introductions, we talked about the state of social media and silos, with some detours into Mastodon, Micro.blog, and the value of having your own site. The discussion inspired me to finish writing a post about the way out of this mess we’ve found ourselves in with massive social networks.
We’re going to keep the meetup at Mozart’s for now. The next meetup will be October 3rd, 6:30pm. I think it will start to become a little more structured: introductions, demos, discussion, and time for writing or working on projects. Thanks to everyone who made it!
Usually our Micro Monday podcast is weekly, but so much is going on that @macgenie published 4 episodes in the last week! Subscribe to listen to recent interviews with Belle Cooper and Jeff Mueller, plus Doug Beal and Aaron Parecki from XOXO.
There have been many articles written in the last month about the role of social networks. Some even reach the obvious conclusion: that the top social networks are too big. This interview on Slate was fairly representative, covering monopolies and centralized power.
But these articles always stop short before hitting on a solution. They always wrap up saying “it’s tough to solve this”.
I think there are 4 parts to finding our way out of this mess with massive social networks:
Better features: We should be careful before copying everything from Twitter. I don’t want to take features that failed us and recreate them in a new environment. Micro.blog leaves out features on purpose that we think undermine a healthy community.
Open standards: When I first stopped tweeting 6 years ago, it was largely because of the developer-hostile attitude from Twitter. Proprietary APIs reinforce the lock-in with content silos. This is why so much of Micro.blog is based on IndieWeb standards. It’s why Mastodon uses APIs like ActivityPub.
Content ownership: Controlling the writing and photos you post online isn’t about open source or the technical experience to run a server. It’s about using domain names for identity, so that you can move your data in the future without breaking URLs. I’ve written more about this here and it’s a fundamental part of the book I’m writing about microblogging.
Smaller social networks: Many people are looking for “the next Twitter”, but it’s not enough to replace Twitter with a new platform and new leadership. Some problems are inevitable when power is concentrated in only 2-3 huge social networks — ad-based businesses at odds with user needs and an overwhelming curation challenge. This might be Mastodon’s greatest contribution: getting people used to the idea of many smaller, interoperable communities.
There’s not only one solution. I think platforms like Micro.blog and Mastodon each have a role to play and can be complementary. Mastodon helps by encouraging smaller social networks, distributing the task of moderation, but doesn’t prioritize content ownership. (An account on an instance like Mastodon.social has no more ownership of its content than an account on Twitter. Both let you export your data but both live at someone else’s domain name.)
If you are frustrated with the state of social networks, I recommend blogging more. I love seeing new blogs and photo blogs just as we’re having a serious debate in the mainstream about social networks. The way out isn’t easy, but there’s a clear path waiting for us to take it.
Congrats @ccgus on the Retrobatch 1.1 update. Cool to see this app keep getting more powerful.
We just posted the first Core Intuition episode in a while. @danielpunkass and I talk about the Sunlit 2.2 release, the App Store, Android development, and iPhone XS leaks.
Two meetups to check out today if you’re in Portland! IndieWeb (10-noon at Cup & Bar) and our Micro Meetup (5-7pm at Von Ebert Brewing — @macgenie and @cheesemaker will be there at 3:30pm). Everyone’s welcome!