Manton Reece

I love road trips and travel blogs. We have a family blog that we started a few years ago, adding new daily posts for summer vacations with the kids and other trips. A blog is a great way to combine text and photos to remember a trip, with the flexibility to keep it for yourself or share it on social media.

For the 6th day of the 12 days of microblogging series, we wanted to highlight 2 travel blogs using Micro.blog. Mary Hatfield writes on her microblog with incredible photos of trips across the United States and even to Antarctica:

When we woke up this morning we were in the Neumayers Channel (below Anvers) located on the western side of Wiki Island ready to take the zodiacs onshore. The weather was quite perfect this morning and it was our turn […] We walked across the fresh blanket of snow to the Damoy Hut, which was built in 1975 and kept in use until 1995.  It has now been restored to its original form and is used as a museum. The land here was an airstrip that enabled personnel and stores arriving by ship to be flown on to Rothera Station in early summer when sea ice prevents dirt access to the station by ship

Arin Mearig kept a daily blog for a 3-month trip to Switzerland, posting photos every day with captions for people she’s met and places she’s visited. From day 34:

quick recap - left the house at 5am, went to 4 cities, hitchhiked for the first time, went on buses, trains, cable cars, and a funicular, ate a delicious burger, saw some of the greatest views ever, and just walked in the door at 10:45pm

I’m inspired by these blogs to write more while traveling. Consider capturing some of your next trip on an existing blog or new microblog.

See this help page for previous posts in this serious, covering topics like photos, microcasting, custom designs, and more.

Preparing today’s blog post about travel microblogs and getting lost in people’s incredible photos of their trips.

Love the way the Spurs finished this game against the Lakers tonight. First of 6 games at home, might be the turning point to climb back into the playoffs picture. 🏀

It’s day 5 of our 12 days of microblogging series. Yesterday I highlighted what Micro.blog users are doing to create unique custom designs for their blog. Today we want to highlight how artists are using Micro.blog to showcase their work.

I’ve loved seeing the drawings from Audra Ann Furuichi, who posts web comics and illustrations on her own site. Sky Sandison has sketches from around Edinburgh, Scotland. And Mike Hendley shares digital paintings as he works through them on his iPad.

Plus there’s great sketchnotes from Mike Rohde and Ben Norris, including one by Ben about my talk from Peers Conference earlier this year.

October was also Inktober, with many bloggers posting sketches to their microblogs every day. We have a special section of Discover for Inktober that collects many of those posts together.

While the iOS apps for Micro.blog are designed around JPEG photos, you can use Micro.blog on the web to upload other formats like PNG and GIF, which might be more suitable for illustrations. Just click Posts → Uploads.

Showcasing artwork on Micro.blog uses many of the same features as photo blogs, which I wrote about on day 2 of 12 days of microblogging. For previous posts in this series, check out our help page on Micro.blog.

It’s day 4 of our 12 days of microblogging series. Today we want to highlight how Micro.blog supports blog themes and what people can do to give their blog a unique design.

There are 3 ways to customize your microblog:

Pick from one of the default 7 themes. These themes are based on existing designs using the Jekyll blogging framework, but modified to work consistently with Micro.blog. We’ve open-sourced all our changes to these themes on GitHub.

Edit the custom CSS for your blog. I’ve been really impressed with what creative Micro.blog users have come up with. You can use CSS to change colors, fonts, hide elements, and more. Here are a few examples from Kitt Hodsden, Michael Barrett, and Khaled Abou Alfa.

Add a custom footer. The footer HTML is a good place to put extra information or JavaScript.

If you have any questions about using CSS, ask in the #design channel on Slack. And if you have any tips, write about it on your blog so that others can learn from it. I’m currently working on a major upgrade to the themes on Micro.blog that I can’t wait to share more about.

Previously in the 12 days of microblogging series, I wrote about microcasting, photos, and using your own blog as a home base.

For the 3rd post in our 12 days of microblogging series, we want to highlight how Micro.blog can serve as your social media “home base”. By centralizing your writing, photos, and other web pages at your own domain name, you can control your content but still share it out to other social networks.

Micro.blog has cross-posting for Twitter, Medium, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Mastodon. This feature is available for free if you host your site on Micro.blog, or $2/month if your blog is hosted elsewhere. It includes automatic posting to all 5 of those social networks and any new platforms we may add later.

Here’s how I personally use this feature. I never post directly to Twitter. I publish short posts on my own blog, and Micro.blog automatically sends them to Twitter and other networks. Occasionally I’ll sign in to Twitter and check if I have any @-mentions that need replying to. This way I can avoid the distraction of the Twitter timeline and focus on adding content where it’s most important to me: my own site.

With Mastodon, you have another option beyond cross-posting. Because Micro.blog supports the ActivityPub API, Mastodon users can follow your Micro.blog-hosted blog and you can follow and reply to Mastodon users directly in Micro.blog. I posted more last month about how this works and why it uses your own domain name:

Sometimes in the Mastodon world your identity can get fragmented across multiple instances. You might start on mastodon.social but then move to another instance, effectively breaking the link between your readers and your posts each time you move, with no way to migrate posts between instances. By supporting Mastodon and ActivityPub in Micro.blog, you can consolidate your identity and posts back to your own blog at your own domain name.

Your blog is also a great place to centralize your photos, while still integrating with Instagram and these other social networks. Instagram doesn’t allow automatically posting from your blog to their service, but you can use OwnYourGram or our Mac app to copy Instagram photos to your blog, and from your blog to everywhere else. More links in yesterday’s post.

For details on how cross-posting works — and the extra rules Micro.blog uses to make sure that your posts look good on other networks — see this help page. Happy cross-posting!

Speaking of tonight’s Homebrew Website Club, Tom Brown and I were guests on the Plutopia podcast that just posted this week, talking about the IndieWeb, posting to your own blog, and Micro.blog.

I misspoke at the beginning about the founding of the IndieWeb, incorrectly saying “Distributed Web Summit” when I meant “Federated Social Web Summit”. I actually interviewed Tantek and Aaron about those early days of the IndieWeb when I was in Portland this year, for my upcoming book Indie Microblogging. I’d love to get part of that transcript out soon since there’s a lot of good history in it.

Good morning, Austin! Tonight is Homebrew Website Club, 6:30pm at Mozart’s Coffee. We’ll meet at a table outside to talk about the IndieWeb, plan for the upcoming IndieWebCamp Austin, or work on your own web site.

We released a new version of Micro.blog for iOS today with several new features and improvements:

• Added full-screen viewer for photos in the timeline.
• Added auto-complete of usernames when composing a new post.
• Added tapping on your blog hostname in the post screen to switch to a different blog if you have multiple Micro.blog-hosted blogs.
• Added option to set description on uploaded photos for better accessibility. Tap an attached photo thumbnail before posting to edit the text.
• Updated the following count in user profiles to show people you are not yet following to help you discover new people to follow.
• Fixed maximum size when scaling uploaded photos.
• Fixed potential crash when sharing photos from other iOS apps.
• Fixed layout issues on new bigger iPhones.
• Fixed sharing some web page titles.
• Improved accessibility of menus and buttons in the app.
• Improved showing push notifications in the app.

You can download Micro.blog version 1.4 from the iOS App Store.

Yesterday we started the 12 days of microblogging blog post series to mark the 1-year anniversary of the public launch of Micro.blog. I posted about making it easier for people to share their stories in audio form with microcasting. Today I want to highlight photoblogging.

Sharing photos is an important part of Micro.blog. I put a custom photo picker and filters in the original Micro.blog iOS app to encourage everyone to post photos to their blog, so that you end up with a great collection of your best photos at your own domain name. Because photos are square by default, they look great in the Micro.blog timeline, and with cross-posting Micro.blog can attach photos to your tweets or send posts to other social networks.

We also have a companion iOS app just for photos called Sunlit. It has an Instagram-like timeline for browsing photos from your Micro.blog timeline, with the focus around blogs that I wrote about in my preview post as we were relaunching Sunlit 2.0:

To play nicely with microblogs, we introduced a new post type in the app for single photos. For longer posts, you can still collect multiple photos together, add text, and post them as a story directly to your blog.

Some people on Micro.blog focus almost exclusively on posting photos, like Robert Brook. Some people have even created separate blogs just for their photos at their own domain name hosted on Micro.blog, like burk.photos. There’s a special section of Discover that features photos from more Micro.blog users.

A couple of weeks ago, Jonathan LaCour on Micro.blog submitted a feature request for a photos JSON Feed. He used this feed to build Microgram, a snippet of HTML that you can paste into your blog to provide a grid of photo thumbnails. You can see my photos page at manton.org using Microgram in this screenshot:

One of the most common questions we get is how to migrate photos from Instagram to Micro.blog. I think we have 2 really good options for this:

• Micro.blog for macOS has a built-in Instagram importer. It will take the archive you get from Instagram and allow you to batch import your Instagram photos to Micro.blog, preserving the original dates and text from Instagram.
• OwnYourGram is a web-based app that connects to your Instagram account to automatically copy new Instagram posts to your own blog. Because it’s based on IndieWeb standards, it can also post directly to Micro.blog-hosted sites.

I hope you enjoy posting and browsing photos on Micro.blog! Tomorrow I’ll have the next post in the 12 days of microblogging series.

Some of y’all noticed that Micro.blog was slow or not responding this morning. Sorry! I explain why on today’s episode of Timetable.

Thanks everyone for the congrats and feedback about the last year of Micro.blog! Coming up today, another post in our 12 days of microblogging series. Also a chance that the new iOS version is approved.

One year ago today, after months of feedback from Kickstarter backers, we opened up Micro.blog to the public. In that time, we’ve watched the community grow, seeing more folks than ever writing on their own blogs while sharing in the Micro.blog timeline and participating in conversations. We are proud of maintaining our commitment to a safe community space where harassment is not tolerated while promoting independent blogging.

We’ve also added a lot of functionality to the platform during this first year. To mark the anniversary, we are highlighting 12 features of Micro.blog over the next 12 days. We’re kicking off the 12 days of microblogging with a major hosting feature that rolled out earlier this year: microcasting.

What are microcasts? Just short podcasts. A major idea behind Micro.blog is that if blog posts are shorter and easier to post, more people will stick with writing on their own site every day. Podcasting should be easier too.

As I wrote when announcing microcast hosting and our companion app Wavelength:

Everyone has a story to tell. Whether that’s through short microblog posts, longer essays, photo blogs, conversations with friends, or now through podcasts, I hope that the Micro.blog platform and suite of apps can help.

I’ve been so excited to see new podcasts launch on Micro.blog, including our very own Micro Monday hosted by Jean MacDonald. For today’s episode, Jean interviews long-time blogger and Mac developer Brent Simmons about his podcast The Omni Show and working on the new NetNewsWire feed reader.

You can find recent episodes from a variety of microcasts in the Discover section of Micro.blog. Also check out Microcast.club, a directory of microcasts. Get started with your own microcast with this help article and join our Slack community where the friendly folks in the #microcast channel can help with questions.

Tune in tomorrow for day 2 of our 12 days of microblogging series.

Having fun wrapping up the next iOS version of Micro.blog with @cheesemaker. 3-4 new features that add up to a very nice release. I’d love to ship it Monday for the official 1-year anniversary of the public launch of Micro.blog.

Great to see Apple Music coming to the Echo (noticed via MacStories). This is kind of an “iTunes on Windows” moment. Makes business sense, but still surprising.

With the midterms and now the near-daily Mueller investigation news, I’ve fallen back into reloading The New York Times home page throughout the day for no reason. Gotta stop this. I already see everything in my RSS reader or Micro.blog timeline.

Sunlit 2.3.1 is now available in the App Store. If you’re interested in posting more photos to your own blog, check it out. It’s a free app and works well with Micro.blog.

There’s a nice feature on RSS apps (best viewed on iOS) in the App Store today.

Posted a new Timetable with a few updates on Sunlit, the updated help.micro.blog home page, and when to upgrade servers.

Haven’t actively used EC2 in a while, but wanted to check out the pricing after this week’s announcement that Amazon is making their own CPUs. On first glance, the “a1” instances don’t look cheaper. Maybe it’s not right to compare them directly to comparable “t3” instances?

Hi Austin! NSDrinking is tonight, 8pm at Radio. Join us for a chat about Apple development over a coffee or beer. ☕🍻

Sent the latest Sunlit 2.3.1 build to beta testers. Anyone can now join the beta with this link.

There’s a really good follow-up about the App Store monopoly in today’s Stratechery daily update. Focusing on in-app purchase (digital goods) paints a very clear picture of why Apple’s rules need to change.

Good news for Sunlit users: @cheesemaker tracked down that crash that had been eluding us and we have a fix ready to go this week. Waiting for Apple to approve it.

I wish it wasn’t hosted on Medium, where you can’t even use your own domain name, but I’m glad to see some long-form posts from Beto O’Rourke after the election. It shouldn’t surprise anyone who has heard Beto speak that he is also a great blogger:

I walked over to the north wall and read Lincoln’s second inaugural address. My body warm, blood flowing through me, moving my legs as I read, the words so present in a way that I can’t describe or explain except that I’m so much more alive in the middle of a run, and so are the words I was reading.

In last week’s Pod Save America, the hosts talked about how there’s a window of time for some candidates to run for president. It might not come again. America deserves a president who can speak and write honestly, leading us past the Trump years.