Tag: Dave Winer

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A couple of new WordLand Links: First Drafting – Doc Searls Weblog & Joho the Blog » Trying out WordLand for blogging the second says:

It’s a web page that clears out all of WordPress’s cruft and gives you an interface  that’s so simple that it’s actually enjoyable.

….

 especially if  … Dave Winer, … lets us add tags. I am irrationally committed to tagging

I like tags too.

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I am still posting using WordLand from time to time. Dave Winer opened the service to everyone, on Friday. I’m reading round it as much as I can:

Aziz Poonawalla wrote a review to which Dave responded.

Andy Sylvester gave it a try, posting a video of his first use. Andy is thinking aloud, a process I always enjoy watching others do.

Manton noted:

its own RSS feeds outside of WordPress. The feeds have both HTML and Markdown. So you could build platforms (like Micro.blog!) that aggregate user feeds.

Manton Reece

Which points to the idea your blog could be, without the WordPress bit, an RSS feed that can be piped everywhere. For example: It could go to micro.blog and then be pushed on to lots of other places.

It has surprised me that WordPress does not have a bigger range of ways to post. I hope WordLand will start a trend. Personally I do not use one particular editor, depending on the type of post I am making.

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WordLand is where we start to boot up a simple social net using only RSS as the protocol connecting users. Rather than wait for ActivityPub and AT Proto to get their acts together. I think we can do it with feeds and start off with immediate interop without the complexity of federation. I call it the feediverse. It’s not a joke, although it may incite a smile and a giggle. And that’s ok

Scripting News: Saturday, February 22, 2025

Feediverse, what is not to like! WordLand, I’ve tested for a while. Something like that might be a good fit for Glow Blogs. A simple posting interface for busy teachers. See also pootlewriter.

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Listened to How I view WordPress

A podcast by Dave Winer tangentially discussing the WordPress drama. I’ve been testing his WordLand editor for posting to WordPress. It was especially interesting to hear Dave talking about the need of a range of different editors. He sees a need for a variety to suit different writers.

I’ve used a variety of Dave’s products and have always enjoyed using them. Dave’s products are opinionated in a thoughtful way that makes me think about what I want and need from software.

WordLand encourages me to think about the features I need and features I want. As I understand it, WordLand was based on an earlier blogging system, 1999 which I really enjoyed using.

I think my favourite way of blogging was when I used TextMate. Unfortunately TextMate & the blogging bundle has not been updated for years. Although TM supported quite a few WordPress features it lacks some I now use.

Like TextMate WordLand only support a subset of WP features. It certainly is nice to use for short status posts. Partially because it simplified all the boxes and features in the WordPress. I am continuing to use it to post to a WordPress.com site, for testing and nonsense and my local Raspberry Pi for short notes.

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Likes Pseudo code and kitchen-table conversations by Dave Winer.

I read a lot of negative stuff about chatGPT. Dave Winer seems upbeat. Even though he mentions that a lot of programmers will lose work, he is positive about chatGPT. There are a couple of laugh out loud moments and lots of ideas to chew on, even if you are not a programmer. An enjoyable listen.

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Likes The blogosphere is in full bloom. The rest of the internet has wilted by John Naughton.

How lovely to see Dave Winer’s 30 years blogging in the Observer on Sunday.

I either read or was told by a friend once that Dave Winer was always right if you waited long enough.

I certainly benefited from blogging, podcasting & RSS which Dave was pivotal in
Developing. I’ve also been lucky enough to play with some of Dave’s more recent tools which always makes you think.

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I bet you could do a beautifully readable blog by just dynamically rendering its RSS feed. Why bother statically rendering the home page, month page, day page or pages for each individual post. Dynamic servers are so cheap these days.

from: Scripting News: Sunday, June 2, 2024

I wonder if this is what Dave means: almost 20 years ago, when I started podcasting with my primary school class at Radio Sandaig (Archive.org link), I didn’t really know what I was doing. At first I had created the RSS feed ‘by hand’ in a text editor then made a php page to read the feed in and create the web page. We didn’t have any day, month or even individual episode pages, just the home page. With only 30 or so episodes over 4 or 5 years this was quite manageable.

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I’ve loved RSS since I started blogging. I’ve been using Feedland as an RSS reader since it started.

Feedland is an interesting and opinionated take on an RSS reader. I particularly like the way it makes me think about the interface & purpose of readers.

Dave Winer has been writing a lot about blogrolls recently. He developing a way for you to display a list of Feedland feeds on a drummer blog and now in WordPress. I tried both and they work.

I had been displaying my Feedland feeds on my blogroll page. I am using some Javascript of my own. Inn my sidebar using the links widget and Jan Boddez‘s plugin to sync my links with Feedland. My new Feedland Blogroll uses Dave’s technology.

A Feedland blogroll is a bit different than a straightforward list of links. It is more like a mini feedreader. Each link can be expanded to show the recent posts from a site. The list is constantly reordered to show the most updated site at the top. This reordering points to the river of news idea, I think, as opposed to the completionist way of doing things. There is no marking things as read. It is a handy way to read and a great alternative to other feed readers.

I just added my whole list of Feedland feeds. This is a subset of RSS feeds I’ve followed, some from years ago, it is not yet thoughtful list. All of the recent blogroll discussion has had me thinking a bit about this.

When I started blogging, pre twitter, a lot of my posts were in response to other ‘ScotEduBloggers’. For a while we had a lively community going. Back then I could have really used this Feedland style blog roll in my sidebar. The blogroll then would have reflected this community. The conversation then moved on to twitter and other places, even LinkedIn!

Now I am thinking that my blogroll should go on its own page. To use as a casual feedreader by myself and a source of interesting sources for others.

The perceived audience might affect the feeds I include. If I was creating a blogroll to share links I might skip many of the more popular and well shared feeds and concentrate on ones that might not be so obvious. For example I don’t support many mac inclined people would need a link to Daring Fireball. If the audience is me, I might want a different set of feeds.

At the moment the plugin gets the users whose feeds and categories you display from the settings. I wonder could these be replace/augmented by parameters in the shortcode, for example instead of [feedland-blogroll] you could have [feedland-blogroll user="johnjohnston" category="nature" ] that would mean you could have different blogrolls on different pages.

The Feedland Blogroll interface is rather nice, reminiscent of Mac system 7 in some ways (my first ui and I loved it). It is a perfect fit for a blog sidebar on a desktop/laptop screen. I am wondering about a couple of things:

  1. Since I want it on a page on its own, would it be sensible to add a bit of css to fill more of my page.
  2. Could it be adapted for mobile. That is where I often read feeds. I’d like it to have a slightly bigger font so that the links and disclosure arrows are easier to hit. The interface has a nice tooltips on hover. I wonder could that be adapted for a phone.

I am not sure if these ideas are either practical or possible. I am sure The FeedLand Blogroll is an idea to follow.

Here is the  WordPress plugin and instructions for Drummer.