Tag: Dave Winer

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I’ve updated my rss chat server on my Raspberry Pi: John’s Pi chat. A new feature is adding a menu of commands to the menubar. I followed the instructions. Just for fun I decided to edit the example in drummer rather than locally. This lead to a mistake where I used the link button to add a link 🔗, rather than a url attribute, with the suitcase button . Anyway easy to fix. I made the outline public and used that in the config. Using Drummer for the first time in a long while reminded me of the scripts menu which, in my mind links to  today a type="link" node opens its url in a new tab; other types get their behaviours later.  Other types sounds interesting.

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I’ve been following the development of rss.chat on Dave Winer’s Scripting.com for a while. Dave set up a limited example at chat.rss and now an open one at https://demo.rss.chat which I joined. There dosen’t seem to be a promise that this particular server will stay up, but it offers the chance to try and explore.

rss.chat is a social network:

You can subscribe to those feeds if you want.

Introducing rss.chat – daveverse

from the same page:

I envision a world of small communities, running on small servers. We haven’t released the code for this yet, but will, under an MIT license.

Which is interesting. I remember, when I started using micro.blog, one of my thoughts was that it was the perfect model for a small community with particular interests. At the time I was thinking of education. I love everything about micro.blog but I do not see many there with my interests in education. As I understand it, Dave has no intention in supporting all of micro.blog’s features. In fact I think he hopes that other people will used the spec and concept to create different things:

Don’t think of this as a product Rob. Think about features you want in other people’s products. Think of this as a source of feeds, not a destination for them.

https://demo.rss.chat/?id=108

This is a very interesting way to think about a new piece of software. There are also some interesting ideas on the github issues including mentions of webmentions and WordPress.

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At WordPress.com, we believe short thoughts deserve a real home. Today we’re introducing a new theme built for quick posts, replies, and reblogs: the kind of writing that lives somewhere between a tweet and a blog post, on a site that’s entirely yours.

from: A New Theme for Short-Form Blogging on WordPress.com – WordPress.com News

A new setup on wordpress.com with front end posting, 500 char limit in their editor, but you can go past that if you use an alternative editor, WordLand for example.

It is not clear to me if the features go with the theme, or there is a plugin I can’t see at work. I’ve only got a free WordPress.com account. It looks like you could change the theme.

Of course it would be interesting to see this on self hosted WordPress sites. I did experiment with a telex block that gave simple short form posting. Not quite in a popup, but could be useful on mobile.

Update: Manton has some thoughts: Manton Reece – WordPress short-form interface.

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Likes Scripting News: Updated version of FeedLand Docker Compose by Dave Winer.

Updated version of FeedLand Docker Compose. It’s now possible to run FeedLand on a local machine on a private network.

I’ve now got Feedland running on my mac, despite a really sketchy idea of how docker works. Eventually I’d like to get it running on my pi again. Especially as I’ve a pi 5. But I really need to understand some more about hosting first.

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Likes Exploring WordPress, Textcasting, and Open Web Standards.

In this episode of the Fediverse Flows series, host Matthias Pfefferle sits down with pioneer technologist Dave Winer. The inventor of blogging, podcasting, RSS, and text casting. Together, they unpack the evolution of the open web, discussing why true interoperability and openness matter more than ever in an age of restrictive social media platforms.

The shownotes and transcript on this podcast are wonderful. The Takeaways, provide a great summary and worth reading after you listen.

I’ve been reading Dave Winer’s blog since I discovered rss. I’ve tried many of his more recent tools, including WordLand & FeedLand which he discusses here1.

Matthias Pfefferle is an IndieWeb & WordPress developer. I use his sempress theme & several of his plug-ins2 on this site. Recently he has been developing the ActivityPub – WordPress plugin . This allow your WordPress site to function as a federated profile. I’ve not tried that as I currently posse posts from here to mastodon via micro.blog.

Anyway, I’m a big fan of both participants.

A few interesting things

of the many in the podcast.

I don’t believe in comment sections on blogs, though. I think we could live without that, actually

Dave Winer

Like Alan I do like comments. I’ve read about bloggers who do not and mostly they are the ones with huge audiences. Apart from valuing the conversation, comments & even likes, which I fetch back via brid.gy, it does let me know that sometimes I am not writing into the void. I’d still blog for the void but it is nice to get some contact.
I’d guess bloggers like Dave dislike comments because of the way they can go on big sites.

But over time, what I hope happens is that people find that Wordland’s editor isn’t what they want. They want a different editor because you know what? There’s no one kind of editor that would please everybody.

Dave Winer

I’ve found this one of the most compelling reasons for exploring WordLand. WordLand is quite an opinionated editor. It has led me to think about all the different ways I’ve posted in the past and try out a few other options.

I think most of the younger generations are not aware of what a link is, what a URL is. They simply use one social network, and if they search for other users, they have that little search box and they search for the username. They do not understand that in a decentralized world that they may have to copy and paste URLs to find a new.

Matthias Pfefferle

This really spoke to me as a teacher. I am saddened by the way that even browsers hide paths after domains, and pupils just grab whatever google tells them. I have been surprised twice in the last few years by young kids, 9-11, doing something smart with urls or parameters.

I really enjoyed listening to this episode, lots of food for though. The ideas discussed become complicated quite quickly. A bit like the IndieWeb in general. Dave has of course been aware of WordPress but only recently started using it in earnest. Matthias comes from a different direction, the IndieWeb and Activity pub.

I’ve also now listened to another WordPress podcast with Dave: #186 – Dave Winer on Decentralisation, WordPress and Open Publishing – WP Tavern.

In this one Dave’s optimism and enthusiasm really shines through. I don’t know who it was told me, or maybe I read it somewhere: if you wait long enough Dave Winer is always right, Not sure that is true of anyone, but Dave Winer is always interesting & though provoking to read or listen to.

  1. Other products of Dave Winer I’ve used recently include:
    BingeWorthy 3
    Drummer
    1999.io ❤️
    ↩︎
  2. indieweb/wordpress-indieweb
    wordpress-indieweb-press-this
    WebActions for WordPress
    A Webmention plugin for WordPress
    ↩︎
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Likes It’s really simple by Dave Winer.

The name Really Simple Syndication is supposed to make you smile, while most techie formats make you want to pull your hair out. RSS reads pretty well even if you know nothing about feeds and XML. I wish the browser people hadn’t insisted on masking it with ugly CSS style sheets. I like lifting the hood of a car to see what’s there even though I don’t know what many of the things in there do. I learn by doing it

RSS continues to make me smile, thanks Dave.

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WordLand 0.5.15 is out. New version of Dave Winer’s WordPress editor. Nicest feature for me is the

Choosing a site now remembers previous sites you’ve chosen

I seem to have 25 sites linked to my WordPress account.

I also listen to Dave’s podcast episode on WordLand earlier this week.

WordLand is a good editor. For some people who write in WordPress it will be a godsend, and for others, a revelation. There should be a lot of editors in this space, because there is no one editor that’s good for everyone.

A very interesting post & comments on Jeremy Herve‘s blog: WordPress, WordLand, and the Open Web. Where there a variery of takes.

Personally the idea of lots of editors really resonates with me, I used quite a few. WordLand for this post although I’ll probably nip into the editor to add some tags.