Sometimes coding is hard, but not usually. It’s figuring out how something should work that takes all the time. | Continue reading
Just released a new 3.0 beta of Micro.blog for iOS. This includes a big change, borrowed from the 2.x versions: Markdown syntax highlighting when writing new posts. We are getting close to release. The only major feature left is WordPress posting support. TestFlight here to follo … | Continue reading
I know I’ve written about this before, but it’s worth repeating: Micro.blog is constantly shifting priorities based on what people are talking about. If we only hear a feature request every few months instead of every week, it is probably going to drop off our radar, even if we w … | Continue reading
I’m seeing lots of Bluesky takes that are a variation of: “Oh jeez, we just moved from Twitter to Mastodon, now there’s another new thing?” But indie microblogging is about moving away from centralized platforms to blogs and open web-friendly protocols. Anything in that spirit sh … | Continue reading
I’m always fascinated when our new AI bot overlords get really basic facts wrong. They know the answer, but can’t put it together until you press them on it. Here’s a quick transcript from ChatGPT that I ran into today. | Continue reading
Some technologies just keep coming back… Currently writing XML-RPC code, this time for JavaScript. Despite the new-ish JSON APIs in WordPress, not to mention Micropub, MetaWeblog is still the best way to talk to WordPress without any extra plugins or configuration. | Continue reading
U2 tickets for the Sphere in Vegas going on sale later this week. Need to somehow fit this into my plans for the fall. | Continue reading
Added a basic import in Micro.blog for folks migrating from Substack. For now, just blog posts. Still need to think through email address import for newsletters… Want to make sure it can’t be abused by spammers. (Substack’s HTML is so verbose. Tried to clean it up a little on imp … | Continue reading
This is not exactly a commentary on any specific platform, but you can just tell when the creators of a tool use their own stuff and engage with the community. The farther you get away from that, the less confidence users will have. | Continue reading
Today we enabled Bluesky as an option in Micro.blog. This adds to our existing cross-posting feature that supports platforms such as Mastodon, Tumblr, Medium, and Flickr. When you post to your blog, Micro.blog can copy the post to any of these platforms automatically. As Twitter … | Continue reading
Fox News in the, uhm, news today reminds me of last month when I was in Dallas. I worked from a coffee shop near my hotel one morning, Flying Horse Cafe. They had Fox News on the TV. Took me by surprise as an Austinite… No way you’d ever see that here, but oh yeah, I live in Texa … | Continue reading
Tantek Çelik blogged about Mastodon’s account migration and its post export, which is based on ActivityStreams. No other apps really import this format yet, not even Mastodon itself. He also mentions the Blog Archive Format and how useful it would be to convert between Mastodon a … | Continue reading
HTML’s srcset is such a weird image attribute. Can’t help but feel there was a better way to handle this. (But no, I don’t have any obviously better ideas.) | Continue reading
Matt Baer blogs about the future of Write.as and WriteFreely — taking features that are currently separate products and integrating them into more of a suite: At this point, I don’t think it makes sense for our self-hosted product to be chopped up into multiple components like ou … | Continue reading
It breaks my heart a little when I drive through a historic neighborhood to see old houses bulldozed to make room for modern mansion monstrosities. I know a house is just a thing, but it feels like erasing a bit of history that mattered to someone. | Continue reading
“Make no little plans. Make the biggest one you can think of, and spend the rest of your life carrying it out.” — Harry Truman | Continue reading
The bookmarks pages in Micro.blog haven’t felt quite right to me, so today I rolled out a small redesign that I think better integrates bookmarks, highlights, and links. (This is only for Micro.blog Premium subscribers. Premium adds web page archiving and making highlights in boo … | Continue reading
If it was starting to feel like Humane’s device would be overhyped or vaporware, I’m ready to put aside those concerns. It looks like they are onto something fascinating, both the projection and the AI language translation. | Continue reading
On this week’s episode of Core Intuition, we talk about the Mastodon API and upcoming new MarsEdit release. And of course, blogging. | Continue reading
One of those afternoons where I’m hopping between unrelated tasks. Currently revisiting how to best crunch through OpenStreetMap data. | Continue reading
Updated my code for Bluesky for the recent API endpoint changes. Looking forward to enabling this for Micro.blog folks. | Continue reading
Tantek Çelik blogs about yesterday’s The Verge article on ActivityPub, underscoring some of the IndieWeb principles that are covered. There’s really a lot in there and I’m glad to see the article getting so much attention. Thanks @pierce@mas.to! | Continue reading
The Verge has a long article by David Pierce today about ActivityPub. The quote from me about domain names doesn’t come across quite how I intended it… Yes, domain names are hard, but we need to make them much easier to deal with because they’re actually great. | Continue reading
I haven’t written a new React Native diary blog post in a while because there hasn’t been anything noteworthy. We’ve shipped new versions of Epilogue for iOS and Android. Micro.blog 3.0 for iOS is almost ready — also a rewrite for React Native. We did hit one feature that I wante … | Continue reading
Accidentally clicked on a phishing email. Ugh, must not be awake yet. Stopped short of signing in and giving them my password, though. | Continue reading
Got lost down the rabbit hole of W3C membership fees… Interesting scaled fee structure, in the United States from $2k/year to $77k/year depending on the member company’s revenue. | Continue reading
There are always more ideas than time. One of the things I’ve most enjoyed about building Micro.blog is that it’s a platform where many blog-related ideas can fit together. The “micro” was always a bit of an undersell. | Continue reading
I’ve been impatient for Bluesky to ship, but this interview with The Verge has helped convince me that it’s okay to wait. The API is still in flux. Already I need to go back and update some early experiments. | Continue reading
One of those just try random code until it works mornings. Not proud of it. Sometimes coding is less well-crafted and more stubborn persistence. | Continue reading
Shoutout to the guy holding a “thoughts and prayers ain’t working” sign downtown this morning. Banning assault weapons should not be controversial. It’s time. | Continue reading
This year I’ve become fascinated with my family tree. Just got back my DNA kit results. (Yes, there are privacy issues. I’m ignoring those for now.) So far it reveals just about what I expected. Still amazing. | Continue reading
Some great NBA playoff games over the weekend. Too many injuries, though. Can’t believe Tyler Herro hit that 3-point shot with a broken hand. Shooters gonna shoot. | Continue reading
Happy Monday, everyone. Starting the week at Progress Coffee again. ☕️ | Continue reading
We pushed a new Micro.blog beta out to TestFlight, improving blog selection to move the list of blogs to the toolbar area. Here’s a partial screenshot of what it looks like. | Continue reading
Didn’t get much feedback about my Substack blog post yesterday, so I started to doubt myself. I wrote it quickly and glossed over some details. But that’s how it is with blogs… Sometimes you put things out in the world and hardly anyone notices. That’s okay! Still worth it. On to … | Continue reading
Another unexpected use for ChatGPT: asking it for examples of using command-line tools like rsync for specific scenarios. Faster than digging through a man page. | Continue reading
For folks trying Micro.blog’s Twitter import, note that the tweets page is just a web page, so you can add intro text or other formatting if you want to. I added a little intro to mine here to give some context. | Continue reading
Dave Winer writes about the Twitter API changes: Corporate platforms always fail, given enough time. The Twitter API had a good run. Now the deck is clear, and there’s room to make some new stuff, or just take a break and smell the roses a bit, or go for a bike ride. 🤪 Th … | Continue reading
Nilay Patel’s Decoder interview with Substack founder Chris Best is excellent. If you’ve only seen the excerpt where Chris declines to answer Nilay’s hypothetical moderation question, that clip was not taken out of context. It is exactly how the interview went, but a small part, … | Continue reading
New episode of Core Intuition is up! On episode 553 we talk about WWDC 2023 tickets, conferences, and Micro.blog’s new Twitter import feature. | Continue reading
We redesigned the Micro.blog home page this year and it’s so much better. Yet I still wonder if we’re telling the complete story about what Micro.blog can do. Full blogs. Social network. ActivityPub. Podcast hosting. Newsletters. Tweet import. Hugo. Cross-posting. More open APIs … | Continue reading
I’ve been keeping an eye on our OpenAI bill since we added automatic podcast transcripts for all podcasts hosted on Micro.blog. It’s working out great and sustainable. Micro.blog for podcasts is best for solo microcasts anyway. Perfect for quick transcripts and the way our hostin … | Continue reading
Congrats to Rogue Amoeba on the major update to Farrago. They’ve done some really nice work in this app. | Continue reading