After reading Matt Mullenweg’s posts about WP Engine, I looked into pricing for WP Engine and a few other popular WordPress hosting services. Most are really scammy, with deceptive intro prices and lots of upsells. Haven’t found any that are as simple and transparent as Micro.blo … | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

From Mark Gurman’s latest, the AI rollout still feels haphazard. ChatGPT may come as soon as 18.2: Looking further ahead, Apple is already racing to complete a major iOS 18.2 upgrade, which will include features like Genmoji, ChatGPT integration and the Image Playground app. The … | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

This story about Microsoft and nuclear power underscores how big a deal AI is: If approved by regulators, Three Mile Island would provide Microsoft with the energy equivalent it takes to power 800,000 homes, or 835 megawatts. Never before has a U.S. nuclear plant come back into s … | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

Finished watching the WordCamp Q&A from Matt Mullenweg. Very unique this year, largely dedicated to calling out WP Engine as taking more from the WordPress community than they’re giving back, based on Matt’s blog post here. I don’t have strong opinions on this, but it’ll be somet … | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

The iPhone Pro 16 Max is my first “huge” iPhone. So far I’m liking the size. It’s a little awkward but doesn’t feel too big. I wanted to try this size as a sort of very, very small iPad, for reading and (sometimes) actual work. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

Special shout-out to the UPS driver who delivered my new iPhone while I was out of town for a day. Not only did they hide the box on our porch, they moved a potted plant in front of it to make it even harder to see. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

Frilly’s Seafood Bayou Kitchen, in Denton. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

Wayward Coffee. ☕️ | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

Just posted Core Intuition 613 with our discussion of the iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia releases, changes that might affect our apps, and the new limitations on control key shortcuts. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

Earlier this year I took a photo of the demolition of the Frank Erwin Center. Today I took another photo. It’s just a huge field of dirt and grass, no sign that anything was ever here. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

Here’s the video for my demo at FediForum. It shows Micro.blog posting, cross-posting services, and an experiment with Ice Cubes. Still not sure if the Mastodon API support will ship or in what form. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

Dan Moren writing at Macworld: Look, I’m not ungrateful. But the truth remains that nothing stokes the imagination of what Apple could do with its products more than the release of its latest hardware and software. As iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and all the other latest OSes arrive, we n … | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

Letting the Republicans say “well, Democrats make up facts too” is an unforced error. We do not make things up. We do not knowingly spread misinformation. Policy is rooted in what’s really happening and a desire to make people’s lives better. 🇺🇸 | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

I blogged when the JD Vance couch joke started making the rounds that we should avoid disinformation even when it’s funny. So perhaps there’s a bit of karma with the fake Springfield, OH story. Trump would make up racist things about immigrants no matter what, of course! Our stan … | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

I continue to be impressed with Bluesky’s growth. From Last Week in the ATmosphere, covering the 10 million users milestone with 5.5 million monthly active users: User retention after this new signup wave is also notably high, with daily active users peaking at 1.91 million, and … | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

I was hoping adding Bluesky video upload would be a quick win this week, but it’s going to take a little longer. The API works differently than photo upload. Need to restructure my code first before I can support it well. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

Pre-ordered Directing at Disney a few months ago and promptly forgot about it until it arrived this week. Looks good just flipping through the pages. 📚 | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

I submitted Micro.blog’s Threads support to Meta again with a new video demo, and it was rejected again. Will try again later this week. So I guess this feature is still in beta for a while longer. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

I don’t get why people subscribe to a service or newsletter and then mark those emails as spam. You asked for the email! I know everyone is forgetful, but marking as spam doesn’t help anyone (and in fact hurts the email sending reputation of small companies like Micro.blog). | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

The new Snap Spectacles are too bulky but they’re the first AR glasses that I can actually imagine becoming as convenient as normal glasses. These will be small and great before the Vision Pro is cheap and light. Assuming Snap wants to eventually make a real product, not a dev pr … | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

At first I was surprised that Mozilla.social is shutting down, but Mozilla didn’t seem to have a complete strategy for the social web. Running a Mastodon server and investing in Mammoth were good first steps. Missing was anything that tied these efforts back to Firefox, Pocket, o … | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

On Jack Dorsey’s point that in the age of AI, it’s important to own your identity and content… For me it goes back to trust, and why personal blogs will be more valuable than algorithmic or retweeted posts from strangers. Lean in to the human voice and relationships with readers. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

After I made some Nostr improvements in M.b the other day, I caught up on a few conference videos to see what the community has been up to. Fascinated by this video of Jack explaining Nostr. It’s like a reset, going from a powerful social media CEO to just a dude hanging out at c … | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

With a new iPhone coming this week, seems a good time to post my latest home screen. Same layout as before, but now using iOS 18 instead of blank spacer icons. In the dock: Hey, Epilogue, Strata, and Micro.blog. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

Teen Accounts on Instagram sounds like a very good change. Of course those of us with kids who were teens years ago were just guinea pigs for social media that prioritized ads over safety, but better late than never. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

I mentioned recently that I was considering removing trial accounts on Micro.blog until after the election, to minimize auto-created junk accounts. I’ve rolled out the first phase of that with some internal changes, and adjusted the 30-day trial down to 10 days for new accounts. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

Love this metaphor from Dave Winer about how Micro.blog handles feeds and cross-posting: It’s sort of a Grand Central station for moving stuff around among the twitter-like systems. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

John Gruber’s article about last week’s iPhone event also compares Tim Cook’s Apple with what might’ve been. I agree with this part: I feel confident that if Steve Jobs were alive and still leading Apple product development, there would have been no iPhone-like mind-blown-the-mom … | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

Not sure I have a favorite iOS 18 feature yet, but tapbacks with emoji are near the top of the list. Only problem is the fallback experience for iOS 17 and earlier users is bad enough that I don’t want to actually send any emoji reactions for a while. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

I don’t really understand how OpenAI’s o1 works, but I found today’s Stratechery update helpful, contrasting the approach of o1 compared to other LLMs which can sometimes blindly follow the wrong path: In summary, there are two important things happening: first, o1 is explicitly … | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

Jason Snell reflects on 10 years since starting Six Colors: Ten years ago I took a leap into working for myself, not working in corporate media. For most days since, I’ve worked in my garage, writing articles for my site, recording podcasts, and writing the occasional piece for o … | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

Federico Viticci reviews iOS 18 and also writes about how to balance his love of Apple tech and dislike of generative AI: Technology without people behind it is just an empty chat box. I want to write about the fun, flexible, frequently flawed things humans do with tech, and I wa … | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

We’ve got a new episode of Core Intuition out today, longer than usual to talk about which iPhones we pre-ordered, thoughts on new features like the camera button, and a discussion of whether the AirPods 4 with noice cancellation are effectively a software unlock. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

Happy for Hacks finally winning. Love that show. It has been tough competition going up against hilarious comedy show The Bear. 🤪 | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

Watching the Emmy’s. It shouldn’t bother me so much but folks The Bear still isn’t a comedy. 📺 | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

As a quick follow-up to my post today about posting APIs, I should have linked to the latest Micropub specification. There is also a long list of clients on the IndieWeb wiki. I just added Epilogue there, which also uses Micropub to blog about books you’re reading. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

We’ve visited Dallas a lot recently. It sort of amazes me that Dallas has been able to develop extensive new light rail, and repurpose old rail corridors into great walking trails. Comparatively it feels like Austin has done almost nothing. Looking at the old Missouri-Kansas-Texa … | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

Toward a common posting API

Dave Winer blogs about interoperability for Twitter-like systems: We had that for the blogging layer of this onion, something called the MetaWeblog API. All the popular blogging software supported it. And that meant you could write once and publish to many places. I’ve been tryin … | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

Sean Tilley has a great live blog of FediForum over at We Distribute. Also includes my demo if you scroll back to yesterday’s coverage. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

I got a lot out of FediForum this week. Mostly lurking this morning, can’t really participate. Some fantastic sessions yesterday. I helped lead a discussion on adapting client APIs for different platforms, with great points from folks on ActivityPub C2S and how to go beyond the M … | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

I hadn’t checked out Lillihub in a while. It’s so nice. Some unique ideas around conversations in Micro.blog. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

For something completely new today, I’m revisiting Nostr support in Micro.blog. Making a few tweaks, and support for custom relays. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

Plaud NotePin

I still think there’s potentially a space for these dedicated AI-based voice recorders, but none of them are quite right yet. From David Pierce’s review of the NotePin: In my time testing the NotePin, I’ve mostly had it around my neck, and I’ve used it to note reminders while dri … | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

Learning about Fediverse Discovery Providers at FediForum. Interesting solution to get search and discovery across instances. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

Hello! This is a quick demo of Micro.blog at FediForum. | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

Great post from Molly White on the Hachette vs. Internet Archive decision on controlled digital lending: In fact, by fighting CDL, publishers are seeking to overstep the established boundaries of intellectual property law to exert continued control over an item that has already b … | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

I watched Oprah Winfrey’s AI special. There was some concern before it aired about whether it would represent both sides of the debate, and it’s true it wasn’t comprehensive, but I thought it was actually pretty good. She has a thoughtful, deliberate style, not too sensational or … | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago

FediForum starts today and runs for a few days. It’s inspiring to see what everyone is working on. Luckily I don’t demo until tomorrow because I’m not 100% together this morning. Covid shot interfered with my sleep… 💉 (Don’t let that discourage you! I got unlucky this tim … | Continue reading


@manton.org | 2 months ago