How Google Reader died — and why the web misses it more than ever - The Verge
Wanna get angry all over again?
(Now do Geocities!)
Link tags: syndication
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Google AMP: how Google tried to fix the web by taking it over - The Verge
AMP succeeded spectacularly. Then it failed. And to anyone looking for a reason not to trust the biggest company on the internet, AMP’s story contains all the evidence you’ll ever need.
This is a really good oral history of how AMP soured Google’s reputation.
Full disclosure: I’m briefly cited:
“When it suited them, it was open-source,” says Jeremy Keith, a web developer and a former member of AMP’s advisory council. “But whenever there were any questions about direction and control… it was Google’s.”
As an aside, this article contains a perfect description of the company cultures of Facebook, Apple, and Google:
“You meet with a Facebook person and you see in their eyes they’re psychotic,” says one media executive who’s dealt with all the major platforms. “The Apple person kind of listens but then does what it wants to do. The Google person honestly thinks what they’re doing is the best thing.”
Spot. On.
Mastodon is a gateway | Andy Bell
I’ve been very guilty of putting all my eggs in the Twitter basket over the last couple of years, especially, and all of that has been destroyed by one bellend billionaire. I’m determined not to make that mistake again and even more determined to make my little home on the internet—this website—as lovely and sustainable as I can make it.
Bird’s-eye View · Paul Robert Lloyd
I love not feeling bound to any particular social network. This website, my website, is the one true home for all the stuff I’ve felt compelled to write down or point a camera at over the years. When a social network disappears, goes out of fashion or becomes inhospitable, I can happily move on with little anguish.
Mastodon is just blogs
Do you still miss Google Reader, almost a decade after it was shut down? It’s back!
A Mastodon server is a feed reader, shared by everyone who uses that server.
I really like Simon’s description of the fediverse:
A Mastodon server (often called an instance) is just a shared blog host. Kind of like putting your personal blog in a folder on a domain on shared hosting with some of your friends.
Want to go it alone? You can do that: run your own dedicated Mastodon instance on your own domain.
This is spot-on:
Mastodon is just blogs and Google Reader, skinned to look like Twitter.
Syndicating Posts from Your Personal Website to Twitter and Mastodon · Matthias Ott – User Experience Designer
A very timely post on using If This Then That to automatically post notes from your own site (via RSS) to Twitter and Mastodon.
I’ve set this up for my Mastodon profile.
Get Blogging!
Your easy guide to starting a new blog.
A blog is an easy way to get started writing on the web. Your voice is important: it deserves its own site. The more people add their unique perspectives to the web, the more valuable it becomes.
The Proprietary Syndication Formats - Chris Coyier
Guess which format is going to outlast all these proprietary syndication formats. I’d say RSS, which I believe to be true, but really, it’s HTML.
Am I on the IndieWeb Yet? | Miriam Eric Suzanne
Miriam has a wishlist for scaling up the indie web approach:
What I would like to see is a tool that helps bring the entire system together in one place. Somewhere that non-technical people can:
- build their own site, with support for feeds/mentions
- see what feeds are available on other sites, and subscribe to them
- easily respond to other sites, and see the resulting threads
(Oh, and by linking to this post, this should show up as a bookmark—I’m also testing Miriam’s webmention setup.)
Increasing the surface area of blogging
RSS is kind of an invisible technology. People call RSS dead because you can’t see it. There’s no feed, no login, no analytics. RSS feels subsurface.
But I believe we’re living in a golden age of RSS. Blogging is booming. My feed reader has 280 feeds in it.
RSS - Chris Coyier
How is all this social? It’s just slow social. If you want to respond to me, publish something linking to what I said. If I want to respond to you, I publish something linking to what you wrote. Old school. Good school. It’s high-effort, but I think the required effort is a positive thing for a social network. Forces you to think more.
Untitled: a novel
Ben is writing a chapter a day of this cli-fi story. You can subscribe to the book by email or RSS.
Back to the Future with RSS
Nicky Case on RSS:
Imagine an open version of Twitter or Facebook News Feed, with no psy-op ads, owned by no oligopoly, manipulated by no algorithm, and all under your full control.
Imagine a version of the newsletter where you don’t have to worry about them selling your email to scammers, labyrinth-like unsubscribe pages, or stuffing your inbox with ever more crap.
Why I Still Use RSS | atthislink
Having only the content I want to see only be shown when I want to see it with the freedom to jump between readers as I please, all with no ads? For me, no other service comes close to the flexibility, robustness, and overall ease-of-use that RSS offers.
Autonomy Online: A Case For The IndieWeb — Smashing Magazine
A wonderful introduction to the indie web—Ana really conveys her sense of excitement!
About Feeds | Getting Started guide to web feeds/RSS
Matt made this website to explain RSS to people who are as-ye unfamilar with it.
How would I improve RSS? Three ideas (Interconnected)
Matt has thoughts on RSS:
My sense is that RSS is having a mini resurgence. People are getting wary of the social media platforms and their rapacious appetite for data. We’re getting fatigued from notifications; our inboxes are overflowing. And people are saying that maybe, just maybe, RSS can help. So I’m seeing RSS being discussed more in 2020 than I have done for years. There are signs of life in the ecosystem.
Why Medium is Not the Home for Your Ideas – The Hulry
Some good blogging advice.
Building a blog for the long run? Avoid Medium.
Notifier — Convert content sources to RSS feeds
A service that—amongst other things—allows you to read newsletters in your RSS reader.