Tag: mastodon

  • Re: Bluesky

    We now live in a time where many smaller social networks exist, some of them will likely exist for decades to come, and most of them may never reach hundreds of millions of monthly active users and that is a very good thing for the web. It is a bit messy, somewhat confusing, and totally…

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  • I’m experimenting with the ActivityPub plugin a bit. I’ve always wanted separate fediverse accounts for my personal projects such as Stupid, Stripe Transfer, etc. but the thought of managing those didn’t seem fun. The plugin allows each author to have their own account; so I’ve added one for @stupid to play with and customized its…

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  • Diversions #2: From Chicago to Assateague

    Diversions is the central hub for news about the membership, behind-the-scenes details of my personal projects, as well as a wide variety of links to people, places, and things that inspire me. Chitown! I spent a few unseasonably warm days in Chicago on a work trip with the NerdPress team. It was my first time meeting…

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  • Favorite Toots now available on the WordPress plugin directory

    Back in early February I submitted the Favorite Toots WordPress plugin I had been toying with on my own website to the WordPress plugin directory. Starting today, it is available publicly there and people can search for it from their own WordPress Admins. The source code is available on GitHub if you’d like to contribute…

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  • Introducing the Favorite Toots WordPress Plugin

    One of the primary ways I find new accounts to follow on social media is by eavesdropping on other people’s favorites. Many social networks make each account’s favorites public but Mastodon does not (yet?). So I wanted a way to show my favorites publicly so that others can look through them. And I’m hoping others…

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  • ActivityPub will cross the chasm in 2024

    In 1991, Geoffrey A. Moore described the challenges of introducing new technology products as Crossing the Chasm. The chasm is this very real gap between the earliest adopters and the early majority adopters of any new technology. By crossing the chasm, the momentum gained usually enables the technology to find market fit. Most protocols, standards,…

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  • Dear Arc

    As an avid Safari fanatic, I’m reluctant to dive into a new browser backed by any company with a business model I find… elusive. I’ve been giving Arc a spin every few releases since signing up for the beta and each time it has improved a lot. Just yesterday I was chatting with our creative…

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  • Doubling down on Mastodon

    The ease of Ivory on Mastodon has me sharing a lot more than I had been over the last few years. Ivory is on my phone, tablet, and my laptop. It is very easy to write a post, share an image, boost someone else’s post, link to a good blog post, etc. My homegrown static…

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  • How to help Mastodon

    There have been several waves of activity on Mastodon since I signed up in 2017. Those waves have increased in frequency and intensity. Admittedly, while I did put in some effort early on, I wasn’t really part of that first wave. I rode in on a much later wave in mid-2022 and haven’t looked back…

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  • Blogging is alive and well

    Oh man am I happy! People that hadn’t written on their blog in a long time are blogging again. Websites that hadn’t been updated in many years, some over a decade, are being spruced up and published to again. And popular news outlets are publishing articles about blogging. Of course, those of us that have…

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  • Disbanding the POSSE

    For the past several years I’ve been POSSE-ing. In Indieweb terms that means to publish content on my own site and syndicate it to other platforms. I’ve decided I’m going to discontinue using automation in favor of manually writing posts for each of the platforms I want to post to. I’m doing this for 3…

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  • Recent Mastodon vibes

    There is a lot being written about Mastodon lately. And it isn’t just being published on Mastodon. Both Time and Wired have published about Mastodon and its creator within the last week. I wanted to post my current thoughts about the platform to capture the moment. Things are changing rapidly. A lot of things are…

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  • Nyasha Green on the issues within the WordPress community

    Nyasha Green recently published a post that covers a few issues she’s seeing within the WordPress community and offers solutions on how to fix those issues. One issue she calls out is that the community relies on free labor: Paying people for their labor is simply not what the spirit of the WordPress community stands…

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  • I am quitting social media

    Mostly. And, for a year. Or more. What started out as a routine flushing of my social media accounts, something I’ve done on more than one occasion in the past, has now turned into a strong desire to leave social media behind for good. And so I’m doing just that. My main reasons for waiting…

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  • Twitter’s project Bluesky seems stuck in the mud

    Yesterday I randomly wondered what the status of Twitter’s Bluesky project was – a project that promises to create a protocol for federating the microblogging platform in the same way that SMTP/IMAP does for email. So I poked around. The Twitter account seems all but dormant. So then I logged into their Discord guild (Discord…

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  • Whalebird – A Mastodon client for Mac, Linux, and Windows

    h3poteto, the username of a software engineer from Japan that only goes by the name* of the fictional character Akira Fukushima online: Recently I started Mastodon. I can find some nice client applications in iOS and Android, but I could not find client for desktop application. The above from a post on Medium from March…

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  • Manton Reece on smaller social networks

    Manton Reece: Many people are looking for “the next Twitter”, but it’s not enough to replace Twitter with a new platform and new leadership. Some problems are inevitable when power is concentrated in only 2-3 huge social networks — ad-based businesses at odds with user needs and an overwhelming curation challenge. This might be Mastodon’s…

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  • Back on a different Mastodon instance

    Longtime readers of my blog will know that I was on Mastodon and then didn’t log back in for a long time. My first instance (mastodon.cloud) was sold? or was given? to a new admin and somehow my account was suspended and I couldn’t reset my password. I reached out to the current admin via…

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  • An interview with Manton Reece of Micro.blog

    I have fond memories of the very early days of WordPress (when it had just been forked from b2/cafelog), of Twitter, of Brightkite, of App.net, of Mastodon… just to name a few. The early days of any platform or so important to what they will become. They are the most fun to watch. The early…

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  • Mastodon in April

    April hasn’t ended but Eugene Rochko wanted to share what has happened thus far with Mastodon during the month. It is an interesting post. Always neat to see explosions like this from the inside. Like this bit: So, April, huh. Twitter changed the reply system, which everybody told them they shouldn’t do, and then removed…

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  • How to support Mastodon

    Don’t know what Mastodon is? Read my Observations on Mastodon post first. I’m all in over on Mastodon for #woollyweek. I thought I’d take a moment to jot down all the ways you can support Mastodon even if you’re not running your own instance, aren’t a programmer, or have a ton of time. Support a…

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  • I’m in for #woollyweek

    Speaking of Mastodon, a few tooters have massed together to start #woollyweek. Sebastian Morr: In our experience, a hard cut works best for trying out new platforms like this. The idea is simple; you log out of Twitter and stay away from it for an entire week starting this coming Monday April 24. Anything you…

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  • Observations on Mastodon

    I’ve been fiddling with Mastodon (to the tune of over 500 toots as of this writing). I’ve also been reading up on the history of the service a lot over the last few weeks. Here are some general observations that I’ve made along with a few helpful links. Mastodon isn’t a single service. It is an…

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  • What I saw this week #38: April 7, 2017

    Don’t forget, you can see all posts in this series by skimming through the what-i-saw tag. Now, onto this week’s links. Video: Puffer fish artist – Absolutely incredible stuff from such a small little fish. Andy Baio is back – Not only is he blogging again but Upcoming has re-launched. Stripe Atlas – The program is…

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