Owning your content

With all the hoopla about the Threads app from Instagram/Facebook, I was reminded of a post from Tantek Celik (Own Your Notes), bringing out these points (see this comic for context):

I am once again asking you to own your notes, rather than tweeting them into Big Chad’s garage.

Maybe you left the big garage and now toot in your neighborhood Chad’s garage. It’s still someone else’s garage.

I have also written about owning your content (here, here and here). Of course, posting this on my Old School blog goes against this (although I have an OPML backup that I could render somehow), which is why I am also posting this on my main blog (WordPress self-hosted). People may feel that what they post on services like Threads, Twitter, Mastodon, et al, is more like conversations that do not need to be “owned”. However, if there is a way to pipe your conversation into a flow where you still own the content (like MyStatusTool), why not do it?

Why I won’t be on Bluesky, Threads et al any time soon

I already have accounts on Twitter, Mastodon, and Micro.blog – that’s enough social networks for me. I have a Drummer Old School blog, my main WordPress blog, and now my minimal blogging tool MyStatusTool (here is my instance) – that’s enough blogging tools for me. Someday I will get my Federated Wiki instance working again (hopefully soon), meanwhile I have my OPML Zettlekasten file to file things. I think that’s enough!

Dave Winer talks about bootstrapping a federated 140-character loosely coupled network. I think MyStatusTool fits the bill! You don’t have to get an account on Threads or wait for a Bluesky invite – just download, install, and get started making some news of your own! PS – I already wrote about this bootstrap.

I like how Ken Smith continues to write about activism (Indiana legislature, lack of journalism influence, etc.), but what I don’t like is how he does not link to any resources of people who are in this fight (like this list of resources I put together and referenced here). Ken, please make an effort to add this type of material to future posts.

I have been working on developing a glossary plugin for Micro.blog, and that has been taking up my time the past few weeks. I plan to get back to MyStatusTool development, as well as some blogging.

I like reading Jack Baty’s stream of ideas writing, thought I would give it a try…

Blogging on a jet plane

I am on a trip, and the Wi-Fi on the plane is working well – so of course a blog post must be created!

Colin Walker and I have both developed tools for making short posts and following RSS feeds.

Colin’s tool: https://colinwalker.blog/php-mst/

Colin’s announcement: https://colinwalker.blog/blog/?date=2023-02-08

My tool: http://fedwiki.andysylvester.com:443/

My announcement: https://andysylvester.com/2023/02/06/demo-of-mystatustool-twitter-using-rss-and-rsscloud/

Check them out!

Demo of MyStatusTool – Twitter using RSS and rssCloud

I have created a proof of concept for a microblogging tool relying on RSS for data storage and rssCloud for notification. I was motivated to do this to show how rssCloud could be used to support a Twitter-like experience. Also, I was blocked for posting an innocuous comment on the FeedLand user feed tool, and felt that there needed to be an alternative to that tool for microblog posting. My earlier posts on the development of this tool are here and here.

In this demo app, the basic functions are:

Ability to make a short post
When a post is made, a RSS feed is updated, a separate page for the post is created, and the post appears on the home page via Websockets
The tool provides hosting for the RSS feed and posts created
The tool can display updates to any RSS feeds that support the rssCloud protocol via Websockets (feeds are listed in a configuration file)
The contents of the feeds in the configuration file are displayed when the user accesses the page (so they can see what has been posted recently), then any posts with the tool appear at the top of the page

The tool is set up for a single user and requires some configuration. Please consult the README on the Github repo for more information if you want to set up the tool for yourself.

The demo app is available at http://fedwiki.andysylvester.com:443/. The contents of the feeds in the configuration file are displayed, along with any recent posts using the demo app. I encourage people to try making posts and see how they appear and how quickly they appear. As posts continue, so will display of updates to the RSS feeds in the configuration file.

This is a proof of concept, but will be further developed. If you find problems in the tool, or want to suggest features, feel free to create an issue in the Github repo. Also, I would love it if a few other people try installing it and let me know how it goes…

Update on MyStatusTool development

Recently I published a roadmap of the major features for a “Twitter using rssCloud” tool that I am calling MyStatusTool. As of this weekend, I have the major pieces in place (have a text box to enter a short post, to create a RSS feed based on the posts, for each post to have a page, to ping a rssCloud server when a post is live, to have the posts be displayed in reverse-chronological order, and to display posts from other tools that create RSS feeds supporting rssCloud). I spent some time looking at integrating Passport.js to provide multi-user capability, but it turned out to be more than just a day’s worth of work. As a result, I am going to push my current version to Github this weekend after writing some docs. More news to come!