Internet

There are 9 posts filed in Internet (this is page 1 of 1).

What is the independent web?

I got a comment from a reader yesterday asking what I meant by the phrase “the independent web” in my previous post. In my post, I defined it as “websites and web presences that are not part of a silo like Twitter, Facebook, etc, where people own their data and control it”. An extension of this is using technologies like RSS for checking for site updates and for podcasting, which are not controlled by another platform (even though entities like Spotify and other streaming services would like to “capture and keep users” within their ecosystems). Wanting to double-check, I did some searching to see if there were other references to this phrase. and found a number of links I will add at the end of this post. To me, the key aspect of “independent web” is not being dependent on a silo (like Twitter or Facebook). This can be self-hosting or hosting on a service that provides good export (Micro.blog as an example). I recently wrote a post about how easy should it be to create a website, based on a discussion between several bloggers. The key point of that discussion, to me, was that Twitter/Facebook provides ease of use/setup/no cost, but also a lack of control. To me, if you want to have an independent site, you should be prepared to pay something for it, and the cost of hosting a weblog or website is pretty low. Finally, to me, the use of the term “IndieWeb” has grown somewhat beyond this “independent web” definition to include using technologies like Webmention as part of a website to site-to-site communication. Again, to me sites don’t have to use Webmention to be considered part of the independent web. I hope this helps answer the question my reader had.

Other links on “the independent web”:

Business Insider – The Independent Web

John Battelle – Identity and the Independent Web

Web Designer Depot – What is the Independent Web and Does It Matter in 2021?

Victoria Drake – Make your own independent website

The History of the Web – Toward an independent web

Mental Pivot – Support the independent web

The Victorian Internet

I read this post from FEE (Foundation for Economic Education) about the commercial development of the telegraph. The main premise of the post was that government efforts to start/promote use of the telegraph were unsuccessful, but entrepreneurs took the ball and ran with it. The response of the British Admiralty was that they were going to continue to send messages via semaphore, which reminded me of this Ken Smith tweet about the use of semaphore in communication and this reflective post. The article has some good links, including the book “The Victorian Internet”, hence the title of this post. We have come a long way in communication, but it is good to be cognizant of our roots.

Bookmarked How to plan and present an online conference (patreon.com)
via Dave Winer, Howard Rhinegold share some experiences from previous online efforts and offers tips for doing this today (in this coronavirus period).

The spread of coronavirus has caused the cancellation of multi-thousand-person conferences. The world of online, many-to-many communication media — audio and video, forums, blogs, mail lists, collaborative documents, slideshows, whiteboards — is like a supersaturated solution and the pandemic is the seed crystal for a state change: Even without a pandemic, the carbon footprint of transporting thousands of people thousands of miles for a two or three day meeting demands action. The time has come to at least severely reduce the number of large international face to face conferences. The good news is that the available tools are robust and either free or inexpensive. However, a successful online conference doesn’t just happen — everybody knows how to partake in keynotes, workshops, hallway conversations at face to face gatherings. The skills of presenting and participating in an online version are nowhere near as widely spread. Conveners need to document, frame, and support training into how to use the new medium, as well as plan and present the keynotes and workshops at the heart of the conference. Skilled facilitators of online discourse are a must. Fortunately, there are plenty of people with the right skills.

Filezilla and Putty migration tips for Windows 10

I am in the process of migrating from a 10 year old Windows 7 laptop to a newer Windows 10 laptop. As part of that effort, I wanted to migrate my setup for the Filezilla FTP program and the Putty SSH/telnet client. I used the instructions from these two pages to migrate the setup.

The one additional thing I had to do was to copy the Keys folder from the Windows 7 laptop to the Windows 10 laptop, as some of the servers used a Putty PPK file. After I did that, everything worked great!

 

Bookmarked SIFTing Through The Outbreak (siftingthroughtheoutbreak.wordpress.com)
Learning to sort through online information on the current COVID-19 outbreak – an excellent resource from Mike Caufield on evaluating news online.