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…

Earlier this week, Ken Smith wrote about redlining and segregation in South Bend, Indiana, where he lives. I have started reading a book about the history of the Black Panthers in Portland, Oregon. There is a section which describes the same practices, and how the Albina neighborhood and the former town of Vanport were the only places where Blacks could live.

Based on the recent Twitter news from Dave Winer, I have downloaded my Drummer files. It would be nice if there was a way to download my Old School weblog – any ideas, lazyweb?

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!

Dave Winer writes today about his Morning Coffee Notes podcast as a place that documents the history of podcasting. In my links zettlekasten, I also have a section on podcasting history (go to Podcasting, then History).

Emissary install problems

I have been in touch with Ben Pate about his Emissary app, and tried to install it on my Windows 10 laptop, but had some problems. I decided to copy my debug log to a blog post and send the link to Ben for further review.

Downloaded Go (https://go.dev/dl/) (https://go.dev/dl/go1.19.5.windows-amd64.msi) and did install.

Downloaded MongoDB Community Server (https://www.mongodb.com/try/download/community) and did install.

Started Emissary, got the following error message:

go: downloading github.com/jmespath/go-jmespath v0.4.0

# github.com/chai2010/webp

cgo: C compiler “gcc” not found: exec: “gcc”: executable file not found in %PATH%

# github.com/pjbgf/sha1cd/cgo

cgo: C compiler “gcc” not found: exec: “gcc”: executable file not found in %PATH%

PS C:\Users\sylve\Documents\emissary-main\emissary-main>

Installed gcc++ from Cygwin, got this set of error messages:

# command-line-arguments

C:\Program Files\Go\pkg\tool\windows_amd64\link.exe: running gcc failed: exit status 1

/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-pc-cygwin/11/../../../../x86_64-pc-cygwin/bin/ld: cannot find -lmingwex: No such file or directory

/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-pc-cygwin/11/../../../../x86_64-pc-cygwin/bin/ld: cannot find -lmingw32: No such file or directory

collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status

Added C:\cygwin64\lib\w32api to PATH (see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4272139/gcc-cygwin-compile-error), got the same error.

Downloaded https://winlibs.com/ GCC 12.2.0 Win32 and Win64 downloads, unzipped the Win32 download. Copied mingw32 folder to C: drive, then updated PATH environment variable to add C:\mingw32\bin

Tried server install again, got same error messages (cannot find -mingwex, -lmingw32)

Deleted Cygwin entries from PATH environment variable, leaving just the mingw32 path

Tried server install again, got a new set of error messages:

PS C:\Users\sylve\Documents\emissary-main\emissary-main> go run server.go –setup

# github.com/pjbgf/sha1cd/cgo

cc1.exe: sorry, unimplemented: 64-bit mode not compiled in

# github.com/chai2010/webp

cc1.exe: sorry, unimplemented: 64-bit mode not compiled in

PS C:\Users\sylve\Documents\emissary-main\emissary-main>

A roadmap for MyStatusTool

Yesterday, I mentioned that I was working on a blog tool not ready to show off yet. Since then, I thought I should follow Colin Walker’s lead in describing some of what I am developing. The working title is MyStatusTool, you can think of it as “Twitter using rssCloud”. The minimum functionality I am working toward is to 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. This pretty much describes the “Read user feeds…” functionality in FeedLand (link works if you have a FeedLand account). You can also think of the Twitter web user interface as an example. I will probably create a temp Github repo soon to start putting the app under version control. Stay tuned for more updates!