Monthly Archives: March 2017

Posted a couple photos as I update my workflow to use Micro.blog’s better photo cross-posting. Still need to consolidate feeds.

→ 2017/03/30 5:04 pm

Wanted to test this photoblog UI and thought: San Antonio is a nice place to take photos. So had to buy tickets to Warriors/Spurs tonight.

→ 2017/03/29 9:55 am

Core Intuition 275

Last Friday we published Core Intuition 275. From the show notes:

Daniel and Manton talk about Manton’s decision to hire Jean MacDonald as Micro.blog’s Community Manager, and the psychological effects of transitioning from a single to multi-person company. They also react to this week’s Apple announcements, focusing mainly on Apple’s new Clips app and how it relates to Apple’s historic focus on facilitating user creativity.

This episode captures the biggest shift for my business since I left my regular job a couple years ago. I’m also hoping to resume my Timetable podcast soon, since there’s more I’d like to talk about that won’t always fit into Core Intuition.

Didn’t expect much from my bracket, but after that great UNC win I’ve somehow picked 3 teams correctly in the Final Four. (Not S. Carolina.)

→ 2017/03/26 7:43 pm

Guiding the Micro.blog community

Earlier this month I flew up to Portland for a few days. It was a great trip. I posted about attending the Blazers game and meeting the IndieWeb group at the DreamHost office. I also sat down with Jean MacDonald to talk about what she has been up to and show her what I’ve been building for Micro.blog.

Today I sent an update to Kickstarter backers about the stretch goal promise I made to hire a community manager. I couldn’t be happier to announce that Jean MacDonald will be helping me in the next steps for Micro.blog.

It became clear as I’ve been talking with Jean that she will add so much to the project. Making the announcement today has inspired me even more to finish rolling out Micro.blog and to see where the community takes it.

On last week’s Core Intuition, I told Daniel that the approach for Micro.blog has to be different than for my previous apps. It’s such a big opportunity that if I don’t focus everything on it, then it will not work. I covered the same theme in a post last month:

I’ve realized as I work toward launching Micro.blog that this product is different. It has a much greater scope than anything I’ve built by myself. To be successful, it needs a team.

No single decision will guarantee success. But today’s announcement is a big milestone for Micro.blog because it’s more than a promise or hope for things to come. Jean’s experience will be essential to guiding the community and moving the platform forward.

More on Twitter’s 10 years

Stephen Hackett marked his 10th anniversary of using Twitter by writing about how great Twitter has been for connecting people. Of course, the company’s problems are also well known:

The company itself seems to struggle in getting even basic decisions right. I often joke that Twitter may be doomed, but I don’t say it in pure jest.

He made a similar joke on Connected 133 that Twitter will be gone in 5 years. I think it’s a toss-up. But one thing I’m pretty sure about: the hate tweets and harassment problems can’t be fixed by waving a magic wand. They are fundamental and must be planned for at the beginning.

Busy morning! Stopped for Tacodeli to start the day right. Big announcement going out to Micro.blog Kickstarter backers soon.

→ 2017/03/21 9:09 am

I’ve tried everything for cutting cable. Sling, Hulu, HBO, iTunes. PlayStation Vue on the Apple TV is the real deal. The best by far.

→ 2017/03/20 10:46 am

App.net archive

App.net officially shut down last night. As I wrote about earlier this year, App.net was an important milestone in the move to more open social networks. I’m glad the platform existed and I enjoyed participating there as a user and developer.

Linkrot and the lack of permanence on the web is a recurring theme for this blog. In the final days as App.net was winding down, I wanted to put my money where my mouth was. I spun up a couple new servers and wrote a set of scripts to essentially download every post on App.net. It feels like a fragile archive, put together hastily, but I believe it’s mostly complete. I’ve also downloaded thumbnail versions of some of the public photos hosted on App.net.

I’ll be making the posts available somewhere, although I don’t know exactly what form the archive should take yet. I’ll also be considering whether to integrate it with Micro.blog, for anyone who wants to migrate to a new microblog and didn’t have time to manually export their posts. (I’ve already built a similar feature to import from Twitter’s .zip archives.)

To my Kickstarter backers, thanks for your patience as I took an unexpected detour this week. Major work on Micro.blog continues. I have a big announcement for next week and invites should be ready the following week. I’ll post an update to Kickstarter soon.