On-Day Three: What is Indieweb?
12:25pm - I think I've been sitting in the library an hour now, which doesn't count as the first hour of today's three because I've just been socializing and such. Now I'm actually set up to work!
I also just changed my avatar on here, this is more modern and pretty closely resembles my squirrely self, at least in my imagination.
Last time, I did some research on AI and Cognition and talked about that sort of thing a bit. I also looked into publ a bit. I was having a bit of trouble with fluffy's website to find their posts about it, and I'm not sure if that's an issue with publ at present? I guess I'll find out.
I don't feel like researching AI today, so I'll start by looking into both publ and indieweb.
12:47pm - Just took a short bathroom trip. I'm reading this article I linked at the end of my previous entry. https://tracydurnell.com/2023/02/07/what-makes-rss-better-than-social-timelines/
It's interesting. RSS has been around for a long time. I think the main flaw is that it doesn't have big corporate backing? Like, a lot of folks never heard of it before, after or while they were using Google Reader, which was an RSS client, and when Google Reader poofed they didn't know what they were using was still there, just not the program they were using to access it.
It's basically a way to subscribe to updates from websites, usually blogs, and webcomics use it too. Anything can use it though? Heck, you could think of it as being similar to having people sign up for your mailing list.
You can use it like a social network too, if you wanted to. I started using Mastodon last year, before the scandals that scared folks from Twitter all over the internet, and there as well. I've said that the thing most people used Twitter for was as a less functional RSS, and it seems pretty accurate. Folks weren't there to microblog, they were using it to publish updates on themselves, their work, their business... Businesses were sharing info. You could follow someone to effectively subscribe to their updates, like a mailing list, or like RSS. It's never been great though?
Most of the time it's been around, Twitter has been operating at a loss. It's technially inferior to RSS and it doesn't make money. There were two years where it did post a profit, but it wasn't much, and those weren't recent years. So, why do folks do it? It might have a lot to do with advertising.
RSS isn't owned by anyone, and it's not there to make money. It's not an organization or company, it's a technology. It's not trying to get people to use it, it's there for people to use. If people don't know about it, they're not going to be able to use it. If there's no people using it, there's no point. There's no profit incentive to get people to use it, so the only benefit is to those who already use it, so that more people use it and then there are more people who will see their stuff and so on.
Heh, I'm getting carried away here. Part of the reason I'm reading this is that I'm looking into indieweb, blogging, and so on. I'm hoping to set up another blog to talk about that sort of thing. This is actually a blog also, though I just took a look and I don't see any RSS feed stuff. I also looked at my "Reading Page" and there are two other people on there, both at least somewhat squirrels as well... I don't usually use Dreamwidth to look at other people. XD
So yeah it's a good idea to put my next blog somewhere else. Probably my own site, with an RSS feed. I've also heard of Atom. I think that's also a feed tech? A competitor with RSS? I guess I should look into that too.
You know, whether it's Twitter or Mastodon or any feed-based tech, what I really want is to seperate the things I follow into multiple streams, probably on the same page, based on what I'm subscribing to them for. Like, I want a feed for friends social accounts where they talk about themselves to be seperate from news or folks ranting about politics or another one that is brands talking about their business or making fun of eachother and another one that is just video game studios, and another that is dedicated to open source, all sorts of stuff!
I was looking into if there was a client for Mastodon that does that, and folks said that none of the alternative Mastodon clients were as good as the standard one, and maybe nobody else is looking for that feature?
Anyways I want to get back to reading that article.
1:30pm - I finished the article, then got distracted on Twitter somehow. I forget how and let's not think about it. I did have a friend who seems interested in doing an art/story trade with me, so that's neat. I'll try and worry about that when I get home.
Oh now I remember, after I finished that article, I started looking at the links from it I opened. The first was to the indieweb website, talking about RSS. There's a meme there I wanted to share, and clicking the image took me to the twitter post it's from!
Here's the indieweb page anywho. https://indieweb.org/RSS
Here's a nice quote from that page!
"RSS is a set of XML feed file formats of varying degrees of use for syndicating time-stamped content from web sites, and sometimes used to refer more broadly to feed file formats as a whole including Atom, or even more broadly in vernacular as a synonym for feed file or even feeds or syndication as a concept. RSS is an acronym that stands for: Rich Site Summary (originally RDF Site Summary, often dubbed Really Simple Syndication)[1]. Atom is an alternative XML format for feeds."
It's interesting how they refer to feeds, and then silos. I hadn't really thought of it that way. I often refer to my timeline on timeline-based services as a stream, with the content scrolling by like leaves floating on the water in a brook.
1:41pm - After that page, I looked at this site. It's short, sweet, and helpful. https://aboutfeeds.com/
I also read that other article I linked at the end of my last entry. It's about as muddy as anything regarding trans folks and issues.
Next up, I'll look at https://indieweb.org/ as a whole. I'm curious what it is exactly.
1:51pm - Okay so far so good. It's a group of indie website owners and developers, and indieweb.org seems to be a wiki where all of the content is public domain. That makes me happy because I'm very in favor of public domain.
I just looked at this page, too: https://indieweb.org/principles
Those are some really good principles, which is something I am really glad to be able to say again.
1:56pm - A problem has occured. I've only been working for about an hour and a half, but my hunger just caught up with me. I need to eat. I'm going home for now, and I may do more after I eat, or not. We'll see how this situation goes.
2:56pm - I'm at home, I ate, and I'm hanging in my room-mate's room. I'm going to keep trying to read stuff at least, but we'll see how it goes. It'd be fair to say "Another hour and a half" though I do really want to get back to doing planning and math for ARK: Survival Evolved. XD
3:43pm - Well, it hasn't been a whole hour since then. I did read things, but it's also been distracting. Now I'm too tired to go on, so I'm going to have a nap.
I also just changed my avatar on here, this is more modern and pretty closely resembles my squirrely self, at least in my imagination.
Last time, I did some research on AI and Cognition and talked about that sort of thing a bit. I also looked into publ a bit. I was having a bit of trouble with fluffy's website to find their posts about it, and I'm not sure if that's an issue with publ at present? I guess I'll find out.
I don't feel like researching AI today, so I'll start by looking into both publ and indieweb.
12:47pm - Just took a short bathroom trip. I'm reading this article I linked at the end of my previous entry. https://tracydurnell.com/2023/02/07/what-makes-rss-better-than-social-timelines/
It's interesting. RSS has been around for a long time. I think the main flaw is that it doesn't have big corporate backing? Like, a lot of folks never heard of it before, after or while they were using Google Reader, which was an RSS client, and when Google Reader poofed they didn't know what they were using was still there, just not the program they were using to access it.
It's basically a way to subscribe to updates from websites, usually blogs, and webcomics use it too. Anything can use it though? Heck, you could think of it as being similar to having people sign up for your mailing list.
You can use it like a social network too, if you wanted to. I started using Mastodon last year, before the scandals that scared folks from Twitter all over the internet, and there as well. I've said that the thing most people used Twitter for was as a less functional RSS, and it seems pretty accurate. Folks weren't there to microblog, they were using it to publish updates on themselves, their work, their business... Businesses were sharing info. You could follow someone to effectively subscribe to their updates, like a mailing list, or like RSS. It's never been great though?
Most of the time it's been around, Twitter has been operating at a loss. It's technially inferior to RSS and it doesn't make money. There were two years where it did post a profit, but it wasn't much, and those weren't recent years. So, why do folks do it? It might have a lot to do with advertising.
RSS isn't owned by anyone, and it's not there to make money. It's not an organization or company, it's a technology. It's not trying to get people to use it, it's there for people to use. If people don't know about it, they're not going to be able to use it. If there's no people using it, there's no point. There's no profit incentive to get people to use it, so the only benefit is to those who already use it, so that more people use it and then there are more people who will see their stuff and so on.
Heh, I'm getting carried away here. Part of the reason I'm reading this is that I'm looking into indieweb, blogging, and so on. I'm hoping to set up another blog to talk about that sort of thing. This is actually a blog also, though I just took a look and I don't see any RSS feed stuff. I also looked at my "Reading Page" and there are two other people on there, both at least somewhat squirrels as well... I don't usually use Dreamwidth to look at other people. XD
So yeah it's a good idea to put my next blog somewhere else. Probably my own site, with an RSS feed. I've also heard of Atom. I think that's also a feed tech? A competitor with RSS? I guess I should look into that too.
You know, whether it's Twitter or Mastodon or any feed-based tech, what I really want is to seperate the things I follow into multiple streams, probably on the same page, based on what I'm subscribing to them for. Like, I want a feed for friends social accounts where they talk about themselves to be seperate from news or folks ranting about politics or another one that is brands talking about their business or making fun of eachother and another one that is just video game studios, and another that is dedicated to open source, all sorts of stuff!
I was looking into if there was a client for Mastodon that does that, and folks said that none of the alternative Mastodon clients were as good as the standard one, and maybe nobody else is looking for that feature?
Anyways I want to get back to reading that article.
1:30pm - I finished the article, then got distracted on Twitter somehow. I forget how and let's not think about it. I did have a friend who seems interested in doing an art/story trade with me, so that's neat. I'll try and worry about that when I get home.
Oh now I remember, after I finished that article, I started looking at the links from it I opened. The first was to the indieweb website, talking about RSS. There's a meme there I wanted to share, and clicking the image took me to the twitter post it's from!
Here's the indieweb page anywho. https://indieweb.org/RSS
Here's a nice quote from that page!
"RSS is a set of XML feed file formats of varying degrees of use for syndicating time-stamped content from web sites, and sometimes used to refer more broadly to feed file formats as a whole including Atom, or even more broadly in vernacular as a synonym for feed file or even feeds or syndication as a concept. RSS is an acronym that stands for: Rich Site Summary (originally RDF Site Summary, often dubbed Really Simple Syndication)[1]. Atom is an alternative XML format for feeds."
It's interesting how they refer to feeds, and then silos. I hadn't really thought of it that way. I often refer to my timeline on timeline-based services as a stream, with the content scrolling by like leaves floating on the water in a brook.
1:41pm - After that page, I looked at this site. It's short, sweet, and helpful. https://aboutfeeds.com/
I also read that other article I linked at the end of my last entry. It's about as muddy as anything regarding trans folks and issues.
Next up, I'll look at https://indieweb.org/ as a whole. I'm curious what it is exactly.
1:51pm - Okay so far so good. It's a group of indie website owners and developers, and indieweb.org seems to be a wiki where all of the content is public domain. That makes me happy because I'm very in favor of public domain.
I just looked at this page, too: https://indieweb.org/principles
Those are some really good principles, which is something I am really glad to be able to say again.
1:56pm - A problem has occured. I've only been working for about an hour and a half, but my hunger just caught up with me. I need to eat. I'm going home for now, and I may do more after I eat, or not. We'll see how this situation goes.
2:56pm - I'm at home, I ate, and I'm hanging in my room-mate's room. I'm going to keep trying to read stuff at least, but we'll see how it goes. It'd be fair to say "Another hour and a half" though I do really want to get back to doing planning and math for ARK: Survival Evolved. XD
3:43pm - Well, it hasn't been a whole hour since then. I did read things, but it's also been distracting. Now I'm too tired to go on, so I'm going to have a nap.