Showing all posts tagged: blogs
RSS is really simple, why do so many find it complicated?
17 May 2024
Chris, writing at uncountable thoughts:
RSS is a pervasive, but little known, web technology that allows you aggregate all your content into one place for easy reading. There are very few websites without an RSS feed, although many don’t advertise the link (or, even realise they have it).
When you put an RSS feed link into your RSS, it is called “subscribing”. But don’t worry — it’s totally free, and you don’t give your email address.
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is really simple. But a lot of people don’t see it that way, and anyone who has ever syndicated their web content, has always struggled to convince their readers of that. Like, probably since RSS arrived in March 1999. Yet RSS almost had its moment, during the so-called golden age of blogging, circa 2003 to 2010.
Writers took to writing blogs, and readers took to reading blogs. Content Management Systems like WordPress churned out RSS feeds automatically. All a blogger had do was prominently post a link to their RSS feed. Really simple. Writing posts explaining what RSS was, and why it was useful, was also common. Erstwhile (by the looks of it) Australian blogger Meg Tsiamis, of (defunct) Top 100 Australian Blogs Index fame, wrote a post in 2007, outlining RSS to her mother, and other of her readers.
Sadly, the more in-depth resource she linked to, is no longer online. In other words though, we’ve been trying for years, decades, to impress upon others the simplicity and function of RSS, but too little, or no, avail. Unfortunately RSS plain simply baffled just about anyone, and everyone, who didn’t write a blog. RSS was too technical, too geeky, many people complained.
But popular perceptions of RSS were only one problem. Accessing RSS easily was another. Some argued Google closing down their popular RSS reader, er, Google Reader (which I never used), in 2013, sounded the death knell of RSS. But the real problem had always been one of uptake, or rather, lack of uptake. Geekiness aside, some people questioned the purpose of RSS in the first place.
I recall, in 2014, trying to explain the utility of RSS to a co-member of a small business coffee meeting group I was then part of. I pulled out my laptop at the cafe we gathered at one morning, and showed him my RSS reader of the time (NewsGator, I think). “Look, see, you only have to visit one website to read one hundred websites,” I said, as I scrolled through my subscription list.
He marvelled as he looked on, recognising a number of websites he visited regularly. “All you need do is get a RSS reader app, like the one we’re looking at now, subscribe to the RSS feeds you like, and you’re set,” I said. Despite my small presentation though, he still looked confused. He didn’t seem to understand why you’d stop visiting a website, to read its content elsewhere.
Oh, the frustration.
Today RSS is even simpler. No apps are needed, one only has to create an account through a RSS aggregator website, Feedly for example (free for a basic account), and start subscribing. You don’t even need to know the URL of a website’s RSS feed. Type in the regular URL, and Feedly will search for available feeds.
Subscribing to an RSS feed is really the same as following someone on Instagram (IG). And it’s just as simple. Choose an IG page you want to follow, and tap the follow button. With RSS though, instead of following, you’re subscribing, although some RSS aggregators call the process following.
Better still, and as is often reported elsewhere, your subscription is anonymous (you could follow my RSS feed, and I’d have no idea unless you told me), and you only see the content you want to. There are no algorithms, or annoying “suggested for you” content. How good is that?
Well, not good enough, perhaps. Until subscribing to a RSS feed literally becomes as easy as following someone on social media, selling RSS as a really simple way of following a website, will, unfortunately, remain a hard sell.
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Can blogrolls build communities online? I think so
9 May 2024
A screen cap of disassociated’s links page, circa November 1999. Them were dark days…
Daniel Prindii asks, could blogrolls form the basis of community building online? Well, once upon a time, when they were known as links pages, that’s exactly what they did.
But with the development of AI tools, spam, and SEO-optimized articles the experience of the web search is a horrible one, where the chances to discover something new minimal. The 404 Media team has made a good analysis of this change. Everyone goes online to learn new things, and to connect with close friends. When your search or feed is clogged with spam and bots, it defeats the whole purpose.
In a way, the early search engines defeated the purpose of link pages and blogrolls. Later, some of them penalised websites carrying blogrolls, as they believed they were made up of paid links. And that was the beginning of the end of blogrolls. But not in the Indie Web/Small Web corner of the web. Here they are common, and serving their original, and perfectly innocuous, purpose of sharing websites a blogger likes, and thinks their readers will enjoy.
With discovery becoming ever more difficult by way of the search engines, the day of blogrolls has come again. To that end, I’ve set up, or maybe reinstated after a long hiatus, a blogroll here. It’s a start, and something I’ll add to over time.
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blogs, history, technology, trends
Forget WhatsApp and Messenger, contact me via my website
2 May 2024
Despite their convenience, ease of sharing content, and even security, I steadfastly resist using the likes of WhatsApp, Messenger, Signal, Telegram, Wire, Viber, and whatever else is out there. I probably infuriate friends and family by refusing to assimilate, but really feel I can only keep up with a certain number of communication channels: chiefly email and SMS/text messaging.
Even though I might only have two main means of communicating with the outside world, three if phone calls or Facetime are included, there’s also a number of secondary channels. Conversations and comments on social media (across a number of networks), forums, and an in-house work app (not Slack), are among them. Some of those interactions can be quite time consuming.
We’re probably carrying on more conversations than we realise, and that’s before we get to face-to-face interactions. I’ve barely written three paragraphs about communicating, and already I’m feeling overwhelmed. Exactly what I set out to avoid in shirking all those messaging apps in the first place. Needless to say then, a recent blog post by Robert Kingett, on the general subject, struck a chord:
“Yeah, found you! I couldn’t believe it dawg. I looked you up on Facebook a billion times, but the app just wasn’t showing you, at all. Neither in the message screen or the actual timeline or anything.”
“Well, you know I have a website now, so that’s where I post. I’m a Blogger now. I stay on my website.”
I’m a Blogger now. I stay on my website. That’s something that should be printed on t-shirts.
When I catch up with friends, they ask me: “how’s disassociated going?” Then a few minutes later, “oh, and are you on Whatsapp by any chance?” Sometimes I’d like to respond by saying, “well, I don’t need a messaging app, because you know you can reach me through my website. You know, the same one that predates Facebook, most of the social networks, and messaging apps.”
But I don’t. I just shake my head. And it can’t be all that bad after all. Some of my friends live interstate and overseas, and we still manage to meet in person when in each other’s respective places of residence, hassle free. All without the need to involve messaging apps, aside from some texts. If you’re an avid user of messaging apps — go for it — don’t let me dissuade you.
But if you want to reach me, you know where I’ll be.
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blogs, social media, technology, trends
Do not comment on another website, when you can write on your own
29 April 2024
The more things change, the more they stay the same, perhaps? Manuel Moreale writing the other week about blog post comments:
I’m not a fan of comments in general and I think commenting on something should be done in one of two ways: 1. Privately via email or via direct messaging. 2. Publicly by posting a reply on your own website.
Back in the day, when the first inceptions of disassociated came online in the late 90’s, these were just about the only options for communicating with a personal website owner. There were of course guestbooks, which, contrary to popular belief, are still alive and well. Maybe I’ll bring one back here.
But if you wanted to respond to something someone had written in their online journal, writing a post in reply, on your own website, was the way to go. Blog post comments were unheard of in the nineties, as indeed, for the most part, was the term blog. But posts-in-response were a great way to build rapport with other website owners, network, and even collaborate.
You never knew what might come of some of these ongoing reply-to-something-someone-had-written-on-their-personal-websites confabs.
For a group of mainly Sydney based web creatives, including me, Jen Leheny, and Justin Fox, (sorry, I can’t find websites for the others), the result was the formation of the Australian INfront. And for almost twenty years from 1999, INfront brought Australian web design front and centre globally.
Blog comments were also a great way to build rapport and network, but I almost think the case can be made that they spelt the end of the personal website. Now that readers of a website/blog could respond to a post in the same place, many people no longer needed their own website to do so.
The likes of Twitter, when it arrived, a microblogging platform, where users only needed to create an account to get posting, hastened the decline of the personal website. But, thankfully, nothing resulted, so far, in their extinction.
Post comments are not unheard of here, but I rarely enable them. And that’s because I’ve long believed the best way to comment on something you’ve seen here is to either contact me, or, preferably, write a post on your own website.
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blogs, self publishing, writing
The Internet is not written in pencil, nor is it written in stone
9 April 2024
An excerpt from Manuel Moreale’s recent interview — from his excellent People and Blogs series — with Oregon based American web designer and writer, Matt Stein.
I rewrite and edit heavily to try and find what I want to say. I wrote obscenely long answers to these questions and had to start over, and I’m one of those serial Discord+Slack edit-after-sending people. I would go broke as a stone engraver.
There could be no better way to describe my writing process. I’d likely go broke simply writing on paper, given the quantity I’d waste, attempting to publish a single post.
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blogs, creativity, self publishing, writing
Personal websites keep the internet fun and real
20 September 2023
The internet felt like an unexplored new frontier when I launched the first iteration of disassociated in 1997. New frontier may seem ornate, trite even, but it was an apt description.
We were feeling our way in the dark, and I’d say most of us were clueless as to what the internet could one day become (although without doubt some people had one or two ideas).
Certainly though today’s internet is worlds removed from that of twenty-five years ago, and being online sometimes feels more like a case of running to stand still.
But it’s not all bad, and at least we still have our personal websites. New York City based creative professional Rachel J. Kwon has put together a collection of blog posts and articles written by publishers of personal websites, who expound the positives of their web presences.
Long may personal websites be with us.
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blogs, history, technology, web design
The Kagi Search Small Web, promoting independent websites, blogs
12 September 2023
Kagi Search is a pay-to-use subscription search engine founded in 2022, that promises to deliver relevant search results free of extraneous clutter and adverts. Another plus is Kagi’s undertaking not to track users, or collect their data.
But Kagi isn’t only about locating pertinent information and protecting the privacy of users. Last week they launched Kagi Small Web, an initiative highlighting the writing of independent publishers and bloggers whose work is often cast aside by the prevailing algorithms, and omnipresent influencers:
Initially inspired by a vibrant discussion on Hacker News, we began our experiment in late July, highlighting blog posts from HN users within our search results. The positive feedback propelled the initiative forward. Today, our evolving concept boasts a curated list of nearly 6,000 genuine websites featuring people with a wide variety of interests.
I’m chuffed to say disassociated is one of the websites to be included. I’ve spent the last few days clicking through a fraction of the six thousand or so publishers they’ve linked to, and am pleased to see one or two familiar faces. What a great idea this is. Thank you Kagi.
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blogs, self publishing, technology
Indie Blog, see random blog posts, go places in the blogosphere
4 August 2023
Indie Blog, is a blogroll website by Andreas Gohr, akin to ooh.directory and feedle, but with a slight difference. Instead of searchable lists, Indie Blog takes visitors to a random post from one of the websites on their directory. You mightn’t know where you’re going, but that’s half the fun.
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The Tiny Awards, celebrating a small, playful, heartfelt web
7 July 2023
Voting is open in the inaugural Tiny Awards, which honour websites that embody “the idea of a small, playful and heartfelt web.” Nominees include the html.review, which I wrote about in April 2022, and ooh.directory, a blog directory, where disassociated is listed. Voting closes on Thursday 20 July 2023, with the winner being announced the next day.
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Blog like no one is reading, Julia Evans dispels blogging myths
7 June 2023
Montreal based Canadian software developer, and blogger, Julia Evans, dispels some of the blogging myths she believes are putting off people who are considering starting their own blogs. For instance, the myth that more material is always better — in other words, blog posts must be a minimum of, say, three thousand words in length — is a good one:
I appreciate the work that goes into extremely deep dive blog posts, but honestly they’re not really my thing. I’d rather read something short, learn a couple of new things, and move on. So that’s how I approach writing as well. I’ll share a couple of interesting things and then leave anything extra for another post. For me this works well because short posts take less time to write.
Some (so-called) blogging experts seem to believe a certain search engine is on a mission to homogenise the web. They do so by spruiking the suggestion blogs, and the posts published therein, must conform to certain, specific, specifications. Failure to adhere to said stipulations will result in bans, blockings, and blacklistings, or some other equally awful fate.
These sorts of antics are also deterring more people from taking up blogging, or self-publishing, as I still prefer to call it. But pay no attention, I say, and do your own thing.
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