Showing all posts tagged: IndieWeb
Tiny Awards 2024 shortlist announced, public voting open
24 July 2024
The shortlists for the 2024 Tiny Awards have been published. Now in their second year, the Tiny Awards honour “interesting, small, craft-y internet projects and spaces which basically make the web a more fun place to be.” Think the work of small, and independent creatives.
To be eligible, websites need to be non-commercial, and launched during, or after, June 2023.
Rotating Sandwiches — a website featuring images of rotating sandwiches, go and see for yourself — won the inaugural award in 2023. The 2024 winners — there are two categories, main award, and multiplayer — will be announced on Sunday 18 August 2024.
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awards, design, IndieWeb, technology
To find #IndieWeb, more people need to know it exists
18 July 2024
JTR, writing at The Art Of Not Asking Why:
Indie blogs are like good spots in town. Sure, they’re on the map, but you need to ask the locals to point them out. In terms of indie blogs, this means other bloggers.
Word of mouth is sure a great way to spread the news about #IndieWeb blogs, but the problem is, I don’t think #IndieWeb itself is really on the map. You’re really depending on someone in the know, being able to you tell you #IndieWeb exists in the first place, who then directs you accordingly.
If some recent posts I’ve seen on Threads are anything to go by, people seem surprised personal websites and blogs are still a thing. What #IndieWeb really needs is a concerted publicity push. Something akin to Love your Bookshop Day, which we have in Australia, or Record Store Day.
But here’s the thing. There used to be something called Independents Day, but that was over twenty-years ago. I remember Jeffrey Zeldman, for one, writing about it. But imagine it: a day celebrating independent websites, and content producers, long before social networks were a thing.
At the time though, larger, corporate, websites were dominating, and beginning to smother the voice of smaller publishers. In a way, it’s a shame Independents Day didn’t go the distance, because today it would be a well established happening. Still, it’s never too late.
There’s nothing to stop an idea like Independents Day being revived, in one form or another. The goal, initially at least, should be to introduce the concept of #IndieWeb to a wider audience, and then from there, once people are asking about #IndieWeb, we can become the friendly locals pointing out what we consider to be the places of interest.
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Webmentions, great for IndieWeb, and, unfortunately, spammers
16 July 2024
Webmentions allow you to notify the publisher of a website that you’ve mentioned, or linked to, one of their pages, from your website or blog. Webmentions are commonly used in the Indie and Small Web communities, and have existed as a W3C recommendation since 2017.
But Webmentions have also come to the attention of spammers, who have made Webmention spam a thing. It means bloggers, such as Jan-Lukas Else, might receive numerous Webmention notifications, only to find they’ve been spammed.
It doesn’t take long, sadly, for a tool designed with useful intent, to be made to serve some other, far more nefarious, purpose.
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Ye Old Blogroll, a trove of links to blogs, personal websites
26 June 2024
My thanks to Ray for recently adding disassociated to Ye Old Blogroll, a directory of small and independent websites and blogs. Directory websites like Ray’s are invaluable when it comes to promoting the work of Indie and Small Web writers and bloggers, which is often overshadowed by all sorts of things, including some of the search engines.
Blogrolls and links pages were once often a common feature of websites and blogs, as were web directories — similar to Ye Old Blogroll — in the past, before search engines emerged. They were one of the few ways website owners could make their work known to a wider audience.
While looking around Ye Old Blogroll, I spotted this post about Substack, by Ray. Substack, an online publishing platform, was flavour of the month about two years ago. I even opened an account myself. Bloggers and writers were drawn in by the appeal of earning real money for their work, and I believe many did, or still are, doing well.
But, it was not for me. For one thing, it would have meant “starting over” again. That is, building up a following on Substack, when I already had one, or a semblance of one, here. And why would I go diluting my online presence? It would almost be the same as setting up on something like Instagram. Plus, some other entity would have ultimate control over my page there. They could decide to pull the plug at whim. And then there is this point made by Ray:
On a related note, when I browse from someone’s blog over to their Substack it feels like going from a sweet little neighborhood into a staid corporate park. A little piece of joy dies in me when that happens because it’s another reminder of the corporatization of the web.
The platform has also drawn the ire of some, including Jason Kottke, who is critical of the sort of content Substack allows to be published. No, stay in your own place. There’ll be ways to make it pay, if that’s what you need.
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blogs, history, IndieWeb, technology, trends
The Artocalypse, an IndieWeb arts community by Chris Shaw
26 June 2024
The Artocalypse is a subscription based community for artists on IndieWeb, created by Chris Shaw at uncountable thoughts. This a great cross-promotional idea, showcasing the work of artists, while also spreading the word about IndieWeb.
I dare say some of the participating artists will already have followings elsewhere, and their membership of Artocalypse will introduce IndieWeb to people who have not heard of it before.
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art, artists, community, IndieWeb
Now that we have IndieWeb how are others to find it?
19 June 2024
How do people who don’t know about IndieWeb, but would like to escape the web-scape funk they’re beholden to, find out about IndieWeb, asks Delyo Dobrev. This is the million dollar question.
Everyone and their grandma and their dog is talking about social media’s bad influence. But do they do anything about it, or do they boomerpost comic strips about more and more kids staring at their phone and waiting for likes?
Blogrolls/links-pages, web directories, and web rings, are among ways to promote the work of other IndieWeb adherents. But you need to be within the IndieWeb realm in the first place, to go on the journey these aggregators will take you. They’re great for their members, but, unfortunately, overwhelming for newcomers, as a Hacker News member pointed out:
How do people make use of such an aggregator? Do people checkout blogs individually and subscribe to feeds to individual blogs or interest? The sheer number of the collection dissuades me. I’m wondering, instead, if it’d be useful for the aggregator to offer an aggregated feed itself, but that might be too random a feed and subjects!
Time is also a factor, doing rounds of IndieWeb discovery is a commitment. Getting started needs to be, somehow, easier. Back to Dobrey:
I remember surfing, actually surfing from link to link, from site to blog to web altar. And it took just a search or two to get started.
That’s what I did back in the day. But sans search engines. I was lucky enough to make, early on, the acquaintance of dozens of personal website owners (sometimes referred to as webmasters, as in masters of their web domain), and would read about their latest finds, as often as possible.
But I’d also stay up literally half the night, every night (even after coming in from a night out), and surf to the websites others had written about on their online journals.
That’s not so straightforward today. Back then, twenty-four hour days felt like they were forty-eight hours long. Now they feel more like twelve hour days. But to introduce more people, specifically audiences, to the joys of IndieWeb, there needs to be an easy path for newcomers to trek.
That is the challenge. That is the million dollar question.
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Running clubs, the IndieWeb of the dating realm?
23 May 2024
Konrad Marshall, writing for the Sydney Morning Herald:
Run South Yarra co-founder Tom Adair is wary of any suggestion that run clubs are the new Tinder, yet relationships are born here, and side-by-side chats while jogging, he notes, are definitely less pressurised than face-to-face interactions. (Plus, you can always pick up the pace and scoot away if a chat isn’t going well.) “It’s almost like a nightclub, but no one’s drunk, and you’re actually making meaningful conversation,” Adair concedes.
If you can stomach the unearthly start times, six o’clock in the morning, maybe earlier, weekends included, it all makes sense. You’re sharing a bonding experience with likeminded people. How could run clubs not be somewhere you’d potentially meet a romantic prospect? Aside from the fact you’re there to run of course, not anything else.
But here’s a thought. Granted, one that could probably only occur to me. If there is a movement online, a turning away from social media, a return to the small web, and personal websites, might the rising popularity of run clubs represent a similar movement away from dating apps?
Imagine meeting, then building rapport with someone — maybe in time, more — in a safe group setting, while partaking of a shared interest, such as running? Though it could be something else. Who needs a meddlesome, intrusive, dating app, for that?
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An indie guide to the IndieWeb, by Wing Pang
22 May 2024
Sydney based product designer Wing Pang, whom I wrote about last week, has published a comprehensive guide to the IndieWeb.
Coming from a design background, joining the IndieWeb was an incredibly exciting and rewarding, yet maze-like journey. To be honest, almost every step of the way was like a leap! But I’ve learnt so much and got a lot of feedback throughout this process from the passionate and friendly community.
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blogs, IndieWeb, social media, trends
Blog of the .Day, bringing back the blogosphere one blog at a time
22 May 2024
Blog of the .Day, yes, styled as Blog of the .Day, a collaboration between James of James’ Coffee Blog, and Joe Crawford, will highlight a new blog every day.
Aside from casting the spotlight daily on a blog, another goal of the project is to bring the term blogosphere back into popular usage. For those coming in late, the blogosphere — that great interconnectedness of blogs — preceded the Twitterverse, and now looks to have outlived it as well.
Long live the blogosphere.
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blogs, IndieWeb, social media, trends, Twitter
An Australian study on IndieWeb, decentralised social media
13 May 2024
Wing Pang is studying Design in Visual Communications at the University of Technology, Sydney, in Australia. As part of the degree course, she’s doing an assignment looking at IndieWeb, and decentralised social media, such as Mastodon. She’s interested in hearing the views of people on the subject, and if you’re interested in offering your thoughts, you can do so via this study form.
Pang will be using the data she gathers here, as the basis for creating an easy to understand guide to Small/IndieWeb, for people who are new to the topic. The study only takes a few minutes to complete, so is well worth considering.
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