Showing all posts about trends
The web today is not necessarily worse than the early web
27 December 2024
Xavier H.M., writing on his Mastodon page:
Your neocities blog is cute but I can’t read the 5pt font and your cursor is the size of a bread crumb. The web page is loading so many gifs my computer sounds like a boeing 747.
disassociated once, in a way, looked like a Neocities website. Or, more the point, way back in the day: GeoCities-esque. My websites of twenty-five years ago may have seemed like the work of a web designer trying to be artistic, but the way they were built presented problems to some visitors, particularly those with low vision. For example, much text on my early sites was rendered as images.
The facility to use alternative text, or alt-text, was always there, as far as I remember, but like a lot of visual web designers of the time, I did not make effective use of the facility. For example, if say I was posting a photo of a tree, the alt text would literally read “a tree”. I’d say nothing about where the tree stood. Along a road? In a park? Near a body of water? Nor anything else that would help describe the image more fully to people who had trouble seeing it.
As for blocks of text rendered as images — this to maintain complete design control across different browsers and operating systems — I probably supplied no alt-text, even though it would not have been difficult to do so. In other words, much of the content was invisible to some visitors.
And then we get around to font and cursor sizes that would suit an ant. For sure, it’s all fun, but doesn’t work for everyone. Those early days were more about aesthetics rather than accessibility. Today’s websites and blogs might look bland, might look all the same, but they are easier for a greater number of people to use, and, as a bonus, aren’t too demanding on our devices.
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design, history, technology, trends
Pack plenty of books and take yourself into internal exile in 2025
27 December 2024
The introverts among us live almost permanently in a sort of internal exile, or a rich inner life, as Waleed Aly referred to it during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
But the idea of getting away from it all, without actually going anywhere, is gaining traction more widely, writes Jacqueline Maley, for The Sydney Morning Herald. This as 2025, and the greater uncertainty that many people are anticipating, looms:
In recent months, I have been reading about the concept of “internal exile” or “internal emigration’. The term comes from the Russian, “vnutrennaya emigratsia” and means a sort of travelling into oneself, to take comfort in small pleasures – often solitary pleasures of the mind, like reading, or listening to music, or gardening or making a pleasant home.
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books, current affairs, introversion, psychology, reading, trends
W3C ethical web principles: web standards for a mature web
19 December 2024
A statement of twelve guiding principles for an ethical web, recently published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
The web is a fundamental part of our lives, shaping how we work, connect, and learn. We understand that with this profound impact comes the responsibility to ensure that the web serves as a platform that benefits people and delivers positive social outcomes. As we continue to advance the web platform, we must therefore consider the consequences of our work.
Comparable, to a degree, to the IndieWeb community’s core tenets. To me, the W3C’s ethical web principles seem like web standards for a more mature, established web, of the third decade of the twenty-first century. One objective of web standards was to build a web (specifically websites), that everyone could view and use uniformly, regardless of their browser, or platform (operating system). We have the technical side of the web down pat, hopefully, now it’s time to focus on ethics.
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Coffee prices push toward fifty-year high
17 December 2024
The last few years have been bad for both producers and consumers of coffee. Extremes of weather in growing regions has resulted in diminishing coffee bean harvests, which has in turn pushed up prices. This is a topic I’ve been covering for a while here now, but it seems coffee is only going to get more expensive going forward:
On Wednesday, the price for Arabica coffee, the world’s most popular variety, hit its highest level in nearly 50 years, with a pound of beans (453.6 grams) listed in New York for US$3.20 ($5.02). The all-time high was US$3.38 ($5.30) for a pound of Arabica beans in 1977 due to snow destroying swathes of Brazil’s plantations.
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coffee, current affairs, economics, trends
Mocha Mousse 17-1230 selected as the PANTONE colour of year 2025
13 December 2024
We’re twelve days out from the big one, and high in the silly season, as the brevity of recent posts here may allude to. Otherwise, the major highlight has to be the annual announcement of the PANTONE colour of the year. As I wrote two years ago, this was a big deal during my web design days. Well, a somewhat big deal, as we were always on the lookout for new colour inspiration.
Anyway, the PANTONE colour for 2025 is Mocha Mousse 17-1230. Mocha Mousse. I can’t decide if that’s a dessert, or a hair product. Whatever, I’m liking it. Here’s how PANTONE describe the hue:
Simple and Comforting: A Soft, Warming Brown. With its sophisticated, earthy elegance, PANTONE 17-1230 Mocha Mousse can stand alone or serve as a versatile foundation, enhancing a wide range of palettes and applications—from minimalist to richly detailed designs—across all color-focused industries.
To whip up some designs featuring Mocha Mousse in your favourite graphics editor, here are some common colour generating codes. The HEX code is #9e7a68. If Red, Green, and Blue is your thing, use these values: R = 158, G = 122 B = 104. On the CMYK colour model, go C = 31%, M = 47%. Y = 49%, K = 18%. For the HSB colour system, go H = 20°, S = 34%, B = 62%.
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There is more to podcasts than YouTube video interviews
5 December 2024
The Australian Podcast Awards were held a few weeks ago in Sydney, on Thursday, 21 November 2024. The finalists and winners, with productions spanning thirty categories, can be see here.
Podcasting is to broadcasting, what blogging is to publishing. It allows an individual, or a small group of people, to create their own radio-style show, independent of regular broadcast channels. Like blogging, anyone can jump in and give it a try. To start a basic podcast show, all that’s needed is a small amount of equipment and software, and a whole heap of determination to build up profile.
Though you wouldn’t think it from looking at the numerous finalists and winners in this year’s Australian Podcast Awards, podcasting is under threat. The medium itself isn’t in strife however, as Dave Winer writes, it’s more about what the word podcasting seems to have come to mean:
We’re losing the word “podcast” very quickly. It’s coming to mean video interviews on YouTube mostly. Our only hope is upgrading the open platform in a way that stimulates the imagination of creators, and there’s no time to waste.
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2024 word the year: enshitiffication. I nominate IndieWeb for 2025
2 December 2024
The neologism, devised by blogger and author Cory Doctorow, just over two years ago, has been named the 2024 word of the year by Australian English wordbook, Macquarie Dictionary.
This must be some sort of record, between the time a new word is coined, comes into popular usage, and then named as a dictionary’s word of the year. Enshitiffication was among sixteen other candidate new words (PDF) shortlisted by Macquarie, and also won as the People’s Choice word.
It seems apt enshitiffication is selected as word of the year, given the rise in prominence IndieWeb/SmallWeb has experienced during 2024. If there’s any sort of counterpoint to the declining integrity of many of the social media platforms, IndieWeb/SmallWeb is it.
Macquarie accepts suggestions for their word of the year, and this might be an opportunity to bring the community/movement/concept/notion, however you like to describe IndieWeb/SmallWeb, to the notice of more people.
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Substack, no alternative to independent websites and blogs
25 November 2024
Online publishing platform Substack, founded in 2017, was all anyone could talk about by 2022. Writers were scrambling to jump on the bandwagon, having heard tales of six-figure revenues being earned by some publishers. Even though we’ve heard those sorts of stories before. I even joined up myself, to see what the fuss was about.
But as someone who’s had their own web presence for decades, I couldn’t see the appeal of incorporating my brand into someone else’s. I think I only ever published one short article there.
But I’d already been hearing Substack appeared to permit the proliferation of misinformation, conspiracy theorists, and far-right ideologies, and was taking no action against the publishers of such content. I have no interest whatsoever in reading that sort of material, but it makes me wonder. Should content some people find objectionable actually be deleted by the administrators of a publishing platform like Substack? And then: how do we define what is acceptable, and what’s not?
For me, hate-speech and anything inciting violence or lawlessness, is unacceptable. Other topics, such as misinformation, and conspiracy theories, may be a little harder to quantify. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, almost everyone I knew complied with stay-at-home orders, and vaccine mandates. However there were some, neighbours, and others I’d see regularly, who hitherto seemed to be no different than me, convinced COVID-19 was a hoax, and the vaccines posed a serious threat.
I’d tell these people I disagreed with what they thought, but their resolve was unstinting. They believed absolutely in what they thought. They were wrong in my eyes, their views plain dangerous to say the least, but this is a democracy, and, like it or lump it, we’re all entitled to our opinion. No doubt, some of these people, would, if they read my blog, object to some of the content I publish here. But does that, of itself, constitute grounds for having it (somehow) forcibly removed?
But back to Substack. American blogger and entrepreneur Anil Dash, for one, believes the platform was created to give voice to extremists:
Substack is, just as a reminder, a political project made by extremists with a goal of normalizing a radical, hateful agenda by co-opting well-intentioned creators’ work in service of cross-promoting attacks on the vulnerable. You don’t have to take my word for it; Substack’s CEO explicitly said they won’t ban someone who is explicitly spouting hate, and when confronted with the rampant white supremacist propaganda that they are profiting from on their site, they took down… four of the Nazis. Four.
John Gruber, writing at Daring Fireball, however counters with the idea that Substack is simply an open-for-all publishing platform:
I know quite a few people whose opinions I admire who feel the same way as Dash here. I’ll disagree. I think Substack sees itself as a publishing tool and platform. They’re not here to promote any particular side. It makes no more sense for them to refuse to publish someone for being too right-wing than it would for WordPress or Medium or, say, GitHub or YouTube. Substack, I think, sees itself like that.
Despite my indifference to Substack, this is largely how I see things as well. I’ve read numerous articles published on Substack, which are just always useful and informative. I’ve never encountered anything hateful, deliberately misleading, or conspiratorial, though obviously such content exists. As it would on self-hosted websites/blogs that are not part of any publishing platform.
Calls to have such content removed seem pointless, unless laws, defamation for instance, are contravened. Fighting fire with fire may be the only option. Writing in response, and criticising material that is hateful or misleading. Do so from your own, self-hosted, independent, website though. Do not allow any publishing platform to assimilate your brand, or your content.
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blogs, current affairs, publishing, self publishing, trends
Is the grass greener on the Bluesky side of the fence?
21 November 2024
Twitter-like microblogging social network Bluesky is having its moment in the sun. We’ve all seen the multiple headlines of late heralding the arrival of another several million new members, most of whom have migrated from Twitter.
The buzz is similar to that surrounding Mastodon about two years ago. Even if Mastodon’s decentralised structure confused many people. But it’s really not that puzzling. Ignore the decentralised talk — even though that sort of setup is probably a good thing — and just join.
If you’re in Australia, or want to interact in an Australian environment, and looking for somewhere you can discuss pretty much whatever you want (within reason) try Aus Social. For the most part, you’ll still be able to interact with people you know, even if they’re on a different instance (server).
I think if what has happened at Twitter has taught us anything, that’s not to keep your social network eggs in the same basket. Presently, I’m on three networks, Threads, Mastodon, and Bluesky. I’m hardly an active participant on any, but Mastodon is where I see the most response to something I post. Bluesky might be next, while I see the least amount on Threads, which to me, sometimes feels like a daytime soap opera.
But maintaining three social network pages isn’t particularly hard work, as I largely cross-post the same content across them all, as a write once, publish multiple times, strategy. There are apps, such as Croissant, that will do the same thing, if you’re prepared to pay a subscription.
The main reason I suggest having a presence on Mastodon, is because it’s decentralised and independent. No one can stage a complete buy-out, as they did with Twitter, because no one person, or entity, has total control. Every Mastodon instance, which makes up its decentralised network, is administered by different people. And anyone who feels so compelled, can setup their own instance, if they want to.
Bluesky, despite claiming to be decentralised, isn’t really, as Can Olcer explains. This puzzled me when I joined. I envisaged a sign-up process similar to Mastodon, where I had to find an instance I liked, and join through that.
Instead, I signed up at the Bluesky website, and that was it. There were no questions about whether I preferred to be on an Australian instance, a social instance, nothing. None of this is necessarily a problem though, but it does leave open the possibility that Bluesky, as a commercial, potentially profiting making entity, may one day follow in the footsteps of Twitter.
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Mastodon, social networks, technology, Threads, trends
The W3C launches the Sustainable Web Interest Group
20 November 2024
The World Wide Consortium (W3C) has the emissions created by the internet in its sights… who knew just high web caused emissions were?
The mission of the Sustainable Web Interest Group is to improve digital sustainability so that the Web works better for all people and the planet. The digital industry is responsible for 2-5% of global emissions, more than the aviation industry. If the Internet were a country it would be one of the top five polluters. The amount of water, energy, and minerals required increases annually, often putting the burden on developing economies.
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