Showing all posts about trends
People also need a motive to start a personal website
15 November 2024
Garrett writing on his Mastodon page:
How do we make it easier for “everyone else,” the “normies,” all those “regular” folk who just want to get online, how do we reduce the friction required to get them to make their own little corners of the web? How do we make the #IndieWeb easier? How do we make the #WebRevival more convenient?
It’s the question of the times, and one I think about. Thing is, almost “everyone else” is comfortable with the ease of using a social media platform to get online. Set up an account. Find friends and follow them. Ask them to do the same. Start posting stuff. Sit back and enjoy the discussion that might accompany a post. No special knowledge required. Nothing else to worry about.
It’s just too easy. But the personal website space really seems reserved for people with a keen interest in creating their own presence online, because there are a few hurdles to entry. I could say — with my relatively low-tech website setup — “well, look at me. I don’t have that much technical knowledge, but see: I have a website, therefore so can you.” But that’s not really much help.
I wanted to have a personal website, and was motivated enough to figure what I needed to do, to make that happen. The problem is, I just don’t think there’s too many regular people, who are the same. Even if there are free-to-sign-up options, such as WordPress.com, or Neocities, open to them.
So, it’s not just ease of setup. Some sort of motive is needed. And motives have come along before. Fifteen to twenty years ago people left, right, and centre, were setting up blogs, motivated by the prospect of making money from them. Some bloggers boasted of “six-figure incomes.” It was enough to see complete novices figuring out content management systems, hosting, content production, and how to build an audience, all in the name of bringing in a dollar or million.
I don’t know what the prospects are like for website monetisation today. Sure, there’s people making some money from their blogs, but like fifteen-plus years ago, only a handful are earning enough to make a difference. Making money from a website may not then be the enticement we’re looking for.
If we are to lure more people away from social media, and encourage them to launch personal websites, presenting them with a motive is something that also needs to be considered.
RELATED CONTENT
blogs, IndieWeb, technology, trends
Things Magazine latest list of links to things
14 November 2024
Things Magazine has been publishing lists of links for over fourteen years, and here’s the latest batch. I don’t exactly know where they source all their links from, which are all top quality, but it’s a process that must take a certain time. Next time someone tries to tell you publishing a link-blog is easier than a long-form writing blog, see if they can do better than Things.
RELATED CONTENT
blogs, history, publishing, trends
The science of standing desks does not quite stack up
13 November 2024
Pretty popular are sit/stand desks at the moment. I’ve helped a few people assemble them, when they’ve bought one for their home office. Good for your health, sit/stand desks, or so we’re told.
Mainly because you’re not sitting all day while working. Some recent research however, suggests the health benefits of sit/stand desks could be overstated. Sitting for extended periods may not be ideal, but too much time spent standing can also cause problems:
“More time spent sitting didn’t necessarily lower a person’s risk of cardiovascular disease, nor did it increase the risk,” Ahmadi says. “It was a null finding. But what it did do was actually increase their risk of circulatory diseases.” Standing for more than two hours a day increased that risk by 11 percent for every extra half hour, which is bad news for retail workers and the standing desk industry.
RELATED CONTENT
Doomscrolling social media does not result in brain rot
12 November 2024
So say psychologists at the Sydney based University of New South Wales (UNSW):
Dr Poppy Watson, adjunct lecturer with UNSW’s School of Psychology, says while the idea warrants exploration, there is a lack of evidence showing excessive doomscrolling of social media is responsible for the mental fatigue, lack of focus, and reduced cognitive function often attributed to ‘brain rot’.
Doomscrolling is hardly a harmless undertaking either, but the UNSW researchers attribute so-called brain rot, particularly among teenagers, more to poverty, socioeconomic status, and poor diet. Brain rot does not, for instance, seem to have impacted IQ scores, which continue to rise:
If intense, prolonged digital consumption were stultifying young people’s minds, then we could expect to see a drop in average IQ scores between pre- and post-digital generations. But as Dr Watson points out, average IQ scores have risen from the start of the 20th century and into the 21st, known as the Flynn Effect.
This as the Australian government proposal to ban social media access to people under the age of sixteen, has been attracting criticism.
RELATED CONTENT
psychology, social media, trends
Great movie title drops are like clever cameo appearances
8 November 2024
Title Drops, by Germany based data visualisation designer and developer Dominikus Baur, analyses the number of times a movie’s title is mentioned during the story.
It’s something that’s not always possible though. I’m looking at 2001: A Space Odyssey, as an example. Although if you can think of a way it could, somehow, happen, let me know. Time-travel classic Back to the Future, however, is, I think, the gold-standard when it comes to title drops.
I’m not sure movies named for a main character, Barbie for instance, really count. It’s surely a given their name will come into the conversation sooner or later. But something like: “next Saturday night, we’re sending you back to the future“, is self-referential in both a smart, and funny, way.
One thing that seems apparent form the data here is that title drops are becoming more frequent.
RELATED CONTENT
The music has stopped for musicians and their support workers
6 November 2024
Just as it is becoming near high impossible to make a full-time living as an author, unless a writer’s work is regularly topping best-seller lists, the same increasingly goes for musicians. And their support teams. Gone are the days road crews, stage hands, recording studio workers, and the like, can make a full-time living in the music industry.
And Hua Hsu, writing for The New Yorker, notes that the word gig, which once chiefly referred to a music show or concert, has found greater relevance in the on-demand work sector, or gig-economy. Doubtless many music industry workers, and I dare say, one or two authors, supplement their income through on-demand work, in response to fewer opportunities to make a living in their preferred occupation.
RELATED CONTENT
Mr Big police stings: true crime that reads like crime fiction
30 October 2024
A police method of prosecuting people suspected of being responsible for committing a serious crime, almost reads like something from a crime novel:
Police manufacture a chance meeting with the suspect, then offer them paid work of a non-criminal nature before introducing jobs that appear to break the law. Through a series of interactions over several months, the sting makes the suspect believe they are being adopted into an organised crime gang with powerful connections to corrupt police, government officials and even judges.
Long story short, police — undercover officers — go about extracting a confession, or admission of guilt, from a suspect they believe committed a crime, but do not have sufficient evidence to place charges. The so-called “Mr Big” technique, which originated in Canada, has resulted in numerous convictions. Legal experts however are concerned some people may be wrongly convicted, as a certain pressure is put on would-be suspects to confess.
RELATED CONTENT
Australia, Canada, law, trends
No one stopped writing diaries, they started publishing blogs instead
28 October 2024
Mali Waugh, writing for The Age:
I also think that keeping a written diary is not really done any more. I wonder whether part of this is that people are much more accepting of traditionally private things being put in the public domain. For the most part, this is a good thing but also sometimes disgusting, like when people share their nose job recovery pictures or their recipes for microwaved brie.
I kind of keep a dairy — but it’s more a listing of the day’s happenings — on some of my socials pages. In fact, my diary-style posts are just about the only content I publish on those pages.
But I doubt handwritten journaling has declined because people necessarily want to make details of their lives and thoughts more public. It’s simply because, no brainer, easier ways to keep a dairy have come along: the web, personal websites, blogs, social media, etc.
I couldn’t see myself starting a handwritten dairy at this point though. It would be more work. Another mouth that would to be fed content. It’d be too much like having a second website. Plus, paper diaries would be more stuff to haul around. It’s like I say: one personal website is enough.
RELATED CONTENT
Apple said to be reducing production of Vision Pro headset
25 October 2024
Hartley Charlton, writing for Mac Rumours:
Citing multiple people “directly involved” in making components for the headset, the report says that the scaling back of production began in the early summer.
My take here is people thought Vision Pro was going to be the next WOW Apple product, and units would fly off the shelves, as they (eventually) did with the iPhone. But Vision Pro, based on pricing alone (leaving aside lack of content, and use thereof potentially being socially isolating), was always only going to appeal to a relatively small group of consumers.
Of course, there’s nothing yet official from Apple, as I type, so the news remains unsubstantiated, even though word of the production cuts have been widely reported.
RELATED CONTENT
Linux OSs and CGI scripts: awesome, but not for everyone
23 October 2024
David Heinemeier Hansson looks at why more people don’t migrate to Linux operating systems:
The world is full of free invitations to self-improvement that are ignored by most people most of the time. Putting it crudely, it’s easier to be fat and ignorant in a world of cheap, empty calories than it is to be fit and informed. It’s hard to resist the temptation of minimal effort.
I run Linux Mint, possibly the most user-friendly Linux distribution AKA distro. For some reason, who knows, Mint reminds me of when I used to tinker with CGI scripts. I’m not talking about CGI as in computer generated imagery, but common gateway interface. In the days of old, CGI scripts helped make personal websites a little more interactive. They could do all sorts of things, but were widely used to power contact forms and guestbooks.
Web designers would hunt around for a CGI script that might aid them to do something or other on their website. In the same way a, say, WordPress publisher today would search out plug-ins. Once a suitable script had been located, they’d then go about configuring it, obviously provided their web host supported CGI scripts. While most scripts came ready to use, they usually required tweaking. Care needed to be taken doing this, because a misstep could render the script useless. Or worse.
For the first ten years I had a website, I hosted it at a smaller operation based in Sydney, NSW. They had a “sandbox” arrangement in place, where CGI scripts could be loaded, and if something went wrong, isolated, without bringing the whole server down. I haven’t used CGI in a long time now, but the configuration experience seems comparable to Mint. It’s mostly setup and ready to run, but still needs tweaks here and there.
But that’s enough to put off some people, even those who would like to move away from, especially, Windows operating systems. It’s unfortunate, but entirely understandable. Most of us just want to push the button, and see something happen.
I should conclude this discussion by making mention of the webmaster — a person, not a team, they were too small for that — at my long gone old web host. I’d often email the support people with questions about some difficulty configuring a CGI script, and he’d respond. My questions must have been too much for the regular support crew (er, duo), and would be forwarded to the guy actually looking after the servers.
He’d send replies at like three o’clock in the morning with suggestions on what to do, which always helped. Remember we’re talking the late nineties here, but this sort of thing said a lot about the earlier days of the web: it often felt like it was all happening during the middle of the night. But emails from the webmaster themselves: that has to be something you’d probably never see today, a hands-on person, instead of a customer service rep, taking the time to help out.
RELATED CONTENT