Friday, October 25, 2019
Years ago my wife and I were in Vegas and had a chance to see Elton John… and missed it. This year, when I realized he was playing in Toronto on the night of our 20th anniversary, I bought tickets as a surprise birthday gift and we planned a short trip around the concert. We arrived in the late afternoon earlier this week, took the airport train to Union Station and the subway to our hotel, then went down to Polson Pier to catch the sunset.
Wednesday, October 16, 2019
Test Saturday Friday Wednesday Saturday Friday
Wednesday, June 26, 2019
Greg Morris is considering migrating his site from WordPress to Micro.blog hosting and had a question about referencing photos in a template: Card previews I really want to be able to solve - does anyone know how to pull an image out of a hugo post in order to put meta property=“og:image” into the head? Micro.blog uses Hugo themes because they are fast and there’s so much flexibility to customize them.
Friday, June 14, 2019
We recently added support for including videos in your microblog posts. We’ve seen some interesting and fun uses of the new feature, and starting today, we want to highlight them in a weekly “Film Fest Friday,” which you can follow on @friday. Each Friday, we’ll link to a few of the videos that caught our eye. The only requirement is that they be micro-sized, i.e. one minute or shorter. Jean Kapsa (@kapsa)
The New Yorker: Can “Indie” Social Media Save Us? — by Cal Newport, featuring Micro.blog, Mastodon, and the IndieWeb’s alternative to big social networks. Welcome everyone discovering Micro.blog today!
Another test. ☀️
Friday, April 26, 2019
Following Jeffrey Zeldman’s article about the open web, Ben Werdmuller has a great post about how we shouldn’t care so much about startup unicorns, using Micro.blog as an example of another type of business:
Wednesday, March 20, 2019
An excellent improvement to Micro.blog was announced last month. The addition of custom templates via the implementation of the Hugo framework makes hosted blogs endlessly customizable.1 The easiest way to get started is to clone an existing theme from an account’s design page and use the existing structure to change just about every detail of a hosted blog. It’s really quite remarkable how much control @manton has added by switching the build engine to Hugo.
Monday, March 11, 2019
Over a year ago I proposed a new blog archive format. The idea was to have a better way to save the posts and photos in your blog, or move your blog to another platform. I’m happy to announce that Micro.blog can now export in this format. Here’s how it works: Click Posts → Export → “Export in blog archive format”. Micro.blog will generate the archive, which is an HTML file with Microformats, a JSON Feed of all posts, and a folder of uploaded photos.
Saturday, March 9, 2019
There’s now an option to switch your subscription to be billed yearly instead of monthly. When you do, you’ll get a discount equivalent to 2 free months. If you’re signed in to Micro.blog, click here to start switching your subscription. For now, new customers always start with monthly billing, but we’ll be expanding this in the future. (I talked through some of the complexity of this feature on the latest Core Intuition.
Saturday, March 9, 2019
SXSW is underway in Austin, which means it’s time to mark the anniversary of my blog. 17 years ago today I started blogging on manton.org. Radio Userland → Movable Type → WordPress → Micro.blog. Still my favorite place to write.
Friday, March 8, 2019
I love this video from WordPress. Very similar in style to what I always imagined we could do for Micro.blog.
Friday, March 8, 2019
We just posted Core Intuition 363. This episode continues the big theme from the last few episodes as Daniel considers taking on extra work beyond Red Sweater. From the show notes: Daniel reveals to Manton that he’s (on the verge of) taking a part-time job. They assess the likely impact on Red Sweater, and how it might affect Daniel’s self image as an “independent developer.” Manton talks about updates he’s making to Micro.
Thursday, March 7, 2019
Brent Simmons has a good list of Marzipan questions. The one I’m slightly worried about is whether we can ship Marzipan apps outside the App Store. Other limitations will improve with time, but closing off distribution is a deal-breaker for me.
Thursday, March 7, 2019
So many great podcasts. I’ve thrown out any structure in how I choose what to listen to. I just have a “Latest” playlist in Overcast with the recent episodes across all podcasts at the top. Tap on a few episodes that look good, depending on my mood.
Thursday, March 7, 2019
Seems about once a year there’s a new story about the last Blockbuster. We loved visiting Bend a few years ago, but didn’t know about the Blockbuster. Fun that the store is becoming a sort of tourist attraction.
Wednesday, March 6, 2019
There’s no Homebrew Website Club in Austin tonight. We’ll regroup in April. (Thanks again to everyone who made it to IndieWebCamp Austin! Seeya next time.)
Tuesday, March 5, 2019
Some great basketball tonight: Spurs holding on with a 1-point win over the Nuggets. Pelicans close game in Utah. And still underway, the Lakers first of 2 must-win games against the Clippers. 🏀
Monday, March 4, 2019
Vincent Ritter has more iOS invites for his Micro.blog app. He’s also looking for Android testers.
Monday, March 4, 2019
I’m the guest on this week’s Micro Monday, answering questions about Micro.blog.
Sunday, March 3, 2019
We just published episode 362 of Core Intuition. From the show notes: Manton and Daniel talk about how IndieWebCamp Austin went, and reflect on the virtues of the diverse “open web” community. They react to a debate between Jeff Atwood & David Heinemeier Hansson about their purportedly different approaches to business. Finally, they talk about Daniel’s increasingly glum feelings about his business, Daniel makes some self-assessment of shortcomings, and the two of them talk about making small, productive tweaks to increase revenues.
Thursday, February 28, 2019
Brad Frost shares a couple of stories about how people have remembered his writing because he has his own blog. He puts it very clearly: Writing on your own website associates your thoughts and ideas with you as a person. Having a distinct website design helps strengthen that association. This is why we encourage everyone to have their own blog and use their own domain name, and why Micro.blog-hosted blogs have multiple built-in designs as well as support for completely custom themes.
Wednesday, February 27, 2019
I’ll be the guest in the next Micro Monday, catching up with @macgenie on recent Micro.blog improvements and answering your questions! Let us know if you have any questions or topics to cover.
Wednesday, February 27, 2019
I added a help page with an introduction to IndieAuth for Micro.blog developers. This is best for web apps and desktop apps where the user is often already signed in.
Wednesday, February 27, 2019
This week Jean published the 50th episode of Micro Monday! There are even more episodes than that if you count the bonus episodes. As she said on the show, it’s amazing what can happen when you’re consistent about recording every week. The latest episode features Jonathan LaCour: You know him best as @cleverdevil, the creator of utilities that enhance your microblog such as microgram (an Instagram-like photo grid page), and micromemories (a Facebook-like “On This Day” feature).
Monday, February 25, 2019
Thinking about our Micro.blog APIs after IndieWebCamp Austin. There are a lot! Probably not even a complete list: RSS, JSON Feed, MetaWeblog, Micropub, ActivityPub, Microformats, WebSub, rssCloud, Webmention, IndieAuth, and now Microsub.
Monday, February 25, 2019
We had the 2nd IndieWebCamp Austin over the weekend. As I did after the 1st IndieWebCamp Austin, I’m going to summarize some of what I took away from the event. Saturday morning started with my quick introduction to the IndieWeb, some thoughts from the perspective of Micro.blog, and then laying out the schedule for IndieWebCamp. Next up, Aaron Parecki gave a keynote on the state of social readers: how we can use apps to both read other people’s blogs and also reply to posts.
Saturday, February 23, 2019
Wrapping up the first day of IndieWebCamp, Aaron Parecki is live-coding a simple blogging engine to demo social readers. Great example of the IndieWeb building blocks and interoperability between services.
Friday, February 22, 2019
Excited for IndieWebCamp tomorrow. If you’re disappointed in modern social networks and looking for what’s next on the open web, I hope you’ll join us at Capital Factory in Austin. More details and registration here.
Friday, February 22, 2019
First time at Capital Factory? Look for these doors tomorrow inside the building lobby. You can still register for IndieWebCamp here. $5 or free when you blog about the event!