Manton Reece

We wanted to do something special for the holidays. Starting today through January 2nd, if you invite a friend to Micro.blog they will get 3 months of free blog hosting. If you already have a paid account, you can optionally pay for their entire first year on Micro.blog.

Happy holidays! Thanks to everyone in the Micro.blog community who has been so supportive as we grow the platform. I can’t wait to share everything we have planned for 2019.

www.manton.org/2018/12/2...

Between 2005 and 2008, I published 4 episodes of a personal podcast, each episode about a different topic. When migrating my blog to Micro.blog this year, I accidentally broke the old podcast feed. I’ve just fixed it by uploading the MP3s to Micro.blog and updating the podcast feed URL in the Apple podcast directory.

Here are the 4 original posts with updated audio links:

• Trains (2005)
• Video Games (2006)
• San Francisco (2006)
• Hillary (2008)

These were all over 10 years ago and in that time I’ve co-hosted 350 episodes of Core Intuition and recorded over 100 episodes of my own new podcast Timetable. I’ve learned a lot since then, and if I was rewriting those old podcasts now I’d improve them. There’s a combination of embarrassment and pride for anything we create long ago. But I never have time for something like what I tried to do in those old podcasts — they include audio I recorded around Texas and California — so I love that they still exist.

www.manton.org/2018/12/2...

We just released version 1.4.1 of Micro.blog for iOS. Here are the changes:

• Improved sharing from Safari to include both the URL and selected text. Use the share button in the bottom toolbar.
• Improved text size to more closely match system defaults. The text in the timeline is slightly bigger now.
• Fixed accessibility when writing a new post so that VoiceOver can be used.
• Fixed sharing images from some apps.
• Fixed prompting for multiple blogs when posting to an external site.
• Fixed default size when scaling photos.
• Disabled username auto-complete on iOS 10 to work around crashes. This feature now requires iOS 11 or later.

You can download Micro.blog from the App Store. If you don’t see it in your Updates tab yet, it should be there soon.

www.manton.org/2018/12/2...

There’s another big story in The New York Times today about Facebook sharing personal data. You may also have heard that Walt Mossberg has stopped using Facebook and Instagram:

This is just a note to say I’ve decided to deactivate my Facebook and Facebook Messenger accounts around the end of the year. After that, I won’t be posting here, or reading what you post. I will be deleting the apps from my devices. I’ve already quit Facebook-owned Instagram and erased its app.

This is important. Many people have left Facebook but ignored that Instagram is owned by the same company. If you dislike what Facebook is doing, continuing to use Instagram only helps prop up Facebook’s business. As I wrote last month:

I think pushback against Instagram is coming, as more people who have already left Facebook also remember that Instagram has the same leadership, and the platform is far enough off track that even the founders have left. It’s a good time to be posting photos to your own blog instead of Instagram.

The pushback is accelerating. Basecamp started a Facebook Free campaign today to encourage other businesses to stop using Facebook and Instagram:

If Facebook’s endless privacy scandals have shown one thing, it’s that the company has far too much data on its users, and that they can’t be trusted not to sell, barter, or abuse that data whether for profit, growth, or negligence.

One of the reasons I remain so confident in Micro.blog is that it was built for moments like this, when public opinion shifts against the big social networks. I have a longer post here about finding our way to what’s needed next.

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Very nice design customization to the Kiko theme on Micro.blog by Kahlil Lechelt.

I woke up this morning, picked up my phone like I always do — to make sure that Micro.blog servers hadn’t quietly burned to the ground in the middle of the night — and the first thing I saw was a notification about Apple’s new campus in Austin. Here’s John Voorhees writing about it for MacStories:

At the center of the announcement though is a new facility that will be located in North Austin not far from Apple’s current Austin campus. The new office will cost over $1 billion to build and sit on a 133-acre site, 50 acres of which will be set aside for open space. Initially, the Austin campus will house 5,000 employees, with the ability to expand to as many as 15,000. The new complex will run on 100% renewable energy too.

I love the contrast to Amazon’s over-hyped search for a 2nd major campus. Apple made a decision and announced it, without leaving the world hanging for months. While Apple has always had other smaller offices outside Cupertino, it’s great to see such a significant new commitment in other parts of the country.

Does anyone know the location for the campus yet? Near the current campus in Austin there are huge stretches of undeveloped property — old ranches that you can see along Parmer Lane or from the other side when taking the train from Lakeline Station. For years I’ve dreamed that this area could be preserved somehow as a park, not just eventually overrun with condos and restaurants. I’m excited that Apple is setting aside 50 acres of the new campus for open space. I hope they consider expanding that even more.

www.manton.org/2018/12/1...

Upgraded from Ruby 2.3 to 2.5 this morning and it appears to have completely fixed some issues I was having with Sidekiq processes unexpectedly quitting.

On last week’s Core Intuition, Daniel and I talked more about WordPress 5.0 and the disruption that will be caused by the new block-based editor, Gutenberg. Daniel also addresses compatibility with MarsEdit in a blog post.

Meanwhile, WordCamp US was a few days ago in Nashville. WordPress founding developer Matt Mullenweg gave his State of the Word talk to wrap up the conference. The talk + Q&A is long, over 1.5 hours, but provides a detailed overview of Gutenberg and where WordPress is going.

There were a few things Matt said that stood out for me, all in response to the same question. Matt says:

I think our mistake — really the mistake of the past decade — is we didn’t do the work to create Gutenberg until 2 years ago. We didn’t start it. Because every time we’d start it, it got really controversial, or it got mired in technical details, or it was just too acrimonious. We’d be too worried about backwards compatibility or something to really take it to term, to fruition, to where it’s something we can actually take and present to the world.

And then:

Twitter used to be called microblogging, right? Many of them have these basic elements of publishing, embedding images, commenting, sorts of things. And you could actually build most of these services on a WordPress backbone. They weren’t because because we weren’t innovating enough on the user experience. I think we’re actually now leapfrogging.

And closing the answer with:

And this I think gives us an opportunity to capture the web that was. And whether we do so or not, though, depends 100% on the user experiences we create.

I love Matt’s answer to this question, and I think Matt’s right that Gutenberg is what WordPress needs to take it through the next 15 years. But I don’t think it’s great for short-form blogging. As WordPress becomes more sophisticated to meet the needs of web folks who want more advanced layout or CMS-like features, I want to make Micro.blog easier and faster for blogs.

www.manton.org/2018/12/1...

Love the way the Spurs finished this game against the Lakers tonight. First of 6 games at home, might be the turning point to climb back into the playoffs picture. 🏀

Speaking of tonight’s Homebrew Website Club, Tom Brown and I were guests on the Plutopia podcast that just posted this week, talking about the IndieWeb, posting to your own blog, and Micro.blog.

I misspoke at the beginning about the founding of the IndieWeb, incorrectly saying “Distributed Web Summit” when I meant “Federated Social Web Summit”. I actually interviewed Tantek and Aaron about those early days of the IndieWeb when I was in Portland this year, for my upcoming book Indie Microblogging. I’d love to get part of that transcript out soon since there’s a lot of good history in it.

www.manton.org/2018/12/0...

Good morning, Austin! Tonight is Homebrew Website Club, 6:30pm at Mozart’s Coffee. We’ll meet at a table outside to talk about the IndieWeb, plan for the upcoming IndieWebCamp Austin, or work on your own web site.

We released a new version of Micro.blog for iOS today with several new features and improvements:

• Added full-screen viewer for photos in the timeline.
• Added auto-complete of usernames when composing a new post.
• Added tapping on your blog hostname in the post screen to switch to a different blog if you have multiple Micro.blog-hosted blogs.
• Added option to set description on uploaded photos for better accessibility. Tap an attached photo thumbnail before posting to edit the text.
• Updated the following count in user profiles to show people you are not yet following to help you discover new people to follow.
• Fixed maximum size when scaling uploaded photos.
• Fixed potential crash when sharing photos from other iOS apps.
• Fixed layout issues on new bigger iPhones.
• Fixed sharing some web page titles.
• Improved accessibility of menus and buttons in the app.
• Improved showing push notifications in the app.

You can download Micro.blog version 1.4 from the iOS App Store.

www.manton.org/2018/12/0...

Some of y’all noticed that Micro.blog was slow or not responding this morning. Sorry! I explain why on today’s episode of Timetable.

Thanks everyone for the congrats and feedback about the last year of Micro.blog! Coming up today, another post in our 12 days of microblogging series. Also a chance that the new iOS version is approved.

Having fun wrapping up the next iOS version of Micro.blog with @cheesemaker 3–4 new features that add up to a very nice release. I’d love to ship it Monday for the official 1-year anniversary of the public launch of Micro.blog.

Great to see Apple Music coming to the Echo (noticed via MacStories). This is kind of an “iTunes on Windows” moment. Makes business sense, but still surprising.

With the midterms and now the near-daily Mueller investigation news, I’ve fallen back into reloading The New York Times home page throughout the day for no reason. Gotta stop this. I already see everything in my RSS reader or Micro.blog timeline.

Sunlit 2.3.1 is now available in the App Store. If you’re interested in posting more photos to your own blog, check it out. It’s a free app and works well with Micro.blog.

There’s a nice feature on RSS apps (best viewed on iOS) in the App Store today.