Manton Reece

Sorry for the late notice — no Homebrew Website Club in Austin tonight. Because of the holidays and weather, we’re pushing the meetup to next week. Jan 9th, 6:30pm at Mozart’s Coffee.

Dialog for M.b got a major update for the new year, including a new posting screen. Available as a public beta in Google Play.

Very cold and rainy day in Austin as it’s starting to feel like 2019 is really here. I’ve been wrapping up a new foundation for themes and customization on M.b that I can’t wait to share.

After living here forever and visiting a new coffee shop every day for a month a couple years ago, it’s not often I find a new place… Working at Irie Bean Coffee Bar while in south Austin for a bit.

We really loved Mary Poppins Returns and Into the Spider-Verse. This Spider-Man is stunning — my favorite Marvel adaptation. And don’t miss the blog post about Mary Poppins from Floyd Norman, who worked on the original film 54 years ago.

For the last Micro Monday of the year, @macgenie edited together 10 clips from the previous 40+ episodes in 2018. This is a great intro to Micro.blog and the podcast.

Worked on some performance improvements for external blogs this morning. RSS and connection errors are also now reported on the web to help troubleshoot feed problems.

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.

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

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...