It's even worse than it appears.
An idea worth RT'ing: "A site people could go to, fill in some info about themselves, and find out how much they would lose under the Repub plan."#
Fix for the Scripting News RSS feed: we now process glossary entries and emoji short codes. The net effect is that text shortcuts like RSS will be expanded as well as 👏 emoji 👏, in the feeds. As they say, still diggin!#
So many thoughts today begin with -- If the Dems only had their shit together. #
If the Dems only had their shit together, we would be mobleizable to knock on neighbor's doors this weekend with pre-written talking points. "Did you know that you could will lose your health insurance if the Republicans have their way?"#
Repubs who consider voting for the repeal of Medicaid and the ACA should fear the hellfire they will face when they run for re-election. This weekend is the time to make your feelings felt. #
BTW, if someone expresses frustration it doesn't follow that they blame you, esp on Twitter which is a length-impaired medium. #
- Two friends, Jon Udell and Mike Caulfield, are talking about "dumb" servers. I call the same things "thin." Also fractional-horsepower servers. They go by a bunch of names, but the idea and motivation is the same. #
- The idea: We move functionality from the server to the edge (desktop, mobile device), repeating until someday there's nothing left on the server. We could go all the way, but it needs a strong operational backend, something a big company is good at, not so much individuals. (With the caveat that some think this problem is distributable, notably the fictional CEO of Pied Piper.)#
The key thing is identity. Once you have that solved, it all becomes relatively easy. I've factored out identity into a layer I call nodeStorage. It associates storage with a user's Twitter identity. Twitter is a good service to use, unlike some others, because they have a liberal policy of who gets to create apps. Faceook has an extensive vetting process. Twitter is "let a thousand flowers bloom." I know some people have problems with Twitter, but I've learned over many years that all corporate vendors are imperfect. If you're waiting for perfection you'll wait forever. And you build the software so that if Twitter should again become draconian, a new service can be filled in with as little disruption as possible.#- Another place I've looked is Dropbox. There, with one simple feature, the ability to associate a domain with a folder, they would solve the problem. I know there are external services that provide something "like" this, but fundamentally Dropbox doesn't provide enough flexibility in the API to do this in a reasonable way. (Lack of granularity in permissions, an app gets access to one folder or everything.)#
- Or Amazon, if their identity system for AWS were simpler for end users, or if their end-user storage system could be accessed through the S3 API. I'm sure they've thought of it. There must be a reason they don't do it. #
- And Twitter could completely eliminate the need for nodeStorage, by offering users a few gigabytes of storage attached to their Twitter account, accessible through the API. The first person who described the feature to me was Jack Dorsey, about eight years ago, when we met for coffee in SF. So he understands why this idea is so powerful. I'm not sure what the holdup is. #
- In the meantime, nodeStorage works. I build the kind of apps I want. Open the sidebar on Scripting News (left margin) and have a look at the apps. Some even have source code so you can see for yourself. #
Richard MacManus keeps on truckin. There's nothing more powerful than a persistent and curious user who's relatively fearless. #- In a follow-up post I learned that there is an IndieWeb-approved feed reader called Woodwind. That's good news. RSS and related technolgies, including OPML import and export, are essential components of the open web. #
- BTW, to Richard, I wrote up my rules for standards-makers, based on experience re what (imho) is important and what works and doesn't. Another item for your consideration. #