Weird how persistent old ways of thinking are. I saw this headline - Hopes are growing for Bakerloo extension to Lewisham, TfL official says - and thought “About time. That’ll be handy”.
And then I remembered that I haven’t lived in Lewisham for 13 years. (And that the author is a former student.)
Obi-Wan Kenobi is the perfect TV series to watch with my 9 year old on Daddy/Daughter TV nights while her big sister is at Guides.
Today has been a relentlessly local day - delivering the local residents’ association mag, and editing the parish mag.
Print is not dead. It’s just local.
Least surprising discovery of the day:
Substack’s RSS feeds are a disaster.
— @manton
It’s platform that takes what it wants from the open web, and locks everything else up behind proprietary tech. Podcasts, in particular, should be wary of the erosion of RSS.
I doubt I’ll ever be the sort of person that enjoys camping in the snow, bit I can enjoy the stunning photos of those who do.
Jared Newman wanted a blog that would automatically crosspost to the major social services. And he found his answer:
I tried a bunch of different options for my cross-posting setup, but the one that worked best involves a service called Micro.blog.
Another test, for @index@www.coffeeandcomplexity.com
What happens if I try to mention Ghost Activity Pub beta users like @index@john.onolan.org or @index@www.coffeeandcomplexity.com or @index@www.peterzimon.com from micro.blog?
Nice to be quoted in this piece about Bluesky versus Threads by a former student, Hannah Murphy, in the Financial Times today.
If you remember and still miss Nuzzel, and use Bluesky or Mastodon, have I got good news for you.
This tool shows you the most shared links in your network. Hella useful.
My advice to any writer looking to start a new site based on the newsletter model would be to consider Substack last, not first. Not because Substack is a Nazi bar, which I don’t think it is at all, but simply because there are clearly better options, and the company’s long term goal is clearly platform lock-in.
Pretty sure that this isn’t what GoPros are designed for, but this still makes me smile when I rewatch it…
Today the Podcasting MA students are going to learn what RSS is and why it matters — whether they like it or not… :-)
Awesome (and important) piece from Anil Dash: Don’t call it a Substack
Links are powerful — that’s why Instagram and Twitter and Threads punish and limit them, and why Substack tries to take credit for them. And that’s why “wherever you get your podcasts” is such a radical concept — like email, it’s a medium that the tech tycoons don’t, and can’t, own. People can read your writing “wherever they get their email”.
I know it’s free, but I think the days of publishers relying on Google Analytics should be done. Not only does GA4 not really deliver the metrics publishers should be paying attention to, it’s also pretty unreliable on key real-time metrics.
Spoke to a Sky News journalist about the Twitter to Bluesky (and Threads to Bluesky) moves.
The piece is now up, with some good quotes from me. 🦋
Remembrance Sunday: veterans, volunteers and… Mods?