Author: Aulia Masna

Former tech journo, used to write for Macworld, DailySocial, e27. Ex , ran a national startup initiative program in Indonesia. Very much into the news.

Speaking of third party Mastodon clients…

Checking out phanpy.social, it looks amazing. So clean, very app like, adjustable text size and interface via browser control. It’s still in development but it looks like it’s ready for regular use if you’re looking for a visually pleasing and functional web app for Mastodon. Best used on mobile or tablet, IMO.

All the boosted posts are grouped together in a carousel, threads get highlighted with an automated count, replies have a different shade, content warning, post visibility, text description, language options, attachments, and polls are available.

Posts are shown either as the normal stack of text blocks or separated as cards depending on your browser’s zoom level, and you can launch the post composition field into a different browser window for much larger and clearer view.

It has dark mode and post detail opens up in a new sheet over the timeline in the same window. Love it!

PS: Here’s an actively updated list of clients and resources for Mastodon

A Twitterrific for Mastodon?

I’m heartbroken that Twitterrific had to die and I don’t suppose Iconfactory plans to build a Mastodon app. Twitterrific developer Craig Hockenberry mentioned in his blog post that the new Mastodon apps are excellent to help with the transition but they ignore the scale and possibilities of ActivityPub. 

I can understand that. I mean, Mastodon is clearly the flagship ActivityPub client right now but its nature means you can see status updates or posts from people posting using other environments such as Pleroma, Misskey, CalcKey, Friendica, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Takahe, micro.blog, etc which are not Mastodon and not fully compatible with the Mastodon API, but they kind of work similarly in some ways yet at the same time quite differently as well.

Should one build an all encompassing Activity Pub app? I don’t think so because it would end up as a big confusing hot mess. Apps optimized for individual services are still the way to go  in my opinion. I’m still hopeful that there’s an Iconfactory take that can accommodate the Fediverse because the team has always managed to come up with innovative designs and user experience. They’ve never been afraid of experimenting with different approaches to the same problem.

Maybe they have something in mind already or secretly have been building something, maybe they haven’t. Given the response they gave to being abruptly shut out of Twitter, maybe they’re going to take some time before deciding on their next step.

Right now there’s already plenty of upcoming third party Mastodon apps to choose from for iOS even if they’re still in TestFlight, not to mention existing ones as well as web apps that can work across platforms, but a buffet of choices never stopped new ones from appearing.

The death of third party Twitter apps

On Friday, 13 January 2023, Twitter turned off access to most third party Twitter clients. People who used apps like Tweetbot, Twitterrific, and Echofon were suddenly shut out of their apps, faced with a screen that told them there’s an authentication issue. 

It’s not the first time third party apps were given the shaft by the company but this time there were no warnings, no official statements acknowledging the matter, no explanations. It’s as if millions of voices were suddenly silenced.

While there had been internal discussions about the ban, it wasn’t until almost a week later that there was an official word and even then there was no public communication that third party apps are no longer allowed. Engadget found out by diving into Twitter’s developer terms which were only just updated yesterday.

Twitterrific developer Craig Hockenberry was rightly incensed about the move, and his Iconfactory colleague Sean Heber wrote about having to shut down the app after 16 years. It’s absolutely clear that Twitter is no longer the same company as it was a year ago or even six months ago.

Unlike companies such as Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, or TikTok, Twitter had always been reliant on third party apps and solutions even near the beginning, which was why the 2012 API restrictions were met with massive backlash to which Twitter then relented. This time, though, no such luck.

The LVCC Loop is a Glorified Theme Park Ride

This is someone’s idea of a revolutionary rapid transport that’s supposed to beat the traffic. Sure, it’s currently only a prototype, just a showcase of an idea, but it looks very much as if the future of transport is a Disneyland ride or a glorified Uber pool. Other cities have much more efficient and safer versions called a bus route, a metro, or MRT.

You may have read about last year’s Tesla jam in the Las Vegas Convention Center Loop so there’s no question that it can happen again.

South Korea’s cyber security landscape is a nightmare

I’ve always known that South Korea has a weird fetish with Internet Explorer and that they were forced to scramble for solutions when other browsers became more popular and IE was losing support from Microsoft. I had no idea that a convoluted layer of security applications  was behind the fetish.

Banks in the country apparently require their customers to have multiple “security” apps just to be able to use online banking because they don’t want to use established digital security resources.

Nowadays, a typical Korean banking website will require five security applications to be installed before you are allowed to log in. One more application is suggested to manage this application zoo. And since different websites require different sets of applications, a typical computer in South Korea probably runs a dozen different applications from half a dozen different vendors. Just to be able to use the web.

Pure insanity.

With 2020 being the alpha release

Mirror time!

I’ve got a blog at another place that I doesn’t support RSS so I’ve been thinking of importing them here or to Medium, but Medium looks too serious and sophisticated for something like my blog. I also thought about reviving my Blogger account but too much time has passed and it’s just a whole different vibe now, so I guess Tumblr wins (or lose).

Initially I was going to have different content on different platforms but it would be too impractical and inconvenient. I’ll be going through one site looking for stuff I may have posted somewhere else and waste too much time.

The plan is to post all of the entries here as is and then backdate them so they appear in the correct order.

I haven’t used Tumblr from the web for a long time, been almost exclusively on the mobile app for years. Turns out the web interface is just so much more elaborate and lets you do so many more things, like backdating a post.

Calls for the return of personal blogs are getting louder

I restarted blogging a month and a half ago here on this channel having taken time out away from Twitter and since then I’ve seen more and more people either returning to blogging or calling for the return of personal blogging.

A few days ago I saw this site by Ash Huang and Ryan Putnam, Bring Back Blog, looking for people to join their movement. Their reasons are the same as why I started blogging again, the Internet community was much better when people posted longer, more complete thoughts for the public to read instead of easy to twist bits and pieces, and the responses being equally thoughtful and on their own spaces as well.

Launching your newsreader in the morning and going through the feeds was a shared experience among internet users way back when but the web culture seems to have kind of moved on from there. We’re supposed to reduce the layers between publishing and public conversation and it seems the incorporation of the social web would be a fundamental part of it.

Twitter was ideal for information exchange, entertainment, and quick conversations but turns out it’s terrible for legitimate exchange of thoughts and ideas even if it’s taken 16 years for many people, myself included, to finally shake it off. 

The rise of Mastodon shines the spotlight on ActivityPub and other social protocols like it which means we could be on the verge of a new internet era especially as Automattic and Flickr are considering its integration to their products.

A second piece I saw was this post from The Verge, asking for the same thing with the same reasons with the added point of being able to control your own content and presence. I’ll just repost her argument that drives home the point of personal blogging.

Buy that domain name. Carve your space out on the web. Tell your stories, build your community, and talk to your people. It doesn’t have to be big. It doesn’t have to be fancy. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. It doesn’t need to duplicate any space that already exists on the web — in fact, it shouldn’t. This is your creation. It’s your expression. It should reflect you. 

*[update] I’d be remiss to not mention this post by Ernie Smith, formerly of shortformblog, from 2019, about reviving blogs. Have a read through it.

Social Media Diversity Gets Reinvigorated

I think I’m pretty happy that one of the major things that came out of 2022 was the implosion of Twitter which opened up a whole range of other destinations for the social web that may have always been there but saw little attention.

The social space is exciting again with people flocking to places like Mastodon, Post, and Tumblr and the federated space is getting far more attention than ever. 

In a lot of ways it seemed to have brought back some of the web development energy of the 2000s as people began to rethink what’s possible.

Much of the development back then was fueled by VC money which ultimately halted many innovations in pursuit of growth and dominance so it remains to be seen how this new energy is going to be funded. I have doubts that crowdfunding will be able to generate the necessary resources without being supported by other forms. 

What that would be I guess is something that we’ll eventually find out in the coming years if the stance against capitulating to VC demands becomes more widely adopted.