Tag Archives: my.own.cloud

go read

From this Gizmodo’s How a lone coder cloned google reader.

Go Read is a web-based RSS reader.It is designed to be as useful as Google Reader.

When you built your house on sand and then you find your house collapsed, it doesn’t seem so smart to rebuild your house on sand, but taller. So I just wonder about writing your google reader clone in a language designed by google and hosting it on a hosting platform run by google, where the only way to sign in is to use google.

WordpRSS Status Update: pretty sweet

Current image of wordprssI’ve been using my kaizen hack time to work on a social feed reader for WordPress. Right now, here’s what it can do:

  • Install itself and set up database tables
  • Put in a few sample feeds
  • Pull feed entries down into the database.
  • Display the list of feeds
  • When you select a feed, display the items

Continue reading WordpRSS Status Update: pretty sweet

Read feeds, when you see something you want to share, hit blog

A few Wireframes for Wordprss

I had an idea a while back that WordPress is missing  a good built in feed reader.  Seems to me that Blog+Microblog+Image Gallery + feedreader + email – Freedom = Facebook.  WordPress has built up the ability to do a blog, a microblog, and post your pictures.  Everybody already has email, Facebook just has your contact list more than everything else does.  What you need is a good feed reader where your write – for inspiration, and because the web is a conversation, natch.

Here’s a quick mockup, mainly coming from my experiences with TT-RSS and Google Reader. Now, I’d really appreciate some help here – the idea is that this would something for more than just me. So, if you want, you can download Pencil Sketching – the wireframe app that I’ve used to make these wireframes. It is free and open source! You can then open up this file with all the sketch information – or clone it on github!

Read feeds, when you see something you want to share, hit blog

Tags? Folders? All at once?

Let’s not be friends on facebook.

Let’s be friends right here.

I’ve got a website and I’ve got a feed reader. That’s how I “publish to the world”. See, all Twitter and Facebook really are is a way to post and get a feed of all the things your friends are saying. But someone is selling your friends to you.

You can get a website for free. You can get a feed reader for free. Google Reader or Bloglines or net news wire – etc.  There’s tons of feed readers out there.

I like google plus, and yup, I’m on google plus.  It’s got the same privacy concepts as diaspora, but unfortunately centralized.

I’m on twitter and identi.ca.  But they are just microblogs.  Oh – they also have direct messages!  That’s micro-email!

So just email me.  Just get a WordPress or Blogger blog.  And when you want to step up to your own website, I’ll help you set that up and import all your old posts in. It’s super easy.  No one will sell your friends to you and someone else’s website going down won’t blow up yours.

Automated Virtue, part 2

In June I wrote up how I’ve been using Ben Franklin’s 13 virtues to nudge me towards being the person I want to be. Just seeing a daily reminder to practice industry or humility has been a great boon to my practice of life.

The ever-perceptive Sam pointed out that I should just share my calendar with you in case you don’t want to set up your own.


Click the Google link on that widget to add it to your google calendar – or if you are using iCal or some other calendar, you can also try this ICAL link or subscribe to the Atom feed. Hope you get as much out of it as I have.

How Ning made me a chump and how you can avoid it

The problem with Software as a Service is you don’t own it.

You get it for free, but you don’t have a stake and you don’t have negotiating power.  Instead, try to work with services that give you an exit plan or that have the safety stamp of an aGPL license. 1

Who cares?

Vim pretties up with the Vivid Chalk theme.Let me back up and tell you a story about a social network I created.  Two big-time development bloggers, Jeff and Scott, were writing posts back and forth about how what colors they liked in their text editors and what fonts they used.

I’m not kidding, this is important in a job where most of what you do is sip coffee and type.  I’ve certainly killed some time messing about with how I color my  source code. Continue reading How Ning made me a chump and how you can avoid it

  1. The Autonomo.us project has a great list of alternatives that either AGPL or CC or something you can use.  Check out this guide to replacing what you are using now with services that keep you free.  (back)

New article on how to set CGI:IRC as Firefox’s IRC protocol handler

I really like to overdo things.  In the overdoing spirit of the Thanksgiving season, I overdid something recently.

When I clicked on an irc link to a chatroom, it didn’t open in my preferred IRC client, which is on my webserver.   I like to run my applications off of my webserver because I don’t have to worry about carrying thumbdrives or dealing with install policies on strange computers.  If I’ve got a browser, my own private cloud just works.

A little digging, a little coding, and I wrote up a handler.  Yes, that was a bit more work than I expected, but this way I can give thanks to you by giving you this gift of a very small effort.

If you’ve followed my advice before about getting your own webserver, this could be a 15 minute task for you.  Install CGI:IRC, install my little handler, baboomp.  Then we can chat on IRC

Say hi!