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Rediscovering the Small Web

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Re: Rediscovering the Small Web

#41

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

snazz wrote: post #6
lxe wrote: post #5

I just got into ham radio. The websites related to the hobby are basically what the web was like before everything coalesced around search and social networks.

In my experience, that's true of many specific hobbies--bicycling, sailing, gardening, etc. It's especially true of hobbies where purchasing ever-more-expensive things isn't so important. Hobbies like cars have more magazine-like and shopping-mall-like sites compared to less consumerist ones (although bikes can be like that too).

I wouldn't say that this is still true of bicycling, at least not bicycle touring. The amount of standalone blogs in that hobby have plunged drastically now that people choose to simply upload photos to Instagram, and what few blogs exist are often buried in Google search results. One can see that standalone forums are emptying out, reduced to mainly middle-aged members, as younger generations turn to Reddit or Facebook for all their discussion of the hobby. Within the bikepacking segment, Bikepacking.com (which presents itself as a community resource but is essentially just one big advertisement for its sponsors) has a chokehold on the community.

I was fortunate to get into bicycle touring at a time when standalone blogs were easy to find, some of them were masterfully written, and there was not yet the mercenary desire to monetize one’s content and become an "influencer". The web of 2020 is very different, and because Google deranks older content, a lot of newbies in the hobby today won't even become aware of the former state of affairs even if much of that content remains just as relevant today.

Re: Rediscovering the Small Web

#42

Post by z3t4 »

I like this article, and I also like hand typing HTML and CSS. But coding is not for everyone. What we need is a better Wordpress, so ordinary people can publish their own website. It has to look good, perform well and be secure, but most importantly publishing content should be quick and easy.

Re: Rediscovering the Small Web

#43

Post by pfraze »

Do4oolu5 wrote: post #38
kickscondor wrote: post #12

If you're interested in recent innovations on this front: (rather than just retreading the same Web as before) * Beaker ( https://beakerbrowser.com ) the peer-to-peer browser just released their beta release - and it has some exciting features. Particularly the built-in editor, meaning you can edit, serve and read your pages all from the browser. (Blogging in Beaker is as simple as visiting: hyper://a8e9bd0f4df60ed52…

Beaker came to my mind immediately as well when reading this article :) It sounds so much like the perfect fit for the author. The new beta has been quite depressing for me, as all my personal apps stopped working due to their complete rewrite of their API. I don't know if I'll ever be willing to start it all over again. But for anyone who hasn't already played with it, I totally recommend it. It feels like the web w…

Really sorry about breaking your old apps. If you ping me on twitter (@pfrazee) or IRC, I can spend some time helping you convert them over. Most of the same capabilities are there (or on the way) so we'll hopefully just need to update the code.

EDIT: for anybody curious, we had to make breaking changes to the p2p protocol and used that as a chance to bundle a lot of improvements -- mainly with performance and reliability. It sucked to break existing content though.

Re: Rediscovering the Small Web

#44

Post by pfraze »

gambler wrote: post #29
kickscondor wrote: post #12

If you're interested in recent innovations on this front: (rather than just retreading the same Web as before) * Beaker ( https://beakerbrowser.com ) the peer-to-peer browser just released their beta release - and it has some exciting features. Particularly the built-in editor, meaning you can edit, serve and read your pages all from the browser. (Blogging in Beaker is as simple as visiting: hyper://a8e9bd0f4df60ed52…

>Beaker ( https://beakerbrowser.com ) the peer-to-peer browser just released their beta release I just tried downloading the Windows executable. Initially it said it will take 1.5 hours, but then the download just failed. Tried a few more times with the same result. This is ironic on so many levels.

Yikes. We host our binaries via GitHub so that... sucks

Re: Rediscovering the Small Web

#45

Post by clarry »

moonchild wrote: post #30
kickscondor wrote: post #12

If you're interested in recent innovations on this front: (rather than just retreading the same Web as before) * Beaker ( https://beakerbrowser.com ) the peer-to-peer browser just released their beta release - and it has some exciting features. Particularly the built-in editor, meaning you can edit, serve and read your pages all from the browser. (Blogging in Beaker is as simple as visiting: hyper://a8e9bd0f4df60ed52…

Is beaker appreciably different from freenet? https://freenetproject.org/index.html

Completely different. Look up privacy or anonymity on beaker's site? Crickets. It's a browser, apparently with all the dangerous bloat (javascript...) with a bolted-on p2p network that apparently does nothing for privacy or censorship resistance.

Freenet is a p2p network with a focus on anonymity and resistance against censorship. It's not a browser, but for freesites it's got protections in place to filter out dangerous active content.

Re: Rediscovering the Small Web

#46

Post by Do4oolu5 »

pfraze wrote: post #43
Do4oolu5 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beaker came to my mind immediately as well when reading this article :) It sounds so much like the perfect fit for the author. The new beta has been quite depressing for me, as all my personal apps stopped working due to their complete rewrite of their API. I don't know if I'll ever be willing to start it all over again. But for anyone who hasn't already played with it, I totally recommend it. It feels like the web w…

Really sorry about breaking your old apps. If you ping me on twitter (@pfrazee) or IRC, I can spend some time helping you convert them over. Most of the same capabilities are there (or on the way) so we'll hopefully just need to update the code. EDIT: for anybody curious, we had to make breaking changes to the p2p protocol and used that as a chance to bundle a lot of improvements -- mainly with performance and reliab…

That's ok, you're doing an awesome job, keep focusing on the good work :) It'll probably itch me again at some point.

Re: Rediscovering the Small Web

#47

Post by yepthatsreality »

pfraze wrote: post #43
Do4oolu5 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beaker came to my mind immediately as well when reading this article :) It sounds so much like the perfect fit for the author. The new beta has been quite depressing for me, as all my personal apps stopped working due to their complete rewrite of their API. I don't know if I'll ever be willing to start it all over again. But for anyone who hasn't already played with it, I totally recommend it. It feels like the web w…

Really sorry about breaking your old apps. If you ping me on twitter (@pfrazee) or IRC, I can spend some time helping you convert them over. Most of the same capabilities are there (or on the way) so we'll hopefully just need to update the code. EDIT: for anybody curious, we had to make breaking changes to the p2p protocol and used that as a chance to bundle a lot of improvements -- mainly with performance and reliab…

> EDIT: for anybody curious, we had to make breaking changes to the p2p protocol and used that as a chance to bundle a lot of improvements -- mainly with performance and reliability. It sucked to break existing content though.

What guarantees are in place to ensure this wouldn’t happen again in the future? I really like the project and realize it’s still young and can probably risk piling on breaking changes, but I can’t imagine future upgrade paths will involve contacting one of the project maintainers on Twitter.

Re: Rediscovering the Small Web

#48

Post by snazz »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #41
snazz wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, that's true of many specific hobbies--bicycling, sailing, gardening, etc. It's especially true of hobbies where purchasing ever-more-expensive things isn't so important. Hobbies like cars have more magazine-like and shopping-mall-like sites compared to less consumerist ones (although bikes can be like that too).

I wouldn't say that this is still true of bicycling, at least not bicycle touring. The amount of standalone blogs in that hobby have plunged drastically now that people choose to simply upload photos to Instagram, and what few blogs exist are often buried in Google search results. One can see that standalone forums are emptying out, reduced to mainly middle-aged members, as younger generations turn to Reddit or Faceb…

I can see that. At the same time, sites like Sheldon Brown's and some of the older MTB forums still rank well in Google searches.

Re: Rediscovering the Small Web

#49

Post by livatlantis »

Do4oolu5 wrote: post #38
kickscondor wrote: post #12

If you're interested in recent innovations on this front: (rather than just retreading the same Web as before) * Beaker ( https://beakerbrowser.com ) the peer-to-peer browser just released their beta release - and it has some exciting features. Particularly the built-in editor, meaning you can edit, serve and read your pages all from the browser. (Blogging in Beaker is as simple as visiting: hyper://a8e9bd0f4df60ed52…

Beaker came to my mind immediately as well when reading this article :) It sounds so much like the perfect fit for the author. The new beta has been quite depressing for me, as all my personal apps stopped working due to their complete rewrite of their API. I don't know if I'll ever be willing to start it all over again. But for anyone who hasn't already played with it, I totally recommend it. It feels like the web w…

Beaker looks very interesting indeed! Download it as I write this. Reminds me a little of what I've read about HyperCard. Looking forward to testing it.

Thanks for the heads-up! There are so many links to follow up on here in this thread.

Re: Rediscovering the Small Web

#50

Post by kickscondor »

Do4oolu5 wrote: post #38
kickscondor wrote: post #12

If you're interested in recent innovations on this front: (rather than just retreading the same Web as before) * Beaker ( https://beakerbrowser.com ) the peer-to-peer browser just released their beta release - and it has some exciting features. Particularly the built-in editor, meaning you can edit, serve and read your pages all from the browser. (Blogging in Beaker is as simple as visiting: hyper://a8e9bd0f4df60ed52…

Beaker came to my mind immediately as well when reading this article :) It sounds so much like the perfect fit for the author. The new beta has been quite depressing for me, as all my personal apps stopped working due to their complete rewrite of their API. I don't know if I'll ever be willing to start it all over again. But for anyone who hasn't already played with it, I totally recommend it. It feels like the web w…

I had to rewrite an app as well - but it turned out to be incredibly simple.

Here's my first commit: https://github.com/kickscondor/duxtape/commit/55dbde9519aedb.... Can't really call it a rewrite - more of a search-and-replace. (Though I had a bit of code that used the old peer sockets - and that code works differently now.)

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