2013-03-06 UTC
eli_li, jfranusic, bnvk, tantek, friedcell, andreypopp, zztr, Phae, eschnou, DEMUNTER and adactio joined the channel
# 12:46 tommorris so, @aral just gave me access to App.net. Wonder how I can start syndicating my stuff there too.
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# 16:46 tantek tommorris - it should be as easy you simply hooking up your home page on your app.net account. app.net should auto-discover your PuSH updates notification, and then subscribe to it. There should be no writing of custom code necessary.
# 16:46 tantek they've made bold statements about supporting standards, time to call them on it.
# 16:49 aaronpk tantek: that makes me want to take out the syndication code I wrote for app.net now
# 16:49 tantek demand that they support subscribing to your PuSH updates, and heck, parse your hAtom directly from your home page
# 16:50 tommorris has anyone gotten it working? I'm leaning towards just using Ifttt
# 16:50 tantek they can use any of the freely available microformats2 parsers to do so :)
# 16:50 tantek tommorris - is your goal personal syndication, or getting them to support standards?
# 16:50 aaronpk tommorris: the thing tantek described deoesn't actually exist...that's the point
# 16:51 tantek does app.net really matter to you that much? I mean do you really have friends *only* on app.net that want to read your updates?
# 16:51 tantek if not, then why not apply pressure to make them support standards instead?
# 16:52 tantek they've made claims to be the good guys, to be all open and supportive of standards - call them on it.
# 16:52 tantek if they make you use a custom API or custom IFTTT setup, then they're no better than a smaller Twitter
# 16:53 tommorris so, I think the whole pay-to-play API thing is really silly
# 16:53 tantek aaronpk - status.net knows how to subscribe from a site that has PuSH updates - and people on stauts.net are able to directly follow tantek.com as a result, without me having to do anything special on their site.
# 16:53 tommorris they seem to have decided that the only people who might want to use an API are app developers
# 16:54 tommorris like, I have no intention of building an app.net client for, say, Android or iOS or whatever. I just want to post my stuff to it.
# 16:54 tantek tommorris - tell your few friends who are only-on-app.net to support following any PuSH updates on the web the way status.net lets you.
# 16:55 tommorris this is the problem with "API thinking". it means companies start thinking of developers as product creators. that's a subset of developers. many are tinkerers.
# 16:55 tommorris or they are product creators *at work* but when they get home they just want to tinker.
# 16:59 aaronpk tantek: this brings up an interesting point actually...
# 17:00 aaronpk i spent a while writing code that shortens my text updates appropriately for twitter's 140 and app.net's 256 character limits
# 17:01 aaronpk things like preserving hashtags at the end by truncating earlier bits of the text
# 17:01 aaronpk if app.net were to subscribe to my notes feed, they'd get the full-length text, which would sometimes be too long for an app.net post
# 17:02 aaronpk should I publish some sort of "rel=alternate" version of my text update at various lengths?
# 17:02 tantek aaronpk, I've considered using p-summary markup for that
# 17:03 tommorris I was looking at the App.net API, it also has things like geolocation
# 17:03 aaronpk what if I want to publish a 140-char version as well as a 256-char version?
# 17:03 tantek I'd say pick the 256-char one, since we're stuck with calling Twitter's API directly
# 17:03 tommorris <span class="truncated-256"><span class="truncated-140">bla bla bla bla bla bla bla</span> and bla bla bla bla</span> ;)
# 17:04 tantek tommorris - and we have "geo" in hAtom as well
# 17:04 tantek all of this can be published in the markup and then picked up by the PuSH consumer automatically
# 17:04 tantek there should be no reason to call the app.net API
# 17:04 aaronpk I currently publish a "long" and "short" version of my bio. 36 words and 125 words.
# 17:05 tantek aaronpk - I've got even more bio variants - but those are all manually copy/pasted by conference people
# 17:05 tantek so it's not really a use case for any kind of machine markup
# 17:05 tommorris so, I was using my personal site for checkins yesterday. I found that I ended up using text search rather than geolocation search because GPS is actually pretty crappy. :)
# 17:05 tantek tommorris - text search is how Dodgeball used to work.
# 17:06 tantek congratulations on rediscovering that path :)
# 17:06 tommorris or rather, GPS is great. except you are inside a building - doesn't work. then you go and get on the Tube, and pop out the other side. it takes time for GPS to seek.
# 17:06 tommorris you spend much more time waiting for GPS to work out where you are than you do just typing in the name of the bar or whatnot
# 17:06 tantek inside a building, that's what wifi-assisted location is for
# 17:07 tommorris also, the API I'm using to get OSM data doesn't seem to include offices. thus Google Camps wasn't on there.
# 17:07 tantek and if systems could do velocity prediction (you were moving in this direction at this pace, therefore you're likely at this location now), and or pattern prediction (last n times you checked in at place A, you checked in at place B within the next thirty minutes)
# 17:08 tantek and posse-prediction (you just checked in with friend F at location A, your friend F now checked in a location B)
# 17:09 aaronpk everyone always uses just one thing, like just GPS search, or just text search, and that never gives a good enough result
# 17:09 aaronpk foursquare is getting better now because they take your past checkin history into account when showing you stuff "nearby"
# 17:09 tommorris so, this is one of the things I liked about FireEagle. the ability to have multiple things feed into your location
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# 17:10 tommorris one I built just to prove a point: screen-scraping a loyalty card site. ;)
# 17:10 tommorris as in, you buy something from store X. the loyalty card website will update your points and list of purchases
# 17:11 tommorris a friend of mine was trying to do the same with the Oyster Card website. unfortunately, it has about a 15 minute delay from swiping onto a bus or Underground station and the web UI updating
# 17:19 tantek some good ideas here to capture on our checkins page
# 17:33 tommorris on the upside, having my checkins on my site is useful. being able to say to people I know "if you want to know where I am, check my website" is pretty awesome. ;)
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# 17:37 tantek I'm surprised you're ahead of the geoloqi kids on that front ;)
# 17:38 aaronpk hehe. my site has my lat/lng and shows the local time wherever I am, but not venues yet :)
# 17:39 tantek aaronpk - local time where you are at is useful, and you can use that to markup a "tz" property in your hCard if you like
# 17:39 tantek a contact's "tz" is supposed to represent the time zone of their current location
# 17:39 tantek so as long as you don't mind displaying your current time zone… do so and mark it up!
# 17:40 tantek is your current lat/long marked up as a "geo" inside your hCard? that's also the precise meaning of the geo property in an hCard
# 17:40 tantek it's meant to represent your current physical location
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# 18:03 tommorris Hmm. Given I know people who frequently work with teams that have members in London, SF and India, I can see a pretty compelling use case for publishing current timezone. ;)
# 18:03 tantek agreed tommorris - it's just rare that people actually do so. thus I'm trying to collect more examples.
# 18:10 tantek LOL! "This user loathes, but is forced to observe, Daylight Saving Time."
# 18:10 tantek "This user loathes, but is forced to observe, Gregorian dates."
# 18:11 tommorris Possibly. Just about to start noodling with MediaWiki Lua.
# 18:12 tantek passive aggression taken to a whole new level ;)
# 18:13 tommorris I once started a deletion debate for a userbox that said "This user believes marriage is between one man and one woman of the same race"
# 18:14 tommorris It turns out it was satirical, created by a supporter of gay marriage who was using it to mock an existing "This user believes marriage is between one man and one woman" userbox.
# 18:14 tommorris (Who knew that small rectangles would cause this much drama?)
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# 19:12 tantek excellent, I see hober has cloned himself. welcome hober2!
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# 21:28 tantek !tell barnabywalters having trouble getting a response from waterpigs.co.uk - site ok?
# 21:28 Loqi Ok, I'll tell him that when I see him next
# 21:29 hadleybeeman No, tantek — not responding over here either.
# 21:29 tantek drat - so many good things there to reference!
# 21:30 tantek do we need to create indieweb mirroring ? so we can host perhaps static copies of a few of each others' sites?
# 21:32 aaronpk could be fun to set up a mini web archive that everyone could contribute a mirror to
# 21:32 tantek I'm thinking more of something that each indieweb site would maintain itself for other indieweb sites
# 21:33 tantek so there's almost a social pressure to help out
# 21:33 hadleybeeman peer-to-peer indieweb?
# 21:33 tantek too easy for a 3rd party resource to suffer from tragedy of the commons
# 21:33 tantek yes hadleybeeman, peer-to-peer indieweb social replication/mirroring.
# 21:34 tantek wherein you designate a few friends as trustworthy to maintain accurate mirrors of your content, and they are willing to take-on the responsibility of hosting some static pages for you.
# 21:34 tantek it scales because no one person has to be responsible for everything.
# 21:34 tantek and it's sustainable as much as social ties are sustainable
# 21:35 hadleybeeman Sort of the online version of asking someone to help out with your kids, should anything happen to you?
# 21:39 tantek perhaps a bit less responsibility than that, but yes :)
# 21:46 tantek so, breadcrumbs - anyone have them on their site? anyone have any particular use for them? (navigation, context, aesthetics, SEO etc.)
# 21:48 aaronpk I gave up on them when I started flattening out my content
# 21:48 aaronpk when my content was more hierarchical I used them for navigation and to indicate at what point in the site the visitor was
# 21:58 tantek like do you have a page for all your 2013 content? or 2013 articles?
# 22:00 tantek when I implement my archive UI, I plan to have pages for year and bim and day
# 22:02 tantek (my archive pages/paths are in partly implemented states, easily guessable by URL)
# 22:05 tantek though my current design just has one top level link to go to the home page
# 22:06 tantek though I'm not sure it's really a breadcrumb if you can't get *back* from it
# 22:11 aaronpk tantek: I don't have explicit year archive pages yet
# 22:13 tantek does that mean everything before? or some-fixed-time-period before? or some fixed-number-of-posts before?
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# 22:17 aaronpk fixed number of posts before. each page shows like 10 posts
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# 22:28 Loqi barnabywalters: tantek left you a message 59 minutes ago: having trouble getting a response from waterpigs.co.uk - site ok?
# 22:29 barnabywalters it seems that not only is my server down (no HTTP or SSH), the control panel server is also down
# 22:30 barnabywalters tommorris: that’ll teach me to buy hosting with a company called "cheapVPS" *roll*
# 22:31 tantek see the above discussion about indieweb peer-to-peer social replication/mirroring
# 22:33 tommorris so, I've just spent some time working on parsing some government data. honestly. any system that uses integers as a type flag is fail.
# 22:33 tommorris if I told you that there was some geographic feature and it was type=003, you couldn't tell me what it is. if I told you that it was type=road_bridge, you could
# 22:34 tantek tommorris - but, that would take extra bytes in the database. :P
# 22:34 tommorris all for the cost of a few bytes, one produces data that nobody will be able to understand without reverse engineering
# 22:36 tommorris fewer bytes and moar vendor lock-in. i love government suppliers.
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# 22:48 aaronpk "Commit to enabling and supporting users in building inbound and outbound syndication to and from App.net" is kinda vague
# 22:51 barnabywalters ”If you donate Dalton will personally hand deliver to your doorstep 1 flying unicorn ninja who has been raised on grass fed organic bacon’
# 22:56 tantek so yeah, push for them to implement PuSH consumption :)
# 22:57 barnabywalters tantek: yep, I have an article in draft about how POSSE isn’t just for social BC, it’s also useful for maintaining 3rd party backups of your content
# 23:22 barnabywalters *sigh* no point stressing this evening. I’ll go off the grid and see what’s happening in the morning.
# 23:22 barnabywalters on the plus side, this time last year no-one apart from me would have cared, so that’s nice :)
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