Why did Twitter win? Because the RSS developers wouldn't work with each other. Thus subscribing to a feed was complicated. In Twitter, it was one click to subscribe, and another to unsub. You could see who your friends subscribed to, again -- one click to subscribe. And even...

As I get deeper into the Claude-O-Verse, I get that it doesn't remember anything about the code. The code actually serves as its memory of the project. There are comments in the code of course, put there by Claude. Managing my own memory when I've got so many different bits of software is the bain of my existence, esp as I get older and older. But I'll turn it all over to Claude as fast as I can, to relieve me of the responsibility to remember all that stuff. Its brain works much better at this kind of stuff. I can conceive of things worth doing. And I know how to build the features, but I don't have the skill of immediately understanding some code by reading it not top down but all the lines at the same freaking time. If this isn't us learning how to work with an aliens species, it's a pretty good imitation.

There’s going to be a lot of new web software in the coming months. The competition changes from managing complexity to who sees the best way to remix the web. There are a lot ways to do it.

I was disappointed Automattic didn't do their project in RSS first. Two-way, full fidelity, open to all feed readers not just Automattic's.That would rock the world.

2017: If you're running a campaign -- think about what you can do now that makes the world a better place. Your campaign is drawing huge attention and money. Most of it is wasted on lies and attack ads. Take a small portion of the money and attention to start doing now the things you hope to do when you're in office. This will turn out to be good politics too. And the process can continue after you're elected. it will make sure you're not too deeply ensconced in the bubble of government. And if you lose, at least you can say the campaign was good for everyone, people who voted for you and people who voted for the other guy.

It's interesting what Jeremy Herve and Matthias Pfefferle at Automattic have created with the WordPress feed reader, hooking it up to Activity Pub and AT Proto, the same way they hooked up those protocols to the standard WordPress blogging functionality (not sure how technically accurate this is). They're also supporting the Google Reader api for users of products like NetNewsWire.

Jeff Bezos is of course one of the biggest names in tech, but he doesn't have much of a public personality. I saw him speak in the early days of Amazon, and in that role, he came off as a great but controversial entrepreneur (he had no interest in profits). He spoke fast, had a weird laugh, but totally fit the part. Not sure about today as he pivots to being a personality, with his wife in every picture with him. Did the real Bezos get lost in there somewhere?

I'll let you be the judge. We have a convention. I've asked it to keep a file named handoff.md. At the end of every session I tell it to update the file with where we left the project at the end of the session, it does, and then I take a break. When I come back, first thing ...

2022: Markdown is just enough HTML.

It's just dawning on me how thoroughly the AI apps are building on Markdown. People love Markdown because it's simple and its virtually impossible to screw it up, unlike HTML which got a lot of crazy-ass features in the 90s when Micosoft was trying to run the world, and then...

A cartoon by Dan Morgan that illustrates the role Markdown plays in AI. Text is central to how AI works, and the text we use in AI is Markdown all the way.

It's very nice to not be working on CSS. I hate CSS. I now have a slave that does the CSS for me.

I didn't invent RSS, I adopted it.

In the age of AI, Markdown is even more the default choice for text, something I heartily approve of. And that's why I think now is a good time to sneak some new open non-silo'd technologies in there, like for example, WordPress. Open source is not the only reason WordPress is valuable, it also supports all the standards of the web. It means WordPress can tie together text on the web in a way nothing else can, and it works really well with Markdown.

One of the great contributions of AI is that you can quickly research prior art for any design decision you need to make. You don’t have to relearn every lesson that people who came before you learned. Study history or repeat mistakes.

My father was a professor at Pace Univ in NYC. When he retired, he used my blogging software to create a book for his students at mbatoolbox.org. Over the years the site moved a few times, and the http protocol was hacked by Google. I used Claude yesterday to get it working again. I'm glad to get this off my todo list. He put the work in because he wanted to leave this behind. My job is to make sure it survives as long as I can. And Claude makes short work of it. I put a copy of the website in a spare folder, and opened Claude Code in the folder, said what the problems are. We worked together and in about an hour it worked again. It could certainly look better, but that was his thing not mine.

I have a single page site with all the WordPress news. Bookmark it. Here's the OPML subscription list, import it into your feed reader, get the news as you like it. WordPress is an amazing platform with a blogging community that we just can't see. And once we're listening, more will appear. It's a great idea exchange platform. So -- are there any great WordPress news feeds we're missing? Please share here.

Everyone is working on something with Claude.

Heard on the internets ad nauseum. "I know how to do what you do much better than you do."

I was just marveling with Claude about how well all the pieces are fitting together, two databases, connected by an RSS 2.0 feed and a websocket pipe had to agree on how to communicate the same object. Worked the first time. Small pieces loosely joined.

Scoble asks on Twitter if there are successful companies that have an open source product. There are lots of them. There are markets where users and developers won't even consider your product or service if it isn't open source. It's a trust issue. I offered an example, WordPress, which probably wouldn't have launched well if it wasn't open source.

Knicks will play the Sixers in round 2 of the playoffs starting Monday.

I've been teaching Claude why we favor Markdown. "We add support for Markdown editing wherever we can, because people like Markdown and they should. It makes things simple and guarantees a certain level of flexibility for their writing far beyond the standards of twitter-like systems with tiny little text boxes. If you don't really support Markdown people figure it out right away. But the character limits and stuff like that seem more technical to users. Markdown support says clearly -- you're really on the web."

Something weird happens as you get older, you walk into a room and see a friend but at first you don't get that this is your friend. Instead you see an old man or lady. Your attention goes away because like everyone you are programmed not to look at old people. Then you instantly realize this is your friend. You put on the virtual colored glasses that let you see them as you remember them, instead of what's there today.

On Bluesky: I asked ChatGPT when weblogs.com peaked.

I've heard that Automattic is running a special deal where developers inside the company can take a month off to do their own project to make WordPress better for users. I would like to propose that in the spirit of interop and the web that we work together on a project. I ...

Apparently Substack does not implement MCP, which is basically the XML-RPC of AI. According to ChatGPT they have a limited API that some independent developers have bridged to MCP. But as you would expect from a tight silo like Substack, the API lets you read but not write. They want you to use their editor, what they don't want is to be one of 20 distributors of your writing. They want an exclusive and they get it.

BTW, I pointed to the Wikipedia page for XML-RPC, and noticed that they point to an archive.org copy of a very old version of the website, instead of the updated site which has new reference code written in JavaScript. The old version of the site used Frontier, which is where XML-RPC was developed, but it's not in wide use these days, JavaScript is. Could someone update the Wikipedia page to change the link to the current XML-RPC site? I'm reluctant to do it myself because that's somewhat against the rules.

Welcome to May, the fairest month of all in the NYC area. Almost every day in May is delicious. And today is esp fair, the Knicks moved on to the next round of the playoffs with a record-setting decisive victory over the Hawks of Atlanta. The next opponent is either the Celt...