Cursor Camp wins Tiny Awards 2026! (and my minor gripe)

The Tiny Awards celebrate “the small, poetic, creative, handmade web”: non-commercial websites by individuals or small groups, nominated and voted on by the public. For me, they have become an important signpost of the web revival. So many creative people are publishing awesome and interesting stuff on the web, far away from the algorithm-trodden (para-)social media silos.

This year’s winner is Cursor Camp by…

https://knot.tilman.me/post/cursor-camp-wins-tiny-awards-2026-and-my-minor-gripe/

Slow Web is still slow

I had some digging into the "slow web" movement again: I re-read the Jack Cheng’s original post (2012), his own review post (2022) and found out about the Ben Grosser's Minus social network, where you are allowed only 100 post for life. All linked and more on the updated garden page: https://tilman.me/garden/Alternative+Web+Movements/Slow+Web

https://knot.tilman.me/post/slow-web-is-still-slow/

Kagi Small Web

An initiative by the alternative search engine Kagi, launched in September 2023. It surfaces recent posts from personal, non-commercial websites that the big search rankings tend to bury: https://kagi.com/smallweb/

Also added to the Small Web garden page at https://tilman.me/garden/Alternative+Web+Movements/Small+Web

https://knot.tilman.me/post/kagi-small-web/

Official Electric

Every now and then you find someone who really owns their corner of the web. AJ Gonzalez (https://ajgenerated.com) is one: he builds his own universe on his own sites, and itch.io, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok feed into it instead of contain it.

His main project, Official Electric, is a fictional brand celebrating its "35th anniversary", complete with an invented corporate history. The homepage was recently streamlined. It's faster and more legible…

https://knot.tilman.me/post/official-electric/

Added https://www.blogsareback.com to https://tilman.me/garden/Alternative+Web+Movements/Weblogs+and+Blogging

Years of students' work in the field of Digital Experience — compressed into 30 seconds.

Interaction design, web design, UX/UI, game design, creative coding and experiments: this is what our Bachelor Design students at the Ohm build!

1-Bit Symphony

Tristan Perich's 1-Bit Symphony (2015) is a beautiful, raw piece of art. Five movements, played by a single microchip in a clear CD case — not a recording at all, but a circuit that performs the music live when you switch it on, straight out of a headphone jack in the case itself. Absolute transparency: the hardware is visible, the code is the score, and on-and-off electrical pulses written in assembly are all there is between data and sound.

The sound…

https://knot.tilman.me/post/1-bit-symphony/

Tilman.me v5.0

I relaunched my homepage! Much more informative and actually a good introduction into what I am up to at the moment: supporting the independent web. Be my guest! http://tilman.me Feedback is very welcome!

https://knot.tilman.me/post/tilmanme-v50/

Five essential ingredients for a web that serves us all

A presentation Hidde de Vries gave at Smashing Conference yesterday. Very interesting points throughout, also very entertaining, even if we only have the slides to look at online so far. He touched many topics I work on and I could especially relate to this chart …

https://talks.hiddedevries.nl/6qLmAh

https://knot.tilman.me/post/five-essential-ingredients-for-a-web-that-serves-us-all/

Publications

I started a new section on this site: A collection of my academic design research: https://tilman.me/pub/ Google Scholar, here I come!

https://knot.tilman.me/post/publications/

Overnight hiking trip. 🗻☀️🏕️

https://knot.tilman.me/post/overnight-hiking-trip/

Crossposting to Bluesky and Mastodon

Knot, my little microblogging system, can now crosspost to Bluesky and Mastodon. I admit this is more news for me than for anybody else — but in the long run you can expect more quality content from my side on these platforms!

Another step towards a more solid POSSE strategy: post to my own site first, then syndicate as well as possible to where the audience still lingers. Testing it in real life conditions now. If that holds up…

https://knot.tilman.me/post/crossposting-to-bluesky-and-mastodon/

Every year Tiny Awards hand out a prize for the best of the small, poetic, handmade web — personal projects, built by one or two people, far away from commercial mainstream. The public nominates, a selection committee picks a shortlist, and then the public votes.

If you want to see what's possible on the web if you have some time, some dev skills and a huge amount of daring creativity, look here!

Eleven sites, voting is open until September 25th. Go click! https://tinyawards.net

Jim Mitchell's IndieWeb Is Punk Manifesto: eight theses reading the personal site as DIY culture. I hope new perspectives like this can help getting new audiences interested in independent web publishing!
https://indiewebispunk.net

Corse 3 & 4
#photography #mobilephotography #photographic

Summer holiday reading stack: This is what I packed for the holiday in Milan and Corsica this year. Not that I ever thought I would it read it ALL …

Read on: https://knot.tilman.me/post/my-summer-holiday-reading-stack/

#books #sciencefiction #puzzles

Corse 2
#photography #mobilephotography #art #life

Corse 1
#photography #mobilephotography

Just write ––– At the moment there are two initiatives running in the world of weblogs and blogging: Blaugust and 100 Days to Offload. They differ in the details. The first is about a month of posting, the other about a hundred posts in a year. But the aim is the same: to get people writing on their personal weblogs more. Read on: https://knot.tilman.me/post/just-write/

Milano day 3 #photography #streetphotography

Milano day 2 (Subway)

It’s holiday time! Spend our first day in Milan. There might be more travel photography here in the next days. Or maybe not. Because I’m on holiday!

How can creative practitioners publish on the web today? Options, pitfalls, and trade-offs

I just published a long essay on a question that nagged me for years. I always felt that more creatives should run their own self-hosted websites — but I was never sure I was right. So I examined every option as objectively as I could, with its real advantages and pitfalls, so readers can reach their own conclusions!

Read here: https://tilman.me/garden/How+can+creative+practitioners+publish+on+the+web+today%3F #indieweb #web

Geoffrey Litt has a great new perspective on how we work with AI-generated code. We're not bound to prompting and moving on. We can have the AI explain what it built — teaching the background, building intuition before showing code, even ending with an interactive quiz so we don't fool ourselves into thinking we understood. … Read on: https://knot.tilman.me/post/geoffrey-litt-understanding-is-the-new-bottleneck/

Meme source: https://x.com/geoffreylitt/status/2071362040346955777

I just put together a »web feed roll« for my website — a hand-picked list of blogs I actually read, each with a short intro and their latest posts pulled via RSS/Atom.

It l is a static flat HTML file. When you click on "Update feeds" a PHP script refreshes the content from the actual feeds.

This was my work day result at IndieWebCamp Nuremberg 2026 — built in a day among a room full of people doing similar things for their own corners of the web.

→ https://tilman.me/feedroll

I spent the weekend at IndieWebCamp Nuremberg, the fifth edition in this city — two days at the tollwerkstatt as part of Nürnberg Digital Festival, in good company with a bunch of IndieWeb folks.

Here is the blog post: https://knot.tilman.me/post/indiewebcamp-nuremberg-2026/

I love Daniel Eatock’s website! The way he publishes his art and ideas for decades on this beautifully simple website is a tremendous accomplishment. And very inspiring. That is why I wrote a page on my digital garden about it: https://tilman.me/garden/Inspiring+Websites/Daniel+Eatock's+Website. Already part three of a series on inspiring websites.

Another Homebrew Website Club Nuremberg last night — and I'm still delighted that this friendly, diverse group of practitioners meets monthly in my city. Interesting, inspiring, relaxed, and funny, as always.

Thanks to Björn for documenting everything: https://indieweb.org/events/2026-06-10-hwc-nuremberg

And if you're even remotely curious about joining us live in Nuremberg: we're hosting a special edition for the Nürnberg Digital Festival! https://nuernberg.digital/de/events/2026/homebrew-website-club-nuedigital

#indieweb #homebrewwebsiteclub

Skywalker #photography #sky #photographic

I wrote about my first IndieWebCamp: https://knot.tilman.me/post/indiewebcamp-dusseldorf-2026/

#indieweb