Two years ago I wrote about the features I’d like to see in an ideal feed reader. Today I’ve tried to sketch out the various components, based on the various IndieWeb protocols, and then match the features I listed previously to the component that I think should provide it.
Separating feed reading into IndieWeb components
Feeds from blogs, to the left in the sketch below, end up in a microsub server, whose function is to fetch and store feeds. A microsub client is what presents those fetched feeds to me. A regular feed reader usually does both these things, but splitting them like the IndieWeb does allows multiple clients to use the same collection of feeds and feed items. It allows a wider diversity of readers, if the fetching is dealt with separately.
The microsub client also contains a micropub client. This allows having action buttons underneath each item presented in your microsub client. Hitting a button posts your reply or remarks, or shares something to your own website, and through your site to e.g. Twitter or Mastodon. Ideally it would be possible to have different websites to share to, next to storing locally in a specified format. The website that receives such an action has a micropub endpoint, and may need authentication through IndieAuth.
Such a reader set-up should be able to run locally on my laptop, as well as on a basic hosting package, so likely php / mysql based. Locally because I want to run my stuff local first, but the same thing online, even if a home server, because I’m not always working on my laptop and would like access from my tablet too, and point my Android Indigenous app to my subscriptions. Locally I would not need authentication from the microsub client to the microsub server, but in all other situations I would.
The sketch above is completely congruent with how I sketched my information gathering and filtering process in 2005:
Matching the ideal functionality to IndieWeb components
When I match the features of my ideal feed reader to those various IndieWeb components I think this is what results:
Microsub server needs to be able to :
* use various kinds of feeds (rss, atom, json, h-feed)
* allow folders (so I can arrange feeds on social distance)
* recognize and store tags if feed items have them
* allow me to tag _feeds_, really meaning tagging authors
* keep track of posting frequency, last post seen of feeds
* keep track of tags or predefined topics mentions/frequency
* pull in machine translations by default for certain feeds and store them with the orginal item
Microsub client needs to be able to:
* present the feed items in the server’s folder structure as a long list (the classic feed reader view)
* present views based on patterns in current feed items: what’s hot, what’s unique? Also set against social distance. (Topics discussed in my communities today)
* present views based on feed tags (show me all Germany based blog items of this morning, show me every feed of from EU based coders)
* present views based on feed tags and item tags: show me Germany based blog items talking about topic X.
* show full text search results of all items mentioning a certain topic.
* store full text search queries
* present visually which topics seem to be hot in which community, or where the frequency of mentioning a topic has changed
* provide a search of feeds (not feeds content): do I already have this feed in my list, where’s the feed of author Y?
* pull in a machine translation on request
Micropub client needs to be embedded in the microsub client and should support:
* saving an article as markdown or as html, to disk, to Zotero
* creating a todo from it by amending a textfile,
* bookmarking it, either to my blog or some other target
* sharing something about it to my blog, to Mastodon through my blog
* replying to it, through my blog to Mastodon, Twitter, other blogs
* allow configuring new actions.
* choosing from multiple micropub endpoints
What do you think, should some of these features be provided by other components than they’re currently listed? Are features missing that you’d like to see in your ideal feed reader?
@ton other than being formatted in micro formats, it’s not clear to me what microsub gets us over RSS.I do think micropub integration is key: curation & comments posted to your own space right from your reading practice. I suggested this pattern for comments here https://blog.bmannconsulting.com/2021/01/30/feedback-to-ben.html
Feedback to Ben
@bmann for me key thing in microsub is it separates feedfetching the feedreading, so that I can point different microsub clients to the same collection of fetched postings on the microsub server (e.g. for each device its own preferred client / viewer). Or point the same client to a diff server. 2nd interest is that the microsub server, afaik, processes differently formatted feeds where there’s no RSS, e.g. h-feed, or a chunk of json api output, and pass it on to the client as if no difference
My mood and focus improved again this week, which is good news. I still got bogged down in more handover work than I expected beforehand, but all in all this week was ok.
This week I:
Did some invoicing and prepared for the January invoicing, which I’ll do the coming wee
Reviewed the procurement terms by a service provider for some data for a client, to help guard their data sovereignty as a public body.
Moved my mail archives to the new laptop (I use Mailsteward for it), and switched to local archiving on the new laptop. As I’m working from home anyway, there is currently no need to keep any e-mail in the IMAP’d inbox, as I won’t be accessing it from my mobile or tablet anyway. This meant I could happily archive anything that was in there, and have been able to declare inbox 0 the entire week. It showed me how often I tend to check mail on my phone, as I now noticed there was never anything on my screen! Let’s see if my average use time on my phone decreases the coming week.
Made a first design for a story telling site, where we plan to collect individual experiences w.r.t. air quality, as part of the citizen science community building project in Rotterdam we started last month. The idea is to look for patterns in the collected stories, and run the ‘survey’ for the entire 2.5 years the project is scheduled for.
Made some but relatively limited progress in reading the documentation on all the EU data related policies and regulations. I am working towards a legal, organisational and content timeline to provide a helicopter view of everything that has a bearing on data. This entire year I will spend about half my time on this subject and making a (moving) ‘map of the world’ will be very useful to me and the client(s). I’m tackling these documents with a lot of note taking into my PKM system, and I’m starting to feel the momentum that is bringing.
Revised a document describing a role and process description for the open data coordinator and data publication efforts of a client. Not finished as I had hoped, but nearly.
For the Open Nederland association I reviewed the received comments on the draft statutes, and presentend them in the General Assembly where we approved the statutes. Now I can have them notarised and registered. This will allow us to start the process of getting recognised as a public benefit institution (promoting open knowledge and creative commons).
With the move to a new laptop I’ve left behind my previous feedreader, ReadKit, and have been using my personal TinyTinyRSS instance. I run it on one of my domain names since some time already, but now adopted it as my main feed reader as an experiment how that fits/feels in my workflow. Started musing about feed reading again because of it.
Due to the forecasted snow followed by a week of freezing temperatures (up to -15C) accompanied by strong winds, made some preparations like wrapping some potted plants, bringing the sleigh and snow shovel from the shed into the house. And, because the supermarket cancelled deliveries because of the weather, made an unforeseen trip to the supermarket myself to stock up for the coming week.
Today was a relaxed day with lots of fun in the snow with Y. I feel physically tired, not mentally tired, and I realised how it has been the other way around for a year now. I suspect I’ll sleep as well as Y tonight (she didn’t make a peep anymore after her head hit the pillow).
Primary schools are reopening as of tomorrow, so Y will be in school in the mornings, allowing E and me a bit more time for ourselves and work than in the past weeks of lockdown.
Y was ready to go outside into the snow as soon as she woke up, and spent most of the day outside
Nee ik was niet ingesneeuwd. Maar soms neemt het leven een andere richting dan je gepland had. Gelukkig heb ik lekker in de sneeuw kunnen spelen met mijn kinderen, een welkome afwisseling na de afgelopen tijd. Ondertussen raast het internet door en deel ik mijn vondsten graag met jullie!
Mijn dank aan de eerste donateurs voor deze nieuwsbrief via Petje.af! Deze nieuwsbrief blijft gratis maar is niet goedkoop om te maken. Ik hoop dat het je genoeg waarde brengt om elke week te openen en door te klikken. Word dan OPEN Supporter! Je kunt een eenmalige donatie doen of een maandelijks terugkerende donatie. In ruil voor de maandelijkse donatie krijg je binnenkort toegang tot een database met tools, tips, gidsen en frameworks om je eigen nieuwsbrief te starten en te laten groeien. En je krijgt een shout-out in deze nieuwsbrief!
Blog on!
Eind februari start bij Knight Center een cursus van 4 weken: “Newsletter Strategies for Journalists: How to Create, Grow & Monetize Newsletters“. De gratis cursus is primair voor journalisten, maar iedereen met een nieuwsbrief kan zich inschrijven. Doen!
Hamish McKenzie, co-founder van Substack, is blij met de komst van Twitter en Facebook in het nieuwsbrief-ecosysteem.
Maar niet iedereen is even enthousiast over Twitter en Facebook in het nieuwsbrief-ecosysteem. Beiden hebben vaker veelbelovende diensten en services geruïneerd in de wil om de competitie te vermorzelen. Misschien is het met nieuwsbrieven anders. Immers, het uitgangspunt is eigenaarschap over je publiek en de boodschap. Decentrale communicatie vanaf het begin. Hopelijk kijken uitgevers en nieuwsbriefmakers naar de langere termijn dan alleen de snelle groei.
Zoals een Disney+ of Netflix show in delen komt, kan dat net zo goed in je nieuwsbrief. SubPub zet de Substack Serials op een rij. Allerlei nieuwsbrieven die een verhaal in delen splitsen.
Een prachtig open format als OPML geeft je de mogelijkheid om via RSS te abonneren op andermans leesmappen. Ontdek nieuwe blogs en stemmen op het web!
❄️ Afgelopen weekend was ik druk met mijn Raspberry Pi om de sneeuwval in een timelapse te vangen. Experiment geslaagd! Alle stappen en code heb ik in een blogpost gezet.
❤️ Wil Wheaton- Why it’s awesome to be a nerd (Met dank aan Bjorn Franke!)
Ton zet op een rij wat voor hem de ideale feedreader is. Volgens mij komt Inoreader toch verdomd dicht in de buurt. Een eigen server om feeds te hosten en in een aparte client lezen is wel mijn doel voor 2021!
✊ Twee weken terug linkte ik al naar Duidelijk Signaal. Het initiatief van Maarten Roelofs om Signal als alternatief voor Whatsapp onder de aandacht te krijgen. In Androidworld vertelt hij er meer over.
Maike Klik schrijft 5 jaar op haar blog over haar werk als Design Researcher bij DUO. Die jaren heeft ze nu visueel gemaakt in een prachtig overzicht. Van de start van Service Design tot teams coachen, er is allerlei informatie te vinden. Hulde!
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List of use cases for a feed reader.
I’ve lost track, Ton. What are you using now as your feed reader?
I am using FreshRSS currently. I’ve dabbled a bit with Aperture/Monocle, with Yarns on WordPress and with using a TinyTinyRSS instance. My TinyTInyRSS instance kept bumping into some ‘bad bot’ filters my hoster has in place (the same is true for FreshRSS btw). The upside to me for both Tiny and Fresh is that I find their php and mysql tech accessible, and have no trouble running it locally. Or at least more accessible than any of the IndieWeb stuff. I’d like to get to a working locally run Aperture/Monocle combo but can’t and haven’t figured out why. With Yarns, which has as a pre above Aperture it lives in the WP ecosystem I am at least more familiar with, I have issue with it storing all feeds in the WP content tables, even though everything in a feed reader is/should be ephemeral imo, just providing enough time to do something with whatever gets fetched (respond, bookmark, download to notes etc). Ideally I’d run yarns in a separate WP install to prevent it polluting my blogs database, but then you’re back to how to ensure my ‘reader’ WordPress instance can post to my ‘blogging’ WP instance.
What are you doing now?
A Now-page is a hybrid between the About page and my weekly notes. The About page says something about my background and general activities. My weekly notes, that only RSS subscribers get to see, talk about actual activities in the past days. This Now page contains the general activities I’m spending time on these days. It contains the things I’d mention if you would ask me in a conversation what I’m doing currently, after we haven’t spoken for a while.
Family
We were lucky to be able to travel this summer, visiting Denmark and France. It was a much needed change of pace and scenery. Around New Years Eve we visited dear friends in Switzerland, and had a few days to ourselves in Luzern aftwards. Balancing our lives now that our action radius has been reduced to the home mostly in the past 18 months is still key. Although slowly we could venture out more in the fall, like going for lunch with E. to have ‘normal’ conversations about other things than the logistics of our stay at home lives, everything is now closed again until mid January 2022.
Learning
During 2020 I’ve revamped my personal knowledge management system (PKM, using Obsidian as tool of choice), and that is now leading to more purposefully seeking out new knowledge. I’m trying to build reading more non-fiction into my days, and as part of that I’ve re(?)-learned reading non-linearly before the summer. Now I’m trying to make good use of that. I’ve also been tinkering with PHP code to tweak how I work with my notes in my PKM, such as building OPML booklists, and posting those to my site. I am similarly tinkering with PHP to build a personal Micropub client, which allows me to directly post to this site from inside my various workflows and tools, and a Microsub client which allows me to get nearer to building my personal ideal feed reader. Both micropub and microsub are IndieWeb concepts. IndieWeb is aimed at using the web they way I want, and staying in control of how you share information and data. My blog is the focal point of these efforts obviously.
Blogging (since 2002) is as important to me as ever, even if nothing much is happening in terms of events, travel, seeing new things.
Work
Currently working exclusively within my company The Green Land. The pandemic shut down any World Bank work I was involved in. My current work is part of the Dutch government tactical council keeping track of the many data related EU programmes and regulations with an eye of tying them to Dutch initiatives and representing the Dutch position in Europe. In side projects I’m helping to translate that to the Dutch national geo information infrastructure, a reference architecture for digital twins, and research agenda’s.
As everyone in the world I’ve been at home mostly since mid March 2020. I’ve been working half time to better balance the challenges things like school closures pose in the first half of 2021, but since returned to more or less full time. The pandemic hasn’t impacted our business negatively, and I feel our team has grown together in the last year. Last November it was 10 years ago we started our company.
Voluntary work
The year 2020 was a challenging year for the NGO I chair, Open State Foundation, which employs 7 people. Since early 2021 things are in good shape and that reduces the need for my direct involvement.
I’m working on getting the Open Nederland membership organisation, the Dutch Creative Commons chapter more or less, recognised as a public benefit institution under Dutch law. (I’m their treasurer). I’ve started to explore creating a SDG’s interest group for entrepreneurs (within Dutch Mensa).
I’m open to other voluntary board positions of organisations that fit with my current thematic interests.
Current interests
Current interests are: networked agency, ethics as a practice, digital transformation but distributed, self automation, civic tech, machine learning for civic tech and households, seeing my work as (political) activism, European and global developments w.r.t. data as a geopolitical force, learning in the networked age.
These interests inform my reading and information gathering at the moment.
I’ve started creating my own feed reader. Which I find is a pretty wild thing to say for me, given my limited coding skills.
Last month I created my own Micropub client. Micropub allows me to post directly to this site, without using the WordPress admin back-end for it. In fact I’m writing this as plain text, and at the end will hit a keyboard short cut for it to appear on my site. Part of the things I post to this site however are responses to posts by other people. I follow those people through their RSS feeds. Using Micropub I could post my responses directly while I’m reading the post I’m responding to, provided there’s a ‘reply’ button in my feed reader.
Feed readers usually don’t have such reply options. In fact, feed readers don’t have a whole range of functionality I’d like them to have. Building my own feed reader as a generic application probably would be hard. But as personal software tool, a ‘narrow band‘ tool that caters just to me it becomes easier to do. I’m pretty predictable to myself, and my workflows are known to me, so there are not many ‘what-ifs’ to cater for. My preferences are the default. As a result such a local tool could be more versatile, and much smarter in responding to my wishes than any fancy application, because I know what I want.
I said at the start I don’t know much about coding, but with some effort I can find my way in PHP well enough, and have been hand coding web pages ever since 1993.
Microsub is a web standard that makes a key difference: it splits the part where feeds are retrieved from other websites and stored in a database, from the part that presents the contents of the database. The retrieving and storing part is the Microsub server, for which I use a WordPress plugin called Yarns, but there are various others (and you could also build your own). The server has an API that allows you to query the content it stores. The presentation and reading part is the Microsub client. The client sends queries to the server and shows the results on screen. And that’s the part I’m building. Because building that part is basically like building a website, that every now and then requests something from a database.
The first step has been taken. I run a php script locally that shows me a webpage like in the image.
Screenshot of my feed reader to be, channels on the left, fetched feed items on the right.
It correctly grabs the groups of feeds and feed content from the Microsub server, and shows them on screen. It can of course be made to look nicer, but the basic concept works.
To this, unlike other feed reading apps, I can add my own response buttons. As links, buttons, or a form below each post. For that I already have scripts I can reuse, from when I was making my Micropub client, the bit that does the posting to my site.
Then I will be able to write my reactions directly underneath the bit I’m reading. Strengthening how my blog allows me to have distributed conversations. Getting that bit closer to the read/write web as it was envisioned.
For many of the other elements on my list of ideal feed reader features, I probably have to do some local storage. Specifically for things like visualising the activity of a feed, or doing things like showing me the topics people in a specific community are talking about this week, local storage might be needed.
I have a basic roadmap of steps to take, more or less following my post about this from last year around this time. For now this first step, a proof of concept that allows me to read feeds, is done.