#indiewebcamp 2012-12-17

2012-12-17 UTC
brennannovak and tantek joined the channel
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tantek hey aaronpk, indieauth.com needs to update the version of the Google Auth API that it's using because it's currently out of date, and shows a cryptic application ID in the challenge screen, and says "Google Contacts", and then returns a 500 Internal Server error.
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tantek repro with matthewlevine.com
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tantek contact info for details: matthew@ that domain
Nadreck joined the channel
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@danielbowen About time! #OwnYourData MT @andrewsayer: Twitter Settings -&gt
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Loqi "Your Twitter Archive" -&gt
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Loqi Download ALL your tweets. Who has it yet?
zztr, brennann_, brennannovak, tantek, melvster, friedcell, adactio, dascher, dascher_, mxuribe and laurian joined the channel
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mxuribe Has anyone used http://theopenphotoproject.org ?
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mxuribe i realize it is not new, but seems pretty cool...and in line with indie web philosopy.
jasonw22, tantek, barnabywalters, dascher, morrocco_mole, spinnerin, brennannovak, lmorchard and sandeepshetty joined the channel
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barnabywalters good evening sandeepshetty
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barnabywalters in response to your question about my article histories, I am using the unholy JSON-in-a-MYSQL field to store the update history :)
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barnabywalters I have plans to expand it to use the cite and datetime attributes of the ins and del elements, though
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barnabywalters and RE open development: it is happening! Various bits of my code are already on github, and more of it will follow
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barnabywalters in particular, check out the POSSE namespace in https://github.com/barnabywalters/php-helpers
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sandeepshetty All history in one text col?
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barnabywalters yep. nasty, isn’t it?
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barnabywalters I’m not storing the diffs or anything, though, just author, date and summary data
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barnabywalters the actual diffs are stored in HTML, designated by ins and del elements
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sandeepshetty So your doing the diff at runtime?
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sandeepshetty BTW, Drupal used to store history in the db similarly, though a row for each edit. Not sure if they still store it that way...
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barnabywalters there is no diff data stored, as such. There is just the list of date/author/summaries, and then the HTML content of the article
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barnabywalters and within the HTML content, I mark up content with the <ins> and <del> elements
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sandeepshetty RE nasty.... I'm all for what hacking things up and shipping :)
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barnabywalters in the future I will use some other markup to associate particular edit elements with summaries in interesting ways
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barnabywalters sandeepshetty: yay shipping!
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sandeepshetty I used to love how infogami used to do diff...
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barnabywalters I’ve not heard of it
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barnabywalters a wiki application framework? that sounds interesting
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sandeepshetty it was something Aaron Swartz worked on at YC... before he moved on to reddit..
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sandeepshetty think it was one of the first markdown wiki's and it used to do a split screen realtime preview..
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tommorris barnabywalters: one solution you might want to look at is the Rails act_as_git solution. basically, you have a Git repository containing flat file representations of what's in the DB.
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tommorris (act as git is no longer mtaintained, sadly.)
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barnabywalters tommorris: I can’t find any useful information about it. google search returns mainly twitter results with broken links in
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tommorris https://github.com/courtenay/acts_like_git
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barnabywalters my current implementation is designed so that I could probably set up a git interface to it, with commit messages as the update summaries
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barnabywalters reads
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barnabywalters is acts_like ruby terminology for interfaces?
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tommorris sorta
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tommorris often the acts_like thing tends to be a way you call them inside the model class
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tommorris so you simply call the "acts_like" method inside the Post class and it sets up all the magic.
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barnabywalters okay, so it’s like a rails-specific, informal interface setter-upper
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tommorris acts_like_git was built as a replacement for acts_as_versioned which used the DB.
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sandeepshetty Anyone here following webfinger?
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tommorris yes, it's a sort of convention for doing mixins
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barnabywalters cool, makes sense
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barnabywalters sandeepshetty: not really. I gave up on it fairly quickly after trying to actually use it in an app
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sandeepshetty I mean the spec and discussion around it on the mailing lists?
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barnabywalters no
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barnabywalters has something interesting been happening there?
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sandeepshetty There have been very interesting discussions on the lists for a while now... around making it HTTPS only... it's indieweb vs. security
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barnabywalters I have seen the HTTPS-only thing discussed elsewhere
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barnabywalters I think Dave winer wrote something good opposing it…
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sandeepshetty where?
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barnabywalters just trying to find it
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barnabywalters http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/december/shouldFeedsUseHttps
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sandeepshetty googling
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barnabywalters so that’s very much related to feeds and feedreaders
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tantek good morning #indiewebcamp
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tommorris hey tantek
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barnabywalters evening tantek
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barnabywalters my problem with HTTPS is the commercial entities required to sign your certificates
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barnabywalters or more specifically the scary browser warnings if you use a self-signed certificate
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tommorris is pretty fanatical about HTTPS given he's a big fan of open wifi.
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sandeepshetty I've used the free certs from startssl and havne't had any issues with them..
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tommorris In fact, it was a matter of some celebration when Wikipedia started doing HTTPS and protocol-relative links. I've been advocating for a while that all users with higher permissions should only be able to use HTTPS to login. ;-)
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sandeepshetty highly recommend them..
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tommorris my domain registrar provides a basic SSL cert free with the domain registration.
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barnabywalters oh cool, I have seen them before but never looked in to them properly
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sandeepshetty The only problem that I have with HTTPS is the requirement of an IP...
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tommorris HTTPS and cloud hosting like Heroku is a massive PITA.
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sandeepshetty tommorrow: Gandi?
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tommorris sandeepshetty: yep.
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tommorris is http://enwp.org/Tom_Tomorrow ;-)
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sandeepshetty tommorris: AppFog plays well.. but its expensive.. they only support it on their paid palns (starting at $100)
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tommorris yeah. Heroku charge $20/mo.
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tommorris and the $20 a month you pay Heroku for SSL buys you a lot of boring-old-non-cloud hosting.
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barnabywalters tommorris: a lot of VPS, even
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barnabywalters well, for a small personal site
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sandeepshetty So this brings up a question... Who is expected to go the indieweb way by the community? techies or regular non-technical users?
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tommorris indeed. or even dedicated. I've got a friend who says he's paying £9 a month for dedicated.
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barnabywalters sandeepshetty: techies at first, then we build versions for non-techies :)
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tommorris sandeepshetty: techies at first, then eventually I'd hope there'd be enough resources for non-technical people to jump in
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sandeepshetty stuff like HTTPS is *hard* for regular users to setup and to automate or make easy
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barnabywalters tommorris: I am paying £100 a year for a low-spec VPS which is working quite nicely
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sandeepshetty barnabywalters: I pay $19 at linode... very very happy with them..
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tommorris sandeepshetty: so, eventually, I'd hope some kind of app.net model would exist. you pay an annual fee to one company who'd give you the "indieweb package". and you could easily leave at any time.
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barnabywalters I have heard lots of good things about linode. I think I would use them for commercial services. For my personal site and a few small client sites a little cheap thing works nicely
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tommorris it'd all be open source software, the data would be fully exportable, full open standards etc.
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tommorris I'm using Linode for my work project. I'm using prgmr.com for my site.
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sandeepshetty I've been recently considering going the openphoto way...
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barnabywalters tommorris: wordpress.com is the closest we have to that at the pmoment
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tommorris yep
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aaronpk Linode is nice. I'm also thinking about swtiching to AWS tho, but not sure if that's too much overkill for my personal sites
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sandeepshetty instead of storing my data in MySQL, I'm considering using a plugable data store that plugs into s3, dropbox, etc..
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tommorris I tried OpenPhoto, just didn't do anything for me, I'm afraid. not quite enough features.
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barnabywalters calepin is also nice for no-effort, #ownYourData blogging
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tommorris so, for images, I'd suggest that if you have enough metadata, you can always use wikimedia commons.
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barnabywalters host markdown files on dropbox, pay £5 a year for a domain
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tommorris basically, syndicate your photos out to wikimedia. keep a copy elsewhere, but so long as your photos are within the scope of wikimedia commons, they'll host them for free forever as long as wikipedia exists. ;-)
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barnabywalters tommorris: does wikimedia commons impose a license requirement?
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tommorris yep, has to be CC BY-SA or CC BY (or equivalent) or public domain.
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barnabywalters well, that’s not too restrictive
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sandeepshetty tommorris: I was talking about data in general, bog posts, articles, notes, etc..
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tommorris and it has to be "educational". which is to say, a snap of you and all your friends in a bar doesn't really count.
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tommorris you can't use it for all your images, but it's certainly something to build in.
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sandeepshetty With sandeep.io I'm storing stuff in MySQL, but I'm considering just storing stuff in S3
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barnabywalters tommorris: my photos are either screenshots, or photos of me building musical instruments :)
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tommorris the musical instruments bit probably counts.
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tommorris I take lots of photos to document places for OpenStreetMap
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barnabywalters btw tommorris, did you get any interesting feedback from the UX brighton session?
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tommorris yeah, the main feedback was basically to make the design as much like twitter as possible in terms of things like line length and layout
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tommorris they greatly praised tantek's site as doing that very well
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sandeepshetty barnabywalters: RE calepin: it's more like a static blog, I'd prefer to have the ability to have code running on my site..
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barnabywalters sandeepshetty: sure, it’s vital for automated POSSE, but calepin is a nice no-effort, minimal-cost approach
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barnabywalters perfect for non-techies or non-programmers who are comfortable with markdown and dropbox
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barnabywalters tommorris: cool. Twitter have certainly almost perfected the 'note AKA tweet' content type design and posting flow
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sandeepshetty how does it do the "SE" part of POSSE?
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tommorris is still waiting excitedly for Twitter to let me download all my old tweets btw.
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barnabywalters sandeepshetty: ah, I meant running actual code is vital for POSSE
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barnabywalters although manual POSSE would be an acceptable alternative, esp. when networks provide automatic cross-posting
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barnabywalters tommorris: I know! I was so surprised when they announced that
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tommorris They've been promising it for years now.
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tommorris SELECT * FROM tweets WHERE user = "tommorris";
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barnabywalters it’s great that you don’t have to be in the EU to get at your data any more
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barnabywalters as far as I can tell, when you demand your FB data, they give it to you in a huge PDF… *disgusted face*
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tommorris Well, sending subject access requests is kind of the long-winded way to get your data from silos
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tommorris barnabywalters: a huge PDF *on a DVD they send you by post*!
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barnabywalters oh yeah, I forgot that bit :)
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barnabywalters I’m looking forward to seeing the format of the data they provide. Thinking of writing a script which adds µf2 to the HTML
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tantek tommorris - that's great to hear! (re: UXBrighton feedback)
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tommorris barnabywalters: there's a sample in the hacker news comments.
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tantek barnabywalters - not true about FB data export. I got a nice zip archive of HTML+CSS+JS, where the HTML was marked up with microformats (e.g. hCards etc.)
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tantek they definitely give you enough information to bootstrap an indieweb store of all your stuff (including comments made on your stuff by others!)
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tommorris tantek: yeah, what barnabywalters is referring to is if you make a legal request under the EU's data protection laws. they have to provide you LOADS more.
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barnabywalters tantek: really? wow. What was the JS for?
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tantek the archive is actually *browsable*
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tommorris like they have to provide you all the inferences they've made about you for advertising and profiling purposes
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tantek fascinating
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tommorris the twitter archive looks similar. HTML+JS. they also provide CSV
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barnabywalters yep, part of the legal twitter data is any contact information they’ve crawled from your address books
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tantek barnabywalters, re: "Twitter have certainly almost perfected the 'note AKA tweet' content type design and posting flow" - not sure I agree
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tantek in fact, I think they've been regressing
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sandeepshetty tantek: How do you ask FB for it?
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tantek due to business model pressures
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tantek sandeepshetty - excellent FAQ - we should add that
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tommorris barnabywalters: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4929167
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barnabywalters tantek: well, they had it better than anyone else currently
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barnabywalters I am of course not in support of their recent… “developments”
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tantek sandeepshetty, click the little triangle in the top right corner, choose Account Settings (or just go here: https://www.facebook.com/settings )
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tantek then click the "Download a copy" link at the bottom of the text
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tommorris in fact, if you've been piping your tweets into FB, you could actually use the data export from FB as a way to get your tweets back. ;-)
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barnabywalters tommorris: yet another positive POSSE LOCKSS outcome!
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sandeepshetty tantek: cool! Thanks! Downloading now :)
dascher joined the channel
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tantek.com edited /Twitter (+4) "silo" (view diff)
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barnabywalters has anyone taken a look at the mozilla Social API?
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barnabywalters it’d be great to be able to use firefox as an indieweb publishing client
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tantek.com created /silo (+585) "stub" (view diff)
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tantek.com created /Facebook (+321) "stub with export instructions" (view diff)
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tantek barnabywalters - I've taken some look at it
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tantek I agree it would be interesting, especially in the way that Julien was building the SocialButler at IndieWebCamp 2012 in Portland.
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barnabywalters tantek: is it something you’ve been contributing to?
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tantek only occasional feedback
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tantek their focus was BigSocial first, and I've encouraged them to please keep the design open so that it can work with indiewebsites also
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tantek but I can certainly add weight to any feedback you guys want to give
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barnabywalters right now I’m having trouble figuring out whether or not it actually exists — can we experiment with it now? Firefox beta?
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tantek.com edited /silo (+11) "dfn" (view diff)
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tantek yes it's live in the beta
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tantek FF18 I think
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tantek btw - we talk about silos a lot around here
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tantek I thought it would be useful to start adding some precision to the definition
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tantek drafted: http://indiewebcamp.com/silo
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tantek contributions/improvements welcome
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barnabywalters is having a go at writing a Social API service provider to put my note publishing interface in the sidebarWidget
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tommorris.org edited /silo (+14) "/* Popular Silos */ +Flickr" (view diff)
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tommorris nice. another government has just decided to publicly release all their government works: Israel.
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tommorris Canada is scheduled to do so next year.
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tommorris.org edited /why (+401) "/* Why Indie Web */ you don't want the service owners to steal your shit" (view diff)
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tantek I remember Flickr used to show ads next to photos when logged out - I can't seem to find any pages where they do that any more.
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tommorris well, Instagram isn't just writing in the right to put ads on their site/apps. it's that they can take your photos without your consent and use them in third-party promotions.
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tommorris so, you know, your photos suddenly become an ad for someone else's company
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tantek ah ok
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tantek that's too bad
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tantek is that photos you post in 2013 and later only? or existing photos too?
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tantek is it retroactive?
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tantek that might be a good reason to make my account private (does that protect you from your photos being used in ads?)
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tommorris not sure
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tommorris I've made my account private because one night I decided to upload (ahem) a photograph I wouldn't want my mother to see. :)
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tantek I'm just saying, "private" wouldn't be very private if any company could view your photos and use one in a *public* advert.
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tantek regardless, great find tommorris
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tommorris while in general, I'm pretty much okay with that stuff given I license loads of my photos under CC-BY-SA, I think it's important users have a choice how to license stuff
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tantek it's one of the reasons I license my Flickr photos CC-BY-NC
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tantek instead of CC-BY
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tantek I don't want my photos (especially of other people) used in adverts.
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tantek that feels like a trust violation (of the people in the photo)
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brennannovak tommorris: tantek: ugghh, quite annoying- to the Flickr cave, considering OpenPhoto
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tommorris tantek: well, there's personality rights too. even if they were licensed CC-BY, an advertiser would have to get personality rights from the people in the photo
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tantek the timing is quite odd (must have been preplanned), right after the nicely done Flickr iOS app and everything.
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tantek it's like IG is tempting users to switch
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tommorris personality rights have been a source of some contention on Wikimedia Commons
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tantek interesting (re: personality rights. is that like a model release)
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tommorris yep
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tommorris tantek: Commons has a page on it - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Photographs_of_identifiable_people
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tantek tommorris - this is interesting: "no expectation of privacy when many people are openly taking photographs"
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tantek Welcome to San Francisco
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tantek also, the table of consent to take/publish/advert by country is fascinating
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tommorris we've had some interesting debates about this stuff.
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tommorris for instance, we had a photo a while back of a group of men at a pride parade and we described them as "gay skinheads". one man rather objected to this because the connotation of the word skinhead meant both "violent neo-Nazi thug" and "guy with no hair" ;-)
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tommorris and there have been a number of people who have put things on Flickr as CC-BY but didn't really understand that this meant that the pictures might end up being reused on Wikipedia
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tommorris we've removed photos like that out of courtesy
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barnabywalters tommorris: hm, perhaps that’s the best way to concisely communicate what CC-BY means to end users. "This license means anyone (for example wikipedia) can reuse your content provided they attribute it to you"
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barnabywalters s/the best/a good
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Loqi barnabywalters meant to say: tommorris: hm, perhaps that’s a good way to concisely communicate what CC-BY means to end users. "This license means anyone (for example wikipedia) can reuse your content provided they attribute it to you"
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tommorris yeah, it's a tough problem
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tommorris and the CC license is (rightly) irrevocable
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barnabywalters I wonder if statusnet ever had any problems with people not understanding their content was CC licensed
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tantek you guys have seen this right? http://www.tweetcc.com/
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tantek useful for reverse-syndicating @-replies on Twitter onto your own site while ignoring any/all Twitter TOS restrictions.
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tantek e.g. display "guidelines"
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barnabywalters so is that a solid legal way round the whole <del>guidelines</del> requirements thing?
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tantek bingo
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tantek because you retain full rights to your content that you post on twitter (even per their TOS)
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tantek you have the right to CC license it out
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tantek and thus, anyone can use your tweets via the CC license, independent of any Twitter TOS
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barnabywalters that’s cool. /me tweets
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barnabywalters oh, I never realised Andy Clarke and brian suda were behind it
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tantek barnabywalters: http://tantek.com/2012/230/t1/tweetcc-cc-license-tweets-quote-embed-indieweb
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tantek :)
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barnabywalters it is also the first website I’ve ever seen using CSS3 columns (apart from a site I made a while ago)
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tantek.com edited /Twitter (+994) "Recommendations, CC license your tweets, Reverse Syndicating At-Replies" (view diff)
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barnabywalters so I managed to get the socialAPI demo app working. Looks like it has some potential
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barnabywalters I wonder how actively developed/how receptive to feedback the team working on it is
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barnabywalters my immediate initial impression is that it is geared towards services which act as a feedreader and chat service first, and publishing client second
brennannovak, tilgovi, dascher and tantek joined the channel