#dev 2022-07-06

2022-07-06 UTC
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[chrisaldrich] AramZ-S do you know Ben Welsh? https://palewi.re/ I know he's also delved in to archiving technology and built a few of his own solutions (probably both personally and professionally) in the past.
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Loqi Ben Welsh
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[schmarty] A late night idea. I often want to post checkins to my site with good photos, but I typically PESOS those with OwnYourSwarm because (of course) Swarm/Foursquare has the good location dataset. However I don't want to give them photos of people's faces, etc.
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[schmarty] I have noticed that often this urge comes up at places I have checked in before. So, my site already has a checkin at that location.
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[schmarty] Idea: "Moresquare": a Micropub client for creating checkins using only the dataset of places you've already previously checked in
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aaronpk oh interesting
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[schmarty] Give it an h-feed to find checkins from and it makes a local db of venues. From there it's a regular Micropub client for checkins, with photo uploads, etc
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aaronpk so it's still a new checkin, but the list of places to check in at is not from foursquare
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aaronpk tbh that would cover 90% of my checkins lately
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aaronpk the other simpler option is to be able to update your posts with photos
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[schmarty] Yep. It's basically useless in new locations but it's maybe quicker for habit tracking type checkins!
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[schmarty] True a "photo adder" Micropub client would be simpler overall
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aaronpk that's like the teacup client i had on my Pebble watch ages ago. it let me post food posts to my site by choosing from a list of the most common/recent ones i used before
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[schmarty] But the private collection of locations (and all checkins being not-on-swarm after the first one) is also tempting
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[schmarty] Ooh right, good Teacup tracking app
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[manton] I’ve been tinkering with check-ins this week too, coincidentally… See this blog post: https://www.manton.org/2022/07/05/importing-checkins-from.html
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Loqi [Manton Reece] Importing check-ins from Ohai
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[manton] I really want to move away from Foursquare/Swarm. Maybe there should be an IndieWeb-friendly places database that is maintained by the community somehow?
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[manton] We are experimenting with using Apple Maps data for location check-ins in Sunlit for iOS, which can post via Micropub, but the data is just not as good.
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AramZ-S[m] Most of the geodata is def public
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AramZ-S[m] I haven't used it myself, but heard good things about https://ownyourswarm.p3k.io
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AramZ-S[m] (Also a Swarm user who has been looking into at least backing it up)
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[manton] Yeah, OwnYourSwarm is great but still depends on Foursquare. I just don’t trust that their API will be available forever. Already it’s almost impossible to export data, their web site seems broken for this.
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[manton] (Their = Foursquare.)
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AramZ-S[m] Yeah, they clearly care about the check in side of their biz less and less these days
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AramZ-S[m] and there isn't really any alternative similar service
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[manton] Exactly. I think it’s a void that needs to be filled somehow.
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[manton] If there was an indie places db that could be seeded with some data, and then multiple location-aware Micropub clients could add new locations as they were used by people, but that would be a start?
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[grantcodes] Does open street maps not provide some of that?
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[manton] I honestly don’t know. Does it have the concept of being able to do location queries like “nearby coffee shops”, “nearby parks”, etc.?
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[manton] The mapping part is great, I’m just not familiar with OSM places data.
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[grantcodes] Yeah that I'm not sure about, if it does it's not very well advertised. But I feel like the adding / updating places by users is one of the main parts of OSM
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[manton] This seems like a good thing to explore. I just exported my location from OSM and I do see some places in the XML output. Hmm.
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[grantcodes] Seems there's an API called Overpass: https://dev.overpass-api.de/overpass-doc/en/criteria/index.html
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[grantcodes] But places are hard, there's just too many of them 😅
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[manton] Indeed. 🙂
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s[_] I'd honestly not trust OSM to contain enough point of interest (ie. somewhere you check in) outside of Europe or maybe US/Canada?
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s[_] because I don't see much stuff nearby mapped @ osm
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[manton] Yeah, it feels like something new needs to be created to build on existing data.
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sknebel so instead of improving an existing dataset you'd rather start from scratch and not contribute back?
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[manton] I’d be happy to host a places database that could feed to and from other open sources. For example, maybe if you post via Micropub with check-in data, it automatically updates the database. Just brainstorming here. 🙂
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[manton] [sknebel] How did you get from what I said that I want to start from scratch and not contribute back? Definitely not what I meant.
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sknebel ok, misread the tone, my bad
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[manton] The reason another layer seems to be needed is because I just can’t imagine client apps will be able to integrate with existing mapping services directly. Seems more complicated than using an API like Foursquare’s. A places db should also be good at knowing what places someone is likely to want to check-in, i.e. popularity.
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[manton] No worries.
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[manton] Sorry, I’m kind of rambling here, just it has been on my mind recently and I’d like to help push it forward if there’s anything I can do. If the answer is “just use OSM, it’s good enough” that’s great too. I don’t want to build anything new if it’s needed.
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sknebel IMHO: an API wrapping OSM-APIs does make sense.
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sknebel also OSMs "product" is the database - while the project also hosts API access to said database, these arent really intended for unrestricted public use
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sknebel so anything large or commercial should use a service by someone else hosting a copy of the DB+API or do it itself
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[manton] Cool. That makes sense.
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sknebel (similar situation as with maptiles: the OSM project doesn't provide maptiles for everyone, other services do - often paid for larger use)
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sknebel given that there's also vector-based maptile setups, one could generate POI-centric tiles
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sknebel that's a concept I've toyed with, am not sure it actually makes sense overall, but has some interesting properties
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[manton] Looks like the full OSM dataset is quite big, as you’d expect. 50-100 GB.
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sknebel because tiles are just static files, they are easy to distribute and cache
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sknebel and e.g. a site could download and cache the tiles for the city/region/... its owner is in
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sknebel and respond to client queries from there
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[manton] Cool. Seems like there are several options for tiles too if you’re building a client app, which is what I’m mostly interested in. Apple Maps, Google, Mapbox, etc.
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sknebel which also reduces privacy leakage
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sknebel OSM quality varies *wildly* across the world (as do other data sources, but e.g. most western places will make sure they are listed in google maps - OSM not so much)
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sknebel but on the other hand, if something is missing you can just add it
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sknebel and adding POIs of the restaurant/shop/... type is easy
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sknebel some end-user tools also leave notes in the official database with feedback for mappers to pick up, but that's also often a source of bad data and I'm not sure about the rules/politics around that
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sknebel (as a mapper I can say that bad notes can be very frustrating :D - but a well-designed tool could improve on that)
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s[_] from a non-westerner POV I can tell Google Maps sucks here
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[manton] Good to know, thanks! I’m looking at some of the OSM data and it really does seem the closest to what I want.
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s[_] well mostly thanks to my Government but still getting a good POI data will be… a uh-huh moment
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s[_] (South Korea has a draconian mapping laws thanks to our northern neighbor)
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sknebel even for shops etc? interesting (I knew South Korea had strict rules, but didnt expect them to be on that level)
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s[_] Even google mostly relies on user-generated data & local vendor
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s[_] Google can't take the mapping data to their primary US datacenter because KR law requires rubber stamps before exporting Government-sourced map data outside its botders (which… translates to 'make a datacenter here guys')
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sknebel for POIs "official" data isnt the best usually. but a restaurant owner will be the "user" contributing data about their place to google, way fewer do for OSM
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s[_] also note that Google is not the market leader here so if we want to take OSM or other POI data it'd be useful to be able to accept multiple sources
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s[_] People here mostly uses the (notorious) maps.naver.com or map.kakao.com
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sknebel yeah. but I suspect all commercial data is going to be unusable anyways due to their terms
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[manton] Good perspective. I’d prefer to rely on Google as little as possible.
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sknebel so while a client might be able to use commercial sources, a central aggregation project likely won't be
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s[_] true, but at least ability to have injest commercial sources (for their personal node) should be somewhere in the note where global (my read: mostly NA/EU) data does not suffice
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s[_] s/have injest/inject
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jacky s[_]: oh wow, hey from far away :)
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jacky is liking this convo
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jacky it's borderline pop-up worthy
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jamietanna jturtle, I'm also running Hugo - I have a separate server to host my Micropub server, but if you've already got one you could very well just have the Micropub hosted on that server. How are you planning on building the site? By running `hugo` on the server itself, or deploying it from a built site on i.e. GitHub Actions?
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[Murray] manton: I've been trialling OSM as the reference for the geo linking of my check-ins for over a year now and it's been around 70% accurate. I've never used Foursquare or Swarm, so I don't really know what UX it's missing, but as an API I can search for "place name" and get back lat/long, address, etc. it's very accurate at a placename level, and then hit'n'miss for individual businesses
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[Murray] the nice thing, though, is that it's not hard to update with the correct data, and the APIs refresh very quickly (normally within a minute or two for me), so I can backfill that info quite easily
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[Murray] but I'm not sure what a typical check-in user journey is, or what the typical data wanted is. I capture date/time/location and that's about it
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[tantek] Moresquare++ great name & idea [schmarty]! Definitely worth adding to /checkin#Brainstorming!
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Loqi Moresquare has 1 karma over the last year
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[schmarty] thanks, tantek! added!
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[schmarty] also i am super interested in OSM-backed tools for indie checkins! i looked into the OSM APIs a few years ago and felt like reverse geocoding was really messy? like i recall it would have required multiple queries as different types of venues were coded in different layers? something like that.
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sknebel reverse geocoding (i.e. finding addresses) is harder than finding nearby POIs
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[tantek] indeed
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[tantek] the "reasoning by 90% use-case" is quite valid as a design & implementation prioritization strategy
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[tantek] the opposite of, "worry about all the edge" cases may take you 10x as long (made-up number), or worse, lead you down deep enough rabbitholes that you never end up implementing something 👀
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sknebel and yes, OSM is a free-form community thing, so it doesn't all fit into neat categories laid out as you'd want, but at least the common cases are solvable. (and a bunch of it is really a per-use-case decision you just have to make: a drinking fountain is a very useful POI for a cycling app - less so for a checkin app)
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[tantek] the *use-case* edge-cases in particular I mean here.
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[tantek] obv, it's good to worry about and code defensively for programmatic edge-cases.
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sknebel (that doesn't make "drinking fountain" a bad POI category, just not the one you maybe wanted ;))
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[tantek] sknebel, I've added drinking fountain venues to Swarm/Foursquare for exactly that reason 😂
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[tantek] as a runner, I am *very* grateful for that kind of information in parks. also free (as in gratis) restrooms (especially in countries that have cultural defaults against free restrooms)
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jacky what is offline
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Loqi offline is anytime you're not online and connected to the internet; on the IndieWeb, a personal site can have offline support by implementing an offline first approach https://indieweb.org/offline
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[manton] [Murray] Interesting. So your workflow is to search for a specific place name to start? I want the opposite of that, sending GPS coordinates (via a mobile app) and get some relevant places nearby that might be where I am. Although using Foursquare, I do sometimes need to search for a specific name.
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[manton] Also, Moresquare++ 🙂
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@dotproto ↩️ Just another passing thought in the eternal quest to create a personal blog ATM I'm leaning towards using a static site generator and Vercel or Netlify for hosting. Main drawback of that approach, though, is that I don't know of any static site that supports WebMentions (twitter.com/_/status/1544788265173061632)
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@dotproto ↩️ I'm thinking about it. Main hesitation with GH Pages is that I don't think they have any kind of edge function support, so I don't think I'd be able to set up WebMentions(?) https://twitter.com/dotproto/status/1544788265173061632 (twitter.com/_/status/1544788694539702273)
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[aciccarello] Someone should share /static_site with that person. Can use webmention.io or even a netilfy function to support web mentions.
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@dotproto ↩️ I totally forgot about Firebase Hosting. That might be a good option to blend cheap hosting with some dynamism. The only dynamism I'm after is WebMentions support for the sake of conversation/community (twitter.com/_/status/1544790262840365056)
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@AlesandroOrtizR ↩️ Certainly should be able to do it with @eleven_ty (and probably other static site generators). Creator's website integrates WebMentions: https://github.com/zachleat/zachleat.com/blob/c9d41421dd2696ea84c0da577d4bdc98d5eba273/_data/webmentions.js To update, can do periodic builds or have client call a Netlify (or competitor) server-side worker to fetch. (twitter.com/_/status/1544792076621168640)
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@dotproto ↩️ Yeah, I'm currently leaning towards Vercel & Netlify for static site hosting + some custom edge function code for WebMentions. Netlify has the benefit that their paid plan supports up to 3 concurrent builds, which could be super handy for personal projects (twitter.com/_/status/1544791440965767168)
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@dotproto ↩️ Yeah, that's the direction I'm currently leaning – Netlify (or similar) for hosting + edge functions. I didn't realize Zach's site supported WebMentions, thanks for calling that out! (twitter.com/_/status/1544793046599942144)
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@AlesandroOrtizR ↩️ Specifically they use https://github.com/aaronpk/webmention.io which is pretty flexible in how you integrate it. :) (twitter.com/_/status/1544792476157972483)
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jacky what are annotations
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Loqi https://indieweb.org/annotations
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jacky are people familiar with https://www.w3.org/TR/annotation-model/ ?
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Loqi [Robert Sanderson] Web Annotation Data Model
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[Murray] [manton] yes, I know where I am, so I just plug that in 😄 I trust that more than GPS. The CMS plugin I use to integrate with OSM does also enable GPS lookup (e.g. if you're on a phone with GPS enabled), but it won't show nearby stuff, it'll just show you a map tile of where that resolves to and let you tweak it around a little
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[Murray] though, having just typed that out, I do wonder if I shouldn't just use the GPS more often. All I actually want from OSM is the lat/long coordinates; I manually enter the placename and relationships (e.g. what city or part of the country I'm in), so maybe OSM is actually overcomplicating my needs 🤷‍♂️
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[tantek] jacky, yeah, a bunch of us have looked at it and a few of us even participated in very early conversations at W3C on the subject (myself, KevinMarks)
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GWG I missed a check-in conversation...darn
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GWG Are we willing to self host some of the infrastructure as a community? I did some research... it's a lot of data
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GWG In regards to shared check-ins there is a distributed Webmention model I've always wanted to use for something like this
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GWG Essentially, I have my local copy of something that I link to other copies so an update to one generates updates to all... assuming trust
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GWG https://github.com/pelias/pelias I bookmarked this a while a5
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Loqi [pelias] pelias: Pelias is a modular open-source geocoder using Elasticsearch.
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jacky woaaah
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jacky that looks really goo
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jacky *good
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jacky heh the demo on the landing site is pretty cool too https://geocode.earth/
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jacky typing "Mozilla SF" brought it to the right place
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GWG It says discounts available for open source and non profit
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GWG But it can be self hosted
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[tantek] GWG, we have somewhat of a distributed model in that a /venue can be at a different site than a /checkin
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[tantek] so for example, you could post an indieweb checkin by referencing a venue permalink at aaronpk's site
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GWG Yes, but what if aaronpk's site went down
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[tantek] since there's webmentions flying back/forth for every link, this affords /venue permalinks the opportunity to aggregate checkins to that venue and display things like a summary of *who* has checked into it (not just a list of checkins, that's in some ways noisy / less interesting, though a recent feed could be interesting), perhaps even a leaderboard
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[tantek] each /venue permalink could even crown its own "mayor"
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[tantek] based on whatever criteria (most checkins on different days in the past 30 days, etc.)
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[tantek] GWG, then it's less likely you'd use it for checkins
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GWG Okay
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[tantek] people will self-select whose site they will use for which venues
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GWG I just like having a local copy in addition
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[tantek] you can always do that
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[tantek] either instead of or in addition to
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GWG So if I use aaronpk's venue, I'd want a version on my site
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gRegor venue information is relatively easy to make a copy of, e.g. find it on archive.org
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gRegor but aaron's site will never go down! jk
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GWG Either way, would love to figure out a system
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GWG Who wants to talk about it at HWC tonight at 6pm pacific?
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GWG The ram needs on some of these projects are gigantic
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