Do not feel guilty for not reading the tidal wave of information that piles up on your door everyday. Just don’t. Half the battle in this modern era of information overload is learning how to not care about all the information. We call them feeds, or streams for a reason — they never end. Your only goal should be to build a better net. It’s not to worry about unread counts or friend requests, or virtual corn fields.

Take your net. Dip it into the stream. See what comes out.

I have been thinking about something that Gruber posted, Tablets are waiting for their Movable Type. He and Singer are right, Movable Type and other blogging engines dramatically lowered the barrier, but that wasn’t the only reason things took off. It’s nice to think that people would blog to blog, but its likely that the explosion of content and blogs came because there was an audience. That audience was delivered by blog aggregators like Bloglines.

Bloglines, Google Reader, and various desktop news readers drove the popularity of early blogs ¹. Daring Fireball is an example of an early blog that was in the right place at the right time ² . I have personally seen a fireball happen. There is a huge difference between a link posted on the web and when it hits the feed; the feed drives way more traffic. It illustrates the effect of aggregators, especially when considering early blogs.

Webscript.io is like a programmable Yahoo Pipes. It allows you to run simple Lua scripts in a sandbox. They can make HTTP requests, store data in a simple key/value store, and they can load in lua modules from github. By giving you access to a real language and not a simulacrum of programing they open up a bunch of possibilities.

It’s still early though. I keep running into pain points, but the guys running it have been very responsive to support request, and have already addressed some of my earlier problems. I signed up to be a paying member because I think this affords a lot of hackability, its kinda like drinkability.

One pain point I keep running into is that to import modules from Github you need to add a webhook to your Github project. Which makes sense from the perspective of Webscript.io. It allows them to only update there local copy only when its updated on Github. At least I imagine that is how it works on there side. On the user side you must fork any module that looks cool, then add the webhook. After a few times of something like this:

1. Fork the project
2. Add the webhook
3. Click test webhook

I created a repo and now add modules as I find them to that one repo. You can use it too: webscript-lua-modules

Anyway, other then trying to import a Markdown module(haven’t got that to work yet) the first thing I have tried was to hookup App.net, and Webscript.io. Here is a simple authorization flow.

https://gist.github.com/voidfiles/4014269#file-adn_webscript-lua

The next step would be to setup sessions of some kind. Another interesting bit of information is that Webscript.io is supporting CORS so you could build a very interesting client side only app using Webscript.io.

Standards processes are not to be missed. They are grand spectacles that unfold in real-time. They are fraught with personalities, big egos, and grand ideological dialogs. It’s like West Wing, but you get to see everything between the snappy dialog. Even if you only read a little bit about standards its easy to see how all of this can be quite entertaining. All of this spectacle would be okay if it wasn’t of any consequence. Except, that it is of consequence. It’s tragic that some of the most important pieces of technology get wrapped into these odd structures of control.

Here we are though, and we might be gearing up for an interesting era in standards “Markdown: The Spec”. Yesterday, I wrote about how Markdown could be incredibly important in the near future. In that post I mentioned that Jeff Atwood has made a call for a standard. Here is what he wrote:

“I propose that Stack Exchange, GitHub, Meteor, Reddit, and any other company with lots of traffic and a strategic investment in Markdown, all work together to come up with an official Markdown specification, and standard test suites to validate Markdown implementations.”

In large part I agree with this. I see standards as helpful, but I was less focused on a potential standard and more focused on broad trends that might bolster the future of Markdown. Others though, reacted more pointedly. On Macdrifter Gabe Weatherhead said:

“I don’t understand the obvious omission of Fletcher Penny’s MultiMarkdown (MMD). MMD has a very clear specification. It also has an openly available test suite. Is the issue that it is not a consortium of companies that Jeff likes? Nowhere does he mention MMD and it seems very unlikely that he does not know about it.”

So, the stage is set. If there is going to be a standards process we are already seeing the gears working. One question I am sure many people are asking is what role Markdown’s creator will take. John Gruber hasn’t said much, but there has been a few things said on Twitter over the last week or so. The Coding Horror blog post was published on October 25th:

@gruber: @briandigital If you liked the original, which I created dictatorially, what makes you think you’d like a sequel from by a committee? 7:06 PM - 25 Oct 12

@codinghorror: well, no response from @gruber on the Future of Markdown. Looks like the new name for Markdown is gonna be YankeesSuck. - 12:29 PM - 27 Oct 12

@gruber: @codinghorror When you tell me to jump, should I ask “How high?” - 1:18 PM - 27 Oct 12

@gruber: @codinghorror Next step is for you to offer a $5m donation if I release my college records, right? - 1:19 PM - 27 Oct 12

@codinghorror: @gruber I just wanted a response yea or nay with maybe 1 para of elaboration. That did not seem unreasonable. - 1:33 PM - 27 Oct 12

@codinghorror: ok @gruber did respond, finally – he’s gonna think about it. I would love to continue with the name Markdown in some form. 9:37 PM - 27 Oct 12

and then today:

@codinghorror: An open letter to open letters: http://www.lateenough.com/2011/08/an-open-letter-to-open-letters/ - 2:14 PM - 29 Oct 12

@asherlc: @codinghorror Like your letter to @gruber? - 2:57 PM - 29 Oct 12

@gruber: @asherlc @codinghorror Ha! - 3:12 PM - 29 Oct 12

@codinghorror: @asherlc maybe, but but my letter was to Markdown, and @gruber was cc’ed out of respect. Already underway! - 3:45 PM - 29 Oct 12

@gruber: @codinghorror You realize that “Markdown” is not a person and can’t read, right? - 4:03 PM - 29 Oct 12

@codinghorror: @gruber I’m just trying to help make sure Markdown, the concept, is still alive when the rest of us… aren’t. Isn’t that the point? - 4:33 PM - 29 Oct 12

Sometimes spread out over a couple of days its hard to see the whole thread of a conversation on twitter. Also, there is probably a much larger off-line dialog going on that isn’t leaving a public trail.

It’s clear to me that this is completely precedented and is starting out just right for a standards process of this scale.

Markdown like RSS is one of those things that has fundamentally changed my relationship with the way that I work. Unlike RSS though I think Markdown is primed for mass adoption. Its ready because it fills a classic need for a lightweight-journaling-note-taking-style syntax, it has wide spread adoption ie network effects, and we are already seeing movements to standardize and proselytize Markdown to a larger community.

The other day on App.net I posited that Markdown seems to fill the same roll that cursive did. An easy way to take notes. A way for people to journal. I was taught cursive in elementary school. I don’t think anyone will teach my kids cursive. Computers replaced the need for cursive, but there is still that need for something light weight, easy to write, something people can use to think in. While still making it easy to turn into structured documents later.Markdown provides that. It may not be the only syntax that flows nicely, but for a bunch of other reason it’s probably the one that will stick around.

Markdown isn’t the only light markup syntax. Textile, rST, even Mediawiki has users, but Markdown has been built into more systems then any other. Among those of us who use Markdown we are constantly being delighted at where we can use it. This fact makes it hard for another syntax to get adoption. Also, given that Markdown seems to be the main syntax used on Github all the pieces seem set to make this the perfect storm. Markdown could very well be the de facto winner in a competition among syntaxes.

The fact that Markdown is used so widely inside the Github ecosystem matters for another reason. Clay Shirky gave a talk recently about Git. He said that Git is a new form of argumentation. That was his main point, but more importantly he talked about how Github is a place for that argumentation to happen. An amazing amount of governance happens on Github. From the issues to the wiki to countries putting laws up on Github. As I watched his talk, I kept thinking to myself that all of those things are usually written in Markdown. It’s the most pervasive syntax used on Github. If it is going to be the preeminent location for social discourse then Markdown stands to play a vital role.

I understand that this is a corner stone for this line of argument. It could be near sighted to think that Github will create a world for Markdown all by its self, but it might not have to create that world all by it’s self. Also, for Markdown to be widely adopted it needs to be adopted by a larger population outside of tech and Github isn’t the only place where Markdown is making it outside of tech.

Fountain is a Markdown variant for writing screen plays. Screen plays; movie scripts; stage plays. For years, people had to setup Word just so, or purchase very specialized software just to write screenplays but now they have the freedom to use something like Markdown and it was created by one of their own. John August is an actual screen writer. When you see that kind of movement towards Markdown outside of tech it only strengthens the idea that Markdown at least has a shot.

And, just last week Jeff Atwood wrote a post about the future of Markdown. His call was simple; Lets standardize this thing. While I don’t think it has to be standardized I think doing so would help. It would make the future of this whole thing a little less uncertain, and it would create even more network effects. More then his call to standardize, his post embodies the idea that there are a bunch of people out there who think that Markdown is cool, and wonder why the rest of the world doesn’t know about it. There are people ready to knock on some doors.

Look, I know its crazy to say that Markdown is going to be a large part of the written future. One minute after I wrote my post on App.net I had a person in real life turn to me and say, “No”, thank you Andrew Schmidt, while I still don’t think I have convinced him he was willing to engage with me for a little while, but that is what gives me the smallest inkling of hope. If this was apparent to everyone then there wouldn’t be anything to talk about. Every first grader would learn letter forms, and how to create a hyper link in markdown. That’s not the case, and probably won’t be for a long time. These things move glacially, but Markdown has a shot, and I just like making a long bet here. At the bare minimum it will give me something to root for.

Feedburner is the latest service to send out a death knell. While its not dead dead, it’s as good as dead.

It’s the latest in a rash of shutdowns, acquire hires, and significant redesigns all of which freak me the fuck out. It’s now my turn to realize that I depend on way to many free services and I don’t know how in some cases to turn back the clock. I feel confident that I could devise my own schemes to replace every free service that I use, but at what cost, and could I really maintain them all.

I suppose this is why data export is so important. If all these services allowed easy export I could always be constantly exporting and backing up that data. Even that would become cumbersome. So, could we devise a better system?

I can imagine an interesting solution here. What if you had one company that had a paid service and their entire job was to be the repository of your data wherever you went on the web.

By centralizing your data like that there would be a couple of benefits. You would only have one set of data to backup. You could block any company at a moments notice from seeing your data. As well as peace of mind that you had your digital library taken care of. It could free up new product innovators to concentrate just on ideas. it could give them some room to just concentrate on the user experience.

Hmm, this could be cool.

PS: I suppose Dropbox does this a little bit, but everything is files. Which could work, but it would be cooler if they also offered like a way to store structured JSON.

PPS: I am going to migrate from Feedburner, and I want to keep this around for posterity. Here is the ride for this blog. I got a monstrous spike in users about a year ago. I still don’t know why, but engagement has gone up with the increase in readers so I assume it’s legitimate.

<img src=’http://dl.dropbox.com/u/133599/Screenshots/198s.png’ width=518 height=603>

There is a type of blog post that I love to find. It’s that post where you know the nature of the blog is about to change. It could come after months or years of reading, but when it happens the blog will be different forever. After years of seeing these posts and thoroughly enjoying them as an outsider I now feel I am at that point. I might know how these other guys have felt.

Seeing changes in blogs is a little like seeing the inflection point in a graph. If you stare at graphs daily they become a 6th sense. You have probably seen some kind of action sport like skateboarding. When you watch a professional skateboarder you can tell that using their skateboard is second nature to them. They aren’t thinking about how to manipulate the skateboard they are thinking about how to complete the trick. The board is just apart of their body. In a way graphs, especially graphs that you look at on a daily basis, become this sense that gets directly linked into your brain. You begin to react as if they are just another sense.

Blogs are little bit like graphs in this regard. You engage with blogs throughout the day and over time you begin to pick up on their patterns. In the same way I can sense when a graph is at an inflection point I can sense when blogs are about to have an inflexion point. It’s not all that mysterious most times they are banging the reader over the head with their changing nature. The first time I ran across a post like this was on Merlin Mann’s blog 43Folders:

A notebook is basically the creative equivalent of the NFL jersey you picked up at Macy’s; unless you fill it with a lot of hard work and sacrifices, you’re just a dilettante with poor spending patterns. Anaspiring something. A fan of the game. An existential cosplayer. And, that’s not what I want to help you to be. Even if you really love Moleskines or the Raiders, God love ‘em.
- Merlin Mann

It’s pretty clear that 43Folders wasn’t ever going to be the same. I suppose it isn’t so much picking up on the fact that they are going to change it’s more that they are announcing their intentions to do something awesome and because of that you should make sure to watch the closely; hopefully they are going to do something awesome. I found a couple of these posts recently.

For this reason, I feel ashamed to complain about any aspect of the web. If I have a complaint about anything, it’s actually a complaint about myself and the choices I’ve made.

If the web is so full of Internet marketers and lifestyle bloggers that I dread opening the lid of my MacBook, then it’s my fault. If all I see are played out memes and mindless platitudes, that’s my fault, too.
- JD Bentley

And another over at Curious Rat

These websites perpetuate a myth that they are well-informed, knowledgable news outlets that tell the world what it needs to know. What I’ve learned, however, is just the opposite: they’re ad-driven FUD machines that run on pageviews stolen from attention-deficient readers who would rather digest a shocking headline on a digital tabloid than read thoughtful commentary provided on an actual news site.
…
More importantly, the content here is going to change significantly. Actually, change isn’t the right word I’m looking for - my content is going to grow. The new Curious Rat is going to be a place for thoughtful commentary on a variety of topics, including (but not limited to) technology, music, magic, books, art, and writing.
…
I may not post every day, but when I do, there will be a purpose behind it[2]. What you see in your RSS feed will have thought and feeling behind it, not just a gut reaction to something stupid someone said on the Internet.
We see that every day and you deserve better.
- Harry Marks

I have written posts like this before, but I didn’t understand what these guys were talking about… Until now that is. I don’t want to care about piddly shit anymore. I want to focus on things that actually contribute to doing good work. Like the skateboarder I want to make my tools second nature. I don’t want to spend time fighting with my text editor or caring where I put semicolons. I will always have opinions on these things, but what I care about right now is getting shit done.

I wrote a bit about this over at daily.js.

At PicPlz we built a hybrid mobile app. We had a native container written for iOS and Android that hosted a web version of our code. PicPlz was the first time I had worked on a fully mobile website. My operating paradigm was that I was building a website for a small screen.

One day, our iOS developer asked me why our follow button didn’t just react when a user touched it. He pointed out that most iOS apps work that way. It was a glaring reminder that our app was something other than native. I genuinely had never thought about doing it any other way. I was building a web app, and when building web apps there is network IO. For things to be consistent, you need to wait until the network IO has finished. The other engineer persisted though, claiming that it doesn’t have to work that way.

“Optimistic Server Interactions” via DailyJS

I really want to see how far we can take these.

I reposted this from my new development oriented blog http://alexkessinger.net

My grandfather once got mad at me for using the word awesome needlessly. I don’t even remember what I was talking about, which further iterates his point, but he was right to get mad. I didn’t really understand what awesome meant. Today though, I think I do know. The last 30 days working on App.net have been awesome. We haven’t reached our goal over at join.app.net, but I wanted to take a moment to reflect before we get to the end of this larval stage.

I have felt every feeling under the sun; I have felt fear, hurt, excitement, delusion (is that a feeling?), and I felt them all with gusto. I have caught my wife, on more then on occasion, trying slyly to make sure I was okay. Once I embraced something a co-worker said, “Don’t think too much about the wall or you’ll hit it,” things got a lot easier and I relaxed. I started to use all of those feelings to help me get my work done. I am not the only one who’s been exasperated by this journey, the tone of the office has been jovial but tense; which is exactly how a good team should respond to pressure.

I have kept a diary as well, really just because I want to make sure I take note of what this feels like. I knew from day one that I would want to remember how this went down. I had keep some record. Now I know I wasn’t wrong to do that. I might be sitting in my own little echo chamber and people have publicly announced there audacious proposals before, but nothing I have ever worked on has had so much coverage. At least in my neck of the woods.

Tuesday I am going to wake up and go to work, but it will be awesome, err, it will be awesomer. One way or another my life will be better on that day, because I lived through this. We might not make it, but my life is irrevocably changed. My coffee is going to taste better. My glazed donut will probably be the sweetest it has ever been. And, then I am going to put in some hours. I hope it’s on App.net, but whatever it is I am going to do it really fucking well.

My grandfather once got mad at me for using the word awesome needlessly. I don’t even remember what I was talking about, which further iterates his point, but he was right to get mad. I didn’t really understand what awesome meant. Today though, I think I do know. The last 30 days working on App.net have been awesome. We haven’t reached our goal over at join.app.net, but I wanted to take a moment to reflect before we get to the end of this larval stage.

I have felt every feeling under the sun; I have felt fear, hurt, excitement, delusion (is that a feeling?), and I felt them all with gusto. I have caught my wife, on more then on occasion, trying slyly to make sure I was okay. Once I embraced something a co-worker said, “Don’t think too much about the wall or you’ll hit it,” things got a lot easier and I relaxed. I started to use all of those feelings to help me get my work done. I am not the only one who’s been exasperated by this journey, the tone of the office has been jovial but tense; which is exactly how a good team should respond to pressure.

I have kept a diary as well, really just because I want to make sure I take note of what this feels like. I knew from day one that I would want to remember how this went down. I had keep some record. Now I know I wasn’t wrong to do that. I might be sitting in my own little echo chamber and people have publicly announced there audacious proposals before, but nothing I have ever worked on has had so much coverage. At least in my neck of the woods.

Tuesday I am going to wake up and go to work, but it will be awesome, err, it will be awesomer. One way or another my life will be better on that day, because I lived through this. We might not make it, but my life is irrevocably changed. My coffee is going to taste better. My glazed donut will probably be the sweetest it has ever been. And, then I am going to put in some hours. I hope it’s on App.net, but whatever it is I am going to do it really fucking well.