Today, we launched our new Mastodon instance. It will ensure a privacy-focused space to engage with and get the latest from our Commissioners, departments, and the official voices of the Commission.
We want to thank @Mastodon for stewarding us and helping us make this possible.
Fostering European digital players is vital to our strategy for a stronger #DigitalEU.
This is a unique opportunity to grow the community even more. Let's get there!
Delightful 💕 to see that #EuropeanCommission now has an official #Mastodon instance. #EC loves Mastodon, as the image clearly shows.
I hope this love will expand further to not just extend to one #FreeSoftware microblogging application, but to become a full embrace of the #OpenStandards based decentralized #SocialNetworking environment and #SocialWeb technology ecosystems that have formed around its open protocols, such as #ActivityPub.
I’m excited to say that I turned in my manuscript for the ActivityPub book for O’Reilly Media today. I started working on it in September of 2023, with a lot of interim checkpoints and deadlines since. In April 2024, I finished the first draft of the manuscript. Over the month of May, I’ve been working on improvements suggested by the technical reviewers who agreed to look over the book, and from my own re-read.
In total, my TODO file for this month has about 250 changes to be made. Some are small — just changing a word or two — but one required adding a whole new chapter, and many required multi-paragraph sections.
I took the last week of May off from my work at Open Earth Foundation to concentrate on making changes. My team was really supportive, which I deeply appreciated. I went to our country house in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, and I spent the week writing, editing, drawing and thinking.
Now, the next stage of book making starts: production. The production team at O’Reilly will be copyediting, indexing, and laying out the book. Their designers will be taking my UML diagrams and turning them into professional-looking illustrations. We have two rounds of quality control on code samples and fact checking on content.
In September 2024, the final e-book will be available for sale. I’ll have a link here for the pre-sale version when it comes out. If you’re eager to read the book, I highly recommend reviewing the early release version.
Thanks so much to my friends, family and colleagues who’ve made space and time for me to do this work. It has meant a lot to me. I hope the final product helps more developers create cool projects using ActivityPub.
I'm just a humble country chicken admin, but I've been thinking a lot about the cost of the fediverse and how we can improve it for all of the instances... in a coop kind of way
The cost of handing all of the media is THE major problem for me atm.
In the words of Fatboy Slim, "we've come a long long way together." Here, @miaq breaks down Flipboard's federation journey so far.
"We could [federate Flipboard] with a quick flip of the switch but we’ve chosen to act more intentionally," she writes. "We’re taking measured steps to test, learn, and ensure that everything we’re doing stays true to our values and those of the fediverse. Maintaining quality is top of the list."
I keep reading that #GoogleSearch changes are killing small sites. They are indeed.
Last year I figured that the only way to keep my blog somewhat relevant was to strengthen the direct commucation with readers. I bet on #RSS and #ActivityPub.
Year over year, Google traffic share went down from 46% to 25% and direct traffic share went up from 37% to 54%. And the total traffic is up!
Last chance. If you want to have your signature on the real life letter that goes to Canada's House of Commons Speaker and others, you must tell me before 9AM PDT (about 40 minutes).
You do not have to be Canadian to sign.
Signatures received after 9AM will be on the web version.
I've made some updates to the letter including more supporting links and sources.
Enable Mastodon Apps
= Du bedienst Dein Blog mit jeder Mastodon-App!
Mit drei Plugins wird Dein Blog zur #Fediverse-Instanz, die sich per App bedienen lässt wie Mastodon! Du kannst posten. Du kannst anderen Accounts folgen, hast eine Timeline und Du kannst liken, teilen und kommentieren. Andere können bei Dir kommentieren.
People on ActivityPub-powered platforms like Mastodon, and Bluesky, which uses the AT Protocol, can now follow each other, see posts, like, reply, and repost them, thanks to the work of @snarfed.org@snarfed.org, creator of Bridgy Fed. @Sarahp interviewed him for Tech Crunch about the future of bridging networks, how to bridge your account from the fediverse to Bluesky, and what to expect when you do.
@molly0xfff is a leading cryptocurrency critic, but get to know her and you’ll see she’s anything but cynical about the future of the web. Hear why this researcher, writer and software engineer thinks so in this fascinating conversation with @mike:
If you're looking to host your very own single-user/a-few-users #fediverse instance, you cannot go wrong with #snac. It is simple to install on Ubuntu and works very well with some really solid clients. It is also written in C, so it is fast, with few dependencies. Great work @grunfink, you've got a new monthly supporter on Ko-fi!
right now I love #ActivityPub. but something like a Personal Data Server that I can keep at home or pay somebody to manage, move whenever I want and connect to any new service that somebody develops, seems like the inevitable way forward. a blob with all my stuff as safe as I am willing pay for, where these companies are competing to be the most trustworthy and reliable. instead of having it spread out everywhere or with Google or Apple. and them pushing me to use their services. #SocialWeb
I'm adding new profile fields to #Smithereen, so I would like to ask the fediverse about what kinds of contact info one would expect to be able to add to their profile. So far I've seen:
Personal website/blog
Matrix
XMPP
Telegram
Signal
Phone number
Twitter
Email
I've not yet seen these in fediverse profiles but they are mainstream enough that won't hurt to add:
One thing I want to point out about https://pubkit.net is that I know a service like this could be easily abused!
This is why you will have to verify ownership of servers you want to test against
It can be a text file or DNS record, and in special cases, I can make exceptions for devs who want to test against instances they can't publicly verify
The point is, PubKit will be opt-in, and won't require a fediblock, services like these can be done right 😎
So, #Smithereen no longer requires a username when signing up. You instead get assigned one automatically, of the form "idXXX" where XXX is the ID for your user record. You can change it later in settings if you wish. Current Mastodon versions handle this change no problem.
The username is only visible in two places:
The URL of your profile
When someone mentions you
So it's not very important. Definitely not important enough to be a required field when you register.