now

From IndieWeb

A now page is a page on a personal website that tells you what a person is focused on at the current time, day, or very recently.

Ephemeral story posts are often about what someone is doing now.

If you’re looking for what projects people are working on currently, see:

Why

The now page "movement" was initiated by Derek Sivers in a sense to fill the gap between the common "About Page" and regular status updates on services like Twitter and Facebook.

It’s useful for the same reason an “about” page is useful on your site: because people on your site want to know more about you. Besides answering the common question, “What are you up to these days?”, those who have a now page say it’s a good reminder of their priorities. By publicly showing what you are focused on now, it helps you say no to other requests.

IndieWeb Examples

Aaron Parecki

Aaron Parecki has an automatically updated now page since 2017-04-27.

Max Dietrich

Max Dietrich added a now page on 2021-02-28.

Hammy Havoc

Hammy Havoc added a now page on 2021-09-08.

Caleb Hearth

Caleb Hearth has an automatically updating /now page since 2023-04-25.

Nick Simson

Nick Simson is not sure when he created his now page, but uses a mix of third-party tools to maintain updates from various silos.

Zinzy Waleson Geene

Zinzy Waleson has been manually updated her /now page since 2017-04-03.

Nowish Examples

These "now" examples are more like "recently" pages with information updated within the past month or so:

Out of date examples

These "now" examples haven’t been updated for years:

Other Examples

Wikipedia

Wikipedia’s home page essentially serves as their "now" page with a few features:

Services

nownownow

nownownow is a collection of sites with a /now page.

The main page at https://nownownow.com/about encourages people to practice several IndieWeb principles including own their own domain and post their own content.

Those who register their now page on the Now site and who have a Twitter account will receive @mentions on Twitter every few months in part as an advertisement for the service, but also as a reminder to the user to update their Now page.

Criticism

Additional work

Much like side files, a static Now page (just like an about page) requires additional work to regularly update and therefore isn't very DRY (aka Don't Repeat Yourself).

One node of resistance pushing against my keeping a Now page is the felt emphasis on immediacy. Perhaps it’s more perception than reality, but Now feels different than Recently or Lately, which trace a bit longer arc of activity. I want to meld mindfulness & deliberation. --William Schuth on 2018-09-27

Never updated

"now" pages feel like something a lot of people set up but never update


Brainstorming

home automated do not disturb

  • Jacky Alciné is considering tying integrations from his home automation setup to toggle a "Do Not Disturb" mode on his site. Things like an active watch post can be used to alert the site to a "Jacky's busy right now, please don't disturb" state.

when is an event now

  • Dev tip: when displaying events that are happening "now", use the oldest possible value of "now", in UTC-12. If this is only for events you personally are attending, then use your own current timezone to determine "now".

aggregating now pages

Brainstorm: a "now" page aggregator that answers the question of what is everyone up to? Perhaps with clustering of overlapping activities, media being consumed (same books, movies, music), or events being attended

  • https://aboutideasnow.com/?filter=now does a simple/incremental version of this, listing various "now" page updates as separate cards
  • useful improvements:
    • subset of contacts — only folks you know/met
    • clustering of overlapping activities as noted in description

See Also

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