#indiewebcamp 2013-03-01

2013-03-01 UTC
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tantek
what do people here think of the UI practice on various social networks of posting "previews" of linked content? e.g. FB, Twitter, G+ all seem to retrieve and show title/summary/photo for links that you post in your content.
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tantek
when you post a link to a note on your own site, do you feel like you want it to do that too (automatically) ?
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tantek
thinking about this in terms of fidelity (or simplicity) of experience on one's own site vs. syndicated copies on Twitter/FB/G+ etc.
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aaronpk
I do, yes, because the linked content might change and it would be nice to know what it looked like when I posted it
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tantek
oh that's even more interesting - you want a cached preview
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tantek
as of the time you posted the note
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tantek
"the linked content might change" - or die
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tantek
is there a generic term for these things?
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tantek
"preview" sounds too general / abstract
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tantek
also, some social silos even support such "link previews" on links in comments (e.g. FB and G+ do this)
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tantek
to which presumably the indieweb equivalent would be link previews on pingbacks - I think - thoughts?
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tantek
is "link preview" a reasonable term for this? appears to be a fairly emergent existing term (based on google searching for "link preview")
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tantek
"link preview" for example seems more prevalent (in use) than say, "link summary"
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tommorris
tantek: OEmbed seems like a way for doing that. Twitter and FB both use their own algorithm and/or blessed sites
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tantek
Twitter inexplicably chose to call theirs "Twitter Cards" instead which have nothing to do with the previously Twitter launched (but now defunct) "Hovercards"
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tantek
so the problem with OEmbed is that it required another URL
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tantek
whereas *everyone* has now switch to extracted stuff from the HTML
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tantek
sound familiar?
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tommorris
tantek: so, I help run the Facebook page for Wikinews. the FB implementation for extracting image and content snapshot is really buggy
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tommorris
hAtom and so on seems like a much better starting point
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tantek
though FB uses OG:, G+ uses a random assortment of meta, Twitter uses their own meta + OG
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tantek
tommorris - agreed
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tantek
hAtom is a useful building block for this
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tantek
and in fact, I've started to use <body class="h-entry"> as a simple baseline way to markup data for previews
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tantek
so it seems like for indieweb implementations of a "link preview" features, we need:
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tantek
a) an open way to markup the info on pages that we want to go into a preview (obv min: name, summary, photo)
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tantek
b) a library that retrieves a page and generates simple embeddable markup for a preview
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tantek
c) exercise for each indieweb implementer: code to store/cache that embeddable markup in your personal post data store so that you can redisplay it without having to rerequest the external URL (has the advantage aaronpk mentioned of snapshotting the preview as of the time you posted the note)
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tantek
does that sound reasonable?
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aaronpk
not sure what you mean by c
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tantek
for a) we kinda have h-entry already - all we need to add is u-photo
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aaronpk
re-read all 3, now i get it
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tantek
aaronpk - so the library in b) returns you the markup snippet with preview name/summary/photo - you just need to store that however you store information in your posts, so you can retrieve it from your store rather than the external URL
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tantek
of course the beauty of the markup snippet returned is that it would support the same format as in a) so it is completely re-usable without loss of fidelity
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tantek
so I'm thinking of building c) into my posting UI on my site, that is, when I'm previewing a post before PuSHing and syndicating it out, the post preview UI retrieves the link preview(s) on the server, and then shows them to me as part of the overall post preview before I hit the "Publish" button
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tantek
and when I hit the "Publish" button, the same logic which makes a syndicated copy to Twitter (by calling the Twitter API), and then saves the Twitter copy permalink in my data store, can also save the link preview(s) in the same data store accordingly. just piggybacking the same data store write to file call.
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tantek
ok so I just researched what Facebook/OGP, Google/G+, IE10, and Twitter Cards do for link previews and h-entry handily covers the 80/20, *except* for rich media related properties.
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tantek
with the addition of u-photo we get most of that. with (new properties) u-video and u-audio we would get all but the live streaming properties for rich media (the streaming stuff is twitter only anyway).
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tantek
so I'm going to add those as consideration for brainstorming to h-entry
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tantek
I suppose this starts to overlap a bit with #microformats for discussion, but I wanted to discuss first within the real world use cases that the indieweb has for this stuff
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aaronpk
yea I think that would be awesome to do
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tantek
I'm finding that real world indieweb use cases (i.e. stuff any of us wants to implement and ship on our own sites) are a good litmus test for prioritizing/filtering such innovations
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aaronpk
finding the content in a page has always been a hard thing to do, so few people actually do it
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tantek
thanks aaronpk - was wondering if I was just talking outloud to myself ;)
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aaronpk
i remember seeing hillary mason talk about bit.ly doing some machine learning to find the content on a page
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aaronpk
that was strata 2010 I believe
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aaronpk
but yea I would totally be in to pulling out some basic content from sites I link to
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tantek
I think "just use h-entry on the <body> element with a few additions like u-photo" gets us close enough to what all these sites use that we can get started with building on that and see how it works.
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aaronpk
agreed
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@benatkin
Bromise: A bromidic promise. Startups often make these. Don't believe them. https://posthaven.com/ Instead, #ownyourdata.
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tantek.com
created /link-preview (+2681) "draft with thoughts shared on IRC, let's get something going here."
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tantek
tommorris, aaronpk - I attempted to summarize the above IRC brainstorming out loud here: http://indiewebcamp.com/link-preview - feel free to add/expand/extend
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aaronpk
oh awesome
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aaronpk
tantek++
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Loqi
tantek has 8 karma
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tantek.com
edited /User:Tantek.com (+519) "new section: working on"
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tantek
and now it's semi-discoverable at least
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aaronpk
working on is a great idea
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tantek
nothing like being public about that to help with motivation :)
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tantek
and also have other people give you a hard time if you have too many things there
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aaronparecki.com
edited /building-blocks (+338) "add link preview"
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tantek
it's like a forced prioritization
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tantek
oh good call
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tantek
thanks aaronpk
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aaronpk
oh I've been experimenting with adding some content to a sidebar like from your "log" pages from 2003
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tantek.com
edited /User:Tantek.com (+265) "new section: figured out"
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aaronpk
i really liked the sort of time capsule effect it gives the site
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tantek
cool!
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tantek
alright, I think I've braindumped enough for today for the indieweb ;)
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aaronpk
mind if I copy your "figured out" section too?
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tantek
do it!
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tantek
that's the whole idea ;)
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tantek
in general I publish things under the assumption that it's good if people copy
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tantek
since that's the physics of information
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aaronparecki.com
edited /Sites_with_data_portability (+46) "/* Instagram */ add flickstagram.org"
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jedahan
anyone use couchdb?
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aaronparecki.com
edited /User:Aaronparecki.com (+34) "/* figured out */"
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aaronparecki.com
created /salmon (+28) "Created page with "[[Category:building-blocks]]""
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aaronparecki.com
created /openid (+38) "Created page with "{{stub}} [[Category:building-blocks]]""
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aaronpk
!tell tantek you should follow the ##hackernews channel. turns out there are actually a lot of people blogging on their own domains still. in no small part thanks to static site generators like Jekyll
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Loqi
Ok, I'll tell him that when I see him next
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Loqi
tantek: aaronpk left you a message 5 minutes ago: you should follow the ##hackernews channel. turns out there are actually a lot of people blogging on their own domains still. in no small part thanks to static site generators like Jekyll
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tantek
aaronpk, ok will hang out there a bit
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aaronpk
we should find some way to get these people more involved in the indieweb community since they are already totally eligible to come to indiewebcamp
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tantek
I think the key is to ask the right questions
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tantek
e.g. why do you post on your own site?
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tantek
how do you post on your own site?
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aaronpk
i need to get better at writing. there are so many blog posts on my queue and I never find time to finish them
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aaronpk
i need to make a template for myself or something
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tantek
I think we're all trying to figure that out.
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tantek
I too have many drafts.
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aaronpk
turns out finishing things is hard
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tantek
This blog post was my attempt at documenting what I'd figured out so far to help write more posts faster: http://tantek.com/2013/001/b1/twelve-blog-post-writing-tips
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tantek
finishing is mostly about scoping
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tantek
(hence the first recommendation in that post)
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aaronpk
yes, I saw that, very inspiring
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aaronpk
i left it open in my second browser tab for about a month actually :)
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aaronpk
(⌘2 keyboard shortcut)
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Loqi
Ok, I'll tell him that when I see him next
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Loqi
tantek: aaronpk left you a message 6 minutes ago: and now I have a template :) http://aaronparecki.com/articles/2013/02/28/1/twelve-blog-post-writing-tips-checklist-edition
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tantek
wow - thanks for the kind words aaronpk
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aaronpk
question:
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aaronpk
which title is clearer?
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aaronpk
"Using Github to improve communication in an organization"
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aaronpk
"Using Github beyond source code version control"
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tantek
they're different topics
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aaronpk
ok then I think I want to stick with the first
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aaronpk
new idea: indieweb search engine. only returns results from "indieweb" sites (domains that are a single person's identity on the web)
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aaronpk
i don't really want to build a search engine, I just want to ignore things like cnn.com and wikipedia.org from a search sometimes
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@taraplatt
Amazing @shelflifeseries party thanks to all our @indiegogo premiere supporters/cast/crew! Can't wait Season 4 starts Tues March 5 #indieweb
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@shelflifeseries
Amazing @shelflifeseries party thanks to all our @indiegogo premiere supporters/cast/crew! Can't wait Season 4 starts Tues March 5 #indieweb
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@abenjaminsmith
A list of random dev projects to install on your personal domain/sandbox http://indiewebcamp.com/projects?redirected=projects
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@BarnabyWalters
We have a #webactions Hero Toolbelt config UI! Now onto the actual meat. Most of this was already… #indieweb http://waterpigs.co.uk/notes/1032/
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tantek
aaronpk - just saw your comment about indieweb search engine
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tantek
I think that would be interesting, especially as a motivator
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tantek
one variant of that would be a social indieweb search engine - where it only searched indieweb sites of folks you had XFN links to (or perhaps 2nd degree as well)
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aaronpk
oh that would be a good way to start crawling
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barnabywalters
aaronpk: tantek: blekko’s slashtag approach would be a good starting point
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barnabywalters
I don’t know if we can automate personal slashtag list creation
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aaronpk
slashtag?
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aaronpk
that's not a good name for it :(
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barnabywalters
if we could automate slashtag creation, we could make an /indieweb slashtag which includes our XFN-linked sites
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tantek
did blekko ever get back about properly parsing for microformats barnabywalters?
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barnabywalters
it’s something I’ve had in the back of my mind for a while, I should get onto it really
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tantek
multi-valued class attributes etc.
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tantek
I remember we had a discussion about regexes
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barnabywalters
tantek: the best offer I have is regexes, I can have a go at writing some robust ones
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aaronpk
do they have an API?
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barnabywalters
aaronpk: not sure, just checking now
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barnabywalters
I could always make a browser extension which hooks into their UI if I got *really* desperate :)
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barnabywalters
okay, they do, and it can manipulate slashtags, but you have to email them for free access
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barnabywalters
so I’ll do that
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aaronpk
that's desperate
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