I find myself in the fun position of following up on a follow-up post to my follow-up on Rubenerds original post.

I mean, if we both used Facebook, this would just be a series of comments, but where’s the fun in that? As Rubenerd says, “it reminded me of the blogosphere of old”, and I’m enjoying the feeling of a proper back and forth. And unlike a Facebook comment, his post can be read completely independently, with his thoughts and musings taking their own tangents without the feeling that it all needs to tie back into my post like we’re arguing about something. It’s like a layer cake, or a meat trifle or something.

But as he said, the blogs¹ of old are fading out. Most people just don’t bother, unless they’re part of some large conglomeration. Maybe this is just the evolution of the web, as the weaker writers give up from lack of traffic, and the stronger ones either get grabbed by companies who can pay them, or just keep on solidly pushing through publishing post after post of eclectic material, not for the world but for themselves. Rubenerd is definitely of the latter, while I am one of those weaker ones who got tired of feeling like I was talking to myself. Or I was bad at it.

So while I’m giving it another shot, I can’t imagine how long I’ll last this time. Which brings me back round to RSS. I settled on FreshRSS because it was PHP based and my host had an install script. Not much of a reason to base my decision on, except that I’ve tried TT-RSS before and while I was happy enough with the software, the support left me feeling a bit eh about the whole thing². So Rubenerd, if you’re listening, I’d be happy to set up an account on my instance of FreshRSS if you want to try it out.

Of course, this is all academic if I never use the thing, and I’m not sure I’m going to. As I said in my previous post, reddit scratches that itch I have to find new content. But even that is a bit filter-bubbly despite an amazing breadth of sources on /r/all. What I need is an ever changing list of semi-random content to peruse on my mobile. I wonder if there are any federated RSS aggregators?

And don’t get me started on federated replacements for Facebook Messenger. I have one colleague at work who I keep roping in to try new messaging platforms, and I think he hates me now. In fact I know Mike hates me because he just cycles through each app to message me how much he hates me. I can’t blame him - my phone creaks under the weight of the following in no particular order:

• Pulse (SMS)
• Yammer (for work team chat until Microsoft Teams is available to us)
• Discord (what I tried when I was trying to find something like Slack)
• Telegram (my preferred replacement for FM (Facebook Messenger) with my family)
• Wickr Me (I know exactly one person that uses it)
• Wire (I can’t make anyone use it, not even Mike)
• Google Hangouts (I can’t bring myself to use it)
• Duo (pre-installed on Huey, my phone)
• And three different email apps

Most recently I’ve also installed Keybase, which is so loaded with the buzzword promise of blockchain I couldn’t not try it out. Rubenerd wasn’t there - which as the only person I know who’s actually published a PGP key - surprised me a little. Keybase is chock full of people who have published PGP keys. If you want to hit me up there, my Keybase profile is here. Maybe someone smarter than me can tell me why it isn’t a sound technology, but although it’s based on technology by one company, you can’t get much more federated than blockchain, even if it’s not exactly what we mean when use the term.

One last thing Rubenerd before I go. If not comments, at least enable pingbacks and ping other people when you link them. Otherwise I might not notice you’ve published until I go to my feed reader.