I think of myself as an early adoptor on internet tech, but there is one technology I have never tried and never wish to, either: AirPods. I hate sticking things into my ears. I'm an 'over the ear' headphones guy and I don't see that changing. (p.s. I will probably add Meta's AR glasses to my 'never gonna use' list, but mainly because I have no desire to put Facebook on my face!)

Alright, buckle up internet history fans: we've come to the RSS Format Wars! The year 2000 was when RSS got forked into 2 different protocols: Dave Winer's RSS 0.92 and the RDF-based RSS 1.0. What's remarkable, looking back, is that the top bloggers of the day — Kottke, CamWorld, Rebecca Blood, Brad Graham, and others — still weren't using RSS by the end of that year. But they *were* building blogrolls.

Cybercultural

2000: Bloggers Make Friends, but RSS Format Wars Kick Off

In 2000, the blogroll becomes a trend as bloggers increasingly link to each other. Meanwhile, RSS bifurcates into two opposing formats: Dave Winer'...

#InternetHistory #RSS

TBL on the founding of WHATWG, which now controls the HTML standard (clearly he was not a fan, at least initially).

I’ve been re-watching this last couple of nights. Triumph of the Nerds, tv show from 1996 by Robert X Cringley. I also loved his book, Accidental Empires, on which the tv series is based. Such good production and he speaks to all the main players (Gates, Jobs, Woz, et al). I also discovered recently (via Wikipedia) that Cringely was a stage name, which I hadn’t realized before. I’m not sure what he is doing now…70-ish and maybe struggling, house burned down, etc.

I think this is a fair statement, right? #Threads #FakeFediverse

I just checked my latest Google Search Console report for Cybercultural. Couple of notable trends, that I think apply to other indie websites too: 1. Google has totally turned off Google Discover traffic for my site over the past 3 months. I never got big traffic from it, but at least my posts had a chance before. I suspect Google's algo has pivoted Discover traffic to larger sites, to keep them quiet. 2. Clicks per impression 0.50% (was 2.25% at peak). This is AI Overviews/Mode at play #SEO

By 1999, Microsoft had vanquished Netscape in the browser war, Google was starting to show up competing search engines, and Napster and Blogger had arrived to shake up our culture.

Cybercultural

What the Internet Was Like in 1999

In 1999, Microsoft vanquishes Netscape in the browser war, Google starts to show up competing search engines, Blogger launches, and Napster loudly ...

#InternetHistory Author's note: if you read and enjoy my article, don't just 'like' it — please boost or share it on the web another way. Indie bloggers can no longer rely on Google or other big tech companies for attention, so human curation is what it's all about (again). 🙏

So apparently "Blueskyism" is a word, and it has heavy political connotations according to this post by Tim Onion. Ultimately I blame X/Twitter for politicising what social media app you use, but I don't like the idea of being painted as a certain type of political person based on using Bluesky. I don't feel like that's the case on Mastodon (altho I am willing to wear the "nerd" label than some on Bluesky put on Mastodon users...perhaps because I am actually a nerd)

There’s a couple of days left on this poll. Note that I’m referring to blogs, i.e. linky commentary ordered by date. I think some people who have chosen 90s have been referencing GeoCities, Homestead, etc. While those services could’ve been used to run journals / weblogs, it wasn’t normally the case. By all means choose 90s if you were writing a blog on GeoCities, but just wanted to clarify that.

Mastodon

Richard MacManus (@ricmac@mastodon.social)

Informal Friday poll: what year did you start blogging? I've put a poll with some timeframes below, but if you want to add some colour please leave...