Clark Goble 1967-2019

Clark and I had different opinions on the future of ISIS. This was years ago, when we conversed often on app.net/ADN. He under his own name, me, less boldly, using my John Gordon pseudonym. (Clark knew I was John Faughnan, we corresponded by email too.)

Clark was a slippery fellow in a debate so I suggested a wager based on the state of ISIS in a year or so. I forget what I wagered, but Clark offered to pay off in Amano artisan chocolate. His company’s chocolate that is.

Some time later, a bit prematurely I thought, Clark decided I was right and he shipped me a wonderful supply of some of the finest chocolate I’ve ever had. I tried to stretch out the supply but I’m bad with chocolate. I ate it too quickly.

I was in Clark’s debt after that. I thought I’d have a way to pay it back, but I didn’t expect that to be a donation to his posthumous gofundme account. He died 9/6/2019 of a ruptured cerebral aneurysm. He was 52yo, married, with five children.

My wife’s mother died the same way at the same age. I remember, from medical school days, a young woman dying suddenly the same way. It’s like being hit by lightning. Here one day, gone the next.

I never met Clark in person. We chatted for years on app.net, then continued on Twitter. We had some things in common. We both loved the outdoors - mountain biking and, in his case, mountaineering. We enjoyed science and especially physics — though he was the real thing and I am just a hobbyist. Both of us were happy fathers; Clark's youngest child was about a year old when he died. 

We were both born in Canada. We both liked travel, he wrote often of his mission work in Louisiana.

Politically and spiritually we were pretty different. Clark took his faith and Mormon theology seriously, I’m a functional atheist. Clark was a Western old school Republican, I’m an Obama-Democrat. Many of our discussions were on politics — he loved the ins and outs of democracy.

I miss Clark's voice. I’m sad I’ll never get to drop in for chocolate. I mourn for his family and all who loved him.

• David Clark Goble Obituary - Visitation & Funeral Information
• Remembering Clark Goble | Times & Seasons 
• Clark's Tech Blog | Trying to figure it all out a post at a time
• Clark and my last twitter conversation - Aug 27, 2019

Random thoughts on replacing Twitter

1. Twitter will become a blend of home shopping network, daytime TV, and tabloid news. That might be quite profitable.
2. There is money in sane social communication, but there isn’t big money. In particular there isn’t publicly traded corporation money.
3. With current software and hardware stacks a base social network doesn’t have to be very expensive. I suspect without video storage and without advertising it could be done for $20/user a year and perhaps less.
4. A consortium of newspapers, foundations, and universities with some grant money is enough to develop and support a standards based solution. Remember USENET* was basically supported by universities. USENET was also an open standard.
5. USENET didn’t have to support a billion users though. A sane social communication network will require either an ad model similar to 1980s newspapers or user fees. I like the idea of free read access for all, contribution requires subscription ($20/year), people can donate subscriptions (free pool).

And that’s all the time I have to think about this for now …

* Still around, by the way. Searchable too.

How to build a safe and sane social network

This is how to build a safe, sane, and sustainable social network.

1. Build it to be viable on $1/user year.
2. Sell memberships for $25/year. Each buyer gets one user license and contributes 24 to the free pool.
3. Donors can buy an unlimited number of free-pool memberships at $1/year apiece.
4. Donors who give over $1000 a year get an optional sustainer badge.
5. Anyone can join for free if there are free memberships available.

That’s about it. Essentially it’s the public radio model.

A change to my publishing streams

These are the last days of app.net. It ends in 3 days. App.net has been good to me. Great tools, smart and interesting people, RSS integration (albeit grudgingly at first) and the best communication/conversation platform I’ve worked with. App.net was what Twitter should have been. It has made clear how badly Twitter has failed.

These are, surprisingly, also the end times for Maciej’s Pinboard as a publishing platform. I have 33,236 pins there, and something is broken. Neither pinner.app or pushpin.app are able to connect and download the streams. From what Maciej has written in the past I may have passed some throttling limit. I’m using Pinboard in ways he did not intend — and the iOS apps don’t scale either. 

So I need to make some changes. Gordon’s Notes and Tech will stay on Blogger for now — it’s been surprisingly robust and trouble free for many years. It helps that there’s an exit strategy to WordPress if Google kills it, but as best I can tell Google is going to keep Blogger limping along.

My DreamHost wordpress microblog has mirrored my pinboard stream for years. I’m going to see if there’s a way to make it a true microblog publishing platform. I’m not sure how to do that, in particular it’s not obvious how I can conveniently post via Reeder.app. It will take me a while to work that out.

In the meantime there are several app.net spinoffs in the work. I’m tracking several of these as much as my time allows - especially pnut.io (@jgordon) and 10centuries (@jgordon). March 2017 is a heck of a month for me so things have gone slowly.

Uncertain times! For now if you follow kateva.org/sh you’ll see what I’m up to, no matter how the process evolves.

Maciej's Pinboard is a contender for longest lived microblog platform.

Twitter is racing app.net to the grave. Google social is almost as forgotten as Apple’s flails.

Maciej Cegłowski's Pinboard though, that continues.

Title, Link, Comment, Tag — all editable forever. RSS everywhere. No comments (no trolls), no images, no ads. Cash supported - $11 a year [1]. No obvious string length limit. Common API and bookmarklet support. XML, JSON, and Netscape Bookmark export formats and API for programmatic transfer. Minimalistic mobile support because that's for apps.

Almost a perfect microblog foundation — save that it requires a unique link for each post. [2]

Privately held by a brilliant iconoclast (eccentric?) with atypical values. Maciej has a regular cash stream, seems uninterested in further growth, does no marketing, and his ongoing costs decrease as storage and processing costs fall. He is unlikely to sell or terminate prematurely. Pinboard’s longevity is largely bounded by the health of a male born in 1976 who enjoys travel, is probably a non-smoker, and knows the bus will be fine.  Another 30 years seems achievable. Even Wordpress is unlikely to last that long.

Pinboard may become the world’s longest lived microblog platform.

- fn -

[1] I had to go incognito mode to find pricing. Turns out I paid when he had some kind of lifetime fee. A yearly fee is better.

[2] Pinboard has (editable) Notes which have Title, tags, and description (markdown formatted text). They are a handy way to create a text string with URL and RSS feed, but their native display omits the description portion and I don’t know of any app support (Pinner.app does not show Notes). I also don’t know if there’s API support for Notes or how export works. Notes are basically incomplete, but could be extended to create a complete (spartan) microblog framework. One could create a root “Note” and then, using Pinner, author posts as linked-lists of bookmark referencing prior bookmark … (hence unique url for each) …

Last days at the best of social networks: app.net (aka Alpha, ADN).

My (@johngordon) App.net services are beginning to fail - including PourOver. Post counts are gone. I still find some great discussions; the community will outlast the infrastructure.

I joined ADN/app.net Alpha in 8/2012, I’ve paid yearly since. I was a fan in 2013, still am. App.net filled the void left when Google Reader Shares died. It was better than Posterous, Tumblr or Twitter.

Four years isn’t a bad run. I’m not sure Twitter will be here in four years. On the other hand, “the Well” is 31 years old now (and funded by memberships). The Well is private, so I’ve no idea how active it is, but that’s probably a record.

There’s no obvious replacement for App.net on the horizon but I’m keeping my eyes open …

No, Apple News.app is not necessarily evil. Why do you ask?

[When first wrote this I chose an article, that, by chance, didn’t have a redirect to the original site. Which means I got things a wee bit wrong. Sirshannon gently corrected me. So now a bit of a rewrite …]

Viewing what I thought was a NYT article in News.app (turns out to be an Apple article that showed up on NYT page, which is kind of interesting) I can use Pinner.app 4.0 to create a Pinboard: Bookmark. That bookmark includes a URL like this:

https://apple.news/ABLDsKpUXSOafJmAr1FFtNg

From Pinboard app.net pourover and IFTTT (still around) share that link and my comment to app.net, twitter and my kateva.org/sh personal archive.

So far, so open. But what happens next?

If you access the particular link on an iOS device Apple launches News.app and you can view it there — both Safari.app and Chrome.app do the same thing.

If you access the link anywhere else you get this:

However, that’s not the end of the story (thought I thought it was). This link, opened in a web browser, redirects to a web page:

https://alpha.app.net/sirshannon/post/65149315#65148990

Apple does not redirect to the web version of the article. With NYT and other sources I chose one can open the News page in Safari.

This isn’t is surprising for two reasons. The first is that, even more than Google, Apple is all about Roach Motel class lock-in. The second is that, unlike the RSS of old, News.app has a viable ad-funded business model. Links to the open (perennially dying) web don’t fit that model.

So, despite my dire expectations, Apple, for now, is providing redirects to the web source. This doesn’t mean Apple will never interfere with the distribution of information that would hurt Apple’s business or offend its executives, and my confusion between NYT and Apple content is a bit weird (user error?), but for now News.app isn’t necessarily evil. I’ll be staying with Reeder and the lost mist-enshrouded all but forgotten Shangri La of RSS, Feedbin and Reeder until the last link dies  I’ll be experimenting with sharing News.app articles from it via RSS, Feedbin and Reeder ...

Why I love app.net (ADN)

I joined App.net ($5/month or $36/year) about five months ago. Although it's fundamentally a messaging infrastructure it's currently marketed as an ad-free social network.

I paid $50 at launch, and my account was extended when the cost dropped. That was money well spent; I expect to subscribe as long as they are in business. I love App.net because ...

• It has a very robust ecosystem of tools and services including multiple Mac and iOS clients and multiple web apps. I use Wedge, Netbot, NoodleApp and Appnetizen and will soon try Felix. There are multiple integration points to my Pinboard feed, including IFTTT support. Most of my posts start with Reeder.app [1] then go to Pinboard and turn into App.net posts via IFTTT.
• The community I interact with on app.net is exceptional. More on that below.
• I love the mission: a public (pay) communications infrastructure and related services that I purchase. I love paying for things I use.
• The app.net development team is delightful. I mean that literally; it's a joy to see them play and build on the platform - like @duerig's early stage Google Reader Share alternative, Patter-app rooms and private messages (EdChat) and vidcast shared video commentary.
• 128 characters is stupid. 256 is not twice as good, it's eight times better. (Though URL characters count, so I use URL shortener services)
• I'm 50+ and this is a relatively young community (though plenty of 40+ too). I'm old enough to enjoy that. The only young people I otherwise interact with are my kids (10-15) and their friends.
• I have the (illusion) of helping build something good without, you know, actually having to do anything. (Hence the illusion bit.)
• No advertising. Of course that doesn't mean no marketing; it means I choose the marketing I want)

The real hook for me, however, is the community. I follow a very smart and mutually respectful group of people. The conversation reminds me of Google Reader Shares, some of the BBS forums I joined via packet switching networks before there was public net access, but most of all it reminds me of my undergraduate conversations.

 

During my undergrad days I got to know 4 institutions, partly because I wanted to escape from the one I graduated from, partly because in Quebec everyone went to "junior college" (CEGEP) after grade 11. Whether they were elite or accessible I found great conversations everywhere.

 

There were good conversations at graduate school, medical school and residency as well (I spent a long time in school), but the undergrad conversations were the most interesting. App.net reminds me of the best of those. It is, for example, the only place I can learn from the insights of a (gasp) republican.

 

The group I follow is a pretty tough bunch. If I'm sloppy, I get called on it. I love that -- it makes my thinking better. I learn things.

 

App.net won't last forever -- nothing does. But it's a good place now; it succeeds where Twitter failed me. 

 

If you'd like a free trial let me know at jgordon@kateva.org or in comments below -- I can share 3 invites.

[1] Alas Reeder.app may have been sunset. It's very unstable on the iPhone 5. Fortunately there are alternatives I can explore.

See also:

• The Economist's Babbage on two of my favorites: Pinboard and App.net. The Economist doesn't use bylines, but I suspect this is by @glennf.

johngordon on App.net

App.net is almost certainly doomed. Almost no-one believes that a Weibo-like communication service can run at scale other than by advertising or selling user information. I mean, it's not as though we pay for our data services, or our voice services, or for those stampy things.

App.net is a quixotic hopeless sad bit of misplaced nobility.

So, of course, I love it. Here's my app.net stream: johngordon on App.net.