2023.06.08.

Apollo is shutting down on June 30th.

It means that I officially end up using any social network.

I stopped using Twitter when Tweetbot was killed. I’ll do the same with Reddit too – which I liked better because the community was awesome, but I’m not going to visit a site that kills a superior app like Apollo.

All I need nowadays is a blog and an RSS reader and I’m good.

Twitter Has Stopped Working in NetNewsWire

Looks like Space Karen caught up with NetNewsWire too:

Twitter suspended NetNewsWire today because, according to Twitter, “This App has violated Twitter Rules and policies. As a result, it can no longer be accessed.”

I still have a couple of feeds in Reeder, which are working for now, but I don’t expect them to be around that long.

Honestly, I don’t care about Twitter (or social media in general) anymore. I can do everything I want with this blog regarding publishing my stuff on the web.

I still POSSE my blog posts to Twitter using Micro.blog because some people still follow me there. I may turn that off one day because very few people are coming to this blog from Twitter.

2023.01.20.

I was thinking about installing a new Mastodon instance and creating a new account. Still, this blog is already capable of RSS and ActivityPub, so I’m not sure if I need the social aspect of yet another social network. I simply want to blog. It’s an easy to follow concept, and I have comments open if you want to leave a reply.

There is a way to follow me on Mastodon, though; you can do it by pasting the following handle into Mastodon’s search bar:

@zsbenke@decoding.io

2021.02.23.

HEY for World

HEY for World can be an excellent idea for those who don’t want to be bothered to set up a blog.

When I write a certain kind of email — aka a blog post — why do I have to address it to someone? Why can’t I just address my thoughts to the world? Direct to the web for anyone and everyone? Rather than define the recipients, I just write and let the recipients find me.

Although we had this before and it failed miserably.

2020.11.04.

zsoltbenke.me

As I refresh my online presence with a new avatar and a new Dribbble profile, it occurred to me that I don’t have a page, which I can hand to somebody, and he/she can see what my work is all about. Not a portfolio, but a more superior page than a simple “About Me” in WordPress.

So I built one, featuring some of my work I did lately and, more importantly, the first web development tutorial I promised a couple of months ago. I plan to extract this article into a separate mini-site just for these tutorials, but for now, it nicely complements my “About” page.

Anyway, check out my work!

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2020.10.31.

I’m on Dribbble (again)

It was a long time since I posted anything on Dribbble. In the last couple of years, I did so many exciting things, but I haven’t shown them anywhere; I did show some bits and blobs on Twitter.

Since I like to think about UI interactions and building tools, I should have a platform to show the results. And Dribbble is excellent for that. So from now on, I try to post new stuff I’m working on.

Checkout my Dribbble profile →

(Feedback is always welcome.)

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2020.10.02.

A nyitott web, ahogy annak lennie kellene

Mióta bekötöttem ide a webmention plugint, azóta minden egyes külső helyről érkező reakció megjelenik itt a blogon a posztok alatt. Ez jöhet mondjuk egy másik blogról vagy egy másik social networkről – bármiről, ami IndieWeb ready.

Sajnos nem minden szolgáltatás ilyen, ami régóta zavar. Az utóbbi években népszerűvé vált elzárt platformszigetek megcsorbították a web nyitott mivoltát, így mától nem fogok direktben kontentet írni egyetlen ilyen zárt platformra sem. Ezentúl a bejövő reakciókra adott válaszaimat is blogon fogom megtenni, tehát a Twitterről fogadott pingbackekre is itt fogok írni.

Az itt megjelenő tartalom ugyanúgy fel fog bukkani különböző helyeken, ahogy az IndieWeb POSSE is ajánlja, viszont a platform ahol a tényleges interakció fog folyni, az teljesen a sajátom lesz, ahogy annak már régóta kellene lennie.

2020.07.04.

Az RSS olvasóm csendben teszi a dolgát

Annak idején nagyon népszerű tartalomfogyasztási forma volt az RSS. Manapság mindenhonnan azt hallom, hogy az RSS egy halott technológia – ami persze baromság – mindenki a social médiát használja. Én is régóta jelen vagyok Twitteren, de az elmúlt 10 év tapasztalata alapján nálam sosem fogja leváltani a social média a feed olvasómat. Sőt, valószínűleg hamarabb fog elhalni nálam a Twitter, mint az RSS.

  1. Nincs benne algoritmus, minden időrendi sorrendben történik. Ráadásul még át is állíthatom azt.
  2. Még mindig sokan blogolnak és ennek a legjobb fogyasztási módja az RSS olvasó. Ez az egyetlen olyan szöveges online felület, amiben mai napig el lehet veszni. A legjobb még mindig az, amikor elmélyül az ember egy random cikkben.
  3. Az RSS egy passzív médiafogyasztási forma. Nincsnek benne reply-k, értesítések és olcsó egó boosterek. Posztok vannak csak, amiket olvasni lehet.
  4. Nem fog megsértődni senki, ha leiratkozom róluk.
  5. Nem akarja egy cég az egész internetet a kezében tartani, mindenkit egyenlően kezel az RSS olvasóm.

2020.03.03.

Deleting All Your Tweets

Craig Mod makes some good point about deleting your tweets:

If an idea is any good, chances are you shouldn’t just be tweeting it, but rather giving it a more solid, fleshed out form as a blog post or essay or zine or whatever. This is out of respect for the idea itself. What I find most dangerous about Twitter is that it can generate similar chemical feelings to having done “the work,” when in fact, you haven’t done the work. You’ve just micro-plastic’d idea potential. Make Twitter ephemeral and it seems to undo this psychic voodoo. (For me, anyway.)

It makes sense to me. Also routinely deleting my old tweets gives me some control over one of my concerns with social media: using an old tweet against me. We’ve seen this before.

Sure, I’m not James Gunn, but because Twitter makes it very easy to post things online, we usually do it without thinking. Having these tweets still available years later can be problematic. We are changing, but our short angry bursts aren’t. These are sitting somewhere on Twitter as a record of a random bad snippet of us.

As Craig said, tweets should be ephemeral.

2020.02.06.

The original vision of the iPhone as a tool

The original vision of the iPhone was to help in our everyday life, not to became a life broadcaster and receiver device, which we are hanging to 24/7.

According to Cal Newport, we have to return to the original vision of the iPhone, which Steve Jobs showed us when he introduced it in 2007. Be a really good tool for a couple of things, but don’t hijack our attention in a form of notifications and dopamine booster social networks.

We can develop a healthy relationship with this device if we think about it as a tool. It can be a great hammer to solve problems occasionally throughout the day, but after that, it’s very important to slide it back into our pocket and continue focusing on the thing that we’re doing.

Source

Opinion | Steve Jobs Never Wanted Us to Use Our iPhones Like This – The New York Times

Once you’ve stripped away the digital chatter clamoring for your attention, your smartphone will return to something closer to the role originally conceived by Mr. Jobs. It will become a well-designed object that comes out occasionally throughout your day to support — not subvert — your efforts to live well: It helps you find that perfect song to listen to while walking across town on a sunny fall afternoon; it loads up directions to the restaurant where you’re meeting a good friend; with just a few swipes, it allows you to place a call to your mom — and then it can go back into your pocket, or your bag, or the hall table by your front door, while you move on with the business of living your real-world life.

The iPhone is a fantastic phone, but it was never meant to be the foundation for a new form of existence in which the digital increasingly encroaches on the analog. If you return this innovation to its original limited role, you’ll get more out of both your phone and your life.

2020.02.05.

Different notification types

There is a difference between notifications that I want to receive versus the ones that somebody else wants me to receive.

Triggers that I leave for myself in the future to notify my future presence self are important. Otherwise, triggers made by others are having a very good chance of being not important at all.

When we are using a device, we have to set up notifications in a way to receive way less from the latter one. This way we can preserve the essence of the device as a tool, so we don’t become a tool for someone else who can use our device as a remote to control us.

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