Since I first began the 30-day blogging challenge the indie web movement was on my list of topics to discus. My thinking on it, and related topics, is still unsettled. I’ve read some and, well, read some more. Kevin Marks frequently appears on the Twit network and particularly on This Week in Google, and has talked about the indie web on many occasions.
Here’s a brief and early poll on where I am so far. I like the basic principle of owning all of your content. That’s the foundation of this very site, this blog. I don’t like strongly coupling my various identities across sites, not that strongly. I prefer that they be weakly coupled, if at all. I’m not that interested in discussions, engagement and feedback. At least not in the usual way they occur on the web.
Microformats comprise a clever and intriguing idea. I think there’s value in this evolved approach to (this part of) the so-called semantic web.
The microformats movement has eschewed email and gone to using IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and a wiki for their communication. This hits at the communication problems that I spend a lot of my internet-thinking time on. Email seems terribly inadequate in many ways and yet insists being the best fit for many needs, particularly when Gmail is used. I agree with not using email for long messages or long documents—I’ve adopted a similar approach to communication. (For long documents and messages I email a Google document instead of a long email message).
I loathe using IRC. That in itself is worth at least one long blog post. We use it at work since I’ve been unable to stave off the push by the millennials (plus or minus) there to use IRC.
There’s a very nice “indie web in a box,” With Known, which you can even get a hosted account with. At first, that seems anti-indie-web, but it’s all very well done. The source is open and you can start on their servers then move onto your own when you wish, similar to using Wordpress.
So that’s a quick update. There should be more to come.