Matthew Lang

This has to be the goal of the season.

via kotte.org

... from Patrick Rhone.

via FGGT

A couple of days ago I wrote about what I perceived as a problem on App.net. Finding actual interesting people on App.net through recommendations. Over the next couple of days my timeline on App.net has exploded with people talking about this topic.

I was concerned about finding interesting people in App.net given that there appears to be a high number of bot and feed accounts recommended to you in the Recommended Friends section of the App.net Passport and on Alpha. I just want to find interesting people, not bots or feed accounts.

Having had a conversation with App.net's founder, Dalton Caldwell (@dalton), over the course of Tuesday and Wednesday on App.net, it is clear that this isn't so much a problem with App.net but a problem with all social networks.

I checked out the "People You May Know" block on my LinkedIn page. Initially it only showed me three people, but none of the people in that list were people I knew, worked with or even worked in the same company as them. It was only until I expanded the results further that I started to see people that I had recognised or work with previously. However, the results still showed that the majority of people there weren't people that I actually knew.

I remember the same widget also displayed on Twitter when I had an account there. Quite often, you could see that the people that Twitter recommended to you was based on your bio, your tweets and probably other information that Twitter graph internally. It wasn't completely accurate and often you wonder get a recommendation to which you would respond, why? Why is that person being recommended to me?

It's quite simple. Machines are not good at making relational decisions. My new friend on App.net, @novia, pretty much summed it up for me.

@matthewlang long ago my answer to a question about why computers can’t figure out simple things like this: computers suck at relational reasoning: Even if we create contextual awareness, it would take years of training & they’ll still make errors.
— App.net by @noviad https://alpha.app.net/noivad/post/12500139 App.net %}

So if machines suck at recommending other people for you to follow on any social network based on your own preferences, then how do you find the type of people that you want to follow?

The answer is simple.

Engage, take part, chat, converse, interact.

Be part of the social network rather than just a bystander.

Looking back at my Twitter days it took me a good couple of years to get my list of friends down to a list of mixed interests that suited me. Based on tweets, interests and location, I managed to get a nice timeline of like minded, interesting people to follow. I did this by tweeting to people, searching for hashtags in profiles and finding users or lived in my part of the world.

The same can be said for App.net, but there's a bonus with App.net. Conversations are indeed richer there, and that's where you find interesting people. By taking part. By contributing your ideas, opinions and thoughts to conversations. In order to find interesting people you have to seek them out. You have to intrude (in a nice way) in conversations and take part. It's through this action that I found a few more interesting people to follow last night.

Looking back, I'm actually glad that there isn't an all singing all dancing recommendation tool for people on App.net, because it would take the fun out of finding people on the service and connecting with others. I still think that there should search facilities for people on the service and that perhaps the recommendation feature in the App.net Passport have a filter that allows you to only see recommended people, but that would be all that others would need.

Thanks to Dalton and everyone that contributed to this post through their many conversations on App.net.

While flicking through my App.net timeline last week, I stumbled across a post by Guido Osorios which led me to reading about his reasons for downgrading his account on App.net to the free account.

I hate the fact that I originally payed for a great social API that didn’t hold up well at all. A little over a year has passed since its beginning, and so much about App.net permanently changed, and in my experience, it did for the bad. Sure, it may have hundreds of thousands of registered users now, but most of what made App.net different is long gone — I haven’t discovered a single person in months by now.

— Downgrading App.net by Guido Osorios

While I don't agree with Guido's comment about the direction that the API is taking, I do agree with his concern about finding people on App.net.

I am also finding it increasingly difficult to find people. With the introduction of PourOver, the number of feed accounts have risen and will likely continue. Having these types of accounts are great for members of App.net, but it would be nice to be able to search for just people in Alpha and not have any bot or feed accounts show up.

Maybe it's time for a search directory of just people accounts on App.net?

It would be great to have more people to follow on App.net especially some people I miss from Twitter, but that can only happen if more people join. Now that we have free accounts for people to try it out, I thought there would have been an influx of people but alas it seems that most people are happy to stay on Twitter.

If I'm being honest, I can't exactly remember how I stumbled across Steven's blog. It was a few years ago at least. Anyway, ever since I subscribed to Steven's blog, it's been a treasure of writing tips, practices and great books by Steven.

The first book I read of Steven's was Do the Work. I also read a second book by Steven, Turning Pro. When I first read these books I didn't appreciate their value, but over the last year, I've returned to them more and more found them to be extremely valuable. As for Steven's other books, I have them on a list to read for next year.

Steven's blog is essential for anyone who wants to write. Steven tells it like it is and doesn't sugar coat any of the writing process. It's a hard journey for those involved but he isn't shy in saying that it is a rewarding journey with a great prize at the end for those that are willing to put in the work.

Another great blog to follow if writing is your thing.

With Journalong still fresh in my head I thought I would list a few of the features that I am planning to add to Journalong over the next three months. Development on Journalong has been slow over the last year and for that I apologise. It's no way to keep a product or service going and more importantly, making it useful for you. So if you're a user of Journalong, here's a few new goodies that you might like to see introduced to Journalong.

Viewing of journal files

This has been sitting in my list of planned features for months now. The reason for this is that I always said that I wouldn't display a substantial portion of journal entries through the interface. The reason for this was simply down to privacy. The idea was to allow the user to click on the month they wished to view in the sidebar and just display it, or display the current month's journal after you write a journal entry.

However, I have in the past thought this would be a particularly nice feature to have, especially when your journal can be easily converted to HTML to support formatting, links and images.

This feature will be optional and you will have to turn on the appropriate setting for this when it is released. If you don't fancy having your journal being displayed through Journalong, then leave the setting off. I would much rather customers opted in on their own accord than having them to opt out something they don't want or need.

Journal counts for each month

This just came to me last month. It's only a minor thing, but I envisioned a list of the last 12 months of journal entries, grouped by month, showing the number of journal entries per month in the sidebar.

In order to do this Journalong will scan your journal for the number of entries. Again, your journal is your and yours alone. I won't be scanning or retaining any information from your journal while doing this.

Journal from Draft

Draft is awesome, I love writing in Draft. All my blog posts start off in Draft. It has become my go to place to start all my writing. Why not journal from here too then?

I'll be honest, I'm no designer. The user interface to Journalong is simply what I have been able to do on my own with the help of a CSS framework and some JavaScript. I've tried to make it as pleasing an interface to use for people writing to their journals, but others might want to journal from other places.

These other places that I hope to include will start with Draft. The plan is to use Draft's WebHook URL setting so that you can write your journal entries in Draft and automatically save them to your journal.

via FGGT

While the rest of the family were getting ready this morning, I sat at the edge of my bed and checked out the two websites I quickly look at every morning. The BBC News website and the Hacker News website. After quickly scanning today's headlines I moved on to the Hacker News website. I noticed a submission for Alfred 2 workflows. Mental note made, I must check that out later on.

Once the house was empty, I grabbed a coffee and looked at the Alfred 2 workflows. All good stuff and should help me on a day to day basis, but then I noticed a workflow for something called Dash. Another tab opened and there it was, an offline documentation manager for various languages and frameworks that web developers use. All the documentation I need to do my job without having to go near the browser and I can even work offline if needed, safe in the knowledge that most of the docs I need are accessible.

I could have done with knowing about this months ago. Late to the party again.

It's okay though, because that's what learning and experience is all about. Picking up the tools and knowledge as we go along. Sure we can get a head start by reading someone's tool list and start using all their recommendations but I've yet to read one of these lists where the person has all the tools that I need to use as a web developer. No one person has all the answers.

Okay so you're late to the party with an application or service that would have made your job easier in the past, but the past is gone. Ahead lies the future and with it plenty of chances for you to use that new tool to make your job easier.

You might be late to the party, but it least you made it.