The magic, unexpected, unanticipated positive outcomes, connections, that spring from sharing something online.
Breaking with the usual long winding blogging, let’s go directly to the demo. What was once a hand spun web site with some funky, no longer plugin called Cool Iris then a template-tweaked WordPress site with a google form to collect stories, is now, an open collection available to take stories in video, audio, or […]
The best things in web serendipity are unforeseen. That’s the only way it works. It’s all because of rug shampooing. Back in 2017 at the house in Arizona, I decided to get the old whitish carpet steam cleaned, actually paying someone to do it and not futzing with those rental ones. I piled the furniture […]
Twitter is nearly universally accepted as a dumpster fire of hate, misinformation, and just badness. And this is just said by people in Twitter. But it can excel in small ways perhaps lost in the noise. If you ask for with something specific, people you do not know like to offer answers. This is not […]
In my best Rod Serling intonation, “Submitted for your approval, two different musicians, never having made contact, both express appreciation and credit for shared public domain photos, and offer thanks despite the general understanding of said licenses are that you do not have to attribute…” A direct message came to me in instagram, and it’s […]
I should just end the post with this as a title. Leave ’em guessing, right? It was appropriate today started reading an utterly brilliant essay by Parimal Satyal, Rediscovering The Small Web (thanks to Jay Hoffman): Most websites today are built like commercial products by professionals and marketers, optimised to draw the largest audience, generate […]
Nine years ago, an almost random brushing of one person’s story, even if immortal, so brief as to leave almost no remnant, ripples back again. Just because I left a little shred of information here in the blog pile. That someone far away could find. At once time this would be turned into a video […]
Even just writing this title I anticipate the automated spam offering links to poker web sites. Oh well. I can’t pass up a story of serendipity and ancient web technology. The first card is a tweet from Jon Becker, who for quite some time has had his online students at VCU take a spin at […]
While the tech choruses croon on about scale and AI and datadatadata, I prefer the long tail. Looking in the corners of digital stuff I marvel when you find small signs of quirky human presence. Like web messages you only see when you View Source. Or when you google recursion; and this new surprise search […]
I just popped a CD of blues music into the player. How it got here is a story with being in the mix of other True Stories of Sharing. Why? Well, that’s my own photo printed on the back cover. If the bass player (and also art producer) of the Blue Crawdads had followed the […]
I don’t dislike metadata at all. It does wonderful things to organize heaps of media, content. But it sometimes leaving me… cold. A tweet from Bryan Alexander got this mind clicking. It’s a great story. The Ed Bacon Project is uploading thousands of photos (all with open licenses) documenting the city of Philadelphia, asking the […]
