Richard MacManus
Richard MacManusItβs all a bit serious on the socials today. Anyone got a good tv show recommendation? I recently finished βDept Qβ, which I enjoyed. I binged all of βHalt and Catch Fireβ before that. βA Gentleman in Moscowβ was another fave this year. Iβm up to date with βSeverenceβ. What else is out there to binge on a Friday evening with a glass of vino?
Richard MacManusI look back at the dawn of blogging and RSS in 1999. At the start of that year, a small community of "loggers" were designing and writing weblogs, but it wasn't until the launch of Blogger in August '99 that it became easy for non-techies to publish a blog. Alongside this, Netscape and βDave Winer had early versions of RSS β Netscape's was the official RSS format at this time, but it was very limited. https://cybercultural.com/p/blogs-rss-1999/ #InternetHistory #blogging #RSS
Richard MacManusGhost or Substack? Eleventy or WordPress? Newsletter or blog...or online magazine? There are a lot of choices these days in online publishing, so I've detailed my own recent experiences in this post.
I discuss how I've found Ghost's fediverse integration so far (there are issues, but I'm fully supportive), why you *shouldn't* choose Substack, why I find @11ty@neighborhood.11ty.dev such a joy, and why #WordPress is in desperate need of modernization. https://ricmac.org/2025/08/21/ghost-substack-eleventy-wordpress/
Richard MacManusI admit, I am fascinated by how X users see the internet. I think some of them genuinely donβt know what websites are.
Richard MacManusGary Marcus is not impressed. https://open.substack.com/pub/garymarcus/p/gpt-5-overdue-overhyped-and-underwhelming?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Richard MacManusI disagree with the whole premise of this article (which btw is far too long β itβs clearly been written for machines). βBut the web isnβt human-first anymore,β he writes. WRONG. Thatβs what big tech wants you to believe. My websites are written for humans. Ok, I accept I need to figure out how to make a living from that in this AI eraβ¦but the Web is human-first for me, and always will be. Thatβs non-negotiable.
Ref: The web isnβt URL-shaped anymore - Jono Alderson https://www.jonoalderson.com/conjecture/url-shaped-web/
Richard MacManusFirst issue of Web Technology News has just been published! My new Ghost newsletter that you can find here on Mastodon: @feed@webtechnology.news. Let me know what you think...it's just a start and I want this to be easy to read every week. Also, I'm looking for a catchphrase to end each issue :) Suggestions welcome... https://webtechnology.news/wtn-1-www-34-ghost-6-apis-2-0/
Richard MacManus@feed@webtechnology.news One design thing I'd love to see tweaked: the Mastodon embeds are very skinny and hence take up too much vertical space. If you compare to the Bluesky and X embeds in the post, I'd prefer the Mastodon embeds were the same width as those. Not sure whose fix this would be, but tagging @staff@mastodon.social and @index@activitypub.ghost.org for consideration. See: https://webtechnology.news/wtn-1-www-34-ghost-6-apis-2-0/
Richard MacManusFirst issue of Web Technology News has just been published! My new Ghost newsletter that you can find here on Mastodon: @feed@webtechnology.news. Let me know what you think...it's just a start and I want this to be easy to read every week. Also, I'm looking for a catchphrase to end each issue :) Suggestions welcome... https://webtechnology.news/wtn-1-www-34-ghost-6-apis-2-0/
Richard MacManusTim Berners-Lee on 6 August 1991:
βThe WWW project was started to allow high energy physicists to share data, news, and documentation. We are very interested in spreading the web to other areas, and having gateway servers for other data. Collaborators welcome!β
https://cybercultural.com/p/1991-tim-berners-lee-trys-to-convert-the-hypertext-faithful/
Notice he said collaborators and not parasites (yes, I mean AI, but also human SEO parasites). With the open social web, we have a chance for human collaboration again.
Richard MacManusI decided to start a Ghost blog after its 6.0 upgrade and what seems like full integration with the fediverse (ref @index@activitypub.ghost.org). My new site: https://webtechnology.news
You can also follow it on Mastodon here: @feed@webtechnology.news
As it says on the tin, it will be a newsletter about web technology news (for once, I am using a straight-forward name, rather than mouthfuls like ReadWriteWeb or Cybercultural)
I just started this today, but what I'm thinking is it'll be a weekly linkblog with commentary, for now.