Simon B. Carstensen

@simoncarstensen
18 Followers
36 Following
46 Posts
Rebuilding Jottit, a tool for simple web publishing I originally built with Aaron Swartz in 2007. Trying to bring a little of the old web spirit back.
personal websitehttps://simonbc.com
jottithttps://jottit.org
tinyposthttps://tinypost.blog
Simon B. Carstensen3d ago
I’m experimenting with the MCP protocol for Jottit and have the basics of it working. I can now publish new pages by prompting Claude on my mobile or ask it to summarise pages, make edits, etc. I’m not sure what to think of it yet, but I’m definitely intrigued… #jottit #indieweb #ai
Simon B. Carstensen4d ago
Show threadAndy Baio4d ago
Ze Frank's The Show was self-hosted QuickTime videos on a blog with comments and an RSS feed. A community forum, wiki, and series of interactive web pages tied it all together. Social media was a bunch of blogs linking to each other. Facebook opened to everyone in September of that year, Google bought YouTube in November, Steve Jobs announced the first iPhone in January 2007. Twitter blew up at SXSW in March and iPhone came out in June, the beginning of the end for the dominant open social web.
Show threadSimon B. Carstensen6d ago
@pauladamsmas Thank you Paul, this means a lot
Simon B. CarstensenMar 16
Self-expression matters deeply in the IndieWeb community, and for good reason. But customization easily becomes complexity. How much is too much?
I landed on two settings for Tinypost: light or dark, plus an accent color. The accent runs through your links, your subscribe button, your whole site. Enough to feel like yours. Not enough to turn into a site builder. Hopefully :) https://tinypost.blog #tinypost #indieweb #blogging
Simon B. CarstensenMar 14
Redesigned the blogroll on Tinypost today. Single column now, sorted by latest activity, with favicons pulled from RSS feeds. The blogroll also moved into the profile header as a row of stacked avatars linking to the full list. Much more compact than the old two-column grid. https://tinypost.blog #tinypost #indieweb #blogging
Simon B. CarstensenMar 13
I just redesigned the Tinypost signup process and this is how a newly created blog on Tinypost now looks like. #jottit #indieweb #blogging
Simon B. CarstensenMar 12
I made another attempt at getting some attention on Hacker News yesterday, but fell flat again. 5 points and 2 comments. Moving on now and betting on organic growth from there on.
Simon B. CarstensenMar 12
I redesigned Jottit's URLs. Instead of yourname.jottit.org, pages now live at jottit.org/@username/page-slug. It's a small change but it shifts the whole feel: less "here's a site" and more "here's a person writing something." My own page now lives at https://jottit.org/@sbc #jottit #indieweb
Jottit

The fastest way to publish on the web.

Jottit
Simon B. CarstensenMar 10

Finally posted Jottit to Hacker News today. Was genuinely nervous about it. Spent ages on the wording.

90 minutes later: zero points.

I'm laughing at myself. All that build-up for nothing. Going to try again tomorrow.

https://jottit.org

#indieweb #openweb #webdev #jottit

Jottit

The fastest way to publish on the web.

Jottit
Simon B. CarstensenMar 9
I had a small revelation about Jottit recently. I'd been thinking of it as a site builder: create pages, add a menu, set up a subdomain. Then someone on micro.blog just created a post and shared it with me, and it clicked.
Jottit is for putting stuff on the web. You create a page, share it. Claim it and it shows up on your profile. More like a blog than a site builder. So I spent the weekend redesigning Jottit.
https://jottit.org
#indieweb #openweb #blogging #smallweb