We're working to make a #Federated alternative to #Bandcamp where up and coming bands can connect with fans and share their music on the Fediverse.
The progress is really encouraging, so it's time to get some feedback from real #musicians
My goal is to have something you could actually use in the next month or two. So please get your ideas in so's I can squeeze them into my launch calendar.
At #FediForum, @n00q discussed a Federated music service for #BandCamp refugees. After a few days of drawing up requirements and specs, and a couple days of code, something interesting is taking shape.
Here's a too-fast-tour of a hypothetical album page built with #Emissary. Custom skins, uploads, and transcoding music is still TBD, but so far this feels like magic.
Bands' profiles will be native citizens of the Fediverse to like, share, and comment. Excited yet?
"Building on the #Fediverse is hard. Here is a list of #ActivityPub and other developer #resources that have been helpful in developing #Emissary. This is not a canonical or official list by any means, but hopefully this list of bookmarks is valuable to others who are building their own Fediverse apps." @benpate
Lots of great demos at #FediForum today. Particularly looking forward to Emissary by @benpate, which was described as an "RSS Server", but it seems to be a lot more than that. I like that it brings the indie web and ActivityPub together. https://github.com/EmissarySocial/emissary
@ricmac Thanks, Richard! I'm pretty excited about this, too (and a little scared, tbh)
#Emissary is a personal / small group server that sends and receives ActivityPub, RSS, and IndieWeb (MicroFormats, WebMentions, etc)
It's also a programmable toolkit for others to build their own Fediverse apps. To anyone who's interested: I'm looking forward to helping you build cool stuff with Emissary. :)
So, it seems that watching me type is incredibly boring. So, even though I could live-code a custom Fediverse app in the first 10-15 minutes of a #FediForum session, it's probably better to just show it working.
It's only ~100 lines of JSON config, and less than than in HTML templates. You all won't mind if we skip my typos and get to the good stuff, will you?
Looking forward to Day 2 of the online unconference tomorrow, my speed demo, and hopefully some good follow up discussions after.
I figure it's about time to post more about progress on #Emissary.
Tonight I'm working on the Mastodon API. My goal for February is for the API library to be robust enough to use third-party Mastodon clients with an Emissary server.
Right now, I'm actually able to publish some basic messages to Emissary using https://semaphore.social/ - which is an absolute godsend for developing a server API because it shows me every API call going through the browser. Glorious!
While I’m at it.. I don’t know if #ViralBlocks are a thing or not, but I think they’re worth a look.
Mastodon publishes all my follows.. why not let me publish the trolls I’m muting and blocking, too?
The default setting in #Emissary is to label posts that my friends have blocked, but it’s easy enough to automatically block people that my trusted friends have flagged.
I see an ecosystem.. where tomorrow’s mods publish to many opt-in followers in real time using #ActivityPub, not CSV files.
#Emissary is an #Fediverse client and #RSS reader. It uses page metadata (like #OpenGraph data and #MicroFormats) to make every page on the Interwebs work just like an ActivityStreams document.
It works like a cross between self-hosted #IndieWeb blogs and a Mastodon mega-instance, letting one hosting provider serve many individual sites that pool resources (like shared caches and worker queues) while remaining portable and distinct from one another.
With #ActivityPub, could you have no character limit for the size of posts but then have them for replies? Posts (like articles) should go viral, replies should make for a great conversation and not deter from further engagement.
I'm working on something loosely related - a personal view of the Fediverse (called #Emissary) that feels a lot more like an old school RSS reader than Mastodon, Facebook, Xitter, and the rest.
It lets me curate the slice of Fediverse posts that I want to see and blocks out a lot of other noise.
I love it. Others may not. That's cool. Any population of N people will have > N+1 mutually exclusive needs.
I think that's the best we're going to get in any Democracy.
I'm interested in hearing from #ActivityPub developers who've successfully mapped #OpenGraph properties from <meta> tags in Web pages onto the Page type and its properties in AS2.
Overall, mapping to ActivityStreams was pretty easy. Sherlock is the key component in #Emissary that helps it participate in many different social webs.
I should take a break from whining about #ActivityPub to crow about my big breakthrough. Today, I successfully sent my first messages and replies between #Emissary and #Mastodon. And all it required was a complete overhaul the custom ActivityPub outbox.
It’s a small step forward, but a huge milestone for me. Hopefully, it will translate to big wins for other devs who can use my #Golang libraries in the future.
@jjude Hey, thanks for asking. #Emissary is a new server for individuals and small groups that combines #ActivityPub, #RSS, and #IndieWeb. The app is very flexible, so developers can reprogram most of its behavior, while still empowering non-techies to manage their own personal servers.
Most of the core is done, but ActivityPub support has been a big challenge. So, it’s not ready for the real-world yet, but I’m excited about the progress.
@pbharristoo@allstartrek
I really liked #GulDukat when this series first started. I thought his misguided "benevolence" towards to Bajorans, at least in Cardassian culture, made him one of the more complex and interesting characters.