My favorite part was about a previously attempted fork called the Florence project. According to the article, they were apparently better at having meetings than producing actual code. I laughed. I cried. I relived so many years of software development trauma.
I'm working on "Remote Likes" and "Remote Shares" that help you jump back to your own home server to post when you find something cool on another website.
Imagine those "Share on Facebook" buttons, without all the ick.
I know it needs some work (that's what FEPs are for, yea?) so please read, comment, and help me get this over the finish line.
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.
But, if you're not a software nerd like me, just send me a reply to this thread (or as a DM) and I'll do the rest.
Sharing, Directories, and Discovery are important parts to this, but I still have to build those out. LMK if you have thoughts/feelings about how that should look, too.
@benpate
Here's my dream. It's probably of the chart and i do not intend to write this as any form of expectation or judgement.
My ideal #fediverse#music services has #p2p streaming. This is to unburden my smol server from the unlikely yet secretly desired organic DDOS generated by that killer track everyone suddenly understood.
Of course, every #track is a post, with description, eventual lyrics and individual cover-art. Albums are individual posts too. They are basically digests with a bunch of tracks attached, linking to each track's independent post. They have an individual album art and description of what they represent or conceptualize.
This dream service would be entirely interoperable with #peertube. (Although i suspect this would require some sort of collaboration with peertube since i think audio only entities on peertube are in mp4 format.)
My dream service defaults to disregard the notion of me becoming some sort of recruiting agent for big tech record-distribution companies like Spatify, iFumes, etc... It can optionally be that for those who don't have the strength to stand up against the big-tech narrative, but primarily it would operate much like Faircamp does, by encouraging the audience to chip in directly on the spot with donation funnels on the site and donation links in the fedi-posts body.
My dream service leverages activitypub groups, in similar way that lemmy and peertube does. This is to allow artist with many different projects to create different "channels" representing the difference between their various ventures. This could also be used by labels to create different "channels" for different artists. Multiple users can curate one or several of these channels.
I might have more ideas coming after another cup of java. But this is my input for now. Take it as it is: a dream, by a derp. An enthusiastic and encouraging one though! What you do is great, regardless how close or far off my lil' dream it ends up being!
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?
@benpate this is a great list! Excellent notes about each resource, too (I felt the same way about go-fed after trying for far too long to build some basic integration with it a few years back).
I’m not sure which section it would fit in, but mentioning https://fedidb.org/ might be useful so folks could add their server/instance to it
@blaise - Awesome! I'm glad to make a difference. There's still a long way to go, but the more eyes on Emissary, the better -- so please let me know how it goes for you, and how I can make it work better. There's tons of ways to get involved :)
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.
@benpate I'm going to start out with a regular install but really would love this containerised so I can run on e.g. my home NAS. Looking forward to exploring it. Amazing demos and work today.
If anyone had paid attention in psychohistory class, Hari Seldom would have told you that the current #bridgy uproar was unavoidable. SOMEONE was bound to make a bridge to BlueSky as soon as they opened up.
And, SOMEONE was bound to complain about it from a position of fear and ignorance.
I just want to say that @snarfed.org@snarfed.org has done tons good work for the Fediverse, and I appreciate his latest project.
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.
@smallcircles@benpate The downside of that is automation, as in, if it becomes part of the protocol, someone will automate it. Which is generally good, but this then invites more targeted misinformation to cut off parts of the network.
I'm not against what you're saying, but it has to be constructed very carefully.
Yes, totally. In any such considerations to extend the protocol there should be clear thought about how it may be used and abused. The social experience comes first, and then how the tech may support it best.
#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.
Speaking of "the Future of the #Fediverse" - have you tried the Mammoth mobile app on iPhone? It is a glorious preview of things to come.
They've given their solid mobile app a significant advantage by bundling additional services that fill in the gaps left behind by #ActivityPub. It makes the user experience top-notch.
Services like this (search, user directories, content caches, moderation tools, etc) will be the next big growth area on the Fediverse.
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.
I wanted to access #Emissary using Mastodon clients (like IceCubes and MetaText) but there was no easy way to do it. The Mastodon API is enormous and it took a ton of time just to organize every one of the endpoints. Toot makes it easy.
Hopefully, this helps other Gophers to Mastodon-ize their apps too. I'm all-in on making the Fediverse a better place for developers.
I've been a little quiet about #Emissary - in between moving and refactoring one of the core libraries, it's honestly been pretty broken for a little bit.
But my desk is set back up and I'm excited at making some progress again. Now, two libraries that power emissary are also nearing completion, so others can build on this work without having to implement the whole server.
Sherlock converts HTML pages into #ActivityStreams documents using any and all meta-data available: #JSONLD, #WebFinger, #MicroFormats, #RSS, #Atom, #JSONFeeds (with more coming soon). Any format it can identify gets parsed and normalized into a standard-looking ActivityStreams doc, which gets passed up the toolchain to Hannibal.
I'm so excited to see this stack start to deliver real results soon.