Apparently there was some drama on Bluesky, but to be honest I can’t quite unravel the full extent of it. Just a quick shout-out to the CEO and CTO, who I have a lot of respect for. Strong principles and vision. There will be occasionally missteps because we’re all human. Keep moving forward.

After we added books and bookshelves to Micro.blog, there was a lot of good feedback about expanding it to movies, video games, music, and other collections of media. I think I have a good next step: make it easy to simply search for a movie and blog about it. Planning to wire things up via TMDB. 🍿

The Movie Database (TMDB)

The Movie Database (TMDB) is a popular, user editable database for movies and TV shows.

WordPress has also added support for Mastodon quote posts. Micro.blog’s support is generally working well — I blogged about it here — but I noticed a couple glitches today adapting for quoted WordPress posts, so I’m fixing those now.

7.5.0 — Follow the Feed, Quote the Lead – ActivityPub for WordPress

Manton Reece - Mastodon quote posts in Micro.blog

Mark Gurman on Apple shifting resources away from a lighter Vision Pro: "The company had been preparing a cheaper, lighter variant of its headset — code-named N100 — for release in 2027. But Apple announced internally last week that it’s moving staff from that project to accelerate work on glasses, according to people with knowledge of the matter." They should do both. I’ve been skeptical of Vision Pro all along, but it does need a “Vision Air” hardware update, unless they plan to abandon it. See also: Casey Neistat’s latest video.

Bloomberg.com

Apple Shelves Vision Headset Revamp to Prioritize Meta-Like AI Glasses

Apple Inc. has hit pause on a planned overhaul to its Vision Pro headset to redirect resources toward a more urgent effort: developing smart glasse...

Had a weird dream where I was at some kind of festival and ran into other Mac developer bloggers and… Sam Altman. Tried to convince him that Sora borrowed too much from TikTok and other addictive social networks. It’s technically amazing but I think is the wrong product to build, in this form.

Had no idea about this secret album from Mariah Carey, produced with her friend Clarissa Dane. Gina Trapani blogs: "To blow off steam, she writes a grunge rock album inspired by alt-rock bands like Garbage, Hole, and Sleater-Kinney. She records it at night with the band after the Daydream sessions, channeling her frustrations into the music, and picks the most perfect name for such a project: Someone’s Ugly Daughter." Love this. 🎶

Someone's Ugly Daughter | Note to Self

An all-time great story of creative release: It’s 1995, and Mariah Carey is recording her fifth album Daydream. She’s also in a terrible marria...

Someone's Ugly Daughter - Wikipedia

Last month I blogged about the yogurt shop murders. Now they solved it, further exonerating the suspects who were wrongfully charged. One of them was even sentenced to death… What a tragedy upon tragedies if we had accidentally executed an innocent man. Hope the parents and friends find some peace.

Manton Reece - Watched The Yogurt Shop Murders on HBO, ...

https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/yogurt-shop-murders-more-details-expected-monday/

Because it’s now in the public domain, I can test video uploads with Steamboat Willie posted to a page on my own blog. Almost 100 years old. Still good.

Manton Reece - Steamboat Willie

Really good series. Aces to the finals, but the Fever kept getting back in the game over and over. Fitting to end in OT. 🏀

Congrats to the Iconfactory on releasing Tapestry 1.3. Nice to explore their take on adopting Liquid Glass. Most apps I use haven’t updated yet.

Tapestry

Tapestry

Weaving your favorite blogs, social media, and more into a unified and chronological timeline.

Since I mused last week about expanding the video hosting in Micro.blog, I’ve been working on some behind the scenes changes to make that happen. I’ll post more about it this week. But already in early testing I’m happy to say it is dramatically better.

Manton Reece - Thinking about video hosting

Sora 2 is invite-only, so not entirely sure the scope of it, but I’m getting the feeling that it’s much more of a move into social than Sora 1. Sam Altman writing on his blog: "Social media has had some good effects on the world, but it’s also had some bad ones. We are aware of how addictive a service like this could become, and we can imagine many ways it could be used for bullying." The OpenAI team deepfaked themselves in the announcement videos. Bizarre!

Sam Altman

Sora 2

We are launching a new app called Sora. This is a combination of a new model called Sora 2, and a new product that makes it easy to create, share, ...

The sky and clouds while walking yesterday.

I usually have a few books I’m trying to read and switch between them. This new Kindle feature “Story So Far” seems genuinely useful if a long time has passed since putting a book down. From The Verge: "There will be new AI-assisted reading tools, too, including a feature called Story So Far that generates a spoiler-free recap of a book up to the point you’ve read"

The Verge

Amazon announces new Kindle Scribes, including one with a color screen

Three new versions of the Kindle Scribe are launching in the coming months with larger screens and improved note-taking.

Kagi launches Kagi News. I love this approach of having a single, daily update: "We publish once per day around noon UTC, creating a natural endpoint to news consumption. This is a deliberate design choice that turns news from an endless habit into a contained ritual."

Introducing Kagi News | Kagi Blog

*A comprehensive daily press review with global news.

I care a lot about personal domain names and blogging, of course, and that bleeds into how we approach URLs in Micro.blog. Trying to keep the simplicity of short, readable CDN URLs as we expand to support longer videos, which are more complicated to host.

Typepad is shutting down today. That deadline came up quickly. It’s the last day to export any content. Micro.blog and WordPress both support importing Typepad archives.

From the “this would be a good blog post” department, Kevin Rose has thoughts about ChatGPT Pulse that he posted on Twitter / X: "It’s an agent that continuously researches on your behalf, building on topics from your recent conversations. I’m really having a hard time wrapping my head around this paradigm, because it’s truly unlike anything we’ve seen before. It’s like having a knowledge partner that follows you around, deepening your understanding of whatever you’re curious about." I blogged over the weekend about Pulse. I’m a few more days in now and it’s still good.

X (formerly Twitter)

Kevin Rose (@kevinrose) on X

ChatGPT Pulse (launched on mobile yesterday) is one of the most impactful features OpenAI has released. It's an agent that continuously researches ...

Manton Reece - ChatGPT Pulse

Reading through this great 3-part blog post series from Stephanie Booth about rebooting the blogosphere: "from my “reading interface” (ie, the RSS reader), make it super easy to comment, share, react or link to a publication and start writing something new" A key point in Micro.blog from the beginning was to unify reading, blogging, and replying. A little-understood feature in Micro.blog is you can follow any blog, for example search “climbtothestars.org” to follow Stephanie’s blog. Need to keep improving that.

Climb to the Stars

Rebooting The Blogosphere (Part 3: Integration)

Start with part 1 (activities), then part 2 (interaction). Sorry this 3rd part took a little longer than intended to come out. In parts 1 and 2 of ...

The New Yorker has a long profile of Tim Berners-Lee: "Somehow, the man responsible for all of this is a mild-mannered British Unitarian who loves model trains and folk music, and recently celebrated his seventieth birthday with a picnic on a Welsh mountain." Wait, how did I not know that he loves model trains? 🚂 Looking forward to his memoir: This Is For Everyone. 📚

The New Yorker

Tim Berners-Lee Invented the World Wide Web. Now He Wants to Save It

In 1989, Sir Tim revolutionized the online world. Today, in the era of misinformation, addictive algorithms, and extractive monopolies, he thinks h...

This Is for Everyone