Tammy and I saw Jason Isbell tonight at the Armory. This was our first time seeing him perform which is a little suprising given how much I like various bands he has been in and around. I was so glad to hear him perform Dress Blues as well as Outfit from his Drive-By Trucker days.
I designed this RSS app for the web first, and then added Mac afterwards (in beta soon). I think that worked out well. Helps push the web to be as feature-rich as possible, and lets me rethink what should be different for the Mac.
My wife gives the best gifts.
Goodnight!
I can’t believe I’m only just now learning that Luke Kornet has a blog. Guess I need to officially offer everyone in the Spurs organization free Micro.blog subscriptions. 🏀
As I like to note every year, today is the anniversary of starting my blog. Good day to release some new web software!
Looks like ChatGPT is back at #1 in the App Store. Claude had bumped it out of that spot for about a week. App Store rankings are just recent trends, so maybe we’ll see some flip-flopping going forward based on the news cycle.
Four full weeks of paying more attention to phone screen time are behind us, and it’s time for some closing thoughts on this experiment. But first, a quick recap of how the final week went.
The average was slightly higher than the previous 3 weeks, and that was mainly due to what happened on Tuesday and Friday, which, as you can see from the weekly recap, saw higher-than-usual phone usage.
On Tuesday, I passed 1 hour of screen time for the first time since the start of this experiment, and that was because of a…phone call? I’m not entirely sure why screen time registers a phone call as screen time, but that's why I passed the 1-hour mark on Tuesday. I had a 30-minute phone call for something work-related, and that apparently is picked up as screen time. Go figure. Aside from that, as you can see, usage was business as usual: about half an hour of messaging and a minute here and there for a few extra things.
Friday, I passed the 1-hour mark again, and this time it was actual usage, and it was just Telegram. As you can see from the time distribution, I spent almost 40 minutes chatting with a few people late in the day and aside from Telegram, I barely picked up my phone. The rest of the week was very uneventful.
Looking back at these past 4 weeks, I feel like, for me, the way my life is structured at this moment, 4 hours of weekly phone usage is the sweet spot, and I intend to keep it that way. I’m happy I managed not to consume content on my phone. Podcasts, music and RSS are gone from the site, and I feel like my relationship with this stupid object is in a much better place.
I have deeper thoughts I want to share, but those will get their own dedicated post, likely tomorrow.
How about the others, though? I started this thing to help Kevin get off his phone, and I succeeded so well that he jumped off iOS entirely and moved to Android. Not exactly the outcome we wanted, but hey, at least it's a change. He'll be back using his phone 5 hours a day now that nobody is paying attention. Kev instead is too busy vibe-coding blog platforms to pay attention to his phone, and he abandoned us after one week. As for John, Thomas, and Alex, they all did great, I'd say, and I love that Thomas tracked time spent in front of his computer and not just the phone.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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Ran into some last-minute problems with my bridge to Feedbin. Going to have to disable that feature for launch. I’m a fan of Feedbin, so not happy to do this, but it’ll be something else we can roll out in the future.
Today we’re releasing a new RSS feed reader called Inkwell. It’s a companion product to Micro.blog, so you’ll sign in with your existing Micro.blog account.
Inkwell is a special take on RSS. It has many features you’d expect in an RSS reader, but it also adds integration with Micro.blog conversations and text highlighting. While reading a blog post, you can highlight passages to blog about later.
Inkwell is built around three main tabs: Today, Recent, and Fading. Today is for the latest blog posts. Recent is for posts yesterday or the day before. And Fading is for posts up to a week old. After a week, posts fade out of Inkwell, so you’ll never be overwhelmed with unread posts. If you missed them, it’s okay.
But Fading also comes with a superpower: Reading Recap. Reading Recap takes all of the blog posts in Fading — some you’ve read and maybe some you’ve skipped or just skimmed — and groups them together by website, summarizing what the recent posts were about. It pulls an interesting quote from one of the blog posts and includes it directly. It adds topics so you can tell at a glance what the blog has been focused on.
Reading Recap helps surface interesting posts in your subscriptions that deserve another look. You can also have Inkwell automatically send the Reading Recap in a weekly email.
(There are new costs for us to host Reading Recap, so it and the Fading tab require a Micro.blog Premium subscription.)
I’m excited to announce that a new version of Unread for both iOS and Mac is shipping today with Inkwell sync. Add an Inkwell account to Unread just as you would add Feedbin or other RSS sync services.
Jon Hays has also developed a new app for iOS called Silverleaf. This came together very quickly because Inkwell has an open API. I expect other apps to follow, including the official Inkwell apps.
Inkwell completes the suite of products that make up the Micro.blog platform. For nearly a decade we’ve worked on short-form posts, photo blogs, cross-posting to other social networks, and much more that encourages people to post on their own blogs instead of silos. And now we have long-form reading and discovery, integrated with the unique strengths of Micro.blog.
Can’t wait to hear what everyone thinks. Thank you!
P.S. While I’m working on a new video to introduce Inkwell, you can also watch this video I shared with beta testers. It’s a little out of date but still covers all the basics.
This is hard to believe, but I introduced a bug minutes before blogging about Inkwell. Sync was partially broken. Apologies to folks who tried it right away, it should be returning to normal now.
Thanks @numericcitizen for creating a video of Inkwell with a closer look at everything! Lots of good details in here.
John Brayton blogs about Unread 4.8, with syncing to Inkwell, faster link articles, and more.
Jay Graber is stepping aside as CEO, staying at Bluesky to work on other things:
I’ve grown a lot as a leader and had the privilege of assembling the best team I’ve ever worked with. As we’ve grown, I’ve found that people thrive when they’re in a role where their passions overlap with their strengths. This is as true for me as it is for our team.
Toni Schneider will be CEO. I expect 2026 will be an important year for Bluesky, presumably with new ideas for increasing revenue beyond domain name registration.
Again another rapidfire timeline because I am attempting to get more than 5 hours of sleep :)
That’s it for Switzerland! One of my favorite trips so far! What can I say, the land of cheese, chocolate, and paragliding never disappoints.
The sun spot has begun its triumphant return.
I sort of collect “micro” domain names now, so using micro.ink for Inkwell felt right. All the HTML and JS is actually bundled in a Micro.blog plug-in and served just like any blog. I think it demonstrates how flexible Micro.blog hosting can be.
Android folks, @gregmorris is looking for beta testers for Micro Social.
If anyone else would like to test Micro Social on Android please let me know.
Apparently I cant open test or release until I have at least 12 closed testers for 14 days!
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