I’m continuing to explore developments in the IndieWeb and it’s a great time. There’s such a better internet out there that I hadn’t been focusing on in far too long due to my getting sucked into the Algorithmic Corporate Internet. I’m deciding how I want to engage as contributor in the IndieWeb, but I need to make sure I don’t get complete shiny object syndrome each time I find a new tool or corner.

I recently discovered omg.lol which sounds absurd but is a pretty legit service. You can use it to:

  • Maintain a /now page though I’ve added one of those to this site as well
  • Engage with Mastodon social posts in a different way/interface (or keep them off of Mastodon entirely)
  • Maintain a library of permalinks, important for preserving connections online
  • Upload photos to an Instagram alternative called some.pics
  • Verify that your other sites are indeed owned by you, a human
  • Distribute an email alias at which people can contact you, protecting your own regular email

I’ve already found some interesting people and things through omg.lol’s feeds, so I’ve decided to incorporate it a bit as part of my POSSE distribution system. I’ve made some changes from the last iteration, too, including resuming auto-posts of my business blog content to this personal site each time a new biz blog populates in the associated RSS feed.

I’m also enjoying capturing longhand quotes from my current readings on my Supernote Nomad and want to keep uploading those pictures online to share instead of typing out the quote. The Some.Pics feed will be a good spot for these, I think, as I have gotten used to not posting my personal pictures online over the past few years. I don’t want to get back into the mental trap of “will this make a good photo to share?” When I’m out and about enjoying something in the real world.

Therefore, the third version of my plan looks like:

Original content gets posted to:

  1. egcreativecontent.com (business stuff)
  2. emilygertenbach.com (daily writing, non-biz longform stuff)
  3. Medium.com (Tiredof.Tech posts)
  4. Some.pics (book excerpts handwritten as PNGs)

I can then take these manual actions as I see fit:

  1. Share a some.pics link on social.lol (its sister site/mastodon integration)
  2. Share a ToT content link from Medium to emilygertenbach.com
  3. Import an emilygertenbach.com post to Medium
  4. Share any of my longform blogs to LinkedIn as I see fit
  5. Share ToT content on the ToT Bluesky

And automatic actions happen to save time:

  1. Egcreativecontent.com blog posts get shared as a link and micropost on emilygertenbach.com
  2. A link on emilygertenbach.com to my some.pics page keeps that album connection up to date
  3. Anything posted to emilygertenbach.com gets pushed to Bluesky and Mastodon
  4. Anything posted to emilygertenbach.com gets shared to the rest of the fediverse via bridgy.fed so people can find it using their client of choice

The automatic actions always happen; I will probably do 1-2 of the manual actions per day. All of my writing still happens in Ulysses on my desktop or iPad and gets directly published to my connected platforms (ghost, micro.blog, medium).

What’s next?

Hopefully this version of the POSSE meets my current needs. I’d like to start incorporating some of the zines I make (for fun) into my content hub as well. I still need to decide how I want to fit those in and where.