The first week of 2024 is past and we’re all focused on our goals, and on improving our well-being in some way. So I am going to give you an idea that you can implement right now and turn into a healthy habit.
Open your calendar and write a note to yourself in the future. One month, two, three, whatever makes sense to you. I do that whenever I am going through a rough patch, when I want to remember the day I met someone special when I want to see how one of my decisions turned out.
I’ve done that on my calendar for ages. If you prefer an email, you can also use the website https://www.futureme.org/.
Web Wars — Rise of the Fediverse
Technology sometimes battles with itself now and then. Some of us saw this happen when there were two formats for video tapes. VHS was backed by Sony and won over the Betamax format. VHS was cheaper and allowed for longer play times but Betamax had better image quality.
We are seeing a similar battle happen between the AT Protocol and the ActivityPub Protocol. The first is developed and used by Blue Sky and the second is backed by the World Wide Web Consortium.
ActivityPub is also used by Mastodon and Takahe. And you will hear the word Fediverse many times when discussing these protocols. Both of them offer a decentralized way to communicate in a Twitter-like fashion that reminds us of the way that blogs exchanged links automatically.
Flipboard’s Move to the Fediverse
The article curation app is also adopting the ActivityPub as a way to move to the Fediverse.
In January, Flipboard plans to allow every user to follow the Fediverse, with full integration to be done by April 2024.
At the same time, Threads is also implementing activityPub.
While Blue Sky is showing some interesting features with the AT Protocol, it is still losing ground. ActivityPub has captivated two key stakeholders so far, developers and content curators. Content creators motivated by gains in advertising and partnerships still haven’t shown signs of leaning either way as far as I know.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the fediverse
Danielle Navarro is a data scientist who wrote a very comprehensive guide on how to navigate the Fediverse. I suggest you save it for future reference if you plan on using Mastodon or any other ActivityPub kind of app.
We had put the same idea into practice with similar tools to allow Gregory MS to post new clinical trials and new relevant papers over at med-mastodon.com. And we did the same with Blue Sky.
While bots can be a spam tool, good content curation, and a solid method turns them into information-distributing agents for key publics. And for the first time in years, the social media landscape is offering us the opportunity to build new tools and to play around with different ways to publish and share content.
Your AI tools for this week
I want you to spend less time writing emails and I hope these tools can help.
https://textcraftai.com/ is an app that tries to be Your Personal Inbox Wizard.
https://www.lavender.ai/ promises you will Write better emails faster and get more replies in less time.
https://www.writewithlaika.com/ is an app that learns your writing style to be a better assistant.
marcel eberle
