Simon B. Carstensen

Rebuilding Jottit, a tool for simple web publishing I originally built with Aaron Swartz in 2007. Bringing a little of the old web spirit back.

[Simon B. Carstensen @simoncarstensen]

jottit source code available at https://t.co/kpGrWoXtty AGPLv3 licensed

[Simon B. Carstensen @simoncarstensen]

i haven't announced it anywhere yet, but i recently ported the original jottit code base (which I wrote with Aaron Swartz back in 2007) to a similar, but modern stack (flask+jinja2+SQLAlchemy). it now runs on https://t.co/0BXvZC1NQV. retro software nice :)

[Simon B. Carstensen @simoncarstensen]

it still needs a bit of work, but seeing jottit alive again after all these years was actually quite moving.

[Simon B. Carstensen @simoncarstensen]

with help from AI I can pretty much build a prototype of any idea in just a day or two. the deeper challenge becomes figuring out what to build in the first place. finding direction. figuring out human needs and designing solutions that are actually useful.

[Simon B. Carstensen @simoncarstensen]

what are the primitives of publishing on the web today? that's what i'm exploring with reef. so far: markdown files, git, AI, RSS, and the URL.

[Simon B. Carstensen @simoncarstensen]

continuing reef today: prompt an AI agent to shape markdown into a personal site. i've been building web apps my whole life, but this is completely different: local-first, programmable, git-backed, WordPress for publishing.

[Simon B. Carstensen @simoncarstensen]

Been thinking about this piece by @davewiner the last few days https://t.co/CL9OagNPQG Aligns with everything that I've been trying to build with Jottit and the handful of projects that grew out of it. But coming at it from a very different angle. I want to build this.

[Simon B. Carstensen @simoncarstensen]

Posted Jottit to Hacker News today felt really nervous about it. 90 minutes later: zero points. Laughing at myself now. Trying again tomorrow. https://t.co/pSDaj0YNwu

[Simon B. Carstensen @simoncarstensen]

I had a small revelation about Jottit. I'd been thinking of it as a site builder. Then someone created a post and shared it with me, and it clicked. Jottit is for putting stuff on the web. Create a page, share it. Claim it and it shows up on your profile. https://t.co/CUSaGxqRLy

[Simon B. Carstensen @simoncarstensen]

https://t.co/pSDaj0Zlm2 is the original idea, back from the dead. https://t.co/YGQ9iXwZPO is a brand new minimalist blogging tool. Jottit should stay Jottit. https://t.co/97kIN6S7M8

[Simon B. Carstensen @simoncarstensen]

Aaron Swartz and I built Jottit in 2007 as the simplest way to make a web page. I've spent the last year rebuilding it, but it kept drifting, trying to be a wiki, a blog, and a publishing platform all at once. So I made a big decision: I split it in two!

[Simon B. Carstensen @simoncarstensen]

This is Jottit. Click a button, write something, and you have a site. That's it. https://t.co/CUSaGxqRLy

[Simon B. Carstensen @simoncarstensen]

I’m rebuilding Jottit, a tool for simple web publishing I originally built with Aaron Swartz in 2007. Here’s how it got started: https://t.co/SZLaJtewxN

[Simon B. Carstensen @simoncarstensen]

New on Jottit: blogrolls. Shows site avatars and latest posts, ordered by most recently active.

Here's mine: https://t.co/UBPyWDcblk

Time to bring blogrolls back.

[Simon B. Carstensen @simoncarstensen]

@kraenhansen @Socialsquare Awesome! Wish I could have been there!

[Maria Popova @themarginalian]

What a glorious and gentle world, and how easily we forget.

[Ethan Zuckerman @EthanZ]

After six years in prison, @h0d3r returns to find the web dying, killed by apps and the disappearance of hyperlinks: https://t.co/lhQ1gBMSiG

[Shubham SHARMA @shubham_nocode]

Import your @LinkedIn network into @neo4j graph DB, check this out http://t.co/nk6ARVaAi5 #API #PyCon2015 #nosql