Blurts

I follow several of the TWIT (This Week in Tech) podcasts and was surprised to learn that All About Android was ending (final program). I was not a listener, but the OS and associated hardware (mostly phones) continue to be popular mostly as an alternative to the more expensive iPhones and just as an alternative operating system. The hosts explained that the number of downloads was declining and it just seemed there was less interest.

The main host, Jason Howell, said that he was now going to be working on an AI-focused program and this would seem both an interesting program and a wise business decision. I will likely post a link when the podcast launches.

If you became a heavy user of the Internet within the past decade, you may only know of Google Reader through those reminiscing about the tools of long ago and far away. Perhaps you have also heard the product mentioned by those complaining about the useful services Google decided to kill even though many seemed to have found them useful.

The Verge just published a great piece summarizing the history of Reader and that can be used by anyone wanted to catch up on the history of online tech. As even my more recent posts have indicated, I still find value in RSS and “readers” that allow a user control of the content they access. Source awareness and context are what we lose when we become enamored of AI summaries of questionable validity.

Edmodo was a popular site for K12 education that shut down about a year ago. At the time, I thought that the closing was a function of financial problems brought on by their free tier. This position was seemingly promoted by Edmodo.

“After more than a decade of ensuring Edmodo can stay a free tool for all, we have found that it is no longer viable for us to maintain the level of service you deserve and that we can take pride in ourselves,” the company wrote on its website. “As a result, we have made the difficult decision to shut down Edmodo.com.”

It may have been more than that. About a month ago, the FTC announced that it was suing Edmodo for collecting student personal information in a way not allowed by COPPA. Schools can vouch for students when student information is only used for educational purposes. It turns out that the information collected from students was used to target ads.

People use microblogs (e.g., Twitter, Mastodon) for different reasons. I have mostly used such tools for discovery. I get the feeling many have moved from RSS readers to microblogs to keep up with innovations.

I am also on the other side of this trend. When I examine the data on how individuals come to my blogs, I see an obvious trend away from RSS to search and microblog recommendations. I mostly blog using WordPress which offers extensions that will automatically send tweets and toots when a new post is published. This is very handy and eliminates to the need to connect to the microblogs and generate a post.

Twitter has obviously undergone changes in the last year or so with the new ownership and agenda. I understand that some of these changes concern political issues, but some involve how to generate revenue. Evidently, some of the new revenue plans involve charging heavy users. I have bumped up against this change, not because I am a heavy user by any means, but because it appears Twitter is changing its API to differentiate those who post automatically into different tiers.

Anyway, this means that the WordPress extension I have used for years suddenly stopped working requiring some adjustment on my part. My familiar WordPress extension refused to allow me to post and provided the following alert.

I began searching for an updated extension and was dismayed to find that the process had become far more complicated. There is still a free tier for those of us making occasional use, but application process seems quite complicated.

I did start the application process, but I quickly became annoyed over what used to be such as simple thing. For the immediate future, I have decided to just manually post to Twitter and wait to see what happens. How many casual bloggers are going to make this effort?