Ghost vs. Substack, Eleventy vs. WordPress: My Experiences

red typewriter

This month I began yet another web side-project: a weekly newsletter called Web Technology News on the Ghost platform. I currently have two other active websites: Cybercultural, my internet history site that I run via Eleventy and Cloudflare (and Buttondown for email delivery); and my personal website, ricmac.org, which has been running on WordPress for … Read more

Announcing the Release of My Memoir as a Paperback and eBook

Bubble Blog book

I’m thrilled to announce that my book, Bubble Blog: From Outsider to Insider in Silicon Valley’s Web 2.0 Revolution, is now available to purchase as a paperback or eBook on Amazon. Click on any of these links to order your copy: Paperback, US$19.99: Amazon; Bookshop.org eBook, US$9.99: Amazon Kindle Store; Apple Books; Google Play Note: … Read more

The state of serverless

I’ve just finished a series of five columns for The New Stack about the serverless trend in cloud computing. It’s a terrible name, but basically serverless means removing all the backend burden for developers. No need to worry about infrastructure or servers, you just pay a platform like AWS Lambda to run everything — you … Read more

The Value of Online Writing Today

I’ve been thinking lately about what value long-form writing has in the current internet era, which is dominated by a combination of video (e.g. YouTube), images (e.g. Instagram), ‘in the moment’ multimedia (e.g. Snapchat, TikTok) and the black and white opinions prevalent on social media (e.g. Twitter, Facebook). There are two key aspects of the … Read more

Writers Are Builders Too

A writer’s role is to build something thoughtful and/or delightful that is of value to people. It should help readers do their jobs, or help them understand the world, or help them cope with the world (by providing entertainment or comfort). Would that qualify as a “builder” in Marc Andreessen’s eyes?

Re-connecting

I’ve been working at The New Stack for five weeks now, and am enjoying it more than any other job I’ve had since ReadWriteWeb. A big part of that is due to the team of people I’m working with, who have been generous with their time and knowledge, and welcoming. But I’m also feeling energized … Read more

The AI failures of Facebook & YouTube

The big social media companies have rightfully come under immense pressure over the past week, in the wake of the Christchurch terror attack.  But one question continues to bother me: why were Facebook and YouTube so ineffective when it came to shutting down the terrorist’s live stream and the dispersal of the video after? Over … Read more