POSSE: Matrix Community Year In Review 2022
This is my POSSE copy of announcements I posted to the Matrix Community Year In Review 2022, which was subsequently published on Nico's blog and on Matrix.org's blog.
The Matrix Community Year In Review 2022 is a community-focused complement to the end-of-year review from the founders of Matrix, The Matrix Holiday Update 2022, which is naturally focused on the business and corporate aspects of the ecosystem, the Element company, and the Matrix foundation.
Nico is the lead developer of the matrix desktop app Nheko. He solicited input from the matrix developer community in a dedicated matrix room. Many responded by posting updates on what they and their projects had done during the year. Nico published the resulting collection on his blog as Matrix Community Year In Review 2022 on 2022-12-31.
Thib from Element then published it on Matrix.org's blog.
Open Tech Will Save Us on PeerTube
https://wrily.foad.me.uk/open-tech-will-save-us-on-peertube — I am publishing the Open Tech Will Save Us (OTWSU) talks on an Open Tech platform — namely on my own instance of Peertube. — Thanks to Harald for doing it first. — This article talks more about why, how, etc.
Google-free push notifications with UnifiedPush and Ntfy
In the interests of supporting Open Tech in general, I made a small contribution to matrix-docker-ansible-deploy: it can now install the ntfy push notifications server for you.
To explain what it's for: Using the UnifiedPush open standard, ntfy enables self-hosted (Google-free) push notifications. The notifications go from Matrix (and other) servers, to our self-hosted ntfy server, and then straight to our phone. Especially useful for users of Google-free Android phones, and others who want to reduce their dependence on big tech.
To set it up, see Setting up the ntfy push notifications server in the playbook docs.
Read about it on my blog: UnifiedPush notifications for your Matrix server with ntfy.
Matrix ClassDojo Bridge
I began a project to bridge matrix to the teacher-parent messaging silo ClassDojo, which is popular especially in USA and UK schools.
I am motivated by my loathing of being coerced into putting my private communications in yet another silo where I am restricted to accessing my messages and photos through the company's own products which subject me to advertising and engagement tactics (“Your child earned a point — click to see what for!”), where I cannot easily keep my own copy of my own data (“Subscribe now to keep your memories!”), and all the other typical down-sides of a Big Tech silo.
This scenario is of course exactly where Matrix shines. An ideal fit for a school's messaging needs, scrapping the silo business model, putting the organisation in control of its own data and policies.
In the first half of 2022 I got as far as being able to do an offline demo — manually running the fetching and bridging stages, with the teacher and class names, story text and photos bridged in the to-matrix direction.
My work on this was generously sponsored by my wife.
Since then, the project has been on hold, seeking further funding.
My next step plan for the bridge, when I can get back to it, is to adjust the bridged output to the matrix-for-social-media formats used in FUTO Circles (previously “Circuli”) and MinesTRIX to present a familiar and beautiful display.
Self-Host a Matrix Map Tile Server
I set up my own OpenStreetMap tiles server for secure location sharing with Matrix.
See this guide on my blog which explains why and how I did it, and the Ansible role, and the matrix discussion room Matrix Map Tile Server.
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