Terence Eden’s Blog

Should your phone be a webserver?

@edentandroid phone ReDeCentralize websites · 7 comments · 500 words · read ~317 times.

Screenshot of a Symbian mobile phone asking "Opening a secure connection. Yes or No?"

I really like this article from Rohan D "Every Phone Should Be Able to Run Personal Website". In it, they make the convincing case that phones are perfectly capable of hosting websites and - if we want more people to escape the walled-gardens - this could be a good way to get people back into self-hosting. I loved hosting a small site on my Nokia N95 back in the day, and I'd be overjoyed if modern phones allowed this. But there are a few pitfalls. Connectivity is the main one. If you're sat …

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How I got my username on (nearly) every site

@edentedent websites · 5 comments · 1,400 words · read ~11,721 times.

An error message on Flickr's edit name screen.

I go by "edent" on most websites. It's short, relates to my real name, and is usually unique. I quite often sign up to things just to snag the name. But there have been a couple of sites where someone else has got there first and started using "my" name. I don't own the trademark, nor have any special rights to that name. So I wanted to document how I recovered it on a few prominent sites. NPM The ~edent account had no activity on it. I emailed support to see if I could claim it as an…

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