DEV Community: jenn schiffer

This is the last Glitch newsletter I am posting here (not clickbait)

jenn schiffer — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 20:56:14 +0000

Welcome to the August newsletter. I was looking up some inspiration on how to open it and found a sketchy website that said that the official animal of August is the starfish which is a sign of renewal. That could be totally made up but, whatever, this is a time of renewal for a lot of you: students and teachers going back to school, folks getting back to work after summer vacation, and I imagine starfish are feeling a renewed sense of relief that they were not collected on the shore by said vacationers (note: I’m a computer scientist, not an ocean scientist).

This is a time of renewal for me, too. After serving as your community leader for the past 7.5 years (21.4% of the average lifespan of a starfish, according to a less sketchy website called Wikipedia), I’m leaving Fastly at the end of this month. You and I are in such good hands with the rest of the Glitch team – without them, we’d not be on the path we are to deliver on the strategy I laid out earlier this year, and I wouldn’t feel as good about my decision to leave this job as I do today. I can’t wait to see them grow the platform and community and help us all share and discover the best parts of the web. Please be kind to them, as they work so hard for us and love Glitch as much as I do.

So, this post heading wasn’t clickbait. Going forward you’ll be hearing from the rest of the incredible Glitch team. As for me, I’ll be reading those newsletters, chatting with you in the forum, continuing to enjoy your cool apps, taking part in code jams, and maybe even finishing some of the hundreds of Glitch apps I’ve started through the years. I can’t wait to share what I create with you! In the meantime, the rest of this newsletter is full of, you guessed it, cool apps and blogs you shared over the past month.

See you on glitch.com

@jennschiffer, #1 Glitch community fan, not a starfish 👽

On the blogs ✍️

Check out some of the apps you shared on the web in the July community roundup that will help you generate wishes, generate waves, see the moon, and - yes - make it seem like Kamala Harris likes your favorite band.
Sue has more resources to get you started with Glitch on Fastly - especially if you want to set up a custom, secure domain for your Glitch app. Check out the video on the blog and her great and comprehensive intro to edge computing on the Fastly dev.to - you’re going to want to follow that blog because it’s rich in helpful, informative content!

Let us know what tutorials and guides you’d like to see to help you supercharge any of your projects using Fastly!

Here are some blog posts from the community that we loved!

At least 112 blogs and news sites, according to my research, have shared their versions of Kamala Holding Vinyls. By far the most iconic, though, was from the Charles Mingus estate - whose record started it all.
I often prefer reduced motion, and you can learn about what that means and how to oblige me and others’ preferences in Google Chrome’s web.dev article about it.
Soon-to-be-fellow Glitch alum, Keith, made a wave generator for our code jam last month!
One thing I’ll never stop doing is collecting and giving out Glitch stickers. Andy gave us a lot of love on his blog after I sent stickers out to them and our external sites beta testers.
I wasn’t at PragueJs but I loved reading Jan’s talk about the web we’ve never lost. Glitch got a shout out but it was really cool to see Stefan get the spotlight for his bot work that just happens to be on Glitch.

Have you written about your Glitch apps on a blog, a conference talk…anywhere? Let us know and we’ll feature it in the next newsletter!

On the forum 📣

Check out what the Glitch community is sharing and discussing:

From the Gallery: @MilesWK explores local storage and tells us all about it, @okerew builds an editor like legends do, @haizibliek continues work on a browser extension for autocompletion on Glitch, and more!
Say hi and share what you’ve been working on in the latest Community Open thread or in The Gallery!

The Glitch Community Forum is the best way to ask the community for help, share what you’re making, exchange friendly banter and get to know your fellow friendly Glitch creators. See you there! 😎

Haven’t gone Pro yet? New subscribers can sign up for Glitch Pro with the code JUSTDRAW and get 25% off. You’ll get 100% of the superpowers Glitch Pro gives you – like project access controls, always-on apps, and more!

Hi, it's Glitch, and this is your May newsletter

jenn schiffer — Tue, 21 May 2024 15:15:48 +0000

Happy May! Does it feel like the seasons have changed for you yet? It definitely feels and sounds like summer (in NYC the summer sounds like jackhammering and street construction). For many of you, the feeling of the season is probably the anticipation of classes ending. Clearly I’m just trying to come up with a segue about learning so I can tell you that the Glitch Community Code Jam prompt this month is “teach a thing.” See, I did it.

There’s a lot of other stuff going on on Glitch to distract you from taking finals, grading papers, and discovering new outdoor allergies - like big updates to the Glitch preview, working on the next season of Glitch Jams Live (give me your feedback, hopes, dreams and nightmares!) and a lot more that will be more visible in several weeks. But right now, you’re reading this, so I invite you to keep scrolling and check out what happened on Glitch last month.

See you on glitch.com

Jenn, Director of Community 👽

P.S. Fastly’s next Xcelerate is in London on June 18th! It’s free, packed with engaging technical sessions, and it’s a great opportunity to network with others who care about instant and secure web apps. Sign up today.

On the blogs ✍️

Our roundup of your projects from April is full of places, spaces, buggies and more.
Here’s a new creator profile, but not a new creator by any means: meet Khaleel Gibran, who has Rick Rolled me more than anyone else on the planet but pleeeeease that is not a challenge!

Here are some blog posts from the community that we loved!

One of the best e-essayists out there imho, Robin Rendle, gave a shout out to terminal-based e-essay, ~all-about-computer-love.
To no one’s surprise at all, Maps Mania put out quite a few bangers in April - in particular their fine art take on geoguessr and the slim city clicker game.
Ryan aka “That Virtual Boy” gave a great, exhaustive walkthrough of their generative wallpaper app that uses Glitch as a server. It’s a great case study to taking an app idea to execution and all the things they learned along the way.

Have you written about your Glitch apps on a blog, a conference talk…anywhere? Let us know and we’ll feature it in the next newsletter!

On the forum 📣

Check out what the Glitch community is sharing and discussing:

Fresh from The Gallery: Pufferfish101007 created a Rust version of our Hello Compute starter, andypiper aggregated Glitch posts from the Fediverse, and more!
Say hi and share what you’ve been working on in the latest Community Open thread!

Haven’t gone Pro yet? New subscribers can sign up for Glitch Pro with the code TEACHATHING and get 25% off. You’ll get 100% of the superpowers Glitch Pro gives you – like project access controls, always-on apps, and more!

This month we're snug as a bug under a Glitch-powered rug

jenn schiffer — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 18:10:38 +0000

Happy April! I recently got back from speaking at the Community-led Summit in Boston to a room full of other professionals who also have “community” in their title. Who manages the community when all the community managers are in a hotel conference room? For Glitch, the answer is “the rest of the Glitch team.” They’ve also been working hard on updating containers and deploying newness to the Glitch preview, so this email is dedicated to them for all their hard work and enabling me to take a couple of days off to tell the Glitch community story to the rest of the world.

In case you missed it, this month’s Glitch Community Code Jam prompt is “cool bugs”. And now that I’m back in town, it’s a good time to get started if you haven’t already: you can join me this Friday at 2pm on the Glitch Jams Live stream and we can work on our submissions together! Until then, the rest of this email has a lot of links to cool apps and blogs that should keep you busy.

See you on glitch.com

Jenn, Director of Community and Bugs 👽

P.S. Speaking of live shows, my pals on the Dev Rel team here at Fastly run a monthly show on Youtube featuring demos and live coding. If you like or hate 😏 bots, you’ll want to subscribe and catch the next one!

On the blogs ✍️

Our roundup of March projects from the community will take you on a journey through breathing exercises, screensavers, the terminal, and so much more. Also on the Glitch blog....

A few weeks ago, Glitch turned 7. I blogged about it, yee-haw.
Anil wrote in celebration of a student-built game, using Glitch, that was up for an independent game award. Anything about digital pets is a winner to me.
Upon his last day on the Glitch team, Keith blogged.

Here are some blog posts from the community that we loved!

Web Curios opened this issue with a huge shout out to the beautiful console essay (and recent Glitch App of the Week) ~all-about-computer-love.
Zach Leatherman joined me on Glitch Jams Live last month and wrote about it! That was a really fun interview, I love how the name Eleventy is an homage to his grandma.
Our Culture Mag did a profile on artist Qinru Zhang, who used Glitch to explore AI generation of art based on handmade drawings with ~future-wonderland.
Stefan Bohacek analyzed some Fediverse data related to followers of his bots for his blog.

Have you written about your Glitch apps on a blog, a conference talk…anywhere? Let us know and we’ll feature it in the next newsletter!

On the forum 📣

Check out what the Glitch community is sharing and discussing:

Fresh from The Gallery:
- @Pufferfish101007 updated their Rust-ified version of our Compute starter
- @Samme used Phaser to make a flappy-birdish game
- @MilesWK has jokes, and so much more!
Say hi and share what you’ve been working on in the latest Community Open thread!

Haven’t gone Pro yet? New subscribers can sign up for Glitch Pro with the code COOLBUGS and get 25% off. You’ll get 100% of the superpowers Glitch Pro gives you – like project access controls, always-on apps, and more!

March on Glitch goes in like a lion and out like...an app. Yep, that’s the one.

jenn schiffer — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 16:14:32 +0000

Happy March! The NYC weather last week was in the 60s (F) and sunny and this week it's cold and windy – I swear, if it snows soon I'm going to send myself into orbit! I’ve been thinking about snow a lot, as one does in March, because I’d been agonizing over what the screensaver I’m making for this month’s Community Code Jam should be. On the one hand, I think it would be cool to have snow falling like the old JavaScript code snippets we used to add to our websites 20 years ago, but also a generative artwork based on the time of day would be really fun and dynamic.

If you have any great ideas, say it to my virtual face this Friday at 2pm Eastern on Glitch Jams Live. While you wait, there’s plenty of awesome community projects and content in the rest of this email to tide you over.

See you on glitch.com

Jenn, Director of Community and blog enthusiast 👽

P.S. If it’s your job (or hobby, even) to care about performance or security, and you can be in the San Francisco area on April 4th, you should check out our conference Fastly Xcelerate. There’s no better opportunity to share space and network directly with the Fastly community as well as my colleagues who are responsible for making it all work. It’s free and you can register here today!

On the blogs ✍️

Check out our February community project roundup on the Glitch blog, featuring apps race horses around New Jersey, the difference between “former” and “latter”, sort emoji alphabetically, and more!

Here are some blog posts (and a podcast!) from the community that we loved!

I love Naive Weekly, and it’s not uncommon to come across a Glitch app here and there, like ~httpoetics and ~all-about-computer-love
Bluesky is open to the public and some of the tools to help you get started live on Glitch, like ~bannerizer
Semaphore makes the case for using Vite, listing Glitch (see you starters!) among other platforms that are all in on my personal favorite on-demand building tool.

Have you written about your Glitch apps on a blog, a conference talk…anywhere? Let us know and we’ll feature it in the next newsletter!

On the forum 📣

Check out what the Glitch community is sharing and discussing:

Fresh from The Gallery:
- @allo showed us how to connect a database to the Perchance generator platform
- @n.hieda shared a work-in-progress dance-tech performance based on an interactive Hydra app on Glitch
- and @derekahmedzai made it easy to share your Letterboxd faves.
Say hi and share what you’ve been working on in the latest Community Open thread!

Haven’t gone Pro yet? New subscribers can sign up for Glitch Pro with the code SCREENSAVERS and get 25% off. You’ll get 100% of the superpowers Glitch Pro gives you – like project access controls, always-on apps, and more!

Last month on Glitch was weird and wonderful, let's blog about it! ✍️

jenn schiffer — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 22:50:02 +0000

Happy February! I know that January is the start of the year, but for me it’s always February that feels like a fresh beginning - it’s both my birth and Glitch anniversary month, and that’s why I look for any way to make everything about the things I enjoy. That’s why the prompt for this month’s Glitch Community Code Jam is “welcome to my blog.” I love blogs - always have, always will, and the turbulence that social media is going through is lending itself to a sort of renaissance of blogging. This is just to say, I want to read your blogs OR I want you to start one if you haven’t already AND you should submit them to our jam.

Before you scroll to see some very cool blog posts and projects, I want to remind you all that February 28th is our deprecation date for versions of Node < 12, and this week we’re removing Chromium from containers. All of this is in service of getting Glitch up to date - and to combat activities making it difficult for the community to create cool stuff.

See you on glitch.com

Jenn, Director of Community and blog enthusiast 👽

P.S. Fastly is running a developer meetup in our new NYC space on February 27th - if you’re in the area, we’d love for you to join us for an evening of refreshments, activities and conversations about computing at the edge. It’s also a good opportunity to get some Glitch stickers that I’ve been hoarding at my desk! Save yourself a spot for this free event before they run out.

On the blogs ✍️

If you loved Last Year on Glitch, you’ll love our monthly roundups, with this year starting off hot with the Last Month on Glitch, January edition. This issue includes:

A browser for…toasters
Most flavors of Mountain Dew
Slime (or goo)
Lots of geographic trivia

…and so much more! Check it out for yourself and be sure to add our blog to your RSS feed readers which I know you have if you’re a sicko like me.

Here are some blog posts (and a podcast!) from the community that we loved!

The New Stack wrote about (and even interviewed some of) the Last Year on Glitch 2023 creators.
Maps Mania keeps challenging our knowledge of cities in wildly challenging ways like with their recent game, 25cities.
Google’s Sam Dutton goes deep into what the parts of a URL are. See if you can list the parts before clicking through.
Glitch alum and pal, Danilo Campos, was on the Screaming in the Cloud podcast!

Have you written about your Glitch apps on a blog, a conference talk…anywhere? Let us know and we’ll feature it in the next newsletter!

On the forum 📣

Check out what the Glitch community is sharing and discussing:

Fresh from The Gallery: @n.hieda shared shapes and textures from Taiwan using leaflet, @raulibaper updated their Chat-GPT-facilitated Time Timer app, and @24amesquir served us some 2D jelly.
Say hi and share what you’ve been working on in the latest Community Open thread!

Haven’t gone Pro yet? New subscribers can sign up for Glitch Pro with the code WELCOMETOMYBLOG and get 25% off. You’ll get 100% of the superpowers Glitch Pro gives you – like project access controls, always-on apps, and more!

It's our #giftgiving Code Jam, plus a couple dozen more cool links you can and should click on this December

jenn schiffer — Mon, 18 Dec 2023 18:17:31 +0000

Happy December! I’m watching tiny flurries falling down outside the office window as I type this, and finally feeling both the rush to and relief of a brief winter break before the new year. With all the lights and seasonal cheer on display, it only made sense to choose “gift-giving” as this month’s Glitch Community Code Jam.

Before you shut your school and work laptops, though, I need a huge favor from you: tell us your nominations for the 2023 Last Year on Glitch! That’s right, it’s our third annual celebration of a wild year of creativity from the Glitch community, and this year we’re welcoming the Fediverse developer community into the mix. Get your nominations, and rickroll attempts, in by December 22nd and stay warm and cozy for the rest of this gift-giving season, ok!

See you on glitch.com

Jenn, Director of Community 👽

P.S. Did you know that we have a weekly livestream on Youtube? It’s called Glitch Jams Live and it’s the channel to surf to when you want to see cool websites and apps the Glitch community is building - and we also do a little live coding as a treat. See you there Fridays at 2pm Eastern!

On the blogs ✍️

The November edition of Last Month on Glitch is full of great community projects with cats purring, geometric abstractions, 3d oceanscapes and more!
We’re building a whole new Glitch and need your help with this next phase of getting Node projects up to date with newer versions.

Here are some blog posts from the community that we loved!

Taking an Internet Walk from the Syllabus Project is an incredible journey across many cool parts of the web, some made on Glitch like ~cloudwatching.
The Salem Reporter did a profile on Sophia Wood’s Porthales of Salem project - a mix of art, poetry, imagination, and map technology.
Pradeep D. wrote about their Bhagavad Gita typing game and its purpose of teaching a younger generation about this holy book.
Stefan Bohacek celebrated their fediverse anniversary with a retrospective of their prolific creations over the past year.
The Google Chrome team used Glitch for demoing origin trials, picture-in-picture for the web, federated credential management, and ignore list management in dev tools

Have you written about your Glitch apps on a blog, a conference talk…anywhere? Let us know and we’ll feature it in the next newsletter!

On the forum 📣

Check out what the Glitch community is sharing and discussing:

Fresh from The Gallery: @raulibaper used AI to help make a web version of the visual Time Timer and @n.hieda made an optical flow visualization starter which they remixed for their self-portrait Code Jam project ~cubitoo.
Say hi and share what you’ve been working on in the latest Community Open thread!

Haven’t gone Pro yet? New subscribers can sign up for Glitch Pro with the code GIFTGIVING and get 25% off. You’ll get 100% of the superpowers Glitch Pro gives you – like project access controls, always-on apps, and more!

One Weird Kubernetes Trick, Timothée Chalomet, our first Code Jam ever, and more 🍓🤳

jenn schiffer — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 15:38:01 +0000

Happy November! Some of you may be in chaotic end-of-year mode, be it through school ahead of holiday break or at work during 2024 planning. Either way, I appreciate you taking the time to read our posts.

Things are far more buzzing than chaotic on our team. We’ve been laying down a lot of groundwork towards building the new Glitch - which, in case you missed it, you can learn how to get involved here in the forum. The vision has always been building with the community, and so I’m stoked that we kicked off our first Glitch Community Code Jams. All through November the community has been building around the theme of “self-portrait.”

I’ve been building my own self-portrait for the jam too, live every Friday on our Youtube channel. Subscribe and join us sometime! I spend most of the hour showing off cool projects the community made on Glitch and then do some casual live coding while the chat helps me point out where I misplaced a comma. Hey, it keeps me humble!

See you on glitch.com

Jenn, Director of Community 👽

P.S. Have you created anything on Glitch lately? We’d love to feature it as an upcoming App of the Week. Submit your creations - or your favorites from the community - here!

On the blogs ✍️

In the October edition of Last Month on Glitch, we showcase community projects built on WebXR, maps, Raspberry Pis, Timothée Chalomet’s wardrobe, and a lot more!

Here are some blog posts from the community that we loved!

If you use Kubernetes, you're going to read this one: my teammate, Hannah Aubry, shared how to get the fastest and most secure experience with this One Weird Trick.
Keiran Lee Farr put a lot of thought into building BabyPi, a toy computer for kids, using Glitch and a Raspberry Pi. In part 2, they shared a step-by-step guide on how to build one yourself!
Rory Gianni recorded and shared out their hands-on introductory webinar for D3, a great way to get started if you’re interested in building data visualizations!
Our own Casey did a one-month review and update on their social bookmarking project ~postmarks.
As someone obsessed with Wikipedia, I absolutely must share Stefan Bohacek’s “top edits on Wikipedia” bot!
And as the daughter of a former garbage truck driver, I also have to share the Google Chrome developer blog’s post about WebAssembly Garbage Collection which includes a demo of it with Kotlin in action on Glitch~

Have you written about your Glitch apps on a blog, a conference talk…anywhere? Let us know and we’ll feature it in the next newsletter!

On the forum 📣

Check out what the Glitch community is sharing and discussing:

Fresh from The Gallery: @naotohieda taught a Hydra workshop and also found time to make code jam tool picker wheel! Also, @yonle created a really cool novel emulator called Novelscript.
Say hi and share what you’ve been working on in the latest Community Open thread!

Haven’t gone Pro yet? New subscribers can sign up for Glitch Pro with the code SELFPORTRAIT and get 25% off. You’ll get 100% of the superpowers Glitch Pro gives you – like project access controls, always-on apps, and more!

Learn about XSS, submit your app of the week, have an AI make you a mixtape, and other things to do when it's too hot outside

jenn schiffer — Mon, 24 Jul 2023 19:19:26 +0000

Happy July, everyone. For those of you on summer break, I hope you’re having a chill and restful one. For the rest of us, happiest of Q3’s to you and yours lol. Whether you’re on break or not, there’s something about the summer that relieves some of the pressure from all the hard work over the winter months. I think it’s the fresh grass and flowers of the season that do it for me.

The Glitch team has been doing some gardening of our own over the past few weeks: the latest addition to our new homepage is our new weekly feature, “App of the Week.” As I type this, we’re featuring a classic: Dan Reeves’ Nasa logo generator. Next week: your favorite app? Your latest creation? Send your submissions here and help us shine a spotlight on all the coolest (even in this heat) apps in the universe.

See you on glitch.com
Jenn, Director of Community 👽

On the blogs ✍️

In case you missed it on the Glitch Blog...

Catch up on the June edition of Last Month on Glitch to see what the community’s been up to, including a fun spin on the game 2048, progressive web apps, 2D map shading and so much more.
We chatted with Summer Anne Burton about her mixtape generator, Summbot, her inspirations, and more.
Off the heels of WWDC last month, we showcased how the Glitch community has been leading the charge on progressive web apps and mixed reality, and we gave our homepage a new look to showcase just that - including some new starters to make continuing that work even easier.

Here are some blog posts from the community that we loved!

Maps Mania uses country size comparison with the rest of the world to visualize the impact of climate change.
The Chrome Developer team wrote about improved full screen experiences with the Keyboard Lock API
Here’s a great explainer on cross-site scripting (XSS) from the Atlassian Developer blog.
Okta used Glitch in this tutorial to help you get started quick with Actions.
Rory Gianni shares their process in creating their generative shirt visualizer in a series of videos.

Have you written about your Glitch apps on a blog, a conference talk…anywhere! Let us know and we’ll feature it in the next newsletter!

On the forum 📣

Check out what the Glitch community is sharing and discussing:

Fresh from The Gallery: @vanessa-vasquez share their alignment chart creator after making some with friends and @pomax showed us how to make height map images and turn them into 2D maps!
Say hi and share what you’ve been working on in the latest Community Open thread!

Haven’t gone Pro yet? New subscribers can sign up for Glitch Pro with the code TOOHOTOUTSIDE and get 25% off. You’ll get 100% of the superpowers Glitch Pro gives you – like project access controls, always-on apps, and more!

Build web apps and mixed reality experiences while you hear from the folks keeping the largest Mastodon instance running

jenn schiffer — Tue, 20 Jun 2023 14:46:15 +0000

Happy June! Everyone seems to either be wrapping up the school year or finishing up projects at work ahead of trips to the beach – or whatever it is that humans do when it gets this warm out. Our team’s been busy too; in case you missed it, we launched a new Glitch homepage, created new starter apps to celebrate Apple’s expanding support for progressive web apps and open VR/XR, and made huge progress in letting the Glitch community tap into all of Fastly’s features for supercharging your apps – we’ll be sharing more about this very soon!

While you wait, why not keep scrolling to check out what the community created, shared and wrote about last month, yeah?

See you on glitch.com!
Jenn, Director of Community 👽

P.S. Recently, Mastodon had to fight off a huge wave of DDOS attacks, and we’re going to be hosting what I know will be a really interesting conversation about how Fastly teamed up with the Mastodon community to keep the fediverse running smoothly, called “Mitigating DDOS in the Fediverse with Mastodon” – it’s happening June 28 and is free to sign up. (Let your friends who run their own Mastodon instances know!)

On the blogs ✍️

In case you missed it on the Glitch Blog...

Check out what you created last month in the May edition of Last Month on Glitch, featuring mythical creatures, time travel, a 3D incantation bowl from ancient Mesopotamia…you know, the usual Glitch fare.
Sue blogged about our inability to define the real skill in being a software developer and raises the question for you all: what skills do software developers have beyond writing code?
Jenn Turner had a brief chat with Stefan Bohacek about bots! By the way, she’s looking for more folks to talk to so nominate what creators you’d like to hear about - could even be you!

Here are some blog posts from the community that we loved!

Raymond Camden used Glitch to test the Web Share API and shared his results, with directions on how to try it yourself!
Rory Gianni used Glitch to design an infinite number of shirts with fruit on them. Now they just have to sew them all…
John Mueller built a Midjourney-processing integration between Discord and Lightroom and shared a tutorial so you can make your own.
Berlin-based studio, Invisible Room wrote about getting started on A-frame.
Clive Thompson wrote about the worst computer bugs and how learning about them has shaped his own coding.

Have you written about your Glitch apps on a blog, a conference talk…anywhere! Let us know and we’ll feature it in the next newsletter!

On the forum 📣

Check out what the Glitch community is sharing and discussing:

Fresh from The Gallery: @etsinger advocates for safer biking in Chicago, @pb.oliver.mcloughlin brings Chat-GPT into the Glitch editor, and @wh0 creates a bot that codes with you!
Say hi and share what you’ve been working on in the latest Community Open thread!

Haven’t gone Pro yet? New subscribers can sign up for Glitch Pro with the code SCHOOLSOUT and get 25% off. You’ll get 100% of the superpowers Glitch Pro gives you – like project access controls, always-on apps, and more!

Bringing custom domains back to Glitch and bots to Bluesky 🤖🌤️

jenn schiffer — Tue, 16 May 2023 15:15:14 +0000

Happy May on Glitch! It’s a pleasant time of the year - the weather is getting nicer and summer is on the horizon. Recently we kicked off a new testing program to get some feedback as we work towards bringing custom domains back to Glitch using Fastly’s free TLS offering - join the testing group and help us improve the experience!

By the way, have you heard of Bluesky? Another addition to the decentralized social media space, it’s built on the AT Protocol and growing fast as invites have been flowing over the past couple of weeks. I built a starter bot that counts sheep, which you can view and remix on Glitch if you’re curious about what building bots for Bluesky is like. We’ve also seen cool apps from the community like @gsajith’s ~blue-skies-ahead project which shows Bluesky posts in real time. We’re excited about decentralized social platforms, and especially excited to see our community building on and for it!

See you on glitch.com (and also @glitch.bsky.social)!

Jenn, Director of Community 👽

P.S. Shouts out to creator Dominic Farolino, who reached out to share something really cool he built on Glitch: “I always forget which GitHub repositories of mine have GitHub pages enabled, and therefore might be hosting something cool for the world to see. So I created gh-pages.glitch.me to show me…From spending a little time on it I actually found some pretty cool projects that I didn't know about!”

On the blogs ✍️

In case you missed it on the Glitch Blog...

Check out what you created last month in the April edition of Last Month on Glitch, featuring games, permutations, garbage, and keyboard bashing 🔨
We caught up with Sonny Li to talk about his team’s latest project Codédex, as well as security analyst Kim Key who remixed Glitch in Bio to make her own webpage and makes great podcast recommendations!

Here are some blog posts from the community that we loved!

Keir Clarke of Maps Mania shared this pictorial map of Americana hidden treasures
Daily used Glitch to show off their Prebuilt Integrations API and integrate a Miro board and CometChat
Raymond Camden gave a great overview of the more modern, experimental Cookie Store API.
Evan Marie Carr shared their journey using ChatGPT to build a todo app on Glitch.

Have you written about your Glitch apps on a blog, a conference talk…anywhere! Let us know and we’ll feature it in the next newsletter!

On the forum 📣

Check out what the Glitch community is sharing and discussing:

Fresh from The Gallery: with Spotify shutting down Heardle, @derekahmedzai’s clones are more useful than ever! Also, here’s a fresh new Deno starter by @pb.oliver.mcloughlin!
Say hi and share what you’ve been working on in the latest Community Open thread!

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AI is helping developers pull pranks and gags but will it replace us?

jenn schiffer — Fri, 14 Apr 2023 21:32:39 +0000

Happy April! As I’m writing this, the sun is out and it really feels like spring outside. It’s often this time of year when my brain gets out of winter hibernation and is hungry to make something fun, so I’ve been thinking a lot about online communities and how they help their members get inspired during these moments. I’d love to hear your own online community experiences as we explore how to help you all get inspired through improved discovery and connections.

The inspiration doesn’t have to wait for our work, though. Keep scrolling to check out the creative apps, blog posts and conversations the Glitch community brought over the past month.

See you on glitch.com!
Jenn, Director of Community 👽

P.S. I want to give a shout out to Joe Gaffey who replied to last month’s newsletter sharing their exploration of building a simple 3D model editor using Glitch. Try out https://3table.glitch.me/ now!

On the blogs ✍️

In case you missed it on the Glitch Blog...

Check out Last Month on Glitch to see some of the excellent apps you made in March, including all the ingredients for a delicious meal: sushi beans, AI-generated maps, dreamy fractals, and more.
Anil wrote about our point of view on AI and code and how we’re excited to see how the community is using Glitch to experiment with AI.
If you missed last month’s newsletter, you can check it out here on dev.to!

Here are some blog posts from the community that we loved!

On the Fastly dev.to, Hannah asked the fediverse community about Mastodon’s growth as it hit 10 million users and what it needs to keep growing - or for some folks, not grow!
CapGemini’s Applied Innovation Exchange used Glitch and AI for an April Fools’ joke.
On the topic of AI, Clive Thompson used Glitch in his ChatGPT journey - do you think it will replace coders?
Learn about service workers in Sai Charan Seri’s explainer.
Maps Mania used AI to map every state using one word to describe them - what word does it use to yours?

Have you written about your Glitch apps on a blog, a conference talk…anywhere! Let us know and we’ll feature it in the next newsletter!

On the forum 📣

Check out what the Glitch community is sharing and discussing:

Fresh from The Gallery: @WillMcCrudden made a mail-forwarding service inspired by @tiagorangel’s ~authflow project and @wh0 continues their epic journey of using Glitch to build Nix packages.
I mentioned up top that I want to hear about your favorite communities. While you’re there, why not also share your hopes and dreams and feedback around searching apps on Glitch!
Join us in the latest Community Open Thread - guess what my lucky number is before you click and let me know how incorrect you were!

The Glitch Community Forum is the best way to ask the community for help, share what you’re making, exchange friendly banter and get to know your fellow friendly Glitch creators. See you there! 😎

Haven’t gone Pro yet? New subscribers can sign up for Glitch Pro with the code DEV2APRIL and get 25% off. You’ll get 100% of the superpowers Glitch Pro gives you – like project access controls, always-on apps, and more

There’s a killer new guide to building for Mastodon and the Fediverse…

jenn schiffer — Tue, 14 Mar 2023 14:49:37 +0000

Hello and happy March, the month that weather folklore tells us “comes in like a lion and out like a lamb.” I imagine for those of you students reading this, the lion is midterms and the lamb is spring break. Anyway, Glitch won a DEVIES Award last month!

Also last month, we made a number of updates to our starters:

Eleventy starters have been updated to 2.0.0. By the way, congrats to them on 5 million downloads!
We’ve made our Website starter simpler in a number of ways. Other exciting community news is that Mastodon has joined Fastly’s Fast Forward program. We’re proud to be able to support them through this era of massive growth for them, just as we are proud to be able to support all of you trying to build a better web.

See you on glitch.com!
Jenn, Director of Community 👽

P.S. Did you know we have a Fastly Dev.to blog too? Follow us there for more developer blogs and let us know what you’re building and blogging! Speaking of blogging…

On the blogs ✍️

In case you missed it on the Glitch Blog...

Here’s the latest issue of Last Month on Glitch, featuring clouds, machine learning pianos, outer space experiences, and more.
Want to get started with building on the Fediverse, or just looking at apps to help you navigate Mastodon? We wrote this guide to all the apps and playlists that the Glitch community has built - let us know if you have something for us to add!

Here are some blog posts from the community that we loved!

Tiago Rangel wrote an introduction to Progressive Web Apps (PWAs).
Eric Meyer published his wish list for CSS in 2023 and I agree with every single item he listed, and not just because he includes element transitions that the Chrome team used Glitch to demonstrate.
Stefan Bohacek wrote a retrospective on his journey of building Twitter bots. Check out his other blog posts for his tutorials on building bots on Mastodon!.

Have you written about your Glitch apps on a blog, a conference talk…anywhere! Let us know and we’ll feature it in the next newsletter!

On the forum 📣

Check out what the Glitch community is sharing and discussing:

Fresh from The Gallery: my mind was blown by these audio reactive shaders that torinmb shared a tutorial of. And Efimero shares a history of the Linux mascot that, in my opinion, should have been!
Did you know the forum has a “Feature Ideas” section for the community to vote on? This week we got a request to allow users to toggle the default state of the preview window. What other settings would you like to see?
Say hi to the community and give your feedback in the latest Community Open Thread!

Haven’t gone Pro yet? New subscribers can sign up for Glitch Pro with the code DEV2MARCH and get 25% off. You’ll get 100% of the superpowers Glitch Pro gives you – like project access controls, always-on apps, and more – setting you up for success with your New Years coding goals!