Special.fish
special.fish
special.fish
I spent a couple of hours sufring the site and various personal pages linked within some profiles. From my small sample, it seemed to be popular among some sort of lo-fi designer/technoartist crowd. It was different enough from my usual intake of the web to hook me up for a bit.
I was tempted to register an account, but gave up after reading the pitch: "Special Fish is a place for exploring logs and lists." I mean... I've done blogs (on both home-made and stock tools), tumblrs, micro-blogs (Twitter and Identi.ca), small project-based websites, you name it. What is left to explore on the logs/lists space, especially given the simple pages I've witnessed across the site (and the simple tools given to authors, I guessed), that signing up would be compelling? What are the results of this exploration on Special Fish that are worth mentioning?
I totally understand your hesitance on registering an account. There are so many ways of blogging/journaling on the web already. I actually think it's a good site to browse without ever needing an account. I'm looking at added RSS soon so you won't even need to really visit and can use something like Fraidycat to check in.
Also, SF was mentioned on Kicks Condor recently [1]. I like how they talked about the site... "but it hadn’t even occurred to me to make a social network that is just a directory". I hadn't really thought of SF as just a directory either, but I like the idea that its only purpose is to be a directory of people doing DIY stuff on the web.
Can you elaborate more on this? What do you mean by making text files on my computer into a social network? Is that just a metaphor or are you actually doing something like that?
Update: Okay we are back! Implementing more caching but should be working for now.
Special Fish is a place for exploring profiles and lists.
You could think of Special Fish as a public word processor.
Usually rtf/txt files just sit on a user’s computer.
SF is about making those documents into a social network.I think it’s turned out to be a great place to discover new people and as a portal to unfamiliar places on the Web.
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~~~~~~~~~~In fish culture “down” is of course the direction in which one falls, and this is correctly depicted in the image.
It’s a common confusion, as Down vs Up is more nuanced in Fish culture. Fish technology is extremely under developed: imagine inventing the screwdriver, having it slip through your fins, and it immediately floating “up” into oblivion.
Debate is still ongoing as to if this is why fish do not use screws, or if it’s the other way around — if lack of screws was the reason they never invented screwdrivers.
I chose this depiction because it is easier to convey in ASCII art that the fish is dead.
I also took the artistic liberty of adding some escaping air bubbles, although fish don't breathe.
Anyway, the fish seems to be alive again.
<°((><I especially get a kick out of creative domain names. This is one of my favorites.
I’d use the same words to describe some other social networks.