Published on: 2021-05-15
I'm new to Geminispace, both in terms of hosting my own capsule, but also in terms of browsing, discovering and reading other's content. I appreciate the way in which protocol itself makes it easy to create subscribeable Gemini pages. I've never cultivated my own set of RSS feeds, but I think I might finally do that with my gemini subscriptions. Also there are aggregators and directories, such as:
In addition to geminispace.info search engine I've found a nice dictionary application I now use semi-regularly:
I'm notoriously bad at spelling so oftentimes through my day I'll need to check if a word that I wrote actually means what I think it means 😅️. I used to just type "define some-word" into a web search engine. Having a Gemini alternative to that is really nice.
Those are applications that I've come across so far. Now for the content!
I like casually lurking on shared storytelling capsules such as:
I guess there's nothing preventing content like this from forming on the big web, but that's true for most if not all Gemini experiences. And yet, spontaneous, thoughtful, semi-related, semi-coherent slice of life stories emerging on these two capsules feel distinctly Gemini-esque. I enjoy losing couple of minutes at a time on a story, and some times I get pulled into interwoven story-line spanning multiple posts from multiple authors. Each time that happens it feels like a small, delightful discovery! ♥️
When I have a little bit more time to read through longer form content I like the zine format. So far I've found two:
Although they had but one issue each, they already take different approaches. SmolZINE is more about showcasing interesting capsules and gemlogs and letting you get sucked into the depth of their content. Circ. Transmissions, on the other hand, offers more standard texts, split across columns and features, that are hosted directly on the zine's pod.
In the presently invented "just wonderful" category I must mention Avalon's capsule and its story based, choose your own adventure evoking navigation. I can't stop thinking how cool it is! I think I'll steal it for my own pod one day! Until then, please stop reading this and go check it out: