It's not pretty.Īdd to that the fact that your writing, photographs, links, all reside within their content management system.

Google's the best at it, and creepiest, though Facebook has closed the gap and made it a real horse race. In order to differentiate themselves and compete with the other platforms, each one has to rely on some unique aspect of their service, usually beloved by users, and whore it out to advertisers.

So then it becomes an advertising platform, competing with all the myriad other advertising platforms out there. Unfortunately, as with all 'free' efforts, the provider has to find a way to make money somehow. (I didn't learn about the porn until later.) I chose Tumblr because it was free, had a fairly nice writing environment, and a varied and interesting community. When Apple ceased its hosting service, I decided for the sake of convenience that I would stop maintaining my own content management system, and use one of the online blogging platforms. I lacked the understanding of how the thing was put together.

The downside was that as the application evolved, and as my wishes for Groundhog Day became somewhat more sophisticated, I was less able to take advantage of the power of Tinderbox. I relied upon a customized set of templates offered by Eastgate Systems, and thus was able to overcome much of the initial learning curve with Tinderbox. Groundhog Day, the second iteration of my blogging efforts, was maintained in a series of Tinderbox files for about six years. Tinderbox, 'The Tool For Notes,' is a Mac application actively developed and maintained for more than a decade by Mark Bernstein of Eastgate Systems. Nice Marmot is created using Tinderbox by Eastgate Systems.

Tinderbox mac os x system requirements