Simon Carstensen

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 12:38:18 +0200

My year of rebuilding Jottit is wrapping up, and I’m looking for what’s next. Full-time or freelance, fully remote. If you’re building something for the open web and need a developer, get in touch: simonbc.com/looking-f…

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 10:14:26 +0200

Jottit pages now have plain text and raw markdown versions.

Append .txt for stripped text or .md for the original markdown.

Example: jottit.org/@sbc/rebu… jottit.org/@sbc/rebu…

Useful for reading, quoting, archiving, scraping, and CLI workflows.

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 18:29:17 +0200

Here’s a nice screenshot of the new Jottit sidebar. It works really well for navigating unlisted pages.

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 18:26:13 +0200

Spent the day redesigning Jottit. Shipped dark mode, new site header and owner sidebar with pinned/recent pages.

Sidebar went through 20 iterations and landed on a right-side layout: content left, navigation right.

Full circle: mirrors what Aaron and I built 19 years ago. Some patterns just work :)

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 18:10:46 +0200

A week ago I added an MCP server to Jottit as an experiment so I could post from Claude, not just the web UI.

It turns out Jottit works really well for capturing and refining ideas from AI conversations. Instead of disappearing into chat history, they can become pages and evolve over time.

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 20:14:01 +0200

I’m experimenting with the MCP protocol for Jottit and have the basics of it working. I can now create new pages by prompting Claude on my mobile or ask it to summarise pages, make edits, etc. I’m not sure what to think of it yet, but I’m definitely intrigued…

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 19:08:54 +0200

Customization easily becomes complexity. How much is too much? For Tinypost I landed on two settings: light or dark, plus an accent color. Enough to feel like yours. Not enough to turn into a site builder. Hopefully :) tinypost.blog

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 21:30:48 +0200

Redesigned the blogroll on Tinypost today. Single column now, sorted by latest activity, with favicons pulled from RSS feeds. The blogroll also moved into the profile header as a row of stacked avatars linking to the full list. Much more compact than the old two-column grid. tinypost.blog

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 22:55:29 +0200

I just redesigned the Tinypost signup process and this is how a newly created blog on Tinypost now looks like.

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 14:28:02 +0200

I made another attempt at getting some attention on Hacker News yesterday, but fell flat again. 5 points and 2 comments. Moving on now and betting on organic growth from there on.

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 14:18:40 +0200

I redesigned Jottit’s URLs. Instead of yourname.jottit.org, pages now live at jottit.org/@username/page-slug. It’s a small change but it shifts the whole feel: less “here’s a site” and more “here’s a person writing something.” My own page now lives at jottit.org/@sbc

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 18:48:57 +0200

Posted Jottit to Hacker News today. Was nervous about it. 90 minutes later: zero points. Laughing at myself. Trying again tomorrow. jottit.org

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 18:49:18 +0200

Here’s what my own Jottit site looks like when signed in as editor sbc.jottit.org

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 18:19:39 +0200

I had a small revelation about Jottit. I’d been thinking of it as a site builder. Then someone here created a post and shared it with me, and it clicked. Jottit is for putting stuff on the web. Create a page, share it. Claim it and it shows up on your profile. So I redesigned it. jottit.org

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 16:24:33 +0200

I wrote about loss, the old web, and why I rebuilt Jottit. simonbc.com/rebuildin…

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 17:13:16 +0200

I’m a few days away from launching Jottit.org, a revival of the minimalist wiki tool Aaron Swartz and I built in 2007. If you have a few minutes, I’d love for you to kick the tires. Looking for bug reports and first impressions. Thanks! @manton @dave jottit.org

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 17:12:53 +0200

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:14:49 +0200

Aaron Swartz and I built Jottit in 2007 as the simplest way to make a web page. I’ve been rebuilding it, but it drifted too far. So I split it in two! jottit.org is the original, rebuilt. tinypost.blog is a new minimalist blogging tool. simonbc.com/why-i-spl…

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:14:10 +0200

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 15:12:44 +0200

Currently alternating between painting walls and shipping code. The walls are going slower.

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 15:28:51 +0200

Dave Winer’s blogroll on scripting.com works differently from the traditional model. Instead of a fixed list you update by hand, it pulls in feeds and sorts by when each blog was last updated. The most recently active blogs float to the top. This is the version I wanted to build into Jottit.

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 15:27:19 +0200

New post: How blogrolls work in Jottit simonbc.com/how-blogr…

Tue, 24 Feb 2026 15:25:18 +0200

New on Jottit: blogrolls. Shows site avatars and latest posts, ordered by most recently active.

Here’s mine: simonbc.com/blogroll

Time to bring blogrolls back.

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 19:33:40 +0200

Jottit sites now have a blogroll sidebar showing each site’s latest post and how long ago it was published. Ordered by most recently updated, so active blogs rise to the top. Inspired by @dave ’s blogroll. Also exposed as OPML for feed readers.

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 17:31:29 +0200

Had to fix a few bugs, but I’m now posting to my Jottit site from the terminal using mpcli. I’d planned to build my own Jottit CLI, but there’s no need. The true magic of open protocols.