🦜RIP to Omegle,Build a Tech Typewriter, and The Amo App

Zenly may have risen from the ashes

Nov 13, 2023

Hellllloooo and welcome to this week's edition of The Land of Random

Another week - and more of the old internet crumbling away.

Omegle is dead, and Tumblr downsized some more.

(Basically life support for Tumblr).

I appreciated the long blog on the Omegle website - despite the many horrors that Omegle had, there were also bright spots.

We’ll get deeper into the subject in today’s first topic though . . .

The bright spot was the first few episodes of the new season of Invincible. It’s off to a really strong start!

Oh - if anyone is looking to hire an awesome writer / content marketer - look no further than Sonya Supposedly. She’s looking for work!

We’re finally feeling better here - that was one heck of a bad cold last week, but we’re finally back to normal.

And Fall is in FULL force here - so many pretty trees!

I will not be taking a chance to buy the Humane Pin - but I’m eager to watch reviews when the early adopters get their hands on ‘em.

I’d prefer to buy a cheap used folding phone first.

Let’s dive on in!

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🦜Another Dead Internet Canary

Omegle was more than just a weird website for random video calls.

It was a relic of the “old internet” - like 4chan, Chatroulette, or Pirate Bay.

A Canary in the Internet Coal mine. A site you could make back in the wild west of the internet . . .

I’m not here to defend Omegle - there was a sizable amount of disturbing content on there.

It takes a little bit of crazy to say “oh random video chats with anonymous strangers. I’m sure that will always go well.” Lemme just hop on and assume I won’t eventually be scarred by life by some weird dude.

There are plenty of examples of horrible stuff.

There’s also fun and wholesome stuff like this.

You want more of that? Rob Landers also did the prank with an entire orchestra.

Like anything - Omegle could be used for good or ill.

but - I find it important to take note of when such sites cease to exist.

Like when Bestgore stopped operating, or other such “shock” websites.

or Grooveshark, Putlocker, Projectfreetv, or Kickass Torrents.

Remember when Grooveshark was so popular it was practically mainstream internet piracy?

The internet is slowly shifting - one decade at a time - towards sanitization and censorship.

The Wild West of the internet is in our rearview mirror. We’re just watching the lights of the ole’ town go out one by one.

The battle for Omegle has been lost, but the war against the Internet rages on. Virtually every online communication service has been subject to the same kinds of attack as Omegle; and while some of them are much larger companies with much greater resources, they all have their breaking point somewhere. I worry that, unless the tide turns soon, the Internet I fell in love with may cease to exist, and in its place, we will have something closer to a souped-up version of TV – focused largely on passive consumption, with much less opportunity for active participation and genuine human connection. - Omegle founder. (source)

The free internet is slowly being broken - one decade at a time.

For example - France wants a state-sanctioned website block list at the DNS and web browser level.

You may say “so what” but remember how far we’ve come.

23 years ago - our parents and uncles/aunts were messing around with Napster like it was no big deal to casually pirate files.

One decade - it’s the obvious stuff - the next it might be telling you that you can’t share a meme or link because it’s bad.

*sirigpt* Hey Bob, that’s a pretty dark meme - you can’t share that.

Also Bob, VPN’s are used for nefarious things 9 times out of 10 - I’m uninstalling it for you.

This interesting little speculative blog from Gazoche shows a hypothetical timeline for lots of potential censorship stuff.

Go read the letter on Omegle’s homepage if you have time. It’s worth reading!

Omegle.com

🔨Build A Tech Typewriter

I saw the coolest build for a cyberdeck typewriter on Hackaday.

It’s essentially just a small vertical display and a mechanical keyboard, but the raw minimalism is inspiring.

one of these would be awesome for writing an essay, or fiction.

The creator says

I wanted a distraction free digital typewriter with nice clacky mechanical keys and a thin wide screen. I built this funky thing with a raspberry pi running the software focuswriter and libreoffice. It's made out of plywood and I rapidly realythat carpentry is hard, so I covered the lopsidedness and stray nails with decoupage. It can save/load easily, and I can transfer files easily with a USB drive. (source)

I guessed the Raspberry pi - but what about the screen?

One of the comments on the post suggests the Waveshare 11.9in IPS touch display

and it looks a lot like it.

Between that, a hand made case, a cheap mechanical keyboard, mouse, and a Raspberry Pi - you’re probably looking at around $180 - 200 all in.

“Woah!” You might say - “I’m not spending that much on a cyberdeck typewriter.”

May i gently remind you that the premium version of this idea (cool computer typewriter) - the Freewrite - will cost you about $500.

This is a lot cheaper - and fulfills the same kind of aesthetic.

If you’d like to go FULL DEGEN in this space and money is no issue - might I recommend the USB Typewriter.

Top tier price - and the top tier aesthetic of a genuine restored Typewriter.

After those two options, the Cyberdeck typewriter sounds a lot more reasonable.

There’s even cool 3D printable cases - what are you waiting for?

Go check out the cyberdeck typewriter at the link!

Cyberdeck Typewriter

🤗 The Amo App

Have you heard about the upcoming iPhone app Amo?

I only heard about it the other day from this tweet.

“Oh just another app” i thought - and then I saw who was behind it.

Zenly folks like Antoine Martin or Michael Goldstein. Zenly was a cool app. Lots of neat ui/ux interactions. interesting ideas. A genuine desire to get friends to connect IRL.

Zenly may not have been as popular here in the States (we were too busy scrolling IG and FB) - but it was HUGE overseas in places like Europe or Japan.

(but Snapchat killed it)

We don’t know much about amo yet - but what we do know is that it’s geared towards friends.

We want to get back to what social networks initially set out to accomplish — strengthening real relationships first and foremost before the mission statements became connecting the world. We want to help people without consuming all of their time behind screens and we want to give them a platform to be themselves without needing to compete with brands and celebrities. In doing so, we believe that we can create a stronger business than Meta or Bytedance and one that is net positive to society.

I’m curious as to how Amo will accomplish this mission.

How will it connect us with our friends? Is the UI/UX/functionality revolutionary enough to accomplish this?

So many of the apps we’ve discussed lately all are geared towards moving to a small group.

The question of the decade is - which of them has that special spark to stand out and steal Tiktok’s limelight?

Maybe Amo has what it takes - maybe it’s something else we haven’t even seen yet.

It’s currently available for preorder - and it’s expected to release on November 19.

Check out the website here, or pre-order the app at the link!

Amo App