Setting Up A Rotating "Epicurean Message of the Day" Service On Major Platforms

  • The most recent spurt of graphics from Nate has reminded me that between Nate and Elli and the contribution of others, we have a large stock of good quality graphics - more than enough to produce an "Epicurean Message of the Day" sequence. (Not sure whether to call it "message" or "graphic" or "meme" or something else, so we need to think about that word.


    I think as a minimum we ought to implement that on these platforms:

    1. Facebook
    2. Twitter
    3. Fediverse (primarily Mastodon)
    4. Standalone website.

    As to item four, I think we ought to produce a standalone website that does nothing other than showing a full-screen view of our graphics, rotated perhaps every two or three minutes. That way people with monitors or televisions not actively being used can just open up the site and leave it "playing" for hours on end.


    The graphics are readily accessible but we need to figure out the technology of "bots" or some way to post on the biggest platforms automatically on a daily basis so it's not so hard to keep up with.


    I think for each platform we need a separate account "EpicureanMessageOfTheDay" so that people can subscribe to that account easily and automatically without any kind of approval process. In the case of the website all you'd do is open it in your browser and the "slides" would start to rotate automatically.


    In all cases, probably nothing more than a graphic and perhaps a short message something like "For further information visit ______________" (probably not EpicureanFriends, but we need an easy to type and remember landing page; probably the Epicurean Philosophy Facebook group.)

    As to the website I should be able to add something pretty easily to my existing group of sites, but there too we need to find a web platform (I kind of doubt wordpress is it) that will let us automate just rotating what is essentially a slideshow.


    If anyone has any experience or insight on implementing such ideas, please post here.

    1. Info for setting up a Twitter bot posting system
      1. twitter bot
    2. Info for setting up a Mastodon / Fediverse bot posting system
      1. Mastodon Bot
    3. Info for setting up a Facebook bot posting system
    4. Info for setting up a Slide-show web page
      1. One consideration - bandwidth might be an issue. Might be desirable to find a free service that offers this, perhaps in exchange for an occasional advertisement being thrown in.
      2. https://www.w3schools.com/howto/howto_js_slideshow.asp
      3. Do sites like pinterest or photography sharing sites offer this?
      4. https://www.daniweb.com/progra…-a-slideshow-of-web-pages (This sounds like fairly close to the target: "This is a simple to use, self-contained website slideshow utility. Do you have a monitor or TV setup in your lobby where you'd like to present web content automatically? With this HTML/Javascript page, simply edit an array of pages or "slides". You define a title, duration, and URL for each slide. The pages fade out and fade in between slides. You can change the fade out color as desired. SiteShow features a small menu that automatically appears (fades in) if you mouseover the page. The menu allows you to pause or play or directly access a specific slide."
      5. Perhaps similar: https://www.wikitechy.com/html…how-html-code-for-website This one (and the "daniweb" link above) might be suitable for creating a zip file with all the images in it plus this code, then people could download the package to their computer, navigate their browser to the slideshow.html file, and then have everything locally and there would be no bandwidth issue at all.
      6. More code templates:
        1. http://thenewcode.com/766/Crea…Slideshow-With-JS-amp-CSS
        2. https://www.w3schools.com/howto/howto_js_slideshow.asp
        3. https://stackoverflow.com/ques…-a-slideshow-with-css-and
        4. https://snook.ca/archives/java…simplest-jquery-slideshow
        5. https://css-tricks.com/snippet…e-auto-playing-slideshow/



    More info on crossposting: https://newsbots.eu/about/more#bots

    Tools for bot owners

    There are many tools (apps and scripts) available to operate a news bot. Below you find an incomplete list.

    RSS/Atom feeds (advised method)

    Twitter (for all accounts)

    Twitter (only when you own the account)

  • I have made some significant progress on this idea and should be ready to launch soon. I think I have figured out that I can use the NewEpicurean WordPress site to schedule posts that can then be posted out to RSS readers, Twitter, and the Fediverse at one time.


    The original idea is pretty much as simple as one or perhaps two posts per day, probably just a short quote with some kind of graphic and link back here to the forum to a discussion appropriate to the quote.


    I will get started with the prototype soon and update you here.


    One premise of this being worthwhile is that I am thinking that there are numbers of people like me who use Twitter and/or a Fediverse compatible app and/or an RSS reader to manage their newsgathering. Ultimately I want to have what amounts to a news service that people can customize to their tastes but still have a heavy dose of Epicurean material. Possibly this won't do much other than for a few people on Twitter and those who subscribe to the Facebook group, but it ought to be helpful to at least a few.