Think about the first time you heard a song that sampled another, and thought “whoa.” For me, it was hearing the Four Season’s “Beggin” revived by French DJ Pilooski. The art of taking something known and making it anew for a brand new audience is one that we keep coming back to, like with Casey Kolderup’s Postmarks project. A fresh take on social bookmarking, but built for the fediverse, and more importantly—the individual user—which definitely made me say “Whoa.” Thankfully Casey is a staff software engineer for Glitch, and Glitch is all about *remixing*, so I was lucky to be able to chat with them amid the buzz Postmarks has been generating. 

Jenn: You’re no stranger to Glitch, but how did you first learn about it?

Casey: I’ve followed along with its launch under previous names but was in my “writing Ruby in vim” era at that point, so I hadn’t used the platform all that much. I started using it in earnest in early 2021 when the new React starter launched—I had been working exclusively on backend development for a while and wanted to catch up a bit with frontend trends. Three months later, by some weird twists of fate, I found myself applying that knowledge to Glitch.com as a contractor, helping out with updates to the site itself.

What is your favorite thing about the internet?

For me it’s the opportunity to broaden your horizons, learn about the things that are important to other people, and decide what those things mean to you. On the internet I’ve made lifelong friends, learned about entire branches of political and philosophical thought (for better AND worse), become a fan of bands who only had a few dozen supporters, and discovered the joy of both 6-second Vines about road signs and 6-hour Youtube video essays about Japanese video games.

How is making an app that’s designed to be remixed by others different from making an app just for yourself?

There’s a lot more pressure to make it work before you tell anyone about it, that’s for sure! I found myself having to think more about the specifics of how Glitch (cleverly– I can say that because I wasn’t there when they thought this stuff up) uses things like the .env file and the .data directory to make each remix different. I had never made it this far before on a project that was designed as a remixable object first, but now that I’ve done it I want to think of more.

We haven’t seen new bookmarking apps in several years, what made you want to revisit the idea?

I’ve been using online bookmarking platforms since the days of del.icio.us; a couple years ago I had an idea for something I wanted to do with the solution I was using at the time and found that their API felt really difficult to use, to the extent that I started thinking about how I could probably build the solution I wanted from scratch more easily. 

I got busy with other things and shelved the idea for a bit, then started working on a new Rails app that was built around having small-group conversations with specific URLs as the subject, a sort of “URL book club”. As I built things like User Accounts, Login, Privacy Controls, etc. it all felt sort of tedious, to be building another closed platform and having to spend time on all of these things I’ve written a dozen times with slight variations. Some programmers would take that as a cue to design their own framework; instead I just went back to playing Nintendo Switch. Despite that, though, both apps kind of remained stuck in the back of my mind.

What were your community inspirations for building on the fediverse in this way?

I had been trying out various ways of being a user on Mastodon ever since its first big migration in 2017; some public, some private. It had never occurred to me that the ActivityPub protocol was something I could build a working server on until Darius Kazemi started re-promoting some work he had done to make exactly that process more approachable, and I was particularly interested in apps that weren’t just different microblogging implementations– I’m glad people are building those, but it wasn’t for me.

I thought “maybe I should make my URL book club work on the fediverse?”, and in the process of thinking through the implications of that, I landed on this simpler idea.

If you were to have one, what’s your ActivityPub wishlist?

I’m still learning more about ActivityPub and its associated specs, but I will say that I’ve felt challenged from the start to provide good interoperability with dominant platforms like Mastodon–figuring out how to make Postmarks “play nice” with other implementations seems like a tricky line to walk, and I’d love to learn more about how true that is for everyone versus my own lack of understanding.

What makes Glitch a great platform for building Activity Pub apps?

When I first set up Postmarks and wanted to test that it could publish Notes that something like Mastodon could read, it occurred to me that there would be no way to do the handshake of requests that go in both directions to make many ActivityPub operations work successfully if I was running the app on my own computer.

Building on Glitch gives you a unique hostname that’s publicly accessible from the rest of the internet immediately. There are other tools that would let me do that by creating a tunnel from my computer, but getting new names for each remix is easier than any that I’ve seen.

On the internet I’ve...discovered the joy of both 6-second Vines about road signs and 6-hour Youtube video essays about Japanese video games.

As a fellow not-frontend-engineer, what were the challenges in building a light-weight, responsive site with minimal JS? How did building on Glitch make that easier or harder, and what can we do better to support or encourage that sort of work?

I take a pretty critical eye to a lot of the Glitch platform but I think the Glitch Editor is currently a good place to build a node.js app with Express and Handlebars that accesses sqlite files on disk: not the newest, flashiest architecture; but one that’s certainly well-worn and familiar to a lot of people.

The biggest difficulty I found was related to syncing my changes back and forth between Glitch and the Github repo I set up, especially once I had multiple remixes of my own, so I guess I’d say that regardless of your framework choices it would be great if we could find some time to revisit that workflow and think about how to improve it.

What’s your dream pull request to get from the community of people who are now exploring Postmarks?

The response I’ve already had from the open-source community has been beyond my wildest dreams. In the first two weeks I’ve had so many PRs I’ve barely been able to keep up, and they range from bug fixes in my handling of ActivityPub details to implementing entire features like adding the ability to search your bookmarks. Everyone has been helpful, kind, and barely said anything about some of my more embarrassing lines of code.

I try to keep the GitHub Issues up to date with things that indicate the general direction I’m hoping to take the project (as well as all the known bugs that I or other people have noticed), so taking a look there and speaking up about something that looks interesting is certainly a good place to start.

More Postmarks, hopefully! When I was working on the project by myself I was happy with a number of ways things were designed to be easy for fellow coders, but the response to the launch has made it clear that people from a lot of different backgrounds and skill sets are interested in this already.

While I’m proud of how easy the initial setup process by remixing on Glitch and walking through the README, getting updated versions into your remix while safely preserving your data is something that still has a ways to go, and I hope to feel like I’m supporting people who don’t want to do things that I take for granted like manually managing SQLite databases soon.

I try to put all my projects on https://casey.kolderup.org, but I also blog about them on https://motd.co and socialize with people on Mastodon at https://sharetron.com/@casey!

The art of taking something known and making it anew for a brand new audience is one that we keep coming back to, like with Casey Kolderup’s Postmarks project.

Bringing fresh fun to the fediverse: A Q&A with Casey Kolderup, Postmarks creator

What made you first fall in love with the web? I’m trying to remember my first impressions, but as far back as I can recall, each new discovery made me excited for the next one. First it was email, messages I could send to my (other sixth grade) friends without mailing a letter or passing a note! Then, designing my own site on GeoCities – a space that was completely up to me to decide how to decorate, or express myself. Around the same time, ICQ gave me rapid real-time messaging with new friends from around the world. Each time the world got a little more accessible to me.

We have it all now. So, what makes you excited about the web now? What are you looking forward to next? I’m really bad at predicting the future, but I’m pretty great at loving all the ways the web makes us excited, inspired, and delighted. I know one thing for sure, the Glitch community continues to create projects that make us smile, help us out, and capture countless ways to inject a little more fun in the everyday. 

~town-names by @mapsmania explains the meaning or origins of the names of the biggest towns and cities in the United States. Some of them might surprise you! 

~random-horror-movie by @cfjedimaster can either serve as your own spooky season movie scheduler OR you can remix it to build a generator with Cloudflare workers.

~florentine-real-ease by @hello-smile6 and @mna4 is a multiplayer drawing website that uses a Discourse forum for authentication and was inspired by a discussion in the Glitch forum!

This colorful dataviz app was shared in a recent interview with Gissoo Doroudian that you can read here. 

~open-lab by @n.hieda is an interactive graph using Cosma that maps the common interests of students in their cohort. Remix it and see what interests match your friends!

~chord-search by @jtf4 just put notes into this app and search for chords that match. It’s perfect to use with studying music theory or writing music.

~landschaft-sound by @n.hieda is an app that transforms a camera image to sound using choo and p5js, try it out!


~tenmile by @jpf, @rndmcnlly, and @ktuite offers folks the ability to create and share playable quotes (your favorite parts of the game) of Game Boy games.

~committy by @11BelowStudio is a collaborative card game where you create the cards, created during a recent Itch jam! ✨

~nothcom by @jooooooon inspired by notpron, this site features a Windows XP-themed game that will haunt you. 

~sumptuous-crystalline-palm by @AvinashSharma converts your random color library to the nearest matching Material or Tailwind color for each of your existing colors.

~tree-text-editor created by @EricLewis is a simple tool that lets you create a list in the text editor and render as a tree!

~well-maize-howler created by @obafunsoadebayo17 helps you generate copy for social posts about your choice of topic!

Try this tutorial to see what you can send around the globe with Fastly! Created by @triblondon. 

And that’s a wrap on another amazing month for the Glitch community! Follow us across the open social web 🌐 

You can still send your projects and playlists to us via the community forum, or email community@glitch.com—we’d love to see your work in our next roundup!

The project featured in this post’s header image is ~mxstudio, who created the site for their collaborative design agency led by KT Duffy, using Glitch. 

What made you first fall in love with the web? I’m trying to remember my first impressions, but as far back as I can recall, each new discovery made me excited for the next one.

Last month on Glitch, the August 2023 edition

Did you know that the “dog days of summer” begin in July? If you’re anything like my dog Maggie, the dog days should be more about bothering people to let you outside so you can eat bees, and less about heat and lethargy. See also bothering the cats just to entertain yourself. Speaking of entertainment, we have a full roster of cool apps the Glitch community created during the last 31 days, but before we get to that I want to tell you about a new feature on glitch.com. 

Last month we introduced a new feature called App of the Week. Each week we’re selecting projects nominated by the community to be featured on the glitch.com website — maybe including yours! 

To submit your app (or your favorite app) to be featured, just fill out this form, or share your app in the nominations thread on the community forum. We can’t wait to see what you choose! 

~iphonespacergif by @mikker helps you declutter the homescreen of your iPhone with a handy gif. 

~zippy-inky-radar created by @shmen-shmen is a productivity app with the ability to increase your productivity to scary levels…

~wagtail-starter created by @Scotchester is a Glitch-hosted starter for the open source CMS written in Python and built on the Django web framework.

~ocrop by @admin46899,  finally a way to pull the text you need out of the mess returned by OCR. 

tiddly.packett.cool is a storage and sync solution for TiddlyWiki that turns it into a modern offline-first web app with client-side encryption! 

~2d-ocr by @ckolbeck aims to enable folks who rely on alt text to navigate through things like images of tables.

~juegosdevestirgratis by @anticristo-666 is an art project, or maybe a game, but even if I tried to describe it here, you wouldn’t believe me. 

~aframe-spatial-ui by @dmarcos is a multi-layered WebXR experience that even features one of our faves: Hayao Miyazaki, built with A-Frame and Glitch! 

~misc-calcs by @dtcwee is a collection of useful JavaScript created calculators

~scammersworld by @joinity is a project dedicated to exposing NFT scammers and giving back to the community. 

~musical-tarot by @adam.czibere45080 lets you draw a card to get your reading and an accompanying musical recommendation to inform your vibe for today!

~aramzs created by @AramZS is a new glitch in bio (seeing these in the wild never gets old to us)!

~blueridge by @dschep  is a little art project inspired by the Blue Ridge Mountains. (Hint: these mountain ridges are different on each load!)

~creating-with-data.glitch.me/connecting-atlantic/index.html created by @digitalWestie is a great animated visualization of the progression of trans-atlantic undersea telegraph cables

~newtons-disc by @rowan-m is an online optical illusion that slightly differs from the IRL optical illusion, can you tell??

~tanzaku by @koya.drill lets you create a digital wish on a coloured strip of paper called tanzaku and hang it up on bamboo to celebrate the Tanabata Star Festival.

~storehouse-a created by @bookwormgirl910 and @stsche is a text and typography-based virtual exhibition showcasing interactive visual poetry inspired by the lexicon of NetHack.

~curator-and-the-machine created by @stefan is not a new project but was recently added to fediverse, so we’re happy to feature it again! Try out curating now or read the blog post behind this generative art project. 

The project featured in this post’s header image is ~futureroom by @blippypixel is like if Geocities was a virtual room. Look for the lava lamp! 

Did you know that the “dog days of summer” begin in July?

Last month on Glitch, the July 2023 edition

One Glitch use case that we absolutely love to highlight, is the situation that occurs when folks play around with Glitch to figure out creative solutions to problems. Which brings me to Nat Alison, a software developer and one such Glitch creator. If you’re anything like me, when you see graphs and x-and y-axis points, your eyes go wonky and you get flustered. Not so for Nat, who introduced me to a totally different world of solving interesting problems with math—and Glitch. Please enjoy our recent conversation, hopefully, as much as I did. 

Nat: I honestly don’t remember! It’s either

I heard about it from Jenn Schiffer or another Glitch person at a conference, or

I saw a thread from Anil talking about Prince.

Do you have a favorite project you’ve seen on Glitch?

I think it’s less of a specific project and more of a sense of joy whenever I see a Glitch project pop up in the wild! It’s always something quirky or interesting, and reminds me of the good ol’ StumbleUpon days where the internet wasn’t just four websites recycling content. I try to carry that spirit in my work, and I think Glitch does a good job at it too.

Why polyhedra? What do they signify for you?

Do you have a favorite addition to CSS in the past year, and is there anything not-widely-supported that you're hoping will be soon?

Oh man there are so many! Container queries, “:has” selectors, new color spaces. I just checked and they’re adding trigonometry to it. CSS had gotten so powerful recently it’s amazing! The problem is I can’t legitimately can’t tell you which features have been “added” in the past year or which ones are still not widely supported. I was going to answer offset-path but it turns out everything but Safari implemented it in 2020 or earlier!

Is there an unsolvable puzzle out there that haunts you? 

The Classification of Finite Simple Groups. “Groups” are abstract objects that represent symmetries, like the moves of a Rubiks Cube, or the rotations or reflections of a polyhedron! These symmetries can be broken down into “atoms” called “simple groups”, just like molecules, and by a lucky coincidence there are 18 infinite families just like in the periodic table!

Oh and there are 26 of them that don’t fit into any family, the largest of which is called The Monster and lives in 196,883 dimensions. Like if there were just 26 random atoms made out of strange and charm quarks and one of them was almost as big as the observable universe. Oh and the proof takes more than ten thousand pages. And it has something to do with the most efficient way to pack spheres into 24-dimensional space. And the fact that eπ√163 is almost an integer. Why are they there?? It’s all extremely Cursed Algebra.

Where did you come up with the idea for a permutation group visualizer?

Honestly it was kind of a joke! I was studying the sporadic groups–those 26 groups that are just there for some reason? I plotted one of them to see what it looked like, and let’s just say, the results are not very aesthetically pleasing. Why does it look like that? If this is one of the fundamental atoms of symmetry, why does it look so un-symmetric? I knew I had to make something interactive to show others how baffled I was. Later I found a “prettier” representation of the same group, but my fascination still stands!

This is my introduction to permutation groups - what’s there to know and what's done with this knowledge?

Permutation groups are ways to represent ways to rearrange objects, like a deck of cards or people around a table. They’re the most tactile way to represent a group, whether it’s the transformations of a square or the arrangements of a Rubik’s cube, and it’s often easier to “see” the underlying object they represent. For example, for the symmetries of a square, you can tell the permutation group represents turning and flipping a square. It’s harder to do that with, say, a matrix representation. When I’m looking at something more abstract that doesn’t have a real-world equivalent, it’s a fast way to get a “feel” of how a group works.

Some people’s perception of work in mathematics/abstract algebra looks more like dense research papers and static diagrams—do you consider clean, accessible, interactive work like this to be something to like... fight that, or is there a cohort/movement that you’re working within that deserves more exposure to outsiders?

Definitely! I think, at its core, mathematics is play—exploring abstract concepts, asking weird questions, yeeting numbers—but the notation or the way it’s taught gets in the way of a lot of people getting to enjoy that.

As for cohorts, I’m part of the Explorable Explanations community, which is a group of creators combining play and learning. If you like my stuff you should check out other stuff on their page!

It seems rare to find tools useful for mathematicians that are so fun to click around, is this on purpose?

Haha, I don’t think there’s a secret cabal of mathematicians going “we need to keep math BORING.” I think it’s more that a lot of math tools are meant for research, and so the focus is on utility rather than style. It’s harder to make fun visualizations for a lot of higher level, more complicated math, both because it’s rarer to find someone with UI/UX knowledge that the material and there are usually more prerequisites so it’s hard to convey the point across to the layperson! …though that doesn’t stop me from trying!

What JavaScript dependencies make building stuff like this on the web possible?

I’m using React because it’s what I’m most familiar with but honestly it’s more important to find a toolset that’s right for you and just start making things. 

Speaking of the web, what is your favorite thing about the internet?

It’s really hard to say, especially since so much of the Web has been gutted in recent years. Flash is dead, forums have been abandoned for closed off message boards, even your freaking parking meter wants you to sign up for an app… But you can still make a Geocities-style website, or a blog, or a weird math app! And there are places (like Glitch!) that make doing it super-easy now. I remember in college wanting to make an online puzzle game of sorts but was so confused on how to make a website that I… just did it over Google Forms. It’s also the most accessible place to share what you’ve made. I love making web apps because I can show them to anyone on their phones without them needing to download an app, or buy it from a Steam page or what have you.

I want to make more math apps! There are more cool things in abstract algebra I want to visualize. My dream is to figure out some way for people to even get a bare glimpse of comprehension of something as complicated as the 196,883-dimensional Monster, and I’m going to do it one math toy at a time.

I’m also looking for a Renaissance-style Patron to fund my strange artistic endeavors (or you know, a normal job would be fine too).

My personal website is https://tesseralis.site. All my socials are there, but I’m mostly (somehow) on Twitter at @tesseralis.

Software developer and ride or die for polyhedra, Nat’s previous work explores the relationships between math, puzzles, componentry, and Pokémon. 

5 minutes with Nat Alison, polyhedra enthusiast

Right now it feels like there is so much going on around the web! It might seem like it’s getting harder to keep track of all of the things, but taking a break is always okay. Studies show that taking frequent breaks in general keeps you more relaxed, more productive, and my personal favorite: more creative. So roll back your shoulders, unclench your jaw, take a deep breath in through your nose and out through your mouth, and enjoy what the Glitch community created during the month of June. 

In case you missed it, way back at the beginning of last month, we gave glitch.com a makeover, so it could reflect all of the cool, intriguing, and inspiring projects that you—the Glitch community—create! Take a look sometime, you might just see your own app. 😉 Plus, if you’re at all curious about the new Apple Vision Pro, you can start building for the XR future now on Glitch!

Oh! And another thing. Glitch celebrated its seventh birthday recently, making it a Gemini (making the fish, in fact, twins)! Shoutout to those of you who remember it way back when it was HyperDev. 

One of the least-known, but coolest things about modern web apps is how you can easily install them on your phone or laptop or tablet to run just like any other app. Here are some of the latest glitch apps you might want to install, all based on remixing our ~glitch-hello-installable starter that lets you make apps like this for free:

What2Eat, created by @bangorip, is a meal-planning app that pulls in quick recipes for you using basic styles

~jungle-pwa-webusb, created by @florent.vibert, @griffaud, and @gilles.riffaud is a demo of an installable Progressive Web App with WebUSB capability.

~leomessi, created by @saachidhaliwal is a site focused on dark matter and dark energy for all your dark astrophysicist needs. 

~mayfly, created by @somi is an ephemeral notepad where your notes last 24 hours…seems like this would be great for venting. 

~terrific-jumbled-lock, created by @Pufferfish101007 is a JavaScript Compute starter app for Glitch to port to Rust created during the Glitch Community Testing Program! 

~testing-hill-shading, created by @Pomax is a tutorial that shows you how to turn a height map image into a nice looking 2D map

~skitter-luminous-heaven, created by @lita.doolan, is a feminist wellness chatbot that encourages you with suggestions on how to relax

~florentine-glen-piccolo, created by @atog is a script that will show others what you're listening to via last.fm

~yyna, created by @yynaa is a cute site full of mini-games to play

~you-see-the-moon, created by @identikitten is a microfiction site they made to not let echo anxiety defeat them—or you!

~alignments, created by @vanessa-vasquez is an app that allows you to create and share alignment charts with your friends. Finally, an app that shows if you’re more of a Jenn Schiffer or Jenn Turner type of Jenn. 

~stupendous-aluminum-citrine, created by @lyzleong is a collection of skies from friends scattered all over the world using spreadsheets to create it!

~flexispot-sit2go-fc211, created by @sgidon is a 3D rendering of FlexiSpot Sit2Go Model FC211, for all you ergonomic workstation fans.

~needle-apple-vision-pro, created by our pal @herbst from Needle Tools, answers the question who renders the renderer??

~storiesinmotion, created by @federica.ballardini is a site dedicated to the collaborative investigation of rights violations at the Franco-Italian border of Menton and Ventimiglia. 

~wide-calm-silk, created by @sammy.mcmillion is a very pretty portfolio page in one of our favorite colors 💕

~vague-but-exciting, created by @giulia.laco were the very words used to describe Tim Berners-Lee’s March 1989 proposal.

~switzerland-rainforest is another fascinating app created by @mapsmania that lets you compare the size of Switzerland around the globe.

~newleafradio is a really cute online radio of Animal Crossing: New Horizons songs with custom weather!

The project featured in this post’s header image is ~melding, a nicely made clone of the 2048 game created by @AndrewHanson that you can download to your phone right now!

Right now it feels like there is so much going on around the web! It might seem like it’s getting harder to keep track of all of the things, but taking a break is always okay.

Last month on Glitch, the June 2023 edition

When I first discovered Summbot, Summer Anne Burton’s magical mixtape creator, I knew I had to reach out to her and find out the story behind it. I love mixtapes so much (RIP “burning” cds), and the one Summbot created for me hit me so hard: 10cc, Etta James, Yo La Tengo and Vince Staples??? It’s one of the most intriguing and joyful experiences I’ve had on the internet in a long time, which is one of the reasons Glitch exists – as an outlet for everyone to build experiences for others to delight in. Thankfully, Summer agreed to chat with me about her experience being online through the years, Glitch, and even everyone’s favorite topic: AI. Please enjoy our conversation, and definitely get a playlist from Summbot!

Jenn: How did you hear about Glitch and why did you use it instead of other options out there? 

Summer: I’m a longtime internet explorer of sorts, who first made a personal website in the mid-90s, but I had long left behind coding in favor of working in social media and digital media. I was familiar with Anil Dash’s work and had followed Glitch’s mission with interest from afar for a longtime. At BuzzFeed, I worked with a talented young writer, Anjali, who had an interest in coding and later recommended her to Anil for a job at Glitch and was happy to see that come through (she’s now an engineer at Etsy). I had remained interested in coding but when I finally came back around, Glitch instantly rose to mind as the “easy place” to go. 

Have you ever tried to code (or learn to code) before? What got in your way?

I coded HTML obsessively throughout the ‘90s and then let those skills totally deprecate as I became more obsessed with social platforms like Livejournal and Myspace. I wrote a bit about my autobiography-by-way-of-platforms for BuzzFeed back in 2014 for anyone else for whom this is a special interest, but suffice to say I have always been interested in tech but I gravitate more towards “soft skills,” potentially because of my total lack of technical education (I was unschooled after third grade). I’ve always been an autodidact, which works for coding, but I’m also sometimes someone who quits when it gets hard. 

I just like all the places where people go to express parts of themselves to each other and leave something behind of who they are. I think we’re cute. 

I’m pretty impatient. As an artist, writer, etc, I’ve always been someone who favored quick processes and mess/chaos. That’s why I’m a better cook than I am a baker. That hasn’t always felt like it worked well with code. I have a ton of ideas. I always wished I had a best friend who was a technical whiz and wanted to implement all of them for me. When I started messing around with GPT-4, it sort of unlocked that fantasy for me. I was able to describe an idea and get code generated. Then the code wasn’t perfect, and I ended up having to hunt down tutorials and gits and read API documentation and basically halfway learned to code while fixing its mediocre code. But for me, that process was much much easier than starting from scratch.

Where did you come up with the ideas for Mixtape Machine and The Five Minute Poem?

I am most interested in software that unlocks human creativity. I grew up playing text based RPGs, including early multiplayer online games where you build things together, and I always loved character creators and engaging with non-player characters in improv. These are just the things that are fun to me! I guess when I’m coding, ever since I was a kid, I’m just trying to entertain myself. 

Anyway, with the Mixtape Machine and the Poetry Generator both, I was interested in exploring the uses of OpenAI’s chat bots in a different mode than most people use them — to prompt human creativity, in the case of the poetry game, or to collect thoughts in a sort of dreamlike way, for Summbot (the mixtape machine). 

For the poetry generator, all the prompt questions in the input box were written by GPT-4. I used some reference names such as Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies and David Lynch, and provided some example questions, to get at the kind of weird thing I wanted to prompt. It’s meant to just be a little private exercise to unstick yourself. 

Summbot the mixtape machine took a lot longer and was a much bigger idea. I love making people custom playlists — when I was younger they were physical mix CDs or tapes — and I think it’s such a warm and important human thing that would be totally lost in a “metaverse world” the way some people imagine it. I also always want to share music with people, but find I lack the expertise/authority to just be a critic type figurehead. I’d much rather flirt with everyone in the world and then give them a few songs that remind me of them. So that’s what Summbot is designed to do. 

I made the images of “Summbot” in Midjourney, but they are mostly combinations of Midjourney outputs “blended” with my own original artwork and selfies. There’s like 300 of them and they reload when you reload the page. After you chat with Summbot, she makes you a mixtape that’s based on a giant playlist of mine, filtered by keywords from your conversation. She also creates a title and a cover, which she generates by making a Dalle prompt based on your convo. Every once in awhile something goes wrong, but I think it’s pretty fun and addictive. One friend called her a “Manic Pixie Summbot” and that’s probably pretty accurate. 

I love my old colleague Ryan’s newsletter Garbage Day, and I think he has the sharpest POV on the changing internet and AI stuff out there. I am an obsessive reader of Casey Lewis’s After School substack on youth trends — both because it touches a lot of my day job work as a Creative Director at a communications agency, Praytell Strategy, and also because I’m always trying to stay cool as I get older. And — not coding related, but feels like I would be remiss not to mention I’m a huge Jokermen podcast universe fanatic. I mostly lurk in their Discord but it is one of my favorite online communities. 

What site or tool do you wish everybody knew about?

I’m a huge fan of Glitch and letting everyone know how easy and fun it is to use lol (not paid to say this). I also think Canva and Notion are great tools with great free levels and fairly priced paid plans — they help my not-organized and not-clean brain do better work. Lastly, shoutout to JMPerez’s Spotify DeDupe tool, which helped me clean up my Summbot playlist.

I just like all the places where people go to express parts of themselves to each other and leave something behind of who they are. I think we’re cute. 

I’m @summeranne on ig, spotify, and twitter for now (anyone have a bluesky invite I can have?). If you are interested in working with me, get in touch summer.burton@praytellstrategy.com through Praytell Strategy — my interest in AI was spurred by my work there and we are always open to collaboration! <3 

Summer Anne Burton is the creative director at Praytell Agency, as well as a drummer, DJ, writer, illustrator, and Glitch creator!

“I am most interested in software that unlocks human creativity...I guess when I’m coding, ever since I was a kid, I’m just trying to entertain myself.”

5 minutes with Summer Anne Burton, creative director and mixtape magician

This is a very exciting time for the open web. From the recent updates to Safari enabling native app experiences in the browser, to this week’s announcement of the new mixed reality headset, Vision Pro, at WWDC, a whole new community of makers is being introduced to cutting edge tech built for, and oftentimes with, a web browser. We’re glad to see Apple expanding their support for what the Glitch community has been building and advocating for over the last 6 years: creative, compelling experiences built using open web standards.

The phrase “progressive web app” dates back to almost exactly 8 years ago, and I would be remiss to not give due credit to the Chrome Developer Relations team and its alumni since then for their advocacy and education for the experience of app-like interactions in the browser that has performance at top of mind. You can find many starters for “PWAs” from them on Glitch, like @petele’s Your First PWA playlist. This is the technology behind Apple’s new support for what they’re simply calling “Web Apps” but you can build with and use them today.

Progressive web apps like writepad.glitch.me enable native app experiences without the walled garden around development, or necessity of device specificity.

By the way, if you’re one of the 100,000+ people who have remixed Glitch in Bio, you’ve already created a progressive web app that can be installed and works offline. And we just launched our newest PWA starters that give you everything you need to build installable apps and also send push notifications.

Virtual and augmented reality are buildable for the browser thanks to WebXR, an API that enables browsers and mixed reality devices to connect, libraries like Three.js which enable 3D creations to come to life in the browser, and 3D engines like Needle Tools (whose incredible site runs on Glitch!). Much like PWAs, the Glitch community has been building and innovating with 3D experiences for several years; one of our earliest communities to truly adopt and grow on Glitch was A-frame, a web framework for building virtual reality that uses Glitch to host their starter app! 

An even more dynamic, scene-changing A-frame starter by @galaxykate

Our community has made all different kinds of apps in 3D, like the meditative and surreal ~homer-metaverse by @fcor, whose profile has even more playlists for WebXR learning and creativity. And ~koi-garden by @adarosecannon, an AR/VR developer at Apple, was a favorite call out in our community forum. Ada is also a co-chair of the Immersive Web Group and is my go-to creator for really well-made WebXR apps on Glitch.

koi-garden.glitch.me in action – turn on the sound for an instant chill vibe!

Just like with most of the examples Apple showed at WWDC, mixed reality can absolutely be more functional than creative, but on Glitch it’s both. Check out @emmettbaber’s 3D “XR in bio” and @nbackous’ virtual neon resume for inspiration.

Something that I think is really special about the WebXR community is how engaged and eager to educate the maintainers of its most prolific libraries are. You’ll hardly find a question on Stack Overflow about A-frame unanswered or without help from maintainer @dmarcos, or someone sharing their Three.js project without encouragement from its creator @mrdoob, who also works on the model-viewer component that Glitch uses to show 3D files in the editor’s Assets panel.

This model-viewer component tester shows you the controls you can use when embedding your own 3D models in the browser.

I have always found building an open web to be so exciting, but right now feels really special as we see not only the evolution of 3D imagery, native-app-like interactions, and overall more performant experiences in the browser, but also the evolution of the developer experience when creating them. Everyone who is looking to experiment, play, and even build their next great app is welcome to do so on Glitch, and they’ll be alongside the friendliest and most knowledgeable developers in the space. And we made it easier than ever to get you started. I can’t wait to see what the future has in store for the web, and what the Glitch community continues to create with it!

The header image of this post is a screenshot of ~castle-staging, a virtual castle building app deployed from Unity to Glitch using Needle by the creators of Needle! 

Web apps and mixed reality: a vision the Glitch community has been leading

All of us here at Glitch were watching Apple’s WWDC announcements today with excitement. Product launches are always fun, and new operating systems and features are great. But our takeaway from what Apple just announced is so much more. It feels like a wonderful, familiar story of connecting to people, customers and non-customers alike, through the magic of open standards powering new realities. 

When I was a kid Apple computers were the monochromatic way I got to live the Oregon Trail in the computer room at school. I liked the rainbows in the logo, but it wasn’t until I first saw the internet almost 30 years ago that I really started to care about computers. 

In 2007, everything about the internet changed when Apple introduced the first iPhone. Steve Jobs got up and said “We’ve got a very sweet story,” and talked about how developers would be able to build apps for iOS with HTML. Since then the web’s only grown more central to our lives but those of us who want to to build full-featured apps for the iPhone with HTML have always had a wishlist of one more thing we were waiting for — until today. 

The Glitch community has been building installable web apps for years, taking advantage of the web features often called "progressive web apps" (PWAs) or web apps. Our Glitch-in-Bio app was a PWA from day one so maybe you’ve built one already! To celebrate this milestone from Apple we’re releasing a couple new tools the community can use to build installable apps: 

Hello Installable is a basic PWA starter that includes everything you need to build installable apps — including push support,

And what fun would push support be without a way to send notifications? Push Sender is a free and open push server that’s easy to set up and plug into your new app! 

Web apps aren’t the only exciting thing Apple talked about today. Their new VR headset, Vision Pro, looks amazing and has the potential to level-up the augmented reality experience which we are very excited about since WebXR developers are one of the biggest communities on Glitch, building VR and AR for the web. This is so cool because it’s an amazing example of the developer community defining a space, working with the W3C to define open standards for the immersive web, and really showing companies like Apple the potential of what they’re building. 

With iOS 17, Apple is making good on that original vision for web apps as first-class citizens in their app ecosystem. Mobile Safari is gaining increased support for web apps by implementing the web push API — which means developers can write web apps that install directly to your phone and can send notifications like every other app you’ve got. 

Because they’re built on open standards championed by the W3C, web apps already have wide support on other platforms — but Apple embracing PWAs on iOS means your app will just work everywhere. Web developers get access to things like device rotation, offline access, and even push notifications and the whole web wins. Open standards are how we connect the web, letting everyone participate no matter where they are or what kind of device they’re using.

We’re showing off lots of great WebXR apps from the community on glitch.com, but there’s no shortage of authoring tools either. A-Frame is one of the most intuitive ways to get started with WebXR and they maintain community starters on Glitch. You can remix and get started writing VR right in your HTML. And our friends at Needle have built tools that plug in to Blender and publish standards-based VR and AR scenes ready for the web — you can even publish straight to Glitch!

I still miss the rainbow in Apple’s logo, but when I see them embracing the open web and following amazing work from the developer community it reminds me why I was so excited about the web when I first saw it so many years ago: this is a place we all get to build together. And now it’s easier than ever to do that in a browser, on mobile devices, and in new realities. I can’t wait to see what the Glitch community builds with all this good news coming out of Cupertino. 

Celebrating an open app ecosystem with Apple and a new vision for the web

June is about to be a very exciting month for the Glitch community! But before we get to that, you know we have to celebrate all of the cool things that were created in May. From mythical monsters to time travel to playing with custom domains, the Glitch community was very busy building, experimenting, and making the web a blast. 

Speaking of custom domains, special shout out to all of the folks who participated in the community testing last month. You all helped us to make Glitch and Fastly even better for building with and we can’t wait to show you how. If you missed out on that fun, don’t worry! There will be another round of community testing coming soon to try out Fastly features on Glitch apps from within the Glitch editor. If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, share your interest by commenting on this sneak peek thread in our community forum! 

~biking-in-chicago by @etsinger gives you the lowdown on the issues facing bikers in the Chicago area. 

~creating-with-data.glitch.me/shirt-designer by @digitalWestie and @petra89962 uses generative art to create some shirts people would truly love to buy!

~archive-stumbler created by @ckolderup lets you explore the Internet Archive in a “Stumble Upon” style. 

~gh-pages by @domfarolino is a useful tool for remembering how many static pages you’ve deployed to GitHub. 

~succession-generator created by @derekahmedzai lets you hold onto your emotional support billionaires’ toxic family drama just a tad longer. 

~minigamesbyjess created by @jessameliasilver is the perfect way to kick off your Friday, with a variety of fun mini games. 

~notsoterriblestory by @sjsbutterfly is a fun “choose your own adventure” style game.

~poetechnics-transfluxions created by @ryanhgreene1 is a fascinating collection of poems, diagrams, and figures from Yaxkin Melchy’s "constellation book" called EL NUEVO MUNDO or THE NEW WORLD. 

~pale-reliable-fog by @aagunasekaran will keep you on your toes. 

~word-mastermind created by @clupasq a fun word guessing ga—….it’s wordle, it’s a wordle clone and I just now realized. 

~mythical-creatures by @mapsmania lets you wander the world of cryptids at your own peril!!

~wswjp by @Flench04 and @sutherland.creations details racism facing the Douglas County School District.

~timetravel-streetview by @mapsmania is not a new app, but allows you to now travel to Los Angeles in 2100. 

~birds-eye-quebec created by @mapsmania takes you over Sherbrooke, Quebec circa 1881. 

~cubshomegametoday created by ​​@jbouvier is like a Magic 8 Ball for Chicago Cubs fans. 

~tbb-links by @triangleblogblog is a cool Glitch in Bio app for Triangle Blog Blog fans. 

~galaxykate-arvr-aframe by @galaxykate gives you a chance to play around with WebXR, remix it and give it a try!

~paint-it-timelapse created by @new.in.twon is a soothing timelapse painting of whatever you choose!

~incantationbowl by @olee0114 lets you unearth a 3D incantation bowl from ancient Mesopotamia. 

~strange-attraction created by @rowan-m is another satisfying project that creates beautiful art generated by math that you can shuffle to your heart’s content.

The project featured in this post’s header image is ~bikebus created by @daniel73473 for the Chicago metro area, not the Milwaukee area—but if there is a Milwaukee bike bus we would love to know about it!

June is about to be a very exciting month for the Glitch community! But before we get to that, you know we have to celebrate all of the cool things that were created in May.