Blackbird was the codename for an online content authoring platform developed by Microsoft in the mid-90s. Intended to be the online publishing tool for the first version of MSN (The Microsoft Network), "Blackbird" was born of a Microsoft acquisition of Daily Planet Software, and the tool was first conceived prior to the advent of the Internet and Web as we know it today. At the time, AOL and CompuServe were the primary online venues, and the introduction of the Web to mass consumers was about to begin, even as low-bandwidth, dialup connections dominated. "Blackbird" was based on the concept of an object-based backend file system in Microsoft Data Centers (Microsoft "Cairo"/NT), a low-bandwidth-streaming rendering client with page-based layout (similar to Aldus PageMaker but based on online streaming) and embedded interactive client-side ActiveX objects (then OLE). Fundamentally, it was based on the SGML standard (the direct ancestor of HTML) for client-side layout. It became a Microsoft-promoted alternative to HTML for a brief time, just as the commercial Internet and Web Browser were born. But with scripting capability for HTML yet to be demonstrated, it was to be a means to serve dynamic, media-rich applications and documents that contained processing logic, similar to what a user would experience in a desktop environment. Pages in a "Blackbird application" would be able to contain video, audio, graphs, and other OLE based document formats without the need of plug-ins.
How It All Started: Pre-W3C Web and Internet Background
1971: Ray Tomlinson of BBN creates email program to send messages across a distributed network.
The HotJava Browser: A White Paper
Browsers allow people to treat the data spread across the Internet as a cohesive whole. Web browsers integrate the function of fetching the data with figuring out what it is and displaying it. One of the most important file types browsers understand is the hypertext markup language (HTML). HTML allows text data objects to embed simple formatting information and references to other objects.
Usenet
Usenet, short for User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was established in 1980. Users read and post messages to one or more topic categories, known as newsgroups. Usenet resembles a bulletin board system (BBS) in many respects and is the precursor to the Internet forums that were developed after the introduction of the World Wide Web. Discussions are threaded, as with web forums and BBSes, though posts are stored on the server sequentially.
The Browser is the Computer! by Daniel Lopez & Angel De Miguel @ Wasm I/O 2025
Basic | The Personal Computing Platform
We build products, tools, and standards to make computers more personal.
The AT Protocol's interesting design - LittleBit
Bluesky's backend was made to be more than a social network
Hypermedia Systems
The revolutionary ideas that empowered the Web. A simpler approach to building applications on the Web and beyond with htmx and Hyperview. Enhancing web applications without using SPA frameworks.
Overview
What is Blacksky? Blacksky Algorithms is building the future of self-governable online communities with tools that make complex infrastructure simple to deploy. Most social platforms control what users see, how communities operate, and who gets to feel safe online. Blacksky changes that by providing one-click infrastructure for independent, self-governed digital spaces. Our platform lets communities […]
Overview
What is Blacksky? Blacksky Algorithms is building the future of self-governable online communities with tools that make complex infrastructure simple to deploy. Most social platforms control what users see, how communities operate, and who gets to feel safe online. Blacksky changes that by providing one-click infrastructure for independent, self-governed digital spaces. Our platform lets communities […]
All-Purpose Machines
HyperMap is a new format for REST APIs that lets you execute JavaScript and WebAssembly on the client. This gives you access to modern Web APIs like WebSockets or fetch to build APIs that can dynamically update with asynchronous or streaming data, or even push whole computations closer to the data.
Local-First Software: Taking Back Control of Our Data | a mini-doc
Anniversary
Blacksky Algorithms turns one. Announcing blacksky.cash for private payments and blacksky.tech for one-click server hosting on AT Protocol. Launching 2026.
Digital Topology & Economic Power
The autonomous file, once the basic unit of user agency in personal computing, was first hollowed out through proprietary formats and data internalization, then abolished entirely by cloud platforms, relocating control toward incumbents at each stage. Enclosure succeeds not by offering users less, but by bundling genuine capability gains with topological restructuring, so that the user cannot accept the improvement without accepting the new relationship of power.
The blacksky.community web application now uses our own API servers to load posts, timelines and profiles. When data is missing (accounts on the edges of the network, outside of our primary community, etc) we leverage @microcosm.blue
Blacksky
blacksky.community🦋 ATstatus clients (web)
Frontend clients or viewers for the microblogging / status aspect of the ATmosphere network. This is for web-based clients or viewers. #ATmosphereConf
secretsky
tenna.party
twinkl.social ☆ under construction
mu
Couch Sky
backyard
