I’m here with Khaled and Podz at the Revolution Bar in Soho. We’ll be hanging out here into the night so come by if you fancy.
Monthly Archives: December 2005
The Googleverse
I’ve been particpating in an online discussion called The Googleverse with some amazing people the past few days. The conversation has been good (and has been showing up in some of my fav blogs) so I’d recommend checking it out.
London Meetup
There is a WordPress meetup in London today that I’ll be at. I imagine the topics will cover everything from WordPress 2.0 to the Codex and support. I’m really looking forward to meeting some of the people that have been a part of the community for years now.
Gallery: 12-9-2005
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NY Times on WordPress
Dave Kellam just wrote in about The Carpetbagger, a new WordPress-powered blog from the New York Times. It’s currently linked to from the front page of nytimes.com. This is the last one I blog for a while, I promise!
London Troubles
Geez, I should have stayed in Paris! When I arrived at my hotel in SoHo London last night around midnight I found out they had no record of my reservation from Orbitz and no rooms available. What makes this worse is my reservation for 4 nights had already been charged. Every hotel in town was booked solid for the night. Several hours later I found myself in a hotel waaaay out by Heathrow and now instead of exploring London I’m trying to clear things up, find a place to stay in town tonight, and catch up with work I was planning to do last night.
Consumating Bought
Consumating was bought, something I chatted with Ben Brown a while back about and thought was interesting. (Apparently Alex Muse saw us and also has some thoughts on the deal.) Mike Tatum (the guy who got me to work at CNET) writes about the acquisition here, and the comments are interesting as well. I think CNET will be judged a lot based on how this goes over the next year or so.
Gallery: 12-8-2005
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About.com switching to WordPress
Sheila Coggins just published an interview with me on About.com Weblogs, which came out fairly well and talks a little bit about new efforts like WordPress.com.
The timing for the interview couldn’t be better. As people watching closely may have already started to notice, About.com has begun switching their sites over to WordPress from Movable Type. They’ve been doing it quietly and one-by-one for at least month now, you can see WP in action on Weblogs, Baby Parenting, entrepreneur, US politics, and many more. They’ve integrated it so tightly with their system most of the usual signs of a WP blog aren’t there, but the dead giveaway is the comments. In fact none of their older blogs seem to have comments enabled, just the upgraded WP ones.
About.com isn’t very “2.0” hip but they are still get some of the highest traffic on the web, easily within the top 50 sites in the world. From what I understand they haven’t made any changes to the core code, all of their customizations have been through plugins. They’re also looking at bringing a WP “powered by” link to the pages. (Which, as noted in the previous entry, is completely optional.) I’m very glad About has found a platform that will grow with them. 🙂
The good news keeps coming in.
Gallery: 12-7-2005
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Gallery: 12-6-2005
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German Focus
So the next trip to Europe I’ll have to catch the Netherlands and Germany, I’ve met some fantastic WordPress users (and future users) from both. There is someone on stage from a German media organization talking about how they’ve begun emphasizing blogs much more in their publication, Focus. After browsing a bit I noticed that blogs.focus.msn.de (yes that’s MSN) is all WordPress blogs — cool! What’s interesting about being Open Source is that the software turns up places you would never suspect or know about.
Gallery: 12-5-2005
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Akismet in Java
Akismet Java API, by David Czarnecki (the author of the excellent Blojsom). So cool!
Gallery: 12-4-2005
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Yahoo on WordPress
Stephen Steele (is that a real name?) just wrote in that the new Yahoo Mail updates blog is on WordPress. As far as I know this is the first official Yahoo blog on WP I’ve seen. What makes it really interesting is it’s the first time I’ve seen third-party software (like WordPress) on the yahoo.com domain. You’ll notice every time they’ve done blogs before it’s been on a different domain like yahoo.net or ysearchblog.com, I imagine because of the incredibly strict security requirements anything with access to Yahoo.com cookies must meet. This is very exciting news. 🙂
Landed
Paris has the most confusing airport, although I suppose any airport is confusing if you don’t speak the language. Franck was right. I ended up chickening out and taking a taxi, and I’m not checked in and settled. First order of business: find an adapter for these weird plugs. The weather seems to have cleared up so I’m going to venture out and explore a bit.
Gallery: 12-3-2005
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French Phrases
After reading about Andy’s adventures I decided I better Google up a French phrasebook for study on the flight. The first hit looks like it would get me in to a little more trouble than I’m looking for. 🙂
En Route
About to board the plane to Paris for the Les Blogs conference, where I will be representing open source and WP from the audience side. I’m looking forward to exploring Paris and meeting some French WordPress users. I’m surprised that Dot Clear isn’t represented at the conference, as it seems to be one of the more significant blogging tools over there. There is no WP meetup planned but I’m there through Wednesday so if you’re interested in something drop me a note.