https://soundcloud.com/mbtech/talk-by-steven-jobs-idca-1983
I really enjoyed listening to this “Lost” Steve Jobs Speech from 1983; Foreshadowing Wireless Networking, the iPad, and the App Store. In the beginning he asks who is over 36 years old, and says those are the people who were born before the computer. He also perfectly describes Google Street Maps as an early MIT experiment in Aspen. Really fascinating from end to end, including the Q&A.
You might have seen the news last week that Longreads is joining Automattic’s editorial team. Today I’m excited to announce that we’ve acquired Scroll Kit and they’re joining Automattic as well, and will be focused on making customization more visual and intuitive. We’re barely on the second inning of what WordPress could be, and the impact it can have on the world, and I consider myself very lucky to be working with the best and brightest on transforming the way the world publishes.
The guest blog on Automattic’s hiring process for the Harvard Business Review ended up being pretty popular and thanks to Michelle Weber and Dan McGinn it’s been expanded into a longer version that’s now on shelves in the actual magazine! Very excited about this. If you are in an airport and see it on the stands (as above) definitely pick it up, it’s a great issue.
Brad Stone at BusinessWeek reports Automattic has acquired the great service Longreads, which you can also read about on our blog. See also: Techmeme.
Naval Ravikant writes on Bitcoin (and more) as The Fifth Protocol. Fantastic read, and reminds me to read Snow Crash.
In April and May, there are Automattic team meetups and events happening in Budapest, Napa Valley, Pender Island, New Orleans, Barbados, Cardiff, Konstanz, Playa Del Carmen, Portland, Toronto, Saratoga Springs, Palermo, Edinburgh, and Lisbon. Did I mention that we’re hiring?
I did one of the “On My Phone” interviews for Vanity Fair, which is especially funny during Lent. You can read it here: WordPress’ Matt Mullenweg on Calm, Childish Gambino, and Giving Up His iPhone for Lent.
…there are vastly more possible comparisons than there are data points to compare. Without careful analysis, the ratio of genuine patterns to spurious patterns – of signal to noise – quickly tends to zero.
Tim Harford in the Financial Times has a great article called Big data: are we making a big mistake?.
The Quartz finds that The Million Dollar Homepage still exists, but 22% of it has rotted away. BTW, Alex Tew’s new venture is Calm.com which is one of my favorite sites/services/apps.
Michael Schulson takes a great look at the contrast between Whole Foods and the Creationist Museum in Whole Foods: America’s Temple of Pseudoscience. It is a good reminder that we must try to use the best available data in decisions regardless of our preëxisting proclivities. Also good to check out is Grist’s series on GMOs, probably best summarized in What I learned from six months of GMO research: None of it matters or the NY Times A Lonely Quest for Facts on Genetically Modified Crops.
Two cool new WordPresses launched on VIP: Nate Silver’s new FiveThirtyEight site, and the Facebook Newsroom, which I believe is the first WP-powered Facebook site. (Hopefully the first of many!) Also congrats to 10up and Beyond respectively for working on each of these sites.
Raging Against Hacks With Matt Taibbi. I can’t wait to see his new publication.
I have a few quotes and thoughts in the WSJD article At Lavish SXSW Festival, Some Avoid Marketing Circus.
The chat I had the other week with Reid Hoffman is now online. Reid is such a thoughtful guy it’s my favorite interview in a while. We cover a lot of ground, including expanding WordPress’ (and Automattic’s) mission from “Democratize publishing” to “Democratize publishing and development.” Give it a watch!
How the north ended up on top of the map by Nick Danforth.
I spoke for about half an hour with Cameron Moll on his Hired podcast about working at Automattic and how we approach recruiting and hiring.
Marco Arment on Long-Form content.
Paul Sieminski, the general counsel at Automattic (Automattlock), writes for Wired on how Corporations Abusing Copyright Laws Are Ruining the Web for Everyone.
I have a guest article on the Harvard Business Review blogs called Hire by Auditions, Not Resumes.
I love Christmas: the lights, the food, the music. The music part can sometimes be fraught, though. There’s so many cheesy and badly done Christmas albums out there. Fortunately my favorite genre, jazz, has actually a really impressive collection of interesting interpretations of Christmas classics.
Over the years I’ve curated a few of my favorites. Thanks to Spotify, one of my favorite services I discovered in 2013, it’s easy to share them with you. Here’s my Xmas Jazz playlist, including my favorite holiday arrangement of all time, Duke Ellington’s version of the Nutcracker Suite.
Remember: It’s okay to play holiday music until at least mid-January.
If you have any favorites you’d like me to add, send them via Spotify messages or in the comments. Merry Christmas everybody!