Sarah Kessler at Mashable did an interview with me she’s posted under the title WordPress Founder on the Key to Open Source Success. We talk about capitalism, IPOs, how the internet has changed, and Open Source.
Category Archives: Asides
Adobe on WP
Adobe Migrates to WordPress, switching 1,200 blogs from Movable Type.
Automattic Becomes a Domain Registrar
As some folks have noticed already, Automattic is now a “real” domain registrar (ID #1531). This has been a goal of mine for several years now, chiefly because I am a bit of a domain collector myself and I’ve never been completely satisfied with the domain buying or management experience on any of the usual players. Second, custom domains are a popular feature on WordPress.com and should become even more popular with some changes we’re introducing this month and it’ll be good to be able to provide a fully integrated experience for our users there. It’ll be a few months while we build all the tools necessary to begin taking advantage of our registrar status so in the meantime we’ll continue to use Godaddy, who has been an excellent partner.
Price of Aid
Disturbing but worthwhile article in the New Yorker about how humanitarian aid can prolong and intensify conflict and strife. Link is just an abstract — anyone have a full copy?
FSF Profile
The Free Software Foundation has a new profile/interview of me on their site. The pull-quote: “Fundamental issues of freedom in software are fundamental issues in our lives, even if most people can’t see it.”
Email Graphs
The email levels on my contact page now show graphs when you click on them. I’ve found this new feature to be very motivating for me.
Experience Design
Hipmunk
Hipmunk is a flight search tool with a twist, and even if you don’t travel as much as I do you should give it a try next time you’re taking a trip somewhere. (It’s hard to describe, but easy to use.) As announced elsewhere, I’m happy to be part of a group of people supporting the team as an investor.
Adam Savage On Problem Solving
Adam Savage of Mythbusters talks about how he solves problems, with an entertaining Q&A afterward. Hat tip: Paul Kedrosky.
Greatest Golf Photo
Saw this on Yahoo: Tiger Woods gives us the greatest golf photo you’ll ever see. Basically he mis-shot (which almost never happens) straight into a camera man who was taking a picture right that instant. Here are larger versions. I love how everyone is looking at the camera, Inception-like, and the guy with the cigar. “For camera buffs, Pain was using a Nikon D3S camera, with a 24-70 mm lens and a shutter speed of 1/1000 of a second.”
Offsite Redirects
A new upgrade launched on WordPress.com today, Offsite Redirects. Basically this allows you to retain all of your links, SEO, and visitors when you move from WP.com to self-hosted (or any platform, for that matter). I point it out only because I think it’s central to Automattic’s philosophy, and something I learned from Dave Winer: the easier you make it for people to go, the more likely they are to stay.
Email Load
I added a new feature to the contact page that shows you how high (or low) my email queues are, which update once a minute. If the levels are lower, it probably means I’ll get back to your sooner.
Seattle, Grist, Philippines
After a lovely weekend in New York I headed straight to Seattle, but not because of the Microsoft announcement like many people thought, but to attend a meeting for Grist, an environmental non-profit (with a sense of humor) whose board of directors I just joined. In addition to being a great organization to be involved with that has funny but important coverage, I hope to learn a lot more about the non-profit world and apply it to the WordPress Foundation. Tonight I leave for the Philippines where I’ll attend and speak at a WordCamp in Manila. I’m looking forward to the end of the year when things slow down.
MSN Spaces Closing, becomes WP.com
As just announced on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt, Windows Live (formerly MSN) Spaces is shutting down and migrating their 30m+ users to WordPress.com. Four years ago I was fairly worried as every internet giant (Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo, Google) had a hosted blogging service. Now only Blogger remains, and is firmly in our sights. I’ve been impressed with Microsoft’s regard for their users in providing a solid upgrade and migration path with a really smooth experience, which I think is in strong contrast to Yahoo’s 360 or AOL’s Journals. Given that this effectively doubles WordPress’s user base, there is a lot of work to be done still, but I’m excited by the challenge. 🙂 See also: official Windows Live post, official WP.com post, and 30+ other articles covering this on Techmeme.
Chartbeat
Chartbeat is a cool real-time analytics service I’ve been enjoying using for a while, especially from the iPhone app. As just announced yesterday on AllThingsD, I’ve joined their latest round of funding and I’m looking forward to see what they do next.
iPad vs Kindle
iPad vs Kindle by Mark Jaquith. I endorse this blog post. It matches my experience exactly.
Social Network Detective
My relentless pursuit of the guy who robbed me. “A thief broke into my car. I used Craigslist, a dating site, MySpace and a fast food joint to track him down.”
Israeli Security Hates iPad
I had a pretty interesting experience going through security at Ben Gurion airport — I almost didn’t make it through. I had heard the airport security in Israel was different but I had no idea. They spent about an hour asking questions, turning on (and taking apart) every piece of the 20+ electronic items I travel with, with particular attention and questions around my iPad. They took it out of the Apple case, turned it on, scanned it, took it away for 10 minutes to scan somewhere else, asked if anyone else in Israel had used it, when I last used it, asked when I got it, and ultimately said that their “technology team” had not cleared it for carry-on and they would need to pack it in a special box, wrap it, tape it, and check it directly with Continental (I couldn’t touch it or the box except to put some WP stickers on so I could identify it later). Wowza! My Sony PC, though, is safe to fly with. No wonder I saw so few Apple products at WordCamp. 🙂
Chic & Geek Interview
On the new Chic & Geek website (no relation to Chic Meets Geek events) I was invited to do a “Questionnaire de Proust” style interview which has just been published in French. Lots of little tidbits that I’ve never talked about before. (Translation here.)
Upcoming WordCamps
I really enjoyed attending WordCamps in Houston, Savannah, and Salt Lake City the past few weeks. You can always find upcoming WordCamps here, and I’m currently planning on attending Jerusalem (this Sunday), Portland (September 18-19), and Philippines (October 2). I’m looking forward to meeting more of the WordPress community and also answering your questions in the Town Hall sessions.