The interview I did with Robert Scoble at Big Omaha is now up. Here’s the embed:
Category Archives: Asides
About.me and Wakemate
Today has been a very exciting day. First off, About.me has been acquired by Aol, as good friend Tony Conrad writes about on his blog. A great deal on both sides, I think Aol got a steal and a great team here. Second, one of Audrey’s earliest investments Wakemate has finally shipped their first version, which I’ve been using the past two nights and has been great. (I’m averaging 60 so far.) Reserve your Wakemate here.
40% of the tasks in Mechanical Turk are getting people to spam. Amazon should take a hard stance against these, as soon as possible.
City Equations
The first data set they analyzed was on the economic productivity of American cities, and it quickly became clear that their working hypothesis — like elephants, cities become more efficient as they get bigger — was profoundly incomplete. According to the data, whenever a city doubles in size, every measure of economic activity, from construction spending to the amount of bank deposits, increases by approximately 15 percent per capita.
A Physicist Turns the City Into an Equation on NYTimes.com. A fascinating article about some constants between cities, and a bit at the end about how laws are different for corporations.
The always-excellent Big Picture blog sums up 2010 in photos, definitely take a few minutes this Friday and check out part one, part two, and part three.
State of the Blogosphere
But blogging perseveres–as it should. It is a place where context, thoughtfulness and continuity are rewarded with inbound links, ReTweets, bookmarks, comments and Likes. Blogs are the digital library of our intellect, experience, and vision.
Brian Solis on The State of the Blogosphere 2010.
TechFellow Award
Earlier tonight I won a TechFellow Award in the “Product Design and Marketing” category. I thought this would be a good opportunity to thank the two people who have had the biggest design influence over the past few years on WordPress (and me): Jane Wells and Matt “MT” Thomas.
Cyber Missile
Mystery Surrounds Cyber Missile That Crippled Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Ambitions, such a cool story.
Groupon WP
Groupon has been in the news lately as a rumored 6 billion dollar acquisition target, and of course their blog is powered by WordPress. On that fact alone I’d say, go for it Google!
Airport Security
It’s not that the terrorist picks an attack and we pick a defense, and we see who wins. It’s that we pick a defense, and then the terrorists look at our defense and pick an attack designed to get around it. Our security measures only work if we happen to guess the plot correctly. If we get it wrong, we’ve wasted our money. This isn’t security; it’s security theater.
Bruce Schnier on why airport security is A Waste of Money and Time in the New York Times.
Stallone
Sylvester Stallone’s website is WP-powered. (I saw The Expendables last night.) Also, am I imagining things or did I read a longish profile of Stallone that talked about his production company, his office, the legacy of Rocky… can’t find it anywhere and search on my Kindle is broken.
New VaultPress Security Scanning
New VaultPress security scanning, scans all your core files to make sure they’re kosher.
5-minute Private Collaboration Site
20 Billion Spams Blocked
Akismet just passed 20 Billion Served.
Almost-beta WordPress 3.1 is now running for 15 million blogs on WP.com, the feedback has been really good already and hopefully we’ll iron out some of the few remaining bugs before we do the beta release. The link gives a nice overview of some of the user-facing features of 3.1.
We are made to feel that at any point, somewhere on the globe, something may occur to sweep away old certainties—something that, if we failed to learn about it instantaneously, could leave us wholly unable to comprehend ourselves or our fellows.
On Distraction by Alain de Botton. I’ll finish this later, I need to reload Techmeme.
15 Blogging Best Practices
Top 15 Blogging Best Practices, which I found via the Share the Word blog.
RTE Interview
When I was in Ireland last week I got the chance to appear on the nightly news show on RTE, which you can view here on WPTV. It was interesting because (1) I was standing in the oddest spot and (2) because it was live broadcast I had one of those things in my ear and there was a second or so delay, which was kind of fun. Here’s the view from the broadcast van. The guest photos were taken by Ciara Beades and Aisling Keane.
Spike Jonze and Kanye
I’ve seen two interesting online short films recently, and I’d recommend both (if you’re above 18). The first is “I’m Here” by Spike Jonze, a love story, which you can see on its official Absolut-sponsored site or on Youtube through these Ebert links. The second is Kanye’s new bizarre but gorgeous short film Runaway, viewable on YouTube, which features the beautiful Selita Ebanks. Both are about 30 minutes long, and will have you thinking and talking to your friends.