Annals of Innovation: How David Beats Goliath, from Malcolm Gladwell. A really enjoyable read. Hat tip: Raanan.
Category Archives: Asides
BuddyPress for the World
Happy to announce that BuddyPress is now available to the world. BuddyPress is a package built on top of WordPress which transforms WP into a social network complete with profiles, friends, messaging, groups, and even activity streams. Of course it’s 100% GPL and Open Source. It’s built on top of MU (which can be tricky to install) so still not for everybody yet, but this is a major milestone in the WordPress world. Check it out. Congrats to Andy and the whole BuddyPress team. Here’s Andy’s official announcement post and WordPress.org.
Wired Joins the Family
I wanted to take a moment to welcome Wired.com’s 12 blogs to the WordPress family! (They just completed their switch from Typepad.) I thought this completes my prediction from January that WP would reach over 40% of this list of top blogs, but when I went to the Technorati 100 today everything has changed! First, they only show ten blogs at a time now (lame!) and second there appears to have been huge churn on the list,so we’ll have to wait until next January to do an apples-to-apples comparison.
WP.com
WordPress CodeSniffer
WordPress CodeSniffer Standard. Helps you format your code in wp-style.
PollDaddy PHP
PollDaddy just finished their big switch from ASP.NET/SQL to PHP/MySQL. Go and give the guys a virtual Guinness.
Blogs Are Dead
Blogs are dead; long live the blog by Andrew Keen after our dinner in Amsterdam last week.
WordPress Authors Wanted
Wiley is looking for savvy WordPress folks to author new books they want to publish. If you love writing and are a WordPress wizard than contact Carol Long.
Google Analytics script
40% still use old Google Analytics script. Don’t forget to update to the newest Google Analytics script call. (And drop in WordPress.com Stats while you’re in there to get something quick and author-centric.)
New WordCamp SF Site
The new site for WordCamp San Francisco is online, go check it out. Got some more speakers and announcements when I get back from Japan.
Scotch Whisky Guide
YCombinator and Techstars
YCombinator and Techstars spawning similar startups. I’ve noticed this too, though it’s most likely just good ideas occuring to several folks at once and the seed folks lowering the barrier to entry of starting a company and execution, so we notice more of the confluences.
Bryght Closing
The End of a Bryght Era. One of the earliest hosted CMS ventures (based on Drupal) is closing.
WordCamp China, Hong Kong, and Japan
I’ll be attending our two WordCamps in China: WordCamp China in Shanghai, on April 4, and WordCamp Hong Kong on April 5. I think this says I’m going to be in Japan for WordCamp on April 12th.
Downloadable Web Fonts
Downloadable font formats for the Web. See also: Web Font Optimizer (visit in anything except Firefox). 2009 will be an exciting year for typography on the web, particularly when Firefox 3.5 comes out this summer. Hat tip: Mark Wubben.
Berkun on 2.7
Gravatar in Gmail
Jon experiments with Gravatar in Gmail. I would love to see more of this. We also need a better way to get Gravatars into your Apple address book / iPhone for people that don’t have a set picture.
Authentication in WordPress 2.8
PollDaddy API & Twitter
PollDaddy has a new API. Also check out their easy tool for polling your Twitter followers.