On Friday at 3:30 I’m going to be interviewed onstage at SxSW by the formidable John Battelle on the Future of WordPress — you can see details here. Would love to see some of you there.
Category Archives: Asides
Last year Audrey made an investment in Enterproid, which just came out of stealth. Basically it’s a mod of Android that creates a virtualized environment so you can separate your work stuff and personal stuff, and be able to do fun stuff on your phone that everyone expects but not many IT departments allow. They’ve gotten good coverage on TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb, and just won several hundred thousand dollars from the QPrize and presented at the DEMO conference.
A few super-hip folks (Automattic, Wall Street Journal, and HostGator) are hosting a WordPress party with open bar and all-you-can-eat BBQ on Friday night at SxSW (deets here) but it’s invite only and there’ll be a list at the door. (We can only feed so many people!) However I have 15 spaces to give away to Ma.tt readers, which will go to the first 15 people to comment with a link to an image of the WP logo in a cool place (Photoshop allowed) and your WP-powered blog.
Scott Berkun writes a delightful essay on How is WordPress.com made?.
Adam Gopnik writes How the Internet Gets Inside Us. “[This complaint] is identical to Baudelaire’s perception about modern Paris in 1855, or Walter Benjamin’s about Berlin in 1930, or Marshall McLuhan’s in the face of three-channel television (and Canadian television, at that) in 1965.” Hat tip: John Battelle’s Signal.
WordCamp Indonesia proudly presents the first WordPress Board Game. I gotta try this.
Over on ThemeShaper I share Premium Themes on WP.com, the backstory, which also links to all of the coverage from our announcement today.
Scoble muses on “Why I was wrong about Quora as a blogging service”.
Z-Type is a game that helps you practice typing. Fantastic to play when you’re switching to Dvorak. Hat tip: Lloyd.
I was on the Steppin’ Off the Edge podcast the other day and mentioned I don’t have a Wikiquotes page. Well, now I do. If I’ve ever said something you enjoyed or inspired you, drop it on that page.
Some good news today, TripIt is joining up with Concur. I’m excited about this because I travel all the time and I’m curious to see the TripIt approach and team working in the space with a larger team and more resources. 🙂
Rich Brooks on Fast Company asks What’s the Best Blog Platform?. That’s an easy one to answer. There’s still some disagreement over “What’s the best CMS?” but we’re trying to make that one easy to answer, too.
Scoble Interview
The interview I did with Robert Scoble at Big Omaha is now up. Here’s the embed:
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.