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.
Category Archives: Asides
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.
Implications Of Blogging
Philip Leigh writes about The Implications Of Blogging for MediaPost. “[M]uch like the printing press transformed publishing, the true cultural significance of blogging — which is only incipient at present — will be a consequence of its production process.”
FoodPress and Nokia
Two fun launches today: FoodPress is a new collection of the best WordPress food writing in the world, right now from .com only. Don’t visit if you’re hungry. 🙂 Second, we’ve launched the WordPress mobile app for Nokia and it’s in their Ovi store. Update: And a bonus, check out the slick new design on Akismet that just launched.
John Medina in SF Tomorrow
John Medina, the author of one of my favorite books Brain Rules, is going to be at Automattic’s office tomorrow (Tuesday the 2nd) at 5 PM to have some after-work drinks and give a short talk. We’ve reserved some seats for the SF WordPress community to come by, and we even have free copies of his books for the first 30 people to show up. RSVP is required, so register here. Hope to see a few of you guys there!
Jane Kim Again
I first posted about Jane Kim in 2004, on my first visit to San Francisco. Fast-forward 6 years and she’s President of the School Board and going for District 6 Supervisor in tomorrow’s elections. If you’re in San Francisco, or know someone cool who is, check out her website and keep her in mind at the polls tomorrow. Tomorrow will also be my first time voting in person instead of by mail, which I expect to be annoying but worth it Update: And she won!
Mashable Interview
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.