Category Archives: WordPress

The open source publishing platform I co-founded — development, releases, community, and the ecosystem.

Reger

WordPress

Reger is a blogging system with different types of logs for every activity from running to what clothes you wore. It basically lets you attach certain types of data to posts and then graph it out. What’s neat is something like this could be implemented as a plugin for WordPress using custom fields.

Core Values

WordPress

Mary Hodder’s session on Core Values of bloggers is pretty interesting. They’re discussing trust and identity online, also editorial integrity and money. Excellent moderation. People who happen to be vendors can still give valuable feedback. For example, Brendon Wilson works for PGP, but he had something valuable to offer to the conversation about encryption that wasn’t tied to his company’s product or any specific vendor. I think everyone here is smart enough to smell a demo, as someone said earlier. Lunch was very interesting, talked a lot with Matt Shobe from Feedburner. The list: democracy, attribution, transparency, innovation, personalization, accessibility, honesty, creativity, who people are, editorial independence, connectedness. Bad: power law economics, lack of attribution, anononimity (good and bad), whuffie-hoarding, links for money.

Podcasting Session

Events, WordPress

The Podcasting session by Adam Curry just finished up, it was interesting but I get the impression that they’re needlessly complicating things by recreating constructs that already exist in HTML. Wifi is terrible, I’m connecting through my cell phone and I’ll try to blog everything through that. I do have a few of the tiny WordPress stickers so if you want to show your WP pride here at the conference drop by and ask me for one. Dave Sifry tried to mention Technorati when he had the mic and got smacked down, so I’m going to avoid mentioning WordPress myself (even though it is and will always be totally non-commercial) but I think it’s free for other people to bring it up. Anyway, MJ is going to smuggle me in some nutrition so I better get back to that.

Houston Press and CNET

Personal, Travel, WordPress,

(Also known as Announcements Two and Three. See part one.)

Matt Mullenweg may be underage, but he knows how to get into a bar.

That’s the opening line from the Houston Press feature called The Blog Age, subtitled “Matt Mullenweg helps usher in the real information revolution, one Web log at a time.” Modest, eh? It should be on newsstands tomorrow, so if you’re in Houston, pick up a copy. Otherwise read it online.

Though it’s a little embarrassing for me in parts, it’s a really good article that covers everything from Open Source to my fellow H-Town bloggers to political blogging at the national conventions. I’ve been talking to Cathy (the author) off and on since August and the strangest thing is how much has changed since we first met in a small coffee shop in Montrose. There are a few points I’d like to expand on or clarify but I’m exhausted from today’s travel right now.

The Other Big News

If you’ve read the article already you’ll notice that it breaks a juicy tidbit that hasn’t been published before: I’ve accepted a job with CNET Networks. That’s the reason I’m moving to San Francisco. There were a lot of ways things could have gone and honestly I wasn’t even planning on leaving Houston originally, but over the course of the past 3-4 months I’ve been talking to CNET and an opportunity came up I just couldn’t pass. As it says in the article part of what they’re paying me for is working on WordPress just like I do now. The rest of my time I’ll be working on various projects, most of them probably so top-secret I can’t breathe a word in advance.

The reason I’m excited about working with CNET is how what I’ll be doing meshes with my thoughts and ideals regarding Open Source, standards, and communities. My principles aren’t changing just because my paycheck is. You can expect the same sort of content here on PhotoMatt.net you’ve seen in the past — namely unfiltered personal thoughts, jabs, and observations not connected with any corporate entity. This is obviously a pretty significant move for both myself and WordPress so I’ll do my best to entertain any questions you may have in the comments.

Best Route

WordPress

Blogging to you live from Arizona. We’re going to stop in Tucson for the night and I wanted to solicit feedback on what’s the prettiest drive from there to San Francisco. Until now the plan has been “Get on I-10, go West” but I remember some very specific advice from people on what roads to take and not to take once in California, I just can’t remember what the advice was. I’d like to avoid LA if possible, but other than that I’m open to anything. Any suggestions?

Dumb Lawyers

WordPress

I like lawyers, I consider a few to be friends, but I have to question how some of these people made it into college, much less pass the bar. I got a letter today regarding Agilepeople, which I have never even heard of until today, and they decided apparently since the site uses WordPress I was the “hosting company” and I should provide the “name, address, and telephone number of the owner of agilepeople.org. If we cannot secure the information from you regarding the identity of person or persons who are infringing on our client’s legal rights, we will have no other recourse but to consider litigation.” But wait, it gets better! I call the number on the stationary and apparently the lawyer who sent this doesn’t even have the correct number on the letter.