Dougal on WordPress 1.5. Several people have asked if “Strayhorn” is a poke at Longhorn. Nope.
Cosmos Plugin
Jonas has a Technorati Cosmos plugin which is kinda neat. I think it may have the wrong approach though, here’s how a really nice Technorati plugin would work: watch the site cosmos feed for incoming links, if the link isn’t to the root use the same code we use for Pingbacks to determine what post it’s linking to, if one at all, then check if the incoming link already exists as a Trackback or Pingback, and if not insert it into the comment table chronologically in line with the rest of the comments. (And send a notification email.) Cosmos should work transparant of other forms of commenting. Bonus points if it works with referrer data too, call it “remote-comments.”
FOWA Presentation
I’ve had quite a few people request my presentation from the Future of Web Apps summit. I’m not sure why, since my slides were pretty minimal and (I hope) the meat was in the talk itself, but if you want them anyway here they are as a 7.5mb PDF.
Image Headline Plugin
coldforged Image Headline Plugin gives you really nice shadows, I’ll have to check out how he did that.
At Spam Summit
I’m at the web spam summit and it’s going pretty well. I think some excellent things will come out of this. I wouldn’t want to be a spammer these days.
Nikolai’s Photos
Nikolai Nolan has posted his pictures from SxSW 2004. What’s funny is I know it’s going to kill him that I’m linkblogging this. As usual it has a novel design and presentation. Nikolai is the most underappreciated CSS guru and designer on the web.
Around Hanoi
Visiting the “Hanoi Hilton” prison, Ho Chi Min’s house, an art museum, a pedal-bike tour, some awesome break-dancers, and random place dinner.
QiSci
Quantum scientists at University of Queensland are using WordPress to power their site, obviously sharp people. Another good use of WP as a CMS.
Lush Life
What better way to celebrate 50,000 downloads of WordPress 1.5 than with a delicious recording of John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman performing Lush Life. Lush Life was, of course, written by Billy Strayhorn.
We’ve lost two incredible souls this week: first Dan Fredinburg in Nepal and now Dave Goldberg has unexpectedly passed. I encourage you to Google articles about their lives, like this one about Dave Goldberg or this on Dan, because both were unique and incredible individuals. In an example of how software can have unintended effect on emotions, I just realized I had a pending friend request on Facebook from Dan, probably years old. 🙁 Going through a lot of emotions, but a good reminder that life can be fleeting and to make time for friends and those who you love, something both of these men were great at. May they both rest in peace.
House of Pies Quest
Last night Josh and I started our mission to try every single item on the House of Pies menu. Two down, a lot to go. It just occured to me that some sort of mini-review of each item might be worthwhile, a thought that occured to me as I’m about halfway through the menu at Get Wired.
On WordPress 3.2 with WebProNews
Abby Johnson from WebProNews posted an interview about the philosophy and thinking behind the WordPress 3.2 release, and we also recorded the video below:
Jazz Standards
Lars Holst, Designing With Jazz Standards. I’ve always been inspired by Blue Note record covers and the design of Reid Miles. In fact Sarah got me a book that is nothing but Blue Note covers and I love it.
The Capitalist Manifesto
The Capitalist Manifesto: Greed Is Good (To a Point). A fair summary view of financial goings-on, with a bit of preaching at the end.
Mario and NUX
In this video Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka discuss World 1-1, or the very first level in the very first Super Mario Bros. It’s fascinating how every element on the level is designed to introduce you to a mechanic of the game, or how Mario moves and jumps. This is interesting if you like Mario, but also important for any developer in any medium who is thinking about the NUX (new user experience) of their product. I sometimes joke that in WordPress we put people on the boss monster level the first time they enter the dashboard. There have been improvements but still so much to do to naturally introduce people to our interface.
Best Blogging Software?
I used a neat tool to compare the features of b2/cafelog and Movable Type. As someone who currently uses b2, used to use Movable Type, and deals with MT on a daily basis, I don’t think I could say which was “better,” they’re just different. I think MT has a more robust archiving system with nicer URLs, but with b2 I can post to the blog with email, which has got to be one of the coolest features I’ve ever heard of. In terms of hackability, which I mean in the best way, I like how everything is updated live without having to rebuild anything, but of course that has a trade-off in speed. It really comes down to personal preference and experience. If Michel stopped developing b2 tomorrow, I would still use it because it just does everything I want it to do, plus I have a pretty good familiarity with the code, which helps a lot. Of course just knowing about something helps, for instance Kathy just switched to pMachine, which until she talked about it I hadn’t even heard of. I think what we need is a good google fight.
Since I wrote this I began developing my own software, WordPress, which runs this site and what I believe (having surveyed everything out there) to be the best blogging software available.
Ping-o-Matic!
Ping-o-Matic did over 60,000 pings yesterday. I just finished rewriting the pinging engine to make it even faster. Are you pinging it yet?
Tech blog idea: A site that covers the top headlines on Techmeme 6, 12, or 18 months after they happened, and explores the delta between what people said was going to happen when they raised funding, or did an acquisition, and what actually happens after time has run its course. We keep covering announcements like they matter. Can also compare analyst and commentator predictions for claim chowder.
1.6m Downloads in 23 Hours
23 hours hours ago, WordPress 4.3 was released. It’s already had 1.6 million downloads and counting. For a look at what’s new in this version you can watch the quick video above, or check out the blog post.
Open Source Business Conference
So there is an Open Source Business Conference happening in a few weeks a few blocks away from me and I just randomly came across the site. After SxSW, reading about OSBC is like being in another world: it’s $1500 to go, only two days long, the language on the site is sickeningly corporate, and I haven’t heard of a single person there. Then again, this is an “open source” conference with Microsoft as a platinum sponsor. A real Open Source conference would have no fees, everything would be web streamed, the line between speakers and attendees would be thin or non-existant, and the topics would not focus so much on money. Actually, it would be a bit like Bloggercon.