Cosmos Plugin

Asides

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.”

Open City Data

Asides

Yesterday I was part of a press conference by Mayor Gavin Newsom promoting DataSF.org, which is one of San Francisco’s first steps at opening up. Tim O’Reilly also spoke and made the point to me afterward that as he dives deep into every part of the intersection of technology and government he’s most excited about the prospect for change at the city level. Here are some pictures from the event. I think we’ll see more along these lines, and more WordPress, for San Francisco in the future.

Open Source Business Conference

Asides

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.

WP BBQ in Memphis

For the third year now I’m over in Memphis for the World Championship of BBQ, joined by Otto, Nacin, Scott, and Rose. Last year due to flooding the festival was moved to a fairgrounds inland, but there’s nothing quite like being right on the Mississippi with the sweet aroma of pork all around you. (An aroma that, incidentally, follows you home in your clothes. :)) The team we sponsor, the Moody Ques, put together an impressive booth this year, which you can see coming up in the below timelapse:

The video doesn’t do justice to the delicious food being cooked inside, though, which you have to experience in person.

.Blog

Asides

It’s now public that Automattic is the company behind Knock Knock Whois There LLC, the registry for the new .blog TLD. (And a great pun.) We wanted to stay stealth while in the bidding process and afterward in order not to draw too much attention, but nonetheless the cost of the .blog auction got up there (people are estimating around $20M). I’m excited we won and think that it will be both an amazing business going forward and give lots of folks an opportunity to have a fantastic domain name in a new namespace and with an easy-to-say TLD. You can sign up to be first in line to reserve a domain here. If you have a trademark you can get in August, and then October for the “land rush.”