Ryan is doing the WP meetup in Dallas tomorrow. I’ve been busy at work and forgot that was this weekend, I think we’re too late to do the official Meetup thing but I’d be willing to meet some San Francisco WordPress people for coffee tomorrow afternoon.
Check out this amazing story of a black macaque monkey that picks up a photographer’s camera and takes self-portraits.
Technorati Tag API is Broken
The Technorati Tag API is Broken, or so asserts Kevin Burton. The post is a little old and the comments don’t seem to have gone anywhere. I think the tag having to appear in the URI is a weakness, and a restriction that isn’t reasonable under many hosting enviroments. That said, my understanding of rel="tag" is that they don’t have to link to Technorati at all, they can link to your own taxonomy and not Google bomb key terms. (As WordPress does in 1.5.) You don’t even really need to use the links, since they spider categories and dc:subject from RSS feeds anyway, but if you do tag you posts using the link method, it might be worth using nofollow.
Calypso for Linux
We just announced and released the Linux version of the desktop client for WordPress.com, also known as Calypso. Also all of the code behind the desktop client itself (built on Electron) is now available as open source too.
Zoo Photos
A day at the zoo, yes I’m a little behind on photos. It’s only been 6 months!
LinkRanks
It looks like LinkRanks have been owned, dominated by something call “deai.com.”
Tahoe Pics
A day in Tahoe, everything from snow on the beach to blue steel to flying dirt and gorgeous rocks and water. Oh, and of course a little shameless self-promotion.
My parents first noticed my stutter when I was three years old. For the longest time, I thought I would one day be rid of it. I went for speech therapy, I did fluency exercises, I prayed. But now, at age thirty, I’m fairly confident that it’s here to stay. […]
Somehow, as I progressed through high school, the expectant pauses of those listening to me were more difficult to bear that the nicknames and name calling. Often, I would not speak up, even when I had something I wanted to say.
My default setting was silence.
Read the rest of Mahangu Weerasinghe’s story, Breaking the Silence.
The three biggest myths about women in technology, by Allison Scott and Freada Kapor Klein. Hat tip: Mitch Kapor.
Chamath on Growing Facebook
This is a cool talk from Chamath Palihapitiya from a few years ago in 2013 which makes it extra interesting. It seems like a smaller audience so it’s fun and unguarded. (Though a great thing about Chamath is he’s incredibly candid in every context.) You can’t see the slides in the video, and there’s not much to them, but here they are:
Facebook's Growth Hacker on how they put Facebook on the Path to 1 Billion Users from growthhackersconference
Here are the values he talks about at the end:
- Very high IQ.
- Strong sense of purpose.
- Relentless focus on success.
- Aggressive and competitive.
- High quality bar bordering on perfectionism.
- Likes changing and disrupting things.
- New ideas on how to do things better.
- High integrity.
- Surrounds themselves with good people.
- Cares about building real value over perception.
“But with the Zuccotti Park encampment removed, and the opera closing on Dec. 1, is that it for Gandhi in New York? Or is it worth asking, what would Gandhi do in the world today?” What Would Gandhi Do? in the New York Times.
Nifty Corners
A different way to do rounded corners, for that chic Blogger look. Hat tip: Phil.
100k and Counting
WordPress 100,000 Party, and here’s the Evite. This is going to be a lot of fun. 🙂
Bay Area
Only in the Bay area: Last night I was down at the Mountain View In-n-Out Burger enjoying a double and chocolate shake when I ran into Paul Martino, CTO of Tribe, and his lovely wife. We were both on the “Open Source Infrastructure” panel just last week. Tribe is doing some neat things with open data and standards, it’s time to check them out again.
PollDaddy PHP
PollDaddy just finished their big switch from ASP.NET/SQL to PHP/MySQL. Go and give the guys a virtual Guinness.
Meeting Ben
While in Florence I had the pleasure of meeting Ben Hammersley who took us to have real Tuscan food, which apparently involves parts of a cow you wouldn’t normally expect to eat. We chatted about a whole range of topics and I learned quite a bit about everything from solo polar expeditions to DNA hacking.
Music Photo
I just put up this old photo of some Charlie Parker music.
Open Source Usability
Open Source Usability: The birth of a movement. Mentions the usability review in the comments. At the next FLOSS Sprint Eugene has asked for WordPress to be one of the main projects.