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.
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.
Kindle Easter Eggs
Kindle Easter Eggs: We have GPS. (Sort of.) I’ve been using my Kindle heavily for a few weeks now and have a mini-review forthcoming.
On Vergecast
If you’d like some more background and context on Tumblr and Automattic coming together I had a chance to have a short but nuanced conversation with Nilay Patel and Julia Alexander on The Verge’s podcast, Vergecast. I love how great journalists are able to really dive into the heart of issues, and I really enjoyed the conversation.
Zoo Photos
A day at the zoo, yes I’m a little behind on photos. It’s only been 6 months!
Introducing the Distributed Podcast
I’ve been meeting with some brilliant people for Distributed, my new podcast dedicated to exploring the future of work. The first episode is a conversation with Stephane Kasriel, CEO of Upwork, about how they built a distributed culture, and how flexible work will shape the future of the global economy.
Unlike Automattic, Upwork does have an office in Silicon Valley (albeit one with a remote receptionist!). It was interesting to hear how Stephane’s teams balance in-person culture with inclusiveness for all employees, no matter where they live. Read more about Stephane’s work at Distributed.blog, and subscribe at Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Gallery: series1
Auto-imported from old gallery:
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.
Farnam Street and Postlight
I recorded two interviews very far apart from each other, but which have surprisingly both come out today. The first is for one of my favorite sites on the web, Farnam Street. I was honored to be episode 100 on their Knowledge Project podcast. Knowledge Project is probably one of the podcasts I’ve listened to the most since it started. Please check out their other guests as well, they really do have the most interesting conversations with the most interesting folks.
Shane and I cover turnarounds, how environment affects performance, pros and cons of distributed work, uncovering your lacuna, mental models, and patterns of decision making.
On a completely different vein, I did a deep geek-out on technology and content management systems with Gina Trapani and Paul Ford, two of my favorite technologists, on the Postlight podcast. We covered a lot of tech history, my thoughts on Chromium and Mozilla’s Gecko engine, structured data, Gutenberg, and a lot more. If you’re a developer or a long-time WordPress community member you’ll enjoy this one, but it might be esoteric or technical if you’re not immersed in this world. Here’s a Spotify embed of the episode:
In both we do touch on my idea that, on a long enough timeline, the survival rate for all proprietary software drops to zero. (Hat tip to Fight Club.) Proprietary software is an evolutionary dead end. You can think of open source packages like genetic alleles that have a higher fitness function, and eventually become the fittest organism. The longer I spend watching mega-trends in technology, the more I see that pattern everywhere, from encyclopedias to cryptocurrencies.
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.
Better Firefox Checker
After the Deadline, the enhanced spelling and grammar checker, has just released a new extension for Firefox that enables AtD functionality on any textarea on the web, which is really killer. This is one of the possibilities I was most excited about when we acquired AtD. For more check out the coverage on Download Squad and Lifehacker.
Dylan Tweney writes on how to take back control of your own social networks.
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.
Neil Leifer on WordPress
One of my favorite photographers, Neil Leifer, has a beautiful new WordPress.com-powered site. For the past few years I’ve had this photo in my office:
The story behind it is pretty interesting, taken from this interview with Larry Berman and Chris Maher:
Chris/Larry: It’s actually quite a different question to say what are your favorites verses what do you feel are your best photographs.
Neil: I know, and my best picture ever, in my opinion, is my Ali Cleveland Williams picture that I shot from overhead. I don’t usually hang my own photos, I collect other people’s pictures. But that picture’s been hanging in my living room as long as I can remember. I have a 40×40 print of it which is hung in a diamond shape with Williams at the top. That’s the guy that’s on the canvas on his back.
Chris/Larry: It’s remarkably abstract for a sports picture.
Neil: I think it’s the only picture in my career that there’s nothing I would do different with it. You look at pictures and think that you can always improve them no matter how successful the shoot is. Part of what motivates you to go on to the next shoot is every once in a while you get a picture, whether it’s the cover of the magazine or an inside spread, that’s as good as you think you could have made it. And then a week later you see a couple of things that you could improve slightly. A month later you might see a few more things. It doesn’t diminish the quality of that picture. It simply means that there’s always room for improvement.
Chris/Larry: You’re learning for the future?
Neil: Exactly. It’s sort of what motivates you to go on. If I were to do the Cleveland Williams Ali picture again, I would do it exactly the same. And more important is that no one will ever do it better because it can’t be done like that anymore. Today the ring is different and the fighters dress in multi colored outfits like wrestlers. Back then the champ wore white and the challenger wore black. Today, when you look down at the ring from above, you see the Budweiser Beer logo in the center and around it is the network logo that’s televising the fight. Whether it’s Showtime or HBO, they have their logo two or three times on the canvas. The logo of promoter of the fight, Don King Presents, is also visible. That’s why that picture couldn’t be taken today. So not only did the picture work out better than any I’ve ever taken, but it’s one that’ll never be taken again.
Chris/Larry: Where are you in this picture?
Neil: I’m at 11:00 o’clock, as I remember it. I’m in a blue shirt leaning on the canvas with a camera in each hand.
It’s always an honor to have a great creator make their home on the web with WordPress.
State of the Word… in person!
Update: Here’s the recording!
I’m very excited that we’ll be broadcasting the State of the Word “live from New York City” this coming Tuesday, December 14th! There will be a very small “studio audience” of community members there in person.
Recording the solo version last year was actually one of the hardest things I’ve done in a long time. It’s funny, with a live audience I can comfortably present for an hour no problem, but recording that 25 minute presentation, alone in a room staring at a camera, was an excruciating process over two days and dozens of takes. I got the advice afterward that even if you’re just staring into a camera, it can be helpful to have an “audience” of a few friends in the room.
Even more than that, though, I’m positively giddy to see some of my friends from the WordPress community in person for the first time in several years. Please join via streaming on the 14th, and also there will also be at least 20 watch parties around the globe if there’s one in your neighborhood. Looking forward to catching up, celebrating the community’s accomplishments over the last year, and hopefully raising a torch for our march toward freedom on the web in 2022.
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.