Why Features Don’t Matter Anymore. I think similar things when I hear “But CMS X has hundreds more features than Y! Why don’t we have more users?”
Marco Arment has a great take on how the decentralized nature of podcasting is a feature, not a bug, and Apple being more proactive there would be harmful to the ecosystem. As an aside, since I’ve been in Houston more recently, which means driving a lot, I’ve been really loving his app Overcast and I opted in to the optional paid subscription for it. I just need to get in more of a habit of listening to podcasts outside of Houston.
Front Row
WOW. The new Front Row remote control feature is amazing. I can’t believe this hasn’t gotten more coverage. If I had a TV, this would make a fantastic digital hub. Actually it looks pretty darn good on a regular monitor.
Dell vs. Sun
The Sun Doesn’t Shine for Me, or why Dell is kicking Sun’s butt. I can attest to a similar experience, except that I gave up long before Jason did.
Akismet for Movable Type
We’ve released a Akismet for Movable Type plugin and the response from testers thus far has been very good. John Battelle blogs about it here: Akismet for MT: Death to Spam. Also check out this post by Jeff Nolan. “I was spending up to 45 minutes a day cleaning it up.”
Thomas Dolby, Hot Air, and Southwest
Tons of people have been writing in about some new WordPress blogs, so to roll them into one post: Thomas Dolby the noted musician has a new WP blog, a new conservative video blog from Michelle Malkin called Hot Air, and finally closest to my heart is Southwest Airlines new one.
Conventional RSS
Alex from Textpattern has started putting thoughts down on what we’re calling “conventional RSS.” It’s not a spec, profile, or anything like that. It’s just a documentation of the things we do in our RSS 2.0 feeds. There are some minor differences with what WP currently does, but at least in the beginning WordPress and Textpattern will have a shared set of conventions and assumptions.
New WordCamp SF Site
The new site for WordCamp San Francisco is online, go check it out. Got some more speakers and announcements when I get back from Japan.
Check out the new WordPress for Android 2.0, it’s a bottom-up redesign of how our mobile apps can work.
At Webvisions in Portland
About a month from now I’ll be speaking at the Webvisions conference in Portland on “Scaling for Your First 100k Users.” The talk will be part tech, part social. It’s a very reasonably priced conference with a lot of great speakers, I think they’re going to sell out soon so if you’re interested in going book soon. It’ll also be my first time in Portland, so I’m looking forward to exploring the area a bit and meeting WP users.
Darwin on Web 2.0
Darwin on Web 2.0: “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” — Charles Darwin
Podcast: Scott Berkun on Myths of Innovation
Back to podcasting! Podcast #9 is a 13 minute interview with Scott Berkun where we discuss, amoung other things, his new book The Myths of Innovation. It’s my longest podcast ever, but definitely worth it, especially if you’re involved with a startup or want to create something new.
I [heart] WordPress
Some folks on the WordPress.com forums have come up with some really wacky I [heart] WordPress logos.
Full Code Press
Full Code Press is a 24-hour contest to build a website for a non-profit. Pretty cool idea.
Packt CMS Nomination
If you have a favorite open source CMS, consider nominating it for the Packt Open Souce CMS award.
Our Tail
Someone had asked me about traffic patterns on WordPress.com the other day and whether or not they followed a "long tail." I knew the answer was yes, and I guestimated the numbers from memory at around 80% outside the top 10 blogs. It's actually a little more acute: 92.63% of the traffic to WordPress.com is for blogs outside of the top 25. (About 8.4 million pageviews in the past week.) This is from Google Analytics, so doesn't include RSS or anything like that.
Yodel Anecdotal
Yodel Anecdotal is the new official Yahoo blog, powered by WordPress.
Exploiting Democracy
One of my favorite talks from TED last week was by Laura Galante. The most hackable device on the planet is your own mind:
SxSW Panel Voting
SxSW has opened up panel voting for 2007, similar to how we did for WordCamp. Have they done this before? I've got one proposed called "Scaling Your Community."
Google Markup
Google Strict vs Google Deprecated, where the size of the homepage is reduced using standards-compliant markup. I’m guessing this isn’t a religious issue, just a personal one with whoever owns that code at Google.