Another great review: “This version brings back the pleasure to blog. […] Are WordPressers the only ones having all the fun these days or what?”
Commercial Gates
FCC Bluff
Call the media bluff on HD.
TextDrive Deal
Global Network
Announcing the Ping-O-Matic Global Network, a global and redundant array of servers providing Ping-O-Matic service and APIs.
Civicspace Labs
The new Civicspace Labs site is up, it’s a lot easier now to tell what in the world they actually do. Nice redesign!
Battlestar Galactica Podcasts
Battlestar Galactica is doing commentary podcasts, from the SciFi channel.
NewsForge Review
A great review of WordPress at Newsforge is up, very thorough and covers a lot of the resources at the Codex.
100k
Podz caught the counter at 100,000 yesterday, of course the party tonight is going to be a lot of fun. We might need to call it the 105k party though.
Seattle Meetup Location
Okay so it looks like the best place in terms of size, price, and location of those suggested is The Pike Pub & Brewery which sounds like a fun, laid-back place perfect for a meetup. Thanks to Scott and Jane for suggesting it. Still going to meet at 1 PM. It looks like there are going to be some great people attending, so it should be a lot of fun. Oh, and the tag for today is “wordpressmeetup“. 🙂
Adam Trachtenberg
Stewart Ugelow writes in that “Adam Trachtenberg, eBay’s technical evangelist and author of O’Reilly’s
“Upgrading to PHP 5”, has switched to WordPress.”
Geek Lunches Dangerous
Scoble got in trouble for the very long geek lunch/meetup last Saturday in Seattle. He also relates a funny story from the afternoon. We had about 15 people come and go during the meetup and it was a lot of fun — thanks to all who came out.
Pulse of Freedom
“The Pulse of Freedom is a site published by the protesters at Martyrs’ Square, Beirut, from a tent city.” This is an inspiring story: “A group of Web masters, graphic design artists, writers, and photographers stayed up all night for several nights in a row putting the Web site together.” They chose WordPress. “As far as I’m aware this is the first Web site of its kind anywhere in the world. The leaders of a democratic revolution are openly blogging about their experience from the center of the action.” Echoditto writes about their part in Blogging from Beirut. “I am writing this post from a tent city in the Martyrs’ Square in central Beirut, a place which is filled with the energy and excitement of a burgeoning democratic movement.” Hat tip: Mike Carvalho via email.
Seattle’s decision to throw the ball at the goal line with 20 seconds to go in last night’s Super Bowl was a costly one. But in the long run, it won’t be nearly as costly to the rest of the United States as the National Football League (NFL) itself.
Every year, the NFL rakes in around $9.5 billion in revenue. Its commissioner, Roger Goodell, meanwhile, has an annual salary of $44 million. And while those numbers might make sense for any big business, the NFL isn’t a business – not technically, at least.
According to the Public Law 89-800, it’s a 501(c)6 tax-exempt nonprofit. That’s right, a nonprofit. In other words, the NFL, one of the most lucrative organizations in all of sports, is subsidized by you and me the taxpayers.
From The Real NFL Scandal. If you’re curious, here’s a list of other notable 501(c)(6) organizations.
I enjoyed this Ars Technica look at USB 3.1 and Type-C, which is probably the cable/connection change people will notice the most over the next few years. (As I look with despair on my dozens of USB devices and cables.) I also dug their retrospective, A brief history of USB, what it replaced, and what has failed to replace it. Remember serial ports?
Ben Dwyer on why writing code is like solving a Rubik’s cube.
It’s been a long road, but the WordPress mobile apps are finally making some major strides. WordPress iOS version 4.8 includes a visual editor so you won’t see code anymore when blogging on the go. (For anyone curious at home, WordPress originally shipped with WYSIWYG in version 2.0, and it was highly controversial at the time.)
Meyer Sound Constellation
The Appel Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center has an awesome ambient sound system that sounds acoustic and full from every point in the 500-seat room.. Hat tip: Niall.
“For every McDonald’s you blow up, ‘they’ will build two. Instead of slapping a wad of Semtex between the Happy Meals and the plastic tray, work your way up through the ranks, take over the board of Directors and turn the company into an international laughing stock.”
Sounds nice in theory. But I knew corporations were more resilient than that. Sabotaging the system from inside was as much a pipe dream as changing it through politics and protest.
From Prada Revolutionaries: Confessions of a Recovering Solutionist.
Om Malik on the decline of cameras as gadgets, Standalone camera: Shot (Dead) By iPhone.