On the recommendation of my friend Timothy Young I checked out the book The Martian: A Novel by Andy Weir. Think of it like Shackleton’s Voyage (a great recommendation from Toni) but on Mars. I really enjoyed the book, and if you like geeky, science-filled novels you will too. One thing about the publishing I thought was really cool, as the Wikipedia puts it:
Having been rebuffed by literary agents when trying to get prior books published, Weir decided to put the book online in serial format one chapter at a time for free at his website. At the request of fans he made an Amazon Kindle version available through Amazon.com at 99 cents (the minimum he could set the price). The Kindle edition rose to the top of Amazon’s list of best-selling science-fiction titles, where it sold 35,000 copies in three months, more than had previously downloaded it for free. This garnered the attention of publishers: Podium Publishing, an audiobook publisher, signed for the audiobook rights in January 2013. Weir sold the print rights to Crown in March 2013 for six figures.
When I spoke in Ireland yesterday someone asked if I would blog about them today. I am, but not the best story: Ireland’s media silenced over MP’s speech about Denis O’Brien. Because of an injunction, no media in Ireland can report on alleged corruption, laws I think set up with good intentions (preventing libel?) but being twisted now to prevent the vital functioning of the fourth estate. The country showed amazing mettle in their Yes vote for gay marriage last week, perhaps censorship could be the next thing the populace tackles. (Also I really enjoyed my visit to Dublin, if you want an amazing meal check out Forest Avenue.)
In the great balancing act of our social lives, between the gratification of self-interest and a concern for others, fleeting experiences of awe redefine the self in terms of the collective, and orient our actions toward the needs of those around us.
Monk was the master of the single note, perfectly selected, timed, and struck so that it would have a symphonic amplitude. The asymptote of his music is a punctuated silence, which is why he was especially sensitive to his drummers and dependent on them to organize the music’s forward motion.
The John Biggs article on Why I’m Still Wearing My Apple Watch almost perfectly describes how I’m feeling about the watch right now. It is a very personal device, I’ve gotten attached to the little fellow, and I should probably start selling all my mechanical watches.
For years, we’ve been working on democratizing publishing, and today more people have independent sites built on open source software than ever before in the history of the web. Now, we want to make it easy for anyone to sell online independently, without being locked into closed, centralized services — to enable freedom of livelihood along with freedom of expression.
It’s not a new idea: at a WordCamp a few years ago, someone stood up and asked me when we were going to make it as easy to create an online store as we’d made it to create a blog. Everyone applauded; there’s long been demand for better ecommerce functionality, but it’s been outside the scope of what Automattic could do well.
In the past few years, WooCommerce really distinguished itself in its field. Just like WordPress as a whole, it developed a robust community around its software, and its products meet the needs of hundreds of thousands of people around the world.
Woo is also a team after Automattic’s own distributed heart: WooCommerce is created and supported by 55 people in 16 countries. Added to Automattic’s 325 people in 37 countries, that’s a combined 380-person company across 42 countries — the sun never sets.* I can’t wait to meet all my new colleagues.
Just like us, the vast majority of WooCommerce’s work is also open source and 100% GPL. And just like WordPress, you’ll find WooCommerce meetups popping up everywhere, from Los Angeles to London, and its global and community-focused work together to make the users’ experiences the best they can be.
WordPress currently powers about 23% of the web. As we work our way toward 51%, WooCommerce joining Automattic is a big step opening WordPress up to an entirely new audience. I can’t wait to see how much more we can build together.
Automattic turns ten next month: another amazing milestone I couldn’t have imagined a decade ago. Today’s news is just the first of a number of announcements we have planned for the remainder of the year, so please stay tuned! There’s still so much work to do.
* Want to work with us? We’re hiring. Bonus points if you live in Antarctica, the only continent we don’t have covered.
As I said in the video, please drop any questions you might have in the comments and I’ll answer them as soon as I can. Also check out the posts from Mark and Magnus.
Sometimes, you just want 2 chocolate chip cookies. This happens to me all of the time. I want a super indulgent, rich and buttery chocolate chip cookie, but don’t want to make the whole 36 of them which I’d inevitably inhale over about the same amount of hours.
As promised a few weeks ago, a new installment of the Wired Silk Road story is out and I wanted to share it, The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 2: The Fall. This one is actually a lot more normal, with some surprisingly simple breaks leading to the downfall of Ross, but there’s an interesting twist at the end.
Andrew Nacin, lead developer of WordPress, just finished a talk at Loopconf, where he talked about a series of related WordPress security fixes that spanned two years, with the final fix included into WordPress core under the guise of Emoji support.
Beginning with the 2015 academic year, the Center for Advanced Hindsight (CAH) at Duke University will invite promising startups to join its behavioral lab and leverage academic research in their business models. The Center is housed within the Social Science Research Institute at Duke University and is led by Professor Dan Ariely, Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University.
Tad Friend has a great New Yorker profile of Marc Andreessen, one of my favorite people to debate and talk to (though it happens all too rarely). Check out Pmarca Says if you want to catch up on some of his recent thinking from tweetstorms.
