It turns out not everything about traveling all the time is roses. (Posted from 38k feet.)
In about half an hour I’m doing an AMA (ask me anything) on Product Hunt, please join and ask some questions on any topic that tickles your fancy.
As was just announced on the VIP blog and Google, there’s a new open standard that competes with (or complements) Facebook’s Instant Articles. It’s easy for WordPress sites to support both, you can check out this Github project to see the plugin code so far.
Priceonomics on The Rise and Fall of .Ly. Some of my favorite domains I own are .ly.
If you listed the habits of successful people, tracking and measuring would be near the top of that list. I see it with people, companies, and teams that I work with. I see it in my own behavior.
Fred Wilson writes on Tracking and Measuring. Lack of measurement — picking stats and watching them before and after a launch — is one of the most common mistakes I see product teams make, certainly inside of Automattic.
Last week I did two podcasts around the Calypso news that are both now up, and show very different sides of the announcement. The first was with Brian Krogsgard of the WordPress-focused site Post Status and we talked a lot about the Calypso launch in the context of the WordPress community. The second was the always-fun video group the Gillmor Gang which ranged quite a bit but mostly focused on Calypso in the context of the wider tech world and where we’re going.
Presidential Inauguration in DC
Here’s some photos from some of the events and parties around the inauguration of Barack Obama’s second term, spanning Jan 19-21.
Geneva, Switzerland
Wandering around Geneva and dinner with the amazing author (and WordPress user) Paulo Coelho, and the MB&F M.A.D. Gallery.
When we chose Philadelphia to host the first ever WordCamp US, it was actually for two years, they’ll be hosting again this year December 2-4. We’re going to pick the host city and group for 2017 and 2018 in the next few months, though, and in fact the applications are open and closing in a few weeks. If you think your city and team have what it takes to wow the world with the best WordPress event, please put your hat in the ring!
It’s never a bad time to read and learn about the life, work, and poetry of Gary Snyder.
I know a lot of people are on their way to SxSW right now, here’s a podcast I joined called The Changelog you can download and check out on the way there (or back). It’s a bit more technical than the interviews I normally do, we talk about Javascript, Calypso, the philosophy of open source and WordPress, some of the thinking behind Automattic’s acquisitions, and my favorite programming books. I hope you can check it out, Adam and Jerod did a great job on this one.
You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.
This quote is almost always attributed to Buddha. Luckily there’s a great WordPress site called Fake Buddha Quotes that tracks down its actual provenance.
I’m really happy about the feature in today’s new 4.1 release of Jetpack that streamlines logging in with your WordPress.com account. When this is finished it’ll completely protect you from brute force attacks (and server load), and you can secure one login with two-factor for all your sites rather than maintaining dozens of user/pass combinations for all your WordPresses.
Posted from the WordPress.com Mac app.
It’s an old one, but I love this story about how part of what psyched Kasparov out, and possibly turned the tide, in his famous chess match against Deep Blue was actually a bug.
“Putting a computer in your brain is no longer science fiction.” Pretty awesome work from (WordPress-powered) Bryan Johnson and Theodore Berger, (WP-powered) Kernel.
I’m still catching up with things after the Automattic Grand Meetup, but excited today to be included on the Fortune 40 under 40 list, which I’ve graduated to after being termed out of the under 30 lists. I came in at #20 and it’s great to see lots of friends on the list as well.
You might need a reason to smile today. If so, Kanye’s poem for Frank Ocean’s Boys Don’t Cry zine, illustrated by Dami Lee at the Verge, might be that reason.
Amid the wreckage of fallen startups, Longreads is increasing the original reporting it funds:
Longreads has raised about $250,000 from “thousands of members” since it added memberships in 2012. The suggested monthly amount is now $5 a month or $50 a year, though readers can choose to donate any amount, and Armstrong said that the company’s gotten some thousand-dollar donations. All of that money now goes to pay authors, and WordPress.com matches every $1 from a reader with an additional $3, which clearly makes it a lot easier for Longreads to do what it wants to do.