The source code to Google’s new toolbar for Firefox has some entertaining details and reveals their new spell checker web service, which I think is really nice. Who’ll be the first to rewrite the AJAX spell checker for WordPress to use this web service instead of the PHP pspell extension?
USF using WordPress
Mark Jaquith wrote in to say “The University of South Florida in Tampa is using WordPress to run student blogs. http://blog.usf.edu/ The blogs are available to each of the school’s 42,000 students! The blogs have some pretty slick features like an included Gallery photo album, a unified login system, del.icio.us integration, Flickr integration, and pre-installed CSS varieties. They even provide unified RSS/Atom feeds for all of the blogs.” I don’t know what to add to that, except that this is fantastic. I wonder how long before other universities start to follow in their footsteps?
Psychological Egoism
Okay you know the drill. This is a paper I turned in today for my Ethics class. It deals with psychological egoism, and if you have any leanings toward this moral theory I’d be interested in hearing your feedback on this. My language is strong in the paper, but that doesn’t mean my mind isn’t open. I didn’t have as much time to put into the print (PDF) version of the paper this time, but it’s still a nicer way to read it than the HTML below.
Every human action is at its root a selfish act; even acts that are altruistic on the surface are primarily motivated by a deeper selfishness — or so a psychological egoist would say. Psychological Egoism is a descriptive theory that rather than suggesting, as ethical or rational egoism does, how people ought to live, suggests how people actually go about their lives. The assumptive nature of the theory introduces a number of possible avenues for refutation, some of which are very compelling. Continue reading Psychological Egoism
Apple Loyalty Program
So I finally got my hands on a the new Macbook, finally resorting to Craigslist to find someone who had pre-ordered and pay them a small premium. I was going to write a review, and still will, but ended up writing a bunch on the process of buying things from Apple as a loyal customer.
I have done the second-market Craigslist dance with probably 90% of new Apple tablets and phones before, but never for a laptop. I’m sure every ounce of effort has been expended to capitalize on the hype of the announcements and ship as many of these as possible, but this Macbook/Watch roll-out still seems especially rough with the stores having zero inventory or knowledge of if/when they’re getting anything in, and ship dates now slipping into the summer. There’s a deeper issue though: it speaks to a lack of Apple’s knowledge and connection to their customers, even though they have all the data.
A great restaurant will track every time you’ve eaten there, how much you spent, your preferences, and use that to prioritize reservations and tailor service on subsequent visits. Airlines, for their terrible reputation, actually are decent at this too with their loyalty programs. On United I’m a Global Services level flyer and get some really nice perks as a result, with the knowledge that if I don’t fly a certain amount of miles and spend a certain amount of dollars with them in a calendar year I’ll lose those perks (as I did for a few months earlier this year) and so when choosing between two flights to somewhere I’m more likely to pick the United one. (Also I think some of airlines bad rep is undeserved, they are flying human beings miles in the air inside tin cans where the cost of an error is catastrophic, everything is highly regulated, and many service factors are literally dependent on the weather.)
I am an unapologetic, unrepentant Apple customer ever since I could afford it. One of the first things I did when I got my job at CNET in 2005 was upgrade my Mom from the inexpensive Linux box I built for her (all I could afford) to a Mac Mini. I get almost every new version of everything, including usually 4-6 phones a year (myself and family), at least a dozen laptops, iPads, Thunderbolt displays, iMacs, Mac Pros… at this point I’m probably a cumulative $100k customer of Apple, in addition to the millions we spend on Apple hardware at Automattic (everyone gets a new computer when they join, and we refresh them every 18-24 months, and a special W version at after 4 years of tenure). And I’m late to the game! There are Apple customers today who bought their first product decades ago.
However when pre-orders creak open at midnight, or people start queueing, the order of access to the latest and greatest from Apple is by whoever shows up first, or now online it’s essentially random depending on how lucky you are to load and complete the checkout process. In some ways there’s a beautiful equality to that, but for example when I went with Om in London for the 2013 iPhone release, 95% of the line was people just there to buy and flip it, either locally or ship overseas — the very front of the line was Apple lovers, but in the rest of the line I saw people using Android.
There is some sort of rank ordering inside Apple — Karl Lagerfied and Beyonce have Apple Watches already, reviewers from Gruber to Pogue get devices a few weeks early to test — but imagine if there was an Apple Loyalty program for the rest of us? More than almost any other company Apple has been sustained through tough times by the belief and devotion of their best customers. It would be great if you could earn status with monetary (dollars spent) and non-monetary (impact on the world) points that give you priority ordering access, faster Genius bar appointments, maybe even access to events.
Maybe the truth is Apple doesn’t need to do that, I’m going to keep using them because they make the best products, and when things are rough in the early days (like with the new Macbook, a few recent versions of OS X and iOS) I stick it out because I know it’ll get better. To my knowledge no other tech product maker has done a great loyalty program before, though there are hints in Asian players like Xiaomi and OnePlus. Most luxury brands from Hermes to Patek are also bad at this, because they don’t understand technology and data. But how cool would it be if Apple did reward, or even just recognize, their most loyal customers?
The Most Frustrating Thing
It’s Friday, so I’m going to take a few minutes to describe the most annoying concept I see espoused by 95%+ of blogs I read, people I talk to, and friends I have. The problem is until you let go, you’ll never be able to build something truly useful to a non-trivial audience.
Technology doesn’t matter. Design doesn’t matter.
There, I said it.
Keyboard Cover
Curious if you guys have any favorite keyboard covers, I vaguely recall reading about one on Alex King’s site but can’t find it now. I’m looking for one to put over my laptop keys when I close the cover to avoid damaging the screen.
Sing It From the Rafters
WordPress 1.2 is available. I’m at a loss for words at the moment, so I’ll just quote the features list:
- Sub-categories: Categories can be arranged hierarchically and infinitely deep. Multiple categories combined with sub-categories gives WordPress the most comprehensive taxonomy system of any blogging software available.
- OPML Export and Import: You can import and export OPML to systems like Bloglines or desktop aggregators like NetNewsWire and FeedDemon.
- Automatic Thumbnail Creation System: WordPress has a refined upload feature that automatically creates thumbnails any size you want.
- Encrypted passwords and cookies: All passwords in the database and password cookies are encrypted, ensuring maximal security.
- New plugin architecture: The new plugin architecture simplifies modifying or extending WordPress’ features. Plugins can now hook into nearly every action WordPress does.
- Localization of WordPress and Unicode support: The efforts put into internationalizing WordPress have borne fruit, and now you can adapt WordPRess to work in your native language. Several translations are already available.
- Advanced comment moderation: You can now fine-tune your moderation filters in a manner very similar to blacklists for other weblog tools. There is also mass-editing of comments, which makes it a snap to delete hundreds of comments with the click of a button, if necessary.
- Post preview: Near-instant previews while writing or editing articles help you proofread and make improvements before finally presenting your work of art to the world.
- RSS and LiveJournal Importers: The new RSS import script is the closest thing to an universal importer. It allows you to import entries from Radio weblogs even other blogging tools that we may not support specifically. The LiveJournal importer finally lets you have a full blooded self-hosted weblog without losing all your old LiveJournal posts.
- Unlimited update services: Now you can define multiple weblog change monitoring services to be pinged when you post.
- Directory flexbility: Now you can have all the WordPress files in one directory and the weblog in a higher level directory.
Forbes.com Best of Web
WordPress wins Forbes.com Best of Web and Favorite award for blog tools! “In February, open source blogging application WordPress came out with its release 1.5, and we’ve found that this release puts WordPress squarely ahead of its competition.” Our number of downloads has more than doubled since that was written. Hat tip: Niall Kennedy.
Adobe on WP
Adobe Migrates to WordPress, switching 1,200 blogs from Movable Type.
Acquia Search
Acquia Search looks cool, Automattic should do something similar for WordPress.
Guaranteed Misspellings
I can never spell “guarantee” right, I always end up googling it. Maybe if I blog it I’ll be able to remember. Other words that I consistently mess up: “separate,” “Wednesday,” and “bourgeoisie.”
Vote for CMS Award
Vote for WordPress in the Best Open Source Social Networking CMS Award. No, I have no idea what that category means either.
Fifty Million
As noted on TNW and Adweek, yesterday we passed over 50,000,000 websites, blogs, portfolios, stores, pet projects, and of course cat websites powered by WordPress. I had the good fortune to celebrate this milestone with a few hundred WordPressers at WordCamp Montreal yesterday. (During my Town Hall I wasn’t aware we had passed the number until someone shouted from the audience.) It’s always fun to pass a big round number and over the weekend many libations were consumed with friends old and new, but ultimately the press has always been more concerned with those top-line numbers than we have in the WordPress community. More sites being created is a good benchmark for our adoption, but ultimately WordPress matters not for the blogs it creates but for the lives it affects. We have some huge opportunities this year, particularly around making our software more accessible to the next 50 or 500 million people who want to have a voice online, something I hope to talk more about at WordCamp San Francisco next month.
Web Apps with Class
It would be interesting to talk about web applications and services in terms of the year they “graduated” and went public to the world. IMDB was ’90; Amazon.com was ’95; Movable Type was ’01; WordPress.org and Typepad were Class of ’03; Gmail was ’04; WordPress.com, Akismet, Youtube, TechCrunch, and pbwiki were ’05; bbPress, Amazon S3, and Twitter were ’06; Pownce was ’07, etc. It’d also be cool to see a timeline of major web apps.
Hasselhoff Music Video
This David Hasselhoff music video, Jump in My Car, is a must-watch. There has to have a good story behind it.
September
By the way, welcome to September. There are going to be some pretty big announcements this month, so keep your aggregators locked.
Books in 2017
Here’s what I ended up reading this year, in roughly chronological finishing order. (I usually have 3-4 books going on at once.)
- Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss.
- The Art of Stillness by Pico Ayer.
- Out of Your Mind by Alan Watts (audiobook, really a series of lectures).
- Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Mushashi (audiobook).
- Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien.
- The Best American Short Stories 2016 edited by Junot Diaz.
- Feynman by Jim Ottaviani.
- My Gita by Devdutt Pattanaik.
- From Plato to Post-modernism: Understanding the Essence of Literature and the Role of the Author by Louis Markos (another lecture series).
- The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy.
- The Story of a Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudpragasam.
- All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.
- Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles.
- When Hitler Took Cocaine and Lenin Lost His Brain: History’s Unknown Chapters by Giles Milton.
- Widow Basquiat: A Love Story by Jennifer Clement.
- 32 Yolks: From My Mother’s Table to Working the Line by Eric Ripert.
- Identify: Basic Principles of Identity Design in the Iconic Trademarks by Chermayeff & Geismar.
- Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity by David Lynch (audiobook).
- The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World by Brad Stone.
- The Leavers by Lisa Ko.
- Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. (Update: On Obama’s 2019 book list.)
- Girls on Fire by Robin Wasserman.
- The Executive’s Compass by James O’Toole.
- Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom.
- Dance of the Possible by Scott Berkun.
- The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang (short story).
- Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss.
- After On: A Novel of Silicon Valley by Rob Reid.
- Principles by Ray Dalio.
- The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (audiobook).
- The Undiscovered Self: With Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams by C.G. Jung.
A fairly random selection, and hopefully I can get a few more in next year.
Banned from Technorati Top 100
In Boston
Okay so I’m finally here in chilly Boston, living it up. I’m open to recommendations on places to eat, things to do, and people to see. (Besides the Boston WordPress Meetup this Saturday.)
CNN on WP
Many of you have written in that CNN’s new Political Ticker blog is on WordPress. We know! They’re part of our VIP program which allowed them to launch quickly and serve millions of pageviews with no problems. The team there has launched dozens of blogs on the system, including ones for Fortune.com and CNN Money and is a real pleasure to work with. To the extent blogs are going to have an impact on the 2008 election they need to be able to reach millions of people in a short period of time without problems, I hope that WordPress.com provides that platform for folks.