Z-Type is a game that helps you practice typing. Fantastic to play when you’re switching to Dvorak. Hat tip: Lloyd.
Paris Hilton’s VoiceMail
It’s like one of those train wrecks you can’t look away from, but Om has the scoop that Paris Hilton’s voicemail was cracked as well.
About.me and Wakemate
Today has been a very exciting day. First off, About.me has been acquired by Aol, as good friend Tony Conrad writes about on his blog. A great deal on both sides, I think Aol got a steal and a great team here. Second, one of Audrey’s earliest investments Wakemate has finally shipped their first version, which I’ve been using the past two nights and has been great. (I’m averaging 60 so far.) Reserve your Wakemate here.
WordCamp Shanghai
WordCamp Shanghai at Fudan University.
APP Goes Gold
Health.com Switches
Health.com switches from Typepad to WordPress and adds two main WP-powered sections to their site. Check out their new site, great design too.
Groupon WP
Groupon has been in the news lately as a rumored 6 billion dollar acquisition target, and of course their blog is powered by WordPress. On that fact alone I’d say, go for it Google!
Getting Dark
Boston is so weird, it’s only 4 in the afternoon and it’s already almost dark.
WordPress Japan has decided their official character nameSkiing in Deer Valley
I went skiing for the first time in Deer Valley. Includes a video of the one time Barry fell, but not the 15 times I fell.
Bad ALT
J.K.Rowling’s Site
Compare the flash and text-only versions of J.K.Rowling’s Official Site. Separate but equal, right? Hat tip: Jakob.
SxSW Blogging Begins
Time to break out the old SxSW (South by Southwest) category again, as I depart in just a few short hours on my journey back to my home state of Texas and to Austin, a town which I love. This year is going to be very different for me than the last two because where before I was a naïve young boy sitting in the audience starstruck at all the amazing people there, and now I’m a naïve young boy sitting on a panel starstruck at all the amazing people there. So the seating arrangement has changed a little bit, but not much else. The only other difference is last year WordPress had maybe 2,000 users (tops) and now we have about 40x that.
I just got a new memory card for my camera and I’m all charged up to photoblog the entire event as I have years past, but I don’t know if this year if I can do 0-day photos as I did before, but I’ll try to catch up when I can. Even though all the cool kids will be using Flickr this year I’m going to put mine on my photolog because I don’t want to duplicate effort and use up my limited Flickr bandwidth. The tags should be fun to watch though.
Quick public service announcement: tunnel your traffic or use SSL, far too many people sniff the networks at these things.
I’m going to be on three panels this year, I’ve linked each from the sidebar and I’ll post more about each as they approach.
If you’re a Photo Matt reader or a Ping-O-Matic or WordPress evangelist and you see my please introduce yourself or say hi, I’d love to meet everyone there.
Blogger Ads above Search Results
I had read a few stories about Google services being advertised above search results as a “tip” but I hadn’t realized it was this prevalent. In their position if I was trying to get more users I might do the same, but for some reason this surprised me coming from Google. (It wouldn’ from Microsoft. Hat tip: Mark.
The Memos
Memos from 1972 made in Microsoft Word, incredible. The superscript feature always bugged me too.
It Is Time
The live redesign has started. There will be constant and possibly dramatic changes to this site’s structure, layout, and design until it is done. Check back often and feel free to comment at any stage of the process.
Planned Anarchy
No street signs. No crosswalks. No accidents. A fantastic Wired article about how removing the artificial safety nets we set up for ourself actually makes us safer. The illusion of safety is a very dangerous thing. This is totally applicable to software design too. If you put up a big notice saying “Don’t do this” people won’t read it, you have to design the interaction to encourage people in the right direction.
Comment Spam Kills Sites
The Daily Whim asserts that MT Plus Comment Spam Equals Dead Site. Pretty scary stuff.
How WordPress Spoils Developers
How WordPress Spoils Developers, I get the impression Brian is bullish on the future of WP. He’s right that we have a lot left to work on though, after 2.1 is out the door I think there’s going to be a ton more core development. Update: I agree far more with the developer-friendly bits than the “no room for anyone else” bits. If the latter arguments were true, WP itself wouldn’t exist and the fact that it’s never too late for something new is a point I emphasize in my talks a lot.
We have a great Simplenote for Mac client, and a super clean web version, but nothing first-party for Linux. If anyone is experienced with Linux desktop development and would be interested in creating something extremely minimalist like our Mac app please get in touch!