Good Morning Vienna
I’m in Vienna through Thursday for the Blogtalk Reloaded conference. If you’re a WordPress user please come up and introduce yourself, I have stickers. 🙂
Spambot Stopper
I’ve been testing out a spam plugin that has been very effective. You can get Spambot Stopper on the WordPress support forums. It’s very simple, for more advanced protection check out the Combat Comment Spam page on the Codex.
House and Baby
Some snaps around my apartment with Lea, Hege, and her beautiful new baby.
The economic uncertainty surrounding basic income is huge, and the politics of bringing such a program about on a large scale are daunting. But something makes this radical proposal so exciting that people and governments are increasingly willing to try it. Basic income challenges our notions of the social safety net, the relationship between work and income, and how to adapt to technological change. That makes it one of the most audacious social policy experiments in modern history. It could fail disastrously, or it could change everything for the better.
From FiveThirtyEight, What Would Happen If We Just Gave People Money?
Boxely
Boxely is live, it’s like XUL but simpler and easier.
WordCamp Roundups
I’m still recovering from the conference this weekend. It was really amazing in both the people who attended and the quality of the presentations. Anyone have a good roundup post or liveblog any sessions? Leave it in the comments. The session pages are picking up pingbacks but seem to be missing some good stuff.
WordCamp Milan Photos
Day two in Milano; WordCamp Italy.
Flash Text
As much as I like the people doing it I hope sIFR Flash text replacement doesn’t take off. It slows my browser to a crawl and is used far too much in situations where images and CSS image replacement could be used. (Also looks funny with Adblock but that’s nobody’s fault.
TB Quickmove
James Lee sent me a link to TB Quickmove, an extension for Firefox Thunderbird which lets you move messages into folders with hotkeys, which is what I really really needed. I only wish I could map regular letters.
Editor’s Choice
I heard on the grapevine that WordPress won an Editor’s Choice award from Linux Journal, could anyone confirm? I’m going to head to Border’s tomorrow to see if they have any new copies.
Plinky
Overcome Writer’s Block With Plinky Prompts — Automattic has bought Plinky and is promoting it from WordPress.com. See also: Thing Labs (makers of Plinky and Brizzly), TechCrunch, The Next Web.
Import and Export
Marc asks about export in the next version of WordPress. It’s actually the very first item on the list because it got bumped from 1.5 because of time constraints. The main holdup has been WordPress supports rich data like custom fields and slugs, which users love, but it makes a lossless import and export a pain. Most other blog tools have a WordPress importer already simply because it’s a market leader, so don’t think the export will improve portability much, but it should make a nice way to backup and restore a WP blog.
Mike Hearn has a great and thought-provoking post on why he thinks Bitcoin is at a developer-caused impasse, and he’s ending his participation. I ended up selling most of my Bitcoin last year, but if I hadn’t this would definitely make me reconsider.
Tim Ferriss Interview
I was interviewed by Tim Ferriss of The 4-Hour Workweek on “Simplicity and Start-up Alchemy.” It turned out a little denser and more intellectual than most of my interviews.
PollDaddy API & Twitter
PollDaddy has a new API. Also check out their easy tool for polling your Twitter followers.
Doors in Barcelona
As I walked around Barcelona after everything was closed, I was really taken with the graffiti on the roll-down doors. Here’s a gallery of a few snaps.
On Podcasting
More love from Apple.com: “IMHO WordPress is the best single user blogging system available (did I mention its free?) […] I came accross this really simple tutorial on how to use WordPress as a podcasting engine … take a look at it. What is so amazing is how easy it really is! Before you know it, you’ll have thousands of listeners, be listed in the iTunes 4.9 Podcasting Directory, and be a media darling.” We’re turning the media darling thing into a plugin in 1.6. Hat tip: Pete Quily.
On Stage and Flickr SxSW
A photo of me during the Blog Showdown presentation, Hat tip: Joe Clark. I’ve had a couple of people ask how best to tag me in a photo, I’ve seen some use “mullenweg” or “matt” or “mattmullenweg” but the best bet (and the one I watch) is “photomatt“. (Also, my happiest moment ever.)
Greek Blogger Camp
Day 2 in Greece, on Ios island at the Greek Blogger Conference 2008.