The talk Toni and I did with Alexia Tsotsis at LeWeb this year is now online, at the end we talk a bit about what’s next for Automattic in the WP world:
Also chatted with Hermione Way of The Next Web about the biggest tech story of the year.
Rodin, Versailles, Louvre
Visited the Musée Rodin, Versailles which had the Takashi Murakami exhibit, and finally the Louvre.
Random Paris
Reading, hot dog, Hermes windows, Restaurant Oscar, funny sweater.
Paris Walk and Dinner
Walking around Paris, then dinner with Tony and friends at Chez Savy.
Basquiat exhibit, Snow in Paris
Went to Basquiat exhibit, wandering around Paris in the snow, lunch with Elliot, Social Media Club, Le Web pre-party, some tripe.
Hotel Costes, Guy Savoy, George V
Drinks at Hotel Costes, a fantastic Le Web dinner at Guy Savoy’s restaurant including some peaks behind the scenes and a tour of the kitchen, and closing out the night with some cognac at George V. A lovely night.
Skiing 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.
Big Web Show Interview
The other day I was interviewed by Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin for the Big Web Show, which you can now view here. Also good to watch if you’d like an update on my beard adventure. 🙂
TechFellow Award
Earlier tonight I won a TechFellow Award in the “Product Design and Marketing” category. I thought this would be a good opportunity to thank the two people who have had the biggest design influence over the past few years on WordPress (and me): Jane Wells and Matt “MT” Thomas.
Cyber Missile
Mystery Surrounds Cyber Missile That Crippled Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Ambitions, such a cool story.
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!
Airport Security
It’s not that the terrorist picks an attack and we pick a defense, and we see who wins. It’s that we pick a defense, and then the terrorists look at our defense and pick an attack designed to get around it. Our security measures only work if we happen to guess the plot correctly. If we get it wrong, we’ve wasted our money. This isn’t security; it’s security theater.
Bruce Schnier on why airport security is A Waste of Money and Time in the New York Times.
Stallone
Sylvester Stallone’s website is WP-powered. (I saw The Expendables last night.) Also, am I imagining things or did I read a longish profile of Stallone that talked about his production company, his office, the legacy of Rocky… can’t find it anywhere and search on my Kindle is broken.
New VaultPress Security Scanning
New VaultPress security scanning, scans all your core files to make sure they’re kosher.
5-minute Private Collaboration Site
20 Billion Spams Blocked
Akismet just passed 20 Billion Served.
Almost-beta WordPress 3.1 is now running for 15 million blogs on WP.com, the feedback has been really good already and hopefully we’ll iron out some of the few remaining bugs before we do the beta release. The link gives a nice overview of some of the user-facing features of 3.1.
Short, Sweet WP Video
A few months ago I was recently interviewed on KTEH’s program “This is Us!” and the result ended being a nice 5 minute overview of WordPress, something you could show to your Mom to explain the whole thing. Here’s the video (using Youtube’s new beta iframe player):
Gamification
I like neologisms. We need new words because we have new ideas, and ideas are the only things that break the law of the conservation of energy. Where once there was nothing there now is something, and the history of the neologism is a history of those moments of pure creation. ‘Gamification’, that said, can go take a long walk off a short pier.
Can’t play, won’t play by Margaret Robertson. Hat tip: Paul Kim.
Springfield Castle with Polldaddy
Visited the Polldaddy meetup in Ireland which was held at Springfield Castle, south near Cork. Includes a close encounter with some deer, peacocks, some karting, and a lovely dinner with Automatticians.