When Blogger ditched the banner ads for that small tasteful bar at the top that was both attractive and functional, I loved it. Now I’m going down my blogroll and I noticed Hanni has created a version of the blogger nav bar for WordPress. It’s got the WP logo, a search box, a Press It link, et cetera. I haven’t even looked at how she’s doing it yet, but very cool!
News.com Leads Blog Communication
This is the coolest thing I’ve seen all year. Check out the HTML of this article I linked a few days ago. Notice anything at the top?
<link rel="pingback" href="http://tb.news.com/p2t.cgi/2100-1032-5368454" />
Houston, we have Pingback support! Let’s dig deeper:
<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
xmlns:trackback="http://madskills.com/public/xml/rss/module/trackback/">
<rdf:Description
rdf:about="http://news.com.com/2100-1032-5368454.html"
dc:title="Microsoft flip-flop may signal blog clog"
dc:identifier="http://news.com.com/2100-1032-5368454.html" />
trackback:ping="http://tb.news.com/tb.cgi/2100-1032-5368454"
</rdf:RDF>
Ugly as sin, but that’s trackback. It gets better…
A little URI hacking takes us to this page which lists all trackbacks and pingbacks the article recieved. How cool is that?
It’s my understanding that even though they’ve had the trackback autodiscovery code for a while they’ve been recieving mostly pingbacks, which makes sense given that it’s more fully and elegantly automatic. It would be cool if they could add support for the nascent rel="trackback" discovery method and save themselves the trouble of the RDF hack. Hopefully spammers won’t exploit their trackback server too soon and they can support legacy systems that don’t implement Pingback yet.
The implications of this are fairly large. News.com is obviously bootstrapping code that will involve their readers with the blog conversation surrounding their articles. How long for other sites to catch up? Will they plug into Technorati or Pubsub next? As far as I know this is the first major media organization to implement Trackback and Pingback. The team at News.com should be commended for their effort and leadership in this area.
Blogger Endorses Firefox
Just got this in my forgot-my-username-and-password email from Blogger, “You could also try logging in/recovering your password from a different web browser – we recommend Mozilla Firefox: http://mozilla.org/products/firefox/ Sincerely, The Blogger Team.” Very nice, but if they had recommended “gbrowser” then I would’ve had a real scoop. Also, they have a really great website. I don’t know how much is Adaptive Path magic and how much is in-house, but the result is a pleasure to use.
Typekit has announced that they’ve been acquired by Adobe, I’m excited for Bryan, Jeff, and the whole team and can’t wait to see what they launch next. Had the pleasure of working with Typekit as an investor and as a partner in WordPress.com’s Custom Design feature.
Flickr and WP
Son writes in that WordPress is listed on the front page of Flickr. Though I don’t use it myself for a few reasons, Flickr constantly wows me with its features, architecture, and innovation. I’m watching the service as it evolves out of beta with interest. Also one of their developers, Cal, has been helping out with WP a bit lately.
Copy and Paste
Copy and Paste: the universal API. Please don’t break it!
Sims 2
I am now a character in a Sims game. Update: Here’s the entire category, which includes pictures.
Download Stats
WordPress 1.2 was downloaded over a hundred thousand times. About two-thirds of that was through the new download system where we can track stats better. It’ll be interesting to see the download rate of 1.2.1 (and subsequently 1.3).
“Apple Lossless, also known as ALAC, is a lossless audio codec Apple developed some time ago for digital music. The codec compresses music files anywhere from 40-60 percent of their original size with no discernible loss in audio quality or fidelity.” — Apples ALAC codec is now open source. About a year and a half ago I started re-ripping all my music in ALAC, it’s fantastic, especially now that iTunes can down-convert when syncing to iPhones / iPods.
Calypso, 24 Hours Later
The reaction to yesterday’s Calypso announcement has really blown me away.Here’s a tiny selection of of the coverage, analysis, and reactions to Calypso and the new WordPress.com:
Command Line Tricks
George Lakoff is an academic whose books I came across in my college years, and he’s been very influential on me, especially his approach to language through metaphors. He has an updated version of a classic book, Don’t Think of an Elephant, which is a great read if you’re interested in progressive politics. I noticed a link to a PDF to a WordPress-sounding address, and it turns out his entire site is on WordPress.com!
Old and New Apple
Tantek put an old Apple sticker (as old as me) on his iBook lit logo and you can see how they’ve changed the shape. It also just looks cool.
Postiecon
“So, PostieCon (a conference sponsored by PayPerPost) was among the most controversial things I’ve ever done. People really hated that I was speaking there. I got constant crap from my friends and foes alike because of my decision to speak there. But, it turned out they didn’t have enough attendees so they postponed it to November.” — Robert Scoble
WordCamp Update
I’ve put a placeholder for the WordCamp 2007 site. The location will be the same as last year, the main change is there may be a nominal registration fee.
Greek Blogger Camp
At the end of the month I’m going to Greece for the Greek Blogger Camp on Ios Island. It looks like it is going to be fun, and the registration is very reasonable (30 euros) so I hope to see some of you there.
Blue Skies
Blue skies smiling at me, nothing but blue skies do I see. From the amazing Robert Glasper, a fellow HSPVA alumni. (Dig the enclosure action.)
Jane Kim for School Board
One of the people I had the pleasure of meeting while in San Francisco was Jane Kim, who’s running for school board there. If you’re voting in that area in this upcoming election I would highly recommend checking out where she stands on the issues and keep Jane Kim in mind when you visit the polls. If you get a chance to meet her before the election you’ll also get to see what a neat person she is, if not you’ll just have to take my word for it.
Kat Hagan Works Differently
Koya Bound Kickstarter
In March I took a eight day hike in Japan with Dan Rubin and Craig Mod, which was definitely one of the more beautiful journeys I’ve taken, and I couldn’t imagine finer gentlemen to have embarked on it with. We trekked, ate, bathed, had long conversations about life, about our fathers. When I returned to Houston I was able to show my Dad some of the photos and they brought a smile to his face, a rare occurrence those days before he passed.
Dan and Craig are both Leica heads and shot largely on a Leica Q and M Monochrom on the trip. (Bonus points if you can identify Dan’s non-Leica film camera in the above photo.) After I left they camped out in an old house and put together their best work from the trip into what looks like a gorgeous book, which there is now a Kickstarter for.
There are some very cool perks on Kickstarter if you go back the book now, including a few special editions and some photo prints. I’d highly recommend checking it out!