Inside the Burj Al Arab and dinner at Al Mahara.
Happy New Year! and Dubai Meetup
I wanted to take a moment to wish everyone a happy, safe, and prosperous new year. 2009 looks like it’s going to be a heckuva year. 🙂 Here’s a quick video clip of Grandmaster Flash from the NYE party last night at The Apartment:
Also a reminder that tomorrow will be the first ever Dubai WordPress meetup.
Mall of Emirates, Desert Safari
Browsing around the Mall of Emirates, including lots of shoes and the indoor ski range. Desert safari with belly dancer.
The Atlantis, Dubai
Just a few snaps around the newest hotel in Dubai, The Atlantis, which cost about 1.5 billion dollars to build.
New York to Dubai
Stopover in New York, seeing Julie; A380 Emirates flight to Dubai.
Christmas Day
Christmas day with family, opening presents and such.
Christmas Eve
Christmas eve in park, at House of Pies, and dinner with family and friends.
Houston
Exploring Houston with old friends.
Killing Silicon Valley
Washington Is Killing Silicon Valley, an editorial from the Wall Street Journal. The main thing the article misses is that while the economics of startups are currently distorted doing a startup is still one of the best ways to change the world, for your work to have an impact far beyond the walls of a single company. I’ve seen some killer startups recently, my only hope is that they have enough runway to make it to the execution of their idea. Entrepreneurship.gov says “Freedom is just another word for entrepreneurship.”
Friendster Switches
Friendster Relaunches Blogs, Switches to WordPress MU. Basically Friendster has switched millions of blogs from Typepad to WordPress, presumably at least partly because Six Apart abandoned their Typepad platform for third parties starting in late 2006 with Le Monde.
Art Direction Plugin
WordPress “Art Direction” Plugin, from Automattician Noel Jackson. Basically allows you to do what Jason Santa Maria does for his blog without all the custom code and template hacking, just a simple plugin.
WordPress Interface History
A Journey Through Five Years of WordPress Interface. Take a look at what the WordPress interface looked like at the beginning of 2008. How far we’ve come!
WordCamp SF 2009
WordCamp San Francisco 2009 will be on May 30, 2009.
Entertainment Gathering Day 2
Day two of Entertainment Gathering.
Entertainment Gathering Day 1
First day at the Entertainment Gathering 2008 in Monterey.
2.7
WordPress 2.7 “Coltrane” is live to the world. So many people put so much into this release, all I can really say is “thank you.”
Check out the release video:
Most Annoying Economic Crisis
Inside the world’s most annoying economic crisis, on a shortage of coins in Argentina. “Factoring in the 50 centavos he had already handed over, this effectively reduced the fare to 13.50 pesos, which, for reasons I’ll get to in a moment, is actually more than 14.50 pesos.” Hat tip: Paul Kedrosky.
Houston & Dubai
I’m going to be in Houston for Christmas and while there attending the December Refresh Houston Meetup. If you’re in Houston, come by and say hi. After that I’m going to Dubai for a little bit of vacation, but if there are any WordPress users there I’d love to meet up one night. I’ll be there the Dec 28–Jan 4.
Learn Faster
Gas Stations for Flying Cars
Open Thread: Social Web & Its Challenges . “building floating gas stations for the flying cars”