Friend and HSPVA alum Robert Glasper’s new album Black Radio is out today and has so far been well-received by a great feature in the New York Times and on NPR. You can grab the album on iTunes ($7) or on Amazon ($9).
Aside Archives
LIFE magazine has relaunched, powered by WordPress.com VIP. I’m a huge fan of the magazine’s history and the work of photographers like John Dominis.
Two excellent essays on how Hollywood has completely put our legal system out of whack through years of twisting our legislative process to their ends, or as Shirky put it “imagine the possibility of a longer jail term for streaming a Michael Jackson video than Jackson’s own doctor got for killing actual Michael Jackson?”
Andrew Bridges on PandoDaily: Forget SOPA, Hollywood Already Had a Field Day with the Justice System.
Clay Shirky on his blog: Pick up the pitchforks: David Pogue underestimates Hollywood.
Really great article from my friend Hunter Walk on #Reinventing the Chamber of Commerce, which is especially relevant given how the US Chamber of Commerce has been tending to side with the MPAA and RIAA rather than actual small businesses, startups, and tech communities.
As part of the SOPA Strike, here’s the homepage of WordPress.com today. We got started a little bit early, but figured it wouldn’t hurt to go more than 24 hours.
On WP.com we’ve activated an option for any of the bloggers there to put a ribbon on their site or black it out entirely, and we’ll be participating on WordPress.org as well.
Over the holidays I chatted with Mathew Ingram about the future of the web in 2012 and beyond and he turned that into an opinion piece on GigaOM you should check out.
Exclusive: Microsoft and Nokias Plans for Marketing Windows Phone in 2012.
I dont want to reveal more, and Ive been sitting on this information for weeks so that Microsoft can make its big announcement at CES this coming week. But with these leaks, as with the equally inaccurate LTE leaks last week, I felt the need to set the record straight. The way tech blogs work these days is that any information, no matter how inaccurate, is simply parroted between all the gadget blogs and then, inevitably, to the increasingly lazy mainstream news as well. So lets at least get it right.
Mr Thurrott, perhaps if you didn’t sit on stories for so long other people wouldn’t break them. Your responsibility is to your audience, not Microsoft’s CES launch plans.
I’m turning 28 next week on January 11th. My friends and family always complain that I’m impossible to buy for, and it’s true, I don’t need any more stuff. (Exception is a mixtape / playlist, I eat those up.) The most important luxuries in my life are time, friends, and time with friends. The thing I covet is impact. So this year going to try something different: I’m giving up my birthday to raise money for charity: water and provide clean water to people that need it. 100% of money donated goes directly to projects in the field. Please donate — let’s build some wells. 🙂
DHH writes at 37signals Stop whining and start hiring remote workers. Automattic does the same, except we use P2 for our projects and virtual water coolers, IRC for our chat, Skype and Google+ Hangouts for calls and screensharing, and pretty much never email. When people read these things about 37signals their first criticism is always “does it scale?” For Automattic it has to a hundred people and growing.
I ended up on the Forbes 30 under 30 for Social / Mobile this year, which is good because I only have two more years to make this sort of thing before being demoted to less exclusive “100 under 100” lists. For something more meaty check out this in-depth interview with Japanese devleloper magazine Gijutsu-Hyoron, by Bart Eisenberg, which included some pretty thoughtful questions.
If I were going to start a gadget site, it’d look and work just like The Wirecutter from Brian Lam. Review sites like CNET review stuff when it comes out, and don’t update old reviews when new stuff comes out, so the best printer in March when they did the review might not be still the best printer in December when you want to buy one. Wirecutter picks one thing, and one thing only, and constantly updates their recommendations to keep the context of new products. And, of course, they’re powered by WordPress. 🙂
Automattic just reached 100 people. On Monday we’ll be 102. 🙂
“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.
ReadWriteWeb covers the WordPress.com / Federated Media deal which will give high-end bloggers access to run advertising from FM, which is significantly higher quality than alternatives like Google Adsense, which has been declining in quality and is no longer a great choice for bloggers. Proud to be part of the empowerment of the Independent Web, which is the dark matter of the internet.
Liz Gannes breaks the story that Automattic has made its first investment, in newspaper toolmaker OwnLocal.
The other week in my hometown of Houston, Texas I ended up on stage in a joint conversation with Dries Buytaert, the founder of Drupal. The video of our chat is now on WordPress.tv, and worth checking out particularly if you’re curious about the early history of both projects. We’re more alike than different, and Dries is someone I respect a lot.
This essay by Steve Yegge on Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook is pretty killer, I suggest giving it a read.
“We’ve seen WordPress do some amazing things, and almost every one of us has used Google Maps to explore the world around us. […] This website is a beautiful mashup of WordPress, Google Maps and photography.” — Brad McCarty at The Next Web.
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.
The official URL for Amazon’s new browser, Silk, is amazon.com/silk which right now redirects to amazonsilk.wordpress.com. This is not a VIP deal or anything, it’s just a free blog on WP.com which Beau noticed from their press release. I’m guessing they just wanted a quick and easy way to make a functional and beautiful website, which is kind of the whole idea of WordPress. 🙂