“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.
Aside Archives
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. 🙂
I was fortunate enough to be put on Vanity Fair’s Next Establishment list with a variety of cool people.
At least 40% of TIME.com traffic is going through WordPress, probably more when you add up the non-vertical sites. Bummer they never mention WordPress in the original article.
I’m somewhere in the middle of the Arctic Sea right now, approximately 78°05’N, 28°45’E, but even through the thin pipe of an intermittent satellite connection the ripples were felt of the announcement that Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple. Jobs, or the idea of him, has had a profound impact on innumerable founders and CEOs. My own tribute to him (and Apple as an organization) is in the essay 1.0 is the Loneliest Number, where reviews of the original iPod punctuate a story of the messy act of creation. Moments like this give us an opportunity to take a step back and contemplate the bigger picture, so take a moment to read the post and think about what you’re launching next.
The past two days I’ve been at WordCamp San Francisco and the presentations have been amazing. For the first time ever for San Francisco we’ve had a really fantastic live video stream going from both rooms. It’s a pretty economical way to get all of the content of the conference without the cost of coming to San Francisco. We even had someone streaming from Pakistan! My talk on the State of the Word, will be tomorrow at 11 AM PST so get a ticket on the WordCamp SF site.
WordPress Japan has decided their official character nameAs you may have seen, the WordPress community released version 3.2 “Gershwin” yesterday. Here’s the announcement video with some of the new features:
When you get a chance also check out MT’s post about the Design of 3.2.
Here’s an update on WordPress woes in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. As far as I know we’ve had no contact with KazakhTelecom. Typically this happens when they don’t like something a blog is saying, so they block or degrade service for everybody. The footer of the site links to Global Voices Anonymous Blogging with WordPress and Tor guide, which is still excellent all these years later.
ExpanDrive, a program I’ve used for years, allows you to mount FTP, SFTP, or S3 accounts as local drives on your computer on Mac or Windows. They just released their new Windows version, and it’s fast and slick. They support key authentication, which is my must-have feature.
Alec Baldwin, my favorite character on 30 Rock, has a great-looking WordPress-powered site. It was also built by Alley Interactive who did the Observer site I blogged about the other day.
Six years ago on this blog we scheduled a WordPress meetup in Seattle which ended up including a number of folks who are still changing the web today, including Bre Pettis, Robert Scoble, Chris Pirillo, Matt May, Filipe Fortes, Andy Skelton, Scott Berkun, and Lee Lefever. We’re going to do an informal 2.0 tonight at 6 PM, Friday June 3 at Pike Pub & Brewery on 1st Avenue in downtown Seattle. Come by and share a beer, reminiscence about trackbacks, and talk about the future of the open web. It’s short notice, so please spread the word to your Seattle-area friends.
I’m honored to be have been chosen alongside some cool folks like Kevin Rose, Dave Morin, Andrew Mason, and Charlie Cheever as one of Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs in 2011. I only have 3 more years before I’m too old for these lists. 🙂
Batters Up: Major League Baseball Now on WordPress.com. MLB’s blogging system used to be powered by Movable Type, and about 15,000 blogs switched over to WordPress.com as part of this. It’s an honor and delight to have so many great bloggers joining the family. They’re also in good company with VIP blogs for the NFL, NBA, NBC Sports…