Via Laughing Squid, I found out about this flow chart:
There really is something about this song that makes it so fun to poke fun of:
Just figured I better mention these memes before I forget. 🙂
Via Laughing Squid, I found out about this flow chart:
There really is something about this song that makes it so fun to poke fun of:
Just figured I better mention these memes before I forget. 🙂
There was an interesting article in the New York Times about FarmVille. The only major error I have to comment on is that, given my experience at Tagged, saying Zynga is profitable is a massive understatement.
I think it’s instructive how companies like Slide and RockYou could have been so slow to capitalize on game designs that date back to 1980’s bulletin board systems. Perhaps they’ll study that in b-school. With 20-20 hindsight, this model does complete sense—interaction and bandwidth limitations are pretty much the same relative to the existing technology in each time period are strikingly similar in both BBSs and social networks. And just to further emphasize that it was not first mover that defined success, but rather failure to capitalize, I’ll remind the audience that neither FarmVille nor Mafia Wars were original ideas on Facebook—both were swiped from competitor products.
I will give Zynga (and the others) this. They have a far more mature understanding of social virality than the days of Plaxo, Tagged, or even RockYou/Slide. Earlier social gaming (like the first such app, Zombies) used traditional models based on optimizing signups and invites, but the Zynga model is optimizing views and clicks and they’re doing a good job. Remember, FarmVille only launched in June and now is all over the Times.
Trust me, they make a lot of money off of this.
Before any of us start rationalizing, part of learning is admitting when someone does it better than you. Hats off to Zynga.
Last month, my friend and fellow kimchee-eater, M.J., had three books sent to me. FailNation, How to Take over Teh Wurld, and Graph Out Loud. That’s important that I have friends like her because I’m usually the last to know about the latest memes.
I mention this because if you happen to be in San Francisco today at 6:30pm you really need to go to the book launch party. I came to get their last book signed:
I’ll certainly be there in order to get the books signed (and then give them away later, like I did last time).
(Full disclaimer, I now work for Automattic—though I didn’t at the time M.J. sent me the books. ICanHasCheezburger, GraphJam, and Failblog are VIP customers of WordPress.com.)
Raffi, a co-worker of mine at Automattic, mentioned today that his project, After the Deadline, is now open-source.
It might help to explain what After the Deadline is.
A friend asked me today:
Why isn’t
short_open_tag
set toOn
in php.ini at [servers you set up] or in general?
Basically short_open_tag
allows you to use <?
and <?=
in addition to <?php
when formatting code. The latter can be very useful if you are using PHP as a templating language—like with Savant or no templating system at all.
Many people think that there is a security reason for this. For the life of me, I can’t really see the security problem with the setting though I can see the security problem with the coding. That is… if you code using short_open_tags
, then you run the risk of running that code on a server where this variable it is off somewhere and suddenly you are dumping PHP code to people’s browsers. But that almost never happens and really if you have a configuration issue, you have bigger problems.
The real reason is simply that it violates valid XML markup to use short tags. Simply put, let’s say you have an example where your PHP page has to generate a valid XML file that needs a XML directive.
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
With short_open_tags
, this will generate a fatal error in the PHP engine! The workaround is to do something nasty like
echo '<'.'?xml version="1.0" ?>';
(or some such). As more websites contained XHTML or some weird sort of sacrifice to the Gods of all things XML (SOAP, XMLRPC, REST-XML), it was sooner convenient to admit defeat and just start coding in valid XML markup.
It violates valid xml. It was not recommended for use because it isn’t guaranteed to be on everywhere. Ever since then people have been in the habit of not using short tags just in case they are off. Soon, it became part of the php.ini-recommended and short tags, like asp_tags
and the alternative syntax for control structures got relegated to the dustbin of history.
What is the alternative syntax for control structures? Let’s not go there. 😉
As a San Franciscan, I just love this commercial Audi made for the Winter Games in 2010.
You can see the influence from the bouncy balls commercial.
(BTW, the way I embedded this video is with the new oEmbed support built into WordPress 2.9 development. You can just include the bare URL (or use a special shortcode).)