At the meetup, I noticed someone had a laptop with an interesting advertisement with a “golden ticket” offer to theVaultPress beta.
The next morning, Stephane noticed that they applied that into a clever signup page. Check it out!
VaultPress sign-up
Category: work
Plaxo Office Space
When I worked at Plaxo’s offices on Crittenden (now part of the GooglePlex), there was a door to our server closet inside the handicap stall men’s bathroom of the third floor.
I can picture this like a scene in the movie: You are minding their own business, taking a shit on the toilet when the mysterious door opens, a sysadmin walks into the stall, says to you, “Oh, Excuse me, our wifi was down.” He then opens your stall door and leaves.
PC Load Letter
One day a VP went to print something out, and started shouting, “PC Load Letter? PC Load Letter! What the heck does that mean? PC Load Letter?! Does anyone know what that means?”
He was deadly serious—the entire office was busting up because unlike him, they had actually seen this movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ8SefiNEcs
WordPress Rocks (…err Swings)
WordPress 3.0 (Thelonious) update just went out:
The WordPress.org people have done a great job. There is even a new default blog theme (which if you haven’t gathered I’ve been using for the last half year).
I even broke out a bottle of this to celebrate. Which reminds me, I recommend you update the way you drink the beer: straight, no chaser.
Carpe diem vita brevis.
What I did?
“Terry Chay what did you do!!!!”
—friend on Facebook
Before I clicked on the link, I thought I was being teased for taking down WordPress.com yesterday. (While I didn’t cause the one Jason Kincaid blogged about, I have taken down 11 million blogs before and I felt awful.)
But no, my friend has forgotten that I no longer work at Tagged.
And now that I no longer work there, let me explain what is going on. Simply put, The New York Attorney General intends to sue Tagged for harboring child pornographers and sexual predators.
Continue reading about social networks, lawsuits, and politics after the jump.
Awesome blogging
Earlier this week, Neil Pasricha contacted Automattic about the success of his WordPress blog, 1000 Awesome Things. This is a blog, hosted for free on WordPress.com and it’s very inspiring…
(Read more about it on his blog. Apparently, there is a shout out in the book somewhere around page 400 or so.)
While reading Marie’s post about iPad cases, I came across ∆Temple Bags and noticed the entire site is built on WordPress (WordPress.org). It reminds me of this post four years ago.
People are doing some awesome stuff with blog software. Perhaps you will be inspired (and encouraged) too.. 🙂
OpenSearch on WordPress.com
A couple months ago, I did something so small it doesn’t really deserve mention. Nial and I got OpenSearch working on WordPress.com for individual blogs:
Search of the entire domain has always been working, but this allows you to add a special search for one blog. To activate this, open Firefox (or Internet Explorer), and click on the search dropdown and you’ll see a new entry to “Add your blog name.” Select that.
Maybe I’ll add a plugin to WordPress with this code. I’m not too sure there’s a need though since there are already a couple OpenSearch plugins and this one only works in WPMU and PHP 5. There’s also a couple of WordPress.com-specific features like tags, privacy flags, and blavatar support in this one.
Guns, Germ(ane), and Steal
A commenter on my last article jokes:
I thought : “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” was Robbie Wiliams stuff!
I should issue a couple of corrections to improper attributions in that article.
TumblrPad
(Full disclosure: I work on Automattic, which makes software and services in the same space as SixApart.)
- Image via CrunchBase
Today, TypePad announced the launch of TypePad micro, which I found out about from John Gruber’s somewhat snarky tweet.
This marks the first time (to my knowledge) that SixApart is embarking on a free hosted blogging service, so it was definitely worth a look, especially given some of the things we’ve worked on, have recently got working, and will work on at here at Automattic. Besides, free is the price I like 🙂
Registering for a new account (especially with the Facebook Connect integration) was so easy, I thought, “Wait! Where is my Staples button?”
The blog, though there is some confusion as to the URL, has an aesthetically pleasing layout. It certainly seems to share a lot of influences from Twitter, WordPress P2, Pownce, etc. but the biggest influence has to be Tumblr.
Continue reading about Thoughts about TypePad micro after the jump
Vivanista
(Disclaimer: I work for Automattic which contributes to the development of WordPress, WordPressMU, BuddyPress, and bbPress.)
At this month’s Bay Area WordPress Meetup, there were four interesting talks. One of which wised me up to the Zemanta WordPress plugin, which I’m using now, any content creator (or Another Search Startup) should check it out—it’s quite clever.
But the presentation I want to focus on in this article, was Annie Vranizan’s Vivanista demo.
Vivanista is a social network for women focusing on philanthropy. Even if you don’t have a passing interest in such things, the website deserves a look, it’s quite an attractive website and built in record time—a couple of months.
Being a vertical, this is mostly the territory of white-label social networks, and more recently, Facebook. In fact, if you look at their team, it reads more like a group blog than a company.
That’s because it is.
What makes Vivanista so interesting is that it is built on WordPress MU blog publishing platform in combination with Andy Peatling’s BuddyPress plugin.
Continue reading about More about how Vivanista was created after the jump
Lolcats can never be FAIL'd
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.)