Tag: Automattic

Office Porn

A few weeks ago, there was a thread on on of our internal blogs at workconcerning our home office setup for productivity and comfort. One of them mentioned an old blog post of mine, and it occurred to me that it’s been five years since I’ve shared my office.

Here is what it looks like today:

My home office (HDR)

My home office (HDR)
The Richmond, San Francisco, California

Nikon D3, Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8G
36 exposures (0+/-3ev), 1/15sec @ ƒ8, ISO200, 14mm

Continue reading about my office and HDR panoramic photography after the jump

Posted on by tychay 9

In with a bang, and out with a burrito

In the crossfire between the landlord and the city, Automattic got [evicted][evicted] from their home on Pier 38 on Friday.

At the end of every week, some of the [Automatticians][automatticians] have been having #burittofridays, so they made one last burrito run before closing the doors. As Beau, put it, “We came in with a bang, and out with a burrito.”

P9306488

In with a bang…and out with a burrito
Pier 38, South of Market, San Francisco, California

Olympus E-P2, Lumix G HD 14-14 f/4-5.8 OIS
1/320s @ ƒ9, iso 200, 19mm (38mm)

One of the advantages of working for a distributed company is that now that we are homeless, we’ll simply be working from home. The Bay Area crew won’t get to see each other each week though. 🙁

And here is one last parting shot from [our fearless leader][matt]:

Our fearless leader

Our fearless leader
Pier 38, South of Market, San Francisco, California

Olympus E-P2, Lumix G HD 14-14 f/4-5.8 OIS
1/400sec @ ƒ8, iso 200, 103mm (206mm)

He leaves us with a bit of= T.S. Eliot:

> We shall not cease from exploration
> And the end of all our exploring
> Will be to arrive where we started
> And know the place for the first time.

I’ll miss you guys.

[matt]: http://ma.tt “Matthew Mullenweg”
[evicted]: http://articles.sfgate.com/2011-09-09/business/30133602_1_evictions-tenants-carl-ernst “Pier 38 deemed unsafe; tech tenants evicted—SFGate”
[automatticians]: http://automattic.com/about/ “About Us—Automattic”

Posted on by tychay 0

TumblrPad

(Full disclosure: I work on Automattic, which makes software and services in the same space as SixApart.)

Image representing Six Apart as depicted in Cr...
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?”

 

It only took seconds to create this blog using the default look and feel.

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

Posted on by tychay 7

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.

The Vivanista homepage

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

Posted on by tychay 8

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.

Three new books and their respective websites: FailBlog, ICanHasCheezburger, and GraphJam.

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).

Ben Huh signing their first book.

See you at the party!

(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.)

Posted on by tychay 1