Category: Web 2.0

The second post in roughly 24 hours from Prince Campbell. I didn’t post on the first one because I’ve see the stray post before. Chartreuse is back in the house and welcomed from me.  Lets hope the issues of last year are left behind and we see some great blogging once again. Prince is a great bloke who I had the opportunity of spending a bit of time with last year.

 It must of been something subliminal from me as despite having a big Google Reader purge about 5 weeks ago I left Chartreuse in my reading.

I’m doing some research on switching back to MovableType, in part so I can support the MT Open Source initiative.

WordPress isn’t what it use to be, both from a development and security perspective, as well as having a leadership that seems more focused on commercial interests than the open source side.

If anyone has any advice/ tips/ recommended MT plugins let me know. I’ve noticed that a lot of extra functionality comes standard in MT 4 so I’m not seeing the need for a large number of plugins, but there must be some that come well recommended.

Next stop: relearning the MT template tag structure. 🙂

See here.

Finalists are the top 3 in each category. For a State that is so remote from the rest of the world there’s an impressive lineup of sites.

The winners will be announced at the Duxton, Perth, August 17.

And incase I’ve failed to mention it previously: I was a judge for the awards. Suffice to say that there were a lot more submissions that finalists, but it was a good experience none the less. It’s amazing what people can come up with in terms of site design and delivery.

I’ve decided that the one thing I don’t like about Facebook is exerting effort for a small group of people; basically I don’t get why Facebook pages should be closed to all bar friends. It’s not that I dislike my Facebook friends; I appreciate every one of them, it’s just that in a society that values user generated content where there is a finite amount of time in a day, you only  want to post or create on X amount of places, preferably ones that maximise the audience. Take for example photos: I post to my Flickr account what I want people to see, be they friends or otherwise, why cant I do the same on Facebook?

OK, so people rave about the privacy and closed networks, but how hard would it be to be able to provide the option “Private or Public Profile?” 

If you do want to see what goes on behind the great privacy wall of Facebook (and it’s not that exciting…yet) add me as a friend on Facebook. I might have to have a friend-a-thon so I can play catchup with Robert Scoble…although I’ve got a bloody long way to go 🙂

I don’t even use MyBlogLog anymore, and yet I keep getting spam emails from MyBlogLog users; advertising networks, Nigerian style scams etc. Am I alone? I probably shouldn’t complain and just switch off the emails and resign my MyBlogLog membership properly..but I thought I’d check.  Looks like Yahoo ownership still hasn’t improved things.

All that is old is new again. I’ve been following in passing the debate over sponsored WordPress themes over the last week or so (Jacob Gower has a good summary, Matt Mullenweg’s post here) and I can’t help but shake my head. As Jacob notes the folks at WordPress and other sites are entitled to feature or not feature what they want, but why the jihad, and why now?

I’ve always had a world of respect and admiration of Matt Mullenweg, but I’m starting to question my past loyalty. Remember this is a guy who got done a couple of years back for running spam on WordPress.org, not just a little bit but a ton of it. I defended him at the time, and I don’t regret doing so, but attacking hard working people from doing sponsored WordPress templates that include one sponsored link in return for a free product? WTF?

Of course there seems to be an aloofness creeping in to WordPress these days as well. I contacted Matt not long after I started writing for TechCrunch with a question about a site being shut down/ removed from WordPress.com, the response I got was terse and down right rude. I sent another email off, thinking that perhaps he’d forgotten my past loyalties to him (being one of the very few people to publicly defend him…heck, even his mother and sister contacted me to thank me for supporting him during the spam crisis) and all I got back was a shit response again. Suffice to say I didn’t send him any more email requests. Really weird though that I’m able to talk to CEO’s of multi-million dollar startups without a problem and yet the only serious grief I’ve had in 3 months at TechCrunch was from Matt Mullenweg.

If it smells like Old Mena and it quacks like Old Mena….

But of course that’s being unfair to Mena. She and I have moved past those dark days of MovableType 3.0 and SixApart is back in the good books, with MT to be open sourced this year. We all get older, wiser…and of course we all make mistakes. (so apologies to Mena if you do take offense at the comparison, none is intended, it’s all about the past, not the present).

I really hope that WordPress and Matt Mullenweg don’t repeat the mistakes of Mena and SixApart in the past…but it’s starting to look that way. What next: WordPress development stops to focus of WordPress.com alone?

And while we’re at it: if we’re on a jihad against links, how about the WordPress team stop stuffing their own links into the standard install of WordPress. WordPress is open source after all, and if we’re all about not benefiting anyone, lets be serious about it. I never want to see a link to Matt Mullenweg’s blog again in WordPress unless it’s linked to the dictionary definition of hypocrite.

For all 5 people who will probably listen, I’m another step forward to a podcast again, after a couple of previously failed attempts at the Blog Herald, then a TPN podcast that never got off the ground as I got caught up running a previous company.

I’ve got the Mic, I’ve got Garage Band and I’ve now got Audio Hijack Pro working + registered. Great program BTW, audio quality recording from Skype was quite remarkable.

It has a running title, but I’m waiting on Cam Reilly to sign off on it and get me set up. Format will be plain old talk, I’ll have a guest on and talk about them and general things. In some ways I might end up being the mini-Cam; GDay World without pissing off and offending quite so many people, but expect the swearing to be occasionally at a similar level.

If you’d like to be a guest, let me know. If you don’t want to be I’ll probably contact some of you and insist anyway. Subject matter is fully open; this won’t be a tech podcast as such although it will probably end up having a strong focus in that direction, Id like for example to highlight some Australian tech success stories.  

More soon. 🙂 

Bloggin’ down under: the official Google Blog.

OMFG. This post followed the Postini announcement. Could the cliche’s be any thicker and the content more curdling. It’s hard enough having Americans tell you how much they love your accent and thinking that you’ve got a bloody great big knife in your pocket without having the worlds biggest search engine add to the stereotypes.

As for it being NAIDOC week on Google Australia, I didn’t notice because I’m too busy using Google.com. Google.com.au still hasn’t been updated to include the latest UI changes, the ones that allow an easy switch to other Google search services such as Google Blogs. Perhaps the Google Australia team should spend less time with the logos and dicky posts, and more time with the UI. And BTW, Google Maps may have started in Australia, but the imagery still sucks and is in many cases years out of date, my house is still a vacant block despite the pad going down 3 years ago October, and if I use the mapping feature to get out of the estate I’d run straight into a mound of dirt. Please explain! 🙂

The more friends and comments I’m getting, the more I’m liking Pownce…which is just as well, I was prepared to rip it to shreds at first. Dave Winer’s Twittergraming (audio twitters) will work great in Pownce, and probably more importantly they’ll work natively as well.

http://pownce.com/duncanriley

Unlike Twitter where I was getting swamped with requests and subsequently stopped reciprocating, I’m will recip on Pownce until I get some good numbers happening. Join me now! 🙂

I actually read this yesterday (my time) but never got around to posting.

It’s sad.

ThreadWatch is the site that got me interested in SEO and a site through which I made a number of good contacts over the years. I don’t want to diss Aaron, but the site has never been the same since Nick Wilson sold it. Nick’s shoes were too large for just about anyone to fill; Nick’s often sarcastic style and biting commentary is something more unique to the English, certainly its a style you don’t often see from American writers aand although Aaron tried it was never the same for me as a reader, although notably where as I may have unsubscribed to other sites during this time I have kept reading Threadwatch.

I’m also interested as to why the site is being shut and not sold. An Alexa ranking under 10,000 would make it a decent sized asset, maybe Aaron has other plans?