Writing “The WordPress Bible”

July 3, 2009

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…
That’s how the process of coming to be the newest author for Wiley Publishing seems to have gone, even though the initial contact was only in late April.
Back then, I received a mysterious email in my inbox asking if I would be interested in writing The [...]

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White House Unveils an IT Spending Dashboard

July 1, 2009

During the run up to last years landmark election, then-candidate Barack Obama made a promise to appoint a federal Chief Technology Officer to oversee the federal IT infrastructure and data. In our primary endorsement of Obama, we said:
In the wake of 9/11, a glaring weakness was revealed in the FBI’s technology infrastructure. That has not [...]

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The [Non] Value of Friendfeed

June 26, 2009

Over the past year or so, I’ve fiddled around on Friendfeed. Sometimes actively, sometimes passively. The notion of aggregating all social content into a single place is an enticing value add to anyone who spends time on multiple services across the internet.
As I’ve thought about the value of Friendfeed and it’s potential to be a [...]

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FTC to Close Loopholes in Blogger-Marketer Relationships

June 22, 2009

Late last night, I came across an AP article that indicated a long awaited smackdown was coming from the FTC regarding paid reviews on blogs. Digging deeper into the article, it seems that the issue is not so much paid reviews as it is proper disclosure and verifiable claims.
In the blog world, we are subject [...]

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How Location Based Services Saved My Life

June 18, 2009

Sitting here in Automattic offices in San Francisco, I find myself lovingly caressing my Blackberry which, for a short time yesterday, I believed was separated from me for good. Turns out I lost it the night before and was having phantom spasms over not having it in my pocket to check email, twitter or do [...]

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Personal Branding

June 12, 2009

An interesting thing happened a few months back. Geoff Livingston, the organizer of BlogPotomac, asked me to be on a panel about personal branding at the BlogPotomac event. The irony of the whole thing is that I have a personal brand of sorts, but also resent the idea as a whole. I accepted the invite [...]

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It’s Not Necessarily Who You Know

June 10, 2009

In the world of social media, there has been a dramatic shift in how business ideas and implementations get done. David Armano touches on it today where he suggests that knowing the influencers will get you much farther in your effort.
In that case, it’s up to all of us to find them. Perhaps take a [...]

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Technosailor.com Review and Disclosure Policy

June 8, 2009

At Technosailor.com, we rarely do product or software reviews. Instead, it’s all about the actual benefit that comes to the business owner or entrepreneur from the product or service. Usually, it takes time for benefits or problems to come out. Though I am personally an early adopter of many technologies, I limit the number of [...]

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A Tale of Two Cities: How DC and San Francisco Are Handling Citywide 311

June 2, 2009

Without a doubt, I am a data whore. I love raw data. I love APIs. I love finding interesting ways to mashup data. With the new found craze in government for openness, led in no small part from the Federal level and work endorsed by the Obama Administration to work pushed forward by Sunlight Labs, [...]

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Changing the Currency of Influence via Search

June 1, 2009

There is no doubt that Google is the king of search but how did they become that way? In the old days (you know, before PageRank was dubbed irrelevant), the idea was that the number of links to a site, particularly by more “powerful” sites increased the relevance of an indexed page in the Google [...]

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WordPress and WordPress MU to Merge

May 30, 2009

This is the first year I did not attend WordCamp San Francisco, the annual event that is the largest of the WordCamp gathering. It seems like I’m missing the announcement of some big news.
Matt Mullenweg announced during his State of the Word speech, thaa going forward, WordPress and WordPress MU (Multi-user) would be merged. In [...]

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