Category: Aaron Brazell

  • Platforms vs. Products: Google Does Some Soul Searching

    A rant from a Googler comparing Amazon’s focus on a platform vs Google’s focus on products. Fundamental.

  • Changing Roles at WP Engine

    For some time, I’ve felt there was a change coming and today, I’m ready to announce that my role within WP Engine is changing. Starting today, I have transitioned into an advisory and consulting role with the company. Effective immediately, I will be taking the portion of the business that focused on professional services and…

  • How is WordPress Subversion Organized

    How is WordPress Subversion Organized

    There’s some confusion about how WordPress organizes it’s Subversion (SVN) repository. Most SVN repositories are organized into three main directories, as is best practice — trunk, tags, branches. The repository can be found at http://core.svn.wordpress.org/ and a primer on how to use SVN for WordPress development can be found on Mark’s blog and, for Windows,…

  • Rules for Entrepreneurs: Release Early and Often

    Rules for Entrepreneurs: Release Early and Often

    Last week, I wrote two articles outlining some philosophical ideas around entrepreneurship. This series of articles is all about giving away lessons I’ve learned throughout my five years as an entrepreneur in four different ventures. When you’re in the product business, you have to continually improve on your product. As soon as you hit version…

  • Rules for Entrepreneurs: Compete and Collaborate

    Rules for Entrepreneurs: Compete and Collaborate

    Photo by Roger Barker on Flickr. Google and Apple are not only competitors… they are collaborators. Indeed, Apple and Google both offer top level smartphones – The iPhone from Apple and the assortment of Android devices by Google (Google not only has its own phones but is the main proprietor of the Android open source…

  • Rules for Entrepreneurs: Do One Thing Well

    Rules for Entrepreneurs: Do One Thing Well

    Photo by bartb_pt on Flickr I have been an entrepreneur for just shy of 5 years full-time. Before that, I was engaged in entrepreneurial “things” for the previous 6 years. 4 companies. I am not a perfect entrepreneur and some would argue I’m not even a successful entrepreneur since I haven’t had a successful exit…

  • Digital Music is Dead, Long Live Digital Music: The Case for Spotify

    Digital Music is Dead, Long Live Digital Music: The Case for Spotify

    Back in the 1990s, there was Napster. I mean, the original Napster not the shadow of a brand that is part of the Best Buy electronics offering. Napster effectively eliminated optical media by making people realize that the digital format was the only long-term, effective, space-saving way of having music that was portable. Sure there…

  • Make the Web, Cloud Do Your Work So You Don’t Have To

    Make the Web, Cloud Do Your Work So You Don’t Have To

    Photo by Balleyne While perusing around the web yesterday (after sifting through my email post-vacation), I came across this Ars Technica article discussing the new Firefox upgrade timeline. It actually follows a similar upgrade timeline that WordPress adopted after WordPress 2.0 was released. The new policy outlines a 3-4 month window for new major releases with…

  • WordPress Release Word Clouds

    WordPress Release Word Clouds

    Yesterday, I published the 12th in an ongoing series of blog posts since December 26, 2005, where I take my own look at major WordPress releases and write a hopefully helpful article about features. It’s the routine, and now expected, “10 Things You Need to Know” posts. Out of morbid curiosity, I decided to run…

  • 10 Things You Need To Know About WordPress 3.2

    10 Things You Need To Know About WordPress 3.2

    Photo credit Randy Stewart. WordPress 3.2 will be released soon (at the time of this writing, it is in RC1 which essentially means it is done and being tested). This is an exciting release as it marks the first release that drops PHP 4 dependency. For years, WordPress has opted to play to the lowest…