Holy Shmoly! » wordpress.com

Two million Blogs

Donncha O Caoimh — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 11:04:52 +0000

The number of blogs on WordPress.com passed 2 million late last night. I think that’s just amazing and wonderful!

Links …

Frank asks for the facts behind the cocaine deaths in Ireland recently. I wondered what the odds of dying from cocaine are. Is it really as low as between 0.1% and 1%? How does that compare to road deaths?
Can you heat a room with a 100w bulb? Sounds too good to be true …
Dickie Rock looks scary!
Red Mum found a Far Too Much Bertie sticker. Haven’t seen any myself but I haven’t been in town in ages.
2 million blogs. That’s quite a community. The next social network could be WordPress. Looks like I’m not the only one who’d rather be blogging!

In contrast to social networking, blogging offers a person-centric way for individuals to come online. A social network like Facebook gives you your own place online, but it’s not really your own place. As Copyblogger Brian Clark recently said in a blog post, “For me, there’s really no appeal in spending a lot of time creating ‘user-generated’ content via a social networking application. That’s like remodeling the kitchen in a house you rent.”

Clark was responding to an ongoing conversation launched by blogger and cartoonist Hugh MacLeod, who proposed that blogging is far more important to him than social networking. Bloggers including Stowe Boyd and Darren Rowse seconded the idea. This growing disenchantment with social networking and return to blogging suggests that in the future we could see a migration, at least among tech bloggers, towards more distributed social networking — along the lines of what Messina envisions.
Gavin complained that he couldn’t copy/paste the Mahon Tribunal transcripts. I was able to do just that using Gnome app Evince. Here’s day 328. Anyone want to help copy them into a DRM free format? Our tax payers money paid for them after all.

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A Simply Silly WordPress URL

Donncha O Caoimh — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 12:59:23 +0000

I’m not sure why I noticed this protest sticker. It’s stuck to a lamp post on Patrick Street, Cork but maybe it was the typo in the URL that triggered my subconscious. One thing I can be certain of is that WordPress.org is not taking sides in any conflict of any sort! GPL software can be used by anyone just so long as they stick to the agreement with which they accepted the software.

As expected, palestinesolidarityproject.wordpress.com points at an old blog of theirs as they have now moved to their own server at palestinesolidarityproject.org.

Glossing over the .org mistake for a minute, why do people still put the “www.” in front of long-winded urls? It gets stripped by WordPress.com anyway. Why not put “http://” there instead? Makes more sense to me. Three cheers for the no-www movement!

So, have you seen any glaring typos on posters, fliers, stickers or blogs that made you look twice? Today’s link post doesn’t count. I did that on purpose to make a point. Sure.

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Stumble upon WordPress.com

Donncha O Caoimh — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 10:55:18 +0000

Nice! I just noticed that Stumbleupon support WordPress.com by adding the WordPress.com favicon to the SU taskbar.

Of course, it’s not the only way to browse WordPress.com, you can always use the Next link to jump to a random blog. The beauty of Stumbleupon, is that someone recommended the link. I’ve found some interesting blogs including the Doorways Around the World blog which is errr, full of photos of doorways.

Here’s my stumbleupon page. You’ll notice I’ve stumbled some of my own posts. I don’t want to spam my account and stumble everything, but if I’ve spent longer than usual writing some posts, it’s a good way of driving a few extra visitors to those special posts. Stumbleupon is definitely my favourite social bookmarking site. Install the plugin and start stumbling!

PS. I’m not the only one who likes Stumbleupon!

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Ye Olde Map of Online Communities

Donncha O Caoimh — Wed, 02 May 2007 05:08:51 +0000

From the Icy North of Yahoo and Windows Live to the Gulf of Youtube there are many online communities out there. Surprisingly WordPress.com isn’t on the map. It must be further south in the warm and lush Tropics. Come join the party!

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Knock! Knock! Hallloooooo?

Donncha O Caoimh — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 15:27:05 +0000

Is anyone out there? Next time you come across a blog post without a comment, take a few minutes to stop and chat and leave some feedback. You’ll make someone’s day, I promise.

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You didn't hear? Upgrade now!

Donncha O Caoimh — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 11:37:59 +0000

On the off chance that you haven’t heard the news yet. You should upgrade your WordPress install straight away. Don’t hesitate, do it now. Don’t pause to grab a cup of coffee. If you’re just waking up then rub the sleep from your eyes and jump to the download page and grab WordPress 2.1.2.

Long story short: If you downloaded WordPress 2.1.1 within the past 3-4 days, your files may include a security exploit that was added by a cracker, and you should upgrade all of your files to 2.1.2 immediately.

Users running from svn code aren’t affected, but then you probably already knew that already didn’t you? You should be subscribed to Hackers and Testers lists.

Don’t worry if you’re running a WordPress MU site. That isn’t affected, although you should upgrade to the latest 1.1.1 release as that fixes a number of problems with 1.0 as well as merging in some security fixes from WordPress core.

WordPress.com users have nothing to worry about.

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The Schneider Interview

Donncha O Caoimh — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 10:57:32 +0000

Robert Scoble talks to Toni Schneider, the CEO of Automattic in this video interview about WordPress.com, Automattic and lots of other stuff. I’ve only watched the first 10 minutes, Toni talks about some of the features of WordPress.com – paid features, making money, adverts, fighting splogs and more.

Do you like Akismet? That’s covered too. Make sure you set aside some time today to watch this interview if you use WordPress!

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A Christmas Story

Donncha O Caoimh — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 14:32:03 +0000

Take five minutes out of your busy day and read Mike’s short story about his visit to Santa. It’s a good read!

One of the great things about working on WordPress.com is that I come across brilliant posts like this one. Granted, his blog is in the top 10 most popular, but there are plenty of others.
That gives me a warm glow.

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Me and WordPress.com

Donncha O Caoimh — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 11:23:34 +0000

Matt finally reveals what perhaps a few people have known or suspected for quite a while. I’m working with him, Andy and Ryan on WordPress.com.
I am very very happy with what we’ve achieved so far and can’t wait to get cracking on the new features planned!

That does explain why I don’t post as often here. I’m too busy. I’ve got a text file full of links that I haven’t read, but I do manage to post one photo every day on my photoblog. That’s a great outlet for my photo creativity!

(Thanks Donal for that link correction!)

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What's this WordPress.com thing anyway?

Donncha O Caoimh — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 13:46:14 +0000

Lots of people are asking about WordPress.com, fortunately for them there has been lots said about it already, both on the wp-hackers list, and on the WPMU blog. Usually without much feedback which I have found strange, but there you go!
The question comes up on IRC frequently, and here’s what I said a short while ago:

it’s just WordPress.. if you already run a WordPress blog then you know a lot about what WordPress.com will be

It’s that, but also more. WordPress.com is going to be a great site and a shining example of what can be built on GPL software!

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