A New Favorite Comment Spam

This blog is a honey pot for hand rolled comment spam. Here is a new favorite spam comment:

(without prestigious )With reference to previous Emails so I see that your solution was to ban me complicity , firstly thanks as this blog had no adds on it , you have given me the ammunition to go forward in a legal fight which I doubt, I would win, but in English courts to sue under £5000 , You can not recover costs

I wish I had any idea what they were writing about.

Measurements That Matter on WordPress.com

I know what measurements matter for WordPress.com, because they’re right there on the front page. Right now in the top left of “Freshly Pressed” it reads:

The best of 252,029 bloggers, 223,676 new posts, 327,799 comments, & 54,240,782 words today on WordPress.com.

Those numbers get me far more excited than page views and other “monetization” stats, because these right now front page stats reminds me blogging works.

These stats are about people expressing themselves (writing words) and connecting with other people (commenting).

These are the numbers I look to when I need inspiration.

Movable Type Pro with Comments

I’m sure Movable Type Pro is a fantastic product, but when I watched the introduction video in the announcement article I wasn’t feeling the “profoundly powerful new set of capabilities that shows the web where blogging is going next.”

I thought it was ripe for parody, and so here is my voice-over:

Update: Six Apart shared my video with all of their customers, but gave no link love or attribution to me (no Lloyd Budd anywhere in sight), see my response “Movable Type Pro, Setting Social Networking Free, Vaporware, WordPress, BuddyPress

5 Years of WordPress!

Today, people all around the world are celebrating that five years ago today the first version of WordPress was released!

Of course, most people’s celebration is limited to Happy Birthday WordPress posts. It’s awesome reading them; most posts (subtlety) demonstrate the authors own participation in WordPress. We’re all the developers of WordPress!

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BattleStar Blogger, Darth Mojo

I found a gem of a blog the other day, Darth Mojo. It is written by BattleStar Galactica Visual Effects Designer, Adam “Mojo” Lebowitz. The blog’s tag line is “the dark chocolate side of the force”. As well as in depth BSG insider info, he geeks out on Star Trek, Star Wars, and all things sci fi.

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WordPress and your Problems at MooseCamp!

Bloggers and problems enter, only bloggers exit!

Friday, Feb 22, day 1 of the 4th annual Northern Voice including an “internet bootcamp” for people new to blogging, Facebook, podcasting, wikis, and more. It is an awesome logging conference being held again at the Forestry Sciences Centre at UBC! It’s Tim Bray’s “favorite little blogger conclave.” This conclave is really for everyone, but if you don’t already have a ticket, see you next year.

The other part of day 1 will be the MooseCamp Unconference, the third year of this self-organizing, community from chaos event. The moose are loose and they converge to converse again! Organic and from the hip and with food this year!

Like any good participant in creations from chaos, I’m late in organizing a session — or maybe early because many sessions will be unveiled right at the event. Anyway, over the last week, I’ve been making some virtual calls to WordPress aficionados attending Northern Voice, very modest ones at that, and the result is a dynamic session where we will work together to solve our WordPress problems, WordPress and your Problems.

The plan — plan to change — is for the first half to be spent discussing problems and experiences in small groups and then us all coming together to discuss the groups’ discoveries and some of the problems that still taught us with the whole group.

Hopefully, in the small groups, you will also swap blogging stories and 411.

Some of the small groups could be solving problems related to:

Additional experts on hands:

The groups will be formed around your problems. What problem do you need help with? Post a comment here or add to the wiki page.

As I mentioned each of these aficionados is modest — some I had to trick to volunteer — and I bet you are modest too. WordPress is a rich environment, and by sharing your insights with us, you will surprise yourself with your own expertise . You will also be surprised that we have the same problems. Is there an interesting problem that you have solved and can help others solve to?

Depending on where the interest is we will reconfigure the session on the fly.

It won’t be scheduled during Blogging 101 or Photocamp. Any other sessions to avoid butting heads with? I won’t be arriving until Friday morning, because I’m still through mid-April at the Pregnancy Conference and after that I will be at the First Baby Conference for at least a few months. If there is interest some of us can get together later in the day and take a look at WordPress 2.5 which is still in development, but nearing beta quality, but I want this to be focused on solving people’s problems today.

Welcome to the Thunderdome! Bloggers and problems enter, only bloggers exit!

Thunderdome

Overwhelm their Fears with Open Source

When in conversations with people championing freedom causes using Google Blogger or Six Apart TypePad, I share that myself and many people find it upsetting that they do so using proprietary software.

The inconvenience and their frustrations with software usually leaves them too afraid to even consider switching to another publishing platform.

It is ok that it isn’t their issue. We all have a limited amount of energy, and relative to other causes open source isn’t urgent.

It is our opportunity, those that are passionate about open source, to provide a solution that is superior. We need to allow those people to see benefits that overwhelm their fears and helps them champion their own causes.