Archive for the ‘News’ Category
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4
Oct
2011
Experiment, Georgia
What else would you call sending 2 Los Angeles natives to a NASCAR event? I’d call it a science experiment, or maybe an anthropological endeavor, well I’d call it a lot of things but; Experiment, Georgia is the actual name of the town.
Just south of Hampton, GA and well south of Atlanta, GA. Experiment is the stereotypical Georgia experience – Not quite suburb and not quite rural. There is a Walmart, Chik-fil-a and about 12 Waffle Houses. And of course the whole reason I was there was the Atlanta Motor Speedway and the annual Labor Day NASCAR race.
Here are few fun facts about the Atlanta Motor Speedway, it was at one time the fastest running track in all of NASCAR. Meaning drivers could get those wheels to go faster on this track then any of the others in the NASCAR circuit. Also, The opening scenes of the classic Smokey and the Bandit II were filmed at the track. What could be better then a Burt Reynolds sequel movie that was filmed at the Atlanta Motor Speedway!
If you know me, you know I enjoy a cool car as much as the next guy – but I have no interest in NASCAR. I am sure it is real tough on those drivers and they need all kinds of skill and talent – but I live in and commute daily in LOS ANGELES. So I am not really impressed by someone driving a car in a semi-circle.
11
Mar
2011
Check me out, I just put my Jetpack on.
Automattic just released a new cloud-based set of utilities for WordPress self-hosted Blogs; Like this one. So how is this different then the current Plugins that are available? All of the tools that make up Jetpack are hosted via WordPress.com, so there is nothing to download, no Plugin updates with every new release of WP.
So Jetpack is a set of widgets with a cool logo? In a matter of speaking yes, but these are nicely grouped to make Jetpack a simple one stop shop for some of the most popular utilities. For example you get WordPress stats, a Twitter Widget, WP.me Shortlinks and one of my favorites After the Deadline which helps you write better by adding spell, style, and grammar checking to WordPress.
There is something that makes me think this is a move by Automattic to monetize the free and widely available WordPress platform. On each of the modules of Jetpack there is a little “Free” tag, of course most of these tools are available in some shape or form as free widgets or Plugins developed by 3rd parties. 
So I am guess at some point we will see a small cost associated with some of the more robust tools, possibly a move to scale to enterprise offering. Alternately this could be Automattic’s version of an App Store for the 32.5 million downloads of WP. A smart move since WordPress is used by over 13% of the 1,000,000 biggest websites.
17
Jun
2010
Thelonious ate my blog.
WordPress 3.0 (aka Thelonious) was just released from it’s release candidate phase. I like the lightweight Dashboard and the added Navigation functionality. But with the Update most of the Theme customizations and Plugins I’ve made got thrown out of the window.
So I guess this means I will be spending some additional time on the site – rearranging and re-customizing.
Details on the new WP release below….
11
May
2010
The Oatmeal is right.
The cartoon / satire site The Oatmeal recently posted a comic titled “8 Websites You Need To Stop Building.”
I personally like #5, while you see fewer and fewer “Social Media Experts” there are still way to many snake oil sales men out there.
I’ve actually been asked, “But how come your facebook page status is not updated?”
Simple, I prefer to work at a higher level, spending my time working on larger strategies for mass audience acquisition and appeal – hard to do if you are unable to see the forest for the trees. I’m not as concerned about my personal daily participation in Social Media as much as I am understanding users, customers and making some money while doing it.
23
Mar
2010
The Contract-Free iPhone is here and that means a new iPhone is coming
According to Gizmodo, Apple has sent out an internal document announcing the iPhone is now available without an AT&T contract at any Apple Store. This means you can take your phone to at least T-Mobile in the US, but it’s up to you to unlock it.
The prices break down with the iPhone 3G 8GB going for $499, the iPhone 3GS 16GB comes to $599 and for the top 32GB model you’ll have to pay $699.
This is not a new move by Apple; in fact we’ve seen this before and I think that it signifies there is a new iPhone on the horizon!
