Month: November 2007

Haaretz: “How do you ‘open’ a blog using WordPress”

haaretz - the markerNice write up (in hebrew) in the top israeli newspaper Haaretz on why WordPress is the best choice for blogging.

They walk you through the basics of what it takes to setup ( self install from WordPress.org ) including MySQL requirements, getting an ftp client, and making the config file changes. Next week they plan to cover plugins. Good stuff ! (Thanks to my buddy Nimmy for letting me know).

We’ve seen lots of great activity in Israel around WordPress, including a very successful WordCamp Israel held a few weeks ago.

Dinosaur Bar-B-Que in Harlem NYC – best BBQ I’ve had

dinosaur_t.jpgI generally don’t comment on food 🙂 But when something stands out I feel compelled to share ! I just wrapped up dinner up on 131st at Dinosaur BBQ. (yelp review here) The food was fantastic, the portion just-right, and the service was impeccable. I ordered the “traditional sampler” that included a little bit of everything.

Now some of you who know a little bit about Automattic know that we all take BBQ very seriously. My title even includes “QA for the secret company BBQ sauce”. It will be interesting to see what my other colleagues who have a long history with BBQ think of this place.

Catching up on the last two weeks: Ad Tech, BlogWorld Expo, Quigo & Yedda, WordPress iPhone plugin, Writers strike, and WSJ & Digg

Been traveling and just super busy the last couple of weeks, and started a bunch of posts that are still saved in draft.  So here is a wrap up of what I would have posted, and using a very John Paczkowski-like long headline 🙂

* Ad:Tech New York. Was in town for a few meetings, and a great dinner put together by Mike Hirschland (aka “VC Mike“). It was my first trip back to New York since I moved to San Francisco in July. My overall impression: every industry segment and media outlet is finally aligned to make the online ad world take a huge leap forward. Lots of smart people looking at significant ad dollars moving online and how best to capture them. Measurement will be key.

* I attended BlogWorld Expo in Vegas. I was impressed by the attendance and diversity of companies & speakers. It was also great to meet people in person that I had only emailed or Skype’d with previously (Shoutout to Karen & Dana of ContentRobot and John LoGioco of outbrain). Mark Cuban gave a great closing keynote, and our very own Matt Mullenweg was the opening keynote q&a session and interviewed here by webpronews. Lots of photos of the two day event on flickr.

* Good week to be an Israeli tech company. Quigo, founded by Yaron Galai, was purchased by AOL — congrats to Yaron & team ! Later in the week word spread that Yedda, a Y! Answers like service, also was purchased by AOL.

* On the WordPress front, the winner of the WordPress iPhone plugin challenge was announced. You can download the plugin here.

* The writers strike shows no signs of coming to an end. On how it might all shake out — Marc Andreessen has a superb post titled “Rebuilding Hollywood in Silicon Valley’s image“. A definite must-read.

* Great to see wsj.com and Digg working more closely together. Kevin Rose posted details on the Digg blog and TechCrunch has some thoughts too.