Author: Raanan Bar-Cohen

Raanan Bar-Cohenhttps://raanan.com/
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Useful Mac apps: Play WMVs, Google Analytics Widget, and Quinn

Some helpful ( and fun ) OS X apps that I’ve been using recently:

– id Software released HD footage of Rage (trailer & developer walk-through), the new internally developed game, at QuakeCon 2007 (Shacknews coverage). It’s in WMV format, so if you are on a Mac and not running some kind of virtualization/windows combo, you should grab the WMV Quicktime component. While I haven’t played PC games in years, this one is looking pretty solid.

– Using Google Analytics to track your site’s traffic and running OS X ? Dashalytics is a new OS X widget that shows a snapshot from your Google Analytics account in your OS X Dashboard. On the subject of traffic stats, if you are running WordPress, make sure to check out our WordPress.com Stats plugin.

– Must be something about playing Tetris for hours on end back in the day (aka “Tetris Effect“) that caused me to seek out Tetris clones. A really good one that a few people have emailed me about (and just saw that Jamie wrote about recently) is called Quinn. Really clean interface, and even includes “extensive online highscore database” 🙂 Definitely worth checking out.

– (UPDATE #1) Forgot to also mention the excellent OS X port of Open Office called NeoOffice. It even handles MS Word tracking changes which is something Google Docs does not currently support. (thanks Matt for the tip)

News Corp buys Dow Jones

Interesting to watch the coverage the last 24 hours.

BBC has a good summary of what it all means, and Jon Friednman of MarketWatch.com has an interesting take on what Murdoch will do next with a column entitled “OK, Mr. Murdoch, you’re on”.

I know lots of amazing people at both companies, and I’m anxious to see what they accomplish with the combined assets and various media properties.  Should be very exciting !

This past week, a few firsts: WordCamp, Stinson, Wii, ‘Trapped

A quick wrap-up of this past week which included a few “firsts”:

– My first WordCamp this past weekend — quite amazing.  Great to see this very active WordPress community coming together to share ideas and meet up in person.  If you take a look at the WordCamp schedule page, you will see pingbacks to lots of great coverage like Barry’s ‘high performance WordPress” presentation.   In addition, there are a ton of photos of the event on flickr,  and Brian Oberkirch has a nice WordCamp round-up.

– Stinson beach.  In a word “wow”.  I’ve been up here once before for a quick lunch, but spending a few days here has really solidified this place as gem in my mind.  Even managed to boogieboard/bodyboard for the first time !

– Wii.  I had played the boxing and golf game briefly while at CES last year.  But @ our off-site this week we’ve had it hooked up to a projector and loaded with sports game, notably tennis.  As a somewhat old school gamer I really loved the change of pace with the Wii.  It’s simple, fun, and way more social than most other console games.

– Trapped in the Closet.  A must see hip-hopera 🙂  What was great, and a first this week, was watching it followed by “Trapped in a Drive Through“.

WordPress.com Facebook App

Joseph Scott just posted on WordPress.com that the new facebook app is ready to go.

Blogs are one of the ways the Internet has fostered greater communication among people than ever before. Social network sites like Facebook provide a more structured way to keep up with specific people. Wouldn’t it be great if you could mix the two?

With the new WordPress.com Facebook App you can do exactly that.

Definitely go check it out.

Hit by the OS X 10.4.10 update problems – having flashbacks to BSOD

os x crash I’m speechless ! Just had my mac crash and require a restart (panic) for the third time in about 20 minutes.

Looks like it’s related to a 10.4.10 update that has caused problems with wifi when running on battery power. Plugging the power cord back in seems to have stabilized the situation.

For a few minutes I thought it was Firefox related, since that’s what I was using when the crashes occurred.  I tried out Camino for a bit ( it has been a while since I last used it ) — and it’s really a slick browser. Only thing holding me back from using it full time is the lack of plugin support.
Back to this buggy OS X update. As one user, tele_player, on the apple support forum put it:

 > …and this is better then Windows? Somehow I am
> starting to feel like I bought into the marketing
> hype of Apple products… =(
Right now, it doesn’t look better than Windows, but a screwup like this is actually VERY unusual.

Let’s hope we see a quick fix soon.

My favorite videos that are marketing / HR / recruiting tools

Some smart companies are creating videos that not only are fun to watch, but truly act as a recruiting tool for their companies / services. So while some of these sites rely on social media / UGC, they are seeding their own services by creating content for their own site as a way to kick things off.

A few examples:

1) I saw this one a few months ago, and my first reaction was “I would love to work there”:

We did this video one night after work. We are a company called Connected Ventures, a group of friends who work for: Vimeo, CollegeHumor, Busted Tees, and Defunker… and, we’re hiring: connectedventures.com/jobs.shtml

watch video here

2) And this one most recently is a farce on raising money from VCs ( in hebrew, but with subtitles ), promoting their new how-to video site 5min (thanks Ouriel).

5min is a place to find short video solutions for every
practical question and is also a place for people who want to share their knowledge.

watch video here

3) And of course, FunnyorDie which launched ( I believe ) with the first episode of “The Landlord”: watch video here

4) Our very own beta video player on wordpress.com was launched featuring Matt and Barry “after-hours”. Click to watch.

5) And lastly, one of my favorites, from the Gmail team, which is a cross of a screencast and a puppet show 🙂

iPhone Sights & Sounds

iPhone A few thoughts on what is undoubtedly “iPhone week”:

* I was at the 5th ave Apple (AAPL) store the other day, and actually saw people camping out waiting for the iPhone nearly 100 hours prior to availability.

* Inside the the impressive store on 5th ave, the sales guy i talked to had a couple of interesting things to say:
1) The dollar is so weak VS other currencies, that he sees international tourists buying up everything, and often buying 2 or 3 of each item. ( They were sold out of the mac book and mac book pros I was looking at ).
2) They anticipate a ton of people buying Macs when they purchase the iPhone. Reminded me of the iPod sales habits of a few years ago.

* The reviews are in !:
1) Walt Mossberg just posted his review, and also posted a q&a with Steve Jobs, plus I’m including the video below:
2) David Pogue has a nice complete review as well as multimedia content.

* Biggest take away for me so far from all these reviews: Mossberg, unlike David Pogue of the nytimes, is positive about the touch screen keyboard:

The iPhone’s most controversial feature, the omission of a physical keyboard in favor of a virtual keyboard on the screen, turned out in our tests to be a nonissue, despite our deep initial skepticism. After five days of use, Walt — who did most of the testing for this review — was able to type on it as quickly and accurately as he could on the Palm Treo he has used for years. This was partly because of smart software that corrects typing errors on the fly.

I think for people like me who are die hard blackberry users, this keyboard question is the biggest issue that has to be settled — and the only way that can be done is by using the iPhone for a few days. Or maybe I’m just trying to convince myself why I must buy an iPhone and not wait for the 2nd generation version as I would normally do 🙂

Thanks Dow Jones, Hello Automattic !

Automattic logo

I wrapped up at Dow Jones Online last week, and today is my first official day at Automattic !

I just want to say thanks to Dow Jones. It’s been an incredibly rewarding time working at Dow Jones Online, and I’m tremendously proud of all that we accomplished from the various search initiatives, allthingsD.com, to all things multiplatform with mobile, RSS, and widgets.

Dow Jones is truly an amazing company, and it was great to be in the presence of colleagues who were incredibly hard working and dedicated to their work.

For those who may not know, Automattic is a remarkable company. The team is smart, passionate, and well respected. How we work is probably a bit different than most companies, and the incredible growth of one of our core offerings — wordpress.com, is impressive 🙂

wordpress.com traffic

As a WordPress user from the pre 1.0 days, ( Ver .71 or .72 is when I started following the progress closely ), I’m very exited to be working with Matt, Toni, Barry, and the team.

In July, I’ll be attending WordCamp 2007, so hope to see many of you there. Feel free to drop me a line if you plan to attend.

Webby Awards 2007 in NYC: thoughts

webby I was at the webby awards in downtown new york city the other night with a few colleagues, as our site, WSJ.com, was awarded in the Financial Services category.

It was a pretty interesting night. My quick thoughts, and some coverage.

– Rob Cordrey was hillarious ! His humor is definitely an acquired taste for some — but I thought he did a great job.

– Any event with the Beastie Boys is a big plus !

– Award shows usually showcase the content – be it movies, shows, music, etc. Not in this case. Not a single web site, advertising campaign,or any interactive piece of content was shown on the large screens.

– Great to get everyone organized at an event — but lacked a theme or a cause. With all the talent and smarts in the large hall, it was a missed opportunity to tackle something big.

– Limiting the acceptance speeches to 5 words was brilliant. In that vain, the best acceptance speech was from Mike Hudak of blip.tv in the broadband category. He turned to Rob Cordrey and said: “you’re much funnier on the daily show “ ( 7 words, but nobody was really counting )
Other coverage:

Vallewyag: Obituary The Webbys

I’ve vowed never to attend another Webby Awards for as long as I’ve been going to the show. After last night’s 2007 gala, it’s finally time to burn the bridges. The whole concept has always been slightly absurd: an Oscars-style show for an industry that has little glamor; with a nomination process that rewards organizations with good publicists, or faddish appeal, rather than outstanding achievement. But the revenue-hungry new owners of the Webbys, who took over from founder Tiffany Shlain, have sacrificed the awards’ redeeming quality: the quirky charm she brought.

Jason Schaeffer has his thoughts on the night.

The evening had an Oscar-esque aire…with a red carpet, swirlling paparrazi, candle lit tables and a multi media extravaganze. The event was quite long…..4+ hours in total…but the mandatory five word speaches were amusing (and often risque) at times. It was not a crowd I anticipated attending….very corporate..alot of suits and a formal affair…but then again, NYC always seems to be stiff when I am visiting. Probably spent too much time in SF.

Jane Kratochvil, who is an unbelievably talented photographer, captured some photos from the event: