The dashboard (back-end) is the
main enhancement offered by WordPress 2.0

O start off, I would like to spend a couple of paragraphs to accommodate a rant. As I previously mentioned, WordPress 2.0 is intended to be out before Christmas. In reality, there are a few difficulties and many reasons to avoid premature releases. I don’t mean to spoil the enthusiasm. Yet, I truly think it would be a misjudged decision to rush the release. Patience is a true virtue here due to the arguments listed below.

There are several bugs, which are sometimes fatal, e.g. browser crashes. Some time ago I raised the concern that AdBlock for Firefox has conflicts with TinyMCE, which make editing impossible to some. A release before Christmas is desirable (if not both compelling and necessary) because of massive holiday season downloads. However, why give WordPress that dreadful “buggy FOSS” reputation? Needn’t LAMP be respresented with its highest dignity? One must stick to the very same traits which earned version 1.5 nearly 1,000,000 downloads.

WordPress began to be adopted by many large companies. Many such companies run extensive public sites and intranets. Among the big names: Apple, Yahoo, MSN and About. Only yesterday it was revealed that Yahoo would liaise with WordPress for their hosting, which is exciting news indeed.

Why is that particularly exciting news? MSN and Yahoo are search giants, yet their range of applications extends far beyond that as time goes by. They handle the task of information management and thus must (or are expected to) provide rich content. And yet, Google is the largest among the three and much like the others it boasts a huge community of bloggers. Google started with search and moved on to Web-based applications, tools pertaining to information and data mining. Yahoo grew from communities, content, tools, and services. MSN grew from an operating system and a browser that points to MSN by default. All taken into account, WordPress can receive a great deal in return (not monetarily of course).

One wonders: where is Google in all of this WordPress hype? Their official blog is very poor in terms of functionality and presentation. Their main ‘courier’ or ‘messenger’ , Matt Cutts ¹, has been on WordPress for months despite Blogger and Blogspot being available. The Code Manger, Chris DiBona, on the contrary, uses Google’s services rather than his old personal domain. So while Google’s Code Manager, among many others, have settled on Blogspot or Blogger, Matt Cutts refused to do so (or put more politely, preferred to abstain) and registered his own domain (running WordPress of course) where he became a sort of a messager — an oracle — of Google search algorithms. The community that is thirsty for SEO tips syndicates his blog using feeds, of which there are plenty. He is used to writing plenty of items about gadgets, film reviews and the like, but due to the versatility of WordPress feeds, his subscribers are able to set aside the ‘noise’ and get Google inside infomation exclusively. The important fact is that Matt Cutts’ blog is far more popular than these “get your blog among splogs in a 30 seconds procedure” spaces. Google could learn a few things from Matt (Cutts/Mullenweg) and given that they are kings of Open Source, it is surprising that it is them who have not adopted WordPress yet.

¹ Cutts leaks information to SEO-savvy or curious audience of Web developers, much like googleguy in Webmaster World.

The latest among Eric Meyer’s CSS tricks: a pure-CSS vertical bars diagram.

A mouthful? In a separate page resides an example, which was derived from site statistics. The idea of rendering figures, charts, and diagrams using just browser functionality is astounding. With CSS3 on the horizon, Web developers will be able to achieve much more with less bandwidth to spare. No graphics! not even vector graphics.

Innocent American children are
being taught about God in biology class

N the latest of many arguments on the issue of intelligent design, a high court judge bans it. As a scientist, I find it rather disturbing that religion penetrates scientific education. It ought to be taught among cultural history or theology perhaps.

 
A court in the US has ruled against the teaching of “intelligent design” alongside Darwin’s theory of evolution.
 

Related items: TV budget takes precedent over science

Recommended site: The Edge

UITE recently I mentioned Google’s negotiations with AOL. There is a $1 billion deal in stake. It turns out the the deal may lead to more graphical (i.e. imagery) ads, which thus far Google have trialled and tested on a mere subset.

Users of Google’s search engine will soon see something they are not used to on the notoriously spare site: advertising with logos and graphics. And the advertisers will not be limited to America Online, whose talks with Google prompted the change in policy, according to two executives close to the companies’ negotiations.

This could break the long-standing tradition of non-obtrusive ads from Google. It will, nonetheless, be avoided by many advertisers who opt for text-only ads. This comes only 7 months after Google ads in feeds were initially introduced. Speaking of unwanted intrusion, feeds are often intended to serve pure content in a minimalist way. Ads are adverse to their true purpose.

My message to Google: “With food comes the appetite? Is the mantra losing its mana?“

EARING in mind that humour should not be taken as reflectant of true views, here are a couple of sexist jokes that crossed my mind recently. [smile] I feel as though I need to unburden myself, getting them off memory and onto (non-volatile) text:

• Last week I was approached by a girl with a SuSE laptop. Attractive one even (true story actually). I couldn’t wait to get my hands on her… machine.
• If she had run a set of servers, I’d say she has a nice rack.

It would have be easier to use somebody else’s jokes, but that would be pointless. Surely, such humour becomes a deterrent to women in the IT industry. I believe it to be quite derogatory, so I was honestly on the verge of retracting the post. To borrow somebody else’s joke (Linønut from nntp://comp.os.linux.advocacy):

 
Windows is like an asshole. You need to wipe it quite often.
 

WordPress 2.0: coming to a blog near you by Christmas?

recently mentioned rigorous testing of WordPress 2.0. There are still odd bugs here and there; And yet, only hours ago came out a word of gossip. It suggests that WordPress 2.0 will be officially released just before Christmas. I wonder if it is rushed merely because of the important date. There is a typical download rush throughout the holiday. People have time to spare, so they upgrade software or hop on the blogging wagon. Christmas last year was the time of heavy WordPress 1.2 downloads.

Moving on to a different subject, after lengthy use and experience with WordPress, I decided to join the support forums and make contributions on rare occasions. I participated in the mailing lists for a long time (roughly 1 year), but never in the support forums. My first post was addressing to the problem below.

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An common inner conflict

HERE seems to be a certain apathy among girls towards computer science. This does not necessarily extend to all fields that are engineering-related. My older sister studied computer science, but decided to leave a year early due to lack of interest and passion. She was very much capable of graduating and was a top student in her class. Yet, she had no incentive to staying up all night or becoming obsessed with technology, which was associated with what she perceived as “nerds”. She now works on a Masters degree in management.

These thoughts were stirred up by an article that appeared in the
Boston Globe only yesterday.

Women shunning a field once seen as welcoming

MEDFORD — As a young high school teacher in 1982, Diane Souvaine leapt into graduate school for computer science having taken only one class in the subject.