Today I was at wordcamp NYC. I heard Matt Mullenweg (wordpress co-founder) He talked about the state of wordpress and the future release of wordpress 2.7. (which looks great) One thing that interested me was buddy press. Which allows you to create a social network on your blog. You can implement a list a features for your readers to socialize. There are videos of his talk about the state of wordpress and the future of wordpress.
I also heard Jen Simmons speak on video in wordpress. It was a very interesting presentation. Many of the tools that were not wordpress specific were tools I was already using. (blip.tv for creating podcast feeds etc.)
But I learned about a community of wordpress users called showinabox.tv where you can learn more about hosting video content on wordpress and find video centric themes and plugins. One great one that Jen talked about a lot was vPIP. vPIP is a wordpress plugin that allows you to have multiple video forms available to play on the site. (QuickTime, flash, windows media, etc) This plugin also will create separate RSS feeds for each format so that your viewers can subscribe to whichever format they want.
All in all I learned a lot at Wordcamp NY. Thanks to Jonathan Dingman who organized the event and to all the speakers who made it very informative.
I wanted to post this episode of What’s it all about: Web 2.0 here on Random Sarah because I feel like I get asked about viddler a lot by my friends so I wanted to show you guys.
Today facebook launched version 2 of its iPhone app and it is 100% better than the original. The new app adds basic facebook functionality that it was originally missing. Notifications are there and you have a real news feed with some functions that are even better than facebook’s actual site.
One of my favorites is the new news feed. It allows you to see how many comments any certain post has, and let you add one right from the news feed. Another great feature in the news feed is the bar on the top. You slide your finger horizontally across the bar to switch the news feed you are viewing. It implements friend groups so you can only look at the news feed of people you want to see. It also lets you look at the news feed for certain facebook apps. The inbox has been updated, showing a much easier to read conversation. And as always there is facebook chat.
Helvetica is one of the most common used typefaces in the world. And if you are somewhat of a typography geek like me you should check out this documentary.
Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which celebrated its 50th birthday in 2007) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. The film is an exploration of urban spaces in major cities and the type that inhabits them, and a fluid discussion with renowned designers about their work, the creative process, and the choices and aesthetics behind their use of type.
Helvetica encompasses the worlds of design, advertising, psychology, and communication, and invites us to take a second look at the thousands of words we see every day.
It’s amazing how much this one font inhabits our lives, but it’s really interesting to see.
trailer:
American Apparel loves helvetica so much that they made a t-shirt
video of me talking about the new public transportation directions on google maps.
via cnet
The online map service now has data from New York’s Metropolitan Transit Agency, one of the largest, most complicated, and most widely used transportation systems. It includes data from buses and subways, the Long Island Rail Road, the Long Island Bus, the Metro-North Railroad, and the MTA Bus Company. And it connects to regional systems, including New Jersey Transit’s commuter rail, light rail and bus service, the Staten Island Ferry, and the Port Authority’s PATH Rail, AirTrain JFK, and AirTrain Newark.
