Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

I’ve finally encouraged my sister to start blogging and to open a Twitter account so she can show off her fantastic work. In case you’re wondering, Dee Breathnach is actually Deirdra Walsh in our native tongue - she feels it’s more unique. I just think it sounds more arty farty

Her work is truly brilliant in my opinion. Her latest project will involve a roaming journal around the world - something I will help with, by getting some of my friends to take part.

Visit her blog at http://www.deebreathnach.com

Connect with her on Twitter - would you believe that MC Hammer started following me within minutes of finding and following my sister - and that was within hours of her joining Twitter (she didn’t follow him first). How cool is that.

I twittered this morning

Bloggers who think posts which are relevant/warrant ‘trackbacks’ to my blog, should quote the stuff they find interesting…

Within a short space of time, I received 6 emails and DMs (including two from journalists) asking if I was referring to them. To ensure I don’t insult anyone or give the wrong impression, I’ve decided to write a slightly longer explanation here, as Twitter’s restricted 140 characters does little to help right now.

Before I continue, I’d like to explain what Trackbacks are and how to use them, as they’re not fully understood by all bloggers and they’re almost always underutilized. Even the most seasoned bloggers don’t make them accessible so others can reference their work easily.

What is a Trackback?

Why reinvent the Wheel?! Wikipedia has a great description

A Trackback is one of three types of Linkbacks, methods for Web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking, and so referring, to their articles. Some weblog software programs, such as Wordpress, Movable Type, Typo and Community Server, support automatic pingbacks where all the links in a published article can be pinged when the article is published. The term is used colloquially for any kind of Linkback.

NB. I’ve not only quoted the origin of my source, I’ve also provided a Linkback to the Wikipedia page. Italics are mine.

How to use Trackbacks

It’s simple. Copy the Trackback URL from the blog to which you are going to reference and paste it into the Trackback field provided on the administration page where you’re writing your post. If you can’t find a URL dedicated to Trackbacks you should use the URL for the post. The rest happens automatically. The author of the post to which you refer, will receive an email notification and their blog post will be updated with a link to your post - assuming they’ve enabled that feature of course.

Trackbacks normally appear within comments - click here to see what they look like on this blog. Displaying Trackbacks provides commentators a platform from which to promote their opinion on their own blog. I’m a fan of people writing their own post which has been inspired by another blogger - but only when they provide an opinion, rather than doing a copy ‘n paste.

Some reasons why you might want to write your own post instead of leaving a comment:

1. Your comment is, in your opinion, too long. (I don’t mind long comments - the comments on one of my posts last year fetched over 17,000 in word count)
2. You feel so strongly about something that you wish to solicit opinion from the readers of your own blog
3. You don’t feel comfortable or like leaving comments

It’s standard practice to provide a Linkback to the post from which you were inspired to write an opinion piece. So make sure you always link to your source.

How to implement Trackbacks on your blog

If you have a blog, my advice is to ensure the Trackback URL is the same as the post URL. This will enable others to copy and paste the URL in the address bar instead of having to go searching for the Trackback link. TechCrunch changed it’s blog to include this obvious feature. Read Write Web hasn’t - Look at this post http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/amazon_buys_shelfari.php - you must scroll down the page to search and find the Trackback, which is http://www.readwriteweb.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/4747. If they were the same URL you wouldn’t have to go searching and I wouldn’t have just confused you. It’s blogs like this that make Tracbacks more confusing than they ought to be.

When to use Trackbacks to this blog

I appreciate it when people include a Trackback to my blog - it means they rate my opinion on a particular topic and would therefore like me to read their article and potentially post a comment. In fact, I’m flattered - please don’t stop. You just have to look at my tag cloud on the left of this blog to see what’s relevant. Although, you can check out the BIMA and Segala blogs to see what else I write about.

However, some people write posts which are not relevant to me and wish to simply get my attention for some reason. Remember, I get email notifications each time someone links to my blog. If there’s absolutely no relevance I’m going to view it as spam and never return to that blog. Stop doing it. Please.

Guest post by Kamrul Hassan.

WordPress 2.5 (A.K.A. Brecker) made its delayed debut nearly 2 months ago (March 29, 2008), after spending almost six months in development and is a major milestone for WordPress. WP 2.5 not only added dozens of user-requested features, it included a performance boost on both backend and frontend. WordPress 2.5 branch released WP 2.5.1 just one month later - it includes over 70 bug fixes, performance enhancements, and one very important security fix. Naturally, the feature list remains the same as WP 2.5, so I will keep the discussion focused on WP 2.5.

The list of new features is long (better to read Matt’s post to get the epic) but above all there is the cleaner, faster, semi-customizable, less cluttered administrative interface. The dashboard i.e. the administrative homepage, is a bunch of widgets you can customize to show anything that uses RSS feed (you can’t edit two widgets-Recent Comments & Plugins). Plugins can also hook into this dashboard, for example the WordPress.com stats widget adds a handy double-wide stats box.

The file upload feature received a major makeover, with progress meter and multi file/folder upload capability. When you upload images with EXIF metadata, WP 2.5 will extract all the data into custom fields, for use on the posts - this is great news for people who uses digital camera. While I am on this topic, I should also add that WP 2.5 now has its own built-in Gallery system. You might want to check this documentation for advance usage.

Two of my personal favourite features are the built-in tag management and salted passwords -the phpass library based password hashing and storing (bye bye brute-force for pass). Another notable feature that authors of most multi authored blogs (e.g. Segala blog) will welcome, is concurrent editing protection. Only one person and edit a post now, so no more overlapping each other’s work.

A new WYSIWYG editor is a major improvement. Unlike the old one, it won’t break your code (Paul was for ever breaking the code for embedded video/audio and then turning to me to clean his mess :)) inserted on code-view when you switch back to Rich editor. You will also notice four fancy add media buttons on the top-right corner of the editor. This allows you to add images, audio, videos and other media (ex. PDF) to your posts/pages. The video adding feature is sweet for those who are into YouTube or hosting their own video, just two clicks and you’re done.

Other new features include Password strength meter (like Gmail and MSN Passport), ability to Search posts and pages etc. What you see is sometimes determined by your hosting provider.

If you’re geek you’ll enjoy  the Shortcode API to make southend bracket-delineated strings which can keep the complex embed code intact, optimized DB structure that makes WP db faster, easy argument base taxonomy and URL creation, secure cookies and $wpdb->prepare() like function that allow almost all of the SQL on WP to be prepared first, to prevent SQL escaping.

I know WordPress 2.5 isn’t perfect or complete, there are and will be issues. But the most important thing is that WP 2.5 is a milestone of commitment to the open source community. The development team are constantly making improvements and are extremely quick to react to implement security fixes

Note: You should upgrade to WordPress 2.5.1, unless you applied just the security fixes through custom hack.

The categories for the BIMAs Awards have completely changed this year. As well as staying true to our core vision of ‘Working to support the creative excellence and craftsmanship within digital media’, we’ve also decided to inject a bit of life into the awards, making them even more relevant to industry.

This basically means focusing on all aspects of digital, ranging from the traditional executions of design teams, right through to innovative craftsmanship, which often results in those awesome little gems of wickedness.

Therefore we think you’ll find the categories a lot wider and more general, allowing for a greater variety of submissions from more areas of our industry.

So, as well as celebrating traditional creative, we’ll also be recognising a few unsung heroes.

Read my full post on the BIMA blog and get the run-down on all the categories. We’ve introduced social networking stuff too, so you can enter the best blog or the best social networking application awards.

I need your help. As some of you know, I Chair the British Interactive Media Association (BIMA); the longest established association to represent the interests of the UK’s digital industry. In short, one of BIMA’s goals is to ensure the UK remains as the center of excellence worldwide, for creativity in the interactive world.

When most people think of BIMA, they think of the Awards. Known as the BIMAs™, they rightly take their place on the top shelf of prestigious Awards, alongside the BAFTAs, the Brits and the Oscars. Each year we revisit the categories to ensure they reflect what’s happening in the industry currently. With this in mind, I’d like to solicit your help in defining the descriptions and success criterion for two sub categories under the Social Media category.

What do you think the description copy and success criterion should be for

• Best Blog Award (personal and corporate) and
• Best Network Application (e.g. Faceboo, Bebo)

Was watching The Fixer tonight and loved this clip.

A good friend of mine, Paul Carr, is spending the next couple of weeks in SF (as of tonight). If you’re in town why not leave a comment or send me/him an email to connect. Paul has taken a few months off to write another book, so help him ‘create’ new material. His latest publication is imminent so watch out for it!

Sub to his blog too, it’s hilarious. He knows I won’t forgive him for making fun of iJusine though

paul at alljustwords dot com

At the expense of loosing a mate, Steve Clayton, this is for you. I normally do a Monday Humour post but felt like being early for once.

The Ferrari Formula 1 Team sacked its entire pit crew yesterday. The announcement followed Ferrari’s decision to take advantage of the UK Government’s Youth Opportunity Scheme and employ people from Liverpool.

The decision to hire them was brought on by a recent documentary on how unemployed youths from Liverpool area were able to remove a set of wheels in less than 6 seconds without proper equipment, whereas Ferrari’s existing crew can only do it in 8 seconds, even with millions of Euros worth of high tech equipment.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown went on record as saying this was a bold move by the Ferrari management, which demonstrated the international recognition of the UK under New Labour.

As most races are won and lost in the pits, Ferrari now have the advantage over every team.

However, Ferrari may have got more than they bargained for.

At the crew’s first practice session, the Liverpool pit crew successfully changed the tyres in under 6 seconds.

But, within 12 seconds they had re-sprayed, re-badged, and sold the vehicle to the McLaren Team for a dozen bottles of Stella, a kilo of cannabis and some photos of Coulthard’s bird in the shower.

I asked the question on Twitter this morning, “Why can’t people who are nasty or sarcastic have to be anonymous on my blog?!”

Jemima Kiss’ response was so funny I felt it deserved a permanent placeholder.

Posts that mention me on TechCrunch seem to attract anonymous comments so bad that the type of people leaving them, are formally known as ‘trolls’. I don’t mind anonymous comments per say, mainly because we get them from companies such as Google and Microsoft on the Segala blog - they leave their real names and judging by the conversations I know their identities.

In general, I hate anonymous comments. If you don’t feel you can associate your name with a comment, don’t comment. Should we ban anonymous comments altogether? Should professional blogs such as TechCrunch ban them?

By the way, if we’re not yet connected on Twitter, feel free to follow my feed.

I’ve decided to blog more often about the things I discuss on Twitter. I’ll continue to use Twitter in the same way I do now, but I feel that I’m not communicating enough with most of my social network.

What’s my social network?

In short, it’s you and the other people with whom I’m connected. We are connected by the very fact that you’re interested in what I have to say. By the same token, I’m interested in what you have to say, hence why I converse with everyone who’s kind enough to spend time to leave a comment.

My social network is made up of people. Within that network I have multiple communities, each community representing something unique. The three blogs I author for example, represent entirely different communities, each with some overlap.

• Personal blog = entrepreneurial stuff, connecting, networking, social media…
• Segala blog = trust on the Web, standards, search, semantic web…
• BIMA blog = mainly Industry, creativity…
• Twitter = all of the above

You’ll notice that Twitter represents all of my communities. But it only represents a very small percentage of each one and hence, a small percentage of my social network. That’s because only a small handful of each community is represented by the early adopters in each one.

As I said, I won’t stop twittering. It’s a fantastic way to get to know more people whilst strengthening relationships. Twitter is also the world’s most comprehensive news feed and periodic replacement for a search engine when searching for stuff such as contact details or recommendations.

Think about it for a minute, do you sometimes Twitter messages that warrant a blog post? Does laziness encourage you to opt for the more accessible Twitter?