Category Archives: Technology

Tweet From Your Blog

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Are you tired of your Twitter client, or do you just want to turn your blog into your own social media hub? Well, now you can Tweet from your blog!

Yes, I did mention this briefly in my earlier Timepiece post, but I figured it was so cool that I had to mention it again.

If you have a WordPress.com or Jetpack-powered WordPress.org blog with Publicize enabled, posts with no title (typical of the Aside post format) will be sent to your Publicize connections (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) with a 100-character excerpt and a link to your post. Of course, you know what that means, but I’ll say it again anyway. You can now Tweet from your blog!

Any untitled post will send the excerpt via Publicize, along with a link to the post to bring the discussion back to your blog.

If you have a blog, feel free to try it today! If you don’t, there has never been a better time to own and control your own content, and to break your reliance on other social networks.

New Theme: Timepiece

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I have switched themes yet again here at MacManX.com. This time, I’m using Timepiece, the latest theme from Joen Asmussen.

Joen is quite simply one of my favorite theme designers, and I’m also thrilled to call him a co-worker here at Automattic. You may recall that MacManX.com used Fauna, Joen’s first publicly released theme, years ago for quite some time. I even released Frost, my first and only ever child theme for Fauna, way back in 2007. After a long run with Frost, I had the pleasure of beta testing a fantastic theme from Joen that was unfortunately never released. I’m not sure how much I can say about that theme, but I will say that everything was a widget, literally every single thing was a drag-and-drop widget. The theme was incredibly customizable.

Now, I’m on Timepiece, another great theme from Joen. Timepiece was conceived out of a project from our company’s San Diego Meetup, during which Joen and his team were tasked with creating a theme that emulated a timeline-style flow of events (think Twitter and Facebook), complemented by Infinite Scroll, of course. After a week of hard work, Timepiece tackles that concept in style. So, with a few font, color, and CSS tweaks via Custom Design to make this at least a bit unique, Timepiece is now live on MacManX.com.

Currently, Timepiece is only available for WordPress.com blogs, but WordPress.org bloggers should be able to find it in the WordPress.org Theme Directory soon.

I have really been looking forward to switching to a more timeline-style theme, especially now that I’m molding my blog into my main social media hub for a variety of reasons, and I feel that Timepiece fills that need quite nicely. As a bonus, if you’re looking to transform your blog into your social media hub too, you’ll be happy to know that Publicize now sends a post excerpt for any untitled post to Twitter and other connections along with the link to your post, so you can practically Tweet from your blog now!

I may still be poking around with a few things, but I’m pretty much settled on the overall look as it is now. As always, if you see anything out-of-place here, please let me know!

Your Blogging App is There for You

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With the recent news about Twitter strictly enforcing token (user) limits against third-party clients, it’s important to remember that your blog still loves you.

When you post to your blog, the content is still your property, and you can use any blogging app without fear of artificial user limits or high prices due to limiting and confrontational business policies. Plus, most blogging platforms provide some way to automatically share your new posts on Twitter and other social networks, like Publicize for WordPress.com blogs and Jetpack for WordPress.org blogs.

In the world of mobile usage, I’m particularly fond of our mobile apps. If you’re looking for a third-party mobile app, I have heard great things about Poster, but haven’t tried it myself yet. All WordPress apps use the open XML-RPC protocol, which will never be closed or limited.

If you don’t have a blog yet, and don’t know where to turn to in this era of social networking turmoil, open a free WordPress.com blog today. If you want just a bit more control and don’t mind a few more responsibilities, try WordPress.org instead.

If you have a WordPress.com blog, it will remain online and your property as long as we’re still in business, and you can export your blog’s content at any time. If you have a WordPress.org blog, it will remain online and your property as long as you can keep it running. For both WordPress.com and WordPress.org users, our mobile apps will always be available free of charge.

I know that your blog and blogging app will never truly be a replacement for a Twitter client, but they do allow you to reach your audience (even via Twitter) without compromising content ownership, app usage, or other limiting policies.

Does WordPress.com Support Macs?

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Believe it or not, I get asked this question quite a lot. Does WordPress.com support Macs? Well, I submit for your consideration this photo from fellow Automattician Joey Kudish and his scavenger hunt.

Yes, that’s almost every employee at Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com) holding up their computer, a Mac. What about those of us not holding up our Macs? We left them back in our hotel rooms.

So, does WordPress.com support Macs? You bet we do! In fact, we pretty much support Macs first, since that’s what we use to make everything.

Anyway, this is a rather moot point these days, as most modern browsers (with the notable exception of Internet Explorer) offer very consistent rendering across all platforms, making the Mac vs. PC distinction practically unnecessary when it comes to the web.

So, what does WordPress.com support? We support any browser listed here, regardless of which platform you’re using. We also support any standards-compliant browser not listed there, including a variety of mobile browsers, and you might want to try one of the WordPress mobile apps if you’re a mobile user.

The Cloud is Not Necessarily Green

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“Cloud” is one of the biggest buzzwords these days. Many services are launching on a distributed cloud-based platform, like file sharing, applications, blogging, even hosting, and there are many advantages to cloud services. The most obvious being that you can access your files and applications from wherever you have an internet connection, and especially in the case of cloud hosting, downtime is almost nonexistent as the entire cloud would have to go offline before you noticed any service interruption.

One of the advantages that I keep hearing about online, from friends, and even from speakers at events is that they are moving to the cloud because it’s green (better for the environment). This is false. Sure, the resources that originally took an entire server to run are now efficiently spread across hundreds of servers (hooray!), but those servers may receive their power generated by coal or other fossil fuels (boo!).

Just because something is energy-efficient does not mean that it is green. Facebook’s Prineville Data Center is a miracle of energy efficiency, but it receives its power from PacifiCorp, who derive 70.6% of their power from coal and natural gas, 22.5% from other supplies, and only 6.9% from water and wind. So, while the Prineville Data Center is a miracle of energy efficiency, its overall operation is not green.

Now, if your cloud service derives its power from 100% renewable resources, then you have something highly efficient and green. Google has made incredible strides go green, and A Small Orange covers 150% of their power consumption with Renewable Energy Certificates (which is a topic for a later date), but most cloud services are not so environment-conscious.

Of course, you don’t have to take my word for this. Tom Raftery, the man behind GreenMonk, gave a brilliant keynote address on Cloud Computing’s Green Potential and I highly recommend that you watch it.

I do feel that the cloud is really the future of software and web-based services, and I use many cloud-based services myself, but make sure that you know the facts before touting the cloud as good for the environment.