links

Plugin Development

Will Norris‘ talk at WordCamp PDX introduces WordPress coding standards, common functions, and constants to would be plugin developers (and smacks those who’ve already done it wrong). Also notable: functions, classes, variables, and constants in the WordPress trunk.

Custom Installations

Just as WordPress has a number of hooks and filters that plugins can use to modify and extend behavior, it also has a cool way to customize the installation process.

Extending The WYSIWYG Editor

TinyMCE, the WYSIWYG editor in WordPress has a rich API to allow adding buttons and stuff, but the docs are hard to get into. We can get a jump on that by looking at how it’s implemented in other WP plugins. This code creates the buttons, while the function that responds to the button click and does the work is defined within the plugin. The TinyMCE plugins in core are also informative.

Encyclopodia – the encyclopedia on your iPod

GeoCool! – Rasmus’ Toys Page

IE7 and OpenSearch Autodiscovery

Information Management Now: Social Tagging For The Enterprise

Allen asked, via the web4lib list:

I’m interested in how others handle linkrot in library blogs. Do you fix broken links? Remove them if they can’t be fixed? Do nothing?

Michael answered:

I deal with link rot on blogs as I would with any other publication, print or otherwise: do nothing. The post is dated and users should be aware that links from two years ago may no longer work.

We need to understand that the web is a living, breathing, and sometimes dying organism. The forrest will renew itself.

Dropping the metaphor, link rot is frustrating, but deleting links is deleting history. Fixing links (if possible) or adding updates is another matter, but it’s really only something I’d do for active content.

The sale of Weblogs Inc. to AOL last month for $25+ million got a lot of bloggers excited. Tristan Louis did the math and put the sale value into perspective against the number of incoming links the the Weblogs Inc. properties. It’s an interesting assertion of the value of the Google Economy, no?

The various properties have a total of almost 50,000 incoming links, which work out to being worth between about $500 and $900 each, depending on the actual sale price, which everybody’s mum about.

So Dane Carlson created this (now broken) how much is my blog worth? app based on those numbers and powered by the Technorati API. Zach took a stern look at it (while it was working) and decided the numbers probably represent the gross ad revenues of a blog over four years (or two years with strong growth).

• Pepper Computer
• Buying a Pepper Pad at Amazon
• Pepper Hacks
• Victor Rehorst has been blogging about his Pepper since he got it (a few days ago)
• Pepper Pad stories at TeleRead
• Other Pepper Pad stories here at MaisonBisson

Links: starting with politics, going to copyfight, ending nowhere.

• On The Mediathis week is reporting on the controversies about Sinclair TV and Bush’s wiring, looks at why there’s a dearth of local real local news, and, most interestingly, compares Bush’s lies to Kerry’s exaggerations.The whole show is available as MP3.
   
• RealClearPolitics lists polls in swing states and elsewhere.
   
• EarthBrowser (for Mac) gives us a glimpse of the world, showing swirling clouds and other weather, but hiding the politics and tension.
   
• WalMart vs. the music industry?
   
• SpyMall