I just installed WordPress 3.0 to run this thing, and as always since the later 2.x versions came out, the upgrade was silky smooth. The biggest change is the integration of the WordPress MU function, which allows multiple blogs to run off of one installation. It seems from the WP Codex that most of the highlighted changes are back-end upgrades with better hooks for developers, as the dashboard interface looks almost identical to the late 2.x versions. There are some new features, like the easy creation of custom menus and headers, and the most visual change is the adoption of the new Twenty Ten default theme.
My big hope is that WP is moving in the direction of a direct competitor to larger-scale CMS products like Joomla and Drupal — as this BusinessWeek article notes, the user-friendliness of WP (both for users and developers) is the differentiator. Let’s hope!
And on a totally unrelated note, this is a grouping of two awesome dudes.
This is certainly the ruffest consumer technology in a long time: Scan a barcode with the Red Laser application, and it’ll return product reviews, price comparisons and all the other useful info online. Plus it’s got an open SDK, so once other phones start adding in the iPhone-style laser device, I imagine some permutation of it will show up for widespread use.
Word.
I feel like I’ve run into iterations of this question a few times lately, so here go some words of whizzzdum.
If I were some 21-year-old dude again, but my 21-year-old self was transported to 2008 and I was looking for a job in media websites, I’d pick up some books on the following languages at SBX. I could stop in during my next trip to EV-1 for a Busch Light 30-cube. ($10.99, readers. But that was in 2001 prices. I imagine with the surge in grain prices, it’s gone all the way up to 46 cents per beer or so.)
The geek glasses knowFirst, I’d learn Flash. Front-end developers can do really well with this, even though I think it’s a really bad idea to use Flash for basic page templating. Instead, Flash is awesome for news graphics, such as the popular delegate calculator we rocked at Slate. It’s really portable for things like embedded video players and widgets (see the Bushisms widget), it can do great visual effects that DHTML still can’t do with ease (or at all), and it’s a lot less dangerous than Javascript for site stability. If your swf file is f’d, it’ll take down your movie but likely not your site performance. (Unless it’s way huge and you’re seeing too many downloads, but file size is a problem for anything.)
Second, I’d get really good at CSS. It’s the best way to control page display, so clearly it’s mad useful. The HTML part is fairly simple; you’re just wrapping things in divs of different class and ID. Then the CSS comes into play and keeps your site looking tight.
Third, I’d learn object-oriented programming. It’s the basis of Javascript behaviors and used in back-end programming as well, and that’s across all platforms. ASP.NET, Java or PHP, you’ll want to know the underlying structures. And that’s once you know basic programming stuff like loops, conditionals and database connectivity; if not, learn that first.
Assuming you already have the media knowledge down — journalism and such — you’d be representin’ for an entry-level producer or front-end developer job. Other useful technologies include Photoshop, Illustrator, QuarkXPress (for the occasional print thing), IIS or Apache server admin, and database structure. That last one is obviously useful in general web development, but I’m assuming you’re looking for a job with a media company big enough to have its own DBAs.
As far as the PHP / open-source question, I definitely advise people to learn it, but I say that with the knowledge that you probably won’t be using it working for a media company in the next few years. PHP is great and I love all the innovation around it, but most companies are still running legacy systems in ASP.NET, Java or other technologies and will bust out some criticism about scalability and support issues if you suggest moving to PHP / MySQL. (Facebook apparently not being large-scale and uptime-critical enough.) So, while PHP is great if you want to set up a site from scratch and will be useful when it becomes more supported with big sites, you probably won’t need it on a day-to-day job basis.
Apologies to any non-code people who were bored stiff on this one.
Firefox | January 6th, 2008
Though I’m a huge Firefox booster, lately version 2.0.0.11 has been eating up virtual memory like a fat dude at a Louisiana Chinese buffet. And that’s both on my home PC (which is mad old) and work PC (which is still sorta old but faster, like Bruce Smith in his waning days.) Version 3.0, now in beta development, is supposed to fix the memory leaks, but if you use version 2.0, be sure you close firefox.exe from the Windows Task Manager now and then.
And if you use a Mac, you should probably be visiting condescendinghipstercult.com instead. At the moment, nobody’s registered that. Now’s your shot to create the web’s most accurately named Mac community!
