(iverson's) currentbuzz

How to Mobile-Optimize a WordPress Website

by PrabhasPokharel

Publishing for the mobile web is an important way to reach audiences on mobile phones. This screencast demonstrates an easy-to-use tool that can enable many content producers pubish for the mobile web. WordPress.org has developed software which lets many around the world create websites fairly easily. This tool, the WordPress Mobile Pack, makes it easy for those web publishers to now publish on the mobile web.

In this short how-to video, we show easy it is install the WordPress Mobile Pack and generate a mobile version of websites, along with pointers to the more advanced features of the software.

via How to Mobile-Optimize a WordPress Website | MobileActive.org.

This is a simple explanation of how GNU’s GPL works for programs like WordPress, Drupal, etc. which are open source, but nonetheless licensed. It also contains a very clear explanation of why the php must be GPL, but also, how that doesn’t mean a theme or other GPL product can’t be commercial.

Please remember that this is about copyright and respecting the license that the WordPress copyright holders have chosen. It isn’t about money. Premium themes are fine. It is non-GPL themes (a.k.a. proprietary themes) that are the issue. Also realize that WordPress cannot change its license. It is forever locked to the GPL (version 2). Arguments along the lines of “WordPress should allow proprietary themes because of X,” are pointless. We are as much bound by the license as theme developers!

via Why WordPress Themes are Derivative of WordPress « Mark on WordPress.

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So, you’ve got some time on your hands, regardless if you are a student on summer vacation, an employee on furlough, or a professional in between jobs. Whatever the scenario, I have got a great list of resources to keep you busy for days. I have quickly realized that our industry loves lists — on tips, software, tools, projects — so I decided to make a Top-85 collection of these lists.

All together, the list below points you to more than 2,730 articles, projects, tools and tips in eight broad categories. Whew, don’t get overwhelmed. Just use this as inspiration to make the most of your free time — there is something here for everyone!

via 85 Resources to Pass the Time During Your Next Furlough | Innovative Interactivity.

Jeff Jarvis’ idea that news organizations agree on some tags and then tag news as “orignal reporting,” maybe with other tags like “edited,” or something, would help readers and search engines. Now the “decider” for news is usually just recency.

The idea of rewarding the original version of a story, rather than the 19th nervous rewrite, which is reverse syndication, would allow the organization that is *paying* the reporter, to capitalize on traffic to the story.

I’m still thinking about Jeff’s arguments on why the AP should die. The rel tag is an idea whose time is coming, if not all ready arrived:

Use the rel=”source” attribute of the <link> and <a> tags to explicitly link to the sources you used writing an article.

If every news story carried a switch identifying original reporting, then aggregators like GoogleNews and Daylife (where I’m a partner) could give precedence to and link to that journalism at its source, helping support that reporting in the link economy.

via BuzzMachine.

‘SixthSense’ is a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information.

By using a camera and a tiny projector mounted in a pendant like wearable device, SixthSense sees what you see and visually augments any surfaces or objects we are interacting with. It projects information onto surfaces, walls, and physical objects around us, and lets us interact with the projected information through natural hand gestures, arm movements, or our interaction with the object itself.

via s i x t h s e n s e – a wearable gestural interface MIT Media Lab.

In case you think I am kidding about the “big ass” table, look again.

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