EdgeCloud

A plugin for Wordpress (v2) that helps you automatically build sitemap files for google so that you can index your site almost on-demand.

This plugin generates a Google Sitemaps compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. The Google sitemaps program is part of the “Google webmaster tools”.

I continue to be impressed by the variety of plugins available for WordPress. Not just that, but I have not had a problem with any of them at this point. All have been solid, reliable little chunks of code that get the job done.

Do you ever wonder about the politics of open source? I’ve seen some nasty splits (anyone run through the DBIx tussle on the perl side?). But I thought this entry from the author of the default backup plugin in WordPress was *very* interesting. Of course, it’s difficult to know the full story, especially being outside the beltway so to speak, but it raises some very interesting issues that developers deal with on a daily basis, especially the not created here syndrome that plagues many of them. Writing for open source code bases is a thank-less job to begin with and it’s only made worse by seemingly arbitrary moves that disengage the very people that are trying to support you. In these cases, diplomacy is just as important as coding prowess.

Head on over and cast your vote for panels for SXSWi 2007. There are some *great* topics in there and I have to say that it was very difficult to narrow down my choices to the requested limit of 10. Even being rigorous in my determination I had 20 in the list before I realized it! Sorting them out was even more difficult but here’s what I ended up with.

1. Rapid Javascript Development
2. User Research Smoke & Mirrors: Good Research and Bad Research
3. Thinking Like the Big Boys (and Girls)
4. How to Not Be Afraid of Lawyers
5. NetRoots 1.5: The Mid-Term Elections
6. Journalism in the Blogosphere: A Legal Guide to Internet “Press”
7. Create A Campaign In an Hour
8. High Class and Low Class Web Design
9. How to Easily Attract Your IDEAL Clients
10. Who’s Afraid Of A Little Free Speech

An electic mix, I know (politics, business, design and coding) but such is the current direction of things. Like I said, very difficult decision and many thanks to those who proprosed the panels. I’m very much looking forward to attending my first SXSWi!

Update: Not that you need more feeds added to your reader, but many of these folks have links to their sites/blogs and I’ve already found a couple of very interesting new reads for these very cherished topics. Look below each entry and there you’ll find the name with the link out. Enjoy!

This is what happens when you catch a cold (*sniffle*)

I’ve been here before - the last time I hit this spot I simply hit the big “Mark All As Read” button, but for some reason I can’t just bring myself to do that this time…sigh…

The venerable creator of Ruby fights without fighting. This is in response to all the back and forth about Joel’s spot on language wars which seems to have the bulk of the Rails proverbial knickers in a twist, including DHH. I *love* matz’s response to this (from the ruby-talk mailing list):

|On Sep 1, 2006, at 9:20 AM, Rob Sanheim wrote:
|
|> I find it amusing that he says Rails is too risky and new, yadda
|> yadda, but then he goes on to talk about their in-house language,
|> “Wasabi”:
|
|I too found that beyond ironic.

That indicates that he trusts himself, and not me (Ruby). And I think
he’s right.

matz.

This gem (pun completely intended) was found via RedHanded.

Yup, An Event Apart is coming to Austin. It’s actually coming to the Alamo Draft House downtown location (which is a stone’s throw from one of our client’s offices). If only it weren’t for the $500 registration fee (for one day? I love you guys, but…). I do have to say that it’s nice for these gents (Meyer, Zeldman, and Santa Maria) to grace our beloved city with their presence.

I hope that by Nov. 6th (the date of the event) this crazy ass heat will be long gone. Guys, one tip - check the weather before you come - it might be likely you’ll be wearing a sweater in the morning and a tank by the afternoon (that’s what is kindly referred to as “Texas weather” ’round these parts)…use this local station to check it out before you head this way (links to News 8 Austin weather).

This has already hit the Refresh-Austin group.