January 30, 2008
UPDATE: Based on popular demand, Prologue has been updated to version 1.2, available now on WordPress.com and through Subversion. Check out Joseph Scott’s post for a rundown of the improvements.
Since its release yesterday, Prologue, the new theme that brings easy, Twitter-esque short messaging to WordPress, seems to be getting a fair bit of attention. You never know how projects like these will be received (particularly when opening yourself up to comparisons with a product as beloved as Twitter) so it’s just nice to see that we’ve captured folks’ attention, if only for a moment.
For the most part, people seem to understand that we’re not setting out to compete with (or “kill”) Twitter. Many of us at Automattic are fans! That said, Prologue was designed for something different—easily setting up and sharing a dialogue within a group. It puts aside the standard “behind the scenes” method of blogging and makes the act of posting part of the experience. It creates a kind of archived and searchable conversation, like an IM window that’s archived, taggable, and accessible from any web browser.
Here’s a collection of posts about Prologue, spanning the gamut of reactions I’ve read:
You can follow the whole discussion on
TechMeme. I’m looking forward to seeing what people do with it!
A funny aside—during development the project took on the codename “Prolog,” a mashup of “project” and “log.” Knowing it was the name of a programming language (not the image we were going for) and realizing that some question our spelling abilities anyway, it was changed to “Prologue” just before launch. It wasn’t until after Matt posted the official announcement on WordPress.com that I figured out the new name could be considered a combination of “project” and “dialogue,” meaning the new name still made sense, even if, in this case, the egg came a bit after the chicken. :)
January 28, 2008
At the Automattic offsite last week, Joseph Scott and I created a new WordPress theme called Prologue—a short-form group blogging theme inspired by Twitter. You can see it in action in this live demo.
Prologue is available now on WordPress.com and, of course, open source and available to use with your self-hosted WordPress blog.
January 19, 2008
From The Sunday Times: Women turn on ‘traitor’ Oprah Winfrey for backing Barack Obama
In the original post, a reader called austaz68 said she “cannot believe that women all over this country are not up in arms over Oprah’s backing of Obama. For the first time in history we actually have a shot at putting a woman in the White House and Oprah backs the black MAN. She’s choosing her race over her gender.”
Do Oprah’s fans really think so little of her that they’d assume she does, or should, choose a candidate based on race or gender? Or do you suppose this may be a bit of organized mischief on the part of another candidate’s supporters?
January 11, 2008
From BusinessWeek: Steve Jobs’ Video Dreams
One possibility is that Apple might add a tuner to its TV product later this year. That way, the device could handle the tasks of a cable box and provide a portal for almost any video need—from obscure clips on the Net to the evening news. “The day that happens, Apple TV sales will take off,” says American Technology analyst Shaw Wu.
I can’t figure out where bloggers and reporters keep getting the idea that Apple TV needs to become a DVR in order to be successful. Anyone who’s attempted to set up a Series 3 TiVo knows that the process is so wholly un-Apple that it’s very nearly impossible for me to imagine the company attempting—or wanting to attempt—such a feat.
The problem, if there is one, with Apple TV is the content. And broadcast TV isn’t the way to solve it. If Apple continues to advance Apple TV as a product line, its salvation will come through new software (which, as an Apple TV owner, I hope will be freely available to customers who already own one of the units). Buying (and renting!) content from the iTunes Store via the Apple TV interface is the holy grail—I expect Apple to focus on wooing more content providers to the store rather than picking yet another fight with them by getting into the DVR business.
Stewart and Colbert return, walking a tightrope
Executives from Hello, Doggie, the production services company for the “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report,” as well as executives from Comedy Central, petitioned the union on several occasions over the last 10 days, seeking to reach an interim agreement like the one that allowed David Letterman to return last week with his full writing team.
The proposal asked that the shows be allowed to use their writers and committed them to the same terms Mr. Letterman’s company had agreed to. The request was never formally turned down, though an executive associated with the shows said, “We were told it wasn’t looking good.”
I support the writers’ strike because I understand the horror of television without writers. On the other hand, as the past two months have illustrated, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report serve an important role as the court jesters, able (and willing) to speak truth to power. We need them on the air, with their writers, and the WGA-E is actually doing themselves a disservice by cutting off two lonely voices of sanity.
