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Digital Culture Personal

WordPress.com

It appears that the gang behind WordPress is launching a blogger-like hosted blogging solution over at WordPress.com. I got a sneak-preview invite to it, and here’s my thoughts.

Dashboard

The admin area looks much like the standard area for the “standard” version of wordpress, and includes the Dashboard area. I’d love for this area to include the ability to personalize the RSS feeds coming in…we’ll see if that pops up in the full release.

Write

They’ve snuck a couple of fancy new AJAXy features in to the Write panel, including a drag-n-drop photo area which takes the guesswork out of dealing with photos.

wppresentation.jpg

For some reason, the presentation aspect of the site is very limited…only a very small number (8) of different themes to choose from, and no ability to format the CSS/HTML directly (unlike blogger, where you can make changes to the actual HTML of a given template). According to the FAQ, they’ll be changing that in the future to give people more control.

They’ve made WordPress categories more “taglike” and included a useful little popup that suggests other “tags” when you create a new category (much like del.icio.us).

Overall, it’s an interesting option in the hosted blogging world. I’ve been using the server version of WordPress for a long while now (since the .9, I believe) and have been incredibly pleased. If they can carry over the same usefulness to the hosted version, it should be an excellent option.

wpflock

Looks like wordpress.com is in league with Flock…an interesting pairing. They certainly seem to appeal to the same demographic.

If anyone got this far, and wants an invite, it looks like I’ve got one to give out. Give me a yell if you want to use wordpress.com as your blog, and I’ll send it your way.

By griffey

Jason Griffey is the Director of Strategic Initiatives at NISO, where he works to identify new areas of the information ecosystem where standards expertise is useful and needed. Prior to joining NISO in 2019, Jason ran his own technology consulting company for libraries, has been both an Affiliate at metaLAB and a Fellow and Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and was an academic librarian in roles ranging from reference and instruction to Head of IT at the University of TN at Chattanooga.

Jason has written extensively on technology and libraries, including multiple books and a series of full-periodical issues on technology topics, most recently AI & Machine Learning in Libraries and Library Spaces and Smart Buildings: Technology, Metrics, and Iterative Design from 2018. His newest book, co-authored with Jeffery Pomerantz, will be published by MIT Press in 2024.

He has spoken internationally on topics such as artificial intelligence & machine learning, the future of technology and libraries, decentralization and the Blockchain, privacy, copyright, and intellectual property. A full list of his publications and presentations can be found on his CV.
He is one of eight winners of the Knight Foundation News Challenge for Libraries for the Measure the Future project (http://measurethefuture.net), an open hardware project designed to provide actionable use metrics for library spaces. He is also the creator and director of The LibraryBox Project (http://librarybox.us), an open source portable digital file distribution system.

Jason can be stalked obsessively online, and spends his free time with his daughter Eliza, reading, obsessing over gadgets, and preparing for the inevitable zombie uprising.

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