Monthly Archives: October 2006

WordPress Tagboard Plugin / Widget 2.2

Version 2.2 is available now! This update is released to fix a bug that prevents non-registered users from posting a comment (or “tag”) to the board, on default installations of WordPress. It should work correctly now.

The technical details are that the WP Discussion option labeled “Comment author must fill out name and e-mail” is checked by default when installing WP, and there is (currently) no e-mail field in the tagboard. For now, to get around this issue, the system will add a dummy address to anonymous taggers, but in the future I’m considering either (A) not applying that restriction to the tagboard entries or (B) providing an e-mail address field for non-registered users. Please let me know what you think would be the better solution.

Also, one other thing to note on the subject of WP Discussion options is that the restriction labeled “Comment author must have a previously approved comment” is also checked by default. If this is selected, the comments (or “tags”) to the tagboard will be held in moderation if that particular name has not had a previously approved comment (or tag). This will result in the tagboard appearing to not work for first-time commenters, until their tags get approved. The suggested workaround for this right now is to uncheck that option, but I’m also looking for feedback on that one. Would it be better to (A) ignore that setting for tagboard entries and/or (B) provide a separate checkbox (on the tagboard config page) for whether or not to apply that restriction to the tagboard.

I’d appreciate any feedback anyone has on those two issues. Thanks again for all those who have given it a try, especially those who have provided feedback. My apologies for the delay in fixing it; I’ll try to keep more on top of it from here on out.

UPDATE: Just followed up with version 2.2, which also includes a fix for the display of the tag count in the admin page, courtesy of this comment from the owner of the blogwae site. Thanks!

Google Code Search is here!

Search for some source code, and specify filters for langauage, license, etc.

Lost night!

Season 3 premiers tonight. Can it live up to the hype and expectations? Probably not, but then again there was a lot of expectation after season one, and the season two premier was pretty huge in terms of advancing the story to the next stage, so who knows.

In case it fell off your feed reader since last season, don’t forget to start monitoring underwaterhatch.com (our Lost blog) again, as I’m sure the posts will start to pick up again there as the season gets underway. I won’t be posting about Lost on this blog, since we have that site already dedicated to that.

Speaking of Digg

Dan’s post about digg comments reminded me about the article I read yesterday on Mark Pilgrim’s blog entitled HOWTO play Digg users like drunk kittens.

It chronicles a humorous exercise that kind of confirms the vibe I get from digg in general.

It all started yesterday morning when Mark posted the bait: an article entitled “Digg users are dumber than goldfish“, on his blog. Within moments a faithful digger had dug the story, and it rocketed to the front page of Digg in under 90 minutes.

Don’t forget to read the story of the article that got dug as well, since it actually does make a decent point as well as being the subject of this little game / experiment.

Sun is shining

I’ve got to admit that Sun is really impressing me lately. In an effort to gain back some of the ground that it has lost to .NET in the last few years, they’ve made some pretty impressive moves.

The effort to open up the JVM to support multiple languages I think will be a big win for them, and a particularly good example of that is their recent hiring of the JRuby developers, in an effort to get a full implementation of Ruby running in the JVM (including support for the all important Rails framework).

The greatest thing about this is they’re also going about it in all the right ways. While the two guys who built JRuby are now full-time Sun employees, Sun is not stepping on their toes in any way. JRuby started as an open-source, free software product, and it will remain that way; Sun takes no ownership of it, it’s just funding its continued development. The two guys live in Minnesota, and they’re staying there, which Sun is also fine with. They basically are just going to get fat paychecks from Sun to keep doing the exact same work they’ve been doing up until now.

Other software companies: take notice. Actually, I think more and more are, but I’m thinking of two in particular where this model / approach will probably never happen (you know who you are).

The other thing I love about this story is it highlights a new branch in the evolution of the software industry / profession. In recent years, after the bursting of the initial dot com bubble and the fall of the start-up culture, we’ve seen the rise of the start-up-to-be-bought model, where your goal in starting your own small company was solely to produce a product, service, or whatever that would get you enough attention to garner an offer from a bigger player like Yahoo to buy you out.

That was interesting, but I have to say I like stories like this one even better, where software developers put their time and effort into products they believe in, and some clever companies who recognize the potential value that these developers’ efforts can bring to their business are coming along to support them, as opposed to taking them over. It’s a pretty exciting time to be a software developer, I think.

Google Reader

Google Reader does actually rock now. I think it’s time to switch RSS readers again.

Best of all (well maybe not best, but I haven’t heard a lot of people mention it) is that in addition to all the other great aspects that everyone has been blogging about since the upgrade, they also have a mobile-friendly version of the system that’s actually usable, which is a huge benefit in my book.

Looking for a petition?

Try signing the Full Feeds Petition, and let everyone know how badly partial feeds suck.