PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Some of you may not have heard of SOPA and Protect IP legislation currently making it’s way through the system. I’m not going to go into an indepth explanation as plenty of information exists already to help clarify the issue at hand. I will say that I don’t support these pieces of legislation, they’re incredibly dangerous to free speech on the internet and would set a dangerous standard that would severely limit how we do business online, how we create and how we express ourselves.  I urge you all to read as much as you can on these issues and then contact your representatives in government and let them know how you feel.

Some Links:

A Quick Overview of SOPA by CNET 

Excellent editorial on why SOPA is bad for everyone

The Actual text of SOPA itself

Where you can quickly write a letter to your representatives

Groups currently against SOPA 

The project was an interesting combination of visual updates and new functionality including API integration w/ an existing non-wordpress CMS, a paywall, custom post types, custom sidebar widgets, custom metafields and custom comments functionality. All in all, alot of “custom” involved in this project, with the necessity of keeping Natalie’s existing site live and service uninterrupted.

We’re happy to announce that Nataliemaclean.com’s Video Blogs section launched this week without a hitch. If you’re interested to see what custom wordpress development can provide for your site, have a look or get in touch with me.

Not a problem.  We laid out the custom functionality requirements, custom fields and plugins, and i set to work slicing and building.  We were able to get the site up and running in four days and Mike was able to host their first Style Gone Social Challenge.

This will be my first Wordcamp, and first web development conference in general. It feels like some kind of turning point in my career – like, i can no longer fake that i’m a huge web nerd, i’m actually paying to go and spend my entire weekend sitting through discussions on the history of SPAM, SEO, Typekit and How BuddyPress integrates better w/ WP 3.0. All the while SF’s killer Outside lands festival is going on. It’s totally worth it though.

There’s not much more than a month remaining till this year’s Liberate so we needed work fast – but from there it was just a matter of designing a template that captured their brand – we opted for a fresh clean look, “ink on paper” with their mascot, Ganesha peaking out from the bottom. It’s safe to say everyone was pleased with the results.

If you’re looking for new avenue’s of reaching your users, clients or customers, consider Mailchimp – If you’d like someone to help you personalize your template, consider TMD.

I was right.

It’s been a while since i’ve seen such unanimous approval of a Google product, Chrome to be exact – that Google+ is a social product is an especially rare achievement given how protective we are of our social experience. The only critisicms i’ve read have been not against G+ but rather to social in general… “Do we need more social?” I’ll let the market decide that one – but if i had anything to say on it. I’d say, “maybe”. I’d say – “maybe not more… but better, more open, less spammy, less janky, less farmville and more actually… social.”

That’s what Google+ holds over Facebook – and expands on Twitter with. Communication, sharing, expanding your network, exploring new connections. I’ll let you read all the in-depth tech analysis’s for the full explanation of asynchronous friending / following – but in layman’s terms – this ain’t your father’s social anymore, and i’m curious how to he masses will adjust to to an even more abstract concept of the social web.

That Google have created an incredibly clean, friendly and intuitive interface will bring it far, but users will also need to step up to the plate as well. I’m not worried it’ll happen, slowly perhaps, but as Facebook buckles under it’s own weight, and users get sick of sharing everything w/ everyone (Hi mom…) and constantly hiding app spam, people will start embracing circles, smart filtering, and following.. gone is the “wall” and “friend request” here to stay is the Circle.

TL;DR – The Queen is dead, long live the sexier Queen.

Post crash i helped Netop install WordPress DBbackup plugin, update there template and WP install, and urged them to migrate away from DoFather hosting in the future. If anyone out there is considering hosting, i would not advise working with “DoFather”. Beyond that, their founder is known for making poor ethical decisions.

TMD has been developing wordpress based e-commerce sites using the Shopp Bolt on E-com solution. We’ve been happy with the results thus far though as with all currently available wordpress e-commerce solutions (and for that matter, all ecommerce solutions out there), a degree of tweaking and bug squashing is necessary.

If you’re looking to build your online boutique to harness the power of WordPress, contact TMD for for information.