Toni.org

Author: Toni Schneider

  • AOL buys Sphere

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    Toni Schneider
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    Big congratulations to the Sphere team for selling their company to AOL (and to AOL for a smart acquisition). It couldn’t have happened to a nicer and more talented group of people. I’ve had the pleasure of working closely with Sphere as an adviser for several years. My main early contribution was to bring together…

  • WordPress.com bloggers get book deals

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    Toni Schneider
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    The New York Times reports that two WordPress.com bloggers, Stuff White People Like and I Can Has Cheezburger, have received book deals. “Stuff” apparently got a $300k advance. The books based on their blogs are due out this Fall. Congrats!

  • The last two months

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    Toni Schneider
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    Time’s been flying since we announced our fundraising. That news ended up getting a lot of attention, followed by even more attention on subsequent developments like the release of Prologue and the addition of BuddyPress creator Andy Peatling to the Automattic team. And now we have a major WordPress 2.5 release that’s getting lots of…

  • Automattic fundraising

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    Toni Schneider
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    As Om and Matt report, we closed a $29.5 million round of financing for Automattic today. Coincidentally, the closing is happening during one of our bi-annual company get-togethers, so we’ll be able to toast the occasion in person! (Team Automattic is spending the week on a ranch in the beautiful desert of Southern Arizona.) Over…

  • Crunchies

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    Toni Schneider
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    The Crunchies were very fun last night. Congrats to the organizers, thank you for voting for me and for WordPress, and congrats to the Automattic team and WordPress community: Facebook, WordPress major Crunchies winners!

  • Some comments on free software

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    Toni Schneider
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    Rob Howard (who runs Telligent), says on his blog: WordPress is made available for free because investors and backers of the business are making the captial contribution to bring the consumer cost to $0. That’s wrong and indicates a misunderstanding of the economic model that underpins a project like WordPress. WordPress is made available for…

  • Thinking about Om

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    Toni Schneider
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    Om, my friend, I’m thinking about you and wish you a very speedy recovery!

  • OLPC versus eeePC

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    Toni Schneider
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    I am now the lucky owner of both an OLPC XO and an Asus eeePC. I wrote about the eeePC before, now I got a chance to compare these two Linux-running, cheap ($200), kid-friendly, mini-PCs. Let’s look at size first, since that’s a major differentiator for both: From this angle, they seem about the same…

  • May I ask for your vote?

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    Toni Schneider
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    My platform is free biodiesel for all! Please vote for me: Best Startup CEO. And for WordPress: Most likely to succeed. Here’s how the respective nominees compare on Alexa: CEOs, products. 🙂 Also, if you are into that kind of thing, check out how much money each company has raised (follow the Crunchbase links from…

  • MTOS and Drupal

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    Toni Schneider
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    In the last couple of weeks, there has been significant news from two WordPress competitors. Drupal lead developer Dries Buytaert has raised VC money to start a commercial company called Acquia to support Drupal, and SixApart has released an open source version of their Movable Type software dubbed MTOS. I think both are good developments…

  • Dvorak?

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    Toni Schneider
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    Now that I know at least three very smart people who use Dvorak keyboards (Andy, Iain, and Matt), I thought I might try one: It’s been sitting in my office for a few days. Maybe blogging about it will make me give it a try?

  • Shortcuts

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    Toni Schneider
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    Some of the people I used to work with at Yahoo have come up with a nifty WordPress plugin called Shortcuts. It analyzes your blog posts and auto-suggests things like Flickr photos or Yahoo maps to add to your post.

  • Bubbly video

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    Toni Schneider
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    [vodpod id=ExternalVideo.444443&w=425&h=350&fv=id%3D5321777%26emailUrl%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fvideo.yahoo.com%252Futil%252Fmail%253Fei%253DUTF-8%2526vid%253D1572353%26imUrl%3Dhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fvideo.yahoo.com%25252Fvideo%25252Fplay%25253Fei%25253DUTF-8%252526vid%25253D1572353%26imTitle%3DHere%252BComes%252BAnother%252BBubble%252B-%252BThe%252BRichter%252BScales%26searchUrl%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fvideo.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%2Fvideo%3Fp%3D%26profileUrl%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fvideo.yahoo.com%2Fvideo%2Fprofile%3Fyid%3D%26creatorValue%3DbWhlbXBleQ%253D%253D%26vid%3D1572353]

  • The tyranny of unread items

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    Toni Schneider
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    A few weeks ago, I decided to do something about the hundreds of unread emails and RSS items staring me in the face every day. Even though I was diligently filtering less important emails and feeds away from my inbox and into sub folders, I was still getting too many “holy smokes! 273 unread items,…

  • Insightful (and funny)

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    Toni Schneider
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    Looks like this came out a while back, but it’s new and fascinating to me: (from Ron via Diane)

  • EeePC

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    Toni Schneider
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    A while ago, I asked for a Firefox computer, a simple solid state laptop that’s optimized to run just Firefox. Yesterday I got an EeePC and it almost fits the bill. What I like: It’s affordable ($399, models under $300 are forthcoming) It’s small and light (and cute) The out of box experience was very…