Worldwide WordPress 5K

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The folks at Automattic (who run WordPress.com) schedule an annual 5K run/walk. Not the kind where everyone shows up at the same place but one that is scheduled simultaneously around the world for everyone to participate in.

During this worldwide 5k week I participated in two:

1. Weekly Running Club

Every Tuesday the Denver Beer Co. hosts a running club where nearly a hundred folks all take off and run a 5k together around the Confluence Park area. Rachel and I plan to be there every week if possible.

2. March of Dimes

Every year Rachel and I walk with a family friend at the March of Dimes and this past Saturday it was at City Park in Denver. It was a great way to spend an early weekend morning.

I’ve become more and more accustomed to running over the years (and Nike Running is a fascinating athletics-turned-technology company story) so I hope to document more of these over time.

How to report spam text messages to AT&T Wireless

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Short answer: forward the message to 7726 (SPAM) then reply back with the number it originated from.

The business-minded folks over at AT&T have yet again gone out of their way to try and squeeze extra money out of their “already-paying-near-cartel-prices” customers. I knew they were greedy but the last straw was when I realized they charge extra for the “privilege” of tethering an internet connection (wired or wireless) through your mobile device in addition to the cost for the additional data. Really? My data allotment is data no matter how it goes through my devices, why do they get to charge for a software feature of my wireless phone?

Then… then today I received a terribly annoying spam text message:

After searching DuckDuckGo and Google, AT&T’s own customer forums come up (with people helping each other out), after their official FAQ page.

Thus, if I were to rely entirely on AT&T through its official support channels I would be greeted with a lengthy explanation as to what spam messages are, what the sources may be, and how I can prevent them:

Click to view full size screenshot

The best part: it dedicates much of the page to terrible suggestions (send “STOP” back to a spammer?) and then (for wireless number text messages) they suggest you pay for “AT&T Smart Limits” which is a $4.99 / month package to block specific numbers before mentioning it has a responsible method to report spam.

So, if I’m a typical user I skim the page, see a solution (oh, set up “Limits” and add the number, great!), stop reading and now AT&T takes more of my money. At least, I’m sure that’s the hope based on the way this helpful page is designed. It doesn’t seem like AT&T is dedicated to reducing spam, it appears to be in a conflict of interest: it’s in their best interest for more people to receive unwanted spam messages in order to continue promoting an additional paid service.

Disgraceful.

I’ll be switching to Verizon Wireless once my contract is up.

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I just finished reading Mike Monteiro’s book: Design Is a Job. As a principal at Mule Design for over ten years, Mike has a lot of great experience and much of what he said elicited severe head nodding and a me-too’ing. This book is a great roadmap of the things I’ve learned working with Alex and the team at Crowd Favorite for the past 3 years. I’d say anyone in the web design and development industry should take look at this book. It’s a quick read (finished it in a couple hours) and extremely insightful into the “business side” of web design at a small firm.

Introducing FavePersonal: a new WordPress Theme from Crowd Favorite

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Yesterday the team and I at Crowd Favorite released our latest product offering: a WordPress theme for personal sites and bloggers that we built for, and use ourselves (that’s how you know it’s really good).

It’s been in the works for over a year now and based around a few cornerstones:

  • you should be able to own your various types of content (status updates, photos, videos, links, quotes) and maintain those on your own website without succumbing to a service like Tumblr;
  • you should still be able to participate on the social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) where your friends participate;
  • you have the option easily customize the site to fit your style (custom color schemes using Adobe Kuler);
  • you should attractively showcase who you are and what you’re about (featured posts or photo in the header, Bio Widget with a profile and links)
  • and all this should be accessible from devices of all shapes and sizes (including mobile and tablet).

If you’re looking for a well-built, highly-designed WordPress theme for your own personal site (note: I also use it to run cosnow.com) I’d recommend you check out FavePersonal. It’s on sale now for only $49 which is a steal considering the average pricing of some of the other offerings out there and knowing it comes from one of the top WordPress design and development groups in the world (yes, I’ll toot our own horn).

I’ve thought a lot about how to “own” my content and how to create the simplest “social sharing” flow. The Path app is very close but it’s still closed down (I can’t easily get my content out) and it doesn’t offer the flexibility I want (photos should interact with Flickr or Instagram). FavePersonal is a step towards the ideal scenario. Expect more around this to come…

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Well, this article made me feel like I have no idea what I’m doing with the english language:

Who and Whom

This one opens a big can of worms. “Who” is a subjective — or nominative — pronoun, along with “he,” “she,” “it,” “we,” and “they.” It’s used when the pronoun acts as the subject of a clause. “Whom” is an objective pronoun, along with “him,” “her,” “it”, “us,” and “them.” It’s used when the pronoun acts as the object of a clause…

Apple TV is (just) an accessory

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The Apple TV as we currently know it (a black hockey-puck shaped paperweight), is an accessory. It sits on the final page, before you check out, of the iPad store experience. You will see it right there below they keyboard and charger, next to the printer.

Apple is laser focused on a handful of technologies. iPad, iPhone and Mac as “hardware” and iCloud, iTunes and iOS as “software”. The Apple TV is the middle of the venn diagram. It’s an accessory to continue to bring the experiences (hard and soft) together cohesively on a big screen (a different kind of “social media”).

It’s priced at $99 but has brought so many hours of value to our household. Considering how much a DVD player, sound system, PlayStation and other devices cost: this “accessory” is the most underrated, most disruptive, and least costly device that is sneaking in and making way for the next wave of Apple.

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The Week is one of the most underrated magazines out there. I’ve been reading the paper version for years now so I’m very excited to see a well-executed weekly magazine done on the iPad. If you’d like a series of quick read articles on well-balanced issues and stories from the US and the world, check it out. It’s the only news source I need anymore these days…