So it has been awhile since I last developed a WordPress Plugin for free. Sure I have done dozens for clients, but it has been awhile since I have given one away. But soon all of that will change. Starting April 1st I am entering myself into a two man competition with my buddy Andrew Norcross. Basically I am looking for a fun way to start programming for the public again with a competitive edge for motivation. The original inspiration for this came from Andrew watching one of my favorite movies and tweeting about it.

Here are the rules:

• Contest begins April 1st.
• No rules on functionality, purpose, etc. Just has to be a working plugin.
• The plugin has to be completed and in the WordPress repository by midnight on April 30th.
• Once completed, we will allow a week for voting.
• Loser pays winner $1.
• That’s pretty much it.

Wish me luck! On April 30th Andrew and I will be tweeting and emailing a link where you the public can vote so make sure to pay attention to this blog, Andrew’s blog and both our Twitter accounts. @joehall & @norcross

Something odd happened about 6 months ago. I started buying books on the Kindle. This was odd to me because 1) I am usually against technology with strict DRMs and, 2) I don’t own a Kindle! I have been reading my books on my phone and on my PC. However this morning I wanted to read in bed, but was tired of squinting into my phone. So…. I got to work. I have an old Dell Mini 9 that I got about 4 years ago.

The Dell Mini 9 shipped with an optional Ubuntu OS. Which was one of the main reasons I got it. Overall its been a great netbook. However the model I got only has a 3.8GB hard drive. Which means everytime I update Ubuntu the amount of free space gets smaller and smaller. So to read my Kindle books I opened up FireFox and went to the Kindle cloud reader, which allows you to read your Kindle books inside a web browser. This worked really well for awhile. But I hated having to read on such a small screen, it felt as if the size of text I selected and the orientation of the screen made it so I could only read about 10 lines on each page. But then I remember, YOU CAN FLIP THE SCREEN ORIENTATION in Ubuntu! 90 degrees is all I needed to flip the screen to show more text.

Now the netbook holds like a regular book and is roughly the same size! Looks like I won’t be buying a Kindle anytime soon!

If you haven’t heard the news yet, microblog, lifestream giant tumblr is down. And not just for a few hours, but at this point 18!! On the internet that’s a lifetime! The free service provides blogs to some top players in mainstream media and a few giants in social media. So you can see this is a serious issue!

One of the biggest advantages of utilizing the cloud is the ability to pretty much outsource the tech and management issues related with self hosting. But at the same time using the cloud leaves you vulnerable to companies that can and do experience massive outages. There has to be a middle ground.

There is! Using shared or grid based hosting services in conjunction with software like WordPress is the ideal solution. These “micro-clouds” allow for regular backups and complete control over your hosting environment. Which means that when you are hit with a outage or downtime, you can rebound much faster because you have direct access to the data you created and own.

If your company is using tumblr or a similar service, and you want to move to WordPress with a micro-cloud solution. Let us help you with that transition!