WPBook 1.5 Released – Let the Streaming begin!

WPBook

So for a while I’ve been working on and beta testing the next version of WPBook. Tonight I’ve just tagged it for release, so it will be available for download shortly. (I’ve already been running it here for a while and testing it on a few other test blogs).

The main improvement in WPBook 1.5 is that it now knows how to use stream.publish, meaning that it will automatically post to your wall in Facebook when you publish a post in WordPress. Your friends should see that notification as well in their streams. (We’re not, however, sending application updates or tracking all users’ user id’s – instead you enter your own userid into the settings and it uses that to post to your wall). Included are attachments (first image attached to the post is used) and excerpts (if you hand craft excerpts they will be used in the wall post).

The other main improvement is that WPBook now requires PHP5, and as such can wrap Facebook calls in Try/Catch blocks. For the non-programmer, this means those awful, dramatic “fatal uncaught exception” error screens are gone. WPBook isn’t doing anything terribly meaningful with those errors yet – still working on that- but at least it traps them.
(more…)

CMS Debate from North Shore Web Geeks

A few weeks back I was part of a panel at North Shore Web Geeks which they titled The Great CMS Debate.

John Eckman, Jay Batson, Marc Amos, and Tom Herer. Photo (c) Trev Stair

Unfortunately Jake Goldman was ill and couldn’t make it, so Christine Greene agreed to step in and moderate in my place, while I represented WordPress in Jake’s. (See also Trev’s iPhone sketches of myself, Jay and Marc – he was unable to get Tom).

It was a fun night – I’m not sure I represented WordPress as well as I might have with a bit more prep. (On the security question in particular, see Brad Williams’ presentation from WordCamp Boston.)

(more…)

Content and Commerce: Celebrity Style

Interesting article in yesterday’s New York Times about blogs which combine “shop the look” with celebrity photos.

Specifically included are INFDaily, CelebStyle.com, and JustJared – though obviously there are many other picking up this trend, which has its origins in the celebrity stalking watching print magazine world.

The technology, from vendors like gumgum and Pixazza is fairly rudimentary, as described by the Times:

Companies like GumGum and Pixazza tag the paparazzi photos with links for buying the clothes. They hire people to look at photos and match the clothes they are wearing with the same or similar, more affordable items from retailers like Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom and Zappos. (Image recognition technology is not yet sophisticated enough to automate the process, they say.) The companies get a small fee from retailers when a shopper clicks on or buys an article of clothing.

Essentially, the technology turns the celebrity photo into an ad for the clothing the celeb is wearing, endorsement or no:

“Publishers and readers look at it as this really informational resource,” said Ophir Tanz, chief executive of GumGum, which tagged the photo of Ms. Jolie with one of its “Shop this look” badges. “We look at it as an ad unit.”

Celebrity sites are an obvious place to start with this business, but photos all over the Web could be turned into ads or e-commerce portals, said Bob Lisbonne, chief executive of Pixazza. Pixazza plans to add sites that cover travel, sports and interior design.

I see this as further validation of the integration between content and commerce. Why have a magazine brand and a retailer as two completely separate entities, with the information about where to buy what’s featured in the spreads hidden in the small type at the back?

We’ve long said that “Every company is becoming a media company” in the age of the assembled web – and that includes learning how to take advantage of commerce opportunities around content just as much as it means learning to leverage content in the context of commerce.

This Week: The Great CMS Debate

Happy to announce (a bit late, I suppose, in that the event is sold out - though folks coming who don’t get to see the debate can still join us for networking and beer) that I’ll be moderating the Great CMS Debate this Thursday, Feb 25th, 7:00pm, upstairs at The Grog in lovely downtown Newburyport.

The event will be hosted by North Shore Web Geeks and sponsored (as in some free beer) by The Atom Group.

North Shore Web Geeks

Beta Testing WPBook 1.5

Working through beta testing on WPBook 1.5.

Let’s see if this gets into my stream. I’m testing publishing to the author’s stream, as well as to pages which have granted stream.publish permission.

The biggest challenge so far is keeping track of who those users are, since WPBook doesn’t currently store any info about who is using it.