Archive for May, 2006

How’s that for Scalability

WordPress has really proven itself to be one of the most functional, best looking, easy to use and now scalable blogging applications out there. Here on wordpress.com they have superceeded 200,000 blogs.

Some interesting stats they have posted:

In the past 10 days, WordPress.com bloggers have….

  • Created 14,100 blogs
  • Added 30,300 static pages
  • Tagged 188,259 tags on posts
  • Gotten 267,490 comments
  • Written 291,000 posts
  • Have 779,325 feed subscribers
  • Had 6,832,322 pageviews!

That's simply amazing to think that wordpress.com would recieve over 20million hits a month and still manages to handle 200,000 blogs.

Congratulations to Matt & the team for keeping the whole process here easy & painless.

I would reccomend anyone to get a blog here over blogger or any other service.

GMail Web Clips are SO useful!

Take a look at this picture:

Gmail Web Clips

Google has made its millions upon millions upon millions of dollars providing relevant content. Why is it then when you click on "Spam" in GMail, that you get an array of recipies to make spam sandwiches, spam bakes and spam tortilla sandwiches (among other things).

Congrats Google, that is not only incredibly relevant but also amazingly useful!

Finally trying out Last.fm Radio

Note: Disregard the following links and just try and use the links on my profile. WordPress can't seem to sort out the linking issue to last.fm.
Well I seem to have been upgraded to a last.fm subscriber (my profile) for now which is great. I get access to a few more feature which are good. Features that have always been free though are listening to radio. I fancy myself as a bit of a DJ or "good music chooser" might be the better choice for now, so why don't you sign up and then click some of the following links to fire up a 128kbits mp3 stream from last.fm of some good tracks. :)

I normally wouldn't make a post about something like this but last.fm suprised me with the kind of tracks they were playing. Admittedly I dont listen to very much commercial music but they seem to be getting a lot of it down well.

If you're not on lastfm yet, sign up now and start saving your music history, you never know what you will find in the future. It is truly an exciting place to be.

NetVibes Rocks

I have just switched from Google Home to Netvibes and let me tell you, it's really really good. I like having a custom homepage with all of my favourite feeds and Google Home worked for me quite ok up until now. I had actually tried Netvibes when I made the choice to Google back in the day and it wasnt quite polished enough for my liking. The interface was clunky and hardly worked. Now they really have got it together and the service works great.

I currently have my homepage split up into:

  • General (24)
  • Blogs / Tech (49)
  • Blogs / Business (19)
  • Blogs / Music (73)
  • Blog / Design (21)

It's working a treat :D. These guys really know how to put together an easy to use homepage and you have just won some business from a previous google user. Well done.

Different is Better than “Better”

Seth has it right when he says:

When you make something that works a little better, you're playing the same game, just keeping up with the status quo. When you make something different, on the other hand, you're trying to change the game.

Instead of creating something just that little bit better, why not try an innovate? Why not do something no one else is doing? It will be a lot more fulfilling for yourself and your business.

Why I Like WordPress.com

I am a designer. I believe i was born to be creative and I live to create. Here at wordpress.com though, I can actually forget about playing with that theme or tweaking this or that, because… I cant! This gives me more of a chance to focus on actually sitting down and writing out my thoughts. I'm still quite new to blogging but this is my playground and I love it.

Also another thing to keep in mind is the admins here keep everything running smoothly 99% of the time so I don't even have to administrate anything or worry about anything. Not to mention the fact they are really understanding here, they have a really good service, and someday they will let us put some ads on here!

This is just a quick outburst about why I am enjoying my time here and I highly reccomend it. 

Free VOIP Phone Calls?

I haven't made a post in a while because I am extremely busy with new business but I thought this warranted a quick post.

In the light of Skype now offering free calls to USA and Canada it had made everyone think about phone calls a little bit differently. Phone calls just got a whole lot cheaper and Skype have set a benchmark. Skype is of course the most popular VOIP provider and actually one of the cheapest. It's not until you dig deeper and look at the companies without such a large front that you actually start to see real VOIP value.

I dont know how they do it but VOIPStunt seem to be pulling a stunt by offering 300 minutes of free calls to a number of destinations around the world.

They offer Free calls to any regular landline in:

  • Andorra
  • Argentina
  • Australia
  • Austria
  • Belgium
  • Canada
  • Chile
  • China
  • Colombia
  • Denmark
  • Finland
  • France
  • Georgia
  • Germany
  • Gibraltar
  • Hong Kong
  • Hungary
  • Iceland
  • Ireland
  • Italy
  • Japan
  • Latvia
  • Liechtenstein
  • Luxembourg
  • Malaysia
  • Monaco
  • Mongolia
  • Netherlands
  • New Zealand
  • Norway
  • Panama
  • Peru
  • Portugal
  • Singapore
  • Slovenia
  • South Korea
  • Spain
  • Sweden
  • Taiwan
  • Thailand
  • United Kingdom
  • United States
  • Venezuela

Looking at the software its just like skype but a little less bloated. I typed in my number and it was calling 2 seconds later. I was amazed.

There truly is such a thing as a free lunch.

Of course there is going to be some fine print but it's nothing too unexpected:

* Max 300 minutes per week of free calls, measured over the last 7 days. Unused free minutes cannot be taken to the following week(s). If limit is exceeded, a minimal rate of 1ct/min will be charged (as shown in the VoipStunt software).

So i's obvious here that they want people to use the service so much that they exceed 300mins and buy some credit. 1c/min is actually cheaper than Skypes global rate anyway so I think we have a real contender here.

Moral of the Story: Just when the big guys release something amazing and great, don't forget the little guys could already have something that kills it :D