In no particular order these are some of the things I want to focus on:

BuddyPress
I’d like to write some plugins and/or themes and really get back into the BuddyPress scene as well as emersing myself more fully in the WordPress community.

Develop and Release!
I’ve been sittting on a number of personal projects for far too long that I want to get off the ground this year so watch this space.

Blog
Yes, this blog! I plan to be a better blogger and blog more regularly. If I start to achieve some of the other things in this list at least I’ll have more to talk about!

Photography
I’ve had my Nikon D80 Digital SLR for nearly 3 years now and I’ve yet to spend any time experimenting and learning to really use it for anything but point-and-shoot style photography, mainly of my son which to be honest was a large part of the reason for puchasing the camera in the first place! This year I’d like to get back to my creative roots and really start to push the envelope a little.

Piano
I started learning Piano (for the third time) last year and while I’m still on the folksy beginners stuff I’d like to be able to play some “real” music before the end f this year… music like this.

So there it is… there are a few other things I’d like to do such as learning Italian but I think the list above will keep me more than busy enough, and there are some other upcoming developments that I think might consume rather a lot of my time… but more on that later

Yes, the Mac has some nice features, and there is no denying the allure of some of their hardware, although some of it is a little on the industrial side of “industrial design” for my tastes… yes I’m talking about you Mac Pro! But to say OSX is better than Windows (even Vista) is just crap.

I work in an office where more people use Macs than PCs… and yet more people use Windows than OSX. Sure, we’re a software development company and a Microsoft (.net) one at that but it’s still a telling fact that a large portion of of the Mac loving crowd simply can’t do what they need to do with a MAC alone… for this you only have to look at how popular products like Parallels, VMWare Fusion and BootCamp are. How many Windows users on the other hand run OSX for this reason? None? surely this can’t be!

I use Windows… I have used it since the days of Windows 95, having started out on a Mac, and while like ALL operating systems there are things I don’t like, I enjoy using Windows, especially Windows 7 which I have been using without issue since the early betas. The “Macs are better than PCs”articles are really startin’ to piss me off as they are so completely one eyed and completely ignore any negatives on the Mac side even going so far in some cases to raise the cost of upgrade as a negative for Windows! Seriously?!?!  How many times have Apple cut there users off at the knees in the last 10 years?

Window’s Vista had problems yes… most, after the first few months, were perception based however, helped and guided lovingly by Apple of course. Windows 7 is at a minimum the equal of anything in the OSX world and in my opinion a far superior OS. It’s stable, easy to use and has great features… Apple can try in their advertising to tie Windows 7 to the mis-guided perception issues that plagued Vista but it’s an argument they will ultimatly lose. They’ll have a much harder time convincing anybody to “Switch” when the OS they are already running is this good.

So it’s great to see articles like this occasionally that put some of the BS arguments used into some proper perspective.

One of the great things about living at the bottom of the world here in New Zealand, is our time zone. We’re ahead of pretty much everybody else, with the exception of a few small pacific islands, so while it’s 7.30am on Tuesday October 22nd here it’s 7.30pm on Monday in the UK and 11.30am Monday in California!

So with that said, and today being October 22nd (well here at least) it’s Windows 7 release day! This actually doesn’t mean much to me as I’ve been running Windows 7 on all three of my machines since the first beta’s (and it’s been incredibly stable).

I’ve read both good and bad reviews in the mainstream non-tech media over the past couple of weeks but I can tell you right here, right now: Window’s 7 is quite simply the best Windows yet… and, unlike so many it seems, I never had a problem with Vista! (don’t even get me started on all the Vista FUD BS).

Windows 7 is more of an evolution over Vista than a completely new OS. To most users it will look and feel very familier but there are heaps of small and not so small changes to both the user experience and under the hood that make this a BIG evolution.

Things I’m lovin’ about Windows 7:

• Desktop Slideshows
  7 has native support for desktop background slide shows. Great when you have kids and you just can’t decide which picture of your favourite little person(s) to plaster all over your computer desktop.
• Window Snapping
  Simply drag your windows to the left or right of the screen to create perfectly tiled windows, or to the top of the screen to maximise. You can also use the Windows key and the arrow keys to cycle through the snapped positions for the active window.
• Taskbar Pinning
  Rather than the QuickLaunch toolbar from XP/Vista (that is still available if you want it) 7 uses taskbar pinning. Every application that is running will show up on the new taskbar but you can selectivle “Pin” applications so they remain available in the taskbar when not running. Applications can be pinned from anywhere, Start menu, Windows Explorer etc. and draged around to order on the taskbar itself. Active applications are highlighted and, depending on your settings will expand to show the applications label/name.
• Taskbar Jump Lists
  Right click an icon on the taskbar, running or not, and you are presented with a list of actions/recent files etc. that relate to that application.
• Start Menu Search
  When you open the start menu simply start typing the name of the application you want to run and the list filters and shows only what your after, then hit enter and it launches.
• Windows Explorer
  A heavily improved local search system and new “Libraries” make for far simpler organisation and finding everything is a breeze.

Of course I can’t possibly do all the new or improved features in Windows 7 justice, so if you have the time and fancy an in depth read on what’s hot and what’s not with Windows 7 rock on over to the Win Super Site and read Paul Thurott’s 12 part Windows 7 Review… without spoiling the suprise he sums it up perfectly in part 12:

“Windows 7 is so good, in fact, that users are clamoring for it. Individuals want it at home, and they are asking for it at work. And after a half decade of putting the brakes on OS upgrades, businesses seem to be rallying around Windows 7 as well…”

“…Microsoft has an OS in Windows 7 that is simply better than anything Apple offers. And a more relevant (and true) correlation between the Mac and Windows worlds is that the vast majority of Mac users also run Windows, either in dual boot or virtualized. And the percentage of Mac users who do run Windows–already north of 80 percent–will only increase with Windows 7.”

“Wrapping up, it looks to me like the future just got a whole lot brighter. Rejoice, PC users. Windows 7 is here.”

So I’m loving Windows 7 and you should too!

Matt’s jokes aside I very much believe that the direction WordPress is heading in will naturally make it’s .com arm a competitor of sorts, if not directly, to the MySpaces and Facebooks of the world as the single user and multi-user codebases merge and BuddyPress matures.

There are already a growing number of alternative WordPress driven offerings to AutoMattic’s WordPress.com springing up such as incsub’s blogs.mu and wp.mu which allows users to set up there own branded multi-user WordPress offerings without having to deal with installation and configuration of WordPress mu on their own server. I think we are also going to see an explosion of smaller independant, and potentially connected, niche social networks built on the WordPress/BuddyPress platform due to the unprecidented level of flexability, accessability and control and with far greater customisation potential via Plugins and Themes than any of the current solutions out there such as Ning and Virb.

Gravatar, already used extensivly across the various WordPress properties, and other AutoMattic offerings such as Intense Debate and PollDaddy will also likely be key elements in the social evolution of WordPress.

With over 5 million WordPress.com blogs and 5.5 million wordpress 2.8 downloads (and counting) simply connecting all those blogs together makes for a pretty sizable social network right off the bat… it’s no Facebook for sure but it’s going to interesting to watch over the coming months.

I’ll be watching with great interest to see what WordPress 2.9, 3.0 and beyond do in the social space… I see a bright, fun filled and SOCIAL future for WordPress!

I’ve been so busy on other projects for the past couple of months that I haven’t been able to be as involved with the BuddyPress community as I would have liked but with this milestone I’m itching to get back in there and try out all the new stuff and finally get BabbleLounge up an running! The only thing I would like to have seen in this release would be the inclusion of the Photo Albums feature that has been slated for late 2009 (and there isn’t much “late” left).

To find out all the cool new features of BuddyPress 1.1 go read the release announcement, try the demo site or download it for yourself.

Well done Andy and all the contributors for this awesome platform!

A site, that in an ideal world I would be able to take advantage of, called WPMU DEV Premium is just about to hit the milestone of having 100 plugins, themes and videos for use with Wordpress MU and the BuddyPress.  As with so many it seems, I can’t afford the outlay for a membership as none of my projects are profit bearing. If I could justify the cost however there is one plugin in particular that I see real value in:

Supporter

The Supporter plugin provides a seemless way to integrate a paid upgrades feature similar to the wordpress.com upgrades system, in fact WPMU DEV Premium also offer a plugin called Upgrades that does EXACTLY what the wordpress.com system does using a system of credits as opposed to supporters paypal $ based system. This is a feature which with the exception of Supporter has been sorely missing in the WPMU world so this definately fills a significant gap in the market. The only thing that would make this plugin a complete no-brainer for me would be support for BuddyPress and I’m sure that’s not far away!

Now if I could just find the money for a subscription perhaps I could start monetising some of these projects!

Congratulations James and Andrew on reaching the Ton!

After a search of the WordPress extend repository I came across Smart Archives Reloaded by Scribu, an evolution of the original Smart Archives by Justin Blanton and while it didn’t quite achieve what I was aiming for I could see the potential to get where I was going… so I rolled up my sleeves, put my php hat and started coding.

The new fancy archive is built using a multi-level implementation of the jQuery.Tools tab control and also adds post categories and dates to the list of output tags available. After a couple of days of tweaking and testing I got in touch with Scribu to present “Super” Smart Archives Reloaded. Needless to say he loved it and offered to roll it into the core plugin.

So from version 1.7 of Smart Archives Reloaded you too can now take advantage of the “fancy” archives option and enjoy the smartest archives on the web!

You can see the archive in action here or go download it and try it for yourself… it’s as simple as upload, activate and view, and it even comes with a simple default style!

This is only my second WordPress plugin and my first to see the light of day and it feels great to give something back to the WordPress community. Thanks to Scribu for including my work in the plugin.

A couple months ago during a two week period I’d really rather forget (that started with my car being stolen!) my 1st gen iPod Nano, that has served me faithfully for over 5 years, decided it was going to have a bit of a melt down. It still  “kinda” works but only 40% of the screen is visibible and it now has frequent memory loss issues, forgetting both where it was in podcasts and music tracks as well as sometime what it has stored in it’s memory.

Being pretty close to the expected September iPod announcements I figured it made sense to wait to replace it with a next generation model. So after struggling on with my disabled little friend for two more months I was, to say the least, pretty dissappointed with what Apple rolled out last week, and it seems I’m not the only one.

I am stunned that Apple would decided to roll out not one but two pieces of much anticipated and, in the case of FM radio, for me pretty desireable functionality in it’s now low-end Nano range and not make that same upgrade to the high-end iPod Touch.

Having been thinking that I would go for the mid-sized iTouch when the new models were announced my initial reaction was that this made that purchase decision much harder. Having thought about it over the past few days however I have actually come to the conclusion that it makes the choice easy. I’m not going to buy either… If, as has been suggested by numerous sources, the camera upgrade to the iPod Touch was held back for technical reasons one could also suggest that perhaps other functionality was also held back as part of that same upgrade, such as the FM radio feature, and that those features might be rolled out a few months down the road. Either way, as long as my trusty crippled iPod Nano continues to “Kinda” work I saw no compelling upgrade path with last weeks announcements so sorry Apple, “I’m not buyin’ it!”

Xero, the company I work for, is a Premium sponsor and while it sux to be giving up my weekend with the family I am looking forward to hearing all the latest news in the WordPress world and attending some of the unconference activities on offer. It’s going to be a great opportunity to hear from Ma.tt, who is doing a “Town Hall” style Q&A after lunch on Saturday (although I was a little disappointed to hear he wouldn’t be doing his stock State of the Word speech) and others on subjects such as bbPress forum integration, building community and e-commerce. I was hoping for some BuddyPress related presentations but I guess we’ll have to wait until next year when I think that will really have become HUGE!

If you’re not already coming, take a look at the schedule and get your tickets here.

• An interview on “The Way I Work” with Matt in Inc Magazine
• Another interview with Matt on WebLogTools Collection
• And finally Matt’s “State of the Word” keynote from WordCamp San Francisco

The most interesting take home I got from the Inc interview was this:

Music helps me when I’m coding, which is still my priority. When you’re coding, you really have to be in the zone. I’ll listen to a single song, over and over on repeat, like a hundred times.

I’ve found myself doing this a lot lately and was starting to think I was a bit weird, so it’s good to know that at least I’m in good company!