Jared Smith › Comments

I successfully updated to Mac OS X 10.7.3 the other day via Software Update, but there were a lot of people who didn’t. Looks like Apple is now pushing the entire 1.3GB Combo Update package at least temporarily until they find and fix the delta update. For what it’s worth, 10.7.3 has been great so [...] - Jared Smith

Looks like Mac OS X 10.7.3 is close. I’m hoping that’s the case, because I’ve suffered from an incredibly annoying bug where portions of the user interface are discolored when I attach or detach from an external monitor (a configuration I switch between a couple times a day). It’s not just me, so here’s hoping [...] - Jared Smith

ProPublica has a nicely designed interactive list of likely SOPA and PIPA supporters in both chambers of Congress. Current TV has a cool explanation about how ProPublica’s app, dubbed SOPA Opera, determines who is a supporter and who is an opponent — pretty fantastic stuff (especially if you’re into sentiment analysis). - Jared Smith

If you’re curious as to why there is such an uproar about the Stop Online Piracy Act and its companion in the Senate, the PROTECT IP Act, read Mat Howie’s post at MetaFilter, in which he describes a situation where he was targeted by a mistaken takedown notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and [...] - Jared Smith

A common thread through the SOPA drama is that Congress is legislating from a position of ignorance on how the Internet works. In a column for the Guardian today, Dan Gillmor argues the opposite: [...] What we’re seeing does not derive from any misunderstanding. Rather, I’m convinced, this concerted push to censor the internet, through [...] - Jared Smith

SOPA has been tabled for now (though the Protect IP Act, SOPA’s contemporary, lives on in the Senate). Pardon my cynicism, but I’m fairly sure that in an election year, no member of the House would want to be saddled with passing a bill that the public believes would censor the Internet. Something tells me [...] - Jared Smith

I’ve been exploring LESS this weekend as a way to make writing CSS a much more efficient affair. So far, so very good! I’m using LESS.app for Mac OS X to compile my .less files down to CSS with each save. There are Ruby scripts and JavaScript available for interpreting LESS on the fly, but [...] - Jared Smith

"Totally. I looked at SASS and think LESS is easier to pick up. Disqus generic email template [image: DISQUS] <http: disqus.com=""></http:>" - Jared Smith

"The beauty of the GPL, which WordPress is licensed under: If you don't like it, fork it. Something tells me that won't happen here, though." - Jared Smith

"Doesn't look like Disqus hooks into this yet, even with comment sync between D and WordPress.  Worth looking into. Replies by XMPP are the next logical step, but would probably run into problems with third-party comment solutions (like we're seeing with Disqus comments)." - Jared Smith

Matt Mullenweg: Every Jetpack-powered WordPress is now a Jabber node you can subscribe to with im.wordpress.com — Matt Mullenweg (@photomatt) January 10, 2012 Glad to see someone still remembering how powerful it can be to get notified of social media over IM. It’s still a real shame Twitter never brought back its XMPP bot. - Jared Smith

Count me among those who find plenty of value in blog comments not only because the ability to add something to another person’s Web page is quite powerful, but disparate conversations on third-party services are pretty hard to wrangle (Echo and LiveFyre are getting better at this, but they are far from perfect). Ultimately, whether [...] - Jared Smith

"Given the recent debates over blog commenting, it seems email is just fine (and preferred, even) for a growing number of bloggers." - Jared Smith

"Most blogs (not just the political ones) are in a very hard position from a community management standpoint.  If they allow too many inflammatory comments, their community very likely will devolve quickly into a flamefest.  If they start removing a lot of comments, the community will cry "censorship" and turn the flames on the site owners.  It's a hell of a tightrope that takes a lot of talent to walk. In the end, though, it's on the site owner to set the tone for their site.  Anil Dash's take on this from last summer is fantastic: http://dashes.com/anil/2011/07..." - Jared Smith

WordPress 3.3.1 is now out. Upgraded here without a hitch. It fixes a security problem so be sure to update sooner rather than later. - Jared Smith

A rumor that Facebook Timeline won’t support IE 7 got traction over the New Year’s weekend. According to a comment by Facebook engineer Stefan Parker, though, Facebook will eventually support Timeline on IE 7 (and 6, for that matter). IE 6 got all the attention for being the straggler, but with it finally fading out [...] - Jared Smith

Not sure what happened earlier when I posted my missive about IE 6, but Apache lost its mind and ground to a halt earlier today. A quick look at some vitals indicated that the issue was related to the Twitter API (which points to the Twitter Tools plugin which has archived my last four years [...] - Jared Smith

Internet Explorer 6 usage share in the US is now below 1 percent according to Microsoft. If you’re still expending energy trying to design for IE 6, it really is time to move on. It turned 10 last year. For some perspective, the other active browsers at the time of IE 6′s release included Netscape [...] - Jared Smith

From my 2011 blog statistics, as packaged festively by Jetpack on WordPress.com: Guess I better blog smarter in 2012. - Jared Smith

2011 was bananas. I got married, moved to the biggest metro area I’ve lived in since I was 4, worked my butt off, got to see the Space Shuttle with a ton of amazing people, and a whole lot more. 2011, you were a crazy mofo. I can’t even imagine what 2012 will be like. [...] - Jared Smith

"Thanks Mike!  Looking forward to crossing paths again soon." - Jared Smith

"Hope to see you at some point in 2012, Patrick -- let's see if we can get that number to three times after seeing you twice in 2011!" - Jared Smith

"What's wild is that a majority of my top posts were from 2005-2007 -- impressive and completely unintentional SEO. :)" - Jared Smith

"IsraeliteIndeed In addition to Jon's advice, if you are on WordPress.com, you can use the [tweet] shortcode to embed tweets. A plugin is available for WordPress.org installations to bring the shortcode in (and it's probably a pretty good bet that the shortcode will be in Jetpack pretty soon)." - Jared Smith

MLB concludes a very uneventful collective bargaining negotiation and comes out looking like the poster child for labor peace. What kind of parallel universe is this? - Jared Smith

I’m trying to get into Path more. While the idea of a social network with an extremely low friend limit (150 friends) is hard for me to grasp given my assumptions that anything I publish online is for public consumption, I’m won over by its excellent design — indeed, it has a timeline implementation that [...] - Jared Smith

Paul Thurrott makes a damning case for RIM’s demise: RIM didn’t declare bankruptcy or exit the market for smart phones or anything. What they did announce, however, was that their next generation mobile OS, now called Blackberry 10, won’t ship until the end of 2012, a full year from now. This comes on the heels [...] - Jared Smith

ReadWriteWeb’s acquisition by SAY Media is an exciting development, the fruit of many years of hard work by Richard MacManus and the ReadWriteWeb team (which I have been fortunate to be a part of for the past two years). I’m really looking forward to working with my RWW compatriots and the SAY Media team on [...] - Jared Smith

Patrick O’Keefe has your answer in the form of the most educational use of the isjaredsingle.com codebase ever. - Jared Smith

I’ve had a fascination with The Weather Channel’s local forecast computers since infantile amnesia set in, so reading this post about the tribulations of the IntelliStar 2, the forecast computer that drives the Local on the 8s programming for The Weather Channel’s high definition simulcast, was a fun read. Apparently the project was in trouble [...] - Jared Smith