The previous two years, I’ve helped put together a WordPress meetup in Amersfoort. While this was fun to do, it didn’t really make sense, because I do not live in (or even really near) Amersfoort. As a result know very little about essential things like venues there. It looks like this year, local WordPress people will take over “their” meetup, and I’ve been thinking about setting up a brand new one in “my” 035 area of The Netherlands.

Ideally, I’d like to do something that’s a little more informal than the Amersfoort ones were, and probably also more frequent. If there’s anyone who’d like to help organize, speak at, or simply attend such a meetup, please let me know in the comments. Oh, and despite the little joke I pulled with the logo, I’m hoping to keep it as low-key and relaxed as possible. Suit and tie entirely optional, perhaps even frowned upon .

One of the biggest, and most useful additions to WordPress in recent years has been the introduction of Custom Post Types. Before CPTs, all the content in your site needed to either be in pages or in blog posts. If your site needed a lot of different types of data, you’d typically use categories (or even tags) to tell them apart. I’ve seen (and probably built) examples where “products” and “news” were post categories, and the site’s front-end would continuously filter out one of the two. In hindsight: madness.

Since the introduction of Custom Post Types, it makes sense to declare separate types for different types of data. When doing so, there’s a crucial argument (passed to the register_post_type function) called “supports”. This argument tells WordPress which post features should be available for the new post type. This allows you to mix and match various features. No need for an excerpt? Require a “featured image”? Need custom fields? No problem. But there’s a catch.

Built-in features only

There’s a fixed list of features you can enable or disable. They correspond to the features present in WordPress’s two built-in types, post and pages. Nothing else. And as far as I know, there’s no (easy, developer-friendly) way to add new features. As nice as CPTs are, I think this seriously limits their potential.

Imagine being able to do something like this to create a CPT for a travel video blog.

'supports' => array( 'title', 'editor', 'author', 'thumbnail', 'subtitle' 'video', 'geo-coords', 'event-time' )

The first four features come standard, but the real fun is in the other (fictitious) ones. Being able to add a video to a post in a manner similar to how featured images work could have many potential advantages over simply adding it into the post’s content. And although there are plugins that’ll let you geo-tag and add timestamps, not all of those support CPTs, and they do not all store data in the same way. They’re all adding data to posts, but they’re all doing it in their own way.

Plugin territory

I’m not saying all these features should be in WordPress’s lean and mean core. Most of the ones I can come up with are arguably plugin territory. But it would be nice to be able to define custom post features once, and then be able to add them to any (custom) post type. WordPress could offer a coherent, standardized way for them to present themselves and store their data. A Widget API of sorts, for the backend.

One might argue that you can do all these things using meta boxes, post meta (or extra database tables) and such, but I feel there’s a certain elegance to opening up “post features” as an API. For one thing, there are plugins that let end users define CPTs without any coding, and this would give them more things to mix and match. And perhaps, something like the functionality of those plugins could eventually make it into core…?

Last week, I came across the video below, and it made me wonder how this smartphone holder worked. The stop-motion animation shows both metal and plastic objects clinging to the holder’s surface, so magnetism was out. I tweeted about it, Ideasbynet offered to send me a sample. It arrived today, and I think I have it figured out now.

The holder itself is made out of plastic, but the dark rectangle on the front is silicone. That patch of silicone isn’t sticky (no glue), but it offers extreme friction. And because it’s at an angle, gravity pushes your device onto it. The result is that the phone doesn’t slide off, but seems to levitate. Nifty.

My HTC Desire has a camera that extrudes slightly, so the back of the phone is not entirely flat. Because of this, the total contact area between phone and holder is smaller, but it still sticks perfectly. I can’t turn the holder upside-down, like with the iPhone 4 in the video, but I wasn’t planning to anyway.

Unfortunately, ideasbynet only sells these in quantities of 100 or more. So you’ll have to talk your boss into giving them out as promotional gifts, or at Christmas or something. Shouldn’t be too hard, given the holder’s geeky appeal, or should I say “gravitational pull”?

WordPress has recently been described as “the dark matter of the web”. It’s absolutely everywhere. The WordPress ecosystem is probably bigger than Facebook. But at the same time, most of the WordPress people I know are “flying solo”. There are a lot of freelancers out there who work with a small team, or none at all.

That’s why things like WordCamps and meetups are important. They offer the WordPress community a way to share experiences, exchange ideas and get inspired. Thinking along those same lines, Dutch Automattic “Happiness Engineer” Karim Osman is organizing a “WordPress Coworking Trip” called “WP On Tour”. Or as Karim puts it:

“The idea is to step out of your daily (office) environment and work at a challenging location somewhere in the world. Like a holiday, but then with WordPress geeks Everybody is welcome: bloggers, designers, programmers, entrepreneurs, etc.”

Sounds like fun, right? So much so in fact that the first trip, which takes place in Spain early next year, is now fully booked. And one of the lucky people who “got in” is me . In January, I’ll be working from a luxurious villa in Sitges for 7 days. The villa only accommodates twelve people, so about 99.999% of the WordPress community won’t fit. Fortunately, there’s a form on Karim’s site in case you’d like to be kept up to date about future tours.

There’s a Twitter list of attendees too.

People here in the Netherlands will often complain about poor 3G data speeds. Twitter is full of people complaining about T-Mobile. Some will suggest Vodafone for better reception, while others agree that KPN has the best network. I simply don’t know. And to my knowledge, no independent studies have been done recently. So maybe it’s time for a community app that measures network performance, and reports back to an independent database?

The idea is simple enough. Let’s say we create an Android app that, at predetermined intervals, does a quick analysis of the phone’s 3G reception. It then sends anonymized location and signal strength data to a server that collects them. If enough people could be persuaded to run the app, this server would then be able to display a “heat map” of average speeds per network provider. Nearly in real time. Or you could use historical data to see whether T-Mobile really has poorer performance all around.

I fully realize that this means doing almost the same thing as Apple’s recently been criticized for. Not only would people have to devote storage space, cpu cycles and battery life to help do this, they’d also have to trust the app’s authors. The app would need to keep track of your location, although nothing needs to be stored permanently on the phone. Making the app open source would probably help, and the rewards may well be worth it.

You might wonder what happens when a phone has no connection at all. I think those reports could be buffered on the device and sent later. The server’s algorithm should probably check the number of reports still coming in and start suspecting trouble if there’s a sudden drop. Different phones might also have different readings, and while that probably averages out, it might be worth also collecting make and model info.

As with all the ideas I post to my blog, I haven’t done much research into this. It just popped into my head. Please let me know if something like this already exists. Or if you have other comments. Oh, and most definitely if you’re a talented Android app coder .

Last year, @BruceJillis and I created Gunfollow. Recently, there seems to be a renewed interest in this Twitter hitman of sorts. So we’ve been thinking of ways to make Gunfollow even more fun. The easiest way to do that seems to be to add more messages. Gunfollow uses a predefined set of “semi-rude” tweets that it sends to its victims. But not all of them are as witty as we’de like them to be. And that’s where you could come in .

Please feel free to post suggestions in the comments. We’ll pick the funniest ones and add them to the site, so you and everyone else can use them to gunfollow people. Please keep in mind that:

• Tweets are up to 140 characters long. We add the #gunfollow hashtag and the victim’s username, so it’s best to stay under 100.
• Messages can optionally include the unfollower’s name, like in “@YourName hired me to permanently unfollow you”.
• Keep it fun. There’s no point in being plain rude. Tongue-in-cheek works best.

There’s no price to be won or anything, but we might consider granting you immunity from future assassination attempts. You can’t put a price on peace of mind, can you? Thanks!

There are plenty of way to have “automated” newsletters sent out based on your WordPress blog’s RSS feed. Feedburner and MailChimp, among other do this, and there’s nothing wrong with those services.

However, if you’d want to write content specifically for your weekly e-mail, RSS is not ideal. High quality e-mailings usually don’t simply copy blog posts, they’re carefullt crafted by copywriters to get as much response as possible. That’s why the idea of a newsletter-theme has been floating around in my head. Here’s what I’m thinking might work…

Using WordPress to author e-mail newsletters

1. Set up a WordPress install on something like mycompany.com/newsletter.
2. Write posts like you normally would.
3. The theme renders the newsletter as e-mail-friendly HTML.
4. Take the theme’s output and send it out using a bulk e-mail service of your choice.
5. The WordPress install functions as a “read this online” fallback and image host.
6. Ideally, the theme would have a custom taxonomy to group posts into newsletter issues.

I once spent a couple of weeks editing HTML mailings for use in a very high-end e-mail newsletter system that did not have a nice visual editor, and this idea is primarily aimed at the users of such systems. But even compared to more user-friendly systems, there’s a case to be made for using WordPress. Authoring in an environment you control makes it easier to switch mailing services, and WordPress adds near unlimited flexibility.

Potential drawbacks

No plan, certainly not one as immature as this one, is perfect. Gathering statistics is critical with newsletters, and there’s tons of standard WordPress stuff that the theme would have to omit to keep the result e-mail client friendly. But I think a customizable newsletter theme for WordPress has potential. I’d love to hear what you think.

The Twitter community has a very positive feel to it. This is in part because unfollowing other users is easy, and unless the people being unfollowed have special tools in place, they’ll never know.

But sometimes, simply unfollowing someone is just not enough. That’s why there’s now Gunfollow.com, the Twitter hitman. You can “hire” Gunfollow to unfollow and block a user. It’ll be quick an painless, and you can choose a message that gets delivered to the “victim”. If you prefer, this message can be delivered anonymously.

I had the basic idea for this website at six in the morning last Friday. I tweeted about it a few hours later, and @BruceJillis offered to help out. Working in our spare time only, we had a working prototype two days later, and now, after less than a week, the initial version is ready for you to try.

So, if you’re following someone who deserves to be unfollowed “with a vengeance”, give Gunfollow a try. You won’t regret it, but your victim will…

I’ve been using computers daily since I was twelve, and I’ve never had any trouble with RSI or Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. When I look back at how I sat hunched over my Amiga 500 while playing games, that in itself is a small miracle. Nowadays, I pay close attention to my posture, and I can work long days without even the slightest hint of pain. Until I pick up one of my mobile devices that is.

Last night, I couldn’t sleep because my shoulder was sore. Had it been a Friday, this wouldn’t have surprised me, but this was Monday night, the end of my three-day weekend. When I started going over what I’d done the last couple of days, I started getting the suspicion that my iPod and phone were to blame. I’d not used my desktop PC in three days, and my laptop was still in it’s sleeve.

Think about it. If you’re the type of person who read long web pages on their phone and tweets often throughout the day, you end up holding that device up in front of you for extended periods of time. Modern smartphones are usually around 150 grams, so it’s no workout, but still. My current theory is that it’s mostly the weight of the arm itself.

At this point I’m going to try cutting back on my iPod and phone usage for a while, and see if that helps. I’m also not getting an iPad, because I’m pretty sure it would kill me. I’m also wondering whether other gadget freaks have similar issues. Are these mobile gadgets going to spawn a new RSI epidemic?

Less than two days ago, Blondmonster asked me to review a haiku she’d written for (if I remember correctly) her employer’s Christmas greeting card. We both love haikus and we immediately started brainstorming. “Cow” stanslates as “koe” in Dutch, and we’d joked before about a “haikoe” (which is pronounced just like “haiku” in English). Sometimes you just need to act on impulses like this, so without further ado, I present to you: Haikoe.nl.

The website is extremely beta, and was hacked together from Snapatar leftovers, the Twitter API and some great artwork by Blondmonster. It will break. Possibly even today. But I’ll fix it when it does, and I hope that in the mean time you’ll feed our little bovine friend some haikus. Simply tweet a haiku and tag it #haikoe. You’ll then need to refresh the page to update.