Are You Happy With Your Internet Provider?

In the UK, BBC News reports that free broadband users are “less happy” and not satisfied with their Internet suppliers. “Free” broadband deals have resulted in a downturn in customer satisfaction levels, a report has said. According to the uSwitch Customer Satisfaction Report, most providers fail to match rising customer numbers with improved services and […]

Taiwan Earthquake Disrupts Internet Access

What would you do if a major disaster took out your Internet? A 6.7 magnitude earthquake struck near Taiwan a few days ago. According to Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau measured it at 6.7 and was followed by an aftershock registering 7.0. While two people were killed, the bigger news has been the disruption of Internet […]

Banned, Blocked, and Censored Bloggers

According to the American Library Association, September 30 through October 6, 2012, is a salute to Banned Books week. Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. Typically held during the last week of September, it highlights the value of free and open access to information. Banned Books Week brings together […]

18+ Things You Can Do on the WordPress Comments Panel

The WordPress development and UI team put a lot of work into WordPress comments. Did you know there are 18 features to a single WordPress comment not counting the comment content itself? Rarely do we stop to consider these powerful features in WordPress, so let’s take time now to understand all the different features and […]

Comcast Now Restricts Bandwidth Data Transfer Levels

If you haven’t reviewed the GigaOM White Paper: The Facts & Fiction of Bandwidth Caps, do it now. As of Wednesday this week, Comcast, the largest provider of broadband and DSL for Internet access in the United States is going to be restricting your data transfer levels to 250 gigabytes a month. According to Om […]

How to Access Banned WordPress.com Blogs

As discussed in WordPress.com Banned Again: Why Aren’t You Concerned?, WordPress.com continues to be a target for censorship and blocking from various countries and groups around the world attempting to penalize the whole for the “wrongs” of the few the courts or governments decide to penalize, those cutting off thousands of blogs from access. I […]

Are you Willing to Pay Taxes For Your Blog?

In “Taxes Have No Place On The Internet” by Don Reisinger on CNet’s Digital Home, he makes an important point that I thought would have gotten more discussion and coverage: The ban on the Internet tax is one of the most compelling and important bills to cross legislator desks in years. A tax of the […]

Can The DMCA Be Used Against You If Someone Doesn’t Like What You Blog?

According to the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) Contract Watch, public features are misusing the DMCA, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which is designed to protect copyrights on the web. The announcement references a recent Electronic Frontier Foundation press release about a suit brought against a defendant which used the DMCA to request […]

Can You Visualize the Web?

If you could see the web, what would it look like? I was recently asked, “What does the web look like?” This inspired me to find out what it might look like if we could see the web and Internet, all the interconnected parts and pieces that create the spider web for which the “web” […]

Blame WordPress For the World’s Problems

Let’s call this person “wise” using air quotes to give you a description of where they come from in life. This “wise” person confronted to me at a public event to announce that WordPress was evil and must be destroyed. “After all,” he informed me soundly. “While WordPress says it supports freedom of speech, it […]

It’s About Access

If you have a few minutes today, watch this. Oh, watch it anyway. And share it. It won a Webby, the equivalent of the Oscar for the web world. And I have to admit that at the end, I cried. Seriously. Like those in the satirical episode, I don’t live in the wildest woolliest of […]

Russia’s Bloggers Under Attack

If you haven’t been paying attention to one of the largest countries in the world is persecuting bloggers. I’ve written up a summary in the ClarkWP Magazine site produced by my Clark College WordPress students, “The New Blogger’s Law in Russia.” In December 2013, the Russian parliament passed a law to allow the blocking of […]

The Secret Recipe of Comment Spam Comments

Mr. Louis Vuitton just sent me a message in my blog comments I’d like to share with you. I share this touching message because it is highly educational when it comes to the art of spam comments, and serves to remind us of why we love having Akismet, the best comment spam fighter, on our […]

What You Most Need to Know About WordPress

At the recent WordCamp Portland 2012, I was asked by several attendees to cover the basics of WordPress and we came up with What You Most Need to Know About WordPress. Here are the “notes” from that unconference presentation. The Difference Between Categories and Tags I hear this question at WordCamps, from readers, students, and […]

WordPress 3.2 Released: Faster, Prettier, Powerful

WordPress 3.2 has been officially released, this time after a fairly short testing time period. To upgrade, use the built-in automatic upgrade. According to the announcement, this is the 15th major release of WordPress. Wow, that just doesn’t seem possible, and yet it also feels like too few. How far WordPress has come since 2003, […]