Beauty of people

Recommended Wordpress plugins

Over the past two years I have set up several Wordpress installations for myself and others. These are the plugins that I install every time:

• FCKEditor. A great editor. The newest version with its colored buttons looks ugly (use an older version if you still have that), but it does a good job.
• ReCaptcha. Of course. Akismet does a good job catching spam, but ReCaptcha adds another layer of spam protection, and your contributors do ’some good’ work at the same time. You have the addiotional benefit of activating MailHide, which hides email addresses.
• Raw HTML. Wordpress occassionally messes with you inserted HTML (embed) code, especially when you prepare post with Youtube embed code (for publishing later). If you come back to your post at a later time with the intention of publishing it, the embed code is gone – ‘interpreted away’ by Wordpress.
• TweetMeme. This allows your readers to tweet your posts.
• My category order. This allows you to determine the order in which your categories appear, so you can have the Other… category at the bottom.

There is a plugin for database backups that I have not tested yet, because I download my Wordpress database from the Plesk control panel at the providers that I use.

I’ was also experimenting with the Websense Defensio spam filter, but this had a serious conflict with FCKEditor. I had to disable Defensio to edit, forgot to re-enable it a couple of times, and ended op with 1000’s of spams ;-(
That’s too high a price, so I reverted to Akismet and reCaptcha.

Did You Know 4.0

This is another official update to the original "Shift Happens" video. This completely new Fall 2009 version includes facts and stats focusing on the changing media landscape, including convergence and technology, and was developed in partnership with The Economist.

For more information, or to join the conversation, please visit http://mediaconvergence.economist.com and http://shifthappens.wikispaces.com.
 
Content by XPLANE, The Economist, Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod and Laura Bestler. Music by DoKashiteru, "Home Tonight." Design and development by XPLANE.

Dan the man

Made by Studio Joho:

Solar system music box

The solar system as a music box, made by White Vinyl Design. Click the picture for the animation:

You will have to wait  248 years to hear Pluto….

Pixels!

A beautiful video by Patrick Jean from OneMoreProduction.

Tetris, PacMan, Frogger, Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, BlockOut…. Did I miss any?
And a reference to 2001 A Space Odyssey…. ?

April Fool

We just passed April Fool’s day. Of all the pranks I have seen no one beats this one:

In 2008 the BCC reporetd that investigators for the television programme Miracles of Evolution has shot footage of a cololny of Adélie penguins that coule fly. Presentor Terry Jones explains that these penguins migrate to South America each winter:

In a second video the makers explain how they made it:

Maria Popova TED mashups

As you can see from (a lot of) previous posts I’m a big fan of what’s happening a the TED conferences. Money and the fact that I’d have to fly keep me from going there, but luckily they have all talks online.

Maria Popova made some nice mashups of what she considers TED to be. Here’s one:

The Evolution of Storytelling from Maria Popova on Vimeo.

 The other’s can be found at her Vimeo page.

Bert and Ernie Gangsta-Rap

This is not an 'official' Muppet video; it turns out there still a Muppet Show channel on Youtube with a lot of funny Muppet stuff, like Beaker's Ballad:

Of course, Statler and Waldorf are the best...

T-shirt war!

You can also look at the ‘Making of’:

The power of TED

Since a little more than a year, TED conferences are being held all over the world in the form of TEDx events.

Read the amazing story of Masarat Daud bringing TED to Fatehpur in India.

Maybe this post has an incorrect title. It should have read The power of people.