Jeff Sayre's Blog, page 6

BuddyPress Beginning to Mature At the Right Time

I've written about social-networking fatigue in the past, and still believe that–in the long term–distributed Social Web platforms will win out over the traditional, Web2.0-styled, closed-data-silo social networks. However, until that time arrives, a crack in the armor of the mega social networking sites may be expanding. This presents the BuddyPress project with a prime opportunity.

There is new research out that indicates that teenagers are starting to look for alternatives to Facebook for t...

Google-Verizon Joint Statement Presages End to Net Neutrality

Today, Google and Verizon issued a joint statement on their net neutrality compromise and proposal. In a previous article, I discussed net neutrality and the rumored Google deal.

In their joint policy statement, they outline seven key elements as they call them. In their second element, they clearly state that they are for net neutrality as it pertains to the wired Internet (referred to as wireline). But pay particular attention to the fifth and sixth elements. This is where the issue of...

Goodbye Google Old Friend: It's time for the Open-Source Internet

The issue of net neutrality has once again reared its ugly head, coming to a roiling boil with recent reports of Google entering a back-room deal with Verizon to end net neutrality. Although it is unclear whether these reports are entirely accurate–the PR wings of these two communications titans quickly disputed the claims–this issue is paramount to the Internet's healthy growth and to the numerous entrepreneurs and startups that are banking on the Web-based Internet continuing to provide...

WordPress Hook Sniffer v0.14 Released!

As I posted about ten-days ago, my WordPress Hook Sniffer had a cold, its sniffer all clogged up and not functioning properly. Today, I release a once-again healthy, new and improved Hook Sniffer plugin for all WordPress plugin developers. There are a number of nice improvements.

(You can download the latest version of WordPress Hook Sniffer here. Please read the readme.txt file for important usage and installation notes.)

After the bug fixes, the most noticeable improvement is that you no...

Important Developers' Notice: Please deactivate WordPress Hook Sniffer for the time being

If you are using my WordPress Hook Sniffer plugin, I ask that you please deactivate it at this time and remove the modified plugin.php file–the one that comes with the plugin–replacing it with the original version that ships with WordPress. Make sure that you use the one that comes with the version of WordPress you are running.

I have been having a few issues with BuddyPress development over the past week. I went through all the usual techniques to isolate the issue, finally deactivating all m...

Thinking Outside the Privacy Box

When it comes to issues of privacy and identity, the Web continues to experience growing pains. People speak of privacy and identity management as if they were separate issues. I believe that managing your personal identity is tantamount to managing your privacy. In effect, what is termed Privacy 2.0 and Identity 2.0 are really one and the same thing.

There are differing software tools, protocols, and specifications in the Privacy 2.0 and Identity 2.0 realms. There are also differences...

The Answer is Ebooks

One of numerous variables that are often overlooked in calculating the environmental impacts of any product replacement is ecosystem services. It is an exceedingly difficult variable to include as it encompasses additional subvariables, many of which are difficult to fully quantify.

As publishers and authors scramble to figure out which of the quickly-evolving publishing paradigms will take hold, the issue of what product type is greener–ebooks or paper books–keeps coming up. In my mind...

Repackaging the Promise of the Social Semantic Web

I recently read Robert Scoble's blog post, Privacy Reboot Needed. He makes a compelling case for the possible benefits accrued to each Web citizen that volunteers to expose their entire activity stream–across their various social networks–for all to see.

However, there is one comment that Robert makes at the end of his piece that demonstrates that we in the Social Semantic Web space have a ways to go to get our message across. He states that:

If Facebook wants to be trusted it must make a...

The Growing Panoply of Specialty BuddyPress Developer and Administration Tools

When it comes to the availability of useful, specialty plugins for site administrators and plugin developers, BuddyPress may be approaching an interesting inflection point. Recently, several new plugins have been released that help site administrators better understand and manage their network or offer developers insight into vexing issues and help make coding their WordPress and BuddyPress plugins a little easier.

These are not the normal, run-of-the-mill plugins that extend BuddyPress by...

BuddyPress Featured Members Plugin Widget Re-Released

After dragging my feet for too long, I've finally upgraded and updated my old Featured Members Widget to work with WP/MU 2.9.2 and BuddyPress 1.2.3. The code has been entirely rewritten using the WordPress Plugin API.

This re-released version is what I call a plugin widget as it is a BuddyPress-specific widget and must be activated like other BP plugins. Widget installation is handled this way so that if BuddyPress is not activated, then this plugin widget will not be loaded—which could cause ...