Due to the amount of manually-entered spam I am getting on older posts, I am going to be closing comments on any posts that are older than 14 days. Currently, over 98% of comments that I’m getting on older posts have been spam — making it quite time consuming to manually moderate these comments (I had turned on moderation of all comments a while ago, and will continue manually moderating all comments to keep spam comments to a minimum).

Thanks to everyone who has commented on this blog (whether it’s on a new post or an older post), and I hope to keep getting some of the great comments that people have left. I hope closing comments on old posts will not hamper any discussion or dialogue that this site has enjoyed for the past few years.

So I upgraded today to WordPress 2.8 (which I still haven’t really played around with — obviously, since I just upgraded today), and I’m starting to wonder when I can look forward to not having to click that upgrade button any more.

The addition of one-click upgrades to both the WordPress core installation as well as installed plugins was a brilliant feature addition, but I’m hoping things will go one step further and just update my stuff automatically. While I could see the questions raised already (what if something broke? what if you didn’t want to upgrade? what if your database imploded?), why not just make it a feature that you could turn on?

For me anyway, having to log into all of my sites and upgrade WordPress and all its plugins is something that I do irregularly because it’s time-consuming. Would there not be some way to just have WordPress go through the upgrade and just let me know if there’s a problem? I guess we’re still a long ways away from software that can diagnose its own illnesses. Oh well, I can hope, can’t I?

This article about ’managing werewolves’ (you need to read the article to understand the reference, I won’t bother trying to explain it) was sent to me by a friend recently. It’s a very interesting take on managing relationships (both in the workplace as well as outside the office). Just thought I’d quickly post a link in case anyone’s interested in checking it out — it’s worth a read.

Just came across an interesting piece on KMWorld about how important setting up a logical and consistent information architecture is to your organization’s success with SharePoint. There are some great points in this article — and I agree wholeheartedly with the authors’ recommendations.

Having seen a few content management implementations myself (not to mention having talked to many people who have been involved in CM implementations), one of the biggest mistakes that organizations seem to make is not actually talking to anyone who is going to be using the system.

Knowledge management and IT folks sometimes think they understand a system better than the users possibly could; and in most cases, they’re right. But understanding the way a system works and understanding how the content should be organized are two different things.

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DailyTech reports that Yahoo is looking to muscle its way into the social networking game by purchasing some social networking companies — although Yahoo’s not saying which companies it’s actually looking to purchase.

According to Ari Balogh, Yahoo’s CTO, “I can guarantee you there will be some acquisitions, and we will do some stuff in-house.” Yahoo’s also not doing so hot financially. According to the article:

Yahoo’s profits are down, as are most search companies in the current economy. Yahoo earned $118 million in the first quarter of 2009, a drop of 13% year over year with sales totaling $1.58 billion.

While the article points out that Google has overtaken Yahoo as the destination of choice for people conducting web searches, one and a half billion dollars of sales still gives Yahoo quite a bit of weight in the search arena, right?

I’m not sure how a presence in the social networking sphere is going to help Yahoo at this point. While it may lend Yahoo some credibility in terms of social networking, there doesn’t seem to really be a real plan as to how that social networking presence is going to translate into increased profitability.

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This is just one of the bets on Long Bets — a site that is devoted to predictions and bets about all of kinds of things (but mostly social/scientific stuff).

The site is divided into predictions and bets about how the world will turn out, everything from whether machine intelligence will pass the Turing test to whether the universe will eventually stop expanding.

Anyone can predict anything, and any prediction can become a bet when it is challenged. There are a clear set of rules for each bet, and each side of the bet must clearly describe their logic and reasoning for believing that things will turn out a particular way.

Take a look around the site — there are some really interesting bets. One of my favourites is a bet on whether the Large Hadron Collider will destroy the Earth.

I’ve been following Luis Suarez’s mission to live in a world without email with interest pretty much since it started. And while I agree with Luis that email will not die any time soon, I do think Luis’ email journey raises some interesting questions (many of which Luis has noted in blog posts throughout that selfsame journey).

As I was reading the latest post I’ve linked to above, it made me think about why I send email and how I feel about email. I’m sort of ambivalent about the actual act of sending an email — I often get the sense that there are certain things I’d be better off sending through instant messaging, posting somewhere fixed (especially in terms of files) or simply picking up the phone.

I won’t run through an exhaustive list of the disadvantages of email (a quick Google search brings up a ton of results on email’s cons), but its main disadvantages are pretty obvious. Email is impersonal, error-prone (ever forget to cc someone crucial?), fractured, and is often misinterpreted.

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I came across an interesting piece on social networking called “10 keys to making social networking work” by Mark Gibbs over at Network World. Mark’s got some good points about social networking (although I’m not so sure about his fourth point about traditional blogging, I think it depends on your audience), but there always seems to be one thing missing from these types of articles.

Worry about your content first, delivery mechanisms later. Your first job, no matter what type of content you’re creating, is to consistently deliver quality content. The delivery mechanisms for content are not too hard to figure out, and should largely depend on your audience and the type of content you are creating.

I like to write blog posts because I write infrequently, and when I do write, I like to put down a series of thoughts (it’s not always something long, but it’s too much to fit on Twitter). In my opinion, too much focus is put on the immediacy of microblogging — when instead you should be thinking about whether Twitter is the appropriate forum for your message.

And you can’t really get around the content quality issue. If you’re not creating stuff that people care about, there’s really not much point in creating it, no matter what mechanism you use to deliver that content.

OK, I admit it. I don’t like FaceBook. I know it’s hard to believe that there’s someone who actually doesn’t enjoy using the incredibly popular social networking tool — but I don’t.

It’s not that FaceBook isn’t useful or doesn’t allow me to keep up with people — it’s actually been quite useful for that. I’ve reconnected with people that I would have never had the chance to meet up with again otherwise, which has been fun. It’s also fun to check out people’s pictures and connections and see who knows who.

My problem with FaceBook is that I can’t really keep up with the messages and notifications. A long time ago I just assigned all FaceBook messages a particular priority in my email (which essentially is ‘I will never actually look at this’). Instead, I occasionally log in to FaceBook to see if I have any messages — which I often do. I then have a ton of non-personal invites to things (like associations’ groups I belong to on FaceBook, don’t ask me why), which I try to ignore.

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I’ve had a job change recently, which I’m very excited about — which will allow me to focus a great deal more on enterprise search (which I’ve been involved in quite a bit, and I’m very interested in). The new job’s also got a global focus, which I think will also be fun. There’s going to be some additional focus on taxonomy as well, but it’ll be nice to be in a position to see it all fit together. Check out my LinkedIn profile if you’re interested to know more.

As part of my new responsibilities, I’m in Nashville, Tennessee for the week. I’m pretty blown away by how friendly everyone is in this city — very nice. I’ll be back in Toronto tomorrow after my last day here.