Aaron Winborn

I'm sure by now, new visitors to CMSReport.com have wondered...why so few posts?  Last May, I explained that I was taking a break from technology during the off hours of my "day job".

So, as I have done in past years, I'm taking a break from technology. By posting less during the summer months, I hope to recharge my blogging batteries for the cold weather that is sure to follow.  I will make an effort for the quality high for those articles I do post this summer, but the quantity of posts will be somewhat lower.  My slogan for this summer's tech break is Blog less, breathe more.  I hope some of the other blog junkies out there join me and take a similar technology breaks.  Life is too short to live and die by the computer.

So, now you know.  I haven't lost interest in content management systems and information technology but I do have a greater interest.  I have an interest of staying sane in this busy profession of IT which many of us have chosen.  If you don't take such a break yourself, how do you keep your sanity?

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Advomatic got a great press hit today that we're happy to share with you. VoIP News, a niche news and information publication dedicated to covering all aspects of the VoIP and Internet Telephony marketplaces wrote about our Click-to-Call system.

Robert Poe writes:

Advomatic application lets advocacy groups wage calling campaigns using an online interface.

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Things I know about John Elway, The Greatest QB of all TIME:

1. He's extremely fast.
2. He's extremely tricky. Flea Flicker anyone?
3. He's awesome with the pump fake.
4. He's got laser perfect aim.
5. He has two superbowl rings.

So last night, at 3 am I'm all groggy, complacent and feeding Charlie when I discover a stinky diaper. I decided to change it. Then the following happened.

1. I place the new diaper under the old one and clean him off.
2. As I move the old diaper out of the way, he poops again. I rush to make sure there's no blast radius by blocking with the new diaper.
3. I reach for new diaper #2 while suddenly coming to the realization that I have not covered his junk. I reach for a pee pee teepee.
4. I turn back around and he's managed to use his laser perfect aim to pee in his own ear, and all over his pajamas. He got me with the pump fake.
5. I give him a championship ring for fastest pee-er ever.

I'm even more resolved to beat this kid at his game, but you win this time Charlie, you win this time. By the way, when you get older, don't try that on the football field. It could end badly.

Newport Beach, USA, 18.07.08. Websearchusa, a leading Search Engine Optimization Services Company in USA, had organized, a panel discussion of eminent SEO specialists, on the benefit of link exchange programs of SEO services.

One big question that is playing on the mind of almost all search engine optimizers is how useful is link exchange in context of enhancing the page rank.

David Smith, Senior SEO Analyst, said in his speech that, “You would want your site to be linked by a PR3 and above site. This is normally possible when you too have a PR3 site else the other site administrator might not be interested for all justified reasons. But in case you have a lower page rank or no page rank at all, then it becomes a very difficult process. Why would a PR3 site link to your site when you have a zero Page rank?”

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One of the things we're building at Acquia is a Drupal technical support center where customers can call for help with Drupal questions. We're busy setting up a phone system, a bug tracker, a customer tracking application, a knowledge base and more. We already have some great technical support people on board, but we're looking for more Drupal talent to staff our support center.

Specifically, we're looking for people that have the rare combination of mad Drupal skills (both Drupal configuration and Drupal development), a diagnostic mind, and what we call, the support DNA. Do you have what it takes and do you want to learn how to build a support center from scratch? Apply here.

Or be the first to refer someone who makes the cut, and we'll gladly mail you a check for $1,000 USD to $2,500 USD depending on the situation. See our technical support job page for details on our bounty program.

ComputerWorld: Corporate developers should take a cue from Web 2.0 companies by making users a key partner in software development processes.

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I'll write the rest of this up later, but while it was fresh on my mind. I went hiking this weekend, and because I missed the train that goes to "Applachian Trail Station" I looked up the closest next station and found it to be only 1.9 miles away so I got a ticket to there and hiked back. However, when I got to the train station... there was no there, there. Nada. I back tracked, I forward tracked, I circled around. I was carrying ~40lbs of crap on my back, and 2 hours of this bumping around Rt.22 was getting old. And while I can be proud in this case I was ready and willing to ask directions, but this was the side of a highway.

Finally caught someone in their front yard and they set me straight, I was off by more than a mile. Or rather, google AND the MTA are both off by more than a mile. They correlate, reality doesn't.

Here is a map from the "Appalachian Trail Station" to "The real Appalachian Trail Station" - sattelite view shows you the pavillion that is the station.

More later - with pictures!

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Traveling to Netroots Nation this year was a ton of fun and as always an educational experience. I'm sad to see that Gina is retiring as director, but hopefully there will be much fun next year in Pittsburgh. Things I learned at the conference:

• Being away from my kid and wife now officially is a bowl of suck.
• Joe Trippi can look un-disheveled.
• I miss my kid.
• Old friends are good to catch up with.
• I perpetually wonder if I'm missing something cool that my kid did every minute I'm away from him.
• A lot more people than just my immediately family read this blog. I had no idea that many people were interested in poop.
• I can not handle booze like I used to.
• I can beat the smartest lawyer ever at poker.
• I often miss my wife.
• The Alamo Drafthouse is everything I hoped it would be and more.
• I like not being peed on.
• I was really excited to get 5 full nights of sleep. Too bad I still only got 1.
• I can not handle booze like I used to.
• Sometimes things I think will be exciting are in fact incredibly boring.
• Sometimes things I think will be boring are in fact incredibly exciting.
• Tearing up after watching a video of my kid yawning does not make me lame...I think.
• Sometimes, there can be such a thing as too many parties.
• I really can not handle booze like I used to.
• Austin is a awesome place.
• If you sponsor an event, the chance of you hearing your company get a shout out works in direct correlation with your inability to hold you bladder. The more you leave an event to pee, the more they will say your name without you there. If you stay in the room they will conversely refrain from mentioning you at all.
• Charlie and Heather can apparently function without me. That's disconcerting as everything is supposed to be about me.
• Everybody wants an Advoshirt.
• Being away from my kid and wife now officially is a factory of suck.

Can't wait till next year.

While I was gone, Charlie decided he wanted headshots for his upcoming career as a stage baby. While I wasn't comfortable with all the fame I achieved acting, he apparently is hungry for his 15 minutes. I will be actively pushing to quash his dreams of stardom, and encourage him to go into a more subdued and professional career like extreme sports or politics.

Regardless, a new friend of ours, Andrea Johnston took some awesome pictures. Charlie was already cuter than your baby, but she has now turned him into the George Clooney of babies. Suck on that, other parents who reads this blog. My boy just out cuted yours!

Yesterday, Jody and I had the privilege of presenting at the first Higher Education Web Symposium, held at the University of Pennsylvania. Below you can find the slides from the first part of the session, which was part of our intro to Drupal and a showcase of some of the educational institutions that run Drupal sites. For the second part Jody did a live demonstration of some of the basics of setting up and running a Drupal site, which we were not able to record.

Throughout Jody's presentation the conference participants jumped in with questions, which covered a big spectrum of topics. One of the really interesting things to me, though I guess it really shouldn't be surprising, was how many of the questions were the same ones raised during the two recent usability tests. Not only did those tests help prepare me for addressing these issues when they arose, but it gave me one more motivational push to give a hand at the usability sprint at DrupalCon Szeged!

One last thing I'd like to note, for anybody who was at the session or who wants some more arguments in favor of using Drupal in a University setting, I highly recommend reading the following post, watching the video within it, and reading the comments: Dries Buytaert: Many universities use Drupal

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I'm trapped in humid humid austin this week, while Apollo and Charlie compete in mortal combat to determine who is the cuter Mordecai.

Two will enter, only one will leave!

Begin MORTAL CUTEBACK!!!

*queues the mortal combat themesong*

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Wordpress 2.6 was released just a couple days ago.  During the time I have covered Wordpress, I have always considered Wordpress more as blogging application and not really a full featured content management system.  However, ever since I installed Wordpress 2.5 on one of my sites, I can't help but think that Wordpress now rocks as a CMS.

If you haven't looked at Wordpress in the past year or so, I recommend that you do yourself a favor and take a look at what you may be missing out.

Below is a brief video tour of 2.6 prepared by Matt and company.

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The Diaper Genie is not a magical man in a lamp that will grant you 3 baby poo wishes. No, instead the diaper genie is a poorly made plastic craptastic trash can of doom that will make your life a living hell or awesome depending on its mood, and it will rob you and take your wallet after it ransacks your nursery and dumps baby diapers all over the floor.

All of our parental friends sung the praises of the diaper genie as a life saver, as it seals all the diaper smells into a hermetically sealed sausage of plastic. We took their advice, but we took it to the next level and got the Diaper Genie II, supposedly the next evolution in the fight against the robots for the future.... er wait, in the diaper smell protection racket.

After about a week with the diaper genie, things were going smoothly. The DG and I had an understanding. Charlie would crap his pants, and I would take said pants and shove them into DG. DG would then protect us from Charlie's sulfuric discharges. I would then empty DG of the diaper sausage it had created and prep it for another round. However, newer isn't always better.

In the middle of the second week, apparently I angered DG and it broke on me, trapping a bunch of diapers above the seal, and a bunch below. I looked under the hood, and realized I had no idea how to put the contraption back together. A spring had popped off and some plastic pieces that I had no idea how to rearrange were laying on the inside. After a frantic search for the original instruction on using it, I found a picture that explained how it was put together. After an hour or two of futzing, I had apparently appeased the DG, as it went back to working as it was supposed to. All the extra diapers were stuffed into the top of a sausage wrap and my need for a hazmat suit was temporarily sated.

Cut to week 3. It broke again. And this time I noticed something fun. A little tiny plastic knob that was sealed onto the base of the genie had snapped off, causing it to perpetually break after 2 days of use. Rage filled my soul as I realized I was going to be trapped in a endless loop of sausge repair and toxic fumes, defeating the very purpose of the DP. I was determined to poor all my anger into the fine customer service representatives at playtex, the makers of the diaper genie. After finding no warranty information online, I assumed the worst about playtex. I predicted a phone call where I was put on hold for 30 minutes, and then they would decline my request for a replacement genie.

So I called them, enraged. After pressing a billion numbers to find a live person, I was put on hold. I knew it. They were gonna screw me. 18 minutes later, I finally got ahold of one of their evil service representatives. We'll call her Sharon. Sharon was appallingly nice, frustratingly understanding, and was unnervingly responsive to my issue. I had no way to channel my rage into her. She disarmed me, and offered to send a replacement genie immediately upon my sending in the old one with the free shipping label they send to me, and assured me that my experience was not the normal diaper genie experience. Additionally, she's sending along some coupons for DG sausage liners for my troubles

So maybe the diaper genie can still be magic. I'll keep you posted. In the interim, pray Charlie doesn't poop much.

Last week was crazy. Six airplanes, three time zones, four different hotels, two rental cars, an Acquia Board meeting, two nights in a tent and ultimately, my mind blown at FooCamp.

Off to a meeting in a tiny little airplane. In line behind the big guys. Taken with my iPhone.

FooCamp is the annual invitation-only conference organized by Tim O'Reilly. It is the mother of BarCamp, if you will. The people you get to meet at FooCamp are impressive, and the format (including the nightly campfires) really sets people up to talk, brainstorm and geek out. The result? A fire hose of new ideas and a lot of new friends. Thanks Tim!

Joi Ito took this picture of me so I had to take one of him. Joi is CEO of Creative Commons, and is (or was) on the board of Technorati, ICANN, Mozilla Foundation, the Open Source Initiative (OSI) and much more. He is also an early stage investor in Six Apart, Technorati, Flickr, SocialText, Dopplr, Last.fm, and other internet companies.

Just like last year, I was pleasantly surprised by how many of the Foos are using Drupal, planning to use Drupal, or even evangelizing Drupal. More good stuff comin'!

More photos in my FooCamp gallery.

Miss Sarah Avery has been staying with us all week, taking care of us, feeding us, feeding Charlie at odd hours of the night. Apollo has fallen in love with her. But strangely that love only extends to the borders of the kitchen. Don't know what that's about.

Internet Evolution: "The IBM Data Governance Council sent out a press release this week predicting that within the next four years, data will become an asset that is reported on the balance sheet of corporations, and that data governance will become a statutory requirement.

This trend could bring a new emphasis on data quality and potentially increase corporate use of social networking as a means of improving that quality."

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Over at Drupal Tough Love, chx and I just reviewed Signatures for Forums 5.x-2.3 which "provides user signatures that will be familiar to users of popular forum software" such as "the administrator can choose the input filter for signatures", conditional signatures that are hidden "if a post is under a particular length", and showing the signature only once per conversation.

Eric @ phpbb.com: "We are pleased to announce the opening of a phpBB Blog. This blog will be written by the phpBB Team on various topics related to phpBB and communities. The blog will provide an inside look into the phpBB Teams while benefiting the community.

Be sure to check it out: http://www.phpbb.com/blog"

Original Announcement

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