Tantek, XFN, Matt Mullenweg, and Microformats
XFN is an amazing concept, and after looking at the incredible Page Rank of these various URLs, and not a theoretical one.
I first heard about Tantek when someone posting a thing on Digg about putting the term ‘Tantek’ into Flickr’s search engine, and finding all these pictures of this Uber Geek looking guy with all these hot geek intelligentsia babes. It you looked at the photo stream from the search you are looking a some sort of geek-tech-babe-magnet.
So I made him a contact a while back, not knowing who the hell he was. Fast forward to about 8 months ago, when I discovered Blue Host through the recommended Word Press.org hosting lists, that let to the Open Source auto loader Fantastico, which let to the top of my head being blown off and finding myself slinging hosted Word Press blogs built primarily for the ease of use, CMS and ,most of all, the stunning indexing potential + power with the search engines. (ridiculous sentence there 
What is my point ? The point I am trying to make, is that, over the last 8 months, I have immersed myself in WordPress though building the things for clients. There has been some shift, a profound one, in my understanding of this emerging technology.
The word ‘Semantic’ for instance. Like the word ‘relevance’, which I never used years ago. Google changed all that, fer sure. Kind of like the word ‘obfuscate’, you never heard that one before the Bush Administration came to power. Semantic as it relates to HTML, CSS, metatdata and the deeper structures in the application Word Press.
GMPG Efforts , XFN and XFN 1.1 Creator. These three links are filled with some mind boggling technology as it relates to ‘relevant’ linking over the Internet. XHTML Friends Network (XFN) is such a pure concept, very interesting, for the ‘microformat’ is, and I am going to have to quote Wikipedia here, is:
“Microformats emerged as part of a grassroots movement[4] to make recognizable data items, (such as events, contact details or geographical locations), capable of automated processing by software, as well as directly readable by end-users.[4][7] Link-based microformats emerged first. These include vote links that express opinions of the linked page, which can be tallied into instant polls by search engines.[8]” Wiki
Tantek is one of the key players in this initiative,he is also one of the founders of Technorati and the whole full circle thing is pretty exciting. Matt Mullenweg, on the other hand, is the main man behind WordPress, and developed the first version of XFN Creator.
Daria.be is closing !
daria.be will be shutting down on July 31st, 2007.
I am no longer interested in supporting WordPress or WordPress MultiUser. Please export your posts and move to a new site. You can find a list of WordPress Multiuser sites located here. Please be sure that your new site is keeping up to date on their upgrades.
Please note that support is no longer offered for this site.
Please note that abuse in anyway, shape or form directed to me will not be taken.
Thank you for your understanding,
-drmike
So I went and grabbed all the stuff I had written the Daria.be site and threw them into this post. I tried to find out why he has decided to stop support. Guess the spam finally got to him. Looks like his new site drmikessteakdinner is now a Movable Type blog.
Hey, I found you guys in a desperate search for the Theme Neat!, which seems to have disappeared from the Internet. I was looking to upload that theme to one of my hosted WP Blogs.
I registered with you folks, I like the concept. Thanks for being Visionaries !
It is getting late so I have got to crash, more tomorrow !
Hey !
Well, me mum, she’s got this terrible white poodle named Toby. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and she has decided to do dog boarding for extra cash. Not really boarding, more like paid visiting. I am going to do a website / blog for her and I am in the process doing a logo.
FYI, I hate that little pooch, the last time Toby and I spent anytime together, the little bastard took a bite out of my finger. Needless to say I am not terrible excited about spending any time with the little wretch.
My House Your Dog
I just love WordPress. I have been using some different flavored free blogs over the last couple of years. The experience left me a bit cold.
Then, a couple of months ago, I pitched a client on doing a blog so he could both get the word out to the web, as well as a device to drive interest and traffic to his old html website. I had no desire to waste my time redoing his ancient site, so as a holding pattern I suggested that we do a blog as a place to start.
After checking around, my research pointed to Word Press as the emerging new open source blog platform. I read that many were migrating from moveble Type to WordPress due to the open source attitude. After I got over the initial shock of dusting off my FTP skills and learning what was what, I became an instant fan of WordPress.
Shameless Word Press Fanboy
I am starting to feel a certain amount of a type of connection with people over the Web that is very new to me. Some, who have been using the web to work and play I am sure have an understanding of what I am talking about. I have been able to imagine this feeling, as an idea, or ideal in some of my favorite Science Fiction, Islands in the Net, Bruce Sterling, Crytonomicon, Neil Stevenson, and Pattern Recognition by William Gibson.
But in terms of actually having the feeling of connectedness myself, it is new to me. The only way I can articulate it is by describing a fluid feeling between the Virtual and the ‘Brick and Mortar’ world. That the people in my mind on the web and the people in the real world are now the same, that the virtual entities have the same power and placement as the ones I see in from of me.
Boy, this sounds very vague and silly, but as to what I am referring to, it is a break though of sorts…
Learning about life on the Web
Tired and excited !
Well, it’s been a long week, yet it has seemed to fly by quickly. I have taken the Churchstreetart.net blog to the next phase and I have learned a great deal. This blog, Tarky has become my WordPress test bed, trying out new PlugIns and Themes, looking for conflicts and resolving issues. Most of the PlugIns have been stable, but there are some that I have discarded. Most of the auto meta tag generators are bunk, and I have removed a few. Some of the Plugin apps suck too. I have been flying through them, so it is hard for me to list the bad ones, but as soon as I have some time I will list the ones that work well.
Since I am an SEO guy, I really am going to drill down into finding the right meta tag ones, for the ones I have used so far, All in One, Meta generator etc. have put the code in the wrong place and ended up displaying across the top of the blog for all to see. No good. I guess I will have to do it the old fashioned was and put the tags in manually, but I was hoping for a more robust and uniform solution.
It could very well be that these Plugins predate WordPress 2.1 and need to be ungraded. I will do some research and see. In the meantime I have to backtrack and give the heads up to the people who coded the plugins, for they need to know.
