Mullenweg at only 27 also runs the commercial arm of WordPress, Automattic, which is the company behind WordPress and a handful of other software projects. WordPress is used by more than 14% of the one million biggest websites including those of The New York Times.

Memeburn caught up with Mullenweg for this exclusive one-on-one. Mullenweg spoke about features in the upcoming WordPress version and HTML5 integration and the early mistakes he made by “trying to do it all himself”. He also speaks about why developers are five steps ahead of everyone else with “scripting being the new literacy” and how he wishes the iPhone was “more open”.

Memeburn: WordPress has grown to become one of the most popular content management systems in the world. In your opinion, why has it experienced such rapid growth and worldwide usage? Was it what you expected it to be?

Matt Mullenweg: I never expected WordPress to have the growth it has had, its beginnings were very humble. I think the reason WordPress has been successful, however, is because people have found themselves empowered to create beautiful blogs and websites without having to learn a ton of technology. The entire team behind WP is dedicated to making it as easy to use and elegant as possible.

MB: Did you foresee WordPress evolving beyond a blog platform?

MM: From almost the beginning people started to use WordPress for much more than just blogging, and today on our showcase (wordpress.org/showcase) you can see hundreds of examples of what you can do with the software, limited only by your imagination. This early adoption caused us to build new features in a way that could be extended and enhanced by plugins and themes in a platform-like way.

MB: What percentage of the world’s websites are on WordPress (an estimate based on any research or figure you may have)?

MM: I would say somewhere between 10-12% based on the different surveys I’ve seen.

MB: How do you see WordPress evolving in the next few years, and which emerging technologies do you think will influence it?

MM: I think the biggest opportunity for improvement will be in making our user interface faster and easier to use with the capabilities afforded by new browsers using HTML5. I can’t wait.

MB: Do you see the WordPress.org framework focusing more on enterprise content management solutions?

MM: I see there being more and more businesses built on top of WordPress who specialise in enterprise services, because as more and more Fortune 500 companies adopt WordPress they need vendors to help them. But the core of WordPress will always be focused on the user experience first.

MB: What aspect of WordPress has given you the most satisfaction, and why?

MM: I’m very excited about a feature in our upcoming release, which is like a Zen mode for writing. You click a full-screen button and the entire interface fades away and you have a distraction free interface for writing and focusing on your content. It’s a real pleasure to use.

MB: What’s your next favourite CMS, after WordPress?

MM: I’ve been watching a new one using node.js called Calipso and a Ruby one called Jekyll.

MB: How will the battle against spam be won?

MM: I don’t think it’ll ever be won, but we seem to do the most damage to spammers when we focus less on the symptoms and spam and go to the root economic interests that are driving it. These are essentially criminal activities, so I think it’s best to target them through finances, like payment processors.

MB: Publishing has become more accessible and less elitist, (which instinctively we feel is a good thing), but at the same time it now means that we get widely varying content quality with poor quality content being a real problem on the web. How do we reconcile these two issues?

MM: There was bad content on the web before publishing was easy, before WordPress existed, it’s just a matter of life. Everything is good to somebody, even if it’s just that somebody that wrote it. Ultimately I think the benefit to the world of everyone having a potential voice outweighs the folks who might misuse that freedom.

MB: When is WordPress not a good choice as a CMS?

MM: If you prefer to run a non-PHP environment like Node, Ruby, Java, or whatever, WordPress is probably not the best fit.

MB: WordPress development: Could you share with us some of the mistakes did you make? And what would you have done differently?

MM: The early mistake I made in WordPress development was trying to do it all myself, even though it was an Open Source project. In the WordPress community a consistent theme has been that the more people contribute their best work the better the end product is, and my primary job is just to get out of the way. It took me a while to learn that, but now it’s ingrained.

MB: Many people know about WordPress but very few people know about Automattic, can you tell us about it?

MM: Automattic is the company I founded a few years after WordPress to provide world-class services for the WordPress ecosystem, like a user-friendly version at WordPress.com, anti-spam with Akismet.com, backup and security with VaultPress.com, and surveys and polls with Polldaddy.com. We’re now 90 full-time folks around the world working to make the web a better place both through the products I listed above and through significant contributions to the core WordPress software, which we contribute to but don’t control.

MB: What advice can you give to young programmers / developers who would like to follow in your footsteps?

MM: If you’re a developer you’re already five steps ahead of everyone else. Scripting is the new literacy, and the ability to learn and execute on your ideas without relying on anybody else is going to be invaluable as you iterate and experiment on building something. It’s good to build for yourself first, because in the worst-case scenario where no one else likes it, at least you will.

MB: Using the example of WordCamps, why does it seem as though Africa has not fully joined up with the WordPress community, and what can be done about it?

MM: That’s a good question. I think that there are systemic access problems throughout most of Africa for non-mobile technologies, but as desktop availability increases which means people have more sophisticated access to software like WordPress we’ll start to see more folks get involved in Open Source movements and contribute translations so people can use the software in their own dialect, which is crucial for early adoption. If you’re reading this and speak a language not yet covered by our localisations, please get in touch! The more people with a free voice online the better the world will be.

MB: Who do you follow on Twitter and why?

MM: I follow many of my colleagues, because they’re some of the most interesting people I know. I follow a few musicians because I find them entertaining when they’re unfiltered. Mostly though I follow searches of people talking about our products and WordPress because I’m curious to hear how people are using things and what their feedback is.

MB: Who are your tech idols and why?

MM: I look up a lot to Jeff Bezos because I think he’s created a culture at his companies that isn’t afraid to take long-term bets, things that are important but might not pan out for four, five, or ten years from when they started. That’s something I aspire to do.

MB: Tell us something we don’t know about WordPress.

MM: The first ever translation of WordPress was in Japanese, and we had no framework for translation at the time so the fellow who did it had to manually go through hundreds of files and tens of thousands of lines of code. It blew me away.

MB: Tell us something we don’t know about Matt Mullenweg.

MM: I recently started playing the saxophone again, but this time the tenor rather than the alto which I studied seriously for about 10 years before WordPress started taking off and my travel schedule made it difficult to keep up.

MB: Are you an iPhone, Android or BlackBerry guy?

MM: I love my iPhone, I actually have a custom one with the WordPress logo in the glass on the back, but philosophically I wish it was more open, like many Android devices are. It’s not clear to me who’s going to win that battle long-term, and I’m looking forward to Amazon getting into the mix this year.

Article http://memeburn.com/2011/07/the-future-of-wordpress-qa-with-founder-matt-mullenweg/

By Michelle Atagana: Managing Ed.

Google’s web-based messaging and collaboration apps require no hardware or software and need minimal administration, creating tremendous time and cost savings for businesses.

End users can use the familiar Microsoft Outlook interface for email, contacts and calendar as they transition to Gmail and Google Calendar.

A leading research firm found that Google Apps is as little as 1/3 the total cost of competing solutions.

Want to see how much you could save with Google Apps compared to Microsoft Exchange 2007? Estimate your savings

50 times more storage than the industry average

Each employee gets 25 GB for email storage, so they can keep important messages and find them instantly with built-in Google search.

Gmail is designed so employees can spend less time managing their inboxes, and more time being productive. Time-saving features like message threading, message labels, fast message search and powerful spam filtering help employees work efficiently with high volumes of email.

Mobile email, calendar and IM access

With several options for accessing their information while on the go, employees can be productive with Google Apps even when they’re not at their desks.

At no extra charge, Google Apps supports over-the-air mobile access on BlackBerry devices, the iPhone, Windows Mobile, Android and many less powerful phones.

99.9% uptime reliability guarantee with synchronous replication

We guarantee that Google Apps will be available at least 99.9% of the time, so your employees are more productive and so you can worry less about system downtime.**

With synchronous replication, your data and activity in Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Sites is simultaneously preserved in multiple secure data centers. If one data center is unable to serve your requests, the system is designed to instantly fall back to another data center that can serve your account with no interruption in service.

The Radicati Group found that Microsoft Exchange typically has 60 minutes of unplanned downtime per month. Google Apps customers typically experience less than 15 minutes of downtime per month

Information security and compliance

When you trust your company’s information to Google, you can be confident that your critical information is safe and secure.

Google’s information security team, including some of the world’s foremost experts in information, application and network security, are focused on keeping your information safe. Google and many other customers trust this system with highly sensitive corporate data.

Businesses get these customizable security features with Google Apps:

• Custom spam and inbound mail filtering tools, powered by Postini, to complement powerful spam filters that automatically work with no up-front configuration.
• Custom outbound mail filtering tools to prevent sensitive information from being distributed, powered by Postini.
• Custom information sharing rules to determine how broadly employees are allowed to share with Google Docs, Google Calendar and Google Sites.
• Custom password length requirements and visual strength indicators to help employees pick secure passwords.
• Enforced SSL connections with Google Apps to ensure secure HTTPS access.
• Optional email archiving, up to 10 years of retention.

Full administrative and data control

Administrators can deeply customize Google Apps to meet their technical, branding and business requirements.

Integration options let you connect Google Apps to your existing IT infrastructure.

• Single sign-on API connects Google Apps to your existing authentication system.
• User provisioning utility and API connect Google Apps to your existing user directory system.
• Email routing and email gateway support let you run Google Apps alongside an existing email solution.
• Email migration utility and API let you bring mail from your existing email solution into Google Apps.

System branding and data ownership give Google Apps your look and feel, and ensures customer ownership of employee data.

• Custom user accounts on your company’s internet domain.
• Custom logo and colors in the applications.
• Contractual customer ownership of employee data.

Helpful 24/7 customer support

Google Apps is highly reliable and easy to operate, but support is available for administrators should you need it.

Support options include:

• Phone support for critical issues
• Email support
• Self-service online support

Google Apps also has a deep network of partners ready to help businesses with deployment, data migration, user training, system integration and custom application development

In a piece published in advertising industry magazine, B&T, Leeder said: “The growth of the mobile market is exponential and set to take over as the main method of accessing the Internet in just a couple of years…Australia is going mobile in a big way.”

In a recent study with Ipsos Research, Google found that Australia had the second highest smartphone penetration in the world – ahead of the US, UK, and Japan, and according to Leeder: “The majority of smartphone owners we surveyed had bought their device in the preceding 12 months. One in three had bought it in the last six months. This amounts to a dizzying pace of growth: we estimate that every month, one to two percent of the Australian population buys a smartphone and already over 20 percent of Australian Internet searches are now from mobile devices.”

Leeder added: “Forty nine percent of the people we surveyed use their smartphone to research and then call businesses – while 45 percent have visited a business they’ve found using their smartphone. One in four had made a purchase using their mobile phone, while one in five had searched for a house or apartment.

However he offered no indication as to what Google planned to do to address its biggest challenge and precipitate and accelerate the migration of advertisers to the mobile web.

References

www.bandt.com

IT Wire article

It’s not all that long ago that, if you wanted to buy something, you needed to go to a store. Today you can shop anywhere in the world with the touch of a mobile phone, compare competitors’ prices while shopping in a retail store, and then share your views with hundreds, if not millions, of people through social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

The majority of the world’s top marketing executives confirm that this new landscape has led to a critical and permanent shift in the way they engage with their customers — but only half feel they are fully equipped and prepared to respond to the deluge of change presented social business.

The resounding consensus is that people running campaigns around the world face four major challenges — dealing with the explosion of data, increased use of social media, proliferation of channels and devices, and shifting consumer demographics.

What’s really interesting though is that the most successful people out there address these four challenges quite differently from their peers. Previously there was a focus on “transactions” with customers. Now the focus has shifted to an ongoing “relationship” with people who may share their experiences with a product, service or company on a social networking site.

These outperforming individuals have adjusted their marketing strategies to connect with people in new ways. They use data much more extensively, and they are particularly good at stimulating awareness and desire, and building advocacy after a sale.

There is a very real sentiment that mass markets don’t exist anymore. And if there was a perfect solution to this it would be to serve everyone individually. But just how do you do that when there are hundreds, thousands, even billions of people out there?

There are three very definite steps you can take to improve your online campaigns:

Deliver value to empowered customers
The digital revolution has forever changed the balance of power between the individual and the institution. If you are to understand and provide value to customers, you will have to concentrate on getting to know individuals as well as markets. You will also have to invest in new technologies and advanced analytics to get a better grasp of how individual customers behave.

Foster lasting connections
To effectively cultivate meaningful relationships with people, you will have to connect with them in ways they perceive as valuable. This entails engaging with people throughout the entire customer lifecycle, and building online and offline communities of interest.

Quantify marketing results:
Return on investment (ROI) is becoming increasingly important. A number of executives reckon it’s how their performance will be measured by 2015. If ROI is going to be so important then you have to know how to use it properly.

It is imperative that you exploit the full power of the digital grapevine. You should be making use of customer analytics to analyse data, tracking blogs, third-party reviews, and consumer reviews.

These online sources disclose what customers want. They provide a rich source of information about customer sentiment that can help you more accurately predict demand patterns.

One key thing you need to take away is the notion that customers today are in control of the business relationship.

We’re used to the idea that they expect a valuable product and quality service. Now we need to come to terms with the idea that how a company treats its employees, retirees and the environment is as important as the products and services it sells. This critical and permanent shift means not only changing the way that we engage with customers but being clear on just what constitutes ROI for the business.

By Nicolas Maweni

Ref: Memeburn

Google chairman (and former CEO) Eric Schmidt is no stranger to controversial remarks. Some of our favorites include suggesting people move if they don’t want to be seen in Google’s Street View, and that Google will eventually get to the point where it has a good idea what its users are thinking. This week, speaking at LeWeb 2011, Schmidt has raised eyebrows again with two assertions: that Android is already ahead of Apple’s iOS, and that Google TV will be on the majority of new TVs by mid 2012.

These are bold words — but are they mere bravado intended to show Schmidt’s commitment and belief in Google and the Android platform, or is there something more than confidence behind the claims?

Is Android is ahead of the iPhone?

Speaking to a packed house at LeWeb — a conference in Paris aimed at online entrepreneurs and developers — Google Chairman Eric Schmidt responded to a question about developers aiming at Apple’s iOS before Android by declaring “Android is ahead of the iPhone now.” When the audience responded with silence, Schmidt went on to clarify how he meant that: in terms of “unit volume, Ice Cream Sandwich, the price is lower, and there are more vendors.”

Schmidt conceded that, right now, application developers are targeting Apple’s iOS first and Android second, but predicted that “six months from now, you’ll say exactly the opposite.” That is, Schmidt believes developers will increasingly target Android first.

The question was prompted by an audience member who asked why leading developers of mobile apps like Flipboard making their apps first for iOS, at the expense of other mobile platforms like Android. (Flipboard is just one high-profile example: others include Instagram, Stamped, and Path.) Sometimes, iOS apps even precede the same functionality on the Web and desktop platforms like Windows and Mac OS X.

Schmidt’s argument that Android will become developers’ first choice of platform over the next six months is predicated on unit volume. He suggests that Google’s “open” approach encourages multiple manufacturers to develop for the platform. Android is indeed out in front on the hardware side: Companies like HTC, Samsung, and Motorola (being acquired by Google) are churning out a variety of Android devices that, put together, are easily outselling the iPhone (if not the iPad). According to Schmidt, “ultimately applications vendors are driven by volume,” so the sheer number of Android devices on the market will mean Android — particularly once Ice Cream Sandwich gets fully deployed — will become developers de facto choice for mobile development.

Schmidt punctuated the remarks by saying Ice Cream Sandwich will be developers first choice whether they personally like it or not — perhaps a tacit acknowledgment of the frustrations many developers have had with Android.

What are the odds Schmidt’s assertion will hold up? We’ll only know for sure in June 2012, but there seem to be a number of factors standing in the way.

The largest issue would seem to be Android fragmentation. Yes, Google has Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) ready now, and new handsets are starting to ship with the latest version of the Android OS. But handset makers like Motorola and Sony Ericsson are saying it will be months before their existing ICS-capable handsets see upgrades — and that’s assuming carriers are willing to play ball and support the upgrade on a wide range of existing devices. It’s going to be quite a while before many current Android users get their hands on ICS, unless they’re willing to take a hit to the wallet and buy a new phone before their existing contracts are up. That means in the next six months, developers can’t target just Ice Cream Sandwich, at least if they’re concerned with volume — the crux of Schmidt’s argument. Developers will still have to support previous versions of Android, too.

Another issue with Android might be market perception. For many folks, Android is essentially a knock-off of Apple’s iOS — it’s not an iPhone, but it might be good enough and have a lower price tag. Regardless of whether that perception is technically true, it’s been bolstered in recent months by the death of Steve Jobs and the revelation from Walter Isaacson’s biography that Jobs considered Android to be a stolen product. Google (and Eric Schmidt) have been adamant that “Android was founded before the iPhone,” but there is absolutely no denying that the early pre-iPhone Android bears almost no resemblance to the post-iPhone Android.

See http://www.digitaltrends.com for full article

PETstock South Melbourne Mobile Site

It won’t be long before the Web is accessed by more mobile users than PC users. In many countries, this has already happened. Traditional websites often render poorly or are hard to use on mobile devices. They do not take into account the context in which a mobile user browses the Web. Approaching the mobile Web as a separate channel to your traditional website, then, is critical.

Here are some methods of delivering content on the mobile Web:

• Create a mobile website – Mobile websites take into account small screens, different input devices and the numerous other unique characteristics of the mobile Web.
• Use text messaging – Text messaging is ideal for notifications and updates. It is a perfect complement to your website and a way of keeping users informed.
• Build mobile applications – Mobile platforms such as the iPhone and Android make it increasingly easy to build applications that run directly on mobile devices. They allow you to make your content available even when the user is not connected to the Internet or away from their PC

Pushing your content to mobile devices is ideal if your target audience is often away from the computer or requires access to your content “in the field.”

A part of the article was originally published at Smashing Magazine