Why do people read scobleizer.wordpress.com?

I’m interested to hear why exactly do people read Scobleizer – Microsoft Geek Blogger? Personally I read Scoble’s little rants just for entertainment value and comment there to try to make sense of what he posts as a lot of the time his posts leave you thinking “what the?” and scratching your head.

I think a lot of people actually read Scoble’s blog to stay on the cutting edge and to find out about all the new, cool stuff so they can keep up with the Jones’ and that just seems a little bit sad to me.

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What has happened to the quality of beta software?

What has happened to the age old process of releasing software where the main stages are:

Alpha – Development use only, still not feature complete with any number of bugs
Beta – Feature complete & major bugs fixed
Preview Release – This is typically beta quality software released so people can get a preview of the new software
Release Candidate – feature complete and both major & minor bugs fixed with only obscure bugs left

It seems both sides of the software world, commercial/proprietary and open source are just releasing software willy nilly and not following any kind of pattern, take for example SimpleMachines 1.1, it was at RC1 for quite a long time and then RC2 comes out with significant new features included, did someone forget to tell them what Release Candidate is supposed to mean? Then we have Micosoft with Internet Explorer 7’s public beta that has had numerous significant bugs reported along with a suspected security hole already, I guess that wouldn’t be too bad but IE is so embedded in Windows you have to replace your current version of IE in order to try it and in doing so you are potentially affecting the whole Operating System bringing it down to beta level, that is just not good at all!

Is there some sort of trial with custom templates on WP.com?

Anyone know how http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/ is using a custom theme? I guess I could ask them directly but hey that would be too easy. 😉

Anyone want a WordPress.com invite?

Just like when I first got Gmail I’m finding I have nobody to give invites to that I know.

The first comment that mentions my two dogs names gets the invite. 🙂

How many people accept payments for online support?

I provide support online in my own time in various places after working fulltime as a Senior Technical Consultant (Mainly for Java, Oracle and VB stuff) so I don’t have any financial problems and hence never think of actually accepting or asking for any payment for helping someone out as it actually makes me feel good helping people out and as corny as it sounds that is payment enough for me.

However I’m interested in finding out how many people do actually charge for such support? Like issues with a WordPress plugin or some layout fixes, that kind of thing.

The WordPress.org forums are hard work!

My hats off to Podz, Lorelle, MacManX and all the rest of the regulars that help out at the WordPress.org forums, it is exhausting work trying to keep up with all the posts there!

WPMU and Dreamhost

Although Dreamhost is listed in the hosting section of WordPress.org the code base for WordPress MU is a different beast and has other requirements so unless you know PHP intimately then I suggest you don’t try to install WPMU at Dreamhost at this stage.

The same goes for any other host that runs PHP as CGI instead of an Apache module.

A good alternative is A Small Orange, I am not affiliated with them in anyway and that link isn’t even a referral link, I’m just a very satisfied customer and am happy to pimp them for free from time to time!