Tidbits from Brian - Issue #24
OK, I give up. I'm a night owl. 🦉
A year ago, I wrote about keeping a consistent routine, and that meant trying to get ready for bed at around 11 pm every night. Well, I failed miserably at that goal. No matter how many times I try, I can’t seem to fight my biology. And I no longer choose to. The fact is, I’m a night owl, plain and simple. 🦉
Ever since I was a small kid, I’ve worked better at night and am more productive. I don’t know what it is, but my brain kicks into overdrive between the hours of 8 pm and 4 am (sometimes later).
I love this quote from Melanie Curtin:
Every night owl has experienced that horrible moment when you actually hear the birds chirping outside.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been there. 😅 I’m just going to listen to my body from now on.
Updates ✍️
We pushed out an update for our Novashare WordPress plugin this month. Here are a few of the changes:
Updated Twitter to new X branding (share/follow buttons + click to post).
Reworked the majority of the UI to use WordPress AJAX to save data and perform plugin actions. No more page reloads for faster setup. ⚡
Fixed an issue where duplicate images on a page were getting Pinterest image hover buttons applied multiple times.
Fixed an issue where the main stylesheet was not getting loaded when using the Full Site Editor.
Fixed an issue where the Click to Post block was not showing up on a fresh install of the plugin.
Interesting things 🔎
Misc.
Microsoft is removing WordPad from Windows after nearly 30 years. It’s been fun!
Beetle grows a termite on its back to steal food. Talk about clever. 🪲
Dolby Atmos promises to change how people experience music and movies.
The new Xbox controller and console leaked. One thing that caught my eye is Bluetooth support. That would be awesome!
Friendly reminder that Google Workspace prices are changing. You can keep the same price if you pay upfront for a year.
Threads is struggling to retain users — but it could still catch up to X.
Snagit released some big updates in August and September. I have over 7,500 screenshots in my Snagit library. That tells you just how much I use the app.
macOS Sonoma is here! 🤓 Here are a few things I’ve noticed:
Safari web apps are awesome. You actually get more physical screen space.
The Reminders app now has grocery lists.
Apple has added in-line predictive text, similar to autocomplete.
AirPods got a lot of improvements.
Dynamic screensavers are pretty cool! I’m using “Dubai Skyline.”
Presenter overlay is handy.
For those of you struggling with the new Slack UI, this small update is helpful. 👍
Don't like that "All bookmarks" folder that Chrome recently added in the toolbar? You can remove it.
Version 2.2 of Affinity Designer is out with a lot of new features.
WordPress
I love what InstaWP is doing! ❤️🔥 All the screenshots you’ve seen over the past few months of our plugins were done in InstaWP environments. It’s just so easy to spin up new WordPress instances. It’s by far my favorite WordPress product of 2023.
The Easy Digital Downloads team is hard at work! The changelog for version 3.2.0 was massive. This is one acquisition that has gone over pretty well.
WordPress 6.3 (that came out in August) is already on over 50% of all sites running WordPress. This is really impressive and promising.
I’m just as much of a fan of WordPress as anyone, but you don’t have to use it for everything. Tally 2.0 just came out, and for a form solution, it’s pretty cool!
WP Tavern has launched a forum. I think more places to have discussions is a good thing. Call me old school, but I prefer a forum over a Facebook group.
I have to give a shout-out to the team at Kinsta, who is now SOC 2 compliant. This is a huge undertaking and a big deal for large organizations that need hosting. 🔒
Rough Pixels wrote up an excellent review of our Novashare social sharing plugin. They are also a customer and use it on their site.
If you’re ever selling a niche WordPress site, I was blown away by Empire Flippers. I highly recommend them.
WordPress.org has removed SiteGround from its official hosting recommendations page and replaced it with WordPress.com.
Performance
Looking forward to this! Coming in October, Cloudflare will enable an option for sites that use Google Fonts to automatically load them from their own domain. ⚡
Kinsta rolled out 30 days and 1-year cache length times. This is great for improving server response times (TTFB), hit cache ratio, LCP, and more.
There are some nice UI and performance improvements in DevTools (Chrome 117).
Marketing
Confluence has been rolling out dark mode to folks. It looks beautiful and now matches Trello. 🙌
Looking for an alternative newsletter solution? I recently discovered Buttondown. I might end up giving them a try.
Learn how Google Search Generative Experience (SGE) could affect your website's organic traffic.
Google Meet has introduced a new ultra-low latency viewing experience for video meetings that are streamed within an organization.
I have three invite codes for Bluesky. First come, first serve.
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Anyone out there using Google Spaces? It actually looks interesting for small teams or those already in the Google ecosystem. 🤔
Gary Illyes, an analyst on the Google Search team, says links are not a top 3 Google Search ranking factor.
A friendly reminder that Google Optimize will not be available after September 30. Katie ran some interesting tests before it shut down.
AI
Google Bard got a ton of updates. Collaboration, access to Google apps, double-checking responses, improved sharing, and more.
26% of the top 100 websites are now blocking GPTBot. This is a whopping 250% increase in the past month.
If Pixar made the Harry Potter Series. Check out these awesome Midjourney renders.
ChatGPT can now search the web in real time.
Oops! Google Search caught publicly indexing users’ conversations with Google Bard . 🤦
Bitcoin (not financial advice)
On September 6, FSAB voted to set in place a new rule that businesses can use fair-value accounting for assets such as bitcoin. Jesse dives into why this is huge.
Bitcoin mining is the most ruthlessly competitive industry in the world, and nothing makes this clearer than the current economics and landscape of the industry.
Forbes says it might be time to start dollar cost averaging.
Nucleus is a new draft proposal for Lightning which provides better capital efficiency (no inbound liquidity is required) and liveness.
A new multi-sig wallet from Theya will be available soon. It looks promising.
Bitcoin mining in the land of fire and ice. An interesting video from Bloomberg Originals. 🌋
Minigrids are fascinating! See how bitcoin mining could be a simple answer to Africa’s rural energy problems.
What is the end game for BlackRock when it comes to bitcoin?
The BTCPay app is coming. This will be amazing for merchants!
If you're in the Scottsdale, AZ area, hit me up, and we can grab lunch! 🥗👋