I talked to Matt Mullenweg last night by AIM, from a wi-fi connection in Italy. He was just starting to catch up on the story, swamped under a ton of e-mail and interview requests. He wrote something brief on his weblog, and is in the process of composing an official response for the WordPress homepage. Update: Here it is. Please read it! It addresses many questions.

Update: Matt just posted a comment in this thread, addressing some of the conspiracy theories and saying that his response is coming very soon:

Andy did let me know he was working on the article, I was open and answered all his questions however I’d prefer if our AIM conversation wasn’t quoted more just because I don’t have access to it myself and I’m not terribly articulate on IM. It didn’t occur to me that the article would be finished while I was gone and there would be so much feedback. I’m back online and going to be posting a response shortly.

Otherwise, things are settling down from a very busy day yesterday. eWeek, MSNBC, The Register, Slashdot, Ars Technica, and Metafilter all posted articles about it. After deleting the offending articles, Google added WordPress.org back into their search results and reinstated the 8/10 pagerank.

Chad Jones, the creator of Hot Nacho, contacted me and asked me to post this statement. Several parts of his story were contradicted by Matt himself, and I don’t believe it myself, but I’m happy to reproduce it in full below.

Continue reading “WordPress Followup” →

Disclaimer. I’m hesitant to even write about this, knowing the web’s fondness for angry mob justice, but I feel like it’s an important issue that needs to be addressed. My one request: please be calm and rational. WordPress is a great project, and Matt is a good guy. Think before piling on the hatemail and flames. (Important Update: Followup to this entry, with an official response from WordPress and Hot Nacho.)

The Problem. WordPress is a very popular open-source blogging software package, with a great official website maintained by Matt Mullenweg, its founding developer. I discovered last week that since early February, he’s been quietly hosting at least 120,000 168,000 articles on their website. These articles are designed specifically to game the Google Adwords program, written by a third-party about high-cost advertising keywords like asbestos, mesothelioma, insurance, debt consolidation, diabetes, and mortgages. (Update: Google is actively removing every article from their results, but here’s a saved copy of the first page of results. You can still view about 25,000 results on Yahoo. Here’s an example of some results in MSN.)

Continue reading “WordPress Website's Search Engine Spam” →

It’s been almost two years since the Star Wars Kid video, but the tributes keep coming.

Tonight, “Arrested Development” featured an obvious SWK homage. In a flashback, the family stumbles on a tape-recording of George Michael, the teenage son of Jason Bateman’s character, doing his lightsaber moves. (Thank to Matt for the video.)

Video: swk_arrested_development.mpg (10MB, MPEG2)

While I’m at it, here’s a video clip I’ve been sitting on since late last year from the Cartoon Network’s “Venture Brothers.” From Episode 106, a winged henchman tries to fight Brock with a junk lightsaber. Before he does, he performs some very familiar fighting moves…

Video: swk_venture_brothers.mov (5MB, Quicktime)

And, for the completists out there, episodes of two other shows were entirely based on the Star Wars Kid ordeal. In Episode 76 of “Ed,” aired December 2003, an overweight high school student recorded himself doing a dance. After the video is stolen, leaked online, and remixed into a catwalk-style fashion video, he asks Ed to help seek damages in civil court. In the end, he decides to drop the charges and embraces his geekiness by repeating the dance moves in the high school halls. The fifth episode of “Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends,” aired September 2004, was full of geek in-jokes and SWK parallels. The TV Tome description rounds it up nicely.

Finally, because I get asked occasionally, I have no new Star Wars Kid news. He’s never tried to contact me, and I haven’t tried to follow up in any way. I don’t know the outcome of the lawsuits or what Ghyslain is up to. If anyone out there knows, I’d love to know how he’s doing.

June 26, 2006: Here’s a clip from the September 25, 2005 episode of “American Dad.”

Next week, I’ll be at the Emerging Technology conference in San Diego. I don’t usually go to conferences (too expensive, and I’m too cheap), but I was offered a free guest pass by Cory Doctorow. Humbled and honored in a very big way.

Many people I know opted to attend SXSW Interactive this year, but the SXSW panels seem to cover well-trod territory (e.g. blogging as journalism, commercial blogging, CSS hacks, online community, moblogging, podcasts, etc). Despite the great people in Austin, I think the better presentations will be in San Diego.

Looking at the list of sessions, I’m absolutely giddy. The creators and founders of amazing web applications like Flickr, 43 Things, Del.icio.us, Wikipedia, Typepad, Bloglines and Basecamp will all be talking about their experiences, as well as inspiring folks like Cory, Larry Lessig, Chris Anderson, Ev Williams, Merlin Mann, Danny O’Brien, and James Surowiecki.

Anyway, I can’t wait. If you’re attending ETech, be sure to find me and say hello.

An update to yesterday’s entry… In a 3-2 vote, the college trustees decided to eliminate the journalism programs for both Ventura College and Oxnard College for the upcoming school year. The two campus newspapers, the Ventura College Press and Campus Observer, will be closed. (This will be the first time VC hasn’t had a paper since 1925.) Finally, my mom will be laid off.

Continue reading “College Trustees Kill Campus Papers” →