Stack Exchange, or “How to master a topic overnight”

The brain

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve been spending a lot of time on WordPress Stack Exchange lately and I’ve really fallen in love with it. I’ve always been a moocher of Q&A sites (always the Q and never the A) and decided it was time to give back. I also wanted to give back to the WordPress ecosystem (and along these lines, I have a few “game-changing” WordPress plugins I’ll be releasing soon as well), so I started with their forums, which are terrible — lousy organization, no “preview”, lack of alerts, etc. I then moved over to StackOverflow and then onto it’s WordPress sister site.

While my intentions going into this were selfless, I’ve found a tremendously selfish reason to continue contributing to Q&A sites like this: you learn fast. Continue reading

Apple’s new iTunes U: A critical review

English: Apple iPad Event

Image via Wikipedia

First off, a round of applause for Apple. This is a wonderful push and the world can be better from it. As you’ve shown us time and again in many industries, an idea is only so good — it’s the implementation that determines if it succeeds or not. With the initial implementation of iTunes U, I give you a B-. Call it a beta and I’d be more forgiving, perhaps, but it’s uncharacteristically unpolished for an Apple product. I’d expect this as a first release from Google1, but not you. Here’s a breakdown of what I like and what needs improvement.
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