As you may have read about late last month, Automattic, the company behind WordPress, recently announced their acquisition of Intense Debate, a service for blogs that gives added funtionality like threading, reply by email and more.

I had a chance to try out the next revision early and I have to say, I am very impressed so far. The installation was super easy and my existing WordPress comments were easily ported over into super-charged Intense Debate comments (with kung fu grip!).

Ever-important to me is the design of any blog and I am super pleased as to the consistency that Intense Debate has kept with the styling I had before (it’s actually made it better with the addition of things like avatars and included RSS feeds for comments). I’m sworn to secrecy on the full details of the new release, but I can tell you, it’s pretty awesome and I’m excited for it to go public.

No good beta test is complete without some usage, so leave a comment and let me know what you think about this new way of managing comments.

CommentsBeta+testing+Intense+Debate+on+WordPress2008-10-29+22%3A58%3A55Cesar+Torres

If you’ve spent some time online in the past few days, I’m sure you’ve come across the video I embedded above. In it, celebrities urge people to satirically not vote in the upcoming election (Jonah Hill of Superbad fame, is particularly hilarious).  Once the video was over, I took the advice of Courtney Cox, Leonardo DiCaprio (whose personal studio helped produce the web PSA) and others and clicked over to the site linked in the video—a special Google Map that serves you links for ensuring you’re registered to vote your part of the country. Check it out so you can find online resources for the state in which you reside.

The video played fine and the Google Maps User Voter Info mashup worked great. Not surprisingly though, the technical bottleneck came when I reached the Texas Secretary of State’s website. Not only was it of an ugly design (which I normally groan about with municipal sites then move on), but everything was counter-intuitive, broken or frustratingly unusable. Clicking on links led to downloads of so many PDFs, you’d think the site was sponsored by Adobe Acrobat.

Now, I realize that a site made for the state of Texas (or any state for that matter) is a huge undertaking and would cost tons and tons of taxpayer money. Governments have so much going on, I’m sure their web presence is not of top priority, but to me—someone who practically does everything online—it is. Is it really so much to ask for something organized, easy to use and somewhat nice to look at?

I’m always in awe when a large corporation understands technology and isn’t necessarily directly involved in it. I think I would be even more impressed if my state government “got it.” (Thankfully, the city of Austin gets it with their AustinGO Project—a redesign of the city website along with a new philosophy of a more open government).

If people really do want me to vote, then make it easy for me, in the way that I know how to do it. I’m not looking to SMS in my vote (although that would be awesome), just make information accessible, easy to digest and for the love, no more PDF links!

And now, I’m going to go watch the vice presidential debates. Online.

CommentsDon%27t+vote%3F2008-10-02+23%3A25%3A22Cesar+Torres

This is shaping up to be an event-filled weekend indeed. The TechCrunch/Austin Ventures Meet-up is this Thursday, preceding the famed Austin City Limits Music Festival.

While the TechCrunch roundtable and party at Pangaea are completely sold out, you can still get your hands on Friday and Sunday single-day tickets at the ACL Fest official website (or there’s always craigslist if you still want your three-day fix—prices tend to be pretty reasonable this close to the event). If you were lucky enough to get a ticket to the TechCrunch party and haven’t purchased an ACL ticket and want to, hold out until Friday morning since they’ll be giving some away Thursday night.

EDIT: Once the TechCrunch event is over, make sure to check out the Moximity Launch Party at The Belmont, one of my favorite Austin bars, just two blocks down from Pangaea at W. 6th and Lavaca. Bring your iPhone along as they’ll be signing people up for the launch of their awesome iPhone app. I’ve got my early copy and I can’t wait for other Austinites (and eventually friends around the country) to be on it. Want a beta code? Let me know in the comments and I’ll get you hooked up in no time! These guys are doing some awesome stuff, make sure to follow their progress on Twitter @moximity.

And how, pray tell, am I preparing for the music festival? With as much tech as I can muster Monday through Thursday, of course! For one, Pandora has a kickass section of their site dedicated exclusively to 18 music festivals, including ACL. Check out the Festivals section of their site for the link to the ACL Channel at the very bottom. The only downside of this is you can’t seem to thumb-up or thumb-down anything for future reference.

Also, for scheduling purposes, I’m using sched.org (remember those guys from SXSWi 2008?); Taylor and Chirag have created a section specifically for ACL08. Their site seems to be running really slowly these past few days so I’m hoping they’re just going through maintenance in preparation for the weekend. Once it’s up and running properly, check out my schedule to see what bands I’ll be making it to. I’ll be twittering my whereabouts if you’re at Zilker. Also, I’m following @360acl to check out any news or insights that The Statesman/Austin360 might have. Plus, they’re aggregating people’s tweets on a live Twitter page on their site which seems cool.

Any tools that I’m missing out on? I’m charging up my iPhone, making sure Shazam [iTunes link] is on my home screen for music tagging (and hoping it works with live music), readying my bike (despite recent spills) and getting ready for an awesome weekend. See you in the sun!

CommentsPrepping+for+ACL+with+technology2008-09-22+19%3A52%3A57Cesar+Torres

The following essay was originally written for the Dell Digital Nomads blog, a great resource for anyone who leads a mobile workstyle.

Arguably, one of the greatest benefits for a digital nomad is the sheer mobility of the work style and the freedom one exercises on a daily basis. As a freelance designer, I am consistently the envy of friends who imagine how great it must be to lounge around the house in pajamas while working.

However, what my cube-dwelling friends may not realize is that to me and other mobile workers, this flexibility can actually also be a big disadvantage. While independent workers are free from birthday Fridays plucked straight from a Steve Carell sitcom, there is a noticeable decline in social interaction when your working environment is not the same four walls, forty hours a week.

The recent proliferation of mobile tools (e.g.: cellular phones, ultra-portable notebooks, wi-fi hotspots, etc.) have given freelancers, writers, telecommuters and tech entrepreneurs the ability to jump around from home offices to coffee shops to airports and hotels as alternative work environments. It turns out that e-mail and instant messages can’t substitute for human interaction as people long for face-to-face interactions well after the chat windows are closed.

Over the past few years, this heightened digital connectivity has created the need for something to help bring more social, real world interaction to these independent nomadic workers - a mechanism to allow them to continue to work solo, but to provide the means for connecting with individuals of similar backgrounds and working conditions.

Defined as “café-like community/collaboration space for developers, writers and independents,” coworking has emerged as a solution to counteract this major problem. The main goal of coworking is to create an environment where nomadic workers can work alone…together. The past two years has seen a huge upswing in the international coworking trend and has led to the creation of several movements that you can easily choose to be a part of as a nomadic worker.

Jelly Casual Coworking

In February 2006, New York City roommates Amit Gupta and Luke Crawford invited friends to work out of their living room after missing the social aspect of an office. Word quickly spread about the meetings the duo eventually dubbed Jelly.

Now, coworkers—the term given to anyone participating in the coworking movement—meet up in over 20 cities, with more and more Jellies popping up all over the globe. By designating a time, a location and a shared purpose for coming together, Jelly provides a social platform for interactions to occur in places like coffee shops and living rooms, places where interactivity might otherwise be stonewalled by social norms.

For more information, check out the Jelly info page and the Jelly wiki for the list of cities where Jellies are held.

Coworking Spaces

While business incubators and executive suites are targeted towards startups and freelancers, “coworking spaces” have emerged as one alternative. These environments tend to be more professional than cafés and are great surroundings when you find yourself changing out of your PJs into some “real” clothes for client meetings.

The main difference between executive suites and coworking spaces is the focus on the community of workers that comprise the space. Internet access can be gained anywhere after all, it’s the people lonesome digital nomads are longing for.

Amenities vary from space to space, but you can bet you will find all the normal offerings you would need from a conventional office like conference rooms, whiteboards, fax and copy machines, and wi-fi access. If burning the midnight oil is when you find yourself working, some offices even offer 24-hour access - long past closing time at your neighborhood café. Look for drop-in rates if you want to try a space on for size or happen to be traveling for business; some spaces give free access to drop-ins!

Read the extensive coworking wiki for a list of locations around the world. If there’s no space where you base, then join the conversations in the Coworking Google Group to get the scoop on starting your own. The communities within the existing spaces are always willing to lend a hand and spread the word about coworking.

Conclusion

Mobile tools empower us with an amazing amount of freedom to do our work from wherever we choose. Yet with this heightened level of freedom, isolation was almost an inevitable byproduct. While virtual connections provided the means to get work done, they turned out to not provide the same quality of interaction as face-to-face.

But coworking is just one answer to fulfilling this need. As mobility and telecommuting gain popularity, it will be interesting to see what other innovations come out of growing problems with working virtually. Let me know what you think.

CommentsWorking+alone+sucks.+Stop+it%212008-09-11+17%3A48%3A28Cesar+Torres

When Cullen invited me to try out Dropbox, another Y Combinator alum, I instantly loved the application. It’s like iDisk on crack, shared between two or more people. Check out the TechCruch review for a more detailed report.

I’m obsessed with a consistent Mac OS X GUI, so when I realized the Dropbox menu bar icon was Aqua blue (ohnoes!), I had to fix it to match the other black icons surrounding it. The menu bar icons are just a set of five PNGs that you have to replace in the Dropbox application (cue Owen Wilson in Zoolander). Here are directions to get to the correct path:

In your Applications folder, ctrl-click on the Dropbox icon and select Show Package Contents. A new Finder window will open up with a Contents folder. Unzip the PNGs and drop them into the Resources folder found within the Contents folder. Translation: Dropbox.app > Contents > Resources > [PNGs]

Download a ZIP of the set I made so you too can quell your Mac OS X OCD.

CommentsModding+the+Dropbox+menu+bar+icons+%28because+I%27m+OCD%29.2008-08-11+14%3A23%3A52Cesar+Torres