Web excursions: December 26, 2011 — December 27, 2011

Links of interest from December 26, 2011 through December 27, 2011:

• Chris Grant is leaving Joystiq, and other crazy clarifications/confessions
  I work with Darren and Engadget, and I can confirm that everything in this piece is 100% true. I had never heard of the “AOL Way” before the Verge snafu. If you’ve read what the outsiders have to say, do yourself a favor and read the inside story. 

It’s sad to see Chris Grant go, but I’m with Darrent in whishing him the best in his new endeavors.
• A good smartphone comes but once a year
  Chris Ziegler: “[…]Apple owns the entirety of the hype machine that surrounds the iPhone at almost all times — a hype machine that’s predictable and whole, never fragmented.” All iPhone users know this, consciously or not, but it’s one more thing I appreciate about Apple’s business strategy.
• Get more out of meetings with TextExpander
  Via Eddie Smith, some TextExpander inspiration.
• Easier Plugin Development by Moving Plugin Directory — WP Engineer
  I can’t believe I didn’t think of this. I don’t share a lot of plugins and certainly don’t make any money on them, so anything that saves me time back-testing them is golden.
• scratch.tmbundle
  Just discovered this bundle in the TextMate 2 bundle manager. It’s just a scratchpad you can easily save snippets to, kind of a multi-clipboard with a nifty manager built on the Safari RSS Reader markup. Great idea, nifty implementation.
• WP Engine
  I looked into WP Engine based on at tip from David Chartier. It’s very, very tempting. When they add support for version control and deployment (which they state they are working on), I think I’m in.

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