WordPress Media RSS

Media RSS is an RSS extension for syndicating multimedia files in RSS feeds.  I just added this feature to WordPress.com video feeds, so that videos are more searchable and their feeds are more accessible in all browsers and readers.

Here is an example: http://drhailin.wordpress.com/feed/ contains the following section of code:

<enclosure url="http://hailindev.videos.wordpress.com/IBMQsAT4/video/fmt_std" length="2954752" type="video/mp4" />

<media:content url="http://hailindev.videos.wordpress.com/IBMQsAT4/video/fmt_std" fileSize="2954752" type="video/mp4" medium="video" isDefault="true" duration="29" height="300" width="400" >

<media:rating scheme="urn:mpaa">PG-13</media:rating>

<media:title type="plain">my Caption for Palace </media:title>

<media:thumbnail url="http://hailindev.videos.wordpress.com/IBMQsAT4/thumbnail/fmt_std" width="256" height="192" />

<media:player url="http://v.wordpress.com/IBMQsAT4" width="400" height="300" />

</media:content>

WordCamp Shanghai and Hong Kong

WordPress’s international appeal is evident in its amazing user endorsements from four corners of the earth. In April, there will be two WordCamps in Asia: WordCamp Shanghai and WordCamp Hong Kong.  

Check it out if you are nearby, we’d love to meet you there!

Reading

Better spend your time reading than watching TV. According to a recent research study, readers create movies in their minds. Children who read more are smarter and do better academically. I am so happy that we didn’t have a TV at home when I grew up.

Congrats to David

When my nephew David was four years old, I was a college junior in Beijing.  That year grandma accompanied him to travel to Beijing to apply for a visa to visit his dad, who was pursuing PhD in mining engineering at Virginia Tech.

Time sure flies.  13 years later, my brother Dr. Wu is a well recognized scientist in his field.  In 2004, I earned the very first PhD in computer science in University of Denver’s 145-year history.

David is graduating from high school this year, and has been accepted into CalTech, Stanford, Columbia. I wish he would choose Stanford, because it’s just the best.  I once attempted, unsuccessfully, to get into Stanford MBA program myself, despite the fact that I scored 740 (98^th percentile) in GMAT.  Well, it’s all history, and as long as David is at Stanford, that should give me a good reason to visit the beautiful campus over some weekends!

WordPress LaTeX

Mathematicians use WordPress quite a bit for publishing math research and notes.  In fact today I just helped to fix some LaTeX issues on Terence Tao (陶哲軒)  math blog.  I’ve always regarded math as the highest, purest form of human intelligence.  Tao is one of the most famous young mathematicians in the world today, so when Matt asked me to help him, I was more than pleased and worked late into Friday night to fix those issues.

Note: LaTeX support is available on WordPress.com blogs.

On your self-hosted WordPress blog, you need to install LaTeX plugin.

Random Thoughts on a Cabbage Leaf

Chinese News Digest, the premier site for overseas Chinese scholars, published a short prose I wrote.

The idea is that something as simple as a cabbage leaf is actually a master engineering piece – together with my fond memories of it.

Video Statistics on WordPress.com Blogs

The video bloggers on WordPress.com will notice a new section called “Video Plays” on the Blog Stats section of the dashboard.  I just put together this handy section to report the detailed statistics on the videos you uploaded to your WordPress.com blog.

Note that you need to purchase space upgrade in order to upload videos to your blog. 

Below are a few screenshots:

Open Source Video Solution

One principle that everyone at Automattic cherishes is open sourcing.  WordPress is 100% open sourced product, and thanks to the tremendously supportive community, it has risen to become the leader in the blog software space.

Automattic just open sourced the video framework which is used to power wordpress.com.  The package contains video solutions framework, including transcoder and administration interface utilities,  written in PHP.  It supports multiple formats including standard, DVD and HD.

If you are looking to build your own video solution for your WordPress MU installation, or even start a video company to compete with Youtube (eg, in a niche market), you should definitely check this out.

Blog Research

Read a few papers presented at last International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media.

Some interesting findings:

“web-based knowledge market” – monetary award is not a significant incentive for people to participate in a task on a knowledge sharing market.

Competing to Share Expertise: the Taskcn Knowledge Sharing Community - In general, forums in Yahoo answers tend to have broad
out-degree distributions. In the Programming category this represents a few highly active individuals who consistently help others with their tasks and problems, but do not necessarily ask for help themselves. In the Marriage category, these could be users who regularly offer advice, or are there for the fun of discussion, as is the case in the Wrestling category.  Note that this separation of roles is evident even when one considers whether a user posted a single question or answer.  For instance, in Programming, about 57% of the users who asked questions did not answer any during this time period, and similarly 51% who answered questions did not ask.  Overall, YA is very broad but not very deep.

And you can decide whether you can befriend with one or not by  looking at his or her Facebook profile in 6 seconds.

Change

Change has been a hot topic in the past presidential election.  Americans are tired of the failed policies and perennial inertia. Obama saw this and seized the moment to win a historic election.

Companies win or lose according to their ability to adapt to changes.  Those who survive are not necessarily the fittest, but are the quickest to adapt to changes. In the early eighties, Intel saw a losing battle with the Japanese companies in the memory chips business. It exited its familiar turf completely and refocused on microprocessors – opportunity brought forth by the PC revolution, and has reined in the new arena ever since.  On the contrary, Yahoo failed to react quickly and decisively to the enormous changes in Web search field, and resulted in losing the race to Google.

Entrepreneurs and even ordinary engineers need to adapt to changes as well.  It was a big change when I came to U.S. for a graduate education, leaving behind familiar culture, language, and connections.  Before moving to the Web field, I was one of a few experts in the silicon valley who know how to design SSL in the kernel.  Change is hard as it can make all your previously possessed knowledge irrelevant, and force you to start from zero.  Change is good because it is when you pack your old stuff, move forward, and enter a new promising land.

Keep your mind open, maintain high level of curiosity, and happy sailing.