Shadowbringers: The Best Final Fantasy Game In Ages (And Possibly… Ever)

Final Fantasy XIV

It's a tale as old as tales themselves. The Warrior of Light quests across the realm to vanquish the Darkness that has overtaken the people. Good triumphs over evil, and the hero/heroine rides off into the Sunset having done their good deeds for this adventure. Except... it's not. It's a world where Light is over-taking, and the sinners are the survivors. It's a world…

Continue Reading

High Ed Web 2017: A Hart(ford) for Higher Ed

Final Fantasy XIV

[caption id="attachment_4232" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Shadowbringers takes us to "The First", one of several shards of the universe that's split off from "The Source". This universe, while somewhat similar to our own, has been overrun by Light. We are sent there to save The First from being overtaken, and (by doing so) to become the Warriors of Darkness. This is a fascinating storyline, and I'm…

Continue Reading

Final Fantasy XIV, Shadowbringers: My Top 5 List

Final Fantasy XIV

In just two days, the gates will open wide and the adventures of Eorzea will descend upon the First Shard to guard it against the flood of Light. The preliminary patch notes were released today so everyone's been pouring over them in hopes of learning what information they can before the big opening day celebrations on Friday. Here are the things I'm looking forward…

Continue Reading

Marketing To Your Tribe

Marketing

Sitting on a plane, being able to write on my blog... technology is a beautiful thing, isn't it? I'm flying back from Chicago (by way of Charleston, SC) to Nashville. I had the opportunity to speak on Gamification at two very awesome (and very different) events: Digital Summit Chicago and Type-A Parent & Lifestyle Blogging Conference. One for marketers and brands, another for the…

Continue Reading

Getting into Gutenberg, Part 2: A Knee-Jerk REACTion (and an Introduction to Gutenberg Blocks)

WordPress

I wrote yesterday on Gutenberg, WordPress' soon-to-be editing experience, as it was highly mentioned at WordCampUS here in Nashville over the weekend. Yesterday, I focused specifically on the outer facade of Gutenberg - movable blocks, layouts, and modular approaches to content. Today, we're going to look at the back-end. For a WordPress developer, this is where their experience may become a little less rosy.…

Continue Reading

WordCamp US – In Nashville!

Conferences

In less than one week, WordPress enthusiasts from all over the globe will converge on Nashville, TN for WordCamp US - the annual pilgrimage to celebrate, learn about, and meet others interested in WordPress. Nashville's been my home for over 10 years now, and has a very strong WordPress community here. I've been very privileged to work for an organization that celebrates WordPress' role…

Continue Reading

Ajax + jQuery: An Introduction

JavaScript, Tutorial

Since Twitch released their 'Twitch Extensions' SDK, I've been having a lot of fun playing around with different things I can integrate into Twitch's panels. I've build a WordPress Panel and I'm working on Tumblr and Instagram Panels (which require a lot more API work).  But the crux of everything I've been working on relies on getting data from source to destination in a…

Continue Reading

WordPress, React, and The Future

WordPress

On September 14, Matt Mullenweg announced that WordPress was rethinking its use of the React.js library due to Facebook's clarification on its patents. The short story: Facebook released React under a modified "open-source-ish" license (called BSD+Patents) that allow them to judiciously revoke the patent if a service violates the terms of service (specifically, if they use React to build a system that would compete…

Continue Reading