I couldn’t be happier that my WordCamp Portland 2009 presentation, WordPress-Powered Portfolios, will likely have the shortest shelf life of any presentation I’ve given. It’s a testament to the WordPress team (and open source projects in general) that the “hacks” I proposed only months ago have already blossomed into honest-to-goodness features.

In December, WordPress 2.9 introduced support for post thumbnails, eliminating the need for my custom meta hack. WordPress 3.0 (which should be released around May) will solve the problem of secluding portfolio content from your blog with the introduction of custom post types.

Instead of corralling your portfolio content with tools like “category excluders” or relying solely on nested pages (as I suggested), you’ll soon be able to create a custom “portfolio” post type in a supported and predictable fashion.

As Frank Bültge details on the WP Engineer blog, adding a whole new section to your WordPress sidebar will be a straightforward and extremely flexible process you can bake right into your theme. No crazy plugins or hackery required!

This change is exciting not only for the impact it will have on  sites like my own, but because it increases WordPress’ prospects as a hardy CMS solution.

All that’s left to render my presentation completely obsolete is a more robust and customizable gallery solution. I’ll be crossing my fingers.

The iPhone may be my favorite device of the last ten years. No other gizmo since the PC has so fundamentally altered the way I interact with the web and my social circle.

But the iPhone’s ubiquity in the mobile space scares the living daylights out of me.

It frightens me the same way I’m frightened by the deceptive feeling of serenity that blankets me as I continue to surrender more and more of my data to Google (current buddy, future megalomaniac). The thought leaders at Apple have crafted an experience so warm and fuzzy it’s nearly impossible to escape its allure, even as it wallops all of its competitors.

I simultaneously sing the praises of the Semantic Web (often at the expense of rich media plugins such as Flash and Silverlight) while gleefully supporting dozens of apps delivered via the iPhone’s closed, draconian marketplace. The irony (hypocrisy?) therein is not lost on me.

It seems pretentious to avoid these products solely on insular, geeky principal, so I continue to champion competitors in hopes that a superior device will emerge or, at the very least, keep Apple under enough pressure and scrutiny to maintain their innovation and avoid sinking into mediocrity (remember?).

I had extremely high hopes for Palm’s WebOS, but a still-floundering app ecosystem coupled with some truly strange hardware choices appear to have sabotaged its chances. While I have much more confidence in the Android OS as a powerful and capable mobile device standard (especially in the long-term), the platform seems troubled by a lack-of-consistency between devices and the same snore-inducing, incremental release cycle that eventually tempered my excitement for ambitious open source projects like Ubuntu.

It could just be my ignorance of the platform, but as the iPhone becomes increasingly capable at performing business tasks I begin to look upon Blackberry users as I did AOL users ten years ago—with a feeling of solicitude generally reserved for endangered species.

What we need is a platform with a distinctive and decidedly un-iPhone-like user experience (an iPhone killer killer), produced by a company with experience facilitating ecosystems yet still capable of supporting a wide range of hardware and service providers.

Did you just say Windows?

That’s right, Microsoft showed off Windows Phone 7 Series this week, and it looks great. The minds responsible for the well-reviewed Zune HD have re-designed the mobile operating system from scratch. Designers like myself who admire the HD’s interface are thrilled, but considering the Zune’s marketshare could be very generously described as having a “lack of ubiquity,” it’s a brave (and admirable) move to hand them the keys to Microsoft’s mobile future.

Instead of forcing the user into disparate applications specific to function (iPhone) or allowing the user to multi-task until their poor little phone grinds to a halt (Android), Windows 7 Phones establish contextual hubs of interest. If you want to see what your cousin has been up to this week, you don’t have to check email, Facebook, Twitter and chat in separate apps; simply tap “People,” then select your cousin’s profile. This style of traversing your media and social circle is extremely thoughtful and appears to be well-executed. I know it won’t please everyone, but I’m certain a percentage of the population will instantly prefer it.

The interface itself looks completely unique, at least if you’ve never used a Zune. Subtleties like highlights, shadows, soft corners and texture are completely absent, allowing only color, typography and your content to show through. While occasionally abrasive (especially in the calendar application), it’s a striking choice that’s extremely memorable and looks beautiful in motion.

It isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, though. The browser is still Internet Explorer, albeit the improved (but sluggish) version found in the Zune HD. Until Mobile IE supports the same sort of HTML5 features that have enabled web app developers to deliver rich mobile experiences to the iPhone and Android devices, Windows Phones will still be an obstacle in the evolution of the mobile web. Perhaps most depressingly, hardware actually supporting this OS probably won’t debut until Christmas, and who knows what may have changed by then.

Aside from the platform itself, what excites me most about this announcement is that another Apple competitor has finally shown they’re awake. Watching Apple merrily stomp ahead with Android slowly gaining ground and Palm off in the distance is becoming tiresome.

But an Apple/Google/Microsoft/Palm slugfest? I’d pay to see that.

Fragments is a unique comic book anthology that donates its proceeds to those in need, but not without your help.

We’re now accepting submissions for comics and artwork to be featured in the first volume, benefiting the victims of the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti. If you’re an artist, please consider contributing. If you know an artist, please direct their attention to this project.

With our combined creativity, we can make this an amazing book that actually saves lives.

For more information, please visit the project’s web site or follow @FragmentsComic on Twitter.

My favorite superhero is, without question, Batman. His is the simplest premise with the richest psychological results.

But just as certainly, my favorite to draw is Spider-Man.

When I was a very young comics fan, I was drawn to John Romita’s flawless brushwork. But as I grew older, I became increasingly enamored with Steve Ditko’s Spidey. It felt quirky, jittery, jerky. The opposite of graceful. In a world of sweeping capes, bold shapes and dynamic lines, Ditko’s Spider-Man (and to some extent, Peter Parker) was hopelessly broken and askew.

I would guess at least half of American cartoonists go through a phase of romanticizing superhero comics, and I was no different. I never thought I was very good at drawing superheroes, mind you, but they were really fun.

I recently stumbled upon some Spider-Man drawings I did as a freshman in college. It looks like I was reading a lot of comics by Sam Kieth and Humberto Ramos. I was obviously avoiding the “hassle” of rendering settings or backgrounds (something many young artists struggle with). But these drawings make me smile in spite of their flaws because I had so much fun making them.

And my Spider-Man is definitely quirky, jittery, jerky.