If you’re a WordPress theme developer you may want to keep your themes technically aligned to new commenting features that will most probably make it to WordPress version 2.7. Otto, who is a well-known and respected WordPress community member has published this article regarding his commenting features. Check it out! There is a preview to the new 2.7 commenting system at that page too.

Here are some of the enhancements that Otto covers:
â–ª Creating a 2.7 compatible comments.php file
â–ª Password protection check
â–ª The comments loop
â–ª The power of Ajax
â–ª Styling

We all know that commenting is one of the great features that WordPress is known for. Apparently the development team is taking this feature a step further by offering important feature upgrades like threading, paging and javascript enhancements.

I bet ‘ya this will result in better blogs as people can now interact intuitively from one comment to another.

Just a quick update for everyone. WordPress MU has upgraded from version 2.6.1 to 2.6.2 . It is a required download, not that it’s following a security release like the release of WordPress 2.6.2, but it sure does contain important updates like of the following:

You can download WordPress MU 2.6.2 right here.

Is your blog full of information that sometimes its load time has become an issue for you?  If it takes more than 10 seconds for information to appear when someone visits your blog (with a fast internet connection even), you may want to think about improving this.  First impressions last, for new visitor it may turn them off and cue them not to visit your blog UNTIL they’re sure of a better experience.

Forutnately there is a WordPress plugin to help you… A new plugin developed by Donncha O Caoimh released a new version.  Here’s the plugin intro specs:

WP Super Cache 0.8

This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After an html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.

However, because a user’s details are displayed in the comment form after they leave a comment, the plugin will only serve static html files to:

The good news is that probably more than 99% of your visitors don’t do any of the above! Those users who don’t see the static files will still benefit because they will see regular WP-Cache cached files and your server won’t be as busy as before. This plugin should help your server cope with a front page appearance on digg.com or other social networking site.

You can check this page and this page for more information regarding this plugin.

 

I’m filing this post under “backup” because we’ve been told many times over to backup your drive like a month or so. Please please do it now if you haven’t. OMG, am I sounding like your dentist (!), well, he’s right when he tells you to brush your teeth at least 3 times a day… and floss!!! har har har.

Ok, ’nuff about teeth, backup these days are equally important though. If you’ve been situated where there was “hair pulling” and “table banging” because you failed to backup, here’s a tool that may make you avoid that horrific episode.

The Imation Apollo Pro WX Hard Drive.

It’s a USB wireless hard drive (comes in 250GB to 1TB storage capacity) that you can hide anywhere within 30 feet AND STILL be able to access as if you’ve got your own “data cloud” at home. Comes pre-packed with data security features that ensures you private and sole access to it. No worries about the neighbors trying to peek in and create havoc with your files.

Right now, it works with the Dell Latitude and XPS models AND with Kensington’s four-port Wireless USB Docking Station. Soon enough, I’m sure it will expand its compatibility to a lot of PCs and notebooks.

It will be available Q4 of 2008. No price listed yet.

If you’ve got a knock-out idea that you think will change the way people live, help the world in anyway or improve something in the planet, you just may win a US$10 million prize from Google.com. Google wants to hear your idea and if it can, help make it a reality.  Just go to www.project10tothe100.com to find out more.

Or watch this video below as an intro.

 

 

I think this is the largest public campaign that has ever hit the internet for the past decade.  Maybe the past 2 decades even.  This campaign was launched to celebrate Google’s 10th year anniversary.  What a way to celebrate!  I really feel the community getting together to achieve a milestone project with Google.

Google announced the project live on CNN on Wednesday morning.

“These ideas can be big or small, technology-driven or brilliantly simple — but they need to have impact,” Google said in a news release. “We know there are countless brilliant ideas that need funding and support to come to fruition.”

This campaign runs to October 20 only, remember, they’re only asking for ideas, you don’t need to develop a full working prototype of it.  In a narrative form, and in any of the 25 languages they have listed, you just need to type away.  Hey, it could even be an idea with your blogs or something.

This is your chance to put your dreams to reality… and possibly help the human race!

 

Show your love for good ‘ol WP!

I’ve seen several creative WordPress fan art lately, which brought  me to think if there are any official or unofficial collection of all WordPress logos on the net.  If you’ve got any WordPress fan art yourself, you may want to consider writing the WordPress team to submit it for all the world to see, or use, or whatever… maybe to just brighten up their day.

The WordPress fan art above was from WordCamp Philippines.  Matt was quoted to “really like this art work”, though I’m sure he favors every fan art made for his WordPress work.  We’ve seen this fan art on t-shirts and bags… they really rock!

What makes me wonder though is “can people copy these logos on shirts”, some of them really are cool and would be great to wear a few myself.  Is there a way to ask permission to use them?  hmmm…  of if you would like to make fan art, would that require a permission from WordPress? double hmmmm…  wonder how that works? anyone?

Set your browsers and travel to this fan art page … and this one too.

I’m sure a lot of you would remember downloading the WordPress Weekly podcast, eh?  Well they’re back, after a long looooong time resting.  Funny I remember Episode 22 then pffft… vanished.  So I had other podcasts fill in that void.  Now I’m a fan of Cali Lewis, Natalie del Conte & the CNet guys.

But since WordPress Weekly is back… it’s like wearing my old pair of shoes… comfortable and familiar.  For those who don’t know the podcast yet, here’s a re-intro by Jeff Chandler (the program host):

 

WordPress Weekly is a weekly oriented podcast that takes place every Friday evening at 8PM EST starting on October 3rd, 2008 on Talkshoe.com. The format of the show will remain close to what it has been in the past. The co-host and I will discuss the WordPress news of the week. This could be plugin updates, releases, themes, version releases, development updates, a tutorial written by someone in the community, could be anything as long as it relates to WordPress. At the end of each show, Keith and I will give out our plugin of the week. This plugin is picked individually by us and is tested prior to the show.

I am aiming for a relaxing atmosphere where WordPress Users can gather around for 1 hour every Friday evening and discuss the latest happenings with everything WordPress. You could almost consider the show a virtual WordCamp.

You can listen to the podcast thru TalkShoe or subscribing thru iTunes.

 

 

 

 

 

Kieran O’Shea has released a Calendar for WordPress plugin.  It looks like the regular Google Calendar webpage embed except that any calendar edits are made within the WordPress dashboard instead.  This plugin displays a full-month calendar (no option for daily and weekly spreads, yet) with all your events displayed per date.  The user hovers the mouse pointer over an event and a full description of the event is displayed.

You can download the calendar right here.  And view a sample execution of this plugin right here.

Features

Calendar is feature rich and will continue to become better as development continues.

 

I’ve heard and read about people cramming to get their very own DropBox.  I figured, “hey what’s that all about”, shrugging it off to a weekend check-up.  Well it’s the weekend now and all I’ve done is head-off to the public beta site of DropBox to view their About Us video.  See below:
 

 

I love it!  I’m off to get my DropBox, pronto!

If you’re frequently sharing files, and like me you use services like YouSendIt or others… you’d find DropBox a breath of fresh air.  Features include:

 

CNet’s Loaded (Sept 10 episode) with Natalie del Conte is spot on when she says that AT&T’s and Verizon’s try on adding a social networking feature as add-on services for their mobile users are “unthinkables”.  She’s right, it is for suckers, why would you pay to access a social network on your phone when there are several ways you can do it for FREE.  AT&T’s “social life” and Verizon’s “my community” is charging its users monthly fees of $2.99 and $1.49 respectively.

(hey, isn’t this part of their wireless stake they’re trying to plant since way back 2007)

Both of them will allow you to aggregate your social networking accounts into one application and manage them from there.

At any rate, this seems to be a clear indication about the growth of social networks… blogging networks in particular too.  If big companies, specially the telcos, are now looking into making money with content (or easy access to it) you can predict that soon enough, they’d be digging their hands into content too.

Is that good or bad news for us… well, honestly I couldn’t tell now.  But my opinion would be these telcos will give us all a great service if they focus on improving easy access to content, and much sensible rates too… like FREE!  Or premium services for much more in return.

 

 

Microblogging service Twitter has recently launched its new design. While the redesign mostly concerns cosmetic changes, and not new features, the Twitter team states that the changes in user interface would make it easier to implement more improvements in the future.

The site supposedly loads faster, with Ajax optimizations. The layout has been streamlined, with the navigation tabs moved and some unnecessary or rarely-used elements done away with or hidden, for a simpler look.

If you have suggestions, comments or if you simply want to compliment the Twitter team for their work, do give them a shout out by sending a tweet that starts with @twitter.

They say they have more updates coming, and that they’re currently working hard on improving on the back-end.

 

Being a part of the WordPress community is such a privilege.  WordPress 2.7 is set to be released this November 2008 and so the cadence to that release has started.  Our first marching orders are to head on to help the development team code the the new Dashboard interface. 

From the picture above you’d quickly see that 2.7 is leading towards a left bar menu from their usual top-down displays.  This had a lot to do because of user surveys too. And so to preserve and maximize the use of the screen area.

The new survey will be about how “The menu function is based on sections with submenus, and you can collapse and expand menu sections without leaving your current screen. The image below shows all menu sections collapsed, while the image on the right shows the Content section expanded. ”

Navigation sections and labels are being decided now.  If you’d like your opinions to be heard, head off to the survey site right here. 

 

 

Last July 4 we’ve introduced you to Google Gears, that useful technology behind the “turbo” button located at the upper right corner of a WordPress admin dashboard at your WordPress.com blog.  Enabling turbo allows your blog to save little snippets of blog data on your local hard drive, the reason being to speedup your blogging experience at WordPress.com

We did tell you too that it was initially available for Internet Explorer and FireFox browsers.

Today, the Gears Blog announced that the Safari compatibility is rock solid.  

We’re really excited to announce the official release of Gears for Safari on OS X (minimum requirements are Leopard 10.5.3 or Tiger 10.4.11).

You can download it today from http://gears.google.com.

This means that you can now access all the Gears-enabled sites (such as Zoho office, WordPress, the new YouTube uploader and Google Docs offline) in Safari.

Unfortunately, no positive news yet of Gears availability for Opera Browser users.  Strangely too, Safari Browsers (windows version) is a thinker.  

Originally dubbed as “Google Gears”, the giant now dropped it’s name and settled with “Gears” as product name.  I haven’t seen any official statement about this branding move, but I’d speculate that public acceptability may be an issue? hmmm… not all are Google fans I’d agree.  Or maybe if you repeat saying “Google Gears” fast enough you’d sound like a grown up speaking to a baby.

 

Stocks values are falling. Big investment banks are filing for bankruptcy. A colleague on the Blog Herald recently wrote a piece on how blogs are weathering the economic crunch that’s being felt worldwide today. Easton Ellsworth writes:

For most people who don’t blog for profit or income, perhaps they don’t directly feel the effects of the crunch on their blogging activities. But for us who are in the business of blogging, we would inevitably feel some effect sooner or later. Blog networks, being business entities, would most likely face some decline in earnings. But how about individual bloggers?

For bloggers who earn directly from advertising revenue and sponsorships, the worry here is that advertisers would cut back on their online ad spending. So whether it’s for directly-sold sponsorship spots or revenue shares in ad networks, there could be a decline in earnings.

For bloggers who work for blog networks, meanwhile, the big worry is job security. With the fear of blog networks folding up, the future might be bleak. Or at least with some blog networks restructuring their pay schemes, the question is whether this would turn out to be beneficial or not. Bloggers who perform well might find this a better proposition, but those whose blogs aren’t exactly popular might not.

In my view, though, blogs and blog networks are better able to weather economic declines compared to other businesses. For one, the overhead is small. Unlike brick and mortar establishments, we don’t have to pay any lease or rent for office space, office utility bills, and costs for other administrative work. Yes, we do spend for hosting, domains, electricity, design and development, and even equipment. And of course, for the moneyed networks, acquisition of online properties. But that’s as far as overhead goes. I would say that much of our expenditure is on creative staff, and hopefully the good output is there!

But still, the effect remains to be seen. Will we feel the crunch? If not directly, then perhaps indirectly–with rising costs of living and such. So Easton’s advice to develop quick reflexes makes perfect sense.

New media is ever-changing. So bloggers’ and blog networks’ ability to change and shift focus quickly should be quick enough.

Image source

 

What does placing “ninth in the highest internet users in the world “mean?  It means an undisclosed amount by Google purchasing Korean blogging company Tatter, that’s what it means.  Google is setting it’s eyes on Yahoo dominated Korea with this move to “Google-ize” the country’s popular blogging software “TextCube” by Tatter.  TextCube has been compared to Blogger.com rival WordPress.

 

“We are excited to welcome Tatter and Company’s engineering team to Google Korea”, announced a Google spokesperson in an e-mailed statement. “Acquiring Tatter and Company will allow us to enhance our online publishing tools in Korea, benefiting a large number of users who already depend on and enjoy Google and Tatter and Company’s products”.

An excited Tatter co-chief executive Chang-Won Kim confirmed the deal on his personal blog, noting that Tatter had been “Googled”.

In a country where it’s all high-speed internet access (mostly), it is no wonder that with this move by Google, all other big names in the “cloud” and the computer industry in general will take a definitive move towards connecting with the Korean market.

 

 

 

Honestly, this new feature reminded me a little bit of the Twitter environment. I say that because I first saw this type of feature at Twitter.com  BUT NOW, it’s Blogger.com’s new Followers gadget. This gadget allows you to see who’s following/reading your blog AND has become a fan of it by adding it to their list of favorite blogs to visit.  As you could see above, it uses their blogger.com avatar as part of the gadget display.

Take a peek at what you see as the blog owner in your blogger dashboard:

A neat summary of how many followers you have AND the ability to “pay-back” by following your followers blogs too.  Now isn’t that useful?  

At the dashboard you are given the ability to follow other blogs too, even if they’re not hosted at blogger.com.  Just head on to your dashboard and click “add”, then type in the blog address to quickly add it to your favorites.  If the blog you just followed is hosted at blogger.com your avatar will be included in that blog’s followers list.

Haven’t seen this added to WordPress 2.7 features yet.  I hope the widget developers can also make a WordPress version soon?

 

 

 

 

 

September 5, 1998… Google was born,  co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were students at Stanford University .  To date, I believe Google is a stronger 10-year old than any other tech company, including Microsoft.  At 10 Google seems to be pushing very strong on its core competencies.  Now reports say their eyes are set in entering the mobile phone industry too, something to rival the iPhone?  Your guess is as good as mine.  But will there be a stronger 10-year old tech company in the future.  I would doubt that, maybe in the distant future.  Check out this table from CNet.com:

 

Today Google nearly has about 20,000 employees worldwide and  a $150 billion market value to redefine media, marketing and technology. Founders Page and Brin, both 35 now and worth US$19 billion each.  Not bad.  That’s about US$2 billion a year, a windfall compared to the $100,000 seed money a venture capitalist poured into the very young start-up Google of 1998.  Google CEO and Chairman Eric Schmidt is to be credited highly for the great leadership he provides on a daily basis.

Happy birthday Google!

 

 

2.6.1 hasn’t really warmed up its seat on our servers and now a mandatory upgrade to 2.6.2?  Hmmm… you’re as surprised as I am, dear readers.  Through the help of Stefan Esser the WordPress development team has addressed the dangers and vulnerabilities of SQL column truncation and the weakness of mt_rand().

Ryan Boren announced this mandatory security upgrade saying “if you ALLOW OPEN REGISTRATION in your blogs, you should definitely upgrade immediately”.  Check out the announcement page for more details.  And alongside the security upgrade are several bug fixes that will make WordPress work even better.

WordPress 2.6.2 is available right here.

 

If you’ve been looking for an effective way to communicate those company memos, look no further.  Let me introduce you to Digital Memo.  Imagine working in an office where the company bulletin board is the loneliest “toolâ€, the least used.  If you’ve got an important message to say, hey, that’s the last place you’d publish it, right?  Everyone just breezes by it!  Unless you’ve got a memo announcing a bonus, a party or a cook-out!

Now imagine your message as the first thing people see when they turn on their computers?  It’s a CEO’s dream.  Instant communication from the head down the line.

Digital Memo is a system based on the power and convenience of instant messaging that notifies users each time you add a new post to your blog.

 

 

By integrating the RSS feed that is published with your blog into the Digital Memo system, Digital Memo enables you to use your blog as a tool to automatically send memos digitally. Get set-up in 3 steps:

This tool has successfully integrated the “user-friendliness†of a blog software and the “formality†of a corporate communication system.  Each computer belonging to the company network will surely receive every corporate memo, promptly alerting each user with the attention your memo deserves.

Digital Memo also has an online tutorial if you wish to see a demo.

Now, let’s see how the CEO “work flow†looks like:

Step 1:  You come in the office, turn on your PC and fire up (or open) your blog.

Step 2:  You compose a short memo informing everyone about something really important, or maybe inform them about their attendance to the company barbecue on Saturday perhaps.  Or maybe write everyone a “good job†note for a change.

Step 3:  You hit “publishâ€, and that’s it!

Your blog’s RSS feed will be monitored by Digital Memo and any new blog post you publish will automatically be fed into the Digital Memo system and distributed company-wide to everyone’s computer desktops.

Now I know what you’re thinking - Is this very secure?

Yes it is.  You and only you would know what your blog user name and passwords are.  Your blog can well reside in the company server, where presumably you’ve got that box all firewalled and tamper-proof.

Is it easy to install? Yes it is.  The Digital Memo reader can be installed on multiple systems by using the MSI installer. Full instructions are provided with your documentation on purchasing.

Will the staff really see these memos in a prominent way?  Yes they will.  Every new memo you post will automatically pop up on everyone’s computer desktops.  There’s literally no way people will miss reading your memo.  No way.

What if I send say a series of memos in a day, will the staff have access to every one of them?  Yes, they will. Digital Memo will appear only as one memo box (or a neatly tucked icon in the system tray) in everyone’s computer desktops with “next†and “previous†memos distinctly accessible with just a click of a button.

What are the other benefits of using Digital Memo?

 

The only sad news is that Digital Memo is only available for Windows XP or Vista.  Too bad for Mac users, but hey, if we can create enough demand maybe they can make a Mac version too!  

Oh, and another thing …  if your company’s communication structure is based on a strong policy that every memo should be “written on paper  too bad.  Maybe it’s time to change the policy?

The Test

We’re only 5 PCs in the company network, I gave it a try, and found that it is very “snappyâ€.  There were no installation snags, the operation “CEO Workflow†(described above) was a 1-2-3 winning combination that even the most cyberphobic CEO would appreciate.  Messages were instantly received by every PC.

The Recommendation

I’d encourage you to go and download the trial software, there’s nothing to lose, really.  You may want to try it out on the IT department, to start with, and slowly add more departments in due time.

Digital Memo is made by Popuload Software.  A company, based in Montreal Canada, noted for their innovative range of software solutions that help change the way users interact with the “usual†operating systems.  A leader in providing RSS tools for communicating and tracking information, digitally.

The evaluation version is a fully functional and unlimited version of Digital Memo. The only difference this has from the purchased version is that each distributed post will contain a “trial warning messageâ€.  Not bad if you want to see how this new memo distribution method performs in “the long runâ€.

The full version costs US$195.00, it is downloadable right now by purchasing it online thru your credit card or PayPal.

Program updates are distributed via the Popuload website as well.  

Check out the company website at www.popuload.com

Editor’s note: This review was written upon request by Pouload Software.

 

Nobody missed me!  Not even a comment to say, “hey where’s Jim?”.  Have we all just taken a quick look elsewhere for their daily tech dose, have we all stepped sideways to look at the other side… have we… have we… have we…

Kidding!  Been out for nearly a week and a half to work on something personal.  But I’m back, I’m back.  I’m OK, thanks for missing me! 

This past week was a little too busy for WordPress,  Matt Mullenweg has been travelling the globe to be at WordCamps happening one after the other, I think he’s in Australia now.  I was able to touch base with him in one of his stop overs.  A little star-strucked I must admit as I did personally meet Mr. WordPress.  What a meeting!

Wordpress 2.7, he says, will be released by November 2008.  He presented a demo of the beta version and boy… it’s a huge release in my books.  So many fancy things making WordPress easier to work with, and of course, visually great too.

You can catch the proposed features right here.  One of the features I’m really anxious to use is the “One Click Plug-in Installer“.

The plugin installer allows for installing plugins from the WordPress Administration panels. You can search for plugins by tag, plugin author, or by subject. It also lists the featured, most popular, and recently added and updated. When you click on the title of a plugin, you can see the details and choose to install it into your WordPress plugin list.

Yep, nothing of the download the plugin yourself, upload it to your plugins directory and activate it at WordPress plugins section.  :)  Really cool isn’t it?