What media features do you want in WordPress 2.9? That’s the question asked on the wordpress.org blog right now, and if you’re a user you really should cast a vote to help shape 2.9.

You might also be interested that the release of WordPress 2.8.1 is near, with the first release candidate now available. There’s also a beta of WordPress MU 2.8.1 if you like to help testing that.

I hear from Al Fox that yet another company is reeling from brand damage caused by employees voicing their opinions on social media services. read more

If you are an RSS addict like I am, you probably stumbled across the news that iTwitter, an iPhone App created by @iConnect, had launched on the App Store.

Uttering those four magical words (push notification for twitter) many users downloaded the app before they had a chance to bump the price from free to $3.99 USD.

While the iTwitter app is impressive overall, its push notification feature may help underscore the need for the Twitter team to establish themselves as a gateway to Apple’s servers instead of the various Tweet clients out there. read more

Strategist News has launched an online destination that aims to deliver business news and blog posts that are recommended by like-minded professionals.

The new website hopes to set itself apart with the quality of its community and resulting content selection. Members are a diverse group of business, investment and marketing strategists with an intellectually curious attitude. Blog posts and news articles are selected and ranked based on the number of recommendations.

Strategist News also announced its 2009 Top 50 Business Blogs, an annual ranking of best business blogs on the web. The ranking aspires to shed light on the best business bloggers, based on their popularity, credibility and relevance, from the point of view of business professionals.

Only time will tell if Strategist News can really deliver on its promise of high quality business news and blog posts.

The beauty of social media is that everyone has a venue that is capable of catching fire and getting the words you write in front of the masses. But with this new-found power comes great responsibility – and perhaps the need for a lawyer. read more

There has been a lot of talk and a lot of confusion in blogging circles, especially among WordPress users, about the GNU General Public License or GPL as it is more commonly known.

When most people think of the GPL, they immediately think of Linux, Firefox (which actually uses several licenses, including the GPL) or other well-known programs that use it. However, several blogging platforms are also GPL including WordPress and Open Melody, a fork of Six Apart’s Open Movable Type project.

Over the next few weeks, we’re going to take a look at the GPL, what it is, what it means and, most importantly why it is important to bloggers and those who are running Web sites on open source platforms (including, for example, phpBB).

To start off, we’re going to talk about some of the basic premises of the GPL, what the actual license says and what your freedoms and rights are with GPLed software. read more

The tragic death of Michael Jackson is still hot on the web. The upcoming memorial service aside, another proof of the artist’s former greatness is him surpassing everyone on Facebook, clocking in at over 6.8 million fans as I’m writing this. And it just doesn’t stop, new fans are added every second. It’s almost scary.

Meanwhile CNN is planning to integrating people’s MJ memories from Facebook with their upcoming live coverage of the memorial. Assuming you’re one of the millions not holding a ticket to the Staples Center, Mashable tells you where you can watch the memorial online. There is no way anyone in the social web will miss this, wether they like it or not.

Twitter is featured in upcoming 30th anniversary Collins English Dictionary, writes The Telegraph.

The entry under noun will read: “a website where people can post short messages about their current activities” and under verb it will read: “to write short messages on the Twitter website”.

By the way things are going, we’ll most likely see more dictionaries adding Twitter, and other coined expressions as well as descriptive brands from social media soon.

Happy Monday, folks! Last week, we introduced you to Melody, the new open source fork of Movable Type. In that post, I expressed my uncertainty as to the goals of this project. I also theorized that creating open source versions of commercial MT features was not one of those goals. Here’s exactly what I said:

It’s unclear at this point how this project will differ from the existing open source version of MT. Certainly, a different leadership is going to have different priorities. The Melody folks seem to be bending over backward to show this is not a break from MT, but just a separate development branch. And, similarly, Six Apart has welcomed the new project. So I doubt we’ll see any of the commercial MT features rewritten as open source modules, at least in the near term. It’s more likely we’ll see features that are useful to independent developers (and, consequently, small to medium size businesses) instead of the enterprise-level development that seems to be 6A’s focus.

read more

We all know that blogging is a rewarding endeavor. Now imagine if you could take that joy and add in an element of philanthropy? ActionAid Australia, an international anti-poverty agency, is planning to send up to 10 bloggers to poverty-stricken countries, in an effort to establish a network of outreach blogs.

Part of the gig includes setting locals up with the equipment and know-how they need to tell their stories. read more