Prominent WordPress theme designer Brian Gardner has released a new open-source theme set called Revolution Two to essentially replace his highly popular Revolution WordPress theme. The new theme set includes 10 themes for free downloading.

The release comes two days earlier than previously anticipated, with Gardner saying in his most recent blog post announcing the launch of the new Revolution theme, “I figure I owed you all an early release.”

That, or he really just wanted to be able to nurse his post-Halloween sugar hangover on Friday night. :)

Starting November 1, the original Revolution theme will no longer be available for purchase (although existing Revolution buyers will still receive support “for life”), except for necessary updates for 12 months to maintain compatibility with WordPress. Instead, Gardner has opted to go the open-source route for monetization, with plans to sell premium support for the free Revolution Two themes on an annual ($99.95) or lifetime ($149.95) basis.

Follow the Revolution Two project on Twitter for project updates.

Have you ever used the Revolution theme for WordPress? What do you think of the new Revolution Two themes? Do you agree with Brian Gardner’s decision to make the Revolution Two themes open-source?

Well over 100,000 iPhone users have downloaded the official WordPress for iPhone application, according to the WordPress for iPhone blog, and based on figures Automattic has received from Apple.

The vast majority (nearly three in every five downloads) come from the US, with one in five downloads from Europe, 8% from the UK, and the rest from Canada, Japan, Australia, and other countries.

What the numbers can’t tell is how many people are actively using the software. That’s a feature which should be available to developers in a future release of the iPhone firmware, according to Steve Jobs’ keynote speech earlier in the year.

It’s also impossible to tell exactly how many times other applications have been downloaded, as Apple doesn’t divulge that information except to individual developers.

As an iPhone user, I haven’t done any serious blogging using the handset, though it’s great for some housekeeping tasks such as moderating and responding to comments, editing typos, and such like. However, 100,000 people obviously thought they’d give it a go, which must be encouraging for Automattic.

According to the blog post, version 1.2 of the WordPress for iPhone application will include landscape mode, comment moderation, enhanced image options, and other tweaks. It should be available in the next few weeks.

100,000 and Counting (via Sitepoint)

Coollittlethings Studio has added its own software to the mix of blogging applications for the iPhone in the shape of Blog Press (iTunes Store link).

Unlike some other general blogging tools for the iPhone which have missed out one or more key blog platforms, the developers claim it works happily with all the major players — that’s Blogger, Windows Live Spaces, WordPress, Movable Type, and TypePad.

It supports photo uploading from a Picasa Web Album or Blog Press Public Album (both of which would need to be set up first, naturally). It’s not clear whether you can also grab photos from the iPhone’s albums, as you would with most other applications. read more

One of my favorite online services, Evernote, has moved out beta and opened themselves up in a “Grand Opening” to the general public.

Evernote is an online note clipping & storage service for a variety of document & note formats.

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