A few months ago, top news agency Reuters was severely criticized for publishing digitally altered photos from Lebanon. The unfortunate incident is now better known as the “Adnan Hajj photographs controversy,” leaving a dark blemish in the use of digital photography for news reportage. [Read more…]
WordPress 2.0.7 Released
Just ten days after releasing version 2.0.6, WordPress 2.0.7 is now available for public download. This update addresses a PHP security issue in certain versions of the popular scripting language, as well as a Feedburner problem that was inadvertently introduced in 2.0.6. Similar to the previous updates, the WordPress team labels this as a recommended upgrade. [Read more…]
Announcing Habari: The New WordPress?
Have you heard about Habari? Habari is a new blogging platform from familiar names formerly associated with WordPress. The project was announced by Chris J. Davis earlier this month, who’s one of the core developers of the new weblog publishing application.
But is there space for another WordPress alternative? [Read more…]
Recommended Update: WordPress 2.0.6
In light of the recently reported cross–site scripting vulnerabilities in WordPress, version 2.0.6 has been released to address the said issues in the templates.php file as detailed in these entries from Operation N and Security Focus. (As cited in our related coverage.)
Along with the aforementioned fixes, changes were made specific to the comments system, now filtering for input that may ruin layouts and markup. Also listed in the summary of changes is the compatibility for PHP/FastCGI setups and the now functional HTML quicktags for Safari browsers. [Read more…]
Blogs, Bloggers, and Blogfights
What makes blogs and bloggers prone to blogfights? Wired just ran a story on the best blogfights of 2006 and I’m sure most of us are aware of at least one of those listed. Remember Kevin Rose vs. Jason Calacanis?
But what really brings bloggers to quarrel? [Read more…]
Is Digg A Valid Search Engine Result?
Over at Search Engine Journal (and at digg.com), there is a discussion regarding digg.com pages showing up at google.com search results, along with the actual link to the relevant story or article. However, there have been instances where the digg page ranks higher than the actual link.
Do you think digg shouldn’t be in google’s results? [Read more…]
Is Your Password Secure?
Several weeks ago, a phishing attack on popular social networking site MySpace.com managed to harvest thousands of actual usernames and passwords. These users were tricked into entering their account details in a hosted user page that was intentionally designed to appear like a legitimate MySpace login page. Since the page’s URL was within the myspace.com domain, even net–savvy users were caught unaware of the attack.
Are our passwords ever safe? [Read more…]
Blog To Share
Bloggers are into blogging for a variety of reasons. Most of the very first used their blogs as personal journals, until it grew into an extension of their professional practice. Web designers and open source hackers immediately come to mind. Niche blogs on specific interests and discussions are some of the more recent uses of this medium, now frequently tied up with other advanced technologies.
But what has always been common in almost all weblogs? [Read more…]
AdSense discourages images near ads
Google’s AdSense along with cheap web hosting and free blog providers has helped spawn today’s continuous growth of blogging and online advertising. Basically, everyone can now publish a weblog and hope that someone clicks on their paid text links block.
The unfortunate result of the accelerated growth has been the creation of MFA (Made For AdSense) sites that serve no valuable information but focus only in generating revenue. Similarly, the professional blogging community came into prominence with its wealth of experience and knowledge on how to optimize blogs for higher click–through rates and traffic, which leads to better revenues. [Read more…]
Improving the WordPress comment system
Do you think WordPress needs better comment management functionality? Prolific WordPress blogger Lorelle VanFossen discusses what she thinks is WordPress’s most significant weakness, the lack of a simpler and more intuitive way of handling comments in the popular blogging platform.
I’€™m sure that your ‘€œnumber one flaw’€ or lacking feature in WordPress might be different from mine, but this is one that really bothers me. I think the solution is simple. So the question is: Why hasn’€™t something been done to fix this flaw?
The flaw? Comments.
[Read more…]
