I’m currently working on Alan Moore’s SMLXL engagement marketing and mobile blog and adding podcast features as part of our internet marketing campaign.

I chose the PodPress plugin to manage and deliver his podcasts.

The online documentation for the plugin seemed unailable from the wiki that the author’s website directed me to. So I then did some searches and came up with a number of video tutorials. These are very nice because you can also see the exact options that they are talking about. There appears to be an explosion of video tutorials on the web as many are attempting to add value added service to their web sites.

Here is one of the best I found for PodPress.

Google Chrome Browser

The internet is a buzz since Google's release yesterday of its browser named Chrome. There are many wild predictions about its future, what it means for Microsoft and Firefox and a share of nay sayers. I downloaded and to it for a test drive myself. But I waited a day to see what reactions would be and if more detailed information came to light before I went shooting my mouth. Overall the reaction seems to be very positive.

A number of things stand out about Chrome.

1. On the surface, its page rendering seems fast. It uses WebKit
2. Browser tabs are spawned as separate tasks. This the most talked about feature so far, because it means that if one website's scripts are running slow, the other tabs will not slow down. The problem child can then be killed off. This point gets my vote.
3. Chrome uses the V8 JavaScript engine. It means Chrome has speed advantages over many of the other browsers.

The general consensus seems to be that the new browser is clear pitched at web applications, and specifically web applications that continue to work when off line. Many see this as the way of the future, where applications are not tied to any one particular operating system, and are available anywhere, any time.

The browser then coupled with Google's Gears, a collection of web widgets, clearly puts in competition with Adobe's Air and Microsoft's Silverlight. As JavaScript engines become faster and if a standard HTML video element was adopted, the future looks dim for these two proprietary platforms. This is one point that seems to have garnered much applause from the technical community.

The next thing that seems to be rather sensational and wildly exaggerated, is that Chrome is Window's killer. As many people have pointed out, Chrome needs an operating system to support it. So Windows is not about to go away. But, where it does spell trouble for Microsoft, is when Chrome and other browsers create a fast, stable platform for web based productivity software, its Office cash cow is in serious trouble.

For me, it has been interesting to use Chrome for the past day, but four things stop me from using it more regularly.

1. No add ons – I love my Firefox ad blocker, Firebug development debugging tool, as a developer, I can't live without this one.
2. Its CSS rendering is not up to date. It fails the Acid 3 test. My WordPress admin theme does not work properly. So I'm using Firefox right now to write this.
3. There seems to be some JavaScipt incompatibility, some of the WordPress Editor Monkey features didn't work.
4. I can't install Flash. While this Chrome is meant to ultimately mean the demise of this platform, the nearly the whole internet still uses it. For instance, Google's own Analytics.

None of the other browsers are sitting still, so the competition is on. I believe we can expect to see some amazing developments from all of the browsers in the near future.

Careful what you post online, be very careful.

Steven J. Murdoch , a security researcher at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory recently had his WordPress blog hacked. The hacker created an administrator account on the blog. However Steven quickly deleted it. He then began investigating how this happened. In the process of doing this he was curious about the password that the hacker used.

WordPress stores raw MD5 hashes in the user database. It is believed to be computationally infeasible to discover the input
of MD5 hash from an output. Someone would have to try out all
possible inputs until the correct output is discovered.

Steven looked at various lengthy methods of uncovering the password, but in the end he turned to Google. It seems that many sites use hashing for query strings. His search led him to a genealogy page with the surname of Anthony. Bingo, this was indeed the password.

More detail can be found in his original posting about Google as a password cracker.

WordPress 2.3 Beta 1 is now available for download and testing. Some of the features of 2.3 include automatic notification for plugin and core code version updates, built-in tags support, faster javascript, and SEO-friendly URL redirection.

There have been reports of compatibility issues with a few plugins due to the changes to the category system (plugins that only used the API functions should be okay, but those that used direct SQL queries may break). Also, some file moves in the admin area have affected a few other plugins. Please report problems on Trac, and document compatible plugins on the Codex.

I've already installed the beta on one of my blogs and quite like some of the new features, such as tags and automatic notifications. In fact I already found the plugin notification useful, and upgraded one. I have also however seen some bugs. I'm looking forward to the final release. 

I am currently researching a project concept to integrate a number of web based Open Source applications. In my googling I came across Mashable.com a Web 2.0 Mashup Treasure Trove. They are currently running a series for WordPress.

• 50+ Tools For The WordPress Admin
• AJAX-Powered WordPress Plugins
• Plugins for Wordpress Comments

With in excess of 4.5 million monthly pageviews, Mashable is the world's largest blog on social networking.

It covers sites like MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, hi5, Piczo, Bebo and YouTube, but also other independent web applications.

I have a client Rebecca Caroe of Rowperfect that I work closely with on her blog. She will often send me little tip bits of information that she comes across when surfing the internet, and asks whether it is of any benefit for her site or my other customers. There have been many times that this has been invaluable. An extra pair of eyes on the internet never goes astray.

On this occassion I was directed towards Andy Beard's post "Akismet False Positives & Spam Karma Configuration". While Andy does not actually say Spam Karma is the be all and end all for blog spam, his enthusiasm does. It may indeed warrant a closer look, however as I've noted, many people are looking for that holy grail of the ultimate spam killer, a "set it and forget it" solution.

The sad reality is that because bloggers are using freely available plugins, the very same plugins are also freely available to the programmers working for the spammers. The plugins become victims of their own success. The more popular they are the more targeted they will be. 

Towards then end of his post, Andy goes on to suggest a combination of spam filter plugins. This the best solution, a combination of filters makes your defenses less predictable and more complex for the spambots, especially if you choose your own cocktail of spam filters.

I'm a fan of WordPress. It produces clean extensible markup. It also has huge user base, and consequently a developer base also.

However, I've always found the admin rather ugly, and its navigation menu rather annoying, as I miss having the easy access to sub-pages via a drop down menu system. So after doing a little googling, I finally located two plugins which give me a look and feel that I've been craving. Tiger Style Administration by Steve Smith provided the slicker look, and Admin Drop Menus by Andy Staines provided the drop down menus

On first activation of both WordPress plugins, they don't appear compatible. After closer inspection, the solution to their happy co-existence lay in making modifications to the Tiger Style Administration CSS.

After activating the two plugins, and implimenting this modification, my client feedback was overwhelmingly positive, making WordPress far more intuitive to navigate.

 I'll post the CSS solution soon.