by Kamrul
Suppressing freedom of press or voice is not new; through out human history it’s been exercised. But since we call this century, “century of democracy and freedom? it’s really odd when suppressing voice became alarmingly increased, it is supposed to reduce right? And much worse when we see voice of free will has been suppressed by biggest democratic countries in the name of National security. Remember few weeks ago the teenage girl got questioned by secret service, that’s just a small incident; there are many more worse cases in the land of freedom.
Finland, Ireland, Iceland and the Netherlands are countries chosen to be the best place for freedom of expressing. And amazingly none of them are in the list of big shot democratic state. As blogging is a way to express freedom (well for most of us) I am sure you guys will love to read this article “Reporters Without Borders Names Worst Violators of Press Freedom?. The full list is here.
After reading that article I was stunned, that the bottom half of the list is mostly housed the so called big boys of democracy. Now question is that democracy failing? I think not. I think democracy is misused and altered to serve the predators, while real democracy remains unpracticed. For example- Read the rest of this entry »
by Kamrul
Recently WordPress family is gone under a lot of upgrade and addition. WordPress is no longer just a simple blog 
platform. WordPress now open the limit to multi blog feature, with its new release WordPress Multi-user 1.0, adorably called WordPress MU.
WordPress MU is an official branch of WordPress that is designed for managing and hosting literally thousands of blogs instead of just one. It’s the software that powers the WordPress.com, the official WordPress blog hosting site. MU has been in heavy development nearly a year now, if you have followed WordPress developer forum you should know that by now. Setup is a bit more complex than the 5-minute install of regular WordPress; So MU is best suited for a more server-savvy audience. The key facts of WordPress MU:- Read the rest of this entry »
by Kamrul
Ok a lot of blog software we have seen or introduced to us in this year. A lot of big software giants drop their 
shorts and launch blog software, but surprise move for Adobe; they were still out of that game. But hell what were we thinking; Adobe was just oiling up to launch something different. Adobe introduced Contribute 4 which can be used as remote Website & Blog editing and entry (flash player embedded). Unlike any other blog software, it’s actually let you connect with blog host and the editor is a WYSIWYG editor, means you can see live what the changes are going on your blog. The coolest features of Contribute 4 are:- Read the rest of this entry »
by Kamrul
Google finally made the Orkut open for everyone, no invitation required anymore. I think Google finally realize that they don’t need another community/blog platform failure, just like what happen to their blogger. Orkut faced its fare share of legal problem so far, in India, South America for objectionable contents. Well its isn’t actually Orkut’s fault, Google has a neck of lawsuit trouble. Users can sign up now by using their Google accounts or simply creating one and linking it to their Orkut account.
Orkut currently has around 30 million registered users, 60% of them from Brazil (where Google got sued few months ago), USA 14% and India (Google got sued here also recently) 10%. But after this entire lawsuit still Google’s Orkut is gaining some significant ground internationally rather than in US. Maybe after all Google can save it one social networking community. As share market giving Google serious confidence boost, proving majority o critics false, although EU might gaining on YouTube copyright violation case any day.
Looks of Google’s Orkut is way much better than MySpace, have some cool tools too. And since now Google owns YouTube you can expect the quick Video post soon to be available for Orkut bloggers.
Note: Some reader’s already reported that Orkut still isn’t free. But in case you open up a new Goggle account with Mobile invitation, it’s workig. So i repharse “Orkut is Semi-free”.
Special Update: It’s not open worldwide. Use proxy server to see the new screen. It’s working with Brazil, india and some US west Coast IP address.
Orkut, Google, Social Network, community, blog, bloggism
by Kamrul
The moment we all have been (at least most of we) waiting for “Firefox 2? final release is just less than 24 hours away. Mozilla already release last weekend Firefox’s final beta RC3 and it’s available for developers and beta testers. According to Mozilla Vice President of Products Christopher Beard, Firefox 2.0, which should be available on Tuesday if all goes according to schedule, includes key new usability features missing in the new IE 7.
Some unique updates and usability has been implanted to Firefox 2 which are not present in IE7. New usability features in Firefox 2.0 that differentiate it from IE 7 include one that will restore the browser to pages where the user was working if a sudden OS restart or shutdown occur. And user will have full control on this feature like default restoration of last few pages visited or turn off this option or configure according to test. Read the rest of this entry »
by Kamrul
Apple rolling out iWeb 1.1.2, bundled with iLife’06 —just lunched.
iWeb 1.1.2 includes blogging software and integrates without a glitch into the rest of iLife package, which includes iPhoto, iMovie HD, iDVD and iTunes etc. By using the rest of the suite, bloggers will have drag-and-drop options, such as dragging an iTunes play list into the blog. Of course, links will be automatically created to the iTunes music store where visitors can purchase said songs.
Read the rest of this entry »
by Kamrul
Blog advertising is overwhelmed already; since Google started Adsense so many thousand has popped up and offered blog advertising. But feed advertising has been limited so far. Google’s Adsense for beta the first feed advertising is still in beta stage, unless you are not using Google’s blogger you have to edit your feed template to monetize your feed with Google Adsense for feed. Do I have to even say that it’s pretty much pain in the butt to edit feed template? Don’t think so.
After Google very few company/organization came out to offer feed advertising, due to it’s complexity I guess. And also many bloggers said most of the feed monetizing failed to give any significant amount. It’s really a negative blow since feed carry out almost 40% of the blog reader, in most of the case. From the business perspective this is a great loss of resources, when a large portion of your content goes without monetizing. My idol Daren Rowse puts a fabulous article “RSS Advertising Options“, which will give you an idea of feed monetizing scope and opportunities.
Those who don’t have opportunity to join those RSS advertiser for some reason (for example your feed is new, or location or language) I will suggest Feed template alteration. It’s little tricky but if you follow the right path it’s not that hard. Here are the few plugin/module I think will be helpful- Read the rest of this entry »
by Kamrul
Have you lately claimed any blog in technorati? Especially last 24 hours. If you did you should have noticed that there is now 3 ways to claim a blog, instead of two. The new one let’s you claim blog by entering your blog admin’s user name and password. Last night I was just claiming this Blog News Watch blog, and stumble upon this new feature. Well after doing some surfing I came to know that this call OpenID claim.
Technorati now started to support OpenID. But your blog platform needs to support OpenID, in order to get this option in technorati, otherwise you won’t see it. LiveJournal & Vox already have built in supports for OpenID, but for those who are using Movable Type, WordPress & Drupal will need plug-in to activate the support of OpenID. Lots of other platform does also support OpenID, you need to consult your platforms documentation.
OpenID, technorati, blog claim, WordPress, LiveJournal, Movable Type, Drupal, vox
by Kamrul
WordPress 2.0.5 is now available for download for beta testers. Not much noticeable changes for general users but for developers it’s a preview that the original WordPress 2.1 release is just around the corner.
So WordPress developers make ready lots of coffee and donuts, because I guess you guys will go to need that, since WordPress 2.1 is just about to knock the door. And Beta testers check the wp-testers list. There is a release candidate for you to try out. Mark Jaquith of WordPress put a list of changes brought in WordPress 2.0.5; you can check that out to get a sneak peak.
WordPress, 2.0.5, beta version, WordPress 2.1, upgrade
by Kamrul
Duh! Less than 24 hours after the launch of Internet Explorer 7, security researchers are digging holes in the new browser. Danish security company Secunia reported today that IE7 contains information disclosure vulnerability, the same one it reported in IE6 in April. The vulnerability affects the final version of IE7 running on Windows XP with Service Pack 2.
If a surfer uses IE7 to visit a phishing Web site, that site could exploit the security flaw to read information from a separate, secure site to which the surfer is logged in. That could enable an attacker to read banking details, or messages from a Web-mail account, said Thomas Kristensen, Secunia’s chief technology officer. One of the security features Microsoft advertised for the new browser is the protection from phishing attacks. My goodness Microsoft, it took five years to make it still so many issues, probably loosing its touch.
Source: PCworld
IE7, Internet explorer, software, microsoft, bug, flaws
