For the past few weeks, I have been using ChromeDeck (the native Tweetdeck application for the Google Chrome browser) fairly exclusively as my desktop Twitter client. I am very pleased with the application, and am extremely impressed at how similar the appearance is to the desktop app. There are a lot of neat features that you won’t find in the full-fledged desktop version; but there are also a few features I used regularly in the AIR application that I sorely miss in the Chrome version. (more…)

Moogo lets you create professional looking websites with a range of design and layout options for almost any type of content site. There are a wide range of options inside the Moogo portal and site creation is very quick and easy. It’s just three simple steps and if you can use Microsoft Word, you will be able to use Moogo.

The only thing you need to decide with Moogo is what features you want to use. Moogo offers you a Free Website with minimal options and features, something very basis if you are not ready for a full web presence. Then there are paid options ranging from $4.99/month to $14.99/month. I wont go into explaining the offerings for each of the paid plans, but I will explain the steps on how to setup the Personal Website plan:

Selecting a Layout

The first step is all about selecting the correct layout for your site. Moogo offers a variety of layouts from which you can select the one that best suits your needs. Assign the headers, the header is the top image on your page and you can select from a variety of categories, from Interests to Information Technology. You can preview your selections on the right side to see the picture of what the page looks like.

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Firefox 3.6 was released today – the company notes a 20% speed improvement over version 3.5.  Apparently over 350 million users use Firefox as their browser of choice.

Here’s a list from Firefox of the new features in 3.6:

• Personas: Personalize the look of your Firefox by selecting new themes called Personas in a single click and without a restart
• Plugin Updater: To keep you safe from potential security vulnerabilities, Firefox will now detect out of date plugins
• Stability improvements: Firefox 3.6 significantly decreased crashes caused by third party software – all without sacrificing our extensibility in any way
• Form Complete: When filling out an online form, Firefox suggests information for fields based on your common answers in similar field
• Performance: Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness, and startup time
• Open Video and Audio: With the world’s best implementation of HTML 5 audio and video support, now video can be displayed full screen and supports poster frames

And here’s an updates list from the developer side: 

• Support for the latest HTML5 specification, including the File API for local file handling
• Font Support: In addition to OpenType and TrueType fonts, 3.6 now supports the new Web Open Font Format WOFF)
• CSS gradients: Supports linear and radial CSS gradients which allow for a smoother transition between colors
• Device orientation: Firefox 3.6 exposes the orientation of the laptop or device to Web pages

Microsoft Office 2010 will include the ability to save documents to and open documents from a repository on the Web. Further, you’ll be able to actually open the documents in your browser and perform minor edits. Until that functionality is enabled, though, you have another option to do the same thing (actually, since we have yet to actually see the collaboration and cloud storage features in Office 2010 – they have not yet been enabled in the beta – the alternative might even be better than what’s coming).

OffiSync allows you to save your documents to and open documents from a GoogleDocs account. You can associate multiple Google accounts with your Office installation, easily switching back and forth between those accounts. With OffiSync, you can do all of the following: (more…)

Recently, the WordPress team has been pushing out new releases rather quickly, making it advisable to upgrade your installation fairly regularly. The WordPress wiki includes some pretty good instructions explaining how to backup your install and how to upgrade. However, with the EZ WordPress Backup plugin, you can backup and upgrade with even more ease.

Installing the EZ WordPress Backup plugin is just as simple as installing any other plugin. Simply go to your Plugins menu and click the “Add New” link. In the search box, type in “EZ Backup” and the EZ WordPress Backup plugin will be the only result that appears. Click the Install link and then activate the plugin. (more…)

Curtiss noticed that WordPress has posted a new version of their downloadable blog software today. The update takes the latest public version of WordPress to 2.8.5.  WordPress employee Peter Westwood calls this a “hardening release” and is mostly related to security.

From the announcement, the headline changes in this release are:

• A fix for the Trackback Denial-of-Service attack that is currently being seen.
• Removal of areas within the code where php code in variables was evaluated.
• Switched the file upload functionality to be whitelisted for all users including Admins.
• Retiring of the two importers of Tag data from old plugins.

WordPress suggests that you update your WordPress installations to the 2.8.5 release. You can update manually by downloading the update and reinstalling all of the files or by clicking the upgrade button inside of the WordPress admin. Always make sure to backup your database before you upgrade your blog.

Blogging service Zemanta has announced new compatibility with the Movable Type blogging platform today. Zemanta’s goal is to bring together relevant databases and help enhance content across the Web and in email. They use a variety of databases including Amazon, IMDB, Wikipedia and Last.fm. The idea is that you write a blog post as you always have and Zemanta kicks it up a notch by adding related links content that your users will benefit from.

The interesting news is that Zemanta will be included by default in the new Movable Type 4.32. This is huge for Zemanta because it provides a great distribution play but also an awareness play. It also makes it easy for non-technical users to get started using Zemanta.

The Zemanta team describes the new integration as, “easy peasy lemon squeezy”. No, seriously that’s what they said in their announcement blog post. Easy peasy I’ve heard before but never combined with a lemon squeezy.

Earlier this year Zemanta launched Balloons – also check out our interview with Zemanta CEO Ales Spetic.

This evening I did my twice-weekly check to see if any of my WordPress blogs have been exploited and what do you know…CenterNetworks has been exploited. I was checking every day but moved it to twice a week checks after the last security patch for WordPress that moved the blog to 2.8.4. The exploit took place last night as far as I can tell and has already been indexed in Google so there goes my traffic and earnings.

When the “big hacker” event happened earlier this month, WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg noted, “The only thing that I can promise will keep your blog secure today and in the future is upgrading.” As of this evening, I can only assume his promise no longer stands valid.

I can’t tell whether the exploits are coming through WordPress or my host, Rackspace. Rackspace always says it’s on the WordPress side. I am happy to provide whatever I can to WordPress to help them figure out what happened and I can only hope that eventually they get this fixed. Rackspace personnel called me this evening and noted that the permissions are all set correctly on the server. If it’s something on my end, I’d like to know that as well.

Update Midnight: Rackspace is now running a XSS checker on this site.

Update 4:30pm Saturday: Rackspace is now saying that they believe someone logged into CN and manually changed the template file. They are supposed to be sending over some logs soon.

Update: 8pm Saturday: I’ve received the log files – unfortunately they don’t show much beyond someone editing the footer include. If someone from WordPress would like the files, please contact me.

Each and every time that my WordPress sites are exploited and/or hacked, I seriously regret moving away from Drupal where in over three years I wasn’t hacked once.

Related: The Good, The Bad and The Exploited – My Move from Drupal to WordPress

This is a quick tip – never use the “default” theme in WordPress. Even if you decide to use the default theme for your blog, change the name to something unique. I have started to think about my theme names like passwords and am using unique names for each site.

It appears that many times the hackers and exploiters will get into your site and edit the default theme. If you change it to something else, it can make it a bit harder to be exploited. It doesn’t mean you won’t be exploited, just that it might help a bit. Think of it as that little chain you put on your front door. It won’t stop a criminal from getting in, just make them kick the door harder.

Changing the theme is easy – here’s how I do it.

• Login to your admin panel and select the appearance option
• Select the themes option (you may already be on this page)
• Now FTP to your blog and change the name of the theme from Default to something unique (e.g. sd2tge0)
• Reload your themes page and select the newly renamed theme

Related: Our commentary on the good, bad and the exploited in our move from Drupal to WordPress.

If you’ve got an iPhone or an iPod Touch, you should really check out the apps I’m going to highlight in this post. All of them are free, and all of them are great. I am leaving out some of the obvious ones, like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, WordPress, Google, etc., as just about everyone that uses those services already knows about the iPhone apps that go with them. I want to highlight the fact that this post is strictly based on my opinion. I’m sure it will irritate some people, and others will wonder why such-and-such is not listed, but these are just the ones I enjoy the most. Therefore, without further ado, here are my top five free apps for the iPhone (in no real particular order): (more…)