This is our place to give you updated hosting, development and web designer news, happenings on the website, and frivolous information about the internet.
The Nerds' gang: Brian Franklin - Gamer and master model (so he thinks) David Walsh - Editor with a penchant for hosting (and likes using big words) Preeti Pradhan- Blogger, writer, and social media chick (the brains behind it all)
Wordpress is one of the most popular CMS (Content Management System) that powers many popular blogs and websites. The Wordpress engine is expecting a major update to version to 3.0 with the Beta 2 version released on May 6th. We are anticipating some exiting new changes that will significantly affect the performance and customization options. Here we discuss some of the new changes that will be the part of this update.
Firstly, the default theme is changed to “Twenty Ten” which was a much required feature. This theme presents a cleaner and bold look. Twenty Ten now allows custom header image from user uploads or included images that makes it easier to personalize. It also gives the capability to easily change the background color of theme. Wordpress 3.0 also brings a new menu management system which makes it easier to edit and add menus and place them as widgets on the website. This can be achieved by simple drag-and-drop of the widgets which earlier required some coding.
One of the most useful feature is “Multisite” which enables Wordpress 3.0 to manage multiple blogs/websites with distinct domain names from a single Wordpress installation. However it requires some advanced knowledge and coding skills for which it is not targeted at general blogs. A network of blogs which are run by a single company or individual can benefit from this feature.
The new CMS also provides the sites with their own URL shortener that is based on your own domain name. Thus there is no need to use third-party URL shorteners and reduce effort while keeping brand identity intact. Wordpress 3.0 also allows selecting custom username and password during installation instead of the automatically generated passwords which required changing afterwards. Another important feature is pre-defined Author Templates which can be applied to make the styling from different authors unique. The complete list of the new changes in Wordpress 3.0 can be read on Wordpress Codex.
Thank you to all of our competition participants this week but there can only be one prize winner. After voting Sam Rudge won with this photo caption “Even after just a few months, Bob began to regret not buying the $10 cable tidy set from Target”. Keep checking back for our next competition.
Although internet has seen drastic changes since its inception, some of its basic standards have remained the same that is hindering its acceptance in some areas. Internet Domain Names Addressing has always followed the same pattern with Latin based naming and an ending with ‘.com’(or others). This restriction of domain names hindered the extension of the internet to languages that are not derived from Latin alphabets, thus forcing a large portion of world’s population to be aware of the language in order to get access to the internet.
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) manages the domain naming standards and has recently approved the usage of non-Latin web addresses. This will enable the countries with non-Latin languages to make domain names using their native alphabets. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates are the first three countries whose Arabic IDN ccTLDs has been approved in this program, and we can see the early adopters following this new standard emerging.
This new standard also supports languages which are written from right to left, as is the case with Arabic. Now you can visit http:// مصر . وزارة-الأتصالات .موقع which follows the new standard, however it displays correctly only on Apple’s Safari browser for now. According to ICANN, applications from 11 other languages are awaiting approval that includes Chinese, Russian, Thai, Tamil and Sinhalese. TE Data, Vodafone Data and Link Registrar are among the first few companies that have been authorized to sell the Arabic based domain names for now.
This new feature will certainly bring the web content to a large community, and we can see Internet to extend further in the coming years with more content in non-Latin based languages. We expect this change to be adopted by all web browsers soon.
We love the hilarious Photo Captions you have been giving us – so we are doing another! Join us on Facebook and give us your best photo caption for this image.The favorite wins $25. Good luck!
We have a winner! Congratulations to John Hopper for correctly identifying the vintage game we posted as Flagman. Stay tuned for our next competition coming soon.
Most of us are now familiar with the heated relations between Adobe and Apple, especially after Apple’s strict move to remove support for Adobe’s CS5 professional software. Steve Jobs, CEO Apple has posted his views online about the relations with Adobe and the future of Flash and streaming media, especially on mobile devices.
The letter defends Apple’s claims about the shortcomings in the Flash player and how it’s not suited for mobile devices such as iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Steve has pointed out several defects in the product and compares it with the alternatives such as HTML5. According to Steve, Apple doesn’t support propriety web development software. This is because the close standards don’t allow community to bring changes in order to meet demands of user base. Thus Apple supports HTML5 which is both light and open-source. Steve also negates the claim that without supporting Flash, Apple users are deprived of the complete web experience. He claims that majority of the streaming websites including YouTube are supported on iDevices out of the box.
He further criticizes the performance and security features of the Flash product by commenting that Flash is both unsecure and requires high system resources which in-turn reduces battery timings of mobile devices. As compared to H.264 video standard which is hardware decoded on iPhone, the flash media only runs in software which requires almost twice the hardware resources, thus decreasing the battery life to almost half. Flash based applications such as games and utilities are not suited for touch-enabled devices, thus these applications fails to bring a better user experience.
Steve also comments on the company’s move last month to ban Adobe’s CS5 flash to iPhone compiler which will disable Adobe’s move to port flash applications onto iDevices. Apple claims that third-party applications are not optimized to run on the iPhone and proved to be sluggish. The intermediate layer also restricts the developers to make full use of the underlying hardware which results in poor application performance and value.
In short, Steve Jobs believes that unless Flash improves in the areas listed above, he doesn’t see it to become viable in coming years. You can read the complete script of the Steve’s letter here.
Android is now the only real competitor to the popular iPhone OS that comes in trendy smartphones and is backed by Google and HTC. Google has confirmed native support of the Adobe Flash in the upcoming revision 2.2 of the open-source Android OS. This capability will result in a richer web experience on the smartphones and mobile devices running Android.
Apple is always criticized for not providing support for the Flash in its iPhone OS that comes with the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices. The company is now backing HTML5 as an alternative to Flash that will be able to support streaming media and ads for the iPhone OS.
However most of the streaming content available today is based on Adobe’s flash that includes popular media websites such as YouTube and Hulu. As the smart devices have become faster and now support popular browsers, the mobile web traffic has now become a significant part of the internet and the support for flash playback is now a much needed feature in these smartphones. After Apple’s refusal to support flash in their iPhone OS, Google team has taken a move to provide full support of the flash playback in the Android 2.2.
This was revealed by Andrew Robin, VP Engineering Google during an interview describing the project code named ‘Froyo’ that will provide native support for Flash Player 10.1. This update will be available soon on latest Android based smartphones including Google Nexus One and provide compatibility with flash games, flash based streaming media and ads.
It’s competition time again for our Facebook Fans. Join us this week to test your vintage gaming knowledge or purhaps just show your age! Either way there is $$$ for the first correct answer. Good luck!
