Here’s a more textual overview of what’s new in Wordpress 2.6:

Post Revisions: Wiki-like tracking of edits
With the power of modern computers, it’s silly that we still use save and editing metaphors from the time when the most common method of storage was floppy disks. WordPress has always respected the importance of your writing with auto-save, and now we’re taking that to another level by allowing you to view who made what changes when to any post or page through a super-easy interface, much like Wikipedia or a version control system.

Differences between two versions of posts.
This is handy on any blog in case you make a mistake and want to go back to an older version of a post, and it’s super handy for multi-author blogs where you can see every change tracked by person.

Press This!: Post from wherever you are on the web
A few months ago on my blog we started a conversation about the posting bookmarklet in WordPress and which systems we should look to for inspiration, like Flock, FriendFeed, Facebook, Tumblr, and Delicious. From these suggestions and the Quick Post plugin by Josh Kenzer, we developed a Press This bookmark you can add to your toolbar that provides a fast and smart popup to do posts to your WordPress blog:

For example, if you click “Press This” from a Youtube page it’ll magically extract the video embed code, and if you do it from a Flickr page it’ll make it easy for you to put the image in your post. On my blog I’ve been experimenting with using different categories and the in_category() function — such as video, quote, aside, et cetera — to create a more tumblelog-like format.

Shift Gears: Turbo-speed your blogging
Gears is an open source browser extension project started by Google that developers like us can use to give you features we wouldn’t normally be able to. There are a lot of things we can do with Gears in the future, but in this release we’ve stuck to using what’s called a “Local Server” to cache or keep a copy of commonly-used Javascript and CSS files on your computer, which can speed up the loading of some pages by several seconds (they just pop right up!). You can install Gears for Firefox or Internet Explorer, with support for Safari and Opera pending. WordPress works just fine without it, you just get a little extra juice when you have it installed.

Theme Previews: See it before your audience does
Now when you select a theme it pops up a window that shows the theme live with all your content, instead of immediately making it active on your site. This is great for just test driving themes before making a switch over publicly, and it is also helpful when you are developing a theme and need to test it but don’t want everybody to see your ongoing mistakes development.

Here are some of the smaller features and improvements in 2.6:
* Word count! Never guess how many words are in your post anymore.
* Image captions, so you can add sweet captions like Political Ticker does under your images.
* Bulk management of plugins.
* A completely revamped image control to allow for easier inserting, floating, and resizing. It’s now fully integrated with the WYSIWYG.
* Drag-and-drop reordering of Galleries.
* Plugin update notification bubble.
* Customizable default avatars.
* You can now upload media when in full-screen mode.
* Remote publishing via XML-RPC and APP is now secure (off) by default, but you can turn it on easily through the options screen.
* Full SSL support in the core, and the ability to force SSL for security.
* You can now have many thousands of pages or categories with no interface issues.
* Ability to move your wp-config file and wp-content directories to a custom location, for “clean” SVN checkouts.
* Select a range of checkboxes with “shift-click.”
* You can toggle between the Flash uploader and the classic one.
* A number of proactive security enhancements, including cookies and database interactions.
* Stronger better faster versions of TinyMCE, jQuery, and jQuery UI.

Have we run out of steam, guys?

ONLINE game publishing firm Level Up! is looking to use mobile platforms for distribution of their content. The plan is part of the company’s content distribution enhancements, which started with a recent facelift of their online portal.

In an interview with hackenslash, Level-Up! New Media editor in chief Kevin “Kiven” Codamon said the old site was an early attempt to incorporate a few Web 2.0 features, notably integration of content from the different game portals and forums of Level Up!

The new site focuses on submission of non-text-related content from users, especially fan art, fan fiction, web comic strips, strategy guides, and tips-and-tricks.

Codamon added that the user-generated content is linked to the company’s player content program, which encourages players to create new material based on the Level Up! games they play.

Codamon said the enhancements in the site follow what he called the “1/3 rule” where old content, new content, and user-generated content share equal amounts of space. Likewise, Codamon said the site will remain accessible to all users.

“We’re continuously improving the site. Our mobile services are in the pipeline and might be implemented before the end of the year. That way, it’ll be easier for our players to access our content,” Codamon said.

So far, the new site already has a mobile component, which is largely a download site for mobile wallpapers and logos. Eventually, they will be incorporating a group texting service called GuildTxt for players within the same guild or clan.

The improved Level Up! site is also enjoying 200,000 daily page views in the main portal, he said.

If you’re a media planner at an ad agency, you know that planning an online display buy can be challenging, particularly in scaling your campaign’s reach while keeping it relevant for your target audience. Plus, how do you keep track of the millions of sites out there that might be just right for your campaign?

I am personally interested to see fo myself how this app works and maybe help out in my digital monetization efforts.

To make your life easier, we’re introducing Google Ad Planner, a research and media planning tool that connects advertisers and publishers. When using Google Ad Planner, simply enter demographics and sites associated with your target audience, and the tool will return information about sites (both on and off the Google content network) that your audience is likely to visit. You can drill down further to get more detail like demographics and related searches for a particular site, or you can get aggregate statistics for the sites you’ve added to your media plan.

While Google Trends for Websites, announced last week, is designed for all users, Google Ad Planner is designed with media planners in mind. Using Google Ad Planner, you can quickly create media plans and export to a .csv file, which can be opened in most spreadsheet applications. Or, you can export to DoubleClick’s MediaVisor, which helps you manage all your other media planning, buying and campaign management activities.

Source

More about Blogrolled after the jump

As per Blogrolled.com

How it Works

As an advertiser, it’s an easy process. We have an inventory of publishing sites available to you which you can search, sort through, and find publishers related to your product or service. Once you have found a listing you like, enter the details for your site and then checkout. Within a few business days of making the purchase, the selected publisher will place your ad live on their site.

As a publisher, it’s just as easy. Once an advertiser makes a purchase from your listing, you will be notified of the sale. Once you’ve received the notification, you will be asked to place the ad on your site into your blogroll. Done. That’s it!

You really get to see a ton of volcanic material strewn all over the place. Too bad Matt didnt visit the Palace in Knossos! (i dont know if its even open to the public)

Definitely, a place i would love to visit in the future…

It’s recently been confirmed that the first WordCamp in the Philippines will be taking place on October 25, 2008 September 6, 2008 in Manila. The event is being put together by the same group of people who were responsible for the Mindanao Bloggers Summit. The WordCamp event plans on taking two tracks. One for technical sessions with the other concentrating on beginners. Asides from the social gathering of WordPress enthusiasts, WordCamp Philippines is also planning to hold an “Install-Fest” where everyone will be encouraged to bring their laptops or desktops to the event where a guided tour of installing to the latest version will done along with, installing the most important plugins, and for demonstrations on how to tweak WP themes.

WordCamp Philippines Website

Awesome japanese food at Sugi BTW.

Video of our interview here: http://www.inquirer.net/vdo/player.php?vid=829