WordPress and WordPress MU are going to be merged

Yes, you have read the title correctly, the codebase of both WordPress (single user installation) and WordPress MU (multi-user installation) are going to be merged into a single codebase.

Matt, the founder and lead developer of WordPress has announced this news during his State of the Word speech at WordCamp San Francisco.

It is not clear when this merging will be done, but my guess is that they will be merged in WordPress 3.0. Once the integration is done, we can have BuddyPress for single user installs also.

This is great news both for the developers and end users and I am very excited about it. πŸ™‚

Posted in WordPress | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Android Developer Challenge – ADC2

Mobile Application developers, get ready, Google has announced the second edition of Android Developer Challenge to award the best mobile apps build on the Android platform.

The first edition of Android Developer Challenge which took place last year had more than 1,700 entries. With the recent release of Android 1.5 Google is expecting more entries this time. This challenge was announced in the recent developer conference Google I/O along with other Google Wave and Google web Elements (more about them later πŸ™‚ )

Rules

The following are some of the important rules to take part in the contest

  • Should be in English
  • Should run on Android 1.5
  • Open only for applications which are not published before.
  • Should be submitted to one of the following 10 specially-designated ADC 2 categories.

Categories

  • Education/Reference
  • Games: Casual/Puzzle
  • Games: Arcade/Action
  • Social Networking
  • Lifestyle
  • Productivity/Tools
  • Media
  • Entertainment
  • Travel
  • Misc

Prizes

For each of the 10 categories:

  • 1st prize: $100,000
  • 2nd prize: $50,000
  • 3rd prize: $25,000

Overall (across all categories)

  • 1st prize: $150,000 (meaning the overall winner will receive $250,000)
  • 2nd prize: $50,000 (meaning the 2nd prize winner will receive up to $150,000)
  • 3rd prize: $25,000 (meaning the 3rd prize winner will receive up to $125,000)

Timeline

The dates are not yet finalized but the submission will close somewhere in August and the results will be available by November.

Important Links

PS: (for Yuvi) Since you have lost your mobile, try to get a new one which supports Android so that you can take part in the contest. πŸ™‚

Posted in Android/Java, Events/Conferences | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Added support for rooms in Post to FriendFeed

I have updated my Post to FriendFeed WordPress Plugin to add support for rooms. Now you can choose, in which room the post should be posted.

Screenshot

Here is the screenshot of the new feature.

post-to-friendfeed

Dependency

Please note that this Plugin now requires my FriendFeed API Core Plugin to be installed to work. You can download my FriendFeed API Core Plugin from my Plugins page.

Feedback

If you have any comments or if you want to report any bugs, please leave a comment below or contact me.

Credits

Thanks to the Rob, Ken and to all others who commented in this FriendFeed discussion. It’s only your comments which made me to dust off the code and update it. πŸ™‚

Posted in Plugin Releases | Tagged , , , | 15 Comments

Using FriendFeed API in your WordPress Plugin

I am working on some new features for my Post to FriendFeed WordPress Plugin, and it required some additional methods to the FriendFeed API wrapper. I have added these methods to the FriendFeed API wrapper and have released it as a separate Plugin like Open Flash Chart Core Plugin.

Additional Methods

The following are the additional methods that I have added to the FriendFeed API wrapper library.

fetch_user_profile($nickname)

This method accepts users nickname as input and returns the list of all of the user’s subscriptions (people) and services connected to their account (Authentication required for private users)

fetch_user_rooms($nickname)

This method accepts users nickname as input and returns the list of all of the rooms to which the user can post (Authentication required for private users)

Download

You can download the Plugin file from my Plugin page and then upload it to your wp-contents directory.

If you are a WordPress Plugin developer, then you can check my FriendFeed API Core Plugin to find out how to integrate FriendFeed API with you own WordPress Plugins.

PS: Incidentally this is my first blog post from Windows Live Editor.

Posted in Plugin Releases | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Quick tip for WordPress Plugin Developers

Hello WordPress Plugin authors, here is a quick trick to link to the latest zip file of your Plugin hosted at the official WordPress Plugin directory.

In order to link to the latest zip file, you have to link to the zip file without the version number. Consider my Bulk Move WordPress Plugin. The latest version of the Plugin (at the time of writing) is 0.2. If you have to link to the latest zip file for download then you have to link to the following url http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/bulk-move.zip

Right now this url points to version 0.2 and in future if I update the Plugin to version 0.3 then this url will automatically be mapped to version 0.3.

I use the above format to link to the zip files of my Plugins hosted at WordPress Plugin repository from my blog. The advantage of this method is that, I don’t need to update my links every time I update my Plugin.

Hope you find this tip useful.

Posted in WordPress | Tagged , | 1 Comment

WordPress Plugin Competition 2009

If you are a seasoned (or just a budding) WordPress Plugin author, then here is your chance to show off some of your coding skills. Weblogs Tools Collection is conducting their annual WordPress Plugin Competition.

Dates

The competition began on May 1st and will run till July 31st, a total of three months. You have to develop a new WordPress Plugin and release it in the Plugin Competition blog before the end date.

Prizes

The list of prizes are yet to be released (waiting for sponsors), but there will be a minimum of $1000 for the winner.

Rules

The following are some of the important rules.

  • Should be GPL compatible
  • Compatible with WordPress 2.7 and above.
  • Be secure and use secure coding methods.
  • Should be made available through the WordPress Extend pages
  • Announced and discussed on the Plugin Competition Blog.
  • Preliminary support has to be provided to the public.

So guys, it’s time to sharpen your WordPress skills and all the best for the competition.

PS: I am working on a Plugin (my entry for the competition) and will release it soon. Stay tuned πŸ™‚

Posted in WordPress | Tagged , , | 11 Comments

CustomizeTalk.com Takeover

I have happy news to share. I am going to be the new owner of customizetalk.com. πŸ™‚

customize-talk logo

CustomizeTalk.com is a community site for Google Talk users, with loads of tips and tweaks, news about Google Talk and also information about Google Talk Addon development.

Recently there is been some slight decrease in the activity at the site, due to the fact that Google has slowed down its Google Talk development and has started concentrating more on the browser based chat client embed inside Gmail.

My first step as the new moderator is to increase the activity in the site (after removing spam posts ;))Β  and I am looking for suggestions. So guys do have a look at CustomizeTalk.com and let me know what can be improved.

I am planning to cover other Google Talk related topics like browser based chat client inside Gmail, XMPP, Jabber etc. Also let me know if you feel that other topics could be added.

Looking forward in meeting you guys over at customizeTalk. πŸ™‚

Posted in Google/Yahoo | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Get a legal version of Adobe Flex Builder for free

Adobe has been trying hard to build an ecosystem around Flex, which is a collection of technologies for the development and deployment of cross-platform rich Internet applications based on the Adobe Flash platform.

In order to woo more developers to use Flex, they are giving away free copies of Adobe Flex Builder. In order to get these free copies you have be

  • A student or a faculty or employed in an educational institution
  • A developer who is unemployed due to layoff.

To get these free copies all you have to do is just fill out a form at this link (student, unemployed)

Additional free resources

Together with free copies they are also offering the following

If you ask me, I would say this is a smart move by Adobe to get more developers into the ecosystem.

If you are not eligible to get a free copy, then you can get the trial version of Adobe Flex Builder which can be used up to 60 days for free or buy it in retail for $249.

Posted in Web Programming | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Bulk Move 0.2

I just found that the bug which was in my Bulk Delete WordPress Plugin that deleted drafts in a particular category when only posts were selected was also present in my Bulk Move WordPress Plugin.

I have updated the Plugin with the fix for the bug and you can download it from the Plugin home page. I have also uploaded the Plugin to the official directory to make your update process painless.

If you want to only move posts from a category to another and not the drafts, then you need to update to the latest version.

Let me know if you find any issues with the Plugin.

Posted in Plugin Releases | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

WpRecipes Contest

WpRecipes.com recently crossed 3000 RSS subscribers and in order to celebrate that they are running a contest. The winners will get free WordPress managed hosting and membership to WordPress theme clubs. You can get more information from the contest page.

All you need to do to participate is to simply write WpRecipes (like this blog post) and post the link in the comments section of the contest page.

For the uninitiated WpRecipes is a blog with cool tips and tweaks about WordPress.

Update: Wow!! It seems that I have won the first prize in the contest. πŸ™‚ I have won one year of free hosting from WPWebHost and one year subscription to Elegant Themes. I am waiting for the prizes to arrive and will try to post a review about them.

Posted in WordPress | Tagged | 4 Comments