Everyone is honored and excited today that Change.gov, the website of President Elect Barack Obama, has turned on IntenseDebate comments to discuss things like health care.

Micah Sifry has an excellent write up of the topic.

Imagine what happens if those numbers–on not just any “centralized site” but the one that symbolically and perhaps literally has the attention of the President-elect–start climbing into the five- and six-digits. Before our eyes, we are witnessing the beginning of a rebooting of the American political system. [emphasis added]

[...]

By using IntenseDebate (and the OpenID framework), the Obama transition is actually enabling a lot of interesting community development to start happening beneath the surface of a threaded discussion. Users get their own “commenter profile” on IntenseDebate, along with reputation points, and they can carry those profiles onto other sites that use the same system. Users can also choose to follow other IntenseDebate users, so if someone is really diligent they could start to gather a group or a crowd around them.

It has even started to make the cable news, as evidenced in this clip.

Pretty exciting! And it’s also a reaffirmation of Automattic’s platform-agnostic approach to Akismet, Gravatar, PollDaddy, and IntenseDebate that although Change.gov uses Expression Engine for their CMS they’ve chose IntenseDebate for their comments.

This is new to me, even though others have known about it for months. There’s a Matrix Easter Egg in WordPress 2.6 and in the betas of WordPress 2.7. To activate it:

1. Edit a post.
2. Scroll down to the revisions section of the page and click the latest revision.
3. On the next page, scroll down again and select the same revision for comparison.
4. The Matrix has you..

Danger !
Self-comparison detected.
Initiating infinite loop eschewal protocol.
Self destruct in… 3
2
1
Wake up, Donncha…
The Matrix has you…
Don’t let this happen again. Go Back.

Related Posts

• Easter Is
• Easter Egg in Redhat 8 and 9
• Stoppie!

After feedback from users and some minor tweaks, my Journalized Theme version 2.7 is finally released! The theme is no longer in beta and is ready for the big time.

A reminder of some of the new features:

• Comes with six built in ’skins’ (including the old Blue, Sand, and Winter)
• A new administration interface to configure the theme.
• Support for widgits, tags, and Gravatars
• Can be configured to have 1, 2, or 3 columns.
• Supports custom header image, including in the background
• and many more…

Go get it now!. As usual, leave feedback on the theme page please.

Tim said it better than I could, but I’m also very much looking forward to attending Entertainment Gathering this year. I was there covering the event last year and it was a huge creative recharge and very inspiring.

My favorite story from last year was at lunch I noticed this amazing looking device that was totally readable in broad LA daylight sitting on a table. I was gawking at it and a voice behind me said “Pick it up! You can play with it.” It was Jeff Bezos with his trademark laugh and the device was a Kindle. He gave a personal demo and I was sold, I pre-ordered one as soon as I got online and have loved it ever since. (Except it’s broken now, but that’s another story.) Registration is currently open here.

WordPress MU, the multi blog version of WordPress that runs on such sites as WordPress.com has been updated to version 2.6.5 to address an XSS vulnerability in the feeds offered to users.

More details will be forthcoming but for the time being, there’s also the WordPress.org announcement post.

This release also has a number of bug fixes, including a fix and improvements to rss caching. This is a required upgrade, so please install it as soon as you can.

In related news, a new version of WP Super Cache is also available. This version hopefully fixes:

1. Issues with clients seeing compressed pages incorrectly
2. Cache clean up
3. Warnings if Apache modules are missing
4. Better support for WordPress MU. The wp-content/cache/.htaccess rules are now displayed on the admin page
5. Better documentation on file locking
6. WP Cache files are written to a temporary file first
7. Use WP_CONTENT_URL in mod_rewrite rules generator

It also adds a number of filters:

1. “supercache_dir” filter so the supercache directory can be manipulated. “wp_cache_key” cache_action to modify the key the wp-cache file is named after. Using both of these should make it easier for plugin authors to manipulate the cache based on user agent or other criteria. ie. iPhone theme? Unfortunately .htaccess rewrite rules will have to be updated manually.
2. Added “wpsupercache_buffer” filter so the current page can be manipulated before being stored in the cache.

Related Posts

• WordPress MU 2.6.1
• WordPress MU 2.6.2
• What’s this WordPress.com thing anyway?

WordPress 2.6.5 is immediately available and fixes one security problem and three bugs. We recommend everyone upgrade to this release.
The security issue is an XSS exploit discovered by Jeremias Reith that fortunately only affects IP-based virtual servers running on Apache 2.x. If you are interested only in the security fix, copy wp-includes/feed.php and wp-includes/version.php from [...]

Sirup

Sirup is a magazine and blog layout for WordPress 2.5 and above. It has a fixed width, is valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional, supports Gravatars and Sidebar Widgets. You can customize the appearance of your site with an options page.

Quoting You!

A light two column design with sleek and clean lines and cool colors.

Olivia

Two column, gravatar and widget ready theme with seven different styles.

 Equilibrium

Clean and simple magazine styled widget ready theme.

CognoBlue

Three column, widget ready, with right and left sidebar SEO theme optimized for Google Adsense.

Floral Prints

A light three column design with an elegant topper with floral prints and cute little butterfly subjects.

Rainy Days

A rainy two column design full of the cool wet air of a fresh thunderstorm.

First on the list is a large collection of WordPress video tutorials, tips and tricks ranging from the very basic to the very advanced from SpeckyBoy. This list also includes our very own Weblog Tools Videos which lists various WordPress and blogging videos, tips, tutorials and reviews.

Noupe has listed 11 new “Most Wanted” hacks for WordPress in a nice illustrated list. The new hacks include protecting your pictures from hotlinking and Custom Google Search for WordPress.

WPMU has received 37 nominations for their WordPress MU awards for 2008 and are looking for people to help choose the winners. View the nominations and vote for them.

Michael Kubler has written up a tutorial to make WordPress captioned images work as expected on your WordPress theme. Captioned images were introduced in WordPress 2.6 (I believe). This blog had the same problem till we managed to wrangle the extra CSS code for it to work.

Download Squad is linking to a Firefox add-on that allows a blogger to post screenshots/screengrabs directly to a WordPress blog. This can be very useful if you do a lot of reviews and such where you post screengrabs. Be wary of bugs.

If you ever wanted to see me talking about cooking, specifically tsatziki, or in an apron. (Which is probably the most complex thing I could make.) Luckily I had some professional help. Thanks to KTEH for the opportunity.