Our lives have forever been improved since two words have been added into our vocabulary: Antoine Dodson, brother of an attempted rape victim who became an overnight viral sensation when he gave the performance of a lifetime on Alabema news station WAFF.

Antoine Dodson, whose name neatly anagrams into Donated Onions, Adenoid No Snot and Oaten Dodos Inn, is nothing short of a national treasure. If there was a way to give him his own display at the Smithsonian for the next 80 or so years, this would become my greatest goal. And now, the man, the meme, speaks again.

WAFF caught up with this brand new internet sensation outside of the same building that his sister's attack occurred in to find out what it feels like to be an internationally recognized face and name. Antoine is calm, cool, coiffed and ready. You watch this video and tell me how many signatures it's going to take to get Bravo to give this man his own show. I'll sign up your kids, your wife, your husb, errbody up in here.

He is literally based on a novel by Sapphire, he is just so precious. Look at his face in this genius animated GIF and we dare you to not fall in love:

(GIF via ONTD)

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Last month, we noted that Twitter was testing a You both follow feature, showing users you and another user both follow. That's interesting, but not particularly useful. Today, they've begun to roll out a new Suggestions for You feature which looks at who you follow, and who the people you follow follow, and suggests new people for you to follow. Yes, just like Facebook does. This is very useful.

In fact, this is arguably the most useful social graph feature that Twitter has rolled out yet. A few weeks ago, Twitter rolled out a new name results area for search which was incredibly helpful for finding celebrities or brands on Twitter. But this is better. This is all about finding people you may actually be interested in based on your current social graph, but for whatever reason, haven't connected with yet.

Such a feature would be less interesting if it were only tucked away in the Find People area of the site. But Twitter is actually going to put it front and center too. When you click on other users' profiles, you'll see a Who to follow area in their profile space to show similar users that you might be interested in. And when you follow someone, you'll get other suggestions based on that follow as well.

In terms of how they determine these suggestions, Twitter says:

The algorithms in this feature, built by our user relevance team, suggest people you don't currently follow that you may find interesting. The suggestions are based on several factors, including people you follow and the people they follow.

[thanks Tyler]

After the recent leak of a Android 2.2 (Froyo) test firmware for the Samsung Galaxy S, people have been wondering when the official firmware release would be out. But thanks to SamsungUKMobile's Twitter account, we can now expect it in September.

Remember though, this is for the international Galaxy S, and not for any of the US variants. The TouchWiz UI on the Galaxy S isnt as deeply integrated compared to other customized Android user interfaces,which makes updates like Android 2.2 Froyo easier for Manufacturers to roll out.

The Galaxy S is a great device, and I cant wait to see what else Samsung plans to package in the upcoming Froyo update. It cannot get here fast enough.

[Via: AndroidGuys]

Samsung Galaxy S receiving Android 2.2 (Froyo) in September is a post from: ZOMGitsCj.com

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WordPress is a powerful content management system, and its popularity as a portfolio solution is enticing to many. There are a lot of themes out there that claim to do the job, but if you're as picky as me you'll find some pretty annoying flaws in many of them.

In my search for the best of the bunch, I installed about 30 offerings (out of the hundreds I looked at) and after trying them out and changing my mind a couple of times I finally settled down with a theme. This took me months, so I'm going to save you the bother and present the five free Wordpress portfolio themes that made my own particular shortlist.

SimpleFolio The Best All-Rounder

Despite being a tricky free WordPress theme to set-up, SimpleFolio by Omar Corrales is worth the hassle. For your troubles you'll get a clean and easy-to-navigate theme with a separate portfolio section (with the option to exclude portfolio posts from your blog) and a home screen to die for.

The home screen includes a JavaScript front-page slider to exhibit portfolio entries, which does a great job of making your work look awesome with its smooth transitions. There are a further three widgetized areas on the home page, so adding a contact form or Twitter plug-in is as easy as pie.

If you like the look of this theme and fancy giving it a go, then you're going to need a little help. There's a fantastic little guide over at WordPress Handyman which guides you through the ins and outs of setting up and maintaining your new portfolio. As always with WordPress, you can edit the style.css file to suit your personal tastes.

Vikiworks Infinity For Social Media Types

For an aesthetically pleasing, majorly customizable portfolio that's plugged in to Flickr, Twitter and Delicious, look no further than Infinity by Vikiworks. The free WordPress theme follows a three-fixed column style, and whilst not being widget ready could probably be modified with some serious Notepad'ing.

There are two PSD files to download as well as the theme, which makes customization in Photoshop that little bit easier. Blog posts themselves are presented in two thumbnail cover-style columns to the left of the page, so if you're not bothered about separating your work and your blog then this one's for you.

For the more courageous there's a sister theme called Mashup based on Infinity, only with widgets and a style switcher. The developer has appealed for help in completing it, and needs guinea pigs willing to give it a go. If you're not averse to beta testing, you can download Mashup here.

FolioGrid For Speed-Freaks, Designers, Photographers & Artists

This sharp looking offering from FrogsThemes has a little something for everyone. Utilising the tried-and-tested grid layout, the theme comes in a variety of colours and is easily altered with some handy CSS. All the styling is done through the theme's stylesheet, meaning you really can open up and customize this one.

The menu lives at the top of the page, and is always accessible from anywhere on the site, making it a cinch to navigate. There's some lovely use of jQuery for slick transitions, and the theme is widget-ready. For a fast and lightweight WordPress portfolio, FolioGrid does the job.

Fullscreen For Style-Conscious Photographers & Videographers

If photos are the order of the day then you may want to pay close attention. Fullscreen is a portfolio package developed by Graph Paper Press that delivers nothing but a menu and blog posts (represented by just images). It all makes for a very sexy looking clean interface, with some fancy JavaScript image rollover effects for added garnish.

One thing to look out for is some issues with the menu not displaying correctly in older versions of Internet Explorer, though some of you won't really care (and those that do can customize, of course).

Images can be implemented into posts using the WordPress media gallery, which makes for easy posting. If you want your photo or video work to be the main focus of your site, then this theme will honour your wishes.

Contrast The Black Sheep

SmashingMagazine once hosted a typographic layout competition for WordPress and Tumblr themes, and Paul Linder's Contrast didn't win. But that doesn't matter, because it's awesome all the same.

Using nothing but XHTML and CSS, it's lightning quick and beautiful to look at. Presenting you with a straight-up black and white home screen, Contrast is designed to be left as a portfolio rather than a blog as well.

As the focus is on text, many writers, copy-editors or web designers may find this appealing, though the minimalist design could suit anyone. It's bold, unique and quick.

Have you used any of these free WordPress themes? Got another favourite we've not featured here? Spread the word in the comments! Are you a photographer? Check out our very own photography PDF manual by Bakari The Essential Guide To Digital Photography.

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While it's been exciting to track the #NewHotmailHere sightings and from what we can tell from the comments on Twitter and here on this blog, most of you are pretty excited about the new Hotmail. For some, however, things aren't going so well.

On the Windows Live Solution Center, there are some 650 responses at the time of this posting to the forum post Issues With New Windows Live Hotmail. While some complaints are about confusion with the new look, etc., which probably can be expected with any change of any kind, a number of far more serious problems are being reported.

Scanning the forum posts, there seem to be problems on a number of fronts: using certain older browsers, using Qwest, ActiveX issues, along with some more general problems with performance and certain features not working. Some people are using Mac OS X 10.4 and can't upgrade to the recommended Safari 4.x (sorry don't know much about Macs or why this isn't possible), but others seem to be using more current browsers and are still having problems, here's a quick sampling:

• I can now barely log in, cant delete any messages, cant compose messages, signing out takes forever. I do not want social networking message options, or ultra rich test clipboards to type emails on i just want to be able to check my email and send messages.
• the exact issue is ever since the upgraded, when i sign in to my hotmail account I see that I have messages and can see who they are from, but cant view them. Mycomuter hangs up or says NOt Responding.
• I see the following message above my Inbox/email: "We can't connect to Windows Live Hotmail from Qwest right now. Please try again later"
  I use Windows Internet Explorer 7 & 8.
• Was using IE8. Dowloaded Safari to see if there would be a difference, but although it allowed me to access my hotmail, it works ever so slowly, and is still doing some very weird things like flickering of icons, and sporadic access to different hotmail folders. Methinks this is a Hotmail problem rather than a browser problem. Smooooth move!

A number of posters have mentioned a problem with Hotmail from Qwest, apparently they are not able to get to their email, no matter what browser.

Responses from Microsoft personnel seem to be few and far between, but one workaround concerning ActiveX was posted:

For Browser freeze issues in IE, please try these steps and let us know if that helped or not:
In IE go to Tools > Internet Options > Security > Custom Level... >
Deactivate ActiveX objects.
Log back into Hotmail inbox - then go back and set the security to Default level.
For customers who arent able to access their emails at all in any of the browsers/computer, please try accessing your emails using a mail client as a workaround till we fix these issues for you.
For instructions, go here:
http://windowslivehelp.com/solution.aspx?solutionid=a485233f-206d-491e-941b-118e45a7cf1b

Older browsers seem to be a big problem, with a Microsoft poster offering a suggestion for the older Safari issue:

yes we fully support Safari 4.x. You could also try downloading the newest version of Firefox, which we also support. Sorry you haven't had a great experience with the new Hotmail so far, but it should be much better once you get upgraded.

Of course at least some of the forum posters are resorting to their own workarounds, by switching to Yahoo! or Gmail. Someone even started a Facebook Group, I Hate the New Hotmail, albeit currently with only 77 members. Still 650 responses to just one thread on the support forums (which aren't all that easy to find we have a link on our Wiki page if you're looking for it) and over 30,000 views since just last Thursday are some fairly sobering numbers. Are you having problems with the new Hotmail? Have you been able to fix them? Are you using the support forums? Let us know in the comments.

(via a comment from User55, hope you get your issues resolved soon)

San Francisco Bay Area cartoonist and illustrator Yasmine Surovec nails the Crazy Cat Lady experience with her LOL depictions of life as a cat person in her series Cat vs. Human. You can find more of her work here.

• Follow Yasmine on Facebook.
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Source: Slacker Radio Press Releases (http://www.slacker.com/company/pressreleases.jsp)

Slacker Radio has gained its share of popularity among music fans for offering a nifty cache feature that other mobile music apps lack; after creating a station, you can save it for offline use (perfect for underground subway rides or long plane trips). Now it's distinguishing itself from other services even more by incorporating still more diverse content.

Slacker isn't the first service of its kind to incorporate news content Sirius | XM does something similar but this move does serve to give Slacker what could be seen as an edge over Pandora, which only serves up music and doesn't allow caching.

For 14 days, basic Slacker users will be able to access ABC News content; Slacker Plus users can keep on tuning in after the two-week period ends (the Plus subscription is $3.99 per month). The content which includes segments from Good Morning America, anchored by Robin Roberts, George Stephanopoulos, Juju Chang and Sam Champion; and Nightline anchored by Terry Moran, Cynthia McFadden and Martin Bashir is located within the mobile app in a folder marked News, and works in much the same way music stations do (i.e. you can skip stories).

You can also choose to add hourly news updates to any of your stations, but the process to do so is laborious, to say the least. First, you have to futz around on the website, create a station, go to the Fine Tune tab to select that option, save the station, make it a Favorite, and, if you're already logged into Slacker on your mobile device, sign in and out to make the Favorited station appear. Sure, you can choose to Fine Tune any pre-existing station which is easier than creating your own playlist or choose to have ABC News turned on for all your stations by surfing over to Account Settings, but all this still requires signing online. We wish it were possible to do all that within the app, as going through all that song-and-dance degrades the whole easy and accessible aspect of it.

More About: abc, App, Mobile 2.0, music, News, Slacker-Radio

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The site has grown at an incredible rate since its inception, and it's always struggled to keep up (technically speaking) with user adoption. Ever since its userbase spread beyond the tech elite to more mainstream social media users, the site has been subject to a seemingly unending string of growing pains.

In response to a wave of failures last month during the World Cup, Twitter engineer Jean-Paul Cozzatti posted that the company's network was improperly configured, leading to downtime and trouble with features.

Cozzatti claimed that the company had doubled the capacity of its internal network, improved its monitoring and rebalanced its traffic to prevent future downtime.

For much of 2009, Twitter's biggest challenge was coping with our unprecedented growth (a challenge we happily still face), he wrote. But as this week's issues show, there is always room for improvement.

Apparently, the improvements made last month were not enough to keep up with user growth and their demands on the service.

Cozzatti posted again today to address Twitter's issues Monday, comparing the engineering team's work on scaling the app to riding a rocket. To give you an idea of how fast that rocket is soaring through the social media universe, we reported in April that the service had 105 million users. In his post today, Cozzatti said Twitter now has 124 million registered users.

Scalability and uptime are the team's top priority; in fact, Cozzatti noted, other projects are being put to the side until these problems can be thoroughly solved. He stated that Twitter's engineers have made more than 50 performance and optimization tweaks since the site's World Cup woes, including doubling throughput to the database that stores tweets, improving how the app uses memcache and improving page caching of the front and profile pages, which helps to reduce page load time.

Nevertheless, There are still times when we run into problems unrelated to Twitter's capacity, Cozzatti admitted.

Monday's issues serve as a perfect example. During the database malfunction and restart which covered a 12-hour period users were unable to login, sign upor update their profile information and design. In the end, wrote Cozzatti, this affected most of the Twitter ecosystem: our mobile, desktop, and web-based clients, the Twitter support and help system, and Twitter.com.

While Twitter is getting its own data center this fall and is actively recruiting more engineering talent, the company clearly needs to implement the long-term solutions we're reading about. To have the cultural cachet of a web service such as Google search, Gmail, Facebook or any of the apps we rely on for day-to-day work and life and we have the distinct impression that Twitter does, indeed, hope to be part of that cadre it must first and most importantly achieve an acceptable uptime ratio. All the partnerships, revenue and media buzz in the world can fall a bit flat when the app itself doesn't work.

That being said, we're certain Twitter can and will make the needed improvements for scalability, and growing pains are good pains to have.

Are you confident that Twitter can become reliable and stable in the near future? Or do you foresee more significant downtime from this service? What will it take for Twitter to grow as quickly as its users require?

More About: developers, down, downtime, engineering, scalability, twitter

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It's a beautiful thing to watch people tweet. Especially when you try to figure out what they're tweeting about, how they feel, and where they're tweeting from then put that all on a map and animate the changes over time.

Researchers from Northeastern University and Harvard College recently built a pretty and captivating visualization of U.S. Twitter users' moods, as determined by sentiment analysis. You can watch two days worth of tweeted moods in this video:

Watching the cartogram pulse as it indicates the proportional volume and sentiment of tweets is probably more interesting than the researchers' conclusions about their data: people are happier on weekends than weekdays; West Coast happiness trends are usually about three hours after East Coast happiness trends. Still, it's neat to learn that Thursday evening aka just about the time I'm posting this is the time of the week Twitter users tend to express the most negative sentiment.

Meanwhile, over at Betaworks, they've just posted a visualization of the record-setting sustained volume of tweets from around the world during the World Cup. There's no sentiment analysis here just counting of relevant hashtags but you can see the volume of tweets corresponding with the occurrence of games that people in a country are interested in.

People seem to tweet less about being frustrated than being triumphant; for the championship game, Betaworks noted an immediate lack of traffic in the Netherlands after losing while the attention in Spain persisted through the next morning. Or it could be that disappointed tweeters just left off the proper hashtag formulation when lamenting their team's loss.

These aren't the first Twitter geography-plus-time visualizations videos, of course. Here's one from last year that maps tweets with the words just landed and just arrived in:

Just Landed 36 Hours from blprnt on Vimeo.

Here's another of tweets from people who were pleased about Barack Obama's inauguration. And here's one from the New York Times depicting tweets during the Super Bowl. (Those two aren't embeddable, so you'll have to click through.)

Perhaps the data geeks who made these were too busy thinking about the visuals, but for some reason or another none of them include a soundtrack. So it's up to you to put some trippy music on, chill out, and watch the Twitter visualizations.

Disney has released the newest trailer for TRON: Legacy at Comic-Con, and it's spreading around the web like wildfire.

TRON: Legacy is the much-anticipated sequel to Tron, the 1982 classic that follows hacker Kevin Flynn's journey into the virtual world of the ENCOM mainframe. Jeff Bridges is reprising his role as Flynn in the sequel, which is due to be released on December 17, 2010.

This trailer not only shows off the cutting-edge, techno-style special effects that make the world of TRON; it also dives deeper into the storyline and the relationship between Bridges' character and his hacker son Sam Flynn (played by Garrett Hedlund). Comic-Con attendees got an extra bonus, though: eight full minutes of footage from the upcoming film.

The film trailer has been a hot item around the web. The movie wins nostalgia points with children of the eighties, and it also wins the hearts of technology and computer geeks. After seeing this trailer, we're more excited than ever for this film.

What about you: Are you excited? Are you planning on going to see the film later this year? Let us know what you think in the comments, but please, no reaction videos.

More About: entertainment, f, Film, movie, movie trailer, TRON, tron legacy

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We've already brought you ways to share music on Twitter, but the solutions below will help you share the spoken word. Whether you want to sing happy birthday to someone, rant, or make a heartfelt apology, we've found five services that can help you out.

All the services we've tested have three things in common they are all completely free, they don't require a phone (i.e. they are web-based solutions), and they are all easy to use. There are differences between them, so it's worth having a read through our experiences so you can see which would best suit your own needs.

1. Chir.ps

Chir.ps is a super simple way to broadcast your voice to your Twitter followers. After signing in with OAuth, it's just a matter of entering your name for your personalized Chir.ps page before you can get going on the recording side of things.

The on-screen recording is again, simple just authorize Chir.ps to use your computer's mic, hit one button to start, say your piece, and then hit stop. You can preview your recording and once you're happy with it, add text and then tweet it.

There's a slight delay before the tweet will hit your stream, and when it does Chir.ps will have added a shortened URL (like this: http://chir.ps/6hb) to your message which people can click through in order to hear your audio.

While still decent, the audio quality of Chir.ps did not seem as great as other services we used, but the site does offer a listen count, so you can see how many people have hit play, which we do like. Here's what your message will look like when people click through to Chir.ps:

2. AudioBoo

AudioBoo (because sound is social) offers an iPhone and Android app as well as an online service, but for the purposes of this article, it's the web-based offerings we're interested in.

Once you've signed in with OAuth and chosen your AudioBoo username, the online recording takes place in a pop out window, which also gives you the option to upload a common audio file.

If you record via the site, you can talk (or sing, or hum, or groan or whatever it is you want to do) for five minutes, after which you can preview your ramblings. Once you're happy, give the recording a title and AudioBoo saves it down into the Your Boos section of the site.

From here you can choose to share your audio to Facebook, get an embed code for it, or tweet it, which creates a short URL like this: http://boo.fm/b154817

AudioBoo's sound quality is good, but there's no way to see how many people have tuned-in to listen to your broadcast, although there is the capability to comment on Boos. This is what your Boo will look like:

3. Twaud.io

Twaud.io is another service that lets you both record online and upload files. Recording online is easy: Just sign in with OAuth, authorize use of your mic and you're good to go for a generous thirty minutes worth of record time, which is practically podcast length.

Just hit the record button, hit it again to stop, and then press play to review whatever it is you've just uttered. Once you're done on the same screen there's a box to enter up to 100 characters of text, then just press the Twaudio it! button and you're done.

Twaud.io's URLs are super short (http://twaud.io/ls4) and play automatically when someone hits the link. Those who listen to your recordings also get the option to download them, get an embed code, retweet them or comment on them, which is sent as an @reply to the creator.

Sound quality is good, and the site tells you how many listens you've racked up, which is also good for an ego boost. This is how your message will appear to others:

4. Chirbit

Chirbit doesn't offer OAuth sign-in as it's not designed solely for the microblogging service, but setting up an account is a pain-free process, all the same.

Once you're in, you can use the service to record up to two minutes of audio, as long as you've given the appropriate permission just by hitting the onscreen buttons. After you've listened back and decided you like what you hear, you can give the clip a title and then add it into a category.

The default category is a Chirbit and any casual users who are interested in occasionally using this as a social tool need not worry about the others (such as audiobook, joke, pickup line), which are designed to help the Chirbit community find content more easily.

To save your Chirbit, you hit send and it will then appear on your Chirbit homepage. To get sharing, hit the cog icon on your recording and the site gives you the option to post it to Facebook or Twitter, making you a nice little shortened URL in the process. Here's one we prepared earlier: http://chirb.it/5LAfeM. And here's what viewers will see, which includes the option to respond:

5. ShoutoMatic

As well as offering a paid-for service where celebrities will record a message for you to tweet, ShoutoMatic also offers the infinitely more useful and free service of letting you record your own tweets.

Head on over to the site, either sign up for an account, or connect via Facebook, and you're ready to start shouting, as it were.

On the simple interface you just hit to record, review and save the clip. If you've signed in with Facebook it will prompt you to post it on there, but you can skip this bit.

After you've saved it, you can e-mail, download, post to Facebook or tweet your audio. If you tweet it, then Shoutomatic makes you a neat shortened URL (like http://bit.ly/ckvllv) and adds the text Check this out to your tweet, which obviously, you can choose to delete.

There is no listen counter on ShoutoMatic, but people are able to reply directly on your message page. Here's what anyone following the link to your message will see:

BONUS: Pockets

If you're in the United States, Pockets lets you send targeted voicemail to an individual Twitter user. As you will see in the video demo above, Pockets will call you and record your message, which is then sent as an @reply to the recipient who can click through to the Pockets website to listen.

More Twitter resources from Mashable:

- Top 20 Sites to Improve Your Twitter Experience
-10 Ways to Share Music on Twitter
- Twitter to Facebook: 5 Ways to Post to Both
- HOW TO: Create Custom Twitter Backgrounds
- HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Twitter #Hashtags

[Img credit: Pixey]

More About: audio, AudioBoo, chir.ps, Chirbit, how to, how tos, pockets, shoutomatic, social media, Twaud.io, twitter, twitter tools, voicemail

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Shared by Jim
I agree with this, I loved my Kindle. I sold it when I got my iPad because it didn't make sense to have two devices, but it was great for reading. If you're a reader, at this price now it doesn't make sense for you not to own a Kindle. (if you don't have the need / want for an iPad)

Yesterday, Amazon announced a new Kindle, similar in design to the new DX and just $140/$190 for WiFi-only and 3G models, respectively.

Naturally, the tech press is already declaring it dead, because the tech press loves product killers and other perceptions to completely rule out entire classes of products because they lack the empathy or worldview to recognize these products' markets.

Dave Winer says:

When I read on tech blogs that Kindle is a goner, I think these people must not read very much.

I love the Kindle. The iPad didn't kill it. Amazon is going to sell a ton of these, especially at this new price point.

Reading on the iPad is a bit of a kludge. You can read on it, and it's a lot better than reading on a computer, but it's still too reflective, heavy, bright, and power-hungry compared to the Kindle.

People often assume that the iPad's backlit LCD screen is an advantage over the Kindle because it doesn't need a separate light to be read at night. But the Kindle's e-ink screen is actually more versatile for different lighting: not only does it work in bright sunlight just as well as paper, but I find it easier to read a Kindle at night with a small lamp on than with an iPad in the dark, even using dark mode and low brightness. And I often can't use those same nightstand or headboard-clip lamps with the iPad to light the area less harshly because the iPad's screen is too reflective. The iPad is also too heavy to comfortably hold in most ways for long periods, and its wide range of software capabilities can be distracting. When you're holding a Kindle, all you can do is read. When I read on an iPad, I always want to go check my email. And my feeds. And Tumblr. And Twitter. Just for a minute.

The iPad is a great casual computer, but the Kindle is the superior reading device.¹ And there doesn't need to be any killing. If you really like an iPad for its other uses, now that a Kindle's entry price is $140, it's perfectly reasonable to have both.

Tiff and I are taking our first backpacking trip in a few weeks. We'll presumably have no access to AC power for 6 days, and we'll likely regret carrying anything heavy or unnecessary. But we'll have times at camp in which it will be nice to be able to entertain ourselves.

I'm not bringing the iPad. I'm certainly not bringing a laptop. I'll have my iPhone for emergencies, but powered off to conserve its battery. I'm bringing the S90, not the 5D Mark II.

And I'm bringing a Kindle, loaded up with books and Instapaper compilations, in a Ziplock bag for waterproofing. No case, no charger, no extra batteries. Total weight: 10 ounces. (I'll be carrying more coffee than that.) If it breaks, it's a lot cheaper to replace than an iPad. Its battery will outlast the trip, even with heavy use. It holds so much text that I'll always have a great selection and more than enough supply. And I'm simply bringing a few extra sets of AAA batteries (2 oz.) for my headlamp to light it at night if needed.

Gizmodo and the like probably don't care that the Kindle is the perfect device for so many uses like this that people encounter on a regular basis in Real Life. But Kindle owners, and Amazon, don't need them to.

A few WordPress superstars have teamed up to create WPEngine, a new and very exciting platform that promises to do all of the above and more.

WordPress has become the killer platform for many bloggers, small businesses and developers/consultants with multiple clients.

However, there's a middle ground between a WordPress.com blog and a hosted WordPress site that a few apps are attempting to cover. This middle ground includes people who don't have the technical skills of a WordPress developer or even a website administrator but who still want to take advantage of a greater part of the WordPress ecosystem of plugins and other benefits.

About the Product

WPEngine offers a WordPress VIP-type experience for smaller-scale websites, and it includes top-notch support, one-click backups, optimization for speed and scalability, and security features that include automatic software upgrades. Also, you'll be able to use any WordPress plugins, themes, custom CSS or JavaScript you like.

The platform gives users a set of specially curated plugins that have been vetted for security and have the WP Engine team's absolute recommendation. If there is a plugin that isn't in our list, reads the site, you should feel empowered to use it anyway.

Most of all, WPEngine promises its users simplicity and a seamless transition and integration experience.

The platform seems like it will work for bloggers, for businesses, and also for small dev shops that need to keep an eye on several WordPress-based sites.

About the Team

While the product sounds fabulous and, indeed, just what the WordPress ecosystem needs, product is only part of what makes a good startup; the company also needs to have a great team. WPEngine was developed by Aaron Brazell, a well-known figure in the WordPress universe who authored The WordPress Bible; blogger and developer Jason Cohen; and Cullen Wilson, an Austin-based developer. The startup is also under the wing of Ben Metcalfe, who has made a habit of picking good bets in the startup world. His last pick, NutShell Mail, experienced the Silicon Valley version of a Cinderella story and was acquired recently by Constant Contact. Altogether, it's a bit of a dream team for a WordPress product.

Finally, the platform got the following 140-character thumbs-up from WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg this afternoon: I think it's a nice complement to first-party solutions, especially for businesses that use [WordPress] as a CMS.

About Signup and Migration

We talked a bit with some of the WP Engine team today about migrating blogs including themes, customized TypeKit fonts, comments and more over to the WP Engine platform, and it's a process we're eager to test. We'll be trying it out soon, and we will report back on the results.

In the meantime, if you're interested in learning more, sign up for WPEngine's beta program. The platform will be open to the public very soon. You can test the platform for 15 days free of charge, and it costs $50 per month thereafter. There are no contracts, and you're free to move your blog elsewhere at any time.

What do you think so far? Is this something you'd be interested in trying? Do you think it will be useful for businesses and WordPress developers? Let us know in the comments.

More About: aaron brazell, ben metcalfe, Wordpress, wpengine

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The investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time and says it uses that information to predict the future.

The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents both present and still-to-come. In a white paper, the company says its temporal analytics engine goes beyond search by looking at the invisible links' between documents that talk about the same, or related, entities and events.

The idea is to figure out for each incident who was involved, where it happened and when it might go down. Recorded Future then plots that chatter, showing online momentum for any given event.

The cool thing is, you can actually predict the curve, in many cases, says company CEO Christopher Ahlberg, a former Swedish Army Ranger with a PhD in computer science.

Which naturally makes the 16-person Cambridge, Massachusetts, firm attractive to Google Ventures, the search giant's investment division, and to In-Q-Tel, which handles similar duties for the CIA and the wider intelligence community.

OK, to start, let's get past the whole PC means personal computer so a Mac is a PC thing. I'm aware. But for the sake of argument and story-telling, I'm going to use PC to refer to a Windows-based machine, whether home built or from a manufacturer.

That said, I have to repent for a sin. Though actually I guess I'm just admitting, because repenting would lead you to believe that I plan on stopping. That's not the case.

That sin is lust, and the object is a Mac.

I came into this profession as a blogger wielding a plastic-bound Logitech keyboard and 24 inches of widescreen Dell. I was determined to be the one that didn't change. I was going to profess my love of Windows 7 and the world would know that I was typing every new entry while staring at the beauty of the 4-color Microsoft flag.

It's not really that I'm a Microsoft fanboy. In fact, I've used a wealth of different operating systems, and would move to a flavor of Linux if more of what I do with audio production were supported. But, that hasn't happened, so I've stuck with the old standard.

Conversely, I'm also not an Apple fanboy. I think that the iPhone is pretty, but I don't really want one. Apple TV is one of the most disappointing products I've ever seen and iTunes on a PC is the single worst piece of software I've ever been all-but-forced to use.

But then it happened.

I'm a slave to the number pad on my keyboard. I avoid the top row of numbers as if they're carriers of some highly infectious disease. Unless I'm playing a game, this row of digits is doomed to a solitary confinement, never to be graced by my tender touch.

One day, the 2 on my trusty Logitech bit the dust. Without warning or probable cause, it simply died. I was in shock. I knew that I should have bought two of the things when I got it, but I just neglected to do so. Disassembling the $20 thing was of no use, and they were out of stock at all but the most untrusted sources. I had to face the fact: it was time to buy a new keyboard.

I started my search across the vast keyboard wonderland that is Amazon, reading reviews and trying to decide what was right for me. Time after time, the most highly rated keyboards came from Logitech and Apple. In a moment that can only be described as fiscal insanity, I shelled out $50 for the Apple Aluminum keyboard. The one, of course, with the number pad.

The next day, as the keyboard arrived at my door, I was wary of even plugging the thing in. I carefully unboxed the device, making certain that I'd be able to return it if I didn't like it. I set it in place, plugged it in and typed my first sentence.

And then it happenedAs if in an instant, I suddenly began to understand.

From the first few words, I instantly knew that I was addicted. I had never before felt a piece of hardware that was more responsive. Typing with this newfound friend was like driving a sports car that answered willingly to my every touch. With light flicks across its chicklet-laden frame, I found myself typing faster and with less effort than ever before.

I was hooked. I needed to find out more.

The next instance of my unintended investigation came with the arrival of Ostrich. Being that I'm the editor of a channel entirely dedicated to applications, it was up to me to take a look at Ostrich and figure out if it was any good.

Only one problem: I used Chrome, and Ostrich was the first Twitter extension for Safari. Well, no harm done. I'll load up Safari for Windows and, give Ostrich its due time and then I'll be back to Chrome.

I'm guessing that you can already tell what's going to happen, so I'll spare you the details. I'll just say that I'm now firmly into my third week of using Safari and I have absolutely no plans of going back to Chrome or Firefox as of this time.

Why? Because Safari, for me, is justbetter. And that's the confusing part, honestly. I can't put my finger onto why it is that I like Safari better than Chrome. They're both Webkit-based and both run essentially the same, but after weeks of using Safari and dealing with a couple of initial frustrations, I keep getting the sense that the browser is more intuitive, more responsive and simplybetter.

And so here I sit, typing this missive on an Apple keyboard, using Safariin Windows 7. Why? Not for lack of desire, mind you. Simply for lack of funds. I've finally gotten to the point where I can justify in my mind the cost associated with owning a Mac, but my wallet doesn't seem to care what my mind thinks.

I now understand the cost. I now also understand why Mac enthusiasts shell out the money for them without a second thought. I've used a years-old Powerbook that still ran flawlessly. I've seen a friend who still has a Mac G4 Cube in daily service without a hitch. Why? It comes down to build quality, and Apple simply can't be beaten, in my PC-using opinion.

So there it is. 900-some words later and I've finally laid it out there for flames from both sides. So flame on, my Internet-anonymous friends. Don't mind me, I'll just be over scraping change out of the sofa cushions to add to my Macbook Pro savings account.

Original title and link for this post: Confessions of a Mac-lusting PC owner.

Twitter is rolling out a new feature to help you discover new people to follow:

The algorithms in this feature, built by our user relevance team, suggest people you don't currently follow that you may find interesting. The suggestions are based on several factors, including people you follow and the people they follow.

This is a very welcome move by Twitter. TechCrunch says they're building a Social Graph, while VentureBeat suggests a PeopleRank algorithm powering these suggestions.

The problem? Twitter badly needs a Matt Cutts.

Active Users

Here are stats on number of tweets by Twitter Users by RJMetrics from Jan 2010:

• 80% of all Twitter users have tweeted fewer than 10 times.

That means only 20% are active users.

The 2009 Annual Report from Barracuda Labs independently confirms these findings.

• 34% of Twitter users have no tweets
• 73% of users have less than 10 tweets

Spam Accounts

Now, from the remaining 20% of active Twitter users, how many users are spam?

According to TwitSweeper in March 2010: 5%.

These are accounts who tweet "make money fast online!", "multiple sources of passive income", "view my naked pics!", etc.

That leaves 15% of Twitter users who are real and may be considered worth following.

Why This Is A Problem

If Twitter is trying to build a meaningful, relevant social graph, they have to clean up first.

Twitter's PeopleRank faces the same challenge as Google's PageRank: Blackhat SEO. These spam accounts are followed by each other and by other fake accounts all to provide a semblance of a active social user graph and avoid algorithmic detection. These are virtually indistinguishable from real users and will become part of the suggested users ecosystem.

How many times do we encounter spam accounts on Facebook? How many times do we see spam results in the first page of Google search results? In contrast, how many times do we get @replies from spammers on Twitter?

A contaminated social graph or PeopleRank system is harmful to Twitter from an investor, user, and advertiser point of view. It will be great if Twitter is able to suggest whom to unfollow and get rid of all these inactive, fake, and spam accounts.

This spring at Twitter's first developer conference Chirp the big splash was a forthcoming feature called Annotations. The feature will allow publishing software to annotate Tweets with a wide open variety of metadata, which could then be read and analyzed by other software. Annotations are going to be big, if and when they launch.

At Chirp it was said that the Annotations feature would launch in the second or third quarter of this year. Now the company's developer advocate, Taylor Singletary, said today on the Twitter developers list that it's not going to work out that way. "We haven't yet announced a release date," he said in response to an inquiry, "and it's still a ways in the future while we tackle some other projects."

Sponsor

We've got an inquiry in with Twitter asking what that means, but it seems clear that the company is slammed with technical challenges, has other priorities and wrongly estimated the roadmap for this very important part of the platform. (Update: see below.)

Here's how Annotations will work. It will allow publishing software to mark-up tweets with any kind of characteristic or namespace (local weather when and where a twit did tweet, for example) and any kind of value - cloudy with a chance of meatballs, for example. Twitter messages are fairly rich with metadata already and incredibly easy to analyze and build on top of, but Annotations would open that up so far the sky's the limit.

It's worth mentioning that Twitter's unveiling of Annotations at Chirp happened around the same time as, and was widely compared with, Facebook's launching of personalized content widgets and tentacles expanding all over the web, among other things. Facebook shipped its announced project, for better or for worse.

Twitter is Busy

In another email on the same list today, Singletary said that the processing of white-listing applications to ping Twitter's servers with a production-level frequency was clogged with backlog, growing more critical in its evaluations and being re-evaluated.

Numerous advertising technologies have been rolled out since Chirp as well. Annotations is a hugely ambitious strategy, and the squabbling over namespaces and standards was one that Twitter said it was going to let the market work out on its own. That made some people quite unhappy.

We've asked Twitter for clarification on the revised Annotations roadmap and will update this post with the company's response.

Update: A Twitter spokesperson responded to our inquiry and said that yes, Annotations will launch. "We'll still launch Annotations. The team that was working on Annotations is currently focused on our number one priority, which is site stability." No doubt Annotations could themselves pose scalability challenges. They could at least blow our minds, if not a series of related servers.

Below is an image of what each Tweet looks like under the hood right now, before annotations. (Click for full size view.) Each of those fields is powerful, but inflexible and defined by the company. Imagine a new one that's open to being defined however a publishing tool sees fit. That's the vision behind Annotations.

Filed under: App Review

Gallery: American Museum of Natural History Explorer app

TUAWThe American Museum of Natural History's Explorer app for the iPhone and iPod touch originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

By now, many of us have seen the video of YouTube user Hungrybear9562 (a.k.a Paul Vasquez) freaking out over a super pretty rainbow there are been remixes, interviews with Bear and even an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live (Kimmel helped Vasquez rocket to stardom after tweeting a link to the vid at the beginning of July). Yup. This video certainly was meme-tastic, and now it has a country rock cover befitting the soundtrack of some awesome '70s movie about love and loss, like Harold and Maude.

This isn't the first time Fallon has given a viral vid the Young treatment he covered Pants on the Ground (remember that classic jam?) back in January. And now, for your Fridaze listening pleasure, here's both of those jams. Fallon should seriously cut an album his comedic skills are questionable, but I would totally listen to a disc of viral covers if I had a truck and nothing but the open road before me.

Double Rainbow

Pants on the Ground

More About: double-rainbow, humor, jimmy fallon, pop culture, television, viral video, youtube

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