Hot on the heels of the completely revamped WordPress 2.5 release, here comes WordPress 2.6 with even more new features. I was kind of surprised to see another major release so soon but the features it brings are very cool and I will be upgrading my WordPress sites to 2.6 soon.

Let’s take a look at the features WordPress 2.6 has:

• Post Revisions - Wiki-like tracking of edits. Great for multi-author sites as well as individual owned sites to go back to previous versions of posts. I have several posts that I update frequently and just introduced a new sidebar item (click over to the blog to see) to showcase those. I’d like to see if the post revisions feature would enhance that for me!
• Press This! bookmarklet. You could post from wherever in the web like YouTube, Flickr, etc and this bookmarklet will open a Write page with the embed code already inserted for you. Definitely making it’s way to my Top browser Bookmarklets post.
• Google Gears support. WordPress can sweet talk Google Gears into caching frequently used CSS, Javascript files speeding up your WordPress experience tremendously!
• Theme Previews. Means one less plugin for me. I use the Theme Preview plugin to look at the blog design I am working on before you do. Now, WordPress can natively allow you to do that.
• Word Count
• Image captions. Sweet.
• Bulk management of plugins.
• A revamped image control that improves its handling, resizing, etc.
• Toggle between the flash and classic image loader
• Full SSL support and more

If these features don’t convince you to upgrade, how about this tidbit? WordPress 2.6 fixes ~194 bugs!!!

Here is a video review of the highlighted features from WordPress.

I have a feeling that this might tick off the general WordPress users. Because this means another upgrade shortly after the release of 2.5 & the security update 2.5.1. To me though, this just means that I am using a high quality open source software with a high energy development team that brings out the state of the art features into it’s releases very quickly. It’s probably the geek in me.

So, what do ou think about WordPress release schedule? Is it too soon? Are the new features, security fixes big enough for you to upgrade?

Shameless plug: My wife, Shriya, is working on setting up a WordPress shop to help her clients with installs, upgrades, theme customizations, theme development services, etc. Until that site is up, you could contact her through the contact form here or at SpicyTasty.com for any affordable WordPress related help.

Hello newcomer, did I say welcome to ShanKri-la yet? Before you move on, just wanted to thank you for visiting and we hope you come back and see us again!

Yes, we took the plunge and got our hands on our new 16GB iPhone 3G (white) this morning.

I had announced the launch of our new blog Top iPhone Resource with the release of 1st gen iPhone but I ended up not getting it at that time. Now, with us getting our own iPhone 3g, we are reviving our TopiPhoneResource.info blog back into life. My wife Shriya & I will be blogging all about iPhones over there.

Come see our iPhone 3G unboxing with a lot of pictures of the new iPhone 3G (white) and the story on how we got it at AT&T.

As a sign of showing our seriousness with this new iPhone blog, we have also acquired the dot com companion and will be setting it up to redirect to the dot com address this weekend.

As you have come to expect with ShanKri-la, you can be assured of quality and useful information at our iPhone blog as well. So, head on over for your iPhone fix!

Mozilla has announced that it has set a Guinness World Record for the most number of software downloads in 24 hours.

I had written about the release day and followed the little download fiasco around the time Firefox 3 was made available around the world.

Firefox 3 was downloaded by 8,002,530 people and that is the most a software has been downloaded in 24 hours with around 1.7 million people pledging in advance to download the software. And today, so far there as been around a whopping 29 million Firefox 3 downloads!

While you are at it, you could download a fun certificate to show off your participation in the Guinness Record.

Congratulations Mozilla!

After weeks of rumours and guesses sorrounding the release of Apple iPhone 3G on July 11, AT&T has finally revealed its pricing plan.

As you’d expect, I am not happy. And so aren’t a lot of people. Here’s the lowdown:

You can get an iPhone 3G 8gb for $199 or 16gb for $299 only for

• iPhone customers who purchased before July 11
• Customers activating a new line with AT&T
• Current AT&T customers who are eligible, at the time of purchase, for an upgrade discount

If you don’t qualify for an upgrade discount, like us, you’d pay $399 for 8gb and $499 for 16gb iPhone 3G.

The above prices are available only with a 2-year contract with AT&T.

Wait, there’s more. The real kicker is in AT&T’s pricing plan.

AT&T is increasing the price of the data plan from $20/month to $30/month for 3G network. And it doesn’t include the 200 SMS messages.

Check out the detailed price comparison tables in AppleInsider that accurately shows different options and how much more AT&T has hiked the price of various data plan options.

As you can see, getting a family plan? It’s gonna hurt some more. Now, see if you can get the same clear picture from AT&T’s pricing charts.

With my current plan not eligible for an upgrade discount until Mar 31 2009, a 16gb iPhone 3G will cost me $499 + $30×24 + $18 (activation fees) = $1237 + tax! If we decide to bite the bullet and get one, this will be our most expensive toy. And we don’t even have 3G coverage at where we live.

If I am so peeved about AT&T and it’s pricing, you might wonder why bother buying one? My wife and I did resist the temptation last time around. But, the talk of $199 & $299 again rekindled our interest.

Plus, take a look at this iPhone 3G guided tour! (video link)

Do you blame us for getting tempted to snag one on July 11th?

Apple’s ad says ‘Twice as fast, Half the Price’. I say half the price, my ass.

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ), the entity that tightly controls what domain names could be registered just relaxed its rule paving the way for a slew of new names to be introduced to domain names.

At present, there are already 27 TLDs (top level domains) available like the popular .com, .org, .net, etc. Starting second quarter of 2009, ICANN will start accepting applications for new names and will approve or reject based on an independent review process as well as based on thrid party objection.

What does this mean to the web?

We could start seeing domain names ending with industry specific tags like .travel, .food, etc. and city specific tags like .nyc, .paris, .la etc. There is no end to it and ICANN hasn’t limited the words that can be applied for either to see what the industry will come up with.  There will be numerous options for any business to register a domain name with. And I am not sure if it can be structured. If you had a .nyc domain name, could you still have your .com address and if you were a hotel in New York City, could you also have a domain name with .travel? You are still a business, so you could have a .biz domain name as well.

Having said that, not everyone could register a TLD. You have to be serious enough and shell out around half a million dollars and promise to take care of it.

What does this mean to us?

With a habit of visiting multitude of websites daily, sometimes it’s hard enough for me to remember between a .com and a .net these days. With the flood gates for domain names being opened with the possibility or hundres of new TLDs, the advantage is not in our side. We are going to get confused. Period.

I wouldn’t be able to remember if the hotel someone recommended or the review i read pointed to a .com or a .biz or a .travel or a .hotel name in it. Especially if there were different hotels registered with each of these TLDs.

What does this mean to Google?

If I were Google, I would be very happy this morning as all this is good news for a search engine. If you were confused or unable to find the business names anymore by your .coms or .nets or .biz options for a name, you would naturally turn to a search engine. The results shown by Google are going to be even more important down the line when there are a zillion more sites with crazy names attached to them with no apparent structure.

I think this just made the consumer dependence on search engines like Google even stronger. More and more people are going to flock to Google to go anywhere on the web as the directories would be too big and too cluttered to find what you want.

Even now, how many times have you caught yourself going straight to Google before you get to a website? This is just with the few common TLDs like .com, .net and the occasional hypens in the name. Imagine with hundred more options for domain names and my head starts to spin already.

It’s Friday. So, lets push aside the gloom that’s about to descend on us and see if we can come up with some funny domain names? I have a feeling the first TLD that will get registered next year will be .porn.

[via ICANN]

Open Source movement is seeing a lot of excitement this week. Hot on the heels of the much anticipated  release of Firefox 3, openSUSE has released their shiny new version openSUSE 11.0 today.

openSUSE 11.0 is in the wild now with almost 200 new features specific to openSUSE, an awesome new installer, a faster package manager, KDE4, Gnome 2.22, Compiz Fusion and much more than I can list here.

I have been running openSUSE 11.0 beta for a week and love every bit of the improvements made. Plus, with KDE4 coming out with a stable release, you could get openSUSE 11.0 with KDE4 out of the box.

As much as I’d love to do a full review of openSUSE 11.0, some of my trusted sources have already done so and much better than I can. So, I am going to point to some excellent resources if you’d like to read up on this new version!

About openSUSE 11.0

openSUSE 11.0 Main page | Release Notes | Product Highlights | Screenshots | Guide to open SUSE 11.0 | openSUSE 11.0 Review

The above links will inform you of all things openSUSE 11.0. I will try to post a follow up post with little tricks and tips if there is enough interest in your comments as I don’t usually talk much about Linux here.

Download openSUSE 11.0

openSUSE 11.0 CD ISOs | openSUSE 11.0 DVD ISOs | openSUSE 11.0 torrents | openSUSE 11.0 deltas

To help avoiding over loading their servers, it is recommended to use the mirrors when possible.

Post 11.0 Installation

Scott Morris of SUSE Blog has put together a nice list of package repositories you can add to YAST.

If you can’t find a more recent package via YAST, openSUSE Build Service might have it.

I found this tutorial referenced by Scott very helpful in setting up my openSUSE with codecs, video drivers and the applications I need.

If you get stuck with anything, there is always the openSUSE forums to get help from.

At the moment I use Linux for my desktop only at work as it well suits the tasks i do. But, with openSUSE 11.0 I am seriously considering making the switch in my home desktop as well. Especially with the release of Wine 1.0 this week, I could run many of my Windows only applications in Linux as well.

What would it take you to make the switch to Linux? (if you already haven’t)

I am on Twitter and seeing so many people looking to download Firefox 3 only to face disappointment with the sites being down. I did update my last post with the download links but you probably woulnd’t know of the update if you didn’t visit the site.

So, I am posting it here again for those subscribed by RSS or email.

Update: If you are wondering why Firefox 3 isn’t available for download yet, it will be there for download at 1:00PM EST.

Update 2: Looks like all the Firefox download sites are down for me still at 1:45 PM EST. Here are the ftp download links, if you promise to help with the Guinness Record by downloading again.

Mozilla Firefox 3.0 Final For Windows

Mozilla Firefox 3.0 Final For Linux

Mozilla Firefox 3.0 Final For MACOS

(thanks Umana)

Update 3: 2:45PM EST : DISCLAIMER: Looking at the release notes in the links above points to Firefox 3 RC3! These may not be the actual download links. Sorry! My linux download from the above link has Firefox 3 final release notes. So they may be ok.

Update 4: 3:06 PM EST Here is another direct ftp listing of Firefox 3 downloads for various platforms

ftp://mozilla.isc.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.0/

Update 5: 3:52 PM EST Firefox 3 is finally available from GetFirefox.com

If a link doesn’t work, just try again. I was able to download all three versions.

If you interested in running your current Firefox 2 & Firefox 3 simultaneously, you could follow this tip.

I am not sure if downloading it from these links will impact their attempt at the Guinness Record but as long as we can doanload it again before tomorrow from the official sites, it might be alright. It’s just not fair to NOT be able to get to the downloads after all this anticipation.

What do you think this will do to Firefox 3’s credibility?