The folks over at Automattic just released the stable 2.8 version of popular blogging platform Wordpress. This site, along with a large percentage of blogs out there, runs on the Wordpress platform and I can’t say enough about all the features and SEO-friendly options that it has built-in to the base version (not to mention all the free plugins and themes available on their site).

Over 790 bugs were fixed from the previous 2.7.1 version not to mention they claim it’s supposed to be a lot faster (that has yet to be seen). Some of the new features can be found under the Appearance section of the backend, from a re-designed widgets section to the addition of convenient “Activate, Preview and Delete” quick-links underneath each theme. If you’re trying to decide between a few themes or just like to keep a lot available, this will undoubtably save you a lot of time.

Some highlights of the updated features are:

• New drag-and-drop widgets admin interface and new widgets API
• Syntax highlighting and function lookup built into plugin and theme editors
• Browse the theme directory and install themes from the admin
• Allow the dashboard widgets to be arranged in up to four columns
• Allow configuring the number of items to show on management pages with an option in Screen Options
• Support timezones and automatic daylight savings time adjustment
• Support IIS 7.0 URL Rewrite Module
• Faster loading of admin pages via script compression and concatenation

So if you haven’t logged into the back-end of your own Wordpress blog lately, now’s the time to do it and use their automatic upgrade feature! That or you can find the download page (as well as instructions for how to install or upgrade) here. You can also view the complete list of updates and bug fixes on their development site.

Starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT this Saturday, June 13th, you can finally get an easy-to-share username for your Facebook account! Facebook explains the process that will start once their countdown page – www.Facebook.com/username/ reaches zero in a recent blog post on their site.

No longer will you have to copy and paste your profile link (which just consists of a string of numbers representing your user id) when sharing your online profile with others, now you can give your Facebook account it’s own vanity URL. Not only great for sharing but it has it’s own obvious SEO benefits which is why I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a large amount of “username-squatting” come Saturday! Below you can see an example of what the search results for that username would pull up on Google.com.

With Facebook.com being a high authority site in the search engines, this has the potential to benefit your brand and/or campaign if used correctly. In the meantime get ready to see a whole gaggle of variations on www.Facebook.com/people/Lose-Weight-With-Our-Diet-Pills/234234324 addresses pulling up in the SERPS.

A new twitter worm is running rampant through the microblogging community infecting those who are easily enticed with the idea of gaining more followers. It’s actually very simple, all it does it tweet out to the infected hosts followers, “OMG I just got over 1000 followers today from http://twittercut.com.” Anyone who visits the site will be prompted to enter their twitter login credentials in order to “access the twittercut tool” however upon submitting the info it then just goes and mass-tweets to all of your followers and the cycle continues. Playing of the desperation many seem to have when it comes to becoming ‘popular’ on the network, A twitter search pulled up thousands of folks who fell victim to this trap.
If you see one of your friends twittering “OMG I just got over 1000 followers today from http://twittercut.com”, you might want to tell them to change their password ASAP before it’s changed for them.

So the source of twittercut apparently is a Twitter user named JordanEmbry. It’s also the same name used on the whois records for the twittercut.com domain. Twitter has already disabled his account but using the Google cache you can still see the profile + recent tweets. You’d have to be a moron to use your real info on a scam like this, so I can’t imagine this is really the culprit.

He’s hosting it on free-webhost 110MB.com, so I just sent them a message letting them know about the TOS/Abuse Violation… hopefully they’ll take the site down soon.

In what has to be one of the strangest pairing of television stars I’ve ever seen, Will Ferrell will be facing nature’s wrath alongside Bear Grylls on the season premier of Man Vs. Wild, taking the duo deep into the frozen tundra ‘far north’ of Sweden. It is set to coincide with the release of his upcoming motion picture Land of the Lost.

I wonder who’s idea it was (marketing or talents)?

Discovery Communications ad sales jockey Joe Abruzzese decided to step up and give the typical marketing pat-on-the-back by telling Variety Magazine just how this is a prime example of working closely with advertisers on “content integration.” At least Annah Zafrani, VP of media promotions for Universal Pictures, was put on record calling it the studio’s “most innovative project to date” with Discovery.

Should be fun to watch.

Like Guitar Hero but wish you could play it at work without your boss catching you air-guitaring in the break room? Now you can with the recently opened beta online game JamLegend.com!

Pretty much it’s guitar hero meets the keyboard….even allowing you to change up which keys are assigned to which strings, enable or disable having to strum & it even gives you the option to disable 3+ note chords (for the weaksauce soft-rockers). They’ve come up with a way where you can use your keyboard (this is where a wireless keyboard is strongly suggested) similar to how you’d hold the console-version plastic guitars….though if you’re at work I would recommend you not playing in this fashion as it may draw unneeded attention from coworkers.

You can play against the computer, be auto-matched against another online player or even challenge other users and friends to duels/showdowns (A duel lets you take a high score and challenge a user to match or beat it, a showdown allows for real-time multiplayer matches). In addition to achievements there are levels, XP earned/lost as well as a rapidly growing list of songs. Want to hear the song you and your drunk friends recorded on the site? Not a problem – they’re actively seeking new material, all the artist has to do is fill out a short form agreeing to allow their material to appear on the site.

Already have a guitar controller and want to use it with JamLegend.com? No Problem! They’ve got a wiki with instructions for how to use your Wii, PS2/PS3 and even Xbox260 controllers with your computer….so if nosy bosses aren’t a problem feel free to rock away on your fake plastic guitars against other online players in a fight to top the charts as the JamLegend superstar!

Anyhow, there you go – the latest site to take up all the time I should be spending on writing new posts…Enjoy!