When we think about the very basic fundamentals of blogging and expressing ideas we find the clear practice of writing. Today we are launching a new theme which tries to reflect precisely on that. Manifest is a wonderful theme for writers.

This is a theme that presents your creations in an elegant and powerfully clean way, offering your readers an intimate and direct experience with your thoughts.

The Manifest Theme

With content being the clear focus in Manifest, you can create different types of posts by choosing appropriate post formats. You can create image posts, link posts, asides, and Manifest will present them in the same neat, clutter free way it shows your regular text posts. You can even add a subtle header image to bring a personal touch to the design.

The Manifest Theme was designed by Jim Barraud. Go and learn more about it on the theme showcase, or activate it right away at Appearance → Themes. And once you are done, just start posting.

Last week, we introduced support for OAuth2 and launched develop.wordpress.com, as we’re eager to empower the developer community to extend WordPress.com in new and meaningful ways.

Today, we’re excited to announce the availability of our new oEmbed Provider API, yet another way to make it easy for third-party services and their respective audiences to share and consume content.

oEmbed is a format for allowing an embedded representation of a URL on third-party sites. The simple API allows a website to display embedded content (such as photos or videos) when a user posts a link to that resource, without having to parse the resource directly.

Same post, multiple formats

The API supports any WordPress.com URL, any WordPress.com-hosted domain or subdomain (EG: http://techcrunch.com/, http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/) as well as WP.me shortlinks pointing to WordPress.com-hosted sites.

Hop over to develop.wordpress.com and see the oEmbed Provider API documentation for more information. Keep impressing the world with innovative ways to use the wonderful breadth of content created by our millions of talented bloggers!

Got lots of magazine-style content and need a stylish frame? Today we are introducing Lifestyle, a new colorful magazine theme that comes with ten content-friendly, soft color schemes.

Lifestyle Theme

As a premium theme, customization is at the core of Lifestyle. Choose from multiple layouts and menus, breadcrumbs, header image, or custom background. This theme is a great fit if you publish magazine or news style content. You can showcase multiple categories on the homepage and use featured images to make your site look stunning.

Developed by StudioPress, Lifestyle is available for the lifetime of your blog for $75. Read more about the theme features or preview it live on your blog from Appearance → Themes.

Today we’re excited to launch Matala, our newest theme. You might recognize this one — it was once the primary theme for ma.tt, Matt Mullenweg’s blog. Last year, Matala was released to the WordPress.org Themes Directory, and now we’re thrilled to bring it to WordPress.com.

The Matala Theme

Originally designed by Nicolò Volpato, Matala’s bright colors and dynamic shapes are suggestive of designs seen in Talavera, a pottery tradition common in Puebla, Mexico. Grungy textures, hand-scribbled icons, and whimsically titling text in the main navigation menu join the colors and shapes to give your blog a bright, playful look.

You can use Matala’s fun design as is, or create a look of your own with a custom background image and custom header image.

Matala comes with three widget-ready areas: the right-hand sidebar and two columns at the bottom of your post content column. In addition,  there is a full-width page for single-image pages, an option to display a small “Random Photos” gallery on single-image pages, and support for six post formats — aside, status, quote, video, image and gallery.

Learn more about Matala’s features on the Theme Showcase.

We love developers and the applications they build to help extend WordPress.com in new and meaningful ways. To continue providing support for developers who build applications that integrate with WordPress.com, we’re announcing support for OAuth 2, as well as a new developer portal, develop.wordpress.com.

Starting today WordPress.com supports a new method of authentication which makes it extremely easy for third party applications to connect with WordPress.com blogs. This new method uses an open protocol, OAuth2, to allow secure API authorization in a simple and standard way. OAuth2 allows applications to access a WordPress.com blog without ever asking for personal details such as a password or username. Connections from applications can easily be managed within the dashboard and connections won’t break when a username or password is changed.

In addition to supporting the new authentication feature, we’re also launching develop.wordpress.com. If you’re interested in learning more about OAuth2 and other ways to integrate with WordPress.com, then this developer portal is for you.

Develop.wordpress.com contains some handy documents and resources about how you can develop using WordPress.com technologies. The site also houses a channel where you can contact us directly regarding issues such as OAuth2 authentication, client access, and embedding new media types on WordPress.com.

These documents are only the beginning -  we’ll be adding more resources and tools over time as the developer ecosystem grows.

Memolane is one example of the many possibilities for integration of third party applications with WordPress.com. Memolane allows you to pull posts directly from your WordPress.com blog into a graphical time line with other elements of your online life. You can easily view, add to, and share this timeline online. As of today, you can also embed your personal Memolane on your WordPress.com blog using a new shortcode.

So, developers, what would you like to build with WordPress.com?

Today we are introducing an elegantly designed and typographically pleasing theme, Château.

The Château Theme

Designed by Ignacio Ricci, Château has been crafted with close attention to detail and typography. Its beautiful, minimalist look allows you to make your content the focal point of your blog.

Aside from a brilliant design, this theme offers many cool features that help you to personalize your blog. There are two color schemes, three layout options, custom accent color, Custom Header Image, Custom Background, six widget areas, and three post formats — Aside, Gallery and Image. It’s loaded with options that make the theme flexible enough to fit a variety of sites.

Read all about Château’s features on the Theme Showcase.

Want to share your WordPress.com posts with your LinkedIn connections? Now you can! Today we are happy to announce that our Publicize feature connects with LinkedIn. To activate Publicize for LinkedIn, head to Settings -> Sharing in your dashboard and click Connect to LinkedIn. Please note that you need to have a LinkedIn account before you can connect it with your WordPress.com site.

After you’ve approved the connection, you’ll see LinkedIn listed in the Publish module next to the post editor. Here you can customize the message for the update you’ll send out to LinkedIn and any other sharing services you have connected. You can also opt out of Publicizing a particular post by unchecking the box next to the name of the service. Below is an example of an update shown on LinkedIn.

A LinkedIn sharing button was also recently added to the Sharing feature on WordPress.com, which can be displayed at the bottom of your posts and pages. Visit your Settings -> Sharing panel and you’ll see LinkedIn as one of the Available Services.

We’re always working hard to give you more opportunities to increase the traffic to your blog. If you have questions, read more about how Publicize works. For more information on boosting your readership, check out Getting More Views and Traffic.

Over five years ago, when WordPress.com was just getting started, we launched a theme that has become near and dear to many of us. A theme that even then stood out from all the others with its, well, its banana-smoothie-ness. It’s about time to shake up the Banana Smoothie, isn’t it? Maybe even give some other fruit a shake? We think so. Let’s take a look at its delicious successor, Fruit Shake.

The goal of Fruit Shake was to capture Banana Smoothie’s essence and serve it up to everyone with a refreshed design — and even more fruity flavor. Hence, your choice of three fruit-flavored color schemes: Banana, Blueberry, and my favorite, Dragon Fruit. And just like, Banana Smoothie did, Fruit Shake comes with its own fruit shake recipe widget — courtesy of the incomparable Jane Wells — that lets you share your love of bananas, blueberries, and dragon fruit with your blog readers. Also, there may or may not be a secret, unlockable, fruit in Fruit Shake. Or not. I can’t say much more than that except, well, it might be a secret. If it even exists.

Of course, if you just like the basic colors of Fruit Shake you can also personalize the design with your own custom header and custom background image. You can even remove all the widgets from the sidebar in Appearance → Widgets and create a sleek tumblelog look for your blog. In other words, you don’t have to be obsessed with fruit to enjoy Fruit Shake. It doesn’t hurt though.

If you want to know more about the cool features in Fruit Shake we’ve made a page that outlines them all on the Theme Showcase. You can read up on Fruit Shake there and check out a live demo or just activate it on your blog and start experimenting! And if you have a self-hosted installation of WordPress you haven’t been left out of the fun. Fruit Shake will be making its way to the official WordPress Theme directory where you can download it and install it on your blog.

It’s a new way to blog, on a new type of platform. Today we’re excited to share a glimpse of the future for all the WordPress mobile apps. Drumroll please! I give you WordPress for webOS, available as a download for the HP TouchPad with support for more webOS 3.0 devices coming in the future.

Here’s the run-down: It’s the first official WordPress app to have a full featured WYSIWYG (what’s this?) post editor. The app has been translated to all languages available on the TouchPad. It uses a “Sliding Panels” interface, which takes full advantage of the larger screen of the TouchPad and makes for fast and easy blog management on the go. Check out the video below to learn more!

Of course the app also features everything else you’ve come to expect from a WordPress app. You can manage posts and pages, as well as add new ones. Moderation is built right in, and you can even reply directly to comments. If a comment comes in and you’re working on something else with your TouchPad at the time, you’ll get notified about it. Peruse the Stats panel for in-depth information on what your visitors like the most about your site.

Another neat thing about this app is its use of “Cards”. This is a webOS invention that lets you stack screens belonging to the WordPress app in a single pile, making it very easy to, for instance, write a post while keeping the main window open. In fact, if you tap an email address in a comment, a compose email card will be stacked together with those of the app.

Learn more about WordPress for webOS at webos.wordpress.org and follow @WPwebOS on Twitter for the latest news!

Are you rocking a TouchPad? You can download WordPress for webOS directly on your device using the HP App Catalog. Just search for “WordPress”. Visiting on a device? Follow this link to download.

Get involved! Just like all the other official WordPress apps, WordPress for webOS is an Open Source project that craves your mad programming skills. Head on over to the development section to learn more.

Huge thanks to Beau Collins for some major webOS pwnage. We’d also like to thank our partners at HP for making all of this possible.

So, what’s your favorite invention in WordPress for webOS?

Comment detail view with a few comments pending moderation.

Compose card using the WYSIWYG editor.

Post detail view. The main sliding panel is collapsed.

Stacked cards and notifications example.

If you’ve wanted a magazine theme for your blog but haven’t found just the right one today’s new theme might just do it for you. It’s called Delicious Magazine and it’s the latest in a series of terrific magazine themes from Woothemes.

The Delicious Magazine Theme

If you love using images to draw your visitors into your writing, you’ll love Delicious Magazine. Right away you can see how it uses Featured Images to build an elegant area for highlighting groups of select posts on your home page. And just like the other premium magazine themes available on WordPress.com it’s packed with features that let anyone easily customize the design.

Delicious Magazine is available for the lifetime of your blog for $45. Read more about the Delicious Magazine features or preview it live on your blog from Appearance → Themes. It might be the magazine theme you’ve been waiting for!

Today we’re excited to bring you Custom Design, a powerful new tool that combines easy to use, code-free font selection from Typekit and a beautiful CSS editing interface with world-class support from our famous WordPress.com Happiness Engineers.

You’ll find both new features—Fonts and CSS—under Appearance → Custom Design in your dashboard. Custom Design costs just $30 a year, and both features include a free preview so you can try them out first.

Example of Custom Design landing screen.

Fonts Made Super Easy

The Font Editor provides a visual preview of your blog with over 50 gorgeous premium Typekit fonts—from foundries like Mark Simonson, exljbris, FontFont, and the League of Moveable Type—and allows you to easily modify the size and style of your fonts. It works with all themes, no coding skills required!

Example of choosing fonts with the Font Editor.

We worked closely with Typekit on this new tool—incorporating their long experience with delivering beautiful fonts on the web—to create the best experience possible. With the Custom Design upgrade comes the ability to manage all your Typekit fonts settings from within your dashboard; you no longer need to make a roundtrip to Typekit and back to update the fonts on your blog.

If you are already using Typekit fonts on your blog, you are grandfathered in—meaning your fonts will continue to display as they do now but you’ll have limited editing and functionality. To take advantage of all the new features, we encourage you to upgrade to Custom Design.

CSS Backed by Expertise

This popular tool received a visual refresh with its merge into the Custom Design upgrade. If you know your way around a cascading style sheet, you can use the CSS Editor to really put a personal touch on your blog and create an entirely new design.

CSS editor in action.

If your site already has custom CSS enabled, it will continue to work as it does now, and visitors will see no changes to your design. Furthermore, you’ve been upgraded to the new Custom Design package for free, so you now have full access to all the new features, including the Font Editor.

Along with the CSS Editor updates we’re making the WordPress.com CSS forum officially supported by the WP.com Happiness team. Bring your CSS customization questions to the forum and you can get expert help.

From your feedback—and by seeing your cool customizations in use all over WordPress.com—we know that design tools on WordPress.com are put to good use, so we hope you love this new upgrade. Fonts are now incredibly easy. We’re now helping you craft your CSS. Let’s make something beautiful.

If you’d like more details on the new upgrade, head over to Custom Design.

Here at Automattic we feel really lucky to be able to interact with so many WordPress.com users through our awesome Happiness Engineers in Support, meeting WordPress users and lovers at various global WordCamps, and even Matt runs into WordPress users when he’s on a plane (is there a better way to get Support? We think not. But let him sleep a little).

One of the most common questions we answer is, “Can I have my own domain on WordPress.com?” The answer to that question is a resounding YES!

We are happy to give you a free website at WordPress.com (something like anyaddress.wordpress.com) but if you want to also use your own domain, you can do that very easily.

You don’t need to create another site – you simply need the inexpensive Domain Mapping Upgrade. In layman’s terms, domain mapping just means pointing example.com to your anyaddress.wordpress.com site, so when your friends visit example.com they will see your super-cool site hosted at WordPress.com, and example.com will remain the visible address.

That’s it!

• It doesn’t matter where you registered your domain – you can still map it to your WordPress.com site. Check out How to Map an Existing Domain.

• Still need to get a custom domain? You can do it all through WordPress.com. Check out How to Register and Map a New Domain.

• Have a domain already, but want to put your WordPress.com site on a subdomain (like blog.example.com)? We can do that, too. Read How to Map a Subdomain.

After you map your domain, make sure you Update the Primary Domain to your shiny new personalized domain so when people visit your example.com site, that’s the address that stays visible in the address bar. Instructions for doing that are in each of the above posts, or you can find it under Upgrades > Domains on that blog’s dashboard after you’ve completed the domain mapping process.

Oh, and we’re not jealous, either. If you ever decide to transfer the site off WordPress.com, you can take your domain with you, too. Check out How to Transfer a Domain and if you prefer one of our super talented Happiness Engineers to move your entire website for you to a self-hosted WordPress solution, check out Guided Transfer.

Spread the Word!

To show our support for IPv6, and as part of our IPv6 migration plan, we have enabled dual stack connectivity on our blog on this occasion of World IPv6 Day. If you view this site over IPv6, you will see a visual indicator confirming access from IPv6:

What’s IPv6?

For those of you who don’t know, IPv6 is the next-generation Internet protocol, which offers a large number of IP addresses, 296 (= 79228162514264337593543950336) times of what IPv4 has to offer. A typical IPv6 address looks like 2001:db8:cafe::1, compared to an IPv4 address 192.168.148.1. IPv4 space is quickly becoming exhausted, necessitating the migration to IPv6. You can read more about IPv6 in its Wikipedia entry or in the free book, The Second Internet. You can use IPv6 tunnels if your ISP does not offer IPv6 connectivity yet. Using http://test-ipv6.com/, you can verify IPv6 connectivity.

Behind the Scenes

This is powered by 2 load-balancers running nginx, and connectivity to IPv6 internet is through IPv6 6in4 tunnels provided by Hurricane Electric Tunnelbroker, as our datacenters have not enabled IPv6 yet.

Plans

This is not the end. Once we have native IPv6 connectivity, we are planning to roll out IPv6 connectivity for all sites on WordPress.com, and maybe all Automattic sites as well. Stay tuned for more IPv6 announcements…

Starting today, visitors to your blog can use their Facebook or Twitter account to leave comments. This saves everyone a few steps and gives visitors control over which identity they use.  It’s a win for everyone.

As an important touch, we let you stay logged in to multiple services. This means you can stay logged in to Facebook for convenience, but still leave a comment through Twitter or your WordPress.com account. Just click whichever identity you’d like to use, and the selected one will be associated with your comment when it is published. You’re in control of your identity, as you should be.

Depending on your theme, you may notice the comment area looks different than before to make room for these new features. We also intelligently choose to use a light or dark visual style for the comment box, depending on the theme you are currently using.

And since you know your readers well, you can now change the text above the comment box to be whatever you like. We recommend using the default we are applying to new blogs, “What are you thinking?”, as questions often encourage more comments, but you can change it to whatever you like by going to your dashboard, then Settings → Discussion.

We know you like comments and this will help you get even more. Stay tuned for better Twitter and Facebook integration features, coming soon.

Last year on WordPress.com we introduced the world to the first new WordPress default theme in 5 years — the first annual default theme — Twenty Ten. Now it’s our pleasure to introduce you all to its successor, Twenty Eleven.

The Twenty Eleven Theme

It might look familiar. Yep, Twenty Eleven started life as the Duster theme before it made the theme big leagues. But it’s not just a renamed Duster. There are tons of really cool improvements and features packed into it — more Post Formats, beautiful new header images, alternate color schemes and layouts, even custom link colors. All those features add up to the best part of Twenty Eleven: just how customizable it is. It looks great as a blog, a showcase of all your posts, and even a tumblelog or photoblog.

If you want to know more about the cool new features in Twenty Eleven we’ve made a page that outlines them all on the Theme Showcase. You can read up on Twenty Eleven there and check out a live demo or just simply activate it on your blog and start experimenting! And if you have a self-hosted installation of WordPress you haven’t been left out of the fun. You can wait to give Twenty Eleven a shot when WordPress 3.2 is released in about a month or try it out right now with the beta version and upcoming release candidates. We’re looking forward to seeing how you use Twenty Eleven on your blog.

We love to create new features on WordPress.com, but we also like to make it easier for you to connect your site with other popular services. We’ve teamed up with the folks at Twitter several times over the years, and we’re thrilled to help them unveil the new Follow Button to the world for the very first time today.

The new Follow Button makes it easy for your readers to follow you on Twitter without ever leaving your WordPress.com site. Here are three ways to incorporate it on your site:

1. Add the new Follow Button to posts, pages, or text widgets. You can even show a count of your followers, customize the colors, and display a link to your Twitter page. Check out the Twitter Follow Button support document for all the details.

Here’s a working example of what the new Follow Button looks like:

Follow @wordpressdotcom

2. Embed fully functioning Tweets on your posts and pages with Twitter Blackbird Pie. The new Follow Button will appear in the upper right hand corner of the Tweet.

Follow @wordpressdotcom@wordpressdotcom
WordPress.com

3 New Ways to Attract More Twitter Followers from WordPress.com http://wp.me/pf2B5-1QT

about 1 hour ago via WordPress.comReplyRetweetFavorite

3. Activate the Twitter Widget on your site’s sidebar to display the Follow Button below a list of recent Tweets.

We hope the new Follow Button will help you to boost your site’s reach and exposure. Don’t forget that there are additional ways that you can integrate Twitter with WordPress.com:

• Add a Twitter sharing button to the bottom of your posts or pages with the Sharing feature
• Tweet new posts automatically to your Twitter account with Publicize

Writers are as different as the stories they produce, and their ideal writing environments vary no less. One thing most writers agree on, though, is that one of the toughest challenges is overcoming distraction. At WordPress we’ve always believed that when you’re using the application, the focus should be on what’s most important — your content. In the spirit of making things faster and simpler, today we are introducing a couple of changes to your dashboard that will make it easier for you to just write.

A Fresher, Faster Dashboard

The most noticeable change is that the dashboard looks a little different. Nothing drastic, just a little facelift intended to make managing your content easier. Moving the left menu up means more room if you tend to keep a couple of sections open at the same time. Fiddling with the font sizes in the header also created more vertical space, so you can make your writing window/post box bigger on the editing screens (you can drag the lower right corner if you use the Visual editor, and/or change the default height of the writing window in Settings → Writing). We’ve also replaced the icons in the Visual Editor toolbar with new ones designed by Ben Dunkle, the same person who designed the navigation icons for the dashboard, that we think are less distracting and fit better. You’ll also be saying goodbye to the “New Post” button that used to live in the header. We’ve added an “Add New” menu to the admin bar instead, for faster, easier content creation. Oh, I almost forgot — we’ve made a number of performance improvements to make everything in the Dashboard run just a little bit faster. Yay!

Goodbye, IE6

With this update, WordPress has discontinued support for Internet Explorer 6. It has required increasingly complex code trickery to make the WordPress dashboard work in the IE6 browser, which was introduced 10 years ago and does not support current web standards. Even Microsoft is counting down to IE6′s extinction! If you try to log in to your Dashboard using IE6, it will be pretty broken — but don’t worry, you’ll see a red alert box that provides a link you can use to upgrade. What do we mean by broken? This is how the new dashboard looks in modern browsers:

WordPress viewed in Chrome browser

…and this is what it looks like in IE6:

WordPress viewed in IE6 browser

So please, if you’re still using IE6, upgrade!

While we were at it, we started looking at other older browsers, and it makes us cringe a little when we see people using them, because the web could be so much better for them (not to mention more secure) if they would update to their favorite browser’s current version. Starting with this update, if you log in to your WordPress site using an outdated browser, an orange alert will appear on your Dashboard screen letting you know, and will provide links to the browser updates and to Browse Happy, where you can learn a little more about your options.

Introducing Distraction-free Writing

The other big change — one that we love — is a major upgrade to the full-screen writing experience. The normal posting screen is great: you can set it up the way you want it, and you can add and edit every piece of metadata related to your post in addition to writing it. Sometimes you just want to focus on writing, though, without all the extras, right? If that’s how you feel, you may have used the full-screen writing mode in the Visual Editor  before, accessible by clicking a blue screen-shaped icon in the top row of the toolbar. That full-screen mode took up the full browser screen, which was cool, but then your lines of text went all the way across, making it harder to read and edit your creations. The Visual Editor toolbar stayed up top, which was handy if you wanted to add a picture or a link, but was a little bit distracting because of the colors. And if you zoomed or resized your browser, that was not good.

Everything about this feature revamp is designed to relax you, and allow you to find your groove without distraction. There’s a lot to point out — because hey, we’re proud of it — and the new look is quiet and deceptively simple.

• It’s available for all users, whether you use the Visual Editor or HTML. Visual Editor users will notice a more laid-back icon to enter distraction-free mode, and HTML users will see a new [fullscreen] button. Click one and you’re on your way.
• Distraction-free writing mode still takes over the browser window, but the writing area is optimized for a comfortable line length and easy reading and editing. Editor styles set by themes are also supported.
• The formatting header is shown when you first arrive on the screen, to orient you, then fades away so you can focus on your writing. Move your mouse to indicate that you want access to these items and it will magically reappear.
• Only the most-used formatting and embedding icons are shown, reducing visual noise, along with a Save button in the upper right (you’ll need to go back to the regular editor to publish), and the word count in the lower left.

Distraction-free writing, with toolbar (move mouse to activate)

Completely distraction-free

• Keyboard shortcuts are supported.
• You can switch beween Visual and HTML modes while in distraction-free writing mode.
• Have I mentioned how restful this screen feels when you’re writing? Well, I have now.

I never used to like full-screen mode for writing, but I love distraction-free mode. Try it, and I bet you will, too!

Tip: make your browser go full screen if you really want to be distraction-free. To enable full screen mode in Firefox and Chrome, go to View → Full Screen, or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+F (on Windows) or Command+Shift+F (on a Mac). To disable full screen, use the same keyboard shortcut, or move your mouse to the top of the screen to reveal the menu.

Get Featured on Freshly Pressed

We hope you’ll enjoy these updates as much as we do. As always, let us know what you think, but this time, let’s mix it up:

• If you encounter a bug, something looks weird/broken, or you need help with the new distraction-free writing feature, please let us know in the special distraction-free writing support forum instead of leaving a comment about the problem on this post. Note that we’ll be continuing to touch things up as needed based on your feedback for the next couple of weeks.
• There’s also a new distraction-free writing support page for reference.
• Leave your feedback on the design update in a comment on this post.
• To comment on the new  distraction-free writing feature, go try it first! Write a post and see how it feels. Give it a “just write” tag. Then come back and tell us what you thought about the experience and give us your feedback in a comment on this post. Include a link to the first post you wrote in dfw mode so we can check you out.

I will personally read every first “just write”-tagged post that is linked in the comments within 48 hours. I will (completely subjectively) choose my five favorites posts and feature them on Freshly Pressed, and will also send the authors a WordPress swag pack (buttons, stickers, maybe a surprise or two) as a prize. Note: I am easily swayed by correct spelling and grammar, so be sure to make use of the built-in spelling and grammar checker!

Attention baseball fans, today we’re launching a triple-header of new themes just for you.

We’ve partnered with MLB.com to bring its Fan, Modern, and Retro blog themes to WordPress.com. The designs range from minimal (“Modern”) to loud (“Fan”), and there’s even a throwback to old MLB Club logos and styles for a bit of nostalgia (“Retro”, of course).

But that’s not all: you can also customize each of the MLB themes with your favorite team’s colors and logo. So whether you prefer O’s to A’s, pinstripes over blues, or Red Sox instead of White, we’ve got a theme for you.

We would also like to welcome the MLB.com blogging community, and thank them for waiting patiently in the bullpen while we prepped their new home here at WordPress.com. MLB bloggers: if you have any questions, please review our FAQ about the transition to WordPress.com, read our support guides, or feel free to get in touch.

So go ahead and join folks like Tommy Lasorda, Ozzie Guillen, Keith Olbermann, and thousands of other blogs of summer, by heading over to Appearance → Themes  → Friends of WordPress.com  in your WordPress.com dashboard to activate an MLB theme, and  Appearance → Theme Options to pick your favorite team.

For many of you, your WordPress.com site isn’t just about communication, it’s about collaboration, too.

We’re taking collaboration and sharing one step further today at WordPress.com by enabling you to embed  presentations, documents, forms, spreadsheets, and calendars created with Google Docs and Google Calendar.

We’ve had a lot of users request this functionality from our awesome Happiness Engineers, and we are listening.

To get started sharing Google Docs and Google Calendars, just copy/paste the code provided by Google into a post, page, or text widget, and you’re done!

We’ve created two new Support documents to guide you through this step by step:

• How to publish your documents from Google Docs
• How to publish calendars from Google Calendars

Note: if you’re sharing a private (not public) document, the viewer will have to be logged into Google and have permission to access the document.

Get sharing!

Today we are excited to introduce a new, beautifully designed, free theme called Vertigo. It makes great use of WordPress post formats. It has a charming, hitchcockian typeface for site and post titles. And it’s dark.

The Vertigo Theme

With Vertigo you can set your own accent color for links, which is used in several places throughout the theme, if you don’t feel like red is a good fit for your blog. You can also have a second color of your choice for the site title by using the settings in Appearance → Header.

The theme is inspired by the design work of the late Saul Bass, Art Goodman, and Dave Nagata. Based on the original design by Matthew Buchanan. We hope you like this new theme and start creating incredible blogs with it. As usual, go exploring on the theme showcase.

Today’s latest theme is as clean and fresh as you’d expect a theme named Linen to be. It’s also an impressively adaptable theme with an array of options that make personalizing it simple and easy. If you’re publishing articles in a magazine, pages for a business site, or your own personal blog, you’ll find Linen’s elegant style perfect for you. And it’s yours for the lifetime of your blog for only $68.

The Linen Theme

Just like the other premium themes from The Theme Foundry Linen is packed with features. Linen beautifully highlights posts with featured images by sliding them across the home page. You can add thumbnails to each post and upload your own logo or custom background. You can even customize the typography with a selection of seven accent fonts and eight different body fonts!

Read more about Linen’s features on the Theme Showcase and preview it right now, live on your blog, from Appearance → Themes.

We know the hardest part of blogging is actually writing posts. And most blogging software,  and even word processors, do little to help writers write. Today at WordPress.com we’re  proud to announce a new kind of feature, aimed at helping the writing process, called Writing Helper. It’s a new box that appears underneath the edit box on the Add a Post Screen (the entire box can be dragged to the right side if you want it next to the edit box, instead of underneath).

First up is Copy A Post. You can now reuse the hard work of previous posts as the basis for the next one. Simply hit the Copy A Post button, pick a post, and we copy the title, content, tags and categories for you, saving you steps. If you often have similarly tagged or formatted posts, this will save much time. We will always show your most recent posts in the list, but you can search by title too.

Next is Request Feedback. You can now share a private draft of a post with a friend before it is published. They can help you find typos, suggest improvements and give advice to make the post amazing before your publish it to the world.

When you click on Request Feedback, you can enter email addresses of friends who are willing to help. They’ll receive a special private link to see your draft, where they can leave feedback on your post (see image above). Their feedback will appear in your post’s Request Feedback area when it arrives, so you can make changes to your draft accordingly.

For more about how Writing Helper works, read the support pages for Copy a Post and Request Feedback.

And if you have ideas for other Writing Helper features you’d like to see, leave us a comment.

We’re always amazed with the way you continually push the scope and depth of your blogs on WordPress.com. It only makes sense that you’d also want themes that can take that work and organize it in easily readable, neat layouts. Like our newest theme addition, Fresh News! For the one time price of $45, Fresh News offers a solid design that can accommodate many different websites. From its feature post slider to the 18 color schemes, this magazine style theme is an elegant and feature rich way to display your content.

The looks of Fresh News

Developed by WooThemes, Fresh News also makes use of two fully customizable navigational menus as well as several widget areas and layout options. If you love customization in your themes, you can’t go wrong with Fresh News. Of course, there is much more for you to explore and discover on the Theme Showcase.

Example of Mystique's single page view.

I think you’ll agree this theme has a certain mystique to it. This fun, colorful theme is flexible enough to fit any type of site—it’s simply loaded with options. A long-time favorite for self-hosted sites designed by digitalnature, Mystique is now available in your WordPress.com dashboard.

What doesn’t this theme do? It offers layout choices of one, two, or three columns, six color schemes, four footer widget areas, and support for four post formats. Not to mention built-in links to your favorite social networks in the header, a unique custom widget with quick-switching tabs, and special treatment for a “featured” post at the top of the site.

Read all about Mystique on the Theme Showcase—I think you’re going to really love this one.

We love blogging, and we know you do too, but we also have a special interest in making blogging lovely for your readers as well. It’s for that reason that we’ve taken a shine to Post Formats and themes that make good use of them. Themes like today’s new premium theme, Tapestry, available for a one time price of $75.

The Tapestry Theme

The Tapestry theme accounts for all 10 Post Formats available. How? Tapestry designers, StudioPress describe it this way: “You take pictures, you write stories and opinions, you make videos, you link to cool stuff all the time. Tapestry takes everything you make online, and makes perfect, beautiful sense of it.” With 10 unique icons and a compact layout Tapestry lets you blog your heart out while keeping everything neatly organized.

But that’s not all. Tapestry has options for selecting your layout, custom Widgets, a Custom Header, and a Custom Background. You can even control what content is shown in your blog archive pages. Interested? You can find more information on the Tapestry theme in our Theme Showcase or preview it live on your site from Appearance → Themes under the Premium tab.

Tough note to communicate today: Automattic had a low-level (root) break-in to several of our servers, and potentially anything on those servers could have been revealed.

We have been diligently reviewing logs and records about the break-in to determine the extent of the information exposed, and re-securing avenues used to gain access. We presume our source code was exposed and copied. While much of our code is Open Source, there are sensitive bits of our and our partners’ code. Beyond that, however, it appears information disclosed was limited.

Based on what we’ve found, we don’t have any specific suggestions for our users beyond reiterating these security fundamentals:

• Use a strong password, meaning something random with numbers and punctuation.
• Use different passwords for different sites.
• If you have used the same password on different sites, switch it to something more secure.

(Tools like 1Password, LastPass, and KeePass make it easy to keep track of different unique logins.)

Our investigation into this matter is ongoing and will take time to complete. As I said above, we’ve taken comprehensive steps to prevent an incident like this from occurring again. If you have any questions or concerns, please leave a comment below or contact our support.

Say hello to The Morning After, a classic and popular magazine-style theme that has withstood the test of time. Based on its great success for self-hosted sites we’re excited to bring it to you for the first time on WordPress.com.

Example of The Morning After's front page.

Introduced in 2007 by Arun Kale, The Morning After was a game-changer as the first magazine style theme for WordPress; it is still considered by many to be the top of its class. In June 2010 WooThemes announced it was taking over the theme:

Considering the significance of this theme, we jumped at the opportunity. We felt that [The Morning After] started so many things in the WordPress community… and we wanted to put our weight behind one of the “pillars” of that community.

The Morning After sports a special home page template with featured posts, three available widget areas, and special styles for posts in the “Aside” format. Also included is an optional full-width page template that removes the sidebar and full support for a custom menu, header and background. A robust theme options menu allows for further customization: header links, page headings, full or partial content an archive pages, and more.

Read more about The Morning After on the Theme Showcase.

The Morning After is now available in your WordPress.com dashboard and, for self-hosted sites as a download from WooThemes.

Last November we launched Twitter Blackbird Pie, a quick and easy way to reproduce beautiful,  full-fledged tweets — not just static screenshots of tweets — in your posts, pages, and even comments.

Today we are happy to announce that we’ve made it even easier for you to interact with tweets on WordPress.com.  Thanks to the new set of tools that Twitter just announced, you can now reply to, retweet, or favorite content without ever leaving the page you’re on.

Try it out on the tweet below!

@wordpressdotcom
WordPress.com

Twitter Blackbird Pie Just Got Even Sweeter http://wp.me/pf2B5-1JQ

about 1 hour ago via WordPress.comReplyRetweetFavorite

This improvement takes effect immediately for all tweets on WordPress.com, so there’s no action necessary on your part. Enjoy!

Bonus Tip: Drive Traffic to Your Twitter Account

To gain additional exposure on Twitter, add your account as a verified external service in your public profile under Users -> My Profile in your dashboard. Anytime someone replies to, retweets, or favorites one of your tweets on WordPress.com, they’ll be prompted to follow you on Twitter.

Additional Ways to Integrate Twitter with WordPress.com

• Display your latest tweets in your blog’s sidebar using the Twitter Widget
• Add a Twitter sharing button to the bottom of your posts or pages with the Sharing feature
• Tweet new blog posts automatically to your Twitter account with Publicize

Reminiscent of primordial grid designs used in different print mediums, Basic Maths is one of the most elegant, and smartly-designed themes we’ve ever seen. We are thrilled to have it now available for WordPress.com sites as a Premium Theme. One particular thing of note about Basic Maths, is that it comes with custom support direct from us, the Theme Team at Automattic, for the one-time price of $75.

Basic Maths, a grid based theme.

Apart from a thoughtful design, Basic Maths also offers some cool features, including the possibility to choose custom colors for links and other visual elements, helping you make this theme feel more personal to your site. If you want to make a statement about how important your content is, Basic Maths could be the answer.

You can check more about the theme, designed and developed by Khoi Vinh and Allan Cole, on the Theme Showcase. We hope you like it.

As Scott mentioned in his How is WordPress.com Made? post, at Automattic we work from all over the world, and we use internal blogs for socializing and exchanging non-work ideas in addition to making WordPress.com and our other products more awesome. One of the things we’re really concerned about is staying healthy – we even have an entire blog dedicated to fitness.

We had a great idea: Get all 80 Automatticians from 62 cities to run/walk a 5k on the same day! This way we can get some exercise together as a company even though we’re apart (though we won’t rule out a softball or Texas scramble at our next meetup).

We want to invite you to join us, WordPress.com users (and self-hosted WP users, too!), in the Worldwide WP 5k – the 5k blogged around the world! The date is approaching, so read on to find out how to participate.

WHAT IT IS: A 5k run/walk (approximately 3.1 miles). You can run, walk, or skip. It’s up to you. There’s no time limit and there’s just one requirement: that you participate! [Updated: You can do it inside or outside, on a treadmill or on a track, or even do a swim or a bike ride instead of running/walking - just get moving!]

It’s roughly equal to:

• 3.1 miles
• 12 laps around a track
• approximately 6000-7500 steps
• approximately 50-60 minutes of brisk walking

WHEN: We’re all busy, but we want you to participate, so we’re giving you some flexibility, too. The WWWP5k is set for Sunday, April 10th, but you can do your walk anytime from April 4th -10th (you’ve got a week to fit it in). Just post about it and use the tag “wwwp5k” so we can find you (and for a chance to be Freshly Pressed).

WHO: Anyone who’s ever used or loved WordPress (and your families and friends, too).

HOW: You’re welcome to blog your entire route and your preparation (videoblog, perhaps?) but above all we’d love to see where you are and how you’re completing your 5k. Give us a picture of you and what you see when you cross the finish line and tell us your location as you complete your 5k with the rest of the world.

Some tools & suggestions:

• Get a pedometer
• Use http://www.mapmywalk.com/ to chart your course
• Set your car’s odometer to 0, leave your house and drive along a safe course with sidewalks for walking/running, until you reach 1.55 miles (you can loop back the same way), or chart out a 3.1 mile course

If you’re not up to running this year, never fear, you can get started with the Couch to 5k method which several Automatticians like – 9 weeks from couch potato to running a 5k, and be ready to run for next year. But make sure to walk this year – no excuses!

Will you be joining us for the Automattic Worldwide WP 5k?

It is time to introduce a new free theme which goes by the appropriately evocative name of Rusty Grunge. It goes without saying, this theme has all the rusty and grungy elements needed to appeal to all those who embrace grunginess in themes. It has a light content area over a dark background, and some color splashes around on its design.

The Rusty Grunge Theme

The theme comes equipped with options for Custom Background, Menus, Post Formats, and Header Image. It also bears two distinct widget areas, making this theme not only grungy but also highly customizable.

As usual, find more about what it has to offer on the Theme Showcase.

Designed by Chris Wallace, Rusty Grunge is also available for self-hosted WordPress.org sites via the WordPress.org Themes Directory.

With the launch of Apple’s iPad we have seen the future of computing and it is touch. Nothing matches the visceral feel of navigating your digital world with your hands. The past four months we’ve been working closely with Onswipe to bring your iPad visitors our vision of what a blog can look like re-imagined for a touch experience.

Our iPad-optimized view is app-like in its functionality, but pure HTML5 goodness on the backend: it supports touch interactions, swiping, rotation, and many other features of the iPad. Like when we launched our smartphone-optimized WP-Touch integration in 2009 (now responsible for over 150 million page views a month) this is immediately available and active on the over 18 million blogs on WordPress.com.

There are some fun options to play with too. If you browse to Appearance -> iPad in your Dashboard you can:

• Have the theme use an image from your recent posts as a cover.
• Upload a logo to showcase your brand or personality on the cover.
• Upload an image to be used as a loading graphic when visitors add your site to their home screen.
• Switch fonts.
• Choose from 9 different skin colors, to best match the feel of your site.
• Enable or disable the whole thing.

When you tap to view a post, you get to see the full content with a slick commenting interface and social sharing tools for Twitter, Facebook, and WordPress.com literally at your finger tips. It’s a lot of fun browsing sites with Onswipe.

Onswipe has also made the plugin available for self-hosted WordPress.org sites.

On WordPress.com we’re seeing about 750,000 page views a day from iPad visitors and it continues to rise. New tablet devices seem to be coming out every time you turn around. In the coming months we’ll be expanding to work with other popular tablet devices, but we chose to focus on the iPad first because… well it’s cool.

Add a dash of color to your site with Liquorice, a wonderful new theme now available on WordPress.com.

Gorgeous textures and smooth-as-silk typography make this a striking backdrop for your content. This theme’s design is light and airy without being too plain or minimalistic; it’s a great fit for any type of site.

Liquorice features custom subscribe icons for RSS, Twitter, and Facebook for your site header and built-in support for the bold and adventurous Lobster typeface. If you choose to enable Lobster via Appearance → Typekit Fonts you’ll add an extra touch of retro feel to your site. Lobster’s bold, calligraphic strokes make it perfect for calling out titles and headings.

Make this theme your own with the custom background feature, custom header image, and custom menu. Learn all about Liquorice on the Theme Showcase.

Designed by Nudge Design, Liquorice is also available for self-hosted WordPress.org sites via the WordPress.org Themes Directory.

When we launched Jetpack a few days ago Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg said to Techcrunch, “If you’re on WordPress you’re part of the family, it shouldn’t matter if we host you or not.”

Today we’re taking that a step further: we’ll actually help you move from WordPress.com to .org.

We’re launching a new upgrade called Guided Transfer where for a $99 one-time fee we’ll handle every detail and tech thingamajig involved in moving your content, theme, domain, and more to any one of the recommended hosts we’ve vetted. (And of course your new site will be Jetpack-powered.)

Of course we love having you here with us at WordPress.com, but we understand that there are situations where a self-hosted WordPress.org site may be a better choice.

What’s included:

• Install the WordPress software at the recommended host of your choice.
• Transfer over your entire WordPress.com site.
• Install and configure Jetpack and a few other plugins to provide features that you have been using on WordPress.com.
• Configure and test permissions so that you’ll be able to have one-click installs and upgrades.
• Switch your domain(s) over.
• Provide full support for you on your new WordPress installation for a two week period.

While we’re doing that–you can:

• Head to the beach!
• Read that novel you’ve been meaning to dig into.
• Chase antelope on the savannas of Africa.
• Work on that rocket ship that is “just a few tweaks” away from liftoff.
• …or do anything else. (Be sure to take pictures and blog it later!)

WordPress.com has grown into one of the most amazing cloud architectures in the world. This has enabled blogs hosted here to have features unavailable on self-hosted WordPress installs. This makes us sad, since here at WordPress.com we want every WordPress install everywhere to be amazing.

In this spirit, we have great news. We are now making the power of WordPress.com available to almost all WordPress blogs, regardless of where they are hosted.

With Jetpack, a new plugin from Automattic, people not on WordPress.com can now access features that depend on WordPress.com. Jetpack also provides convenience features that don’t use the cloud, but are now easier to install, or were unavailable as plugins before.

To start, go to http://jetpack.me and read the backstory from Matt on why Jetpack is so important for WordPress.

(Mozilla Jetpack is a wonderful, but entirely unrelated, open source project run by Mozilla Labs. We checked with them first and we’re mutually cool on the use of the name.)

You’ve probably noticed that the ride has been a bit bumpy on WP.com the past week with a widely covered DDoS attack last week and then another interruption a few hours ago from an unrelated network maintenance issue. Our core mission is enabling the world to publish, and anything that affects the availability of your site or dashboard impedes that.

Anything less than 100% availability drives us to work harder. Rest assured that behind-the-scenes here at Automattic we’re learning as much as we can from these incidents so we’re even better prepared and more able to adapt next time something unexpected comes our way. (We weather DDoS attacks every day on WP.com and 99.9% of them have no user impact.)

In a previous post I wrote about downtime I ended with the sentence, “For those following along at home, we’re now powered by 152 physical processors, 511 gigabytes of memory (RAM), 174 hard disks with several terabytes of storage, and we’re adding new servers constantly.”

That last part about “adding new servers” was especially true, for WP.com we’re now at 8,921 CPU cores across 2,475 physical processors, 8,200 gigabytes of memory (RAM). We’ve changed how we’ve done storage, but now that layer includes on its own 1.3 terabytes of RAM, 1.3 petabytes of storage, and 8.9 terabytes of solid state disks. (Plus Amazon S3, which we use as backup to our internal systems.) Also, we’re adding new servers constantly.

Keep blogging, and we’ll keep doing our best to make sure you never have to think or worry about this stuff.

Back in the middle of 2009, we launched our very own HD video service called VideoPress. Since then we’ve made a bunch of improvements including the ability to natively share videos in Facebook.

Today we are happy to announce a new set of capabilities that we’ve all been eager to see. Starting right now, all those great videos you’ve created and will be embedding in your WordPress.com site will play back on mobile and touch devices including iPhones, iPads, Android devices, and the new Nokia phones.

Our engineer Mike demonstrates Flash performance on Mobile Safari

VideoPress also now supports Apple’s AirPlay streaming technology to share video between supporting locally networked devices such as iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and Apple TV. Videos with associated transcripts, such as WordPress TV, include WebVTT <track> data for display by supporting browsers.

But that’s not all. If you are running any of the new browsers such as Chrome 3.0+, Firefox 3.5+, Internet Explorer 9+, Safari 3.1+, or Opera 10.5+ – and have Flash disabled or not installed – VideoPress videos will automatically fallback to native HTML5 video support and playback without any issues.

Want to see this new capability in action? Here’s the original VideoPress debut video — give it a shot on your HTML5-friendly browser with plugins disabled or iOS device:

For more info check out the support doc for all things VideoPress. And to purchase the VideoPress upgrade, click on the Upgrades panel of your administrative dashboard.

I have been away from blogging for a while and now am back. Yes am using the beta version of WL4 specifically the amazing Windows Live Writer.

I’m now engaged living the love story I always hoped to have.

I have many many things to share and discuss but I don’t think I will do that now as it’s nearly 2:30 A.M. and I want so badly to sleep.

Will See you soon !!

Add the Bing basic search box to your website

Give your website visitors a convenient and powerful way to search both the Web and your website directly from your default webpage.

To enable your visitors to search the Web or your website by using Bing, choose one of the following options to view HTML code that you can add to your default webpage. Please read the Microsoft Bing search box service terms of use before you use this code.

Add a basic search box to search the Web from your website

In the following code, you must replace "CODE PAGE USED BY YOUR HTML PAGE" with the code page number of the language your website is written in.

For example, if your website is written in a western European-based (also known as Latin 1) language, such as French, English, or German, replace this instruction with the number 1252:

value="1252"

For a list of code-page values for all languages, see the Code pages supported by Windows webpage.

To let your visitors search the Web from your website, add the following code to your webpage:

<!-- Web search from Bing-->
<form method="get" action="http://www.bing.com/search">
<input type="hidden" name="cp" value="CODE PAGE USED BY YOUR HTML PAGE" />
<input type="hidden" name="FORM" value="FREEWS" />
  <table bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
    <tr>
      <td>
        <a href="http://www.bing.com/">
          <img src="http://www.bing.com/siteowner/s/siteowner/Logo_51x19_Dark.png" border="0" ALT="bing" />
        </a>
      </td>
      <td>
        <input type="text" name="q" size="30" />
        <input type="submit" value="Search Web" />
      </td>
    </tr>
  </table>
</form>
<!-- Web Search from Bing -->

Add a basic search box to search just your website

In the following code, you must replace "CODE PAGE USED BY YOUR HTML PAGE" with the code page number of the language your website is written in.

For example, if your website is written in a western European-based (also known as Latin 1) language, such as French, English, or German, replace this instruction with the number 1252:

value="1252"

For a list of code-page values for all languages, see the Code pages supported by Windows webpage.

To let your visitors search your website, add the following code to your page(s):

<!-- Site search from Bing-->
<form method="get" action="http://www.bing.com/search">
<input type="hidden" name="cp" value="CODE PAGE USED BY YOUR HTML PAGE" />
<input type="hidden" name="FORM" value="FREESS" />
  <table bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
    <tr>
      <td>
        <a href="http://www.bing.com/">
          <img src="http://www.bing.com/siteowner/s/siteowner/Logo_51x19_Dark.png" border="0" ALT="Bing" />
          </a>
      </td>
      <td>
        <input type="text" name="q" size="30" />
        <input type="submit" value="Search Site" />
        <input type="hidden" name="q1" value="site:YOUR DOMAIN NAME GOES HERE" />
      </td>
    </tr>
  </table>
</form>
<!-- Site Search from Bing -->

Quote

YouTube - Beautiful voice -quran- أعذب الاصوات في القرآن
 

Quote

YouTube - من أعذب الأصوات على وجه الأرض
 

A Great Teaser Video from the rocky PowePoint Team !!

I LOVE OFFICE 2010 !

Symphony my ………………..

The IIS Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit helps Web developers, hosting providers, and Web server administrators to improve their Web site’s relevance in search results by recommending how to make the site content more search engine-friendly. The IIS SEO Toolkit includes the Site Analysis module, the Robots Exclusion module, and the Sitemaps and Site Indexes module, which let you perform detailed analysis and offer recommendations and editing tools for managing your Robots and Sitemaps files.

More can found here http://www.iis.net/extensions/SEOToolkit

Original Link http://www.liveside.net/main/archive/2009/04/01/windows-live-products-nominated-for-webware-100-awards.aspx

Awards, nominations, it must be the season as yet again we can report to you about some more of those. This time about Windows Live and other Microsoft products nominated for CNET’s Webware 100 Awards 2009. Each year Webware awards the top 100 Web 2.0 apps/services, they are selected by Webware readers and by the users of the products Webware covers.

This year 13 Microsoft products are nominated:

Communication (Vote!)

• Windows Live Messenger, chat, play games, or swap photos with friends.
• Windows Live Hotmail, fast, easy, reliable e-mail, with storage that grows as you use it.

Infrastructure & Storage (Vote!)

• Windows Live SkyDrive, with 25GB of free online file storage and sharing.
• Windows Live Sync, peer-to-peer file synching and sharing, plus remote access to multiple computers.
• Live Mesh (Beta) ties together your network of devices, synchronized folders, and cloud storage.
• Microsoft Silverlight helps developers “light up the web” with richly interactive web applications that work across platforms and browsers.

Search & Reference (Vote!)

• Live Search gives you fast, relevant results… plus gorgeous photos on the Search page.

Browsing (Vote!)

• Internet Explorer 8, faster, easier, safer browsing—and have you tried the new Accelerators that provide instant driving directions, translations, and more?

Location-based Services (Vote!)

• Live Search 411, a free directory assistance number (1-800-CALL-411) that can also send maps, movie listings and more right to your phone.
• Live Search Maps, if you haven’t tried their bird’s eye view yet, prepare to be wowed.

Commerce (Vote!)

• Live Search Farecast (Beta) helps you find the best airfare deals by predicting when prices are likely to rise or fall for your destination.

Productivity (Vote!)

• Microsoft Office Live Workspace (Beta) is your online place to save, access, and share documents and files.
• Microsoft Office Live Small Business helps your small business get off the ground with free website hosting, e-mail addresses, online document storage, and more.

You can vote until April 30, 2009, noon Pacific Time. Let’s hope this year will be at least as successful as 2007 and 2008. In 2007 Hotmail, Messenger, Live Search, and Microsoft Virtual Earth got awarded and in 2008 Windows Live Home, Hotmail, Messenger, and Live Search won.

Want to help? Go on, vote today for your favorite products!

http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/webclient/

WOW

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10

Part 11

( نزار قباني)

يا تلاميذ غزة
علمونا
بعض ما عندكم
فنحن نسينا

علمونا
بأن نكون رجالا
فلدينا الرجال
صاروا عجينا

علمونا
كيف الحجارة تغدو
بين أيدي الأطفال
ماسا ثمينا

كيف تغدو
دراجة الطفل لغما
وشريط الحرير
يغدو كمينا

كيف مصاصة الحليب
إذا ما اعتقلوها
تحولت سكينا

يا تلاميذ غزة
لا تبالوا
بأذاعاتنا
ولا تسمعونا
اضربوا
اضربوا
بكل قواكم
واحزموا أمركم
ولا تسألونا

نحن أهل الحساب
والجمع
والطرح
فخوضوا حروبكم
واتركونا

إننا الهاربون
من خدمة الجيش
فهاتوا حبالكم
واشنقونا

نحن موتى
لا يملكون ضريحا
ويتامى
لا يملكون عيونا
قد لزمنا جحورنا
وطلبنا منكم
أن تقاتلوا التنينا

قد صغرنا أمامكم
ألف قرن
وكبرتم
خلال شهر قرونا

يا تلاميذ غزة
لا تعودوا
لكتاباتنا ولا تقرأونا

نحن آباؤكم
فلا تشبهونا
نحن أصنامكم
فلا تعبدونا

نتعاطى
القات السياسي
والقمع
ونبني مقابرا
وسجونا
حررونا
من عقدة الخوف فينا
واطردوا
من رؤوسنا الافيونا

علمونا
فن التشبث بالأرض
ولا تتركوا
المسيح حزينا

يا أحباءنا الصغار
سلاما
جعل الله يومكم
ياسمينا

من شقوق الأرض الخراب
طلعتم
وزرعتم جراحنا
نسرينا

هذه ثورة الدفاتر
والحبر
فكونوا على الشفاه
لحونا
أمطرونا
بطولة وشموخا

واغسلونا من قبحنا
اغسلونا

لا تخافوا فرعون
ولا سحرة موسى
واستعدوا
لتقطفوا الزيتونا

إن هذا العصر اليهودي
وهم
سوف ينهار
لو ملكنا اليقينا

يا مجانين غزة
ألف أهلا
بالمجانين
إن هم حررونا

إن عصر العقل السياسي
ولى من زمان
فعلمونا الجنونا

Why Would Israel Bomb A University?
By Dr. Akram Habeeb
30 December, 2008
Electronic Intifada

Gaza: As a Fulbright scholar and professor of American literature at the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG), I have always preferred to keep silent about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I always felt that it was my mission to preach love and peaceful coexistence. However, Israel's massive offensive against the Gaza Strip has spurred me to speak out.

Last night, during the second night of Israel's unprecedented attack on Gaza, I was awakened by the deafening sound of intensive bombardment. When I learned that Israel had bombed my university with American-made F-16s, I realized that its "target bank" had gone bankrupt. Of course Israeli politicians and generals would claim that IUG is a Hamas stronghold and that it preaches terrorism.

As an independent professor, not affiliated with any political party, I can say that IUG is an academic institution which embraces a wide spectrum of political affinities. I see it as prestigious university which encourages liberalism and free thought. This personal point view might seem to be biased; therefore, I would invite anyone who would doubt about my assertions to browse IUG's website and research its history. They would learn about its membership in various international academic institutions, the active role its professors play in scholarly research as well as prizes and research grants they have received.

Why would Israel bomb a university? Israel did not only target my university last night. It also bombed mosques, pharmacies and homes. In Jabaliya refugee camp Israeli bombs killed four little girls, sisters from the Balousha family. In Rafah they killed three brothers, aged 6, 12 and 14. They also killed a mother, along with her one-year-old child from the Kishko family in Gaza City.

These acts made me reflect on some of the commandments given by God to the "Chosen People:" Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house. No one could be chosen by God to annex the land of other people and kill them. Israel made these ethical choices by itself. Israel itself chose to wage its wars to eliminate the indigenous people of Palestine.

Dr. Akram Habeeb is Assistant Professor of American Literature at the Islamic University of Gaza.

I have a customer has his MOSS expired after 180 days. he has received below issue

The Execute method of job definition Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.LicensingConversionJob (ID 1a270d77-2273-436d-b5be-f20ce3ff75c1) threw an exception. More information is included below.

Arithmetic operation resulted in an overflow.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Solution was ?!!! IISReset.exe

Thanks for SharePoint Farmer's Almanac for posting this out.

http://thumbtack.livelabs.com

Quick Links

– MSDN site: SharePoint Guidance

– Future friendly url: http://microsoft.com/spg

– Download: SharePoint Guidance – November 2008

– Codeplex site: http://codeplex.com/spg

– Community Forum: http://www.codeplex.com/spg/Thread/List.aspx

Guidance at a Glance

This guidance helps architects and developers build SharePoint intranet applications. The guidance contains a reference implementation (RI) that demonstrates solutions to common architectural, development, and lifecycle management challenges. This guidance discusses the following:

– Architectural decisions about patterns, feature factoring, and packaging.

– Design tradeoffs for common decisions many developers encounter.

– Implementation examples demonstrated in the RI and in the QuickStarts.

– How to design for testability, create unit tests, and run continuous integration.

– Set up of development, build, test, staging, and production environments.

– Managing the application life cycle including upgrade.

– Team-based intranet application development.

The following areas are not discussed in this version of the guidance:

– Content-oriented sites that use Web content management.

– Internet and enterprise-scale SharePoint applications.

– Multilingual SharePoint applications.

– Scale or security testing of SharePoint applications.

Feedback

Your  feedback is invited. Please post it under Discussions on Codeplex. 

Information on Microsoft patterns & practices

Visit us at http://msdn.microsoft.com/practices/ to see the full line of existing patterns & practices.

http://www.microsoft.com/servers/sql/2008/sqlserverenergy/en/us/default.aspx

Backstreet Boys - I Still...

Who are you now?
Are you still the same
Or did you change somehow?
What do you do
At this very moment when I think of you?
And when I'm looking back
How we were young and stupid
Do you remember that?
No matter how I fight it
Can't deny it
Just can't let you go
I still need you
I still care about you
Though everything's been said and done
I still feel you
Like I'm right beside you
But still no word from you
Now look at me
Instead of moving on, I refuse to see
That I keep coming back
And I'm stuck in a moment
That wasn't meant to last (to last)
I've tried to fight it
Can't deny it
You don't even know
That I still need you
I still care about you
Though everything's been said and done
I still feel you
Like I'm right beside you
But still no word from you
No no
Wish I could find you
Just like you found me
Then I would never let you go (without you)
Though everything's been said and done (yeah)
I still feel you (I still feel you)
Like I'm right beside you (like I'm right beside you)
But still no (still no word) word from you

Ensure that United States is your localized Page :)

Microsoft has released to manufacturing its Visual Studio 2008 software development platform and the accompanying .Net Framework 3.5, meaning these technologies are available for download on MSDN to subscribers today, the company said Monday.

The products will be offered on disk within the next few weeks. Trial subscriptions also are available now. Visual Studio 2008 and .Net Framework 3.5 are accessible on MSDN here.

Among other things, Visual Studio 2008 is Microsoft's development platform geared to building Windows Vista applications. During a recent conference, difficulties with building Vista applications with the existing Visual Studio 2005 platform were cited by an attendee, who was assured that the solution is to upgrade to Visual Studio 2008.

Microsoft is touting Visual Studio 2008 as a platform for professional developers as well as hobbyists and teams.

"I am incredibly proud to be a part of the team that is truly advancing the state of developer tools," said S. "Soma" Somasegar, Microsoft corporate vice president for the company's developer division, in his blog on Monday.

"We hope that Visual Studio 2008 and .Net Framework 3.5 enables you as an individual or as a team to build great applications. Whether you are a professional developer or a software enthusiast, are building applications for the client, server, Web, or devices, we hope you have fun with these products as your software is our passion," Somasegar said.

Microsoft with Visual Studio 2008 is offering enhancements in every edition of the product, including Visual Studio Express for hobbyists and Visual Studio Team System for team-based development. With more than 250 new features, Visual Studio 2008 includes such improvements as visual designers to speed development with .Net Framework 3.5 and upgrades to Web development tools and language enhancements, the company said.

A highlight of particular interest is LINQ (Language Integrated Query), which the company said closes the gap between programming objects and data. Developers can focus on what they need the data to do rather than on how to access it, the company said. Microsoft is positioning LINQ as a technology for rapid application development.

"LINQ is the star," said Greg DeMichillie, lead analyst for application platforms at Directions on Microsoft. LINQ makes it easier to tie together C# or Visual Basic with SQL, he said.

"Everything else in Visual Studio 2008 is useful to some set of developers or another, but LINQ hits the entire spectrum of developers," he said.

Also included in Visual Studio 2008 are advanced development tools and debugging features, Microsoft said. Developers can target multiple versions of the .Net Framework, including versions 2.0, 3.0, and 3.5, and build AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) -enabled Web applications.

Tools are featured to speed development of connected applications on platforms, including the Web, Vista, Office 2007, the SQL Server 2008 database, and Windows Server 2008. Web developers can leverage ASP.Net and other technologies.

New ASP.Net controls allow for better page management and templates. Web development is boosted through new support for Web server communication techniques for AJAX/JSON-enabled Web sites.

.Net Framework 3.5 is intended to enable rapid construction of connected applications; it offers pre-fabricated software for solving common programming tasks. Web 2.0, SOA, and software-and-services applications are supported in version 3.5.

Included in.Net Framework 3.5 are enhancements to the base library, Windows Workflow Foundation; Windows Communication Foundation for Web services; Windows Presentation Foundation for presentation; and Windows CardSpace, for digital identities.

WCF supports native REST (Representational State Transfer) and RSS and backs multiple Web services specifications. These include

Web Services Atomic Transactions 1.1, WS-ReliableMessaging 1.1, WS-SecureConversation, and WS-Coordination 1.1.

Visual Studio Team System 2008, meanwhile, is an application lifecycle management system with tools, processes, and guidance. It supports management of application builds.

Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server (TFS) is a collaboration server for Visual Studio Team System. Featured in the 2008 edition of TFS are: Improved performance and security; support for such configurations as clusters, mirrors, and virtual machines; continuous integration; and scheduled builds. Also highlighted in TFS are version control features, query build improvements, and Web access to version control, work item tracking, and status reports.

Microsoft used TFS to manage this release of Visual Studio 2008. "TFS enables process enactment, collects a lot of data, and enables reporting on it. It provides visibility to everyone and it enables enforcement of certain things," Somasegar said.

But DiMichillie described improvements to TFS as minor. TFS lags behind the competition in areas like testing, he said.

Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition costs US$799 for new buyers and $549 to upgrade from the previous release. Team Foundation Server costs $2,799; upgrades cost $499.

Source Infoworld.com

After a long wait has a slogan of (Perusing Happiness) .. I just been informed for my Acceptance to work at Microsoft Corporation in Jordan as a Technical Solution Professional (SharePoint) under the rule of my charming man ever Mr. Zeid Shubilat ..

I was setting at Sharif Cafe close to Madinah Circle worried and almost lost thinking about what the result of mine, i got that email from Mr. Kays (Senior Microsoft HR Manager of MENA), and i was standing like i never did, scream of happiness with no pride and ask God forgiveness and thanks. Yes, am there going through a new Challenge proving my capability in building a SharePoint Market, a marvelous SharePoint. Guess who was close to me that moment, yeah he is Ghaith Al-Qurashi my best friend ever who hugged me with happiness going from a deep faithful heart. I just called my family and i heard my spirit and reason of living my mother crying for this success and God knows that she is the one after God who caused this success to happen.

For all my best friends, brothers and sisters who pushed me to the ultimate to be what i am now, THANKS .. THANKS AND A BILLION THANKS FROM THE HEART ... This success will never be mine, but for the whole community of Jordev .. for my best friends (Ayman Farouq, Mohammed Saleh, Muhannad Omar) who supported me and been always the sample of the effective people. For my best brothers and colleagues ever (Mohammed Helal, Odeh Mahmoud, Raafat Sumarin, Ihsan Anabtawi, Mohammed Najdawi, Khaireddin Bushnaq). For my all my friends who i forgot to mention many many many thanks.

I duno what to say for my charming Manager Mr. Zeid Shubailat for his kind consideration but this will be private for now :D ..

It's a moment to pray for God help, and then it's time for distributing sweeeeeets all over ... Join my celebration my best lovely people ever .........................

www.viewmyworld.com