Also with the 3.0 release, wordpress has bid adieu to its default theme Kubrick. A new theme called Twenty Ten has now taken its place.

Features

• New default theme called Twenty Ten.
• Theme developers have new APIs that allow them to easily implement custom backgrounds, headers, shortlinks, menus (no more file editing), post types, and taxonomies.
• Merging of MU and WordPress, creating the new multi-site functionality which makes it possible to run one blog or ten million from the same installation.
• New lighter interface, the contextual help on every screen, the 1,217 bug fixes and feature enhancements.
• Bulk updates so you can upgrade 15 plugins at once with a single click.

Watch the video from WordPress official team.

Official blog: wordpress.org

I am not an expert in Copyright matters, but we know that every website should change its Copyright year when a new year is started. Also it is not a compulsory thing to do so, but it is always advisable when your homepage is not just a static page showing some static tag, but showing realtime Trends. Like in the screenshot you will notice the Twitter’s homepage is showing latest trends such as Haiti, iPad, Serena Williams etc.

Just to make sure this is not just a case with me, I tried to view Twitter’s homepage using a web proxy. I wanted to try new IP and see if this is same with everyone. I tried 2-3 web proxies and it all gave me same result. The copyright year on Twitter’s homepage is 2009 for everyone.

As expected I couldn’t find © 2009 on a single popular social network/online websites. I tried Facebook, Google, Linkedin, Myspace, Orkut, AOL, Microsoft.com, Yahoo, Friendfeed etc but all of them have updated the copyright year to 2010. Surprisingly the Mixer Labs Geo API service Geo API which Twitter recently acquired also have copyright year 2009!!!

Well in case Twitter has really missed to update its Copyright year, here is simple PHP script they must use to update their copyright automatically

&copy; <?php echo date(’Y'); ?> Twitter

I couldn’t find a single reason to think that Twitter has deliberately left Copyright year to 2009.

What do you guys have to say about this? Does Twitter has deliberately left copyright year to 2009 or did they just forget it?

In a grand Apple press conference at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco today, Apple’s very own Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad. It features multi-touch interaction with multimedia formats including newspapers, magazines, ebooks, textbooks, photos, videos, music, word processing documents, spreadsheets, video games, all existing iPhone OS apps, and internet browsing. The device incorporates an LED-backlit 9.7-inch (25 cm) multi-touch in-plane switching display running at XGA resolution made by Innolux, a subsidiary of Foxconn. Pricing for models in the United States ranges from US$499 to $829 depending on the amount of memory and inclusion of 3G access.

The iPad is slated to be available for sale in the United States at the end of March (WiFi version) and end of April (Wifi and 3G version) 2010. International 3G prices are to be announced summer 2010.

Following are some features of iPad.

• 1GHz Apple A4 processor (custom)
• 0.5″ thick
• 1.5 pounds
• 9.7″ Capacitive touchscreen (1024×768)
• 16-64GB of SSD storage
• 3G available but not in all iPads
• $14.99 for 250MB, $29.99 for unlimited data on AT&T (no contract)
• 3G iPads are unlocked, have GSM micro SIMs
• Accelerometer, Compass
• 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.1
• Runs iPhone apps in window or pixel doubling
• Hardware-accelerated OpenGL graphics
• SDK out today
• $499 for 16GB base model, $830 for all maxed out
• Dock with hard keyboard available

Following is the Apple’s official iPad commercial.

My Favourite feature is the addition of new CSS Gradient API. You can define Gradient effect on any element by specifying simple CSS styles. Thus now you can have CSS Gradient Effect without Images!
Note: All the below examples are Images. In order to view the gradient effect one must use Firefox 3.6

Liner Gradient

To create a linear gradient, you’ll need to set a starting point and a direction (or angle) for the gradient and to define the color stops.

-moz-linear-gradient( [<point> || <angle>,]? <stop>, <stop> [, <stop>]* )

Starting Point: The starting point works just like background position. You can set the horizontal and the vertical positions as a percentage, in pixels, or using left/center/right for horizontal, and top/center/bottom for vertical. Positions start from the top left corner. If you don’t specify the horizontal or the vertical position, it will default to center.
Example

 .linear_gradient_square {
    width: 100px;
    height: 100px;
    border: 1px solid #333;
    background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, blue, white);
  }

One that starts left (horizontal) and center (vertical):

background: -moz-linear-gradient(left, blue, white);

Here’s a simple example with three color stops. Because no point is specified for the first and last colors, they will default to 0% and 100%.

    background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, blue, white 80%, orange);

Colors will be evenly spaced if no position is specified.

    background: -moz-linear-gradient(left, red, orange, yellow, green, blue);

Radial Gradients

The syntax for radial gradients is very similar to that of linear gradients:

 -moz-radial-gradient([<bg-position> || <angle>,]? [<shape> || <size>,]? <color-stop>, <color-stop>[, <color-stop>]*);

Color stops: Just like with linear gradients, you should define color stops along the gradient line. The following circles have the same color stops, but the gradient on the left defaults to evenly spaced colors, while the one on the right has a specific position for each color.

background: -moz-radial-gradient(red, yellow, #1E90FF);
background: -moz-radial-gradient(red 5%, yellow 25%, #1E90FF 50%);

.radial_gradient_circle {
    background: -moz-radial-gradient(bottom left, circle, red, yellow, #1E90FF);
}
 .radial_gradient_ellipse {
    background: -moz-radial-gradient(bottom left, ellipse, red, yellow, #1E90FF);
}

background: -moz-radial-gradient(ellipse closest-side, red, yellow 10%, #1E90FF 50%, white);
background: -moz-radial-gradient(ellipse farthest-corner, red, yellow 10%, #1E90FF 50%, white);

.repeating_radial_gradient_example {
    background: -moz-repeating-radial-gradient(black, black 5px, white 5px, white 10px);
}
 .repeating_linear_gradient_example {
     background: -moz-repeating-linear-gradient(top left -45deg, red, red 5px, white 5px, white 10px);
}

“These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered – combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web – have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China,” Google’s chief legal officer David Drummond commented here. “We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all.”

The attack resulted into a breach of 2 email accounts, and the company has quoted that no major information except date of account creation and the subject line was compromised rather than the content of email itself. Also the names of 20 companies have also been omitted. Recent attacks on Adobe pdf readers and applications to bind malware code with them has been on rise and the timing of Google’s warning and the official statement of Adobe has led to a speculation that some of attacks may have used the Adobe applications or exploits. Google also mentioned in a separate blog post that servers of companies have not been targeted.

China has been known for its quite controlled internet policies and Chinese hackers have recently gained notoriety along with Russian ones in the scene. With the rising attacks on major companies, let’s see what steps silicon giants take to counter it.

About the Author

Rishabh Dangwal is a freelance security consultant, technoblogger and a student pursuing engineering. His tastes include fiddling with every possible piece of computers and technology he could get his hands on and sharing them to the world.

Today Google is celebrating 366th birthday of Sir Isaac Newton and they have changed the logo on their website. But this time they have added an animated doodle of falling apple.

Google believe in simplicity and thus the animated doodle is not a GIF or Flash but simple JavaScript to animate the image.

<img width="384" height="138" border="0" onload="window.lol&amp;&amp;lol();setTimeout(function(){var h=0,v=1,f=document.getElementById('fall'),i=setInterval(function(){if(f){var r=parseInt(f.style.right)+h,b=parseInt(f.style.bottom)-v;f.style.right=r+'px';f.style.bottom=b+'px';if(b>-210){v+=2}else{h=(v>9)?v*0.1:0;v*=(v>9)?-0.3:0}}},25);google.rein&amp;&amp;google.rein.push(function(){clearInterval(i);h=0;v=1})},2000)" style="margin-top: -1.22em;" id="logo" title="Birthday of Sir Isaac Newton" alt="Birthday of Sir Isaac Newton" src="/logos/newton10-tree.jpg"/>

You can access full set of Google Doodle here http://www.google.com/logos/

Let us see some of the cool features added in WordPress 2.9.

Features

1. My favorite one is the latest Global undo/trash feature. So now if you accidentally delete any post or comment, you can restore it back from Trash. This also remove the “are you sure” message on deleting the post/comment.
2. WordPress now comes with its own Built-in Image Editor. Now you can crop, rotate, edit, flip, scale images easily within wordpress itself.
3. Its possible to Upgrade the Plugins in Batch. You can select multiple plugins and update them in one go.
4. Video Embed has never been so easy. Just paste the video url in your editor and the video is automatically embedded in your post. This now supports Oembed feature which is supported by YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr, Hulu, Viddler, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Google Video, Photobucket, PollDaddy, and WordPress.tv
5. WordPress also supports rel=canonical for page redirection and seo.
6. Now wordpress can automatically optimize your database. All you need to do is to add define('WP_ALLOW_REPAIR', true); in your wp-config.php file.
7. You can set custom theme directories, so a plugin can register a theme to be bundled with it or you can have multiple shared theme directories on your server.
8. Registration and profiles are now extensible to allow you to collect things more easily, like a user’s Twitter account or any other fields you can imagine.

Check out the official blog post for WordPress 2.9 release for more updates.

Now one more feather in Google’s cap. Google just launched a programming language GO, an open-source development language that Google believes will combine performance with speed, and one that the company probably hopes will reshape the development and software industries in its favor.

Go is based on the C programming family, one of the most widely used programming language trees in the world. However, the twist is that incorporates elements of Python (a preferred development language within Google) and the Pascal/Modula/Oberon family to make faster and more dynamic programs.

Why Did Google Make Its Own Language?

No major systems language has emerged in over a decade, but over that time the computing landscape has changed tremendously. There are several trends:

• Computers are enormously quicker but software development is not faster.
• Dependency management is a big part of software development today but the “header files” of languages in the C tradition are antithetical to clean dependency analysis—and fast compilation.
• There is a growing rebellion against cumbersome type systems like those of Java and C++, pushing people towards dynamically typed languages such as Python and JavaScript.
• Some fundamental concepts such as garbage collection and parallel computation are not well supported by popular systems languages.
• The emergence of multicore computers has generated worry and confusion.

If you want to learn more, Google (as usual) has released a detailed, hour-long Google Tech Talk on the new language (embedded below). However, if you’re a developer and just want to get started, we suggest checking out the Go Tutorial and writing your first program.

Few features of GO language

1. Speed: Go compilers produce fast code fast. Typical builds take a fraction of a second yet the resulting programs run nearly as quickly as comparable C or C++ code.
2. Safe: Go is type safe and memory safe. Go has pointers but no pointer arithmetic. For random access, use slices, which know their limits.
3. Concurrent: Go promotes writing systems and servers as sets of lightweight communicating processes, called goroutines, with strong support from the language. Run thousands of goroutines if you want—and say good-bye to stack overflows.
4. Easy: Go has fast builds, clean syntax, garbage collection, methods for any type, and run-time reflection. It feels like a dynamic language but has the speed and safety of a static language. It’s a joy to use.
5. Open source: GO is now an open source programming language. Feel free to change/customize it for your need.

Hello World in GO

Following is the Hello World sample code in GO programming language:
Hello World

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
  fmt.Printf("Hello, World \n")
}