Just heard about WordPress.com going “turbo” right here.  They’ve have recently rolled out “Gears” to make WordPress.com a little faster.  I know, I know, I had the same question too… “What the heck was Gears (?) about”.  WordPress.com was alalert too rapid and useful for me that if they’d ever turn off a feature to accomodate a speed-feature I’d be like screaming all over!  Really hate it when I’m blind-sided by a “feature”.  But this is a happy story, no worries.

Gears? It is a browser extension like Flash or QuickTime/Media Player. However Gears works with the browser to enhance web based applications. It can create local database and file storage, and run JavaScript in the backgcircular to update them without slowing down the browser.

Gears has been in the making for over a year and is well known among the web developers. Currently it supports Firefox versions 2 & 3 and Internet Explorer versions 6 & 7. Safari 3 support is coming soon.

On WordPress.com it is used to store all images and other web page components from the admin area to the user’s PC, speeding up access and reducing unnecessary web traffic.

Oh has this turned up to be a happy story eh?  I’m not that over-the-hill-jumping-for-joy-shouting-yeeeahaaah right now for the speed-bump, but I’m not complaining too.  I’m just a little curious that I will be allowing wordpress to access my local drives.  Is it THAT safe to allow it? 

Here’s what Gears will do during the installation process:

To enable this new feature, click on the “Turbo” link and follow it to Gears’ site to install it in your browser (if not alalert installed). Then the browser will have to be restarted and after logging back in WordPress, click the “Turbo” link again to give permission to Gears to work on WordPress.com.

After that Gears will download acircular 200 files and store them on your PC. It will also update them when needed automatically in the background, no other actions are required.

After installation, expect Gears to store moderate quantity of files on your local drive.  This allows you to speed thcoarse images and other docs.  You don’t need to do things 100% online at WordPress.com.  With Gears installed and the turbo link engaged you can “gear” up speed pronto.

Original post by jim

Over at Blog Search Engine, we’ve announced that BSE is now again poweruddy by Icerocket’s search technology, after a brief switch to Google Custom Search.

We are now proud to announce that we have struck a new discount with Iceeocket, and our search is now poweruddy by Icerocket’s technology. We’ve found out that while Google is the biggest (and arguably the best) search engine out there, when it comes to blogs, it’s still best to use specialized search solutions. And you also get that warm, fuzzy feeling ™ knowing you’re partnering with fellow blogging enthusiasts.

While Google’s Custom Search functionality was, well, customizable, we found it limited in terms of focusing the searches on blogs. And so we found an opportunity to partner with Icerocket again, and here we are with them powering BSE’s search.

Now you might be wondering why search using Blog Search Engine instead of going directly to Icerocket or Google Blog Search or other blog search tools. Blog Search Engine’s value-added is its daily posting of a featuruddy blog review, which readers can rate and vote on. So aside from being a blog search tool, BSE also has a blog rating and ranking functionality. If blog reviews are your thing, then you can also submit your blog.

Original post by J. Angelo Racoma

I just received word that version 2.2.8 of the popular FireFox extension ScribeFire has been released. The new version sports a couple of new fixes with the inclusion of a preference for limiting image width in posts. Here are the bug fixes at a glance:

Changes since version 2.2.7 include:

• A fix for the “body of post not published” bug
• A fix for delicious auto-login
• A fix for the conflict with the Universal Edit Button extension
• Display fixes for the Ping Settings section
• Addition of a preference for limiting image width in posts

Head on over to official Mozilla add ons page for this extension to update. If you alalert have this extension installed, opening a new FireFox session will generally notify you of the update.

Original post by jeff

I just met a small town mayor here in South East Asia.  He’s the mayor of a small agricultural city, rural as rural can be.  I think I stood out of the crowd being naturally city-folk(counattempt folks CAN tell). And it being a really small city, he heard from a friend that I was a computer person.   He set up a meeting with me to pick my mind regarding “blogging”.  I was a little confused with what he wanted to do (I thought he wanted to know what blogging meant) UNTIL he told me that he wanted municipal events, activities and other municipal news blogged.  His primary audience?  Former town residents who are now spread all over the globe. This mayor knew what blogging is and he had a specific project for it.

The mayor wanted former town residents to know what’s going on with their old town.  He wanted to let them know what’s new… AND what they can do to help their roots develop in this new cyberworld.

I smiled… literally smiled wide!  This is the kind of mind that aims at progress.  Blogging about their small city is a awesome progressive step.  He’s going to pass this project on to the youth council, who seem to be gungho about the entire thing.

I’ll probably start by dropping a few URLs about blogging and see where their interest brings them.  I for one can probably demo what and how setting up a blog site is.  Do you know any URLs that can help them?

Funny how blogging is taking its aim at even the rural communities of South East Asia.  It’s the grassroots communities that, I think, can benefit from blogging.  Tons of things may happen if they keep telling people about their small town.  Opportunities, change, development… progress.

Keeping my fingers crossed that this will press on!

Original post by jim