IntenseDebate Acquired by Automattic

Some news in the blogging world today...the blog comment system IntenseDebate has just been acquired by Automattic (the company behind WordPress). IntenseDebate is currently revamping its servers and features and has temporarily moved back into a private beta during the overhaul.

I got the announcement today from the fellas at IntenseDebate. Here it is in full:

"It's a very exciting day here at IntenseDebate! We're extremely stoked to announce that as of today IntenseDebate has been acquired by Automattic. That's right, IntenseDebate is now an Automattic Joint!

Don't worry, IntenseDebate isn't going anywhere. IntenseDebate is still the perfect comment system for your blog or website regardless of the platform it uses. We will still enhance and encourage conversation on your blog while we increase your reader engagement and community. We're just going to be a whole lot bigger!

You can expect our service to be quicker and offer a more robust feature set. We will continue to improve our service for all blog platforms including Blogger, Typepad, Movable Type, Tumblr, and others with more on the way. You can also look forward to advanced integrations with other Automattic products like Gravatar, Akismet, and of course WordPress.

This is good news all around, especially with our new distribution possibilities. Now we have the opportunity to put IntenseDebate in front of more eyes than ever before. You can expect more blog readers to already have IntenseDebate accounts and you will be able to comment on more blogs than you can imagine!

We love your support and couldn't have gotten here with out you! Thanks again for being so awesome and helping us spread the word! You can look forward to even more comments and page views in the future! Feel free to check out our acquisition post and leave a us comment.

Congratulations to everyone!
The Fellas at IntenseDebate"

Why It's Good For WordPress

This acquisition is definitely good for WordPress. It's no secret that WordPress has been in need of an updated comment system for quite some time. Now that need will no longer be there.

WordPress 2.7 will include some of IntenseDebate's comment system features by default, one of which includes threaded comments. I use IntenseDebate here on this blog, and I can tell you from firsthand experience that threaded comments rock!

WordPress 2.7 will also include a plugin that will integrate many of the other great IntenseDebate features, such as commenting across multiple blogs. With these new features and additions, I think WordPress users will be very happy indeed.

Why It's Good for IntenseDebate

On the IntenseDebate side, this acquisition means that you'll be seeing IntenseDebate a lot more often as the joining of the two outfits opens up distribution possibilities. This means that you should be able to use your IntenseDebate profile on a lot more blogs. A definite plus.

There will also be tighter integration with some of the other Automattic joints, such as Akismet (Automattic's distributed and learning anti-spam system) and Gravatar (their globally recognized avatar).

The IntenseDebate name and logo will remain the same, and you'll still be able to use the IntenseDebate comment system on many of the popular blogging platforms (TypePad, Blogger, Tumblr and Movable Type), with even more blogging platforms to be added to the mix.

Happy for the Future of Blogging

The folks at Automattic have already done some great work on projects like Akismet, WordPress.com, WordPress.org and bbPress, not to mention the many WordPress plugins they've written (Google AdSense for Feeds, Secure Admin, Secure Admin, No Self Ping and Batcache, to name a few).

They have an excellent track record and I'm really excited to see what the future of blogging holds for everyone. This is an acquisition that I am definitely pleased to see, so long as the two services remain separate, as they say they will.

Remaining "separate" is very important for many bloggers. For example, I use Blogger here for this blog...so the last thing I'd want to happen would be losing my IntenseDebate comment system due to some "corporate" BS. I guess we shall see. But so far, so good.


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WordPress Version 2.2 Getz Available For Download

The latest version of WordPress (Version 2.2 "Getz") is out now and ready for download. The new version is available in both .ZIP and .TAR.GZ formats and offers several new features, most notably widget integration. There are also over two hundred bug fixes in the new Getz version.

This Getz version is named in honor of Stan Getz (Stanley Gayetsky). He is considered of the greatest tenor saxophone players of all time and is known worldwide as "The Sound" due to his warm, lyrical tone. Here's a video shot back in 1989, two years before he died from liver cancer.


Here are some of the features Version 2.2 Getz offers:

• WordPress Widgets will allow you to easily rearrange and customize areas of your blog (usually sidebars) with drag-and-drop ease. This functionality was originally available as a plugin, but is now included by default in the core code. It's significantly cleaned up and enabled for the default themes.
• Full Atom support, including updating Atom feeds to use the 1.0 standard spec and including an implementation of the Atom Publishing API to complement WordPress's XML-RPC interface.
• A new Blogger importer that's able to handle the latest version of Google’s Blogger so you can seamlessly import posts and comments without any interaction beyond entering your login.
• Infinite comment stream, meaning that on your Edit Comments page when you delete or spam a comment using the AJAX links under each comment it will bring in another comment in the background so you always have 20 items on the page. (I know it sounds geeky, but try it!)
• WordPress now protects you from activating a plugin or editing a file that will break your blog.
• Core plugin and filter speed optimizations should make everything feel a bit more snappy and lighter on your server.
• WordPress also added a hook for WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) support in a future version of Safari.
  

For additional reading, check out Aaron Brazell's article - 10 Things You Should Know About WordPress 2.2.

WordPress 2.1.1 Dangerous - Upgrade Now!

WordPress 2.1.1 Download Is Dangerous!

I just got this from the WordPress blog and I strongly suggest you read it if you've downloaded WordPress 2.1.1 within the last 3-4 days or so.

WordPress 2.1.1 Dangerous, Upgrade

"Long story short: If you downloaded WordPress 2.1.1 within the past 3-4 days, your files may include a security exploit that was added by a cracker, and you should upgrade all of your files to 2.1.2 immediately.

Longer explanation: This morning we received a note to our security mailing address about unusual and highly exploitable code in WordPress. The issue was investigated, and it appeared that the 2.1.1 download had been modified from its original code. We took the website down immediately to investigate what happened.

It was determined that a cracker had gained user-level access to one of the servers that powers wordpress.org, and had used that access to modify the download file. We have locked down that server for further forensics, but at this time it appears that the 2.1.1 download was the only thing touched by the attack. They modified two files in WP to include code that would allow for remote PHP execution."

Secure Your WordPress Blog

WordPress also states, "If your blog is running 2.1.1, please upgrade immediately and do a full overwrite of your old files, especially those in wp-includes. Check out your friends blogs and if any of them are running 2.1.1 drop them a note and, if you can, pitch in and help them with the upgrade."

The latest WordPress download is here: New version 2.1.2

WordPress Downloaded Over 1 Million Times...

From The Blog Herald:

"WordPress just broke a new record having served up over a million downloads. The number will undoubtedly continue to exponentially grow and I congratulate the developers for their hard work and persistance."

Wow, that's quite a milestone! Kudos to all of you over there at WordPress! *woot, woot* By the way, you can check out the current WordPress download count here on the WordPress Download Counter.

Related: WordPress 2.0 (Version 2.0.4) Download WordPress

Blogger and WordPress Make The 100 Best...

Blogger and WordPress

Make "100 Best" List

I was reading through the new issue of PC World magazine the other day - and no, I'm not a nerd. Gosh! I mean, I did spend the whole summer with my uncle in Alaska hunting wolverines. And I shot like 50 of 'em! :P

Anyway, in the issue they named the "100 Best Products of the Year." And out of the 100, two blog publishing systems actually made the list. Sweet! So which ones were they?

Coming in at #33 is Blogger

BLOGGER Blogging Service
"It's not the most sophisticated blogging tool around, but it is free and easy to use. It works with Google's Hello to support no-cost photo hosting and posting, and you can upload pictures from your camera phone to your Blogger blog."

Coming at #95 is WordPress

WORDPRESS Blogging Tool
"Two free practical controls make this product stand out: Photos and art are resizable on the fly in side the editing space, and dividing a blog entry into two parts is simple."

So there you have it. And I think it's pretty cool that both of them actually made PC World's 100 best list. Heck yes I do!