Finally long awaited version 3.0 of Wordpress has been released. This version has got 1,217 bug fixes, so upgrading to Wordpress 3.0 is must must. Get ready to upgrade to Wordpress 3.0 as this is a major update so you have to prepare for the update before actually trying it on your live site.

Major new features of this upgrades are the new default theme “Twenty Ten“.  Wordpress MU is now part of Wordpress, so now you can run off multiple sites from your single Wordpress install. One feature that will going to be very useful for Wordpress blog administrators is the bulk upgrade of plugins, you can now upgrade all selected plugins with just one click.

You must watch the Wordpress 3.0 tour video, specially in HD to catch the Easter eggs (that is what the announcement blog says):

When are you planning to upgrade to Wordpress 3.0? Is your theme Wordpress 3.0 ready? Are you plugins Wordpress 3.0 ready?

WP Super Cache 0.9.9.2 has been released, this is the biggest release because it support Wordpress 3.0 which will be coming out very soon. So now the users will not have to wait for WP Super Cache to be Wordpress 3.0 compatible, it already works with it.

The other major features being added to this release are:

• Better support for mobile plugins.
• Cache preloading to cache every post of the blog.
• Cache tester to test if home page of the blog has been cached.

The only glitch which only affects huge blogs (specially those with more then 32K posts) is that Cache preloading will cache all posts of your blog which means you will hit the file system limits, so if your blog is hosted on ext2 or ext3 file systems (99% chance it is) then you should be careful about this feature. You can read more about the issue at Wordpress.org support forum. Read official release announcement here.

Have you tried WP Super Cache 0.9.9.2 yet? Are you going to upgrade to it or will you wait till Wordpress 3.0? Let us know.

So you own an iPad and you are one of those curious people who want to break into things to see how they work? Or you don’t like being restricted and controlled by Apple. What ever your reasons are the iPhone OS hackers were able to Jailbreak the iPad in just 24 hours of its availability in Apple Stores. So, here is the little guide to help you jailbreak your iPad running on iPhone OS 3.2.

NOTE: First you should take backup of your SHSH blobs so you can restore to iPhone OS 3.2, later.

We will use Spirit to jailbreak the iPad. Using Spirit is very simple. Follow the steps below to Jailbreak the device.

Step 1: Most important step, backup your device using iTunes.

Step 2: Download the Spirit jailbreak for Mac OS, Windows or Linux, depending on the OS you are using. [ Alternate link for Windows Spirit ]

Step 3: Connect your iPad to your computer.

Step 4: Run the Spirit jailbreak application. If you are on Window run it as administrator.

Step 5: Click the “Jailbreak” button.

Step 6: Upon successful jail-breaking you will see the message on Spirit “Jailbreak complete” and the “Quit” button, also the iPad will restart.

Step 7: When the iPad is booted again, you will see the Cydia app store installed.

Thats it. Enjoy your jail-broken iPad, you can download and install any application you want, the applications you install does not have to be approved from Apple. Do you have an iPad? Have you jail-broken it? Or will you jailbreak it?

Apple Pages a perfect application for writing blog posts on iPad. As I previously posted about Wordpress application for iPad and Blogpress for iPad, both the application had their limitations. None of them were true WYSIWYG editors.

After getting disappointed by Wordpress app and Blogpress, I decided to give Apple Pages a try. The applications is a bit costy but I think it’s worth the price.

See the screenshot below to get the idea on how Apple Pages looks like.

Adding images is piece of cake, you can not only just add images but you can resize them, move them and rotate them.

Apple Pages is a complete word processor app, which you can use for editing and creating your documents too. It comes with. Few standard templates which you can use as base for your document.

You can also export your documents to PDF.

Publishing the content you create on Pages is as easy as copying and pasting, or better say it is actually copyingnthe content and pasting into wordpress compose window.

Have your tried Apple Pages on your iPad?

SHSH Blob needs to be saved if you want to jailbreak your iPad. If you don’t save SHSH Blob all your Jailbroken functionality will be lost if Apple may release the new firmware. Why it needs to be saved? we will see later in more detail. But first let me tell you what the heck is SHSH Blobk or ECID SHSH anyway?

SHSH Blobs are basically signature of your firmware installed on your iDevice. They are checked against Apple servers and allow you to restore a particular firmware on your device. This applies to all devices including iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. When Apple releases new firmware it stops signing the old firmware and hence you can’t restore back to older firmware through iTunes.

You must have got the idea why you need to save SHSH Blob before, let me give you a bit more insight on this. The developer of Cydia has configured a server which provides Apple like verification service and can save your SHSH signature to allow you to downgrade or restore the older firmware. So if you don’t have your SHSH blob saved and update your firmware you know that you will lose your jailbroken functionality, not only that but you won’t be able to downgrade to older firmware or rejailbreak your device.

There are numerous ways to store SHSH blob but the most easiest is to use AutoSHSH. Follow the steps below to save your SHSH using AutoSHSH.

Step 1: Backup your device. Open iTunes connect your iPad and make a backup.

Step 2: Download AutoSHSH (rapidshare link). (Note: You will also need JVM installed on your machine).

Step 3: Connect your device in recovery mode by turning your iPad off and then pressing “Home” button while connecting to USB cable, keep Home button pressed until you see “Connect to iTunes” message on your iPad.

Step 4: Start AutoSHSH which you downloaded in Step 1.

Step 5: Click the “Grab my SHSH blobs Automatically” button.

Step 6: AutoSHSH will ask you the location to store your blobs. Select a safe location.

Congratulations you have saved your SHSH blobs, now you can go and jailbreak your iPad.

I bough blogpress hoping that it will turn out to be better then free word press aap, but so far it seems to be more worse. Please don’t bother buying blogpress as it crashed after adding the first blog. But if you can ignore the crashes like me, then go for it.

Still trying to figure out how to access the rest of the options for this post like specifying categories, tags and other stuff. I even can’t modify the slug.

Blogpress seems to have wysiwyg editor, but how format the text is still unclear. Let me make this text bold.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Once again I have not been able to update my blog for quiet a long time. I had been working on few things which kept me busy during those days. Now the reason of writing this post is actually I am test driving the Wordpress App for iPad.

Yes, yes I remember that last time I wrote how an iPad is just a big iPhone. But after using iPad my views have been changed. iPad is not just a big iPhone, at least not for me. Writing this blog justifies having an iPad for bloggers, designers, developers, system admins and business people.

I am planning on jailbreaking my iPad later today, so expect blog posts about jailbreaking experience and hoots over the couple of next days. I also have many cool applications to share for almost every possible use that I can think of.

The only thing that is frustrating is the WiFi bug, but Apple has promised to fix that with the next firmware update. The games are amazing and I have already been addicted to Need For Speed, Fast and Furious, Fifa and Iron Man 2.

As I mentioned I am writing this post to actually test Wordpress application for iPad, the applications seems a little buggy. Still haven’t tried the Wordpress admin stuff, but I am assuming it should work out of the box.

Expect couple of other posts this week about how to jailbreak the iPad. Have you tried the iPad? Do you think it is useful for Bloggers?

Facebook recently launched a web wide Like button which allows everyone to add Like buttons on every page of their site. With in hours of launching everyone started adding buttons on their site. The bloggers who use Wordpress platform for blogging didn’t stay behind in the race, they also started adding the button on their blog and very soon the button started appearing on thousands of blogs.

Let me tell you how can you add the Facebook Like button on you Wordpress Blog with in 5 minutes, without any extra plugin.

Goto the your Wordpress theme directory and open the file single.php and add the following code snippet to appropriate position in your file.

<iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=<?php echo urlencode(get_permalink($post->ID)); ?>&amp;layout=standard&amp;show_faces=false&amp;width=450&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowTransparency="true" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:60px;"></iframe>

The above code adds an iFrame to your site which displays the Facebook Like button. You can modify the look & feel of the button by changing following parameters in the iFrame URL.

Layout:

The above example uses the layout “standard” but you can also use the “button_count” layout which will display Like button as follows:
“layout=standard”

Show Face:

If you wish to show the friends who have already liked the page, then use the option “show_face=true”.

Color Scheme:

If you want to use the dark color scheme use the parameter of colorscheme to change the colors. You can use “dark” as follows to use the dark color scheme for your Like button.

“colorscheme=dark”

Are you using Facebook Like button on your blog? Are you seeing any results? Share your success story with us!

Have you ever wondered how Mashable and other high volume blogs keep up with their fan pages? How they can post every blog post on their Fan Page as soon as it is published? If you have Facebook Fan Page for your blog but you publish your blog posts manually on your Fan Page then this post is for you.

If you haven’t yet created your Facebook Fan Page, kindly create one and then continue reading.

To add your blog to your Facebook Fan page, follow the steps below:

1. Goto your page.

2. If the notes tab is not displayed, goto Notes tab by clicking on the “+” sign.

3. Click on ‘Write a New Note’

5. When you are on Notes writing page, click on the notes settings icon.

6. Click on the “Import a blog” on Notes settings page.

7. Paste your blog URL in RSS/Feed box

8. Click on “Start Importing”

Thats it. You are done. Now whenever you publish a new blog post on your blog, it will be published to your Facebook Fan Page. Go and start blogging and your Facebook Fans will get updated.

Google has release official Buzz share button with share count support. The new button was announced on official Google Blog on 13th April. You can go directly to Buzz Stuff page to configure the button and get the code for your site. If you are a wordpress user you can use my WPBuzzer plugin to add official Google Share button to your blog. Official Google Share button allows you to configure many different aspects of your button which includes:

1. Show or not show count.
2. Button size.
3. Button type.
4. Button language.

The WPBuzzer plugin also allows you to configure most of the options via your plugin settings page. You can see the plugin and button in action on this blog. And don’t forget to share this post on Google Buzz to actually see the button working