BLOGS

Blogger Buzz: As you may have heard, things are starting to look a little different across many Google products—and today, Blogger is the next product to get a makeover. It’s been a few years since we made major updates to Blogger’s look and feel, and there’s a lot more to these changes than just shiny new graphics. We’ve rewritten the entire editing and management experience from scratch so it’s faster and more efficient for you—and easier for us to update and improve over time. ...

Brian Casel is a web designer and owner of ThemeJam WordPress Themes and CasJam Media. You can follow Brian on his blog at briancasel.com or on Twitter @CasJam. WordPress has long been known as a dedicated blogging platform, giving users the tools they need to publish their message and interact with readers. However, with the official release of version 3.0, set to drop this month, the platform will be much closer, if not well within the territory of a content management system (CMS). ...

Brian Krebs, in his “Krebs on Security” blog is reporting that a large number of WordPress blog pages have been hacked to redirected visitors to networkads.net that downloads rogue security applications onto their machines. Also, the owners of the blogs are locked out of access. “It’s not clear yet whether the point of compromise is a WordPress vulnerability (users of the latest, patched version appear to be most affected), a malicious WordPress plugin, or if a common service provider may be the culprit. However, nearly every site owner affected so far reports that Network Solutions is their current Web hosting provider,” Krebs wrote. ...

You may have noticed that certain YouTube videos have a link below them pointing to a popular blog. This little “As seen on” link is Google’s way to thank blogs that have promoted popular videos on their site. If you’re wondering why this or that site hasn’t been linked, it’s hard to say, since there are no clear guidelines as to when a site will be given a link-back. From YouTube’s official blog: ...