Dominate Your Local Market!

In a demo that drew gasps at TED2010, Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos new augmented-reality mapping technology from Microsoft.

Two new WordPress videos have been posted to the videos page at OrangeCat.com.

Is Your WordPress Installation Up-to-Date? (3:22) takes a few minutes to show you how to determine if your WordPress blog is running the latest version. If not it shows you what to do about it.

Although WordPress has been fairly bullet-proof through it’s various versions, each new version introduces new features, fixes bugs and increases security over the previous version.

The same can be said for plugins. Older versions of plugins could have security issues that have been addressed in later versions. In order to run the latest versions of a plugin, you may have to be running the latest version of WordPress as well.

Having your WordPress website hacked could be more than just as inconvenience. If you have the Google Sitemaps plugin installed (and you should), it will report any changes made by a hacker as new content. You could then lose precious ranking if Google determines your site is now less relevant. It is much easier to keep ranking than to rebuild it.

If you are an OrangeCat client, you can subscribe to our updating service that keeps WordPress, themes and plugins current as part of a website maintenance program. That way you never have to worry about your WordPress being up-to-date.

WordPress Security: Delete Your Admin User (3:38) explains how having the default admin user on your blog may be a security risk and could increase your risk of being hacked.

Far too many WordPress blogs still use the admin user that was created during installation. If a hacker can be reasonably sure that the username for your blog’s admin area is “admin” they merely have to crack the password to gain access.

Since so many passwords are pretty weak, using terms such as “joe123″ or “marysblog” or the even worse “wordpress” or “password,” using software to repeatedly try different passwords (called a “brute force attack”) could uncover your password in short order.

All recent installations of WordPress on OrangeCat servers has included the Login Lockdown plugin that stops this kind attack by limiting he number of times a password can be tried before the login is disabled for a pre-determined amount of time.

Deleting the admin user and replacing it with a more secure username is one step you can take to thwart a brute force attack on your WordPress administration. This video walks you through the process.

If you would like us to change your WordPress admin user or install the Login Lockdown plugin, use the OrangeCat.net Services Page to submit a request. Pricing is available on our Services Page.

Bestselling author Timothy Ferriss (The 4 Hour Workweek – #1 New York Times Best seller) delivers his presentation on effective blogging at WordCamp San Francisco 2009

Great information here for anyone starting a blog or wanting to improve their blogging skills.

From Lindsey Olivares and Ringling College of Art and Design via Daily Motion – a little video to help make your day!

The latest version of WordPress has been released and can be downloaded from WordPress.org. This version 2.8 (Baker) has many new features. To preview the features of WordPress 2.8, have a look at this video:

2.8 represents a nice fit and finish release for WordPress with improvements to themes, widgets, taxonomies, and overall speed. It also fixes over 790 bugs.

WordPress 2.8 has made administrative tasks simpler and has enhanced features to allow you to customize your admin interface to organize your work the way you want.

Beginning today, all WordPress installations performed by OrangeCat will be of version 2.8. If you do your own install and/or updates, be SURE to backup your database and files before upgrading and check for updates to your plugins.

There’s a Memorial Day Sale on the three best-selling video tutorial sets at HowDoIDoThatVideo.com. 20% off makes this the best price ever on these complete tutorial series. But the sale only runs until 11:59 PM EDT on Monday, May 25, 2009 so if you want to jump on this, click here to go to the Sale post now.

In this engaging talk from the EG’08 conference, New York Times tech columnist David Pogue rounds up some handy cell phone tools and services that can boost your productivity and lower your bills (and your blood pressure).

Innovation is dead? Marc Andreessen on Charlie Rose

Marc Andreessen is a co-founder of Netscape, the forerunner of Firefox. He also can take credit for Internet Explorer, but is reluctant to do so. “We knew the code stunk.”

If you have an interest in the future of business and innovation, you need to watch this video.

“The iPhone was beamed in from the future.”
- Marc Andreessen

At 11AM on an otherwise ordinary morning, 400 dancers took to the floor of the Liverpool Street Station to bring the joy of dance to the startled commuters.

The purpose was to create an ad for wireless giant T-Mobile, but the contagious mixture of music and dance had bystanders joining in.

Take two minutes to share in the good fortune those had that morning. Life is full of wonderful surprises. Thanks, T-Mobile for this contribution to the joy of living.