Though, if compared to the previous update, the previous one would be much enjoyed by most webmasters (firsly being that there were much more increases in PR than decreases). Seems like Google may have tweaked the alogarithm a little, or it could be that most webmasters are relaxing after preparing all that Search Engine Optimisation last year.

The previous PageRank update was on May, which means this update came a lot more sooner than expected. Judging from past updates in January, February, and May, it does seem that Google is updating PageRank much more regularly, with its cycles becoming shorter (hopefully moving towards the 1 month cycle Google had about 6 years ago). The current PageRank cycle is estimated to span across 1.5 to 3 months.

Update: The “beta” notice appears to be gone, for now.

Seems like Google is doing a mini experiment on the iGoogle page. This time, it involves a small little yellow notice with a “Close” link. Apparently Google forgot to place any message on the notice.

Clicking on the close link will close the notice, though not for long as the empty annoucement will spring right back on the next time you reload the page.

Once again, yet another one of those minor things to happen on the Google home page.

The flaw is being used by Chinese hackers (presumably, since most of the affected sites are in China) to steal World of Warcraft passwords through the installation of a keylogger that records keystrokes for certain programmes. It also attempts to disable Kaspersky Anti-virus (fortunately most other anti-viruses are not affected).

The attackers also attempted mass SQL injection attacks (i.e. attempting to insert some “additional” stuff or modify things in your site) early on and are using these victim sites as a means of

While the bug affects Internet Explorer more often than Firefox in a way, it’s still a good idea to update your Flash player immediately (even if you not play World of Warcraft).

I’m pleased to announce that the Convault theme is available for download. The convault theme is a 2-column layout that supports widgets.

The other theme is still undergoing further testing and may be released shortly.

Dofollow enabled

Tevine would be removing nofollow from comments (i.e. dofollow) to further credit any commentators. If you are a registered user, your comment would not be subjected to immediate moderation. However, if you are not registered, your comments would only appear after moderation.

Sure, you may ask what is in for you, the poster. The simple answer is that, guest posting will act as a form of legal advertising here (provided you leave a link to your site somewhere in the post).

How to guest post

Guest posting is easy. You’ll only need to come up with a 100 word story, and post here. It need not be a news post. It can be a debate, or something else. However, reviews are currently not allowed. Once you are ready, you can proceed to the post submission page and submit your entry. Be sure to write a brief description of yourself at the top of the post (E.g. “John is a problogger at example.com”).

Once you submit your post, it will be subjected to review before it gets posted. Ammendments to a post can be requested via sending an E-mail to the administrator.

What if I register an account?

If you register an account, you will be entitled to future upgrades which allows you to manage your posts better.

What if everything went well?

If the trial went well, posts will be posted automatically, without much prior review. That is, if there isn’t too much spam received via the guest posting feature.

There are some minor changes in the Entrecard dashboard. More statistics are displayed, and sadly, some were moved away from the front page. The following (statistics) additions are pretty nice:
-Credits earned via ads
-Credits earned via drops
-Currently running ads (i.e. ads that you buy)

Some other changes
-Pending Ads/Your Ads moved to its own page

The changes are pretty minor, so don’t expect much from it.

Wishlist

To make it short and sweet, I decided to put it as a list:
-Entrecard API for plugin makers like me
-Make it possible to view other people’s recent drops (without asking the user)
-Template glitches to be fixed (Internet Explorer)
-Support for more ad sizes
-Support for customizing of the card beyond the black-yellow-white design
-A more “nicer” design of the ad, to cater everyone’s taste

I hope that Phirate will be listening. I’ll be using Entrecard for a while more to see how things go.

Since this is a temporary announcement, expect it to be gone in a few days time.

This year went by real fast, and there were quite a bit of nice stuff going on in it. As a nice momento, I’ll like to list the best of Tevine in 2007, judging from its activity (based from traffic and other stuff).

The most popular posts (2007)

Google Toolbar Review #2
If 1 review was not enough, 2 reviews should do the trick. By far this review takes a bit of scrutinizing of the new Google toolbar. There were some nice titbits that probably most people who have tinkled with the toolbar would have found, but for those who have not tried the new toolbar yet, you can read this nice review.

Google, Yahoo,… what about Windows Live?
Nothing like discussing Microsoft’s remodeled search engine in comparison to the super-titans - Google and Yahoo.

Why Microsoft *could* have taken over the Internet
A poke at Microsoft’s monopoly and its capability of ruling over our sheltered haven.

Web standards see increasing adoption
Well, just a nice tip that more people are becoming more aware of web standards that have been around for the past decade. Sounds like good progress don’t you think?

Technorati is flawed
Ah, the ranking system we grew to love. Technorati may be accurate, but not accurate enough, well, because the votes/responses can be “manipulated” as well - accidental or intentional.

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Have a nice year ahead.

While Yahoo decided to go animated with some nice flash effects. A screenshot is shown below:

You can find the 3 here, here and here. Expect one more to come after though.

Even Ask has something to say about Christmas, with a nice template dedicated to Christmas.

There are many other sites celebrating Christmas as well, maybe at least mentioning it. Glad to see Christmas being celebrated online. Sadly, Microsoft (Live and MSN) didn’t really mention much about Christmas, aside from the ads.

Tevine now has a new repository called “Projects“. There are some projects within there already. Here are some notable ones that are useful to almost everyone. Just to cut to the point, I shall be announcing 2 Wordpress plugins in this post.

Title Capitalization
This plugin automates the process of capitalizing titles. I’m sure you know what capitalization is. Capitalization helps give a little ”formal” look to your post titles. Here are some formats [there are 6] supported:
This format capitalizes only the first word.
THIS ONE ON THE OTHER HAND IS ALL CAPS.
This Format Captializes Every Single Word.
Certainly this One might be a Little Different than the Ones Above.

I didn’t want to put a whole dictionary inside the plugin, so the plugin will only deal to a certain level of grammar (sorry, I cannot make titles that look the same as that of CNN, because that would require a dictionary list of nouns, articles, adjectives, etc….). There are some problems with this plugin though (involving some grammar), which would be fixed eventually.

Okay, maybe the same effects can be achieved by using a little PHP, but maybe new users of Wordpress don’t know how to put in a little PHP.

Installation is pretty simple, copy the plugin, activate it, and change the options.

Vote It Up

This was released a little earlier, but I didn’t annouce it much. This plugin gives voting functionality to your posts. Add one line of code, and voila! People can vote for your posts. Guest support is included.

Several styles are supported by this plugin - bar and ticker. There is also some inside code that you can use to even set up a bookmarking site.

Installation is not as simple compared to the first one, but it is roughly the same and is quite easy to follow. Copy the plugin (contained in a directory), activate it, change some options, follow instructions inside the option panel.

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At the moment, it does not allows for input, but that will come soon in due time.

Looks like Firefox just dished out a swift update as soon as releasing Firefox 2.0.0.10.

This update fixes a bug in Firefox 2.0.0.10. As this is a bug fix release, there are no feature releases.

You can update Firefox by checking for updates. Alternatively, you can download Firefox.

Prior to Windows 2000: No longer supported, so no updates.
Windows 2000: No planned updates.
Windows XP: Currently at SP2. SP3 update scheduled at first half of 2008. Annouced on 2006. Beta available to some.
Windows Vista: SP1 update scheduled at first quarter of 2008. Beta available to some.

Digg - 46 to 81 diggs (the amount depends on which category you choose: generally choosing more popular ones require your stories to get more diggs, while choosing sub-categories requires lesser diggs)
StumbleUpon - N/A (1 vote is all it take to bring in traffic)
Propeller - 16 to 21 (similar to Digg, except on smaller scale)
Sphinn - 21
Reddit - ~50
Del.icio.us - ~20. The rate of getting votes will determine if it is on “popular”.
Pligg - 21

The threshold is dependent on settings. For some sites like Digg, the threshold changes with time and is dependent on popularity.

We figured that maybe some people are too shy to use our posting feature, so we made something that allows you to voice your opinion. A little democracy never hurts anyone right?

The voting system in Tevine is similar to other voting systems - you like the story, you vote for it. Each vote contributes a little to the “bar” you see at the bottom of each post. Fill it up, and see what happens. ;)

We will enable guest voting soon.