Typically when you insert a disc to upgrade Mac OS you need to reboot to the disc for the installation process to begin. This means that during the entire upgrade process (even though this process gets shorter and shorter with each update) you’d be effectively without a computer. The upgrade to Lion, it would seem, doesn’t require this step. The update happens just like any other installation process. However, you’ll still need to reboot when the upgrade process is complete.

Notable, but not as notable as not having to reboot at all.

Which is a great thing to see!

So, I’m both sick of waiting and terribly excited to take advantage of the offerings that WordPress 2.7 brings to the table – so much so that I’ve now upgraded my site to the latest version – which is 2.7 RC1.

RC stands for Release Candidate. This means that the software I’m running is, in the minds of the developers, ready to be used by the masses. It is – more than likely – the exact code that will be released as an official update to the WordPress software.  The only reason the code will be updated from RC1 is if anything rather high-priority is found (like a bug or security issue).

Upgrading to RC1 was painless (I came from version 2.6.3 I believe). I’m looking forward to fully kicking the tires on this new release and writing up a general review of my thoughts on this latest release. First impressions are incredibly positive.

By the time 2008 rolls around I hope to be sporting a completely new suit. I’ve got a lot of work to do before I get there, which is why I’m setting this goal 60 days out. First, I need to update to WordPress 2.3.1 (or whatever version is out by the time I get around to updating from my current 2.2.1 build). This jump should be fairly painless besides changing some template code to include the way WordPress handles tags now, and since I am going to be building my site’s new template from scratch anyway, it won’t really be any extra work at all.

I’ve been using this “out-of-the-box” yet hacked template for far too long and I think it is beginning to wear on me. Don’t get me wrong, I really like this template and it has definitely served me well for the way I’ve structured things around here. But I’ve been poking around with some new front page features that simply do not work with the current template. That, and I’ve recently been giving the photos section a lot of attention and what I wanted to do there wasn’t working out with this structure so really I don’t have much of a choice.

Onward and upward. I hope for at least the next two months the recent changes (which are very subtle but were nagging me) serves me, and you, well. But I can’t wait until the beginning of a New Year and the beginning of the next iteration of this site – which I hope will serve me for at least a year.

As always if you find something wonky just let me know.

Update November 23, 2007: Ok, so maybe I lied. After playing with new layouts for a few days I’ve decided to stick with this one and just make small cosmetic changes to make the theme more my own, to update the markup, and extend the features. I’ve done 2 small things to this end over the last two days.

The first thing I did was add support for hAtom. I’m still experiencing some oddities with the dates, and I will continue to make adjustments as I learn how to pull off the date requirements for hAtom with WordPress, but for now the main page of this site will syndicate the latest entries via hAtom with no problem.

The second thing I did was reconfigure the navigation. I’ve been wanting to tighten up the vertical use of space for a little while – so even though this isn’t the final version of the navigation it is definitely a step in the right direction.

Next up is a new heading. Having ‘Colin Devroe’ as an H1 worked for a while…. but soon it shall read something entirely different and may even include some graphics! *gasp*. Until then, enjoy.

The latest version of Viddler really add some fantastic features, which will be detailed much better on the Viddler blog once some of the major kinks have been worked out – but here is a general overview:

• Video commenting can now be done on the timeline. This makes it quick and easy to actually respond to a video using your web cam while you’re watching the video. Here is a comment I left on one of Chris Tingom’s videos.
• Global commenting shows all of the comments in the timeline, as well as just general comments that were left about the video, in a threaded manner below the video.
• Feeds are found everywhere to make it easy to subscribe to the forums, your favorite users, your own videos for syndicating to your blog perhaps (like Chris J. Davis’ lifestream as an example) and even tag subscriptions.
• Sharing your videos has never been easier and the functionality has been enhanced ten-fold with this version. You can now do things like give out a “Secret URL” to share private videos with non-Viddler users. Or, you can share your videos with your friends via any of the many social sites out there.
• Blogging your videos can now be done without ever leaving Viddler. Two-clicks and a video is posted to your blog via XML-RPC. I love this feature, and we’re working hard to expand on it to include even more blogging platforms.
• Personal and global tags now make it easier to look at a specific user’s videos filtered by a specific tag. Or, you can view all videos tagged with a keyword.
• Social tagging means that you can now tag your friends videos, in case their lazy. Or, you might want to tag a video to make it easier to find later. Right now, this is limited to timed tags only – but it won’t be long until you can also use this for global tags on a video.
• Flickr and Twitter have been integrated into user profiles. To go beyond that, Viddler will now automatically update your Twitter account whenever you “do something” on Viddler. This is highly-customizable, so go into your profile options and check it out.
• Yes there is more. Our featured videos have an updated home. Now it is easier than ever to keep up-to-date with the greatest videos on Viddler. Not only are the latest few shown on the user’s dashboard, but we’ve created a calendar to show each day’s featured video.
• Several new ways to explore videos are now in the Explore section. You can view by Most Popular, Most Favorited, Most Discussed, and so on. This will make it easier to find content that the entire community is watching, favoriting, or talking about.
• Play all of a single user’s videos with one click. Simply go to a video of the user you want to watch, click Play All, and Viddler will create a “playlist” of all of that user’s videos and automatically play them all. You can skip around if you’d like to.

There are endless updates to Viddler’s UI, as well as over 100 revisions that have been made within the video player itself, and that is only scratching the surface of what Viddler 2.0 really holds. I’m really happy with the way that this version has turned out, and I’m looking forward to seeing what is next, and how the community utilizes these great new features.

I’m writing this email in the back of the “Viddler mobile” in Santa Clara, California on the way to San Francisco to the Moscone Center for the Web 2.0 Expo. If you have any questions about Viddler 2.0, send me an email or message and I’ll get back to you asap.

[tags]viddler, version 2, upgrade, flickr, twitter, features[/tags]
[slug]viddler2-launch[/slug]

If you experience any problems, let me know. If you don’t, upgrade your own blog to the latest version because, from what I’m seeing so far, it is definitely a lot faster and cleaner than it was previously.

UPDATE: One of the features that I didn’t see documented elsewhere, but I have found to be a really nice addition, is that now when you post a comment you are automatically redirected back to your comment instead of just the post’s permalink. So, if I’m the third comment on a page – I no longer need to scroll down to make sure my comment was recorded properly – WordPress forwards me right to my comment’s bookmark.

Go ‘head, give it a whirl here on my blog on any post. Pretty cool.

[tags]wordpress, open source, upgrade, ella, mysql[/tags]
[slug]wp21[/slug]