Every avid blogger out there has been waiting for this day and it is finally here, the release of WordPress 3.0 aka Thelonious.

Like announced on the official WordPress blog, arm your Vuvuzelas and go and download WordPress 3.0 or alternatively you can upgrade it through your WordPress dashboard.

It took half a year of work by over 200 contributers to get WordPress 3.0 ready for release and what a release this is.

Some of the new major features included in the release of WordPress 3.0 is a brand new default theme called Twenty Ten, there is also brand new APIs available to theme developers that will allow them with more customisation options with regards to backgrounds, menus, headers, short links, post types and taxonomies.

No need to install a separate WordPress installation anymore to make use of a Multi User blog interface, the new WordPress 3.0 incorporates single and MU blogs from just one WordPress installation.

For more information about the release of WordPress 3.0 check out the official WordPress blog.

So you’ve heard all these funny terms on radio, TV and from friends about broadband and ADSL, what exactly is this and how do you go about getting your hands on this thing called ADSL?

Lately I have had quite a few queries from users that would like to know how to go about getting ADSL, where do they go, what do they need and who is the cheapest. If you are still using Dial-up now is the time to read further and learn how you could be saving allot of money every month.

First off let me start by explaining the advantages ADSL has over Dial-up. The fastest ADSL offering currently in South Africa is more than 70 times faster than Dial-up Internet, allowing you to get your files allot faster and more reliable. With ADSL you are not billed per minute like with Dial-up but rather on usage allowing you to browse longer and allot more websites for allot less than with Dial-up Internet.

What you need to get ADSL installed:

• The only thing you will need to be able to get ADSL installed at your premises is a fully working telephone line from Telkom. Please note that ADSL will not work on prepaid Telkom phones.

You have your Telkom phone line installed what is next? The next step in getting ADSL is to order a ADSL line and Data Package, luckily now a days allot of ISPs (Internet Service Providers) does this for you. You will also require a ADSL modem, a tip here, allot of ISP’s will offer you a free modem if you sign a 24 month contract, I always urge people to stay away from signing contracts but there are people who doesn’t mind it just make sure the extra monthly fee is not allot more than what it would have cost you to buy the modem yourself. You can get a decent ADSL modem for around R600.

If you are new to ADSL and would like to keep is simple I would suggest your opt for the all in one packages the ISP’s offer. Lets take a looks at the different all in one ADSL packages available currently by different ISP’s. I will keep it to the cheaper low end packages that is ideal for normal home usage.

As you can see some ISP’s offer a free ADSL modem included with their once of setup fee. Apart from your phone line obtaining one of the packages above will have you surfing the Internet in no time. Note that most of the packages above also includes free email addresses if needed.

To recap everything you need to be able to surf the web using ADSL is the following:

1. Telkom Phone Line
2. ADSL Modem (Included with some all in one packages)
3. One of the packages mentioned above.

That’s it, see how simple it is to move over from slow and costly Dial-up Internet to fast and affordable ADSL Internet. If you have any queries please feel free to leave a comment and I will try my best to help you out.

This morning while posting something on Facebook I noticed a new popup that grabbed by attention. It was a small lock next to the share button and upon clicking it I discovered some real handy new privacy settings.

You now have the choice to customize with who you would like to share certain statuses or links you post. A nice addition is the fact that you can customize it to a degree where you can only allow a selected few friends to see the status or link, or disallow a selected few friends from seeing it.

This sure is a great feature and one that was needed a long time ago. I see the ladies gossiping even more now via Facebook.

MyScoop the new South African blog aggregator and social bookmarking site by Nicolas Duncan has built upon what the community requested.

MyScoop launched about a month ago with limited functionality just as Amatomu shut its doors. The blog aggregator started out with only functionality to fetch the latest blog entries from subscribed blogs and displaying it. Now things has changed and on track to provide the same functionality that Afrigator has to offer and Amatomu used to offer.

Nicolas Duncan has improved MyScoop allot during the last month and added a badge and ranking system. MyScoop now has the ability to keep track of your site hits and what pages users access on your blog. MyScoop also introduced a ranking system that keeps track of what blogs is most popular and what blog posts receives the most traffic, they also added a stats section to the control panel that shows you how many hits your site had on different dates.

The possibilities are endless now that MyScoop has the badge system in place and can gather all sorts of stats from your blog to display to you. What I would like to see is perhaps a Unique visits and Page views combined graph, and maybe one to display weekly, monthly and yearly stats.

Also perhaps Nicolas can provide us with some insight as to how the ranking of the blogs is calculated.

If you have any suggestions about features you would like to see on MyScoop, please leave a comment.

Micro-blogging service Twitter has unveiled a new frontpage featuring a prominent search box in a bid to attract new users.

Co-founder of Twitter Biz Stone said in a blog post that new frontpage is to demonstrate “the power of Twitter as a discovery engine for what is happening right now.”

The all new search box will allow non registered users to search for something and see the latest real-time messages, known as “tweets,” about the subject of the keywords entered.

Stone said this would hopefully inspire people to then sign up for Twitter, which allows users to broadcast messages of 140 characters or less to other members.

The redesign does not affect the Twitter homepage seen by current users of the service, only the introductory page at Twitter.com seen by Internet users who have not yet signed up for the service.

The Garden Route’s first fully serviced Data Center will be constructed and opened at Office Reliance in George during 2009!

This high tech facility will offer 24 x 7 operations, will make use of state of the art equipment and technology, and will offer fully redundant services. It will be capable of supplying localized services to the Garden Route, but will also offer outsourced services to national and international customers.

The Data Center will include the following core services:

• Hosting Center – hosting of shared servers, dedicated servers as well as virtual servers.The hosting centre will have fully redundant connectivity and power systems.

• Call Center – the call center will operate 24 x 7 and will service clients around the globe. Inbound as well as outbound calls will be accommodated, with highly configurable and customizable call handling.

• Business Process Outsourcing Center -The Data Center will be fully staffed and equipped to deal with all BPO requirements. Software testing and QA will be the first BPO project.

• Software Development Center – Dedicated software professionals will be on hand, dealing with specialized and customized software developments. A large government database development project is the first to go through the development center.

For more details on this ground breaking development please contact Imel at imel@officereliance.co.za