WordPress.org just released the latest version of their popular blogging platform, WordPress. The new 2.8 version has quite a lot of new features compared to the previous 2.7.1 version.

WP 2.8 is a major update. It’s much faster than any of the previous versions because of a new way of scripting and lots of tweaks to the styling. One major update is the way themes can now be installed. Remember when WordPress 2.7 brought installation of plugins from within the admin menu? We can now install themes in pretty much the same way. Just browse or search for the theme, and hit install.

Here are a few highlights of the changes in the new version:

• New drag-and-drop widgets admin interface and new widgets API
• Syntax highlighting and function lookup built into plugin and theme editors
• Browse the theme directory and install themes from the admin
• Allow the dashboard widgets to be arranged in up to four columns
• Allow configuring the number of items to show on management pages with an option in Screen Options
• Support timezones and automatic daylight savings time adjustment
• Support IIS 7.0 URL Rewrite Module
• Faster loading of admin pages via script compression and concatenation

The full list can be viewed here. Download WordPress 2.8 here, or you can just upgrade from within the Admin menu by going to Tools->Upgrade.

The popular Amar Chitra Katha Comics are now available on iRemedi’s ‘Ether Media’, a proprietary media content delivery solution for the iPhone platform.

Amar Chitra Katha (ACK), is an assortment of popular Indian myth, epics, history and fables. It follows an Indian version of story telling that presents a perfect combination of commentary, dialogue and illustration.

For now, the only free offering of the comics is ‘The Tale of Arjuna (Lite) – World’s Greatest Warrior‘ and ‘Tales of Saibaba (Preview)‘. Other comics such as the classic ‘Jatakas – The Tales of Courage’, ‘Birbal – The Clever Minister’, ‘Birbal – The Witty Minister’, ‘Ganga’, ‘Dhrona’, ‘Bheeshma’, ‘Dashavatar’, amongst many others, are all very nicely priced at $1.99 to $2.99. This is quite a treat. I still have fond memories of reading these comics (albeit picked up for a price of 10 cents at the time) through my childhood.

Sridhar Bhat, CEO and Founder of iRemedi, mentioned, “This is a historic moment for both ACK and iRemedi. At iRemedi, we are very thrilled to have ACK as our first media partner for our high quality intuitive media app for iPhones and iPods. We always strive to deliver the best experience for the iPhone user community and we are confident ACK’s fans will share our excitement in enjoying ACK comics on the go. For ACK this is a key milestone in bringing the classical Indian mythology and rich culture to the global community instantly in the amazing user experience with iPhones. The iPhone’s revolutionary platform brings limitless avenues for various dreams to become.”

The Amar Chitra Katha digital comics can be read in a panel by panel view, by page numbers, and navigated with the slider. A slide show mode is available for reading through the comics in a faster manner. The app also makes use of the iPhone’s landscape and portrait modes quite well. I would definitely recommend this to anybody, Indian or foreign, who would like to read some great Indian mythology, to download at least the free version.

Google just launched a stand-alone Java app for mobile phones that now enables you to quickly use Orkut on your Internet-enabled mobile phones.

Some of the features of the mobile app are:

• Upload photos to orkut on-the-go, directly from your phone.
• View scraps, friends’ updates, and photo albums while you’re offline.
• Share your orkut albums with all of your friends whether they use orkut or not (via SMS).
• Easily call or SMS your orkut friends and address book contacts from within the app.
• Get automatic updates when your friends change their contact information or orkut profiles.

Below are some of the screenshots of the app from the Official Orkut Blog. The app should work for almost all the new phones out there with support for Java ME (J2ME), MIDP 2.0. Hope we can see an iPhone version come out soon. =)

To install the Orkut mobile app (available in English and Portuguese), head over to m.google.com/orkut on your phone browser.

Microprocessor manufacturer AMD celebrates their 40th anniversary today and as part of the celebrations, they’re holding a couple of contests.

May 1, 2009, marks AMD’s 40th anniversary. Formed by Jerry Sanders and seven co-founders in 1969, AMD is a company with a rich and colorful history. In the past 40 years, AMD has transformed from a second-source supplier that worked within the confines of other companies’ designs, to an innovator that has helped drive the market forward and kept competition alive and thriving in one of the most important technology sectors. AMD takes great pride in our role of igniting next-generation technology solutions, as well as our ability to see where customer and end-user needs are headed next and then collaborate with the industry accordingly.

The two contests being held are the Video Contest and the Photo Contest.

The Video Contest is for the AMD community and you need to create a video up to 60 seconds in length, wishing AMD a Happy 40th Anniversary. The video needs to be uploaded to YouTube and the link emailed to them. Three lucky  ‘grand prize’ winners will receive the ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics card, and 40 ‘first place’ winners will receive the ATI Radeon 4650 graphics card.

The second part of the contest, the Photo Contest, participants need to send their most creative expression of love of AMD. Five “grand prize” photo submissions will each get a new AMD Phenom™ II X4 Black Edition processor and an ASUS M4A78T-E motherboard. Eight “first place” photo submissions will each receive a new AMD Athlon 7850 processor and a Gigabyte GA-MA780G-UD3H motherboard.

How to Enter:
To enter, email your photo to us at amdcontests@bitepr.com. Be sure to check the contest rules found here for eligibility and more information about your photo submission and the judging criteria. Be sure to submit your entries by 5pm PDT on Friday, June 19, 2009.

Eligibility:
Sadly, the contest is open to United States residents only, 18 years and older.

I’d like to personally wish AMD a very happy 40th anniversary. May they come out with more amazing products like the ATI Radeon 4770, and the Opteron processors that we fanbois so loved years back.

P.S. – this article was written on an AMD powered machine.

Here’s something you don’t see everyday – a little devil of a software booting you out of your own computer, then demanding you to send a premium SMS to deactivate itself.

PandaLabs reports a newly discovered ransomware that locks the affected user’s PC, and demands a premium SMS sent in order to deactivate it.

The malware, Trj/SMSlock.A, doesn’t have any self-propagation functions and appears to be coming under the form of a typical fake codec that has been affecting users for over a week now. The message (in Russian) demands that the affected user sends an SMS with the pseudo-unique number to the given number in order to receive deactivation code.

If the prospect hasn’t scared you yet, the images surely will.

Google has finally launched a mobile-friendly version of Google Product Search. The new feature is currently available only to iPhone and Android users in the United States and United Kingdom.

A search for a product gives a ‘Shopping Results’ link within the search results page. Clicking on it will take you to the Product Search page that is specially formatted. Take a look.

Here’s a comparison of how the results look in Opera Mini and the iPhone/iPod Touch. Not that good on Opera Mini now, is it?

The new Limited Edition Prince Opus iPod could be a reason to go crazy. British publishing company Kraken Opus will only sell 950 of the purple special-edition iPod Touch, which comes loaded with a 40-minute movie featuring footage from the enigmatic artist’s “21 Nights” 2007 tour in London, as well as a live soundtrack from his “Indigo Nights” album.

This new limited edition iPod Touch costs $2,100, which means that you’ll be paying $140 per song(!!). This is because the iPod comes with the “Prince 21 Nights Opus,” a book of photography of “21 Nights” shot by Randee St. Nicholas and including lyrics and poetry by the artist himself. T tome is more than 200 pages (each measuring 13 by 20 inches) and weighing in at “an epic 17 kg,” is bound in leather and comes in a velvet-covered case.

Kraken Opus CEO and founder Karl Fowler says that one-third of the 950 available Opuses and iPods were already sold over the weekend.

Mozilla released Firefox 3.0.2 recently and within 3 days, Firefox gets another update, 3.0.3. This one makes us wonder “why this soon?” !. Pretty simple : “They want to adhere to their motto, faster, safer and smarter than ever before.

The latest update is a single-security-bug-fixing-release, Fixing a problem where users were unable to retrieve saved passwords or save new passwords (bug 454708)

Firefox users can update their version by Help -> Check For Updates.
Else, download a fresh copy.

So, as with any software, it is highly recommended that you update to the latest version as soon as possible so as to enjoy maximum safety. And don’t worry if you ever have any problems or queries; we at HarmlessGeek are here for you.

Mozilla released a maintenance update to Firefox, version 3.0.2, which addresses several security and stability issues.

Mozilla also released versions for Sinhala and Slovene languages, apart from a beta version of the browser with added support for Bengali, Galician, Hindi, Icelandic, Kannada, Marathi, Telegu, and Thai which have been made available for testing.

The complete release notes for 3.0.2 can be found here.

Remember when McLaren employee Mike Coughlan had been caught in possession of sensitive Ferrari information? This is the exact scenario in the tech world.

An ex-design engineer at Intel, named Biswahoman Pani, has been accused of copying Intel design documents when he shifted to main rival AMD.

The man has not been arrested yet, and AMD has been let off the hook as the FBI found no evidence that AMD had encouraged or even knew about the espionage.

From The Inquirer:

According to the filing in the Boston US District Court, 13 files containing over 100 pages of top secret documentation and 19 drawings were found during a search of Pani’s house in July.

The FBI was tipped off by another Intel employee who, on discovering Pani’s planned move to the competition, ordered a log of his system access before he left.

On a side note, I supported the Prancing Horse when the scandal happened. In this scandal, I’m with AMD all the way. What do you think?