WordPress 2.9, Now with Built-in Image Editor and Delete Undo.

The latest version of the world most popular self-hosted blogging platform, WordPress 2.9, is now out and available for everyone to download and install. It's been quite a while since the last major update, more than six months actually, and the latest version comes with a few big new features and a bunch of smaller ones as well as updates, bug fixes, the works. The biggest feature is likely the new image editor which allows users to do basic photo editing inside the post editor without having to rely on third-party tools.

I’m here on behalf of the entire WordPress development team and community to announce the immediate availability of WordPress version 2.9 “Carmen” named in honor of magical jazz vocalist Carmen McRae (whom we’ve added to our Last.fm WP release station),” Matt Mullenweg, Automattic founder, the company behind the open-source WordPress platform and the WordPress.com blog hosting service, wrote.

With the new built-in image editor, users can crop, edit, rotate, flip, and scale images until they fit perfectly in the post. Seeing as these are 99 percent of the editing tools any blogger would ever need, the tool is a very welcome addition. It also probably means that you won't need to fire up Photoshop, or maybe Gimp if you're into open source or just too emotionally attached to your money, just to crop out the creepy old dude that keeps popping up in the your artistic shots of the day.

Another new feature which could prove quite useful, even though you wouldn't think you need it until something bad happens, is the new “Global undo/'trash' feature” which basically means that deleted posts don't get obliterated from existence but rather just sent to Purgatory, it's actually called Trash, to make amends.

Batch plugin updates and compatibility checking are a welcomed addition for those with a lot of plugins and an itch to always have the latest and greatest version. The feature comes especially handy when updating WordPress, i.e. right now if you're thinking about upgrading to 2.9, and should make the process a little less painful.

Finally, WordPress uses a little magic to convert most links to videos to actual embed code. The feature works for a bunch of sites like YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr, Hulu, Viddler, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Google Video, Photobucket, PollDaddy, and WordPress.tv and even more are coming. The list of new features doesn't end here but these are the highlights. If you want to know what else is new, you can check out the official post or head over here to see all the 510 bug fixes, updates and new features in WordPress 2.9.

"2.9 has been an exciting development cycle, and I must say it has whetted our appetite for 3.0, which is coming next (probably this spring) and will include at the very least the merge of MU with the WordPress core, and a new default theme," Mullenweg added about upcoming plans.

WordPress 2.9 is available for download here.

adopted from http://www.softpedia.com

50% Cheaper Defragmentation

Computer savvy users are perfectly aware of the importance of regular defragmenting files on the disk. The benefit of the procedure have a direct effect on overall system performance, reducing read/write times, thus leading to snappier opening of applications as well as faster copying data on the hard disk.

One of the downsides users would complain in the past would be the increased resource usage for the duration of the optimization. Lately, this is no longer the case as the standard in most professional defraggers has been raised and the apps come now with the possibility to perform during computer idle times, sparing the CPU and RAM usage when you work on the computer.

Regularly priced at $15, and designed for home users, Ashampoo released the latest version of Magical Defrag

at Softpedia, which offers an exclusive 50% discount. Exclusive download from Softpedia is available until December 20, but the offer will persist beyond this date.

The main advantage of Ashampoo’s defragger, besides the enhanced algorithm that compares with that of professional software of the same kind, is that it has been developed to run in the background, and work during computer idle times. Once activity is resumed on the computer, the defragmentation process will pause, giving you the full power of the computer resources.

Being shaped up with the average home user in mind, the product can start doing its job unattended out of the box, as the beforehand set up default task covers all fix volumes and is configured to run behind the curtain, when no computer activity is recorded. On the other hand, more experienced users are given the possibility to tweak the triggers of the task, such as restricting defragmentation when CPU, I/O or page file activity is above a certain threshold, or when the laptop (if the case) runs in battery mode, or when printing is undertaken.

Ashampoo Magical Defrag is an easy solution for file fragmentation problems, at a great price on Softpedia. The engine doing all the hard work did an impressive job during our tests managing to maintain file fragmentation well under 1% on all partitions, with no other effort then walking away from the computer from time to time and heading to more pressing chores.

Even if Sunday, December 20 is the last day you can download the application exclusively from Softpedia, the discount will continue in the following days, allowing you to grab it for $7.50 from our website.

adopted from http://www.softpedia.com

Rapidshare Auto Downloader 3.8

Download

This application is written for downloading a group of links from Rapidshare.com as a Free user. It cannot remove the limitations of Rapidshare.com for free users; however, you do not need to do the clicking and waiting anymore What is new in version 3.8.2 :

• Deleting incomplete downloaded files
• Adding support for rapidshare.net links
• Adding language support for : Arabic,Bulgarian,Catalan,Croatian,Czech,Danish,Deutsch,Dutch, Farsi,Finnish,French,Greek,Hebrew,Hindi,Hungarian,Indonesian,Italian,Lithuanian,Macedonian, Polish,Portuguese,Romanian,Russian,Serbian,simplified Chinese,Spanish,Traditional Chinese,Turkish,Ukrainian

from http://www.yahoofun.net