Bryan Ruby

Serendipity 1.1.1 was released to fix a few bugs. This is the first update to Serendipity 1.1 since it was first released at the end of 2006. The 1.1.1 update does not include any security fixes so you may not even need to update unless you've experienced one of these bugs:

• Windows IIS server cookie/session authentication problem when not running via HTTPS
• Change execution order of trackbacks to properly send them when a failure occurs
• Display proper plugin permissionship restrictions when the admin user is not part of the group that is restricted
• Fixed a bug that some plugins were not able to properly execute in the entry detail view

In a blog post at the Serendipity site, Garvin also commented on the feature improvements that can be expected for Serendipity 1.2. Users of the weblog application can expect the following in Serendipity 1.2 once it is released :

• Improvements on the authentication/plugin API sequence to better support future plugins like OpenID.

The site, eWeek, posted a little slide show in honor of Presidents Day. The slide show lists "10 U.S. presidents who held patents, thought globally and believed in the power of the press—and macaroni". To the best of my knowledge, none of the presidents have actually managed their own Web site. What a shame for a US President to not experience the true joys of being a geek.

Team Mambo released Mambo 4.5.5 which is a maintenance update for the 4.5.x series of the content maintenance system. All Mambo 4.5.x users are encouraged by the project leaders to upgrade to 4.5.5 which will avoid the possibility of your site visitors experiencing display issues in IE7. Fixes in the maintenance release includes:

• IE7 fixes
• RSS and  search engine optimization fixes
• com_syndicate config parameter fixed
• SQL injection fix in cancel edit functions

Mambo 4.5.5 downloads are available at SourceForge.

From time to time we like to see the giants fall.  However, I think in this particular case if the giant falls so does the little guy.  If the Belgian court's recent ruling against Google becomes the "standard" that all sites will be judged, the ruling would likely have a negative effect for most bloggers and the readers who visit those blogs.  As reported by CNET:

I have been doing a lot of reading lately.  More specifically, I have been reading a lot of IT reference books.  In fact, I venture to say that I'm probably one of the few people who ever brought a book on version control systems to the hospital while waiting for neurosurgery.  I really didn't  get much read that day, but I think I still get bragging rights!

I came across a very good article with regards to taxonomy titled, Search in Focus: Implementing a Taxonomy by Penny Crosman.  The article is a month or two old, but I haven't run across it before so maybe others haven't either.

PHP 5.2.1 has been released and includes a number of stability and security enhancement of the 5.X branch. Besides the usual bug fixes (over 180 of them), PHP 5.2.1 also includes the following key improvements:

Version 0.8 for the forum application, bbPress, has been released. This software is a "plain and simple forum" PHP application with roots out of WordPress.  New features in this version of bbPress include:

John Newton, Alfresco, has written an interesting posts regarding "Web 2.0".  I find the article interesting because I think Newton does bring up some new ideas or at least something that hasn't been talked about in some time.  Newton has observed that the main audience for those of Web 2.0 appear to be users that tend to think on the right side of your brain.  Newton also takes it one step further by saying perhaps it is time we start taking into account the personality types of users when it comes to CMS development.

This was a real revelation for me. However, I don’t think that John and Caterina shared my excitement. Maybe it’s already bleeding obvious. The next day I did a Google search on “Web 2.0” and right brain and didn’t find a lot. However, for me it is profound and it is something I think that we can apply immediately to the development of Alfresco. I am going to explore the concept more and I believe that there are implications from Myers-Briggs personality types in how they interact with the Internet.

Taking this further, this might also mean why those who are "left brainers" are kind of annoyed with this whole Web 2.0 terminology.  It has been my experience that while the general public still craves Web 2.0 those involved in the project are exhausted of hearing the phrase be used so much these days.  If you know anything about Myers-Briggs personality types you know there may be some truth to why some of the strongest groups that dislike the Web 2.0 concept appear to be the hard core developers.