WordPress 2.5 has finally released, and WordPress.org has been redesigned to resemble WordPress 2.5’s dashboard. Here is how it looks like for now:

I have upgraded both of my WordPress blogs to WordPress 2.5, and after just 5 minutes of exploring it, I decided I love the older version better. Two changes on the Write page that really bothers me:

• The Category selection no longer sits at the sidebar of the Write page, instead, it is now placed under the textarea, which is also below the fold. I forgot to assign categories to my first blog post after upgrading because of this
• Image uploading looks more difficult this time. Instead of an uploading box ready right below of the textarea, you gotta click on the Add media button this time, and wait for the ajax thing to load, only then you can upload the image. Too much hassle in my opinion

Another thing I noticed after the upgrade:

The logo looks so wrong with the dark background. Doesn’t really bother much, but it can definitely be much better. These are just what I have noticed so far after less than 30 minutes of upgrading, of course there are a lot of other cool features that I have yet to notice, but so far I have only met with inconvenience.

Probably I need time to suit myself to the new environment. Watch the screencast to have a tour of WordPress 2.5’s new dashboard environment.

P/s: Uploading just three images for this post is already a pain

I don’t know Jake (blogs at More Merchant) personally, but I have seen his head for several time as a 125×125 ad button via Entrecard. I saw it again today, but this time, even his body is shown:

Coincidence actually, for having a t-shirt ad via Project Wonderful just right below his ad. It was spotted at studkickass. It might still be there if you are quick enough. A bigger look:

Like YouTube videos but want something fancier than YouTube’s default dull and boring player? Slide SkinFlix can help turning the dull player into one with bling blings within seconds, in which you can embed it on your blog, MySpace profile etc.

You can choose to pick a video skin (frame) or a theme (butterflies etc flying around on the video)—or even both of them. I made a demo using a video of an Airbus A380 landing at Heathrow Airport, with Fireflies as the theme and a TV as the skin.

The theme thing is quite annoying to me as it’s somewhat blocking the video, but the skin is sure cool, especially when you want something more special than the color and border offered by YouTube.

Have fun customizing your videos!

Of course it is frustrating when you listen to a song you like on radio, but you don’t know who sing that and the song title. You can end that frustration by installing a less than 500KB (after installing) freeware—Tunatic.

The concept is simple. Just let Tunatic to listen to the song that you want to identify, via a microphone, and within seconds, Tunatic will fetch the song name and the artist name from its database if it match something (make sure you’re online, of course).

Best of all, it doesn’t just work for English songs. I tried Chinese songs and it works too! Basically Tunatic will just fetch whatever song information that matches its database. And its database are maintained by the Tunatic community. It collects song information from users who wants to contribute via a program called Tunalyzer. Too bad, Tunalyzer only works on Mac OS X at this moment, else I will contribute too.

I tried recording a song to using my mobile phone, and then play it to Tunatic, and it identify the song perfectly as expected. That would be useful if you listened to a song that you like, either at the radio or in a shopping complex, just grab your phone and record it. When you are home, let Tunatic listen to it, and you will then be able to identify the song name and the artist’s name.

Too bad, Tunatic couldn’t recognize the tune if you sing or hum it. Else you can just remember how to song go, and sing it to Tunatic for the song name. Thilak get it wrong for this part. Once in a while, there will be a really great software coming out from nowhere. This is definitely one of them.

via TechBuzz

You would find this useful if you want to redirect one or more of your WordPress page(s) to another website. For example, you want a link on your navigation that will fetch your visitors to your Flickr or to your forum which is located at another address.

There are two ways of doing this, using a redirect php file or by just using a meta tag.

The Use of Meta Tag

1. Create a WordPress page
2. In the page, insert this meta tag:
   <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=http://example.com" />
3. Substitute “0″ which the number of seconds you want to delay before redirecting. Substitute “http://example.com” with the URL of the website you want to redirect to

The Use of redirect.php

1. Download and upload the redirect.php file by cavemonkey50 to your theme’s directory (/wp-content/themes/theme name/)
2. Create a WordPress page
3. Select “Redirect” as your page template.
4. Add a custom field with the key “redirect” and the value being the URL of your targeted website

I personally prefer the second method, as using meta tag seems to delay the redirecting more.

If you upgrade your blog regularly every time WordPress releases a new version, you should know how pain it is to deactivate every single plugins you have there. Deactivate one.. page reload..wait.. deactivate another.. page reload.. wait.. (you get the idea)

To replace this very important feature WordPress should be including by default, Alex had released a plugin last year, called 1 Click to Stop & Start Plugins. All you have to do is to download the single php file, upload it to your plugins folder, and activate it in your ‘Plugins’ page.

By then, you should see a ‘Deactivate All Plugins’ button at the bottom of your ‘Plugins’ page. The next time you want to deactivate all your plugins, be it for version upgrading or troubleshooting your WordPress problem, just click on the ‘Deactivate All Plugins’ and pooof, everything is deactivated.

When everything is deactivated, it means that the 1 Click to Stop & Start Plugins
is deactivated as well. Now after you are done with your upgrading and stuff, you can activate all your plugins you last deactivated again, but simply activating the 1 Click to Stop & Start Plugins plugin again. It remembers your last deactivated plugins.

Plugin page | Download 1 Click Stop & Start Plugins

The number of comments of a blog is occasionally being used as a metric to determine how active a blog is. Therefore it is important to make sure it is easy for someone to leave a comment on your blog. An example of a bad commenting system are those found on Blogger powered blogs.

I will almost certainly won’t want to comment on a blog that require me to click on the “Leave a comment” link, wait for the pop up, and only fill things up in the small window. In short, Blogger’s commenting system is just bad, very bad. If you are using Blogger too but and are looking for a better commenting system, then check Intense Debate out.

From an annoying Blogger pop up comment to Intense Debate

One of the best reason to switch to Intense Debate is that, it does not pop up, but integrate nicely on your blog instead. Meaning one can post a comment on your blog without leaving the post itself, just like those seen on WordPress blogs. Head over The Thinking Blog for a working demo. Watch the video below to see what features are offered:

Installing Intense Debate is easy. If you are using Blogger, you will only need to add the Intense Debate widget to your blog and you are good to go. I’m not paid for this post, but it just doesn’t make sense to stick to Blogger’s comment system any longer when you can have a way better one.

Here you go, the second SheepTech report card. The first month performed better than this month, as less effort is put on promoting.

Traffic

This month’s traffic is not even half of last January’s. Just 712 unique visitors with 1,232 pageviews. Search engine traffic has increased, and Yahoo! was responsible for it. Google doesn’t seem to trust this blog yet, and it ranks quite poor there.

RSS Feed Subscribers

Nothing much changed. At the time of writing last month’s report, there are 15 subscribers. This time, it is something near too—16!. Also, only one subscriber is willing to let me know who he is, which is Gary.

Money Made

$0, for having 0 advertisement for the whole month.

Last Month’s Goal

Make it to Google’s first page for the keyword “SheepTech” - It’s ranking on the first page now, but it’s at only the fifth position.

30 RSS subscribers and 3k-5k visitors - RSS subscriber have not even reach 20 yet, and only 712 unique visitors are recorded for the entire February. Failed for both.

Have you ever got shocked having your main email inbox being spammed heavily the next day after you revealed your email address to an unknown website? There are many websites out there that collect email addresses from its users, and then sell them to other companies—which will spam the email addresses with junk emails.

Disposable email address is one of the best way to prevent your email address being spammed. As its name suggest, a disposable email address is one type of email address that you only use for temporary. You create it within seconds, read the emails sent to the address, and later the email address will be deleted. Below is the list of disposable email address provider that works great:

1. Mailinator (Highly Recommended)

Mailinator requires no registration at all. Just send anything directly to <something>@mailinator.com and you can check the inbox immediately via Mailinator’s website or even RSS. Because of this, you and another user might be sharing the same email address if you both happens to choose the same address. And because of this, the inbox is completely public and just anyone can have access to it.

It is good if you need a quick email address for general purpose, but I would not recommend if you will be using it for handling sensitive information. As mentioned, just anyone can read your email there, provided they know your Mailinator email address.

2.Guerrilla Mail

A random email address will be generated (example: logeuoua@guerrillamail.biz) with just a click at Guerrilla Mail. You will then be redirected automatically to the inbox, which will last for only 15 minutes before the email address will be deleted. However, you can always request for another 15 minutes if you have not done using it yet.

As you can only use Guerrilla Mail for a certain time frame, it is only recommended for one-time-usage. For example, you are forced to join a mailing list before you can download an e-book, you can use Guerrilla Mail.

3. 10 Minute Mail

It works exactly like Guerrilla Mail. Just that 10 Minute Mail (I know it should be 10 minutes, but who cares) is offering just 10 minutes instead of 15 minutes. But again, you can always request for another 10 minutes if you are not done with your stuff.

4. Spaml

There is no need to click anything in order to generate a temporary email address. Once you visit Spaml, a random email address (e.g. j3cjaphxaq@spaml.com) will be generated immediately and being copied to your clipboard.

So basically you only need to visit Spaml, paste the email address to wherever you want it to be submitted, and return to Spaml to check your inbox. You can even customize the email address to your liking (e.g sheeptech@spaml.com).

5. Jetable

Jetable is not a temporary email address provider. But instead, it will generated a random email address that will forward all emails that are sent to that address to your actual email address. Something like a middleman.

You can choose how long the email address will last, one hour, one day, one week, or one month. Once the email address is expired, it will stop forwarding emails to your primary address.

……………

There are still many more temporary or disposable email address provider out there. But most of them basically works the same. It is essential to protect your primary email address as you just couldn’t imagine how terrible spams are—especially when you are with an email provider with an inefficient spam filter.