The fine people who created the software that runs this blog have just announced that WordPress 2 has officially been released. Tonnes of great new features including a completely redesigned backend that includes a bunch of AJAX goodness, the awesome Askimet comment spam busting plugin, resizable editing box and faster posting!

The Eclipse Web Tools Platform has finally released version 1.0 of it’s great all-around web tools editor. WIth support for technologies like HTML, Javascript, CSS, JSP, SQL, and XML this is a great editor for every web developer to at least check out. You can Download version 1.0 from the eclipse.org site.

I’ve been using this editor for over six months now and it has replaced Dreamweaver as my choice of editor. Dreamweaver is great, but my development team needed to start working with versioning/source-control repositories, and Dreamweaver just didn’t have great native support for our system of choice which was Subversion. Granted, there is a Dreamweaver extension that provides subversion support, but the cost of the extension and negative reviews were a deterent. Dreamweaver was also overkill for our projects. We were simply using Dreamweaver as a very expensive text/code editor.

Thanks to Dopefly for pointing out the release of vesion 1.0 - Looks like I will have to join their mailing lists as well!

Google has provided a Add to Google button feature that can easily be integrated onto your blog or other site that offers RSS feeds. By placing an “Add to Google” button to your website your visitor will have an easier time adding you feed to their Google homepage or Google Reader. Not to be outdone, Yahoo! offers a similar feature.

Here is a nice little tip that will show you how to make the Firefox Back Button Bigger. Why? Well, the bigger the button, the easier it is to target with the mouse, making for better usability (and accessibility).

Does your workplace or educational institution block websites using a proxy? This tip from O’Reilly, will show you how to access those sites using Google Translate. Think of it as a free proxy!

Prototype is am amazing, well thought and well written piece of standards-compliant JavaScript code takes a lot of the burden associated with creating rich, highly interactive web pages that characterize the Web 2.0 off your back. Unfortunately, until recently there was a lack of documentation for this great library, meaning that if you wanted to use it, you needed to really hack it to make it work. Now, the makers of the library have made Using prototype.js documentation available to the general public.

CSSTidy is an open source CSS parser and optimiser. You can use it as executeable file which can be controlled via the command line or through a PHP script. The parser is available for Windows, Linux and OSX.

Progression Desktop promises to help you migrate from Windows to Linux with their easy to use software. The application allows you to transfer files and settings from Windows desktops to Linux desktops in an automated fashion. Settings can be exported an imported from many applications including Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Outlook Express, Mozilla or Thunderbird to Novell Evolution, KMail, Mozilla or Thunderbird, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox, Microsoft Word, AOL Instant Messenger and GAIM.

Ben Bleikamp shares his recent experience Flipping his blog - that’s right he sold his blog, and for pretty decent bucks! The selp-proclaimed entrepreneur set up a poker blog, loaded it with some original content (over 100 posts over 3 months) then sold it for $2,400USD. What I find even more amazing is that he only had 35 people subscribed to his RSS feed and he averaged 100 unique visits a day.

SNARF is a preview product from Microsoft Research that was built around the notion that social network information that is already available to the computer system can be usefully reflected to the user: a message from a manager might be seen differently than a message from a stranger, for example. The user interface is designed to provide a quick overview of unread mail, organized by its importance which of course is determined by the social network information that SNARF discovers.