Matt has announced new additions Ideas and Kvetch, two new ways to participate in the development of open source blogging platform WordPress.

The first is simply called Ideas, and it’s a place where you can share your wildest WordPress wishes with the world, and also vote on other people’s ideas. This allows people outside our normal circle of developers to have a direct say in what goes into the next version of WordPress. For 2.2, which comes out in late April, we will include the top voted on features, so propose something, tell your friends about it, and link it from your blog.

The second we’ve named after the Yiddish word, Kvetch. This is a place where you can quickly and anonymously express whatever might disagree with you in the WordPress world. Let it all loose, but try to keep it PG rated, and we’ll show a random kvetch on the page once we get enough in the system.

Originally posted on January 10, 2007 @ 4:33 am

What better time to launch a techy blog than for CES and MacWorld? New York Times agrees, and puts Bits: Notes on Evolving Technology online, being edited by four seasoned writers.

About Bits
As cellphones grow ever smaller and TV screens grow ever larger, keeping on top of developments in personal technology can seem overwhelming. The Times’s top technology reporters are helping sift through the newest gadgets and trends, reporting from the floors of the Consumer Electronics Show and the Macworld convention.

Via journalism.co.uk

Originally posted on January 9, 2007 @ 10:00 am

Via the Facebook blog, we learn that you now can both browse and use the site with your mobile phone.

Mobile Web lets you surf Facebook on your phone just like the normal website… except that it actually fits on the screen.

Mobile Uploads lets you send photos and notes to Facebook when you’re out and about. We know from experience that really cool things are likely to happen when you’re not sitting in front of a computer.

Mobile Texts lets you send and receive Facebook messages, wall posts and pokes using text messages, plus you can update your status and search profiles from your phone. Remember that time when you needed to call someone, didn’t have their number, but you knew that it was on Facebook? Yeah, that was the worst. Fear no more.

If I was building a community today I would make mobile accessibility one of the cornerstones. You want people to communicate and network, right? Well, get the users hooked even on the go, it’s as simple as that. Good call, Facebook.

Originally posted on January 11, 2007 @ 3:37 am

Several rumors surfaced, and was then dismissed, about the probable sale of MyBlogLog to Yahoo. Now it’s official, however, with coverage over at GigaOM and TechCrunch, as well as the official MyBlogLog blog.

Yahoo! is going to put loads of resources into MyBlogLog and help us roll out a ton of new features. Plus, we’re moving to their infrastructure, which should help with those occasional slowdowns.

The Yahoo blog Yodel Anecdotal also has an announcement post.

For you die hard fans wondering what will change to your beloved MyBlogLog — not to worry. We aren’t planning on making any immediate changes to the MyBlogLog website, distribution or branding. We want to encourage the continued growth of the community and foster the innovation that has already made MyBlogLog an indispensable part of your life. In short, we want to make what you already love even better.

The MyBlogLog team is moving to San Francisco. I wonder how much they got…

Originally posted on January 9, 2007 @ 4:35 am