The micro-blogging app, Jaiku, has moved from it’s previous hosted servers to a Google data centre, following problems with the system.

Jaiku, who had been acquired by Google in October of last year, had always planned to migrate their systems to Google’s servers, in readiness for integration with Google Apps. However due to some problems they had last weekend, they decided to make the leap a little earlier than planned. Jaiku is still in a closed Beta, but now allows current users to give out unlimited invitations. If anyone wants an invite from me, drop a comment on this post.

In a move that is surely showing the flailing business model of Twitter, the free micro-blogging site has axed the use of text message updates to most of it’s UK users, in a bid to cut costs.

An estimated $1,000 per year is the cost to Twitter for every UK user. And they’re not prepared to find a way to make money from these users - it seems easier to just cut everyone off.

As most of us know, Twitter has been suffering huge infrastructure problems with what seems like daily outages of some form another, with many users finding the service increasing frustrating. If it’s not the IM features, it’s the text or website blogging features that are down - every user of Twitter knows all too well the classic whale picture when things aren’t working as they should. With this recent cost-cutting exercise, is it too little too late? Or is it the sign of a system desperately trying to find a way out of a badly scaling web app?

During the writing of this article, twitter is displaying for UK users a box stating “important changes to our SMS service” on the left, above the twitter comments - which is a little ridiculous, as the infamous “We’re working to restore IM services to all users. Thanks for your patience!” message is showing the underlying problems of the site to the right of the page. Patience is getting very thin now guys - I know lots of people that have already gone elsewhere purely due to the frustration these problems are causing.

I’m not sure if this is brilliance, or desperation, but I do know that I, and lots of other bloggers, get a free 1 year membership to Britannica online - which can’t be a bad thing for us. So how?

Surprisingly registering myself on the website for access was very straightforward. You simply provide the address of your website, your name & email address and away you go. And literally within the space of 10 hours or so I received an email with my promotional code - which makes me think the process is semi-automated - unless they have a huge team of people verifying websites. Once you have the email, click the link, register properly and you will be given access to Encyclopaedia Britannica for free (for a year.) So how useful is it?

Well my initial look is very positive. You can link to articles from your website and anyone will be able to read them without a subscription - which, otherwise, would pretty much make the idea useless. So, if I wanted to reference an article about IBM it’s as easy as clicking the link.

It makes more sense, as a blogger, to get balanced sources of information - and to always question a single source until it’s verified elsewhere. The amount of verification depends on the person. The facility to use Britannica online is a good one, but I think generally bloggers will use it for verification and so won’t link to the article directly. If this was the case with most people, they obviously won’t draw people to the website which is the whole reason for this promotion in the first place.

At last! Wordpress 2.5 has been released to an expectant blogging community. For those that use the blogging software (and skymonkey.org is powered by wordpress) then you’ll be glad to know the following features come with the latest version: Multiple file upload, WYSIWYG that doesn’t “helpfully” change your html code, plugin upgrades are simpler & a search system that looks at pages as well as posts. There are lots of other changes too, so if you’re a wordpress fan or are thinking of using the software, go here.

Obviously written because I’m a big wordpress fan - this very blog uses it, and I can’t sing the wordpress group’s efforts in creating an awesome piece of software. However, there is always room for improvement and it always amazes me how the users in the community can take the software and adapt it for their needs. Normally writing plug-ins for wordpress is enough, but sometimes they’ll shoe-horn the software to do something the developers never thought of. Have a look at this tutorial of usable tips and tricks, which includes the source code, to transform your wordpress blog into something a little different. I think I’ll have a little look myself… [SHOW ME]

Talk of the gPhone (see what I did there?) has erupted into rumours once more that the OS is going to be linux based, to compete with the likes of Windows Mobile and Symbian. According to The Register article they are quoted, "according to latest reports" whatever that means. And this brings me neatly into the current state of news nowadays on technology & the real reason for this post..

It seems that the tiny flickering of reports relating to google/apple/microsoft or any of the other big players, results in an article to fill space.. It also seems as if The Register, and other technology news websites don’t have 2 dozen articles a day printed they feel they’re failing, even though they may not have any news to report.

Why do we need our eyes opened to the constant little pieces of news based on nothing whilst having no direction or relevance from these websites?? I personally make sure that all of the news I report isn’t snippets of info based on nothing, but rather bigger important things going on in the world of tech. And if there isn’t any news big enough, then I’ll post a general interest story or some humour - not try to create a story from news that doesn’t exist. Surely the real news is when we can say "The GPhone will use linux that is based on the Ubuntu distro." and be sure that the words "Gphone", "linux" & "ubuntu" are all correct and relevant. And this will only happen when the product is previewed properly so we can report on how the device will work - and not by creating articles regurgitating old news with a spin. [SHOW ME]

Just a short post to say that today I am moving. And although I don’t usually write personal posts, I thought I’d drop this one in as I’m probably not going to be blogging for a week or so with everything up in the air.

So please, don’t go away and hopefully I’ll be back sooner than I think!

This list is pretty comprehensive if you have a blog. If you implement at least half of these things I reckon you’ll see a definate increase in traffic. I personally do most and my traffic is still very light. The only thing I haven’t done is really promote the blog. I was hoping some of you guys would do that.. =)

Anyway, if you are a blogger or are thinking of becoming one, this list I think should set you off in the right direction.

[link]

Yeap, a quick post to let you know (if you care) that the ants are dead, therefore the antblog is dead. Oh well. It seems they only last a month or so before they “pop their clogs” to coin a phrase!

Oh well, on with the tech news then…

Well? I think it went pretty well. And yeah, in case you haven’t noticed, the website is ALL WORDPRESSED UP! Yeah! So the blog is now wordpress, and *hopefully* the XML feeds are working and everything is seamless! If you are having problems, comment or send me an email (about/contact section) so I can make changes, although the initial feeling is it >went well<

So, if you want to move your blog to a WordPress blog, take your time, do your research and send me an email if you need help. I've provided a few links below to hopefully help if you're having problems...

[Import Blogger to WP] - Move your posts to WP. Didn’t work for me, did it manually in the end!
[Moving WP] - How to move WP from one directory to another.
[Move the feed] - I think your host needs to be linux (apache) to do this, but works well. Just remember the .htaccess file they talk about goes in your blog directory! I’m pretty sure all is good…!