After several weeks off the air. I have decided what to do with TechCast, it’ll have a new name. Although, My plan is to setup a few (2-4) segments for the show along with a main (monthly) part where I and sometimes I’ll bring others on, will talk about Tech news, new gadgets, I’ll review products and I’ll even bring on other to be interviewed. I’ve already got one person as a Segmenter. If you are interested, drop me a line.

If you were wondering, “Is this prerecorded or live?”, Well as of right now, it’ll be prerecorded and at sometime I might bring it back to live. Just want to see how to do this and how well it will work this way, first.

I’ll be talking with Ben (the original co-host) and see if he can keep his part going with a Mac Segment for the show, as well. This new version of “TechCast” should be ready to launch by late July or early August. I can’t wait. I’ll keep you updated, the RSS will be on Feedburner.

Thanks for being a part of the community. We’ll keep you updated with all of the details.

As you probably see, I have changed the theme and updated the sidebar.

New Pages

I’ve added a few new pages and updated others. One of the new ones you may notice is the “Social Me” one, it is based off of the MyBlogLog sidebar widget and just added the icon and the link for that social site or thing. Along with the Social Me page, I’ve updated the Community page and changed the name to Live, it still shows the meebo Room, but I’ve added a few widgets, one is a Ustream.tv widget and another is the TalkShoe streaming widget, when I am live you’ll be able to see me with the Ustream widget and hear me with the TalkShoe streaming widget. The URL of the Community page is the same still, although you can also get to it via http://josh.buddes.net/live/.

New Sidebar Widgets/Objects

Loaded with this theme is a new two column sidebar. This allowed me to make my sidebar look a bit cleaner and easier to read and use. The new widgets that I have added are the “Subscribe” bar, the “Blogroll” links and my Facebook badge. Hope you enjoy the new sidebar, if you’ve got a question or some feedback for me, just drop me a line.

Feedburner

If you have subscribed to my blog via the /feed/ URL, I recommend you re-subscibe via the Feedburner URL (feeds.feedburner.com/Josh-B). The reason I say this, is because if I ever get a new domain just for the blog, I can just change it in feedburner and Ta Da! You are still getting my blog’s feed. Plus, I am not sure if the forwarding for /feed/ is also forwarding for subscibers. But, I’ve setup the Comments and Main Blog feed to forward to the correct Feedburner feeds. I set this up by using Feedburner’s plugin called “FeedSmith”.

Commenting

And finally, Commenting, I’ve disabled the Discus comments temperarilly until I can find a way to add my Comment License for the comments using the Discus plugin and a way to import Comments into Discus’s system (Which they are working on). All discus comments have been imported manually back into the Wordpress system, though. If you are wondering, “what do you use for the Comment License?”, I use something called Comment License 1.2.1 which I found via Weblogtoolscollection, the blog post by Jeff Chandler.

The first beta version of WordPress 2.6 has been released, you can download this version here. According to WordPress Trac Roadmap the final release of WordPress 2.6 should be released between 7th July 2008 and 14th July 2008.

Below are some of the things that are included in the next version of WordPress (2.6):

• Post Revisioning
• A “Press This” bookmarklet for tumblelog style quick posting
• Caching of static files with Gears for faster Admin page loads
• A new and improved image editing dialog that offers lots of control over the images in your posts
• Theme previewing as seen on WordPress.com
• Built-in word counting in the post editor
• The ability to disable remote publishing for the security conscious
• XML-RPC API for changing blog options
• Better SSL support for the Admin
• Hierarchy-aware paging in the Manage Pages and Manage Categories admin pages.
• The ability to relocate your content directory
• The ability to move wp-config.php out of your web root
• Drag-and-drop sortable galleries
• Customizable default avatars
• Bulk delete, activate, and deactivate for plugins
• Check box range selection with shift-click
• TinyMCE 3.1.0.1 with lots of bug fixes
• jQuery 1.2.6 with some nice performance improvements
• jQuery UI 1.5
• Lots of bug fixes and performance improvements

Can’t wait to see the 2.6 stable version so that I can use it for this blog.

Those of you that read the Blog at meebo or use the Meebo service – you would know that meebo just got a fresh new design for the meebo inside interface.

As meebo stated in their blog post,

• the background has been darkened to improve console and link readability.
• the new chrome uses fewer colors for faster loading (a section of the title-bar has 4 colors only).
• the new minimize, maximize, and close buttons are more streamlined so they don’t have too much that “click-me-now” feeling.
• the background, buttons and chrome colors all come from the same family of blues.
• icons have been reworked to use a consistent palette, so that no icon is more prominent than others.
• buttons have been updated to match the buttons introduced in the website redesign of a couple months ago.
• last but not least, new color schemes have been added: aqua, brown, carbon, red.

The day I saw this in my Preferences on Meebo Beta, It put a smile on my face! Why? Well to me, having the meebo interface how I want it to display is one of the Best Things that you can do!

For those that don’t like the flat skins.. There still are some of the Classic Skins on Meebo in your Preferences.

PS: David says that a new onyx design (v2) will be out in the near future – Stay Tuned to the Meebo Blog!

You probably have heard that Firefox is launching Version 3.0 tomorrow – and I was wondering, Are you downloading tomorrow?

Although I already have Firefox 3 RC 3, I will be upgrading to Firefox 3 tomorrow to help Firefox hit their world Record that they want! I’ve add a Download Day / Firefox 3 Badge to the sidebar. Did you know that I have optimized this blog for Firefox? Look at the Footer:

JoshB is proudly powered by WordPress / Feedburner and Optimized for Firefox | Designed by: Bob and Commenting by: Disqus.

So, are you downloading Firefox 3.0 tomorrow? Together we can make Mozilla make it to the world record book.

Besides the Firefox information in this blog post, I’d like to UPDATE you on how the finals are going. I started my Science final today and will probably finish it tomorrow, I will start/finish my Math final tomorrow and for the Social Studies one, I will start that tomorrow and finish it on Thursday.

Thanks for reading, I am looking forward to reading your comments below.