WordPress 2.8 Beta Review

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WordPress recently released WordPress 2.8 Beta, which has some interesting new features which will come in handy.

As usual I’ve tested it out, and here are the highlights:

New theme installer

Wordpress Theme Installer

This new theme installer now means that WordPress can install themes you find on the WordPress Theme Directory straight to your theme directory without the need of FTP or manual file copying. It’s very similar to the automatic plugin installation system that was implemented in WordPress 2.7. However, it is more advanced and allows the user to select certain filters to make searching easier. This will definitely be a nifty little feature to look forward to.

Widget handling

widgetsThe widget handling system has been improved, with a much better click and drag interface which is much simpler to use than the previous widget handling system.

Those are the two things I find most useful. Other than that, I can’t find anything else that I would find outstanding.

WordPress has posted a Codex page with information that corresponds to the WordPress 2.8 Beta, so if you’d like a full changelog please click here.

Try it out and see what you think. I haven’t found any major bugs, but I’d recommend you don’t install it on your main blog/site. If you can, create a test blog for WordPress 2.8 beta and wait for the final release before installing it on your main blog/site.

The Sims 3 leaked online 2 weeks before public release

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It looks like EA haven’t won the piracy battle yet (will they ever?).

The Sims 3 has been found on public P2P sites just two weeks before the public release of The Sims 3. It can now be downloaded and played on, however this is illegal and GEEK! does not encourage you to do so.

Electronic Arts, the owner of The Sims 3, has previously tried and failed to stop piracy when it launched its last Maxis game – Spore. This was also leaked on to P2P sites before release.

The Sims 3 is currently due for launch on June 5th in the United Kingdom, but it looks as if many people may already have a copy thanks to the online torrent.

It’s a sad time for the game industry at the moment – too many profits are being lost thanks to P2P sites. The gaming industry needs to learn to work with P2P, because it’s totally obvious that the gaming industry will never win against P2P. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em…

BBC demonstrates how much damage Trojans can do

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The BBC has posted a short video on its website that demonstrates what a hacker could do with a trojan horse at his disposal.

The video demonstrates how complex and sophisticated trojan horses are, and how easily somebody could get access to any private information on a victim’s computer.

The videos talks about how a hacker could see the victim’s screen and whatever is on it, read his keystrokes (for displaying hidden keystrokes) and even see the victim’s webcam (scary).

The video is only two and a half minutes long but if you aren’t aware of how clever hackers are, I suggest you take a look at this video.

Twitter – do you tweet?

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I’ve known about Twitter for ages, but it was only 2 days ago when I finally decided to join the party and see what all the fun’s about. I’ve set up a page on Twitter for GEEK! in case you haven’t already seen it – twitter.com/geekonthepc – on which I’ll be posting the most popular GEEK! posts together with all the new posts that get posted here (so you’ll see this post on Twitter).

After playing around with Twitter for a couple of days, I’m not amazed by it. I haven’t got any problems with it, but it doesn’t make my go WOW. I really like the simplicity of Twitter (unlike many other comparable sites) and how easy it is.

Twitter is much more basic than Facebook or Myspace in my opinion. You simply say what you are doing and read what you’re friends are doing. You can “follow” people so you get their updates immediately and other people can “follow” you – it’s kind of like the ‘Subscribe’ function on Youtube when you subscribe to somebody’s channel.

A large range of applications and websites have also been created to enhance Twitter. Many of them simply display the most popular tweets and Twitter URLs. I find these handy, especially if you want to grab attention to yourself.

I don’t use Twitter personally, simply because I’m not really into social networking. As I said earlier, I’ve set up a Twitter page for the benefit of GEEK! readers, but it won’t be something I’ll be joining for personal use.

I look forward to the future of Twitter. I think it will be interesting to see what Twitter becomes in the near future. It is being known to have a very high growth rate and is already extremely popular, so it will be nice to see what it’s like in a years time.

Updated Windows 7 Release Candidate review (screenshots)

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Microsoft has recently released a few updates – one of which fixes a bug with the Windows 7 graphics card driver on my laptop (driver for SiS M672MX), which now means I can use the Aero interface properly and without issues. 

Since Aero is now working, I’ve decided I’ll take some screenshots to give people who haven’t downloaded Windows 7. I recently did a full Windows 7 review without screenshots, so if you’d like to see that instead, please click here.

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