There’s no more separate version of WordPress, starting with WordPress 3.0, the former WordPress MU that hosts multi-user blogs on one site is merged with the streamline version of WordPress. To promise faster update and easy integration, the merger is a welcomed addition to vanilla WordPress.

The latest version of BuddyPress, WordPress’ Social Networking plugin has already reached 1.2.5.2 and can be downloaded here:
http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/buddypress.1.2.5.2.zip

with the Indonesian language file here:
http://i18n.svn.buddypress.org/id_ID/branches/1.2/buddypress-id_ID.mo

Have fun!

Related posts:

1. BuddyPress version 1.2 Version 1.2 is ready for download, go to buddypress.org now...
2. BuddyPress version 1.2.4.1 Indonesian Localization Version 1.2.4.1 is ready for download, go to buddypress.org now...

Version 1.2.4.1 is ready for download, go to buddypress.org now and grab a copy!

The BP 1.2.4.1 Indonesian localization can be downloaded at id.buddypress.org.

Enjoy!

Related posts:

1. BuddyPress version 1.2 Version 1.2 is ready for download, go to buddypress.org now...

Version 1.2 is ready for download, go to buddypress.org now and grab a copy!

We now have a BuddyPress Indonesia local blog at id.buddypress.org.

More Info on BuddyPress 1.2 please visit BP Indonesia blog:

• http://id.buddypress.org/2010/02/17/buddypress-versi-1-2/
• Locale MO & PO Files: http://i18n.svn.buddypress.org/id_ID/branches/1.2/

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Our sister site, buzzdsign.com, has undergone a major makeover, please take a look.

Buzz provides user-friendly web design and development, so if you’d ever need a website or need to redesign your site, feel free to contact them.

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Meet the “Fail Whale”…

The Fail Whale, originally entitled "Lifting up a Dreamer" by Yiying Lu

the image that is shown when the infamous micro-blogging site, Twitter, is overloaded.
For those of you who are not familiar with Twitter, it is a social networking site where users can post a 140-character long of sentences, to express and announce anything from the party they’re gonna attend or about the movie that they just watched, pretty much like your facebook.com‘s status updates or the karma-driven plurk entries at plurk.com.

Twitter is currently down for unplanned maintenance *doh*?

Most sites show a relatively boring and annoying “not found” and “site currently down” page to their users during down time or when their user stumble upon a broken link.

Twitter, however, chose to express empathy to their users during down time. Biz Stone, a Twitter founder, chose an illustration, that best illustrates the teamwork at Twitter working to resolve the problem, on iStockPhoto a while back.

The Fail Whale Artist, Yiying Lu, photo by Nick Cubbin

The image is an image of a flock of birds (associated with the Twitter bird) are lifting a smiling whale from the ocean. The effect was found so effective and so touching. The users are entertained by the cute smiling whale being lifted by the flock of birds, instead. Some users suggested that they give the whale a name. Later the whale finally got a name: “Fail Whale”, a name coined by one of the fans and twitter users.

The Fail Whale

The “fail whale” became so popular, that it spawned lots of fans, fan sites, fan pages and groups. One fan, even contacted the original creator of the “fail whale”, Ms. Yiying Lu to inform her of her work that is now popular among twitter users world-wide. Ms. Lu, who at first is unaware of Twitter when she first created and uploaded the illustration to iStockPhoto, suddenly has gained a lot of supporters and fans of her artwork. I can only imagined the surprise and the excitement she felt when she found out that her work is used on a very famous micro-blogging site.

Soon, fans found out the real back story of the “fail whale”, which was originally named “Lifting Up a Dreamer” and was intended as an e-card for her friend overseas. Ms. Lu suddenly became as famous as her friendly smiling whale.

You can find many articles about her and her whales all over the news and the internet:

• How Fail Whale Became a Hit @ Sydney Morning Herald
• Twitter, Twitter, little Star @ Australia’s Sunday Life
• ‘FailWhale’ Gives Frustrated Twitterers Something to Smile About @ Wired
• A Successful Failure, Fail Whale @ The New York Times

Fans fell in love with the whale and instead of frowns, the cute whale made people smile during down time. So you can really call it a failure, can’t you? Because it really served its purpose and grew into a global icon. Not only that, many “fail whale” t-shirts and mugs have been sold to numerous of fans.

Lessons Learned

So, you have to remember that being famous and successful is perhaps only a click away in this era. Just remember the fail whale. “Success” is only a swim or a lift away from “failure”, just keep smiling.

Check out some of the sites about the “Fail Whale”:

• “What is Fail Whale?” by Yiying Lu
• The Fail Whale Fan Club
• Fail Whale Facebook Fan Page
• Fail Whale Twitter Page

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BuddyPress ver 1.2 Indonesian

Useful Links:

• “Translating BuddyPress”
• http://codex.buddypress.org/translations/

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 The Social Web? What’s that? Sounds funny eh?

Without further ado, okay, here’s the Wikipedia excerpt:

The Social Web is currently used to describe how people socialize or interact with each other throughout the World Wide Web. Such people are brought together through a variety of shared interests. There are different ways in which people want to socialize on the Web today. The first kind of socializing is typified by “people focus” websites such as Bebo, Facebook, and Myspace. Such sites promote the person as focus of social interaction. To do this a profile is constructed by each user. In many ways the profile is similar to a passport.

The second kind of socializing is typified by a sort of “hobby focus” websites. For example, if one is interested in photography and wants to share this with like-minded people, then there are photography websites such as Flickr, Kodak Gallery and Photobucket.

The Social Web may also be used to refer to two different, yet related concepts. The first is as a description of web 2.0 technologies that are focused on social interaction and community before anything else.

Some of you, actually most of you who have landed here in my blog, might have already familiarized yourself with those websites mentioned above and perhaps more: Youtube, Friendster, Gaia Online, Deviantart, Linkedin, Digg, Twitter, etc.

Your Home on the Web, Your Social Gathering Place

With the increasing popularity and adoption of mobile gadgets with internet connectivity, either through 3G or WiFi. These social networking sites are becoming a home and meeting place for people all around to find and communicate with friends, families, and even co-workers. They become a social gathering place online.

 

Facebook's Wall updates

 

You can update your status telling your friends, families about what you’re doing at this very moment. You can upload your photos of yesterday’s family outing, or older photo albums. Share your stories or stories, and let your friends or families join in and comment on them. These sites become a place for you to express yourself and tell the world about your presence.

Know the Limit!

But don’t forget… you have to know the limitation. You can’t just pour out all information about you on the web. You have to filter the information that you want to share. You have to be careful so that no one can misuse the info you share on these social networking sites to your own disadvantage. You have to be your own judge.

Be extra careful with your residential address, phone number, bank account number, credit card number. Also extra careful with the photos you upload publicly (especially those embarrassing ones of you or your families or friends). Trained professionals can extract information just by looking at these photos closely. If they can, so can criminals. We don’t want to attract those types, do we?

Expressing yourself on the social web is free and FUN… BUT… you have to stay alert and careful of the things you share. It’s just a word of caution.

Oh, don’t forget that your BOSS might be watching, too! :p

[UPDATE]

Articles for you to consider before sharing anything on the social network:

• http://www.michaelaulia.com/blogs/sick-leave-faker-caught-on-facebook.html
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jan/31/facebook-sex-divorce
• http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2008/10/24/Hooky-playing_worker_caught_using_Facebook/UPI-45161224823329/
• http://technollama.blogspot.com/2007/07/caught-on-facebook.html

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The web-browser market has experienced a lot lately. Nearly a decade ago, the two dominant players of the time were Netscape Navigator (the reigning champ) and MS Internet Explorer (the contender). You might have witnessed the “Browser War” between Netscape and Internet Explorer (IE), which eventually won by IE.

Designer’s point of view

Personally, as a web designer, I have to constantly review these changes to cater to my target audience’s needs and visiting exper ience by designing websites that will “look and feel” similar when viewed using different browsers. Some call this “cross-browser / multi-browser compatibility”. You have to make sure that the site you designed will not break in that particular browser. One of the resource that you might want to go is the browser statistics, like: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

IE is losing grounds

From the statistics, you can see that Firefox is gaining market share consistently year by year. With the addition of Google Chrome in late 2008, the browser market share is once again a fiery battleground. IE has been losing its market share chunk-by-chunk to the competitors.

Why?

Perhaps, primarily because the competitors offer “innovative” additions to the browsing experience. Tabbed browsing made famous by Opera, even way back in the times of IE 5. Usable and customizable add-on / plug-ins for Firefox that extends the browser functionality to greater extends. Next comes “Google Chrome” with Google’s ambition to reinvent the web browsing experience.

Save the Developers

One additional reason why IE is losing its ground is perhaps most IE users are still stuck with IE 6. IE 6 has lots of limitations. A while ago, March 2008, a site called savethedevelopers.org offered a javascript popup for developers/designers to embed in their page, encouraging users to upgrade their outdated IE 6 to IE 7.

Somehow the site is now down and is redirected to Microsoft’s IE page instead. Interesting… Has Microsoft pulled some strings? For us, developers and designers, to maintain compatibility with IE 6 is a rather painful process. For example: IE 6 does not render transparent PNG “gracefully” so we have to include a PNG fix script. Certain IE-specific CSS hacks have to be applied to IE that normally are not required on other browsers.

Mobile Internet Browsing

Don’t forget that with recent advancements in mobile connectivity, more people are browsing the internet using their mobile gadgets. Opera Mobile is famous among Symbian-powered smartphones, including “smart-touchphones” with Opera Mobile for Symbian UIQ devices. iPhone users browse their favorite sites using the built-in Safari browser.

Now, us, designers and developers have more homework to do: to make sure that our design or code will not break on these gadgets, too.

Reference:

• http://www.tgdaily.com/html_tmp/content-view-40800-113.html
• http://crunchgear.com/…/internet-explorer-bleeding-market-share/
• http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/index.html

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