Daily Bits

Web Tools

Automattic Launches VaultPress, Back Up Service for Self-Hosted Blogs

by

Automattic has announced its new service that is aim to help self-hosted WordPress blog owners ensure that their blog properties are safe and secure. The new service called VaultPress is an online backup service built on the Automattic grid which in case you’re not aware is serving more than 10 billion WordPress.com blogs and 250 million monthly visitors.

VaultPress would ensure that your blogs and sites are completely secure no matter what happens to the server where it is hosted.  The service will secure your plugins, themes, comments, posts revisions  and of course every bit of content of your WordPress blogs.

Despite the complexity of what it can do, using VaultPress will be surprisingly easy. It’s actually your usual WordPress plugin that you can install on your blogs.  And you can always add additional blogs easily anytime you need to.

And once you get VaultPress running, it will continously monitors and stores updates to your blogs and sites. Everything that you do – write, edit, and upload will be simultaneously reflected in your VaultPress backup.

Sounds wonderful, right? Unfortunately, VaultPress will be offered as a Premium service.  Monthly fee is expected to be around $10.  But hey, it’s not really a big sum of money considering that it will safely secure that your blogs will always be online.

VaultPress is about to go on close beta state. If you want to be part of the beta testers, you may sign up here.

Will you register your blog on VaultPress once it goes public? Are you willing to pay for it?

Google Rolls Out File Transfer Feature on Orkut and iGoogle, Coming Soon for Gmail Too

by

Google is rolling out a new  feature to some of its communication services such as Orkut, iGoogle and Gmail. This new feature has something to do with easily transferring files through the chat facility.

If you are an Orkut member or you use iGoogle as a start up page for your browser, you might be aware that both these services have a Google-powered chat facility.  And one of the important feature of  any chat facility is of course file transfer capability.

So, if you want to transfer file to a friend, you don’t have to send them an email again. Just start a chat session, click on the “Send a file” option from the Actions menu and then start sending the file.

And while you’re either in your Orkut dashboard or iGoogle account, you may have noticed that Google also did some minor facelift to on the chat facility of these two services. More particularly you may have noticed three new blue icons that enable you to start a video, voice or  group chat easily and quickly.

These new chat features will also be available to Gmail Chat facility . But in the meantime, you can still use the “Video and More” option from the Gmail chat window to start a video conference with your Gmail buddies.

Digg Unloads Widget, Buttons Generator and Soon an iPhone App

by

As if telling us that they are still up and running, the folks at Digg has been sending out noisemakers one after another.  Digg has just released the buttons and widget generators while a native iPhone app is in the pipeline.

The New Digg iPhone Application

The new Digg native iPhone app is not yet announced but Mashable was able to obtain some insider info as well as screenshots to prove that the Digg iPhone app is indeed in the works.  The app would support browsing of popular, upcoming and recent stories across all topics in Digg.com. It will also let you Digg and bury stories right within the app. Plus an option to navigate through comments and related stories. The Digg iPhone app is slated for release anytime now in the Apps Store.

Digg Buttons and Widget Generators

The new Digg buttons and widget generators on the other are now both available. What these online tools allow you to do is to create and customize Digg buttons that you can incorporate to your blogs/sites seamlessly.  Digg is releasing these online tools in preparation for the launch of the redesigned Digg.

But aside from letting you create Digg buttons easily, the buttons that you will create and incorporate in your websites now boasts of  new features such as dynamic display of live Digg count, faster load time, customizable look and feel and more.

The Digg widgets also gets some other new features including more customization options, tabs and columns, thumbnails, fallback content and more.

You can try creating your Digg buttons here, or the Digg Widgets here.

Dropbox App Coming Soon to Android Phones

by

Among the cloud storage services I’ve tried, I stuck with Dropbox for its superb storage solution. I used Dropbox to synchronize my files from my online, desktop and iPhone applications and pretty soon I might get another interface – for my Android-powered Google Nexus One phone.

Yes, you read it right. If you have a Dropbox account, you will soon be able to access your files from your Android phone as Dropbox is about to launch its new Android app pretty soon. And will the upcoming Dropbox app for Android offer us Android phone owners?

The new Dropbox iPhone app will let you:

Access your Dropbox on the go – view all the contents of your Dropbox account, including music and movie streaming right on your Android phone.

Make edits to your files and sync them back to Dropbox – Changes you make to your files using the Android app will be automatically synced to your Dropbox account/

Download files for offline viewing – Have all your files accessible anytime, anywhere by adding them to your “Favorites.’

Upload files and sync them to your Dropbox – Use your Android phone’s powerful camera to take snapshots, shoot video and then upload them from your Android phones to your Dropbox account to make them accessible. You can also send an email containing the links to your files to your friends quickly and easily.

Share links to files in your Dropbox –  That practically include any  files in your computer.

No words yet on the exact date that this Android app will be available, although the Dropbox blog mentioned something like in the next few months.

ChaCha Adds Social Dimension to its Q&A Service

by

I’m not really sure whether you have heard or at the most used ChaCha.com, a question and answer service that provides quick, accurate answers to millions of question everyday.  Regardless, you might be interested to know that the online Q&A service  is adding some social aspects to its service by launching the new ChaCha.me social platform.

The ChaCha.me platform allows you to build a profile. But once your profile is up, practically all those who’ve created their own profiles as well can start asking you various questions.  Likewise, you are free to ask questions to them too.  It’s like building a social network based on the Q&A format.

To kick off its launch, ChaCha.me is featuring David Guetta who recently won a Grammy Award and currently has two songs on the Billboard Top 50. Guetta will be among the first celebrities who will be featured on ChaCha.me. Once on the featured page, fans can ask questions and hopefully get answers from celebrities.

In addition, ChaCha.me will soon be making its way on mobile platforms, specifically on iPhone and Droid handsets. An SMS functionality is also being planned.

ChaCha’s CEO Steve Jones has this to say about the launch of ChaCha.me:

“One of the most fundamentally appealing qualities of social sites like Twitter and Facebook is the notion that people care about what celebrities and friends are doing and sharing. ChaCha.me provides this forum for users, but also takes it to the next level with intimate Q&A interaction. These ChaCha.me answers may flow into ChaCha’s broad database so that those who are asking for answers from ChaCha will receive, in effect, certified answers directly. For example, ChaCha will now be able to return certain answers about David Guetta, directly from David himself,” said Mr. Jones.

WordPress for BlackBerry Updated to 1.1 with Geotagging, Notifications and More Features

by

When I first tried WordPress for BlackBerry app, I was pretty amazed at how it simply gets the job done. I mean despite its simplistic approach to a mobile application, that is minus all the fancy interface, it’s really commendable that the app works fast. Perfect for mobile blogging.

And guess what, making  WordPress for BlackBerry even more efficient are some new cool features that extend the app’s blogging functionality. WordPress for BlackBerry 1.1 is now out and it’s really loaded with great new features including the following:

  • Comment Notifications
  • Geotagging of Posts
  • Improved UI interaction on Touch devices
  • introduction of Touch Gestures:
    Sliding a finger to the left or right quickly on the Comment screen displays the next or previous comment.
  • Photo Resizing improvements with user defined dimensions
  • New File Browser with thumbnails support
  • Overall enhancements to the speed and stability of the app

I was going to point out its greatest features but then as I was scrolling through the list, all new features are very important in making the app a great mobile blogging app. But yeah, the comment notifications is a much needed feature. While the geotagging of posts makes the app at par with the current location-aware feature of most mobile apps.

Wait, there’s more. The app also now supports several languages including English, Italian, Finnish, French, Indonesian, German, and Portugese.

You can snag the WordPress for BlackBerry 1.1 from the BlackBerry App World. It’s free to have, download, install and use.  Or you may fire up the old app from your BlackBerry and you will be prompted to update to the new version.