The personal weblog of Arian Xhezairi - a student, web developer and Technology enthusiast.

8 months iTechnologize, 22 years Arian Xhezairi

I’m officially announcing that I’ve turned 22 two days ago. Couldn’t make this announcement any earlier that this, while I was engaged in various subjects, ex. celebrating my birthday with my girlfriend, calling MediaTemple for my new server I’ve purchased, and lot other stuff going on. But it’s not a big deal whatsoever, because I’m here again, one year older.

I’ve also promised I’ll upgrade my blogs, however iTechnologize is still not updated, for what I should do first is transfer it to the new home. After that, I’ll run things from the beginning again. In the mean time, I’d be glad if someone would suggest me a nice minimalist theme for this blog as I’m not feeling comfortable with either ones I’m choosing from time to tome. Currently I’m unable to take some time and develop a new one for myself, as a matter of fact there are three themes I’ve started to develop and yet remaining uncompleted.

Again, I truly thank you for being so loyal to this blog, I thank you for the visits, I simply thank you for your interest in what I write encourages me to keep on trying harder to offer you new interesting stuff to read. You made my 21th be a very entertaining year for me to have lived and experienced new things.

I like Matt so much for giving us WordPress 2.6 that quickly

I consider you’ve noticed that I didn’t publish anything about WordPress 2.6 RC1, and I assume you pretty much know the reason why I didn’t do so. Without further rambling I announce (after Matt of course) the availability of WordPress 2.6 final release. Honestly, I am so excited to write about it.

Personally I had enough time to play with 2.6 beta releases, while ignoring the RC1 I’m jumping right upon the final and enjoying what it’s coming with. The new features have already been mentioned many times, here and in other blogs, so what really matters now is to encourage you download it here. However if you missed anything, a full list of in-the-package features can be found in the official announcement so enjoy of what you’ll face with.

Regardless of my criticism WordPress developers insisted on releasing a Release Candidate, but obviously they followed that no longer than in three days with the final hit, which I’m pretty happy about. I think Matt read and didn’t really like what I’ve said in my previous post about WordPress Betas and RCs. I assume he was on a WordCamp and rushed to get back as soon as possible saying to his guys “Hey, what are you waiting for, release the Final!” In worst case scenarios he would have said “… no matter how much we could improve, just do it.”, or maybe not, this only happened with the major 2.5 version I think. Anyway, this is my fantasy, the story I came up with.

Below you can watch a worth watching video which demonstrates new embedded features in WordPress 2.6.

Earlier I’ve stated that I want to upgrade my blogs before I turn one year older, but I’m not going to hurry though as for tomorrow I have a Web Applications & e-Technology exam, plus I’m waiting for a potential 2.6.1, who knows what may happen. Enjoy it.

WordPress version 2.6 almost here

A very short note about changes and naming, I was just wondering at least. The latest changes seem to be very promising, and sincerely we’re expecting something very much improved. Now below I’ll provide some useful links so you get a closer feeling of the new WordPress 2.6 Beta3 release.

However, there’s this naming convention which confuses me, probably I lack some necessary information, but why Beta tag has been used instead of RC that the major 2.5 was named after. On his blog posting about Beta3 of the version 2.6 Ryan Boren says:

We have one more week to go before the final release of 2.6.

Now, according to that there will be no Release Candidates hopefully, and oh, the release dates. Well, we all have a bad experience from the long process until 2.5 was released, will the same happen with 2.6 too? I strongly hope not.
It says due in 5 days, so I certainly expect no “due in 22 years” joke again. No serious influence will hit us with the upcoming 2.6 as long as there are a lot of other bloggers who still use 2.3, even 2.1 actually, but for multi-author blogs, well the Post Revisions feature is pretty much welcomed I suppose, plus much more. But anyways, everybody enjoys new features, they ease our work process, make us feel more comfortable.

WordPress 2.5 has been downloaded 1,917,488 times, let us show how much we were disappointed from 2.5 by exceeding this number with surprising downloads of 2.6, but don’t rush, we have to wait for the final.
Or no, maybe we should be polite and spare their servers bandwidth (that was meant to be a joke).

Eventually, I yet expect a response from Matt about my emails I’ve double sent him, as he made a promise about that through commenting here. But hey, popular people are very busy usually, that much so they even forget their promises of a human-to-human. Who am I after all to beg Matt for a response?

However, I’m excited to list a short version of new changes concerning 2.6 Beta3 release plus providing a direct link for downloading 2.6 for you who wish to give it a try before 14th of July is here. As I speak, I’ll be 22 in 20th so I want to update my blogs before I turn one year older.

Some among many changes since the last Beta.

• Image captions
• Yet more inline documentation
• “Add Media” buttons for the RTE full-screen mode
• Theme Preview fixes
• Gallery sorting fixes
• I18N fixes

WordPress Track – full list of latest changes made in 2.6 Beta3 release
Download Now – WordPress 2.6 Beta 3

Wish them luck.

A new song, Tingulli Trent shouts back

Usually, we all listen to a particular song for its rhythm, or for its lyric, sometimes even for the combination of both.

I’m wondering if you’ve ever heard an Albanian song. You probably didn’t have the chance to, or it didn’t raise your interest, however, I’m extending this time.

Tingulli Trent has faded from the scene for nearly half a year, but they’ve returned with new album. Regardless of the reasons of why they disappeared for so long is none of my business, hence I’m not commenting anything about that, but at least I’m showing you their brand new single which is totally amazing. Chances are that I only feel that way, but I think you’ll enjoy the rhythm too, so here it is for you below, give it a shot who knows what would be the impression afterwards ;).

One Sunset in Prizren

One Sunset in Prizren

Originally uploaded by Arian.x

It’s been a long since I had the chance to experience such a sunset in my hometown. Probably because I’m always away from home, either never happen to be in the right moment.
Regardless of past unluckiness, yesterday the sky looked really wonderful, as if we were living near the beach, but the tones that covered the sky were simply perfect.

Indeed I didn’t even notice it while I was working on my laptop, but a friend of mine which I seriously need to thank, made me aware (as she knew that I’ve become a photography maniac) of the view outside my window. Outside was raining, so I had to take an umbrella with and then fire couple of shots.

In the end I the results came out to be pleasing, so I can say that I enjoy it. I hope you enjoy it too. After all this something I’ve been trying to catch on Prizren. I’m proud to live in such a beautiful town.

Simple Balance, a free & pretty WordPress theme from Blogsessive

Among many useful and very needed blogging tips for novice bloggers, providing with handful WordPress tips, plugins and everything else related to it, Alex Cristache the man behind Blogsessive.com today has just released a new free WordPress theme. A brief description from Alex concerning the theme is as follows:

Simple Balance theme is a 3 column widget-ready WordPress theme. Some of the features include:

1. Widget-ready left and right sidebars;
2. Top 468×60 ad space;
3. Right sidebar built-in ad space for 125×125 banners;
4. SEO smart coding for titles and content;
5. WordPress 2.5 ready;
6. Valid cross-browser tested XHTML and CSS;
7. Possibility to fully display the latest X posts on homepage instead of the post excerpt (to prevent duplicate content issues);
8. Not to forget, beautifully balanced design;

If you want to get a feeling of theme’s look you can view the provided demo here, but I truly recommend that you go and download here instantly.

A little bit of more info can be found in this link.
For this accomplished work, I think Alex deserves to be hailed, do so if you drop by his place and leave him a comment.

Prepare to wave goodbye to Google AdSense Referrals

21 hours ago I received an e-mail from adsense-noreply@google.com about the planned retirement of Google’s AdSense Referral program. It’s really not an urgency but they’re giving AdSense users a clue to start cleaning up unnecessary and future useless code so to speak. The last appearance of Referral links will stop showing in the last week of August 2008.

I didn’t really profit that much from this program, actually not from the whole AdSense at all, hence it’s not influencing me in any way. Last time I checked my total income through AdSense was only $0.91, which really is to be ashamed of. However, I know some people who earned hell of a benefit from it, and this news could find them unprepared.

The newly implemented strategy is totally different comparing to the old Referrals. Google has acquired DoubleClick Performics, hence their Affiliate Program will be functioning as part of the Google Affiliate Network. From all this inflection, considering that Google is always “constantly looking for ways to improve AdSense by developing and supporting features which drive the best monetization results for our publishers”, there was a sentence that caught my eye for a second while, reading through that email letter:

Affiliate Network will now operate as the Google Affiliate Network for advertisers targeting users located in the United States.

I’m not aware if AdSense Referrals worked the same way only for US advertisers, as I told you I wasn’t much of an AdSense fortunate, but the above statement tells me more or less that users from other countries won’t profit anything using this newly implemented program. At least not for the beginning, probably later on it’ll widen it’s possibilities. Thus, this means that as long as I’m leaving in Kosova, I shall not plan on using this service, instead search for other alternatives. Period.

Whatsoever, there is a sign I’ve usually noticed when a company gets acquired by a bigger one. They usually lack the time to update they’re website once they get pwned. The same detail I noticed at Performics Affiliate Marketing page (see for yourself if page is not altered yet). The Google Affiliate Network logo used there is of the highest resolution possible, they didn’t even think of resizing it. Probably it could be a matter of “feeling proud to be Google” thing or either “I don’t want to use Microsoft Paint to destroy Google’s Logo quality”. Either ways it looks not nice.

Last but not least, AdSense for Search & AdSense for Content are not altered from this deflation. So consider continuing to earn income, if until now you did so. I wish I would though.