Good news WordPress fans, DevPress is here! It’s a new site where you can get beautiful WordPress themes, functional plugins and useful WordPress tutorials. Launched yesterday, DevPress a collaboration of 4 guys who love WordPress, the community and open source.

The DevPress team is made up of Justin Tadlock, Patrick Daly, Ptah Dunbar and Tung Do. Many of you know Justin Tadlock for his free WordPress themes and plugins and also the Theme Hybrid theme club. Patrick Daly is known for developing free Hybrid child themes. Ptah Dunbar is a core contributor of WordPress and a BuddyPress developer. Tung Do aka Small Potato creator and former owner of WPDesigner.

Here’s an excerpt from the DevPress launch blog post:

What you should know about DevPress is we are figuring this whole thing out. We don’t have a business plan or any hard-and-fast rules about the direction this site is headed in. Instead, we have dreams of what DevPress could eventually become, but at the moment, it’s a melting pot of the team’s collaborative effort. Although the direction is still a bit blurry… we do have one primary goal — to produce the best, highest quality, GPL’d, make you say “wha?!” kinda products. All in that order.

In short, we’re four guys putting in whatever time we have to build plugins/themes that we think are cool.

Today, we’re just building the foundation and not trying to make a big splash in the WordPress pool. DevPress is easing into the waters because it’s much better for us (and you) that we take our time making quality products rather than trying to push several mediocre products out at once.

To celebrate the launch of DevPress, the team have released a free news/magazine styled parent theme for WordPress called News.

News WordPress Theme

Preview or Download the News WordPress theme

Aside from the News WordPress theme, DevPress has also released several free WordPress plugins:

• Clean My Archives – a simple, easy-to-use plugin for creating elegant archives pages of your blog posts. It was created to simplify the process that other archives plugins make more complex than needed.
• Slideshow – a beautifully-designed image slideshow that cycles through image attachments of your blog posts (or any post type) using the jQuery Cycle plugin.
• Members – a complete user, role, and content management system for sites with multiple users. It’s a powerful membership plugin that grants fine-grain control over your WordPress install.

As a WordPress user and advocate, it’s good to see a group of excellent WordPress developers and designers come together and collaborate to bring quality products to the WordPress community. I’m also happy to see Tung Do “officially” back in the WordPress scene.

DevPress is surely a welcomed addition to the WordPress community. Personally, I’m expecting great things from DevPress and looking forward to what they have in store for WordPress and its community. To the DevPress team, congratulations and we wish you all the best!

[via Theme Lab]

UPDATE: Thanks to Aja for pointing out that this should be roundup #25. I didn’t see that I already published #24 because I filed it in the wrong category.

Yes folks, the Weekend Roundup is back! It’s been eight months since I last published the last roundup. I never intended to stop this weekly feature but the busy schedule, problems with my old laptop and a little bit of laziness on my part kept me from posting another Weekend Roundup. Well, I’m trying to revive it again and hopefully I can continue this every week. I’d also like to know from you, my regular readers whether I should continue this weekly feature or not.

Without further ado, here’s this week’s roundup of news and interesting stuff from around the web and blogosphere.

Blogging

• What’s wrong with blog flipping? Rocky of TheWeblogZone, talks about the latest trend in the blogosphere called blog flipping.
• Speckyboy has painstakingly collected over a 100 links of WordPress video tutorials. These videos range from basic to advanced tutorials, like how to install WordPress, upgrading WordPress or how to create a WordPress widget or plugin.
• Having a hard time choosing a blogging niche? Mike Smith shares his list of 50 Passion filled blog niches YOU should be dominating.
• Here’s an interesting post by Nathan Rice on Daily Blog Tips. It talks about the difference between Twitter followers versus RSS subscribers.

Technology

• The first ever in-flight WiFi service to be offered by Virgin America will be opened for beta testing on Monday, Nov 24th. It’s scheduled for commercial release this coming December 1st.
• GotGame released Rogue the first game integrated web browser. Now you can surf and browse the web while playing your favorite games. via TechCrunch
• Future of photography? Japanese designer Mac Funamizu’s hands-on photography concept lets you take pictures just by holding up your hands, forming two L shapes (compose shot) and winking your left eye to take the shot. Isn’t that cool?
• Sad but true. Teen broadcasts suicide live on Justin.tv while viewers watched and encouraged him.

Gadgets

• Engadget has a hands-on review of the recently released and highly anticipated BlackBerry phone, the BlackBerry Storm.
• Can your cellphone do this? Motorola RAZR takes bullet and saves a man’s life.
• Gizmodo has a quick review on the latest Sony Viao LV All-In-One PC. Looks pretty to me.
• T3 reports about two open source gaming consoles that might come out early next year.

Pinoy Blogs

• Google and HTC’s first Android-powered phone, the G1 was recently launched in the Philippines. If you’re in the Philippines and interested to get one, you might wanna read the in-depth, hands-on review of the G1 Google Android phone by Abe Olandres.
• Wanna have a chance to win an HP 2133 Mini Notebook with Smart Bro? My friend Jhay has the details.
• In case you haven’t heard, Gmail just recently launched Themes. You can find it under Settings. So what’s your favorite theme?
• Jayvee Fernandez shares an weather animation easter egg found in the HTC Touch HD.
• For bloggers who are not familiar with HTML and CSS and only use WYSIWYG editors, learning about basic html codes could help you a lot with blogging.

JaypeeOnline Weekly Recap

• WP Theme Review: Blak Magik – The latest commissioned free WordPress theme from Smash Magazine.
• Fresh New Theme for JaypeeOnline – As you can see, JaypeeOnline is sporting a brand new look. What do you think about it?
• Free CD/DVD Burning Software for Windows – List of free optical disc authoring software or more commonly known as cd/dvd burning software. These programs are free to download and are made for computers running Windows.
• Nokia N96 Bruce Lee Edition – The only thing that’s tougher than Chuck Norris.

Btw, I’ve decided to add a little something by creating a custom image/banner for Weekend Roundup. Hope you guys like it. If you have any questions, comments, suggestions or want your article to be featured in the next Weekend Roundup, feel free to leave a comment or send me a message via the contact page.

Thanks for your time and hope you guys have a great weekend!