Now for the Nook Color/Tablet and Kindle Fire, too!

We’re happy to announce that WordPress for Android is now available for the Nook Color/Tablet and Kindle Fire. The 7″ screen on these tablets make an excellent home for the all-new Dashboard UI that we added in WordPress for Android 2.0.

We paid special attention to the post editor on theses devices, enhancing the layout to make it super simple to edit your post content in either landscape or portrait orientation. You’ll find everything there that you’d want in a WordPress app, including support for editing post content, adding media, viewing your stats, comment notifications, and more.

I’ve been using WordPress on my rooted Nook Color so this isn’t really something new. However, this is good news for Nook Color/Tablet and Kindle Fire owners who haven’t rooted their devices as they can now download the app from the Nook Store or Amazon Appstore and install on their device.

Screenshots:
Dashboard

New Post

Posts

Comments

I personally like the design of the UI (user interface) of WordPress for Android better than that of WordPress for iOS especially the main page or dashboard. I also like the ability to access the real dashboard via the Dashboard icon/shortcut, because it lets you access parts of the blog that aren’t available on the app – other settings, themes, plugins, etc.

IMO, the WordPress for Android’s usability and functionality is definitely much better on a tablet than on a smartphone – enhanced layout and bigger screen makes it easier to create, view and edit posts and navigate through sections. I think its safe to say that the same is true for the WordPress for iOS app which is easier to use and works better on the iPad than on the iPhone unless you only use the app for moderating comments.

WordPress for Android is now available from the Amazon Appstore and Nook Store.

Anyone tried the WordPress for Android app on their Nook Color/Tablet or Amazon Kindle Fire? What are the features you like? What other features would you like to see added on future versions? Please share your thoughts.

I knew I had to do something about it so I decided that the best thing I could do to get back on track was to publish a Weekend Roundup. I’m glad that I was able to finally overcome it and I hope that I could keep this up and continue to post updates in the coming days.

Hope you guys like reading this edition of the Weekend Roundup. Enjoy!

Blogging

• 5 Essential Tools Every Blogger Should Use
• Is it Time to Make Blogging Your Career?
• 5 Ways To Increase Blog Comments
• If I Were the Blogging Police…

WordPress

• 7 Benefits of Blogging with WordPress
• Year of the Meetup
• Creating a Shared Content Box Across All of Your WordPress Blogs
• WordPress Security Threats – Jan/2012

SEO

• The 10 Golden Rules to Attracting Authority Links
• 4 Social SEO Mistakes to Avoid
• Why Not Use Alexa for Competitor Analysis?
• 7 Blog Writing Tips With An SEO Focus

Social Media

• 9 Ways to Integrate Email and Social Media Marketing
• Getting The Most Out of Great Content in Social Media
• Google Begins Country-Specific Blog Censorship
• 5 Ways Writers Can Break Out of the Tired Old Social Media Box

Technology

• Surveillance Cameras Used To Study Customer Behavior
• Computer Program Reconstructs Heard Words From Brain Scans
• Do You Like Online Privacy? You May Be a Terrorist
• Microsoft Releases Kinect For Windows

Gadgets

• Spark – KDE Tablet
• Mad Catz Cyborg MMO 7 Mouse
• Boxx Eco-friendly Electric Bike
• Hot Wheels RC iNitro Speeders

Pinoy Blogs

• Using WiFi hotspots without permission: Cybercrime Prevention Act violation?
• How to update your LG Optimus Black to Gingerbread
• Android Users in the Philippines Increased by 300%, iPhone Users by 62% in 2011, According to Smart Communications! Smartphone Users to Rise Sharply in 2012!
• Jollibee On-Line Delivery via Facebook

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions or would want to share your article or any interesting story that you found in the Internet and have it featured in the next Weekend Roundup, feel free to leave a comment or send me a message via the contact page.

Just want to share and inform other WordPress users who use the WordPress for iOS app that there’s a new update available – version 2.9.1 which was released yesterday. This version is a bug fix update and at the same time contains the following changes – stability improvements, crash fixes and an improved read speed & navigation (Next/Previous Read item navigation added) on WordPress.com.

In case you don’t have version 2.9 and are still using an older version of WordPress for iOS, here are some of the new features and improvements from previous versions:

New Features:

• A Feature-Rich Content Editor – Now you can easily format text, make bulleted lists, create links, and do all kinds of other fancy stuff.
• Full Screen Editing – No more teeny-weeny content editor — now you can view more text at a time while you post on the go.
• Reading Made Easy – Keeping track of your favorite blogs has never been easier. Browse all the latest posts on blogs you follow in one place, right from your iPhone.

Updated Features:

• Quick Photo will now use the post format for images (if your theme supports it).
• You can now post pictures that you’ve already taken with Quick Photo.
• Your stats referrer links and comment links can now be opened right from this app.

NOTE: WordPress for iOS 2.9+ requires iOS 4.0 or later and is compatible with the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

I’ve upgraded the app on my iPhone 4 running iOS 5 and everything seems to be working fine – no bugs, crashes or any issues whatsoever. Anybody else using WordPress for iOS 2.9.1?

WordPress for iOS 2.9.1 is now available on iTunes or via the App Store.

A zero day vulnerability has been recently found on TimThumb, a popular image resizing utility widely used in a lot of WordPress themes. This issue was first discovered and reported by Mark Maunder after his blog got hacked via the timthumb.php file/script.

The TimThumb zero day vulnerability allows malicious users, hackers and other third parties to upload and run PHP code in the timthumb cache directory. When the uploaded PHP code is run and executed, the attacker can do whatever they want with the affected site or blog.

Recommended measures:

If You Use TimThumb
If your current WordPress theme is using timthumb.php, make sure that you update to the latest version of TimThumb and to reglularly check on the official TimThumb site for updates and announcements.

Aside from updating the TimThumb file there’s another thing you need to do. Open up the timthumb.php or thumb.php file with a text editor and look for this line ALLOW_EXTERNAL and make sure that the value is set to FALSE.

define ('ALLOW_EXTERNAL', FALSE);

Once ALLOW_EXTERNAL is set to FALSE, next thing to do is remove the domains inside the $allowedSites array to ensure that remote file downloading is disabled:

Before

$allowedSites = array (
	'flickr.com',
	'picasa.com',
	'img.youtube.com',
);

After

$allowedSites = array ();

If You Do Not Use TimThumb
If you don’t use or need timthumb.php but have other WordPress themes stored in your wp-content/themes folder that uses timthumb.php, it is recommended that the timthumb.php or thumb.php file or even the entire theme or plugin folder be deleted/removed from your web server.

The theme I’m using here on JaypeeOnline – FreshNews by WooThemes uses TimThumb. After reading about this vulnerability, I immediately removed the thumb.php file and replaced it with an updated one. I was worried that I was using a very old version of TimThumb and that upgrading might mess up my blog but after the upgrade, I checked all the thumbnails and everything seems to be working fine. I also removed everything related to the old version of TimThumb and cleared the the cache.

If you want to know more about the TimThumb zero day vulnerability, how it was discovered and other additional info, check out Mark Maunder’s blog post.

For those of you who own a Windows Phone 7 device, you might want to know that the WordPress for Windows Phone 7 app version 1.2 is now available and can be downloaded via the Windows Phone Marketplace.

New features on WordPress for Windows Phone 7 version 1.2:

• Landscape Editing – the post editor is now available in landscape mode, providing a larger/wider keyboard and allows users to easily type posts. New changes also make it easier for users to navigate in the post editor view.
• UI (User Interface) Improvements – the improved panorama view UI now has more space to view blog content – posts, pages and comments. Another addition is a better loading indicator so users won’t have to wait for a network task to finish before they can proceed to a different section of the panorama view UI.
• New Language Translations – version 1.2 now includes translations for French, German, Italian and Spanish. For those who are interested in translating the app into their native language, check out this link – translate.wordpress.org
• Under the Hood Fixes – other fixes include better support for post pingbacks in the comment view, fixed comment submission date from being changed when moderating, preview now works for drafts, scheduled and private posts/pages and prompt added if the back button is accidentally tapped while creating a post.

The complete list of fixes, can be found at the trac site.

Download the WordPress for Windows Phone 7 App version 1.2

NOTE: WordPress for Windows Phone 7 app supports blogs that use WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress blogs running on version 3.0+.

Anyone using or tried the WordPress for Windows Phone 7 app? How do you like the app? How does it compare with the other WordPress mobile apps for iOS, Android and BlackBerry devices?