Arm your vuvuzelas: WordPress 3.0, the thirteenth major release of WordPress and the culmination of half a year of work by 218 contributors, is now available for download or upgrade within your dashboard. Major new features in this release include a sexy new default theme called Twenty Ten. Theme developers have new APIs that allow them to easily implement custom backgrounds, headers, shortlinks, menus no more file editing, post types, and taxonomies.

via WordPress › Blog » WordPress 3.0 “Thelonious”.

Another way where professionals can get off the hook for payments is if the video is broadcast for free over the Internet. Earlier this year, MPEG LA extended through 2015 a provision that means streaming H.264 video over the Net requires no royalty payments as long as anyone can see the video without paying.

Ultimately, for the license terms one sees in software, MPEG LA errs on the side of sounding tough.

“The purpose of the provision in the MPEG LA license is to ensure that the license doesn't cover commercial distribution of H.264-encoded video,” Homiller said. “It would be nice if there were a 'gentler' way to convey this, but it might be challenging to do so without opening up some loopholes that the licensers would regret.”

via Is H.264 a legal minefield for video pros? | Deep Tech – CNET News.

Microsoft wanted 100% share in every market they entered. The thought was that once you dominate a market, you can impose your will on it via pricing, distribution, bundling, and all sorts of other methods designed to maximize profit. To Microsoft in the 1980s, a monopoly was a great problem to aspire to have, and since antitrust laws weren’t routinely applied to software companies, the threat seemed immaterial. The problem with this thinking, however, was that the law eventually caught up to them and crippled their ability to continue operating as a monopoly.

via A good problem to have | Mike Industries.

The question is: why? My guess is that In Design etc. is for dead trees.

The squabbling between Apple and Adobe has been getting increasingly personal, with Adobe executives and employees angered in particular by Apple’s decision to block Adobe software that would allow developers to produce programs in Flash that would then be converted to work on the iPhone.

The Journal’s Alan Murray had an exclusive interview with Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen Thursday afternoon, and Digits live-blogged the event. Highlights are below.

via Highlights: The Journal’s Exclusive Interview With Adobe CEO – Digits – WSJ.

Firefox/Chrome: Sure it’s nice and all that we get Gmail for free, but those ads to the right of open messages aren’t really all that helpful. Free browser add-on Rapportive replaces Gmail ads with contact info about the sender.

Beyond installing it, there’s nothing to using Rapportive. You have to give it access to a minimum of information to get started (looks like your name and email address, via your Google account). Then whenever you open an email, it cross-references the email of the sender with various social networking sites, then fills the ad space with whatever information it finds.

via Rapportive Replaces Gmail Ads with Contact Info, Is Very Cool – Gmail – Lifehacker.