WordPress 2.5 has been released with a major overhaul to the interface and a range of new features.

The biggest change is in the appearance of the administration backend, which is described as being a “Cleaner, faster, less cluttered dashboard.” The WordPress dashboard is now widget friendly, and users can include items such as stats, offering similar functionality to MovableType.

Other new features include multi-file uploading, one-click plugin upgrades, built-in galleries, salted passwords and cookie encryption, media library, code friendly WYSIWYG, concurrent post editing protection, full-screen writing, and improved search.

A demo video from Automattic’s Matt Mullenweg above, and further details on the WordPress blog here.

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Make3D takes a two-dimensional image and creates a three-dimensional fly around model that includes depth and a range views. Photos can be uploaded directly or pulled into the site from Flickr.

The service is based on an algorithm created by Stanford students Andrew Ng, Ashutosh Saxena and Min Sun that won the best paper award at the 3D recognition and reconstruction workshop at the International Conference on Computer Vision in Rio de Janeiro in October 2007.

A January Stanford News Service piece explains it some more:

…the algorithm breaks the image up into tiny planes called “superpixels,” which are within the image and have very uniform color, brightness and other attributes. By looking at a superpixel in concert with its neighbors, analyzing changes such as gradations of texture, the algorithm makes a judgment about how far it is from the viewer and what its orientation in space is. Unlike some previous algorithms, the Stanford one can account for planes at any angle, not just horizontal or vertical. This allows it to create models for scenes that have planes at many orientations, such as the curved branches of trees or the slopes of mountains.

The service is in the same space as Microsoft Photosynth, but unlike Microsoft’s more extensive product that meshes many images together to create 3D models, Make3D is a one image only service. If you like, Make3D is Photosynth for the common man, quick, simple, and although the results don’t come close to Photosynth, they are still very impressive. A full gallery of Make3D renders can be found here.

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After publishing an invitation to Facebook to join the DataPortability Working Group January 4, we never thought that Facebook would accept it. Today changes everything you’ve ever thought about social-networking data and lock-in before, because today Facebook, Google and Plaxo have joined the DataPortability Workgroup.

Google and Plaxo joining are a positive, however given that both have previously joined together for platforms such as OpenSocial it’s not that significant, but Facebook is another matter. On January 4 Michael sort of defended Facebook’s stance against Plaxo pulling data from Facebook on the grounds that “Facebook also has a very good reason for protecting email addresses – user privacy.” Today, by joining the DataPortability Working Group Facebook is embracing open standards and open access, and that is a huge fundamental change from its previous stance on being locked in to closed standards.

I spoke with the head of the DataPortability Group Chris Saad prior to this post (Chris is also the CEO of Faraday Media.) After about 24 hours of correspondence, the following are to join the working group as official representatives of their respective companies: Joseph Smarr (Plaxo), Brad Fitzpatrick (Google) and Benjamin Ling (Facebook).

The DataPortability Workgroup is actively working to create the ‘DataPortability Reference Design’ to document the best practices for integrating existing open standards and protocols for maximum interoperability (and here’s the key area) to allow users to access their friends and media across all the applications, social networking sites and widgets that implement the design into their systems.

There has been no shortage of people who have knocked Facebook for their closed standards prior to today, perhaps many of whom had a legitimate point. Today Facebook has taken the first step towards open standards and data portability, and despite those previous gripes they should be congratulated for it.

Facebook

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Plaxo

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Product Clash is aiming to offer “peer reviewed product comparison in a fun way” with a site that takes Digg style voting to product grudge matches.

Product Clash has a broad library of products that registered users can clash with each other or users can also submit their own product descriptions and technical specifications via the “Submit your Clash” form.

The site launched into public beta December 1 and allows visitors to view “clashes” and the current score between two products, as well as product details with relevant technical specifications. Registered users can vote, add comments, use the clash widget on their blog and submit new clashes. There’s also a Facebook application here.

It’s perhaps not the most exciting site I’ve reviewed this year, but it seems well implemented and may well provide some fun for those who like matchups. The team at Product Clash is giving away two iPhones during December, one to a random user on the site and one to the user who gets the highest number of friends to use the Facebook application; if you’re one of many (I’m not) who love adding Facebook applications this is at least a little better than a lot of the Facebook applications I get spammed about via Facebook seemingly every other day

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Perth based startup Norg Media wants to bring community back to news with a service that’s hard to pigeon hole.

At a basic level Norg (short for news organization) is social media that encourages “citizen journalism.” Each Norg Media site focuses on a city and gives users the ability to submit news stories. Stories are then voted on by other readers, but not Digg style. The voting process does push stories up higher on the page, but given its focus on timely news the votes are weighed, and stories automatically move up and down dependent on this weighing process. Blog style users are able to comment on each story.

Submissions can come in a variety of formats. Users can add a short blurb and a link to another news site, or can write their own story. Video and photo submission is also encouraged.

I caught up with the Norg team today and pushed them for a model or easy way of describing what they do; I still haven’t got one. CEO Bronwen Clune told me that this isn’t a hyper-local play, despite the similarities with failed startups such as Backfence. Clune emphasized that this was a low cost, community powered model that will only expand into markets they believe there is demand. She also says that it’s not a competitor to main stream media sites, despite the news emphasis; she sees it more as a niche community news service that is selective with what it publishes, and does not employ writers to generate content, an obvious news site play.

Norg media has this week expanded from its Perth base and now offers Norg sites for Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, with plans to expand into the United States and the United Kingdom in the next 12 months.They are also looking at options for partnerships in non-English speaking countries, having already been approached for partnerships in countries including China. The two person operation is privately funded but is currently talking to investors for funding to bring on new staff so they can better facilitate their international expansion.

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Can’t see the video? Click here

San Diego based Digital Telepathy has changed direction from strategy-public relations to services, with a new model that will appeal to anyone who has ever wanted or needed a hand at getting their startup ideas off the ground.

The concept is simple: Digital Telepathy offers three design my business options with varying service levels based on the length of each plan. The 15 day plan provides a wannabe startup with market research, strategic alignment, scalable revenue model, instruction manual for project completion and a concept summary delivered as a “Biz in a Box”. The 45 day plan offers (in addition to the 15 day plan) “initial buzz building,” and a range of design services including basic prototyping, usability testing, blueprints, concept mapping and other design services. The 90 day plan adds development services including full scale back-end development for beta release, front end development, private beta invites, feature development and more.

The Biz in a Box service isn’t for those already in the industry, or those with a lot of experience, although Digital Telepathy also offers services for existing startups looking for advice on taking their business to the next level. I know when I was previously involved in a startup it was difficult to know where to start, and who to get advice from. Even when you do find someone it’s often not a cheap experience either, the consultant I dealt with previously charged 6 figures to basically guide us in the right direction, without providing any development services.

Digital Telepathy is passionate in helping startups they believe in. DT’s Sarah Carr described the change of direction to me as follows: “It’s pretty cool because we are basically saying to our clients, to the Internet/social space, and to the entire WORLD that we are going to actually DO what we love to do and just get rid of all the crap that bores us to death.” I asked CEO Chuck Longanecker about the cost and he responded “the most important thing for us (dt) is to work on projects that we are passionate about and enjoy doing. The second most important thing is to eventually get paid for what we do, so that we can keep doing it.”

Prices range from $15,000 through to $250,000, although each project is calculated on a per startup basis. It may sound like a lot of money, but it’s a lot of service for your buck, and it is competitive. See the full list of options below.

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Can’t see the video? Click here

The Google OpenSocial site is now live (here). The video above comes from the Google OpenSocial Campfire held Thursday night and is featured on the front of the new page.The site includes the complete OpenSocial API Documentation, FAQ and Group area.Also now live is OpenSocial support for Google’s big in Brazil social networking site Orkut (here). According to Google, the OpenSocial implementation on Orkut has the following benefits:

* Building both showcase and canvas views, with Apps having the ability to create multi-page experiences in the full page canvas view.

* Foster communication among friends by allowing access a user’s profile information, friend list, and an update feed so that people can see what their friends are up to.

* Learn once, write everywhere as apps written for Orkut under OpenSocial can be used to build social apps for other websites.

The OpenSocial team also has a blog here.

Orkut joins Plaxo, and possibly tonight Ning as being the first sites with OpenSocial support.

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Blabberize is a new service that allows you to create your own talking picture, basically a moving mouth on a still image.

Using Blabberize is simple. Users upload a photo of someone to Blabberize, select a mouth and then record a message. Once done, users can email a link to the Blabberize hosted page or embed the result.

Blabberize was developed based on a demonstration at Yahoo’s Open Hack Day event in September.

With sincerest apologies to Nick Douglas, the following Blabberize was put together by Chris Pirillo, who I have to thank for the tip (please note: there is language that some readers may not like in the clip). There are a wealth of other examples as well on their website, which for me at least had me in stiches. I’m not sure what the business model looks like, but it sure is a lot of fun.

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Social networking startup Trusted Opinion has added Netflix Queuing to their recommendations focused offering.

The feature allows Trusted Opinion members to read a review of a movie then instantly add it to their Netflix queue without leaving the page.

Although it sounds simple, Netflix does not offer a public API and hence the feature had to be created the old fashioned way, by creative programming.

NetFlix does not currently offer a social networking service; Trusted Opinion sees the feature as being a draw card for Netflix members seeking new movies.

We last wrote about Trusted Opinion in February. The site has had mixed results in terms of traffic since then in what is a hyper-competitive social networking market. Marrying an all you can eat movie hire service like Netflix to a service such as Trusted Opinion provides something that creates a point of differentiation. The feature will appeal to movie fans looking to find then hire great movies from a sea of Hollywood mediocrity.

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Information Architects have released their Web Trend Map for 2007, a subway map of the 200 most successful websites on the web, ordered by category, proximity, success, popularity and perspective. In theory it demonstrates the relationship between various sites and ideas, with a strong focus on Web 2.0.

I’ve always found these sorts of things clever, in a geeky sort of way, but it’s not recommended that you try reading this with a hangover or whilst on certain prescription medications. Click the image for a larger version or click here for the pdf version.

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