Well over 100,000 iPhone users have downloaded the official WordPress for iPhone application, according to the WordPress for iPhone blog, and based on figures Automattic has received from Apple.

The vast majority (nearly three in every five downloads) come from the US, with one in five downloads from Europe, 8% from the UK, and the rest from Canada, Japan, Australia, and other countries.

What the numbers can’t tell is how many people are actively using the software. That’s a feature which should be available to developers in a future release of the iPhone firmware, according to Steve Jobs’ keynote speech earlier in the year.

It’s also impossible to tell exactly how many times other applications have been downloaded, as Apple doesn’t divulge that information except to individual developers.

As an iPhone user, I haven’t done any serious blogging using the handset, though it’s great for some housekeeping tasks such as moderating and responding to comments, editing typos, and such like. However, 100,000 people obviously thought they’d give it a go, which must be encouraging for Automattic.

According to the blog post, version 1.2 of the WordPress for iPhone application will include landscape mode, comment moderation, enhanced image options, and other tweaks. It should be available in the next few weeks.

100,000 and Counting (via Sitepoint)

Video blogging is never going to make it big for me, and neither are podcasts. Text content is king.

Now, why would I say that? Really, what’s wrong with heralding the video blog as blog 2.0 (or whatever version we’re at), and push the podcast as the 1.5 or something. I can give you 3 reasons why video won’t beat text, why the spoken word online can’t do a real battle with the written word. read more

WordPress 2.7 features are now announced and set. Weblog Tools Collection announced their WordPress Plugin Contest winners. WordPress wants your input on the the new WordPress 2.7 interface. Smashing Magazine toasts WordPress development resources. And there are so many WordCamps, you can plan vacations around them. Why not?

WordPress News

What’s Really Going to be in WordPress 2.7? No more beating around the bush. Ryan Boren has pulled the curtain off WordPress 2.7 features to prepare us all for the upcoming release. They include the new “crazyhorse” WordPress Administration Panels interface, a new Write Post Panel that allows dragging and dropping of meta boxes so you can rearrange your writing surface, the ability to hide columns on the content index pages, inline editing of posts and Pages on the new content index pages, comments XMLRPC API, sticky posts, automatic WordPress Plugin installation and integrated Plugin browser, HTTPOnly auth cookies, and much more.

The MOST exciting features are the ability to automatically upgrade WordPress and the total revamping of the Comments Panel to include replying to comments, keyboard shortcuts (hot keys) for managing comments, and threaded comments to help you keep track of the conversation.

Expect an announcement any day on the Development Updates and other WordPress development sources that major testing of these core features will commence as WordPress developers move closer to the release candidates (alpha versions).

Want a Say in the WordPress 2.7 Administration Panels Interface? In announcements on the WordPress Development Blog and on WordPress.com, WordPress users are invited to participate in a survey to have your say on how the navigation options on the WordPress 2.7 Administration Panels interface (UI) should look and work. read more

Blog World Expo is in Las Vegas this weekend, September 20-21, 2008. I’m going to be there with Woopra, Layered Tech, and WordPress, and from the look of the Conference Schedule, so is everyone else.

The list of Exhibitors in the Exhibition Hall at the Las Vegas Convention Center this year is incredibly diverse. So many companies want to reach out to bloggers, and so many blog, social media, and web technologies are popping up everywhere - it’s going to be interesting to learn what’s hot, what’s not, and what will be the future of the web.

Some of the exhibitors I hope to meet up with include: read more

Since Google slammed bought links, more and more webmasters have been scrambling around for a solution. Maybe not to replace their paid links, but to make their linking more natural in appearance, and definitely more scalable and sustainable. As an online marketing consultant I get paid well when called on to help out with this, but I am going to give you one solution for free. read more

If there was one company determined to dominate the mobile blogosphere, it would have to be ShoZu. Connecting with almost 350 different mobile devices, ShoZu is enabling bloggers (regardless of their phone type) to post from their phone (and away from their computer).

But what sets ShoZu apart is not how many mobile platforms one can blog from, but rather how many blog platforms one can blog to.

ShoZu connects to not only the traditional platforms (such as Blogger, TypePad, WordPress, LiveJournal, and Windows Live Spaces) but also the unfamiliar (like Netlog, freewebs, Multiply and even Six Apart’s Vox.com).

While ShoZu has always had an iPhone app for users to test out since the birth of the app store, I decided to give it a second look after hearing about the numerous improvements regarding this iPhone app (with most of them being positive). read more

The U.S. and Canada are going through hard economic times. You knew that, right?

And you probably knew that blog networks, like all businesses, thrive or perish according to their ability to respond to changes in the economies in which they operate.

But what you maybe didn’t know is the extent to which the current economic struggles of Canada and the U.S. are affecting the blog networks you visit on a daily basis - Gawker, b5media, Federated Media, Splashpress (which owns this blog) and Weblogs, Inc., to name a few. read more

Football season might be under way, but there’s still plenty of baseball to be played. Hence the $65 million Major League Baseball ad campaign, “There’s only one October.”

You might have thought that your favorite major leaguer does nothing but spend hours at the batting cage. But there are several professional athletes who are working out a new muscle group, mainly, their fingertips.

New television ads will feature Torii Hunter, Mark Teixeira, Evan Longoria, Carlos Pena, Jermaine Dye, A.J. Pierzynski, Kosuke Fukudome and Aramis Ramirez. You’ll get an up-close look of each player blogging, all in an effort to build up hype for the upcoming playoffs.

Expect Jeff Foxworthy, Randy Jackson, Stewie from Family Guy and several other FOX personalities to make an appearance as well.

According to MLB, many players are “computer savvy and either participate in or are blog readers.”

Glad to see it’s not just for geeks anymore.

Next up: Carpal Tunnel putting the pros on the DL? Doubtful.

Six months ago, a group of venture capitalist companies set up the iFund to promote and fund application development for Apple’s iPhone.

Now, they’ve set up the iFundVC blog, which will be used to keep the public updated on where the $100m is being invested.

There’s only one blog entry at present, and it will be interesting to see how much the site is developed. Particularly as some elements of the funding process are sure to be confidential, I wonder how much is left to talk about.

The design of the blog is certainly basic, but if pushes out interesting information then I don’t really care.

(Via TUAW)

Windows emulation masters CodeWeavers has launched CrossOver Chromium for Mac OS X and Linux. It is basically emulating the open-source content in Google Chrome, the Chromium project, under OS X and Linux, so if you’re dying to try Google’s web browser out, this is you chance.

However, beware! This is from the Q&A:

Q. Should I run CrossOver Chromium as my main browser?
A. Absolutely not! This is just a proof of concept, for fun, and to showcase what Wine can do. Chromium itself is just beginning. As the Chromium project progresses, they will be providing more compelling support for Mac OS and Linux, particularly with process security and memory management. Those future versions from Chromium will be better suited for daily use than this version.

There isn’t any native versions of Google Chrome nor Chromium itself yet, so this will have to do, unless you’re using Windows. Like most of you are.