What’s coming in WordPress 3.0.. ads multi-blog support
If you’ve ever wanted to operate and manage multiple blogs from a single WordPress install, there’s always been the option of running WordPress MU. Unfortunately by the time you realise you need it, you’re already many months into running your standard single instance blog.
Why would you need to run multiple blogs ? Well perhaps you run multiple sub-properties from the major overall hub. In some scenarios you may want these to be branded or themed differently. Imagine a company that produces mac and pc software for instance. Or perhaps your blog theme isn’t conducive to the photo gallery section of your site.
Good news.. As outlined in a new post from Mitchell McKenna, titled ‘What’s Coming in WordPress 3.0’ he explains that WordPress and WordPress MU are in fact merging. This means from a single install you can operate and manage multiple blogs from one central location. We can assume that the upgrade process allows for this to happen seamlessly.
Also included in the list of new features is the addition of better menus via custom Woo Themes Navigation included in the core release.
There’s also a brand new default theme, which frankly was over due for an update.
More information about all the new features @ MitchMcKenna.com
Wordpress 2 iPhone app now available
An updated version of the Wordpress iPhone app is now available. Strangler it’s a whole new application (search for it in the App Store), rather than a regular application update.
There’s lots of new goodness here, so I recommend any WordPress bloggers with iPhones go and get WordPress 2, then clumbsily go and delete WordPress 1.
Ben S wins The Best Job in the World
Tourism Queensland have announced the winner of their ‘Best job in the world’ campaign. The lucky winner is Ben Southall from the UK, you can follow his updates and get all the info over at http://islandreefjob.com
Commiserations to my favourite Cali Lewis from http://geekbrief.tv – We’ll have to wait and see how Ben does, but Cali would have done a great job and also brought a big audience with her.
3 New Windows Live Writer plugins (Digg, Twitter, Flickr)
There’s now 3 new plugins available for the blogging tool – Windows Live Writer.
Digg This
Many bloggers these days want to provide the “Digg This” button on each post, this plugin makes this process simple, allowing users to submit and digg each post.
Twitter Notify
If you’d like to let your twitter followers know when you submit a new blog post, then the twitter plugin is a great option. 
Flickr Upload
When inserting an image in a blog post, this plugin also uploads that image to your flickr account. If your doing this anyways, it’s a nice time saver.
More @ WindowsTeamBlog
Lightbox plugin for WordPress / Windows Live Writer
Since starting the blog on techAU, I’ve used Windows Live Writer to post content to the site. Often when blogging the post will include a number of related images. Until the recent tech preview of Windows Live Writer, using Lightbox wasn’t supported.
For those who aren’t familiar with Lightbox, it’s a plugin for your website that uses Javascript to black out the browser window, while displaying an image. When a number of images are tagged, they form a group, which then allows the user to simply click next to go to the next image in the gallery.
The latest version of the Lightbox plugin is version 2.04.
If your running a Wordpress-based blog, you can install the wordpress plugin for Lightbox, then install the tech preview of Windows Live Writer. You will need to reconfigure your account in Windows Live Writer to enable Lightbox, to do this follow the steps below.
Weblog > Edit Weblog Settings > Update Account Configuration.
Then when inserting images, you can check out the options on the link and you’ll see both the ‘Enable Lightbox 2’ checkbox and the group field.
Update
After experiencing a number of issues with the lightbox plugin in WordPress, I have now removed it.
WordPress iPhone App, now available in App Store!!
Finally one of my most anticipated iPhone applications has finally arrived in the iTunes App Store. The WordPress iPhone Application lets users blog while on the road. This single application has just added dramatic new functionality.
While away from home or the office, I can now use my iPhone as a portable blogging device, write a some text, choose a category, hit post and have a new blog entry on techAU.
After spending some more time with the application I’ll provide a full review or this and many other iPhone applications.
More @ WordPress
WordPress for iPhone is coming soon
WordPress have confirmed and shown (video) of the upcoming iPhone application that will let users not only post to WordPress.com blogs, but like techAU, WordPress-based blogs.
This is one of the key features of the iPhone that I’m after, to be able to blog from anywhere in the world from a device you always have with you, significantly changes the immediacy in which bloggers can post time-critical information.
It’s surprising that this app wasn’t available at launch (July 11th), let’s hope it arrives very soon.