"We hope you'll consider WordPress.tv not just a support resource, but a place to hang out and keep up with all the geeky goodness going on in the WordPress community," Matt Mullenweg said in a post on the launch of the new service.

The introductory video (embedded below) gives a brief overview of the site and calls out to the WordPress community for help; if you've got a video you think should be added, or want to request a specific tutorial, you can put in a request to Team Automattic.

Great move by Automattic in adding WordPress TV to their growing list of projects.

The new WordPress App for iPhone supports both WordPress.com installations as well as self-hosted Wordpress.org blogs that are version 2.5.1 and above.

The app includes the following features:

- Embedded Safari previews of posts
- Full support for tags & categories
- Photo support for both camera phone pics and library photos
- Support for multiple blogs
- Ability to password protect a post, save as draft, or mark for later review
- Auto-recovery feature recovers posts interrupted by phone calls

You can see WordPress on the iPhone in action in the video below or check out screenshots here:

More information can be found on iphone.wordpress.org where you can review the Frequently Asked Questions and/or report issues with the application.

To download this app from iTunes, click here.

Thanks to Digital Inspiration for breaking the news.

Users who run their own WordPress installations were already able to ping Twitter whenever they posted an update thanks to plugins like Twitter Tools or Twitter Updater.

For WordPress.com, this is an important update, as it brings it up to par with light blogging services like Posterous, which have made autoposting to Twitter and other microblogging services a core feature of their products.

More WordPress Updates: New Theme Viewer and PicApps Partnership

The Wordpress team has been quite busy lately, besides launching Publicize, Wordpress also unveiled a new version of its theme viewer last week and two days ago, Wordpress also announced a partnership with PicApp that allows Wordpress users to embed premium images into their blogs.

The way reply-by-email comment support will work is pretty straightforward. After enabling support for emailing comments, and then turning on the 'Enable sending comment replies via email' option (both found on the Settings > Discussion page), you are set. The next time you get a comment, you will be notified by email, and you can respond simply by replying to the email with your text above the original comment.

As we wrote earlier today though, consumers are not happy with how the mobile web is performing. Turning on mobile themes by default could be one small step towards solving that problem in the large territory that is WordPress.

Earlier this month WordPress announced that users can now more easily publish links to their new blog posts out into the world's defacto light-weight RSS reader, Twitter.

From the slow emergence of mobile reading and publishing to the unwillingness of carrierers to solve bandwidth problems, it's clear that the mobile web is still in its very early stages. For now, little things like this make a very big difference.

Integration with WordPress

PollDaddy and WordPress were already working on integrating PollDaddy into the WordPress.com platform, and, as PollDaddy's founders put it, "in the end, it just seemed like the perfect fit for us to join them." As has been the standard for Automattic's acquisitions, PollDaddy will continue to operate as a standalone platform and the company will continue to support and develop it on other blog and social networking platforms.

WordPress.com has already integrated PollDaddy's functionality for its users, who can now easily add surveys to any blog post, which will surely give PollDaddy's user numbers a significant boost. Automattic is also making a PollDaddy plugin available for self-hosted WordPress blogs.

Here is a short overview of how the WordPress.com integration works:

The new version also now automatically saves posts and restores them if the network connection is lost during the publishing process.

Just like the first version, Wordpress for iPhone 2 is an open-source program.

It's important to note that this new version will not appear as an update to the old version. Instead, users will have to install a new app, which can run side-by-side with the older version.

The new version, of course, still offers the same basic feature set as the earlier version. These include support for multiple blogs, photo uploads and post previews, as well as full support for tags, categories and password protected posts.

Blogging on the iPhone

There can be little doubt that the iPhone - or any mobile phone for that matter - isn't the ideal platform for writing long, thoughtful blog posts. Maybe that's why Wordpress for iPhone 2 puts more emphasis on comment moderation than the first version.

For a quick blog post on the road, though, the app is perfectly adequate, especially if you just want to upload a few pictures. It's not as easy to use as the more specialized PicPosterous, but Wordpress for iPhone 2 is a far more flexible application and Wordpress has a different user in mind for this app.

Features

One nice feature of WordPress' Post By Email feature is that the service automatically creates a gallery for posts with multiple pictures. Users can also easily post YouTube videos by email, as the service automatically creates an embed when it sees a YouTube URL in an email. WordPress also supports a number of additional short codes that give users more control over the formatting of their posts.

WordPress vs. Posterous

Of course, Posterous is probably the most well-known post-by-email service. Just like WordPress, Posterous allows users to quickly post text, images, and videos by email. Posterous, though, puts a stronger emphasis on sharing content from other sites, especially since the service introduced its bookmarklet in February. Unlike on WordPress, though, users on Posterous have no other option but to post by email or through the bookmarklet. The simplicity of Posterous is definitely one of the main draws of the service, but it looks like WordPress now offers a very similar degree of functionality, with, of course, the whole feature set of the WordPress blogging platform thrown in for good measure.

Moderator is a simple app that does its job well. The app provides you with notifications of how many comments are waiting on your approval both inside the app and also when the app is docked in your taskbar. Moderator also gives you the option of deleting, approving, or marking a comment as spam. You can also choose to view the gravatar of a commenter and set the refresh interval at up to 60 minutes. All of this is nicely packaged in a small and clean user interface.

Moderating Comments From Your Desktop

Developed by Daniel Dura, Moderator is a nifty AIR app and WordPress plugin that allows WordPress users to moderate comments from their desktop with ease. To get started, all you will need is version 2.6+ of WordPress and the latest version of Adobe AIR. To download Moderator, the app requires you to first install the Moderator plugin into your WordPress plugins directory. Doing so provides an added layer of security for your blog. Once the plugin is installed and activated you will be presented with a download link for the Moderator AIR app. As an early release, users may encounter some kinks and quirks depending on the amount of unmoderated comments you receive on a daily basis. However, Moderator is a great app to help you keep up with your comments as the day wears on, without having to constantly refresh your WordPress dashboard.

From post revisioning to a "Press This" bookmarklet for quick tumblelog style posting, there are quite a bit of great improvements you'll see in Wordpress 2.6 Beta 1. So what else can users expect to see?

• Caching of static files with Google Gears for faster Admin page loads
• A new and improved image editing dialog that offers lots of control over the images in your posts
• Theme previewing as seen on WordPress.com
• Built-in word counting in the post editor
• The ability to disable remote publishing for the security conscious
• XML-RPC API for changing blog options
• Better SSL support for the Admin
• Hierarchy-aware paging in the Manage Pages and Manage Categories admin pages.
• The ability to relocate your content directory
• The ability to move wp-config.php out of your web root
• Drag-and-drop sortable galleries
• Customizable default avatars
• Bulk delete, activate, and deactivate for plugins
• Check box range selection with shift-click
• TinyMCE 3.1.0.1 with lots of bug fixes
• jQuery 1.2.6 with some nice performance improvements
• jQuery UI 1.5
• Lots of bug fixes and performance improvements

Posting Revisions

What's Missing?

One of the biggest changes in Wordpress 2.5 was the dashboard and design user interface of the entire Wordpress system. It would've been nice to see an option to revert back to the "classic" Wordpress interface or maybe even more dashboard themes for users. While Wordpress 2.6 features a host of new improvements, let us know what you think is missing from the list. In the meantime, grab Wordpress 2.6 Beta 1 here. Don't forget to backup your files!

At press time we have not had a chance to try out Six Apart's new free, open source plugins but Wordpress users can read more about them and try them out here.

Now WordPress.com has embraced email for exactly that purpose. A new WordPress.com feature - currently in closed beta - adds actual utility to those "You've got a comment" emails: Reply via Email.

Voila! No more logging into the Web site to participate in the conversation.

As part of the announcement, the WordPress team has also hinted that threaded commenting may soon be part of the WordPress.com offering, as well.

WordPress.com users who are interested in test driving this new functionality can - ironically - head to the post on the topic and leave a comment to be included in the beta. But they'll have to act fast. Participants will only be accepted until 6 PM PT (UTC-8) on October 24.

It's safe to assume that this simple improvement to the current commenting workflow will be met with a favorable response. The comment thread for beta participants is already filling with people interested in using the new feature. No doubt threaded comments will be equally welcome. Although I have to admit, I'm curious as to how the threaded concept and this new email reply concept will mesh. Also on my mind? How the commenting features of Automattic's Intense Debate acquisition will be folded into the WordPress family.

Perhaps we'll hear more about all of this as we draw closer to the launch of WordPress 2.7 on November 10.

Personally, I experienced a similar reaction when I saw Coltrane demoed in front of the WordCamp Portland crowd in September. Jaws were dropping. I swear there were "Oohs," "Ahs," and spontaneous applause. (Which I guess is appropriate for a release named after a jazz legend.) Everyone - from new user to WordPress developer - was downright giddy.

WordPress 2.7 delivers an interface that is nearly impossible to hate - because each user has ultimate control over the way the interface is arranged. Practically anything you can touch on the interface can be changed. Don't like something? Put it away. Drag it somewhere else. Resize it.

The new release also offers features that users have been requesting, including things like "sticky posts" - posts that remain stuck as the first post on a blog even as additional posts are published - and the ability to do more from the dashboard. If the first word to describe Coltrane is "customizable," then the second word is definitely "thoughtful." Across the board, users can complete more activities with fewer clicks.

All the shiny newness on top hints at changes to under-workings, as well. There have been several changes to APIs, bug fixes, and inline documentation added to assist in development and support.

But for as impressive as the new release is, I'd offer that the positive reception has less to do with the technology and the functionality. I think it's far more visceral than that. I'd say it has more to do with the fact that users felt that the WordPress interface team - led by recent Automattic addition Jane Wells - listened to their concerns and worked to resolve them. What's more, they allowed users to be involved throughout the development process.

With WordPress 2.7, WordPress users feel like they're part of the team again. And that goodwill could gain WordPress far more ground than any of the new features.

To read more about the new release, see the WordPress blog. Or take our word for it and download WordPress 2.7.

While I was in San Francisco I sat down to talk to Toni Schneider, CEO of Automattic Inc - the company set up to leverage the popular open source blogging tool Wordpress. One of their main projects is WordPress.com, described as "a more limited version of WordPress that is hosted and completely maintained." It's pretty much the equivalent of TypePad, the hosted blogging service offered by Automattic's main competitor SixApart.

KnowNow Wordpress Enterprise Edition

The competition with SixApart was stepped up today when Toni announced on his blog a partnership with enterprise RSS vendor KnowNow, for a new product called KnowNow WordPress Enterprise Edition (KWEE). It's an enterprise version of Wordpress and comes just a month after SixApart announced Movable Type Enterprise 1.5, which we profiled on Read/WriteWeb. Toni told me that KWEE is an enterprise package of Wordpress MU (the multi-user version of Wordpress) - with additional enterprise functionality bundled in. So for example KWEE comes with LDAP, Automattic's spam solution Akismet and a stats package. KnowNow will market the product to their existing base of enterprise customers - and any improvements that KnowNow makes to the Wordpress product itself, will be released back as open source.

I asked Toni will it be a hosted service? He said it will be available as both a hosted service (by KnowNow) or customers can install it on their own servers.

Stats about Wordpress.com

As far as Wordpress.com goes, Toni reeled off some impressive stats. It gets 18 million unique visitors per month and 70 M page views. There are over 480,000 blogs hosted on wordpress.com. He also said there are an estimated 1-2 million Wordpress installations that are self-hosted. Toni told me the fact that wordpress.com is ad-free is a big part of the reason why people use it.

I asked Toni how wordpress.com compares to Typepad. He said that Typepad has similar traffic to wp.com, although he says wp.com is about to pass Typepad (at least according to Alexa). Here is the latest Alexa chart:

Toni said there is a developer ecosystem around wordpress, which was done without putting commercialism around it - e.g. he notes that themes have links back to the designers. He also told me there is a lot of innovation happening in the wordpress platform in general - for example the plugins. The fact that Wordpress.org is open source is also a factor in the growth of the product, said Toni.

Of course you will hear a different story from SixApart, but my general impression is that Wordpress has the advantage in innovation - but TypePad is seen as a slicker and more user-friendly product for the masses.

International Expansion

One of the more interesting aspects of wordpress.com is its international usage. While english is the number 1 language used, there are a multitude of other languages supported - and Wordpress users are encouraged to translate more. Spanish is the second most popular language currently - and indeed 4 of the top 10 Wordpress.com blogs are Spanish.

But while international support is expanding, Wordpress isn't immune to the problems of operating in China - where Wordpress is blocked.

Wordpress Widgets

One of the more promising areas of growth in Wordpress is widgets, or mini web apps that Wordpress users can plug into their blog. As of now there are 247 widgets. Around 15-20 of these are available in the wordpress.com service. Toni told me that most widgets are created by external developers. Basically this involves developing a Wordpress plugin and then widgetizing it in an HTML wrapper.

Summary

It's pretty plain that Automattic is taking on SixApart with both the Enterprise Edition and the continued growth and expansion of wordpress.com. Right now SixApart has the lead in marketing and probably resources, but Wordpress is a strong innovator and has an open source platform to attract developers. This little battle is far from over and it'll be interesting to watch it unfold!

Remember our poll, which showed that 52% of respondants either don't have an OpenID account or don't know what it is? Well that's slowly changing - and every time a new Internet company supports OpenID, the chances of OpenID becoming the decentralized identity service of choice increase.