While this might not seem like anything spectacular (after all YouTube is 20 time larger with 2 GB), Tumblr fans will be able to broadcast their videos immediately without dealing with the hassles of transcoding.

(Tumblr Staff) Over the next few hours, we’ll be rolling out crazy simple native video uploading to all accounts. This is designed to be an easy alternative to full-blown video sites when all you want to do is post a quick video to your blog. [...]

Tumblr will immediately post most H.264-MP4-AAC videos without transcoding! That means no waiting and no quality loss. Photo Booth videos and iMovie’s “Export to iPod/iPhone” work great.

Tumblr still limits users to the “5 minuet rule” when it comes to video uploading, although hopefully that will change once they unleash the rumored premium features.

Despite its simplistic approach to blogging, Tumblr is quickly turning into a full fledged blogging platform, whose previous additions of pages and comments could make it a strong contender against both Blogger and WordPress (especially for bloggers looking to save some money during this recession).

I personally have not had time yet to extensively test the new release but expectations are very high. In the past I have called Expression Engine the best self-hosted blogging platform on this site and am certainly looking forward to compare the new version to WordPress which I have come to love enough to use daily and customise for almost all projects, but often I have preferred the ease of EE 1.6.x when tailoring sites.

But First Things First.

The newly released EE2.0 PB (Public Beta) comes with a price and a new pricing structure:

• Freelancer: $99.95
• Non-commercial License: $149.95
• Commercial License: $299.95

Although Expression Engine 1.6.8 Core still available is, there is no free Core version for EE2.0, instead EllisLab offers a 30-day free demo download. It certainly is a daring move and although many labour has gone in the release (more than 2 years), one can only wonder if EllisLab is cutting of the ever shrinking community and pricing itself out of the market. In a sector with as main competitors the free and open source platforms WordPress and Movable Type, this bald move must be admired. When Six Apart announced a change in licensing structure in 2004 WordPress almost single-handedly won the market and some years later SA announced a new opensource version of MT, which was released end 2007 but MT had already lost its position as market leader. Is EE headed for a similar obscurity?

It must also be said that the standard license fee has increased with $50 for normal users. To make the platform more appealing for developers and designers there is a new Freelancer license at $99.95. One of the biggest differences when comparing EE to WordPress is the availability of plugins and the new license structure is not bound to help the Expression Engine community.

That said, I am looking forward to play with EE2.0 over the next 30 days before I decide whether I want to invest in a license for something I can have freely somewhere else. A license I mainly need to continue playing with the platform and promote EE as a viable and (hopefully still) better alternative.
It will be sad if the license structure will seal the future of EE as I would love to see more choice and more viable alternatives to WordPress. I secretly hoped that EE2.0 would become open source like other platforms but who am I. Now I must play with EE, I only have 30 days!

Can you imagine replacing WordPress with EE? What impact would it have on your business, especially when running several blogs?

Update: Expression Engine 2.0.0 PB released (yes version 2.0.0).

Whenever I think of open sourced CMS (Content Management System), I often think of Drupal and Joomla which are used by web masters to make powerful websites without breaking the bank.

So you can imagine my surprise when WordPress–software created primarily for blogging–defeated Joomla and Drupal as the Overall Best Open Source CMS for 2009.

Update: Corrections made to article. See below for details.

(PacketPub.com We are pleased to announce that WordPress has won the Overall Best Open Source CMS Award in the 2009 Open Source CMS Awards. WordPress has won this Award for the first time in the past four years, earning itself a place in the Hall of Fame category for the Award next year.

While WordPress occupied the top spot in the Overall Award, the other two extremely popular finalists MODx and SilverStripe tied for the first runner up position.

Although I am still puzzled as why web masters skilled in the “art of geek” would choose WordPress over its rivals (ease of use perhaps?) this marks a great victory for those belonging to the faith of WordPress.

While only time will tell whether WordPress will defeat it’s rivals in 2010, its victory here could mark the beginning when WordPress is seen more as a CMS, instead of yet another “web journal software” to use.

Update: Corrected CMS mistake (published Customer Management Software instead of Content Management System).

Also a commentors pointed out that WordPress won because Drupal & Joomla won previously.

Prior to its brief hiatus (due to software migration) the Perf Marketplace had been an active portal for buying and selling of blogs, software, and related services. The new Marketplace aims to bring this back. With a free-flowing format (forum-based), Performancing hopes that users can have meaningful exchanges of information and fruitful trades of products and services.

Along with the recent free signup promo for the Hive and the reopening of the Jobs board, the Marketplace relaunch is just one of the efforts the Performancing team is doing to ensure a vibrant community of new media professionals. Sign up now for free, or browse the current listings.

Though the program is aimed towards developers, bloggers should be excited about this new development as well.

Chris Alden, CEO of Six Apart writes, “For personal bloggers and TypePad users, opening up our APIs means that TypePad will be built into applications that will help the bloggers and their readers, paving the way for more applications that enhance TypePad functionality. For our larger TypePad customers it opens up a large set of possibilities about how they can integrate their TypePad blogs into their existing web sites”

It is hoped that the developer program would produce more core functionality upgrades to the TypePad blogging platform in the form of third party development similar to what Automattic has done with Wordpress.

If you’re interested to take part in the developer program then go to developer.typad.com and sign up!

LiveJournal has just launched a joint program with Google Adsense called “Your Journal – Your Money” last September 22, 2009, which gives LiveJournal owners a chance to earn cash through their blogs by displaying Google ads on their pages.

“This project allows millions of LiveJournal users to work with Google to earn money from doing what they already love to do on LiveJournal. The Google AdSense program is successfully used by many bloggers across the globe, and I am delighted that LiveJournal users are now going to be able to share in this success.” says Vladimir Dolgov, country manager for Google Russia, during a press release.

According to the LiveJournal Inc. Blog, this feature is only available to all paid and permanent account holders. Before they could enter the program, users are asked to have their own Google Adsense account.

Once signed up, users can specify where their ads would appear on their pages. Furthermore, advertisements are fully customizable, allowing users to choose the color, size, and format of the ads.

The amount that bloggers can earn on the program depends on different factors like the cost of the ads and the number of views that the ad receives.  Blog owners will get most of their earnings, with only a small percentage going to Google. LiveJournal, on the other hand, will not directly receive any share of the advertising revenue.

Interested parties can learn more about the “Your Journal – Your Money” program here.

From the Blog Post:

So effective immediately, we are ceasing development of SimplePie and shutting down the project. We will shortly be pushing all code to GitHub. The mailing list will continue to serve users for the time being, but my sincerest hope is that someone will take up the charge to fork SimplePie, fix all of its issues, and continue on with this project that’s been such a huge part of my life for the past 5 years.

While I am not sure what this means for the long term use of the code as they are going to give away the final release to whomever wants it via GitHub. It is always interesting to me to see big projects loose steam, despite the sadness that surrounds the demise of an otherwise great project and product.

The question now is: who will continue on helping people parse RSS feeds in the future? WordPress 2.9 was set to use SimplePie version 1.3. What will they use for WordPress 3.0? Only time will tell.

* How to Create a Mega-Following and Mega-Sales With Social Media Marketing
* Building a Loyal Facebook Following for Increased Profits
* How to Grow and Engage an Audience on Twitter
* Five Reasons You Need to Be on Twitter (and Tools to Help You Manage)
* Social Media Start Up: 3 Key Tools to Build Your Social Media Marketing Plan
* How to Attract Tens of Thousands of People in Mere Days

The list of presenters is pretty damn good too: Gary Vaynerchuk, Darren Rowse, Mari Smith, Jason Alba, Ann Handley, Brian Clark, Chris Garrett, Denise Wakeman, Michael A. Stelzener.

There are also apparently a heck of a long list of giveaways (in the form of ebooks, cds, etc), that they say is worth up to $370, so the price doesn’t seem quite so bad, so long as those giveaways are of use to you.

The major thing though I think, is how they are presenting these sessions. Purely online. And unlike most conferences none of the 4 weeks worth of sessions will be on overlapping time slots.

From the site…

At traditional summits and conferences, groups of sessions are often held at the same time, so it’s impossible to attend them all.

Not this summit.

When you register, you’ll be able to take advantage of EVERY business-building opportunity. Even better, after the summit you can download a video recording of each session. If you miss a live session, we’ll provide you a free recording AND transcript.

If you want to dig into social media to push your blog to the next level, or just want to hear Gary Vaynerchuk yelling about “killing it” (and who doesn’t? Gary is great), get signed up today. Tomorrow it’ll cost ya an extra $100.

It’s get some really good advice on what you should (and shouldn’t) be doing to build up some traffic.

Here’s a small taste of one of the tips…

Why social bookmarking traffic is bad for my blog?
Social bookmarking traffic is very smart. If you are trying to make money with contextual ads like Adsense, for example, you will notice that such traffic will covert very poorly, if at all..

And why is social bookmarking traffic is good for my blog?
This is no brainer. More traffic means people like your content. Just imagine even if 1% of those visitors link to your article from their blog. Also imagine if 1% of of those people visiting your blog for the first time become your subscribers.

The tips are all pretty good (especially the stuff to avoid), so if you’re struggling to get traffic coming to your blog, or you just want to build it up a little faster than it should make some interesting reading.

Any great traffic building tips you think they missed or are wrong about?

Now I’m off to bug everyone in my family to visit this blog(that’s a joke, read the tips!).

It sounds pretty cool actually. You get to make your blog available to a bazillion (give or take a few) potential new readers, and even get 70/30 split revenue sharing(the 70% going to Amazon). It seems like Amazon is doing the pricing, and it tends to average around $2 a month, but without knowing how they are making that decision, it’s hard to say if that is likely to change or not.

I’m not sure how fast this will spread, but it will be pretty nice to have access to a lot more blogs on the Kindle, and is a very good sign of things to come.

What do you think, should BloggingPro spread into the world of the Kindle? I’m not sure, but it’s interesting to ponder just how this will change blogging in the semi-near future.