Ping or Update Services are tools that you can use to let other people know you’ve updated your blog (or in simple words, its just notifying sites, and letting them know that you have new content on your Website).
WordPress automatically notifies popular Update Services that you’ve updated your blog by sending a XML-RPC ping each

There was a bug with Wordpress 2.9, where scheduled posts and pingbacks were not not processed correctly due to incompatibilities issues. So this new Wordpress patch, version Wordpress 2.9.1 would fix all those minor bugs.
Download 2.9.1 or upgrade automatically from the Tools->Upgrade menu in your blog’s admin area.

Description
The Plaxo Theme is out and its free. The theme is as simple as the Plaxo design itself, this theme brings it all together. It looks good and works great. I’ve added all of the best design elements on the Plaxo layout and with loads of Plaxo-like features and more….. On the options page

Did you update your Blog’s footer copyright notice with the new year? Here is 2 simple ways to let your footer auto-update itself with the new year .
If you’re running Wordpress like me, then all you need to:
* Open the footer.php in your theme folder
* Paste “<?php echo date(“Y”); ?>” instead of the copyright

After the release of WordPress 2.8.6, WordPress engineers started working on a newer version of WordPress and they had made up their mind that they would launch a newer version of WordPress within this year (2009)…. And they kept their words by launching it yesterday!! Congrats to the WordPress team .
Let me discuss some

There are many websites which host malwares (unknowingly) but they look like pretty nice and authentic sites in order to trap the visitors. Google Safe Browsing tool is a tool developed by Google which helps you to test a website which you think may not be authentic or has malware hidden in the source codes.

In

More security patches for your Wordpress. Wordpress 2.8.6 fixes two security problems that can be exploited by registered, logged in users who have posting privileges. If you have untrusted authors on your blog, upgrading to 2.8.6 is recommended.
The first problem is an XSS vulnerability in Press. The second problem, is an issue with

Wordpress 2.9 beta testing starts shortly, and today wordpress has released a hardening patch (getting us ready) for the new 2.9 release.

Somethings to notice in the release of Wordpress 2.8.5:

A fix for the Trackback Denial-of-Service attack that is currently being seen.
Removal of areas within the code where php code in variables was evaluated.
Switched the file

I’m sure many of you have tried to add your WordPress blog into Google Webmaster Tools but failed to verify the blog since you cannot add meta tags, neither you can upload an HTML file since yours is a free WordPress blog.
Here’s a way if you really wish to add your blog into