The Flash driven line and area chart from amCharts is a great way to display data dynamically on your site. All the data needed are stored in a separate XML file, so updating is done in seconds. You can zoom a selected period just by clicking and dragging, turn on/off each individual graph and all values are shown when hovering. Yet another XML file allows you complete control over every colour, size, font and background.

I’ve just added the comic strip “Help Desk” from ubersoft.net to my sidebar by including a few functions to the main functions.php file (actually just by doing an include() to make updates easier) found in the /wp-includes directory in WordPress.

These functions automagically look up ubersoft.net to check if a new comic is out. If yes it will create a thumbnail with a link to the original, otherwise it will simply state that nothing new is out. To make it even prettier I’ve used the Lightbox add-on to have it open on top of the page so you wont have to go anywhere.

When I get around to it I’ll create a drop down menu with links to previous comics. I’ve just created a hidden DIV layer that will reveal the “Help Desk” comic by calling a tiny JavaScript. Drop me a line if you are interested in getting the code on your own WordPress installation.

Have you ever tried to include special characters like e.g. é, ê, è, ‘ or “ as a string into a JavaScript (like in an alert message when someone forgot to fill in a field in a form etc.)? Most likely it will look something like à followed by yet another character (especially in IE when the site is running on a Windows server, Firefox will probably get it right…). In order to avoid this you can simply replace the character with the corresponding Hex value (ASCII).

Loss:

• After Viacom got YouTube to remove its videos and signed a deal with Joost.com.

Win:

• At the same time, YouTube’s traffic actually increased 14% since removing the videos.
• YouTube has found some success with media partnerships lately (e.g. NBA and BBC).
• YouTube gets coverage for all those deals in the New York Times.

Read more | Digg story

Based on this news bulletin I’m performing an upgrade during the next few hours resulting in periodic downtime;

Long story short: If you downloaded WordPress 2.1.1 within the past 3-4 days, your files may include a security exploit that was added by a cracker, and you should upgrade all of your files to 2.1.2 immediately.

If you are running version 2.1.1 of WordPress I suggest you do the same. Anyhow I apologize for the inconvenience this may cause you. But safety first, as may grandma keeps telling me…

A big thank you goes out the the WordPress team for their swift response and solid feedback as always.

Edit: Upgrade procedure completed! Please let me know if something isn’t working as expected!