Google has disabled a Google News feature that allows personalities featured on the news items to comment on the news stories. When this was announced not so long ago, news media couldn't quite get the idea behind it. Although it received media coverage for its ingenuity, personalities though didn't quite like it, well at least based on the low usage of the said feature. And so,

The topic of your link neighbors is well discussed. It goes without saying that: a backlink from a resource linking to only reputable sites is good; a backlink from a resource that links out very seldom and is very conservative / lazy about out-linking is good. But is it actually a separate profile for such sites (that are both selective and lazy linkers) in Google's algorithm. There is an interesting discussion over at WebmasterWorld.

Drag and drop has come to Gmail : you can now drag a message by its left-hand grid, and move it into a label/ folder to the left side. Also, you can now re-arrange labels via drag & drop. [Thanks Cookie Lee and Niranjan!] [By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Gmail With Drag & Drop | Comments ] [Advertisement] Google books at eBay : background info on Google, AdWords, AdSense, Blogger and more.

Posted by randfish I'm not always a fan of Guy Kawasaki's work, but really enjoyed his post on the OPEN Forum - A Dozen Don'ts for Entrepreneurs . I thought I'd take a stab at replicating it with some of my biggest warnings for those in our field. For the list below, the word "clients" is interchangeable with "marketing manager" or "executive team" for in-house SEOs. Don't Create False Expectations Clients are just like everyone else - when you exceed their expectations,

If WordPress were a country, our Bill of Rights would be the GPL because it protects our core freedoms. We’ve always done our best to keep WordPress.org clean and only promote things that are completely compatible and legal with WordPress’ license. There have been some questions in the community about whether the GPL applies to themes like we’ve always assumed. To help clarify this point, I reached out to the Software Freedom Law Center, the world’s preëminent experts on the GPL, which spent time with WordPress’ code, community, and provided us with an official legal opinion. One sentence summary: PHP in WordPress themes must be GPL, artwork and CSS may be but are not required.

Matt,

You asked the Software Freedom Law Center to clarify the status of themes as derivative works of WordPress, a content management software package written in PHP and licensed under version 2 of the GNU General Public License.

We examined release candidate 1 of WordPress 2.8, which you provided to us at http://wordpress.org/wordpress-2.8-RC1.tar.gz. The “classic” and “default” themes included in that release candidate comprise various PHP and CSS files along with an optional directory of images. The PHP files contain a mix of HTML markup and PHP calls to
WordPress functions. There is some programmatic logic in the PHP code, including loops and conditionals.

When WordPress is started, it executes various routines that prepare information for use by themes. In normal use, control is then transferred via PHP’s include() function to HTML and PHP templates found in theme package files. The PHP code in those template files relies on the earlier-prepared information to fill the templates for serving to the client.

On the basis of that version of WordPress, and considering those themes as if they had been added to WordPress by a third party, it is our opinion that the themes presented, and any that are substantially similar, contain elements that are derivative works of the WordPress software as well as elements that are potentially separate works. Specifically, the CSS files and material contained in the images directory of the “default” theme are works separate from the WordPress code. On the other hand, the PHP and HTML code that is intermingled with and operated on by PHP the code derives from the WordPress code.

In the WordPress themes, CSS files and images exist purely as data to be served by a web server. WordPress itself ignores these files[1]. The CSS and image files are simply read by the server as data and delivered verbatim to the user, avoiding the WordPress instance altogether. The CSS and images could easily be used with a range of HTML documents and read and displayed by a variety of software having no relation to WordPress. As such, these files are separate works from the WordPress code itself.

The PHP elements, taken together, are clearly derivative of WordPress code. The template is loaded via the include() function. Its contents are combined with the WordPress code in memory to be processed by PHP along with (and completely indistinguishable from) the rest of WordPress. The PHP code consists largely of calls to WordPress functions and sparse, minimal logic to control which WordPress functions are accessed and how many times they will be called. They are derivative of WordPress because every part of them is determined by the content of the WordPress functions they call. As works of authorship, they are designed only to be combined with WordPress into a larger work.

HTML elements are intermingled with PHP in the two themes presented. These snippets of HTML interspersed with PHP throughout the theme PHP files together form a work whose form is highly dependent on the PHP and thus derivative of it.

In conclusion, the WordPress themes supplied contain elements that are derivative of WordPress’s copyrighted code. These themes, being collections of distinct works (images, CSS files, PHP files), need not be GPL-licensed as a whole. Rather, the PHP files are subject to the requirements of the GPL while the images and CSS are not. Third-party developers of such themes may apply restrictive copyrights to these elements if they wish.

Finally, we note that it might be possible to design a valid WordPress theme that avoids the factors that subject it to WordPress’s copyright, but such a theme would have to forgo almost all the WordPress functionality that makes the software useful.

Sincerely,
James Vasile
Software Freedom Law Center

[1] There is one exception. WordPress does reads CSS and image files to create previews of templates for the template selection portion of the administrative interface. Even in that case, though, nothing in those files calls any WordPress functions, is treated as a command by PHP, or alters any other WordPress data structure. These files are read as data and used to create an image and display a miniaturized version of a webpage to the user.

Even though graphics and CSS aren’t required to be GPL legally, the lack thereof is pretty limiting. Can you imagine WordPress without any CSS or javascript? So as before, we will only promote and host things on WordPress.org that are 100% GPL or compatible. To celebrate a few folks creating 100% GPL themes and providing support and other services around them, we have a new page listing GPL commercially supported themes.

Like many of you, I was saddened to learn on Sunday that Billy Mays died at the age of 50. My family has been watching the Discovery Channel series Pitchmen, featuring Mays and fellow pitchman Anthony Sullivan. I had been planning this post for a few weeks, but there has been so much search news to cover, I haven't had the time. Now, I'm publishing it to honor the tried and true techniques Billy Mays used to sell millions of products. Mays' style may not be your cup of tea,

On Tuesday, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Real were named in a lawsuit filed by some music publishing companies claiming that each of their online music stores - Zune, Yahoo Music, and Rhapsody - infringe upon their copyrights. If you're shaking your head and wondering how that is possible, with all the royalties they pay out, you're not alone. This copyright business is  a real mess.  As consumers we know not to illegally download music or share it online,

As real-time search and Twitter's growing importance in producing valuable information is getting into the mainstream, Bing is joining the likes of Facebook, Google and Twitter in bringing real-time search feature in their respective search algorithms. Starting today, Bing will be integrating more real-time data into its search results, beginning first with tweets of famous people - bloggers or celebrities. While this may be a welcome development,

by Mike Krumboltz Michael Jackson died less than a week ago, but the battle over his fortune is well underway . The will was recently released, and folks are eager to know more about some of the key players in the King of Pop's financial saga... Nona Paris Lola Ankhesenamun Jackson : Claiming to be Michael Jackson's widow, the woman recently filed a claim in Los Angeles Superior Court. Fans of Jackson have heard of Ms. Nona Paris before.

by Claudine Zap It's the time of year when thoughts turn to summer getaways. According to a TripAdvisor survey, travelers would rather go to New York , San Francisco , and Miami over, well, Cleveland . That metropolis was voted "most boring city" by vacationers who would prefer even the windy city of Chicago over a boring one . Cleveland does have some notable aspects that could draw tourists: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is there. And now,