We’ve recently made some changes to help improve the communication between plugin authors and plugin users about the changes that are made between versions.

We feel that all software should have a changelog that details, at a high level, what changes have been made in each version so that the user can make an informed decision about when to upgrade and how much testing they should do with their site.

In order to make this an easy and open communication channel we have added support for a Changelog section in the plugins readme.txt file.  This changelog information is then displayed as a separate tab in the plugin directory and also in the back end of your WordPress blog when you view the details on a new version of a plugin.

The new section is formatted as follows:

== Changelog ==

= 1.0 =
* A change since the previous version.
* Another change.

= 0.5 =
* List versions from most recent at top to oldest at bottom.

We would also like to recommend that you also provide meaningful log messages when you commit changes to the subversion repository for your plugin so that people who want to dig further into your changes can see why things are changing (At the moment is seems a large number of plugin authors leave this field blank which isn’t very helpful).

by Vera H-C Chan Internet stories that sound "too good to be true" sometimes turn out to be just that. In the June maelstrom of celebrity deaths, a World War II vet died on June 17 at age 86. His passing got some mention in the Roanoke Times , but someone believed that Darrell "Shifty" Powers deserved a lot more notice: The former soldier had served in the 101st Airborne Division, part of the fabled Easy Company that inspired the book and 2001 HBO miniseries,

The Google Docs team last week promised to dust off its suite of word processing, spreadsheet and presentations apps. Today, it began the roll-out of such new features by adding the ability to let users import tables from Microsoft Office PowerPoint and insert them in presentations : Moreover, the tables will be editable. When you drop a table into a presentation, you can add, select, and resize rows and columns, format and align text across the table.

Tomorrow marks the tenth anniversary of Microsoft's Windows Live Messenger. Microsoft says it has become the most widely used free instant messaging service in the world, with 330 million users. A spokesperson for Microsoft shared some interesting findings with WebProNews from a survey about Windows Live Messenger: - 71 percent of Americans surveyed have accidentally IMed the wrong person in the past year.

Hey everyone, I wanted to clear up some confusion created over the past couple of days surrounding the DiggBar, specifically how Digg short URLs work. As we've stated in the past , the DiggBar is meant to streamline the Digg experience and provide our registered users with the opportunity to catch up on comments, related stories and additional source content. Our strategy with Digg short URLs is to facilitate sharing of Digg content,

Google has added the ability to include tables in presentations in Google Docs. The feature has apparently been in high demand, and the company says they really wanted it too. Users can insert a table into their presentation, then easily add, select, and resize rows and columns, format and align text across the table, and set background colors for cells and borders. Rows will resize themselves to fit content.

Google announced today that it is expanding availability of local currency reports to AdSense publishers in Denmark and Norway. Switching to these new reports means that all earnings generated from advertisers paying in other currencies will be converted to the publisher's local currency each day. "If you receive payments in your local currency, there won't be any additional conversions at the end of the month,

Readers of this blog are aware that we're less than a month away from SES San Jose (Aug 10-14). In anticipation of some of the mobile local content that will be featured at the show, I was able to catch up with Michelle Moore, director of search engine strategies at Metric Voodoo . We'll be sitting on a panel on Day 1 of the show, entitled Keeping it Local: The Convergence of Phones & Local Search .

by Claudine Zap Our top picks from the day's hottest searches. Total solar eclipse 2009 (Searches increased by 14,482%). Skywatchers in Asia prepare to view the event . Giant jellyfish (+2,425%). Japan is being hit with six-feet-long sea creatures that pose a danger to the fishing industry and swimmers . Gazpacho (+338%). Find your favorite recipe for the chilled tomato soup. Moon landing (+112%). Wired.com lists its top 10 reasons that the moon landing was "awesome,

Earlier today, I wrote about the new Yahoo home page. My requests to toy with with the new Yahoo home page in a Yahoo developer sandbox were not met. Here is what we see currently: I am very anxious to play around with the new Yahoo home page when it becomes available later today - for one reason in particular: My Favorites. I saw this in action during a demo from Tapan Bhat, senior vice president of Integrated Consumer Experience at Yahoo, yesterday and it looked intriguing.