Twitter Has A New, Better Search Engine

Most users probably won't notice any differences when they use the Twitter search function, but that doesn't mean it hasn't been approved. Twitter announced today that they have changed the architectural way in which their search platform makes queries to their systems database. According to Twitter, the new functionality allows for a better system of scale, including the ability to index more Tweets per second, while using less Twitter system resources, an important improvement given the number of recent fail whales. According to several sources, the new program is no longer using MySQL queries due to the issues that arise when trying to manage an ever increasing database with the program. Twitter developers plan to continue in the development of their search program, with plans to announce new and exciting offerings in the coming months. What would you like to see from Twitter in terms of what their search program offers? Also, I would like to know what "issues of scale" developers at Twitter are running into with MySQL.

Blogrolling Shutting Down On All Saints Day Posted: 06 Oct 2010 12:48 PM PDT After ushering in an era of blog links upon the sidebar, it looks like Blogrolling has finally decided to shut down their site on the day after Halloween. BlogRolling will be shutting down November 1st, 2010. If you are not using BlogRolling code on your site anymore, you don't need to do anything. If you are using BlogRolling code on your site, you'll want to follow these simple steps before the end of this month. (Blogrolling Status Blog) Note: Emphasis theirs. Although newbie bloggers may shrug their shoulders at Blogrolling's demise, the site did play a small part in the blog revolution by making it easy to add links to sidebars without a deep knowledge of HTML. Blogrolling also played a small part in Iran, as the site's dead simple services made it easier for the Persian blogosphere to network with each other (that is until the Iranian government blocked Blogrolling from being used by their ISP's). While the site's future demise became apparent after Google jumped into the link roll game, many bloggers continued to use the service (especially those using WordPress). Bloggers seeking to save their link data are being instructed to log into Blogrolling and copy their links upon a word document (or rich text file) before November 1st, as well as to remove any of Blogrolling's code from your site or server.

VaultPress Gives Stat Geeks Another Reason To Choose WordPress Posted: 06 Oct 2010 11:03 AM PDT The boys and girls at Automattic (the company behind WordPress) have released a new feature for VaultPress that should help make WordPress more appealing for those who live and die by their analytics. Today, we're announcing the first release of VaultPress stats, available immediately for all of our beta customers on their VaultPress dashboards. VaultPress stats complement stats packages you may already be running, like the WordPress.com stats plugin or Google Analytics. [...] Because VaultPress backs up activity on your blog in realtime, we can help you understand time-based patterns. What time of day do you blog most often? What day of the week do you blog the most? We've crunched these numbers for you so you can see at a glance when you're most productive. (Official VaultPress Blog) At first glance the new VaultPress stats dashboards seems more of a "Google Reader stats meets Disqus analytics" mash up, in which Automattic blends the best of both services upon one dashboard. However one feature I did find distinct about the VaultPress dashboard was its ability to track the number of media files uploaded, as well as pages created (2 features that may appeal to group blogs as well as analytical geeks). Unfortunately there is no way to segregate between media types (i.e. images, videos, audio, etc.) which could help further distinguish VaultPress from the sea of WordPress backups available. Despite presenting users with basic stats from "behind the curtain," the new dashboard is pleasant to look upon, which may help convince a few of my Joomla friends to make the WP switch (as they have been watching VaultPress with envious eyes).