After a seemingly never-ending torrent of (GCE level) maths homework, I’ve had to turn to Microsoft Math for help. I can’t recommend it enough as it does everything I need it to do. And for $20 (about £10), it’s hardly going to break the bank. Unfortunately, it’s not received an update for about 18 months and it doesn’t appear to be updated any time soon but it’s still a solid piece of software and definitely worth the price. You could even argue that it doesn’t need updating.

With the impending release of WordPress 2.7, I thought I’d share some of the new features and styling from the betas.

First thing’s first, the admin pages have seen a big redesign which nicely brings WordPress up to date with trendy drag-and-drop functionality. The new design has a very clean and simple look yet it packs in lots of information, stylishly. It’s not as colourful as 2.6 which worries me in a way as the colours they have used look garish and out of place.

What strikes me most is how integrated WordPress now feels. Once you’ve installed it, you may never need to use FTP again. Plug-in installs and updates can be done within the admin interface – very easily.

Of course, as with many big version overhauls, most plug-ins don’t work and there are quite a few things that I don’t think have been wisely placed. For example, whilst the new navigation strip is a welcome change to the old navigation bar, it is too long and there are quite a few things that I’ll never use. Of course, you can “minimise” it if you wish.

There’s been a big push towards making the interface more customisable and so you are able to remove panes that you don’t like and you can even transform it into a single column display just by dragging the panes into one single column. So in a sense, it feels a lot more like a desktop application.

QuickPress allows you to quickly bash out a post – Twitter-style – and whilst I probably won’t be using it, I can see many who will. Although, with the lack of category selection, its potential is seriously limited.

Added to all these new features, 2.7 also sees a huge number of security fixes and general bug fixes – essentially making this a must-upgrade situation.

Among all the seemingly Web 2.0 traits, 2.7 transforms WordPress into more than just a simple blogging platform. And I dare say that this new version will be one of the major evolutions of WordPress so far.

The Digg Recommendation Engine recommends new stories that may be of interest to you, compared with what you have already Dugg. It finds Diggers like you and uses what they have Dugg and recommends them to you. When I saw the video, I didn’t think I’d be part of the selection that would get the feature first.

First thoughts are very promising. You need to be a fairly active member of Digg to keep the recommendations relevant, I should add – it grows in strength with stories you Digg. If the compatibility between you and other users is low, then chances are you’ll get poor results. For me, though, most recommendations were fairly accurate. My compatibility percentages were between 7 % and 13%.

For somebody who rarely uses the Upcoming feature, this brings a welcome change and I’ve already Dugg many stories that I probably wouldn’t have seen otherwise. When the feature hits mainstream, I dare say it’ll be used heavily and the recommendations will be very accurate.

The Griffin iTrip SE was pretty much unusable. The transmission is incredibly quiet – so quiet, that even at high volumes, you still struggle to hear it. To add to insult, it turns itself off every so often due to “power saving functionality”. If it’s a European model, things are made difficult still with a feature to deter pirate radio stations by selecting a random frequency every time the device is turned on. Sadly, it makes life worse for the majority that use it for good and I’d hardly say it deters pirate radio stations (although why use it if it only has a weak signal anyway?).

There can be good things said about the wide compatibility of iPods that it can connect to and the ability to still use the headphone jack whilst transmitting is an added bonus. However, if you appreciate music (and by that, I mean listen), you should avoid it completely.