The beta version of WordPress for Blackberry, a native application, is now available for download.

Details about the beta and how to get involved in this Open Source project are available on the blackberry.wordpress.org site.

Below is also a quick video overview of the app:

[ Visit blackberry.wordpress.org ]

Telegraph blogs, a thriving section of the Telegraph.co.uk news site, has relaunched all of their blogs on the WordPress MU platform:

Damian Thompson, Blogs Editor of the Telegraph Media Group, announced the upgrade:

Telegraph blogs look different this morning – really different. Overnight we moved everything to WordPress, the world’s most successful and elegant open-source blogging software. It’s a big change that offers immediate benefits to our readers, with many more to come.

Telegraph Media Group has always been an innovator in the digital space dating back to their early web site efforts in 1994. With their recent award as Digital Publisher of the Year, and now this move to WordPress, they continue to impress !

[ Visit Telegraph blogs ]

Recently GigaOM – a network of sites focused on technology news, analysis and opinions – launched a new premier research membership site powered by BuddyPress running on WordPress MU.

This new site, called GigaOM Pro, was created “to address the gap that exists in real-time expert industry analysis on emerging technology markets.”:

The site was built by Mark Jaquith, who has written up a few thoughts and tech details on this very exciting project.

[ Visit GigaOM Pro ]

The Ford Story is a recently launched site committed to making Ford’s progress towards getting new high-quality, fuel-efficient cars, and trucks on the road today transparent and open. The site is completely powered by WordPress and uses WordPress as a CMS to deliver a wide variety of static content, videos, photos, and dynamic updates.

We talked to Scott Monty from the Global Digital Communications group at The Ford Motor Company to see what the company’s experience using WordPress has been like so far.

Why did you choose WordPress over other publishing platforms?

We wanted to use a flexible platform that would easily integrate with the social web. The Ford Story is going to be a dynamic site, and we wanted to be ready to respond to the needs of the day, so we needed a technology that would allow us to take a modular approach. Knowing that we could use plugins and other components that connect with the rest of the web was a strong selling point.

What was the process of designing and developing The Ford Story site with WordPress like for you and your team?

The team that did the actual development hadn’t used WordPress for Ford before, but from what I understand, they were immediately able to work with WordPress and make it function the way we needed. As we have continued to develop and tweak the site, WordPress has allowed to do so on the fly.

What aspect of WordPress has been the biggest help in getting your site up and running and keeping it going how you want it?

We’re going to be giving the site a bit of an overhaul in a few weeks, and the team has been actively testing code, plugins, and different features of the site. The ability to quickly swap in and out these components has made the process pretty smooth.

Where else is WordPress used at Ford?

We already use it for our Social Media Press Releases and for our Autoshows site.

How does WordPress fit in with Ford’s broader move towards embracing social media?

Our vision for social media is to connect consumers with the people of Ford and to allow them to connect with each other, providing value along the way. We hope that as we turn The Ford Story into the social media hub for the company that this is clearer than ever. We know that WordPress is a widely respected, well-known, and community-developed platform in the social media space. It means that we’re more closely aligned with current trends and Web technologies and that we can develop the site more quickly as we move into the future.

In talking with publishers who are using WordPress as a full CMS for their sites, many folks are eager to enhance the “Submit for Review” feature for Contributors to include email notifications.

Peter Keung of Mugo Web, has created two Open Source GPL plugins that provide this enhanced functionality.

The first is Peter’s Collaboration E-mails:

This plugin enables automatic e-mails to the relevant users at the different post status transitions: when posts are pending; when they are approved or scheduled; and when their statuses are changed from “pending” back to “draft”.

The second one is often used in conjunction to append relevant notes, called Peter’s Post Notes:

Add notes on the “edit post” and “edit page” screens’ sidebars in WordPress 2.7 and up. When used with Peter’s Collaboration E-mails 1.2 and up, the notes are sent along with the e-mails in the collaboration workflow. There is also a general and private notes system on the dashboard.

You can download both these plugins from the WordPress.org plugin directory along with 5300+ other Open Source GPL plugins: Peter’s Post Notes and Peter’s Collaboration E-mails.

Elance, a marketplace “where businesses connect with independent professionals to get work done”, has published their latest Elance Online Work Index. In this index they rate which skills are most in demand in their marketplace based on 100,000 new jobs posted on Elance over recent months:

The #1 in demand skill is PHP, followed in the #2 slot by MySQL. The top publishing platform, with an overall ranking of #13, is WordPress, up 2 spots from #15 since the last index. Joomla comes in at #29, previously 18th overall, and the next publishing platform listed is Drupal at #75, previously 46th in the last index.

Since WordPress is PHP/MySQL, WordPress professionals out there are in a great position with the most in demand skills.

You may recall back in January oDesk posted about similar trends in their marketplace as well.

[ Read more on the Elance blog ]

Health.com has launched the Ask the Natural Living Experts forum hosted on the new TalkPress VIP service:

This new discussion area enables Helath.com’s visitors to interact with healthy living experts in a forum and Q&A environment. This forum site also runs our anti-spam service Akismet and integrates seamlessly with the other Health.com WordPress.com VIP blogs. That means visitors to Health.com sites such as Healthy Living, are already registered for the forums and can begin interacting immediately.

For a bit more info on the technical workings of TalkPress head over to Sam’s post on that topic. And for more details on the building of this forum project, the lead consultant Watershed Studio has posted a few thoughts.

[ Visit Ask The Natural Living Expert ]

Great to see that Army Live, the official blog of the United States Army, is powered by WordPress:

Launched in early April, the blog is maintained by the Office of the Chief of Public Affairs, Online and Social Media Division. It’s running a nice clean custom theme, and seeing lots of Gravatars in the comments.

[ Visit armylive.dodlive.mil ]

Thanks to Dale for writing in to let us know.

Michael Ashby of Coherent Methods LLC, published a very thoughtful post about his experience so far working with WordPress and BuddyPress:

I switched from MoveableType to WordPress back in September of last year and it’s been one of the best decisions that I’ve made regarding this blog. WordPress is just so much easier and, dare I say, FUN to use. There’s a richer developer community, more templates and generally more help out there than there is for MT. But my joy with working with WP over MT is more than just skin deep.

Michael goes on to talk about the Six Apart Motion component that works with MovableType:

When I first watched the video for Motion, I kept going “Huh? How am I supposed to use this?” If you take a look at the Motion Demo, you’ll see what I mean … After looking at the demo, the only feeling I’m left with is “Why?” Why would someone want this on their site?

In comparison, the BuddyPress platform sparks this reaction:

Then you take a look at the BuddyPress Demo and there’s a remarkable difference. It’s clearly designed to mirror the FaceBook style of community, but it’s cleaner and clearer as to what you can do and how everything works. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that it’s a better design that FaceBook! I’m currently developing a new community web site and I actually had to stop and think about BuddyPress for quite some time. So at the end of the demo, I’m left thinking “How would I use this?” Not, “Why would I use this?”

Looking forward to seeing what Michael and his team put together with WordPress and BuddyPress.

[ visit mashby.com ]

Intruders.tv, an international web tv network, recently relaunched their globally focused channels, having switched to WordPress MU as their publishing platform of choice.

Since they started out two years ago, the Intruders team have been bringing high-quality, high-profile tech/Internet interviews to the world with HD video, in a number of languages, from a refreshing breadth of locations. Head of content and Co-Founder Vincent Camara explains:

“Throughout last year, Intruders tv registered over 10 million video plays, conducted over 600 interviews and have a library of over 300 hours of HD content available”

The new, streamlined MU implementation and design (by howard/baines) provides a seamless experience between the growing number of channels Intruders.tv is adding to its rosters.

Retaining a focus on the innovators “creating tomorrow’s business, today“, Intruders is expanding the breadth of its offerings to cover Film, Fashion, Mobile and Cleantech, in addition to partnering with leading technology news site the INQUIRER as a content provider.

Best of luck to the team, and a warm welcome to the WordPress family!

[ Visit Intruders.tv ]