Bloo version 1.00 release candidate 2 is now officially available. As you may (or probably may not) have noticed, Thinklings was upgraded to this release recently.

You can read the full release notes here. But the stuff Thinklings readers and posters would care about is below:

• Multiple Category Tags. Finally . . .


• Redesigned the layout of the post admin and post display. In particular, made changes to accommodate multiple categories.


• IP Blacklist - just more spamicide to deal with nasty spammers and trolls. We hates them, we hates them forevah!


• Multiple comment protection. Some of you had problems with your comments hitting twice. This has been fixed.


• Reworked the ThemeSelector so that the admin can select which themes he/she wants to be in the rotation. This gizmo allows you to pick the Thinklings theme of choice that best fits your mood and preference. Check it out in the navbar.


• Fixed problems with the RSS feed. For like the gazillionth time.


• For those of you who are Thinklings chess players: you can now login to the Thinklings blog itself. Feel the power! Actually, you can't do much when logged in, but you can change the name you're known by in Thinklings Chess, you can now change your password, and also your email. Click on the login link in the navbar to check it out. Once you're logged in, this link will change to the pretentiously named "Administer blog" link. But all you can really administer is yourself :-)


• Plus a whole lot of other little fixes and enhancements

Now, for the crass commercial: For those of you who blog and who maintain your own blog site: anyone interested in giving Bloo a try? You can get the software on SourceForge, and the best way to find it is via the main Bloo site - just click on Download. It's free, of course.

There is a small yet growing community of Bloo blogs out there. Join in!

And watch me for the changes . . .