The main idea behind the launch of this version is not to extend Joomla, rather to begin the transition to the new release cycle and provide core improvements in the Joomla package – something which Joomla developers were waiting for a long time now.

The major improvements include performance improvements, front-end content editing, composer integration, additional high-level security measures and around 700 bug fixes. With these features the front-end editing Joomla modules are now functioning in a much better manner. This feature gives site content editors’ access to perform content creation and editing without the need for back-end Admin access.

The other outstanding features of this version are:

De-couple weblinks from New Installs – This will give you a lighter Joomla core making it more user-friendly

Continued Microdata Implementation – Introduced in 3.2 version, the latest version also continues to implement this feature in Joomla’s core layouts

Composer Integration – With this you can manage the external dependencies in a better manner

No Captcha reCaptcha – Helps you control or rather spams. This way Joomla 3.4 gives an edge to legitimate users

UploadShiled Implementation

With these changes, Joomla experts and Joomla developers can now easily focus on the admin functions. While Joomla content professionals can spend more time on building proper pages, proofreading and creative writing.

With the improved performance of Joomla, now you can expect better performance leads as well as efficient SEO for Joomla-powered websites. The new version is geared towards reducing abandonment as well as engaging customers.

Today Joomla is one of the most sought after CMS, and with the launch of its 3.4 version it has turned into a more efficient and faster CMS – an area in which many CMS lag behind.

The Joomla team has many other improvements in its road map, namely Joomla’s admin interface with main focus on accessibility, mobility and performance enhancements, 508 requirements, streamlining core CMS and also enhancing Joomla SEO capabilities.

Thus if you are using any other CMS, then you surely are lagging behind and missing out on some very outstanding features which are readily available on Joomla.

Some of the best blogging tools for Joomla are:

EasyBlog

According to Joomla experts this is one of the best Joomla blog extensions. It provides smooth and seamless blog layout integration with all the major Joomla templates available in the market. EasyBlog supports multiple blog authors in a single blog extension without requiring users to login to the back end. Also with this tool a built-in comments, advanced media management and lots of integration with social media.

K2

This is an award-winning content extension for Joomla. What makes it one of the best blogging tools for this platform is the fact that it provides a unique integrated solution for rich content, nested-level categories, comments, tags, ACL, front-end editing, sub templates and many such features to the blogger.

With this tool you can easily convert your Joomla website to a magazine site bearing product catalogs, author blogs, event & directory listing and many such exciting features. Also known as CCK – Content Creation Kit, K2 enables you to create custom content types blogs so that you can easily review and make changes to your blog. It fully supports Joomla API and provides advanced SEF options.

ZOO

Joomla web designers vouch by ZOO for being flexible and powerful content application builder. Just like K2 you can use this tool also to create custom content types which are suitable for blogging purposes. The ‘lite’ version of this tool provides an out of box solution for blog writing. You can easily add tags, social bookmarks and slick comment section.

Powered with JavaScript user interface ZOO provides its users with a clean design and import content from Joomla, CSV files and other popular Joomla components.

Joomla Core

This tool has improved drastically, giving a lot of freedom to the bloggers. With the introduction of nested categories, it is now much easier to manage content, and store your articles. An updated and improved version of ACL helps you access information easily from the complex blog. It is packed with power and gives lot flexibility to advanced users. And when you combine Joomla Core with extensions like ‘Komento’ you get a great blogging platform.

WordPress for Joomla

This tool enables empowers you to deploy the best blog software. It integrates WordPress directly into a Joomla extension. Thus you can have multiple blogs within one Joomla installation. This tool enables you to integrate WordPress plugins and themes while using the Joomla content plugins at the same time. This all inclusive tool has provides you with excellent built-in SEO and comments section. As an author you can password protect your posts and enjoy seamless blog and layout integration.

So now do not hesitate to use Joomla as a platform for your blogs. Make most of these blogging tools and add an edge to your blogging experience on Joomla.

Matt offered a few rules of thumb to make sure you’re not buying a domain that spammers have burnt to the ground. First step is to do a search for the domain by typing the “site:domain.com” into the Google search bar. If there are no results at all for the domain, you should consider not to buy that domain.

Next step is to go Archeive.org and search for the domain. The archive will show you what previous versions of the site looked like, by knowing what the site used to look like you can get a clear idea of the domain history. If this ends with spam, Matt suggests not t buy that domain name.

If you are thinking to buy a domain directly from previous owner, ask if you can see the analytics report to get an idea of what the traffic pattern were like. If you find a sharp drop in traffic, then it’s an indication of Google penalty which has hit the website earlier. So matt suggests not to buy such domain.

Webmasters are aware of the fact that expired domains can benefit or do nothing or seriously hurts SEO efforts. So be careful in picking the domain name and follow the Google’s Matt Cutts “Rule of thumb” as explained above.

For more information on how to pick the domain name, watch this video:

SlickLogin’s product had a website create an almost inaudible tone when you tried to log in, you’d then hold up your phone to your computer’s speaker and it would verify that it had heard your tone and then send your credentials in. In theory, it would make remembering a password unnecessary, but it could also work well for two-factor authentications — instead of entering in a unique code from your phone, it could just communicate your identity directly.

Google already has a widely-used two-factor authentication app that’s used both for its own products and others, and it’s not crazy to think that something like SlickLogin could become a part of that.

SlickLogin believes “logging in should be easy instead of frustrating and authentication should be effective without getting in the way”.

Its founders are Or Zelig, a former data security expert with the Israeli Defense Forces, and two security researchers, Eran Galili and Ori Kabeli. A detail of how much Google has paid for this service has not yet been disclosed.

Distill was working on ways to help HR people recruit technical talent, a cool idea that combined video interviews with programming challenges reports Techcrunch’s Kim-Mai Cutler, who was the first to spy the acquisition news. Distil was in private beta with the service, testing it with companies like ClearSlide, Disney, Box, ModCloth and Fivestars.

The startup’s two founders, Deng-Kai Chen and Ken Maclnnis, came from Tapjoy, StumbleUpon and Google created Distil. It has been working to make the easy process of technical recruiting by developing a service that does video conferencing and has a text editor with the file uploading for the two parties to collaborate on coding.

Here is the Blog Post from Distill that announces that the service will be closed.

We are excited to share the news that the Distill team is off to start a new adventure! We are joining Yahoo. Prior to creating Distill, we were part of the original team behind the creation of Tapjoy, a mobile performance-based advertising platform that drove deep engagement and monetization opportunities for mobile app publishers. We’ll be drawing upon our expertise from the Tapjoy days to help build out Yahoo’s mobile advertising solutions.

As of today, we have stopped development of Distill Schedule and Distill Interview. You will still be able to schedule interviews through the end of February, and the Distill platform will remain available through Sunday, March 30, 2014. If you have any questions, concerns, or data requests, please contact us at support@distill.cc, or reach out to your account manager directly.

We want to express our sincere thanks and gratitude to everyone at the awesome companies we have been working with, as well as the candidates who have met their future employers through Distill. It’s been a fun ride for us, and we couldn’t have gotten this far without your help. Thank you!!

The Distil Team.

Starting today, click on the name next to a website’s link in your search results, you will get served a small window providing a little bit more information than what’s provided on the page. The panels are accessed through a small clickable link on the second line of applicable search results.

Starting as a small trial, Google will continue to expand the number of sites that bring search results with knowledge graph entries attached. The update is likely to enhance search for individuals, it could cause issues for website owners who appear in search results with the added information panels.

This feature will kick in whenever Google recognizes a website notable or when it can pull enough information worth showing.

According to re/code, the partnership with Stripe will allow Twitter to accept credit-card payments from its users. Twitter has already dabbled in tweet-commerce through alliances with Starbucks and American Express, but has never fully embraced a single system that could be used to enable fluid on-the-fly commerce.

The move could also open a whole new market for m-commerce, where smartphone-toting shoppers could buy products they spot on the high street.

It’s not clear how exactly on-Twitter purchases will work or whether physical or digital products will be the primary focus.

Andy Rubin will be in charge of quite the budget, it seems although Google didn’t disclose numbers, as Larry Page himself took the Google+ to congratulate the ex-Android chief for his future strokes of genius on the way to creating our robotic overloads. It’s not clear what kind of robots the group will build, but several of the companies involved previously built humanoid robotic arms and it seems like Rubin is suggesting that Google’s creation might be able to move, reach and grab things like a person.

In an interview with the New York Times, Rubin said that he had convinced Google founder Sergey Brin and Larry Page that now was the time to make a move into robotics, even though such a plan might not deliver results in short term. “Like any moonshot, you have to think of time as a factor we need enough runway and a 10-year vision” Rubin told the paper.

The robotics efforts will not be aimed at consumers, but rather industrial applications with Rubin pointing to opportunities in manufacturing and logistics, highlighting frustrations with the complexity of the consumer electronics industry, which is dominated by labor-intensive assembly.

With Rubin at the helm, it looks like Google’s robotics hobby is going to turn into a full-fledged business. After tackling search, advertising, e-mail, mapping, browsers, video, social networks, internet access, mobile phones and laptops, perhaps robotics looks to be next big business for Google.

Cutts says “It used to be the case that Google bot and our indexing system would truncate at 100 or 101K, and anything beyond that wouldn’t get indexed, and what we did, was we said, ‘Okay, if the page is 101K, 100K, then, you know, it’s reasonable to expect roughly one link per kilobyte, and therefore, something like 100 links on a page.’ So that was in our technical guidelines, and we said, you know, ‘This is what we recommend,’ and a lot of people assumed that if they had 102 links or something like that then we would view it as spam, and take action, but that was just kind of a rough guideline”

Matt also explained that your PageRank is divided by the number of links on a page. If you have 100 links, you’ll divide your PageRank by 100. If you have 1,000 links, you’ll divide your PageRank by 1,000.

If you’re concerned about having too many links on a page, Cutts suggests getting a “regular user,” and testing it out with them to see if they think it has too many links.

With the new system Google says the comments “you care about” move to the top. Google knows what you care about. Got it?

When leaving a comment on YouTube, it’s now possible to choose if it post the message on Google+ as well and whom to share with it. Further, YouTube now offers the possibility to use rich text, by adding tags such as bold, italics and you’ll add some style to the comments.

Adding URL’s is possible as well. Outside links will appear as such, while YouTube video URL’s will show as a link using the title of the video. Comments can be edited or deleted completely, while now it’s also possible to disable reshares and replies. Video owners are provided with tolls to review comments before they’re posted and can block certain words, they can also auto-approve comments from certain fans. There are plenty of people, including those providing with videos that aren’t pleased with Google’s move.

This is Google’s effort to trim out the useless comments, the trolls and to force some quality on to the YouTube comments.