The long-awaited WordPress 2.5 was released this weekend, and of course I just had to try it.

The upgrade process is as easy as always:

• Make a backup,
• Deactivate your plugins,
• Overwrite your current WordPress directory from the downloaded TARball,
• Login and run the automatic upgrade scipt,
• Activate your plugins,
• Done!

The admin interface is quite different when you log in, but the new dashboard is easy to get used to and use, so no major learning curve ahead. I found all the features I used before very quickly, and everything works fine as expected. For my blog the upgrade broke nothing in my customisation, so the upgrade was extremely painless.

Get the upgrade.

I’ve been using Bloglines for a long time, but as of yesterday I switched to Google Reader (thanks to a tip from my friend Moqub). Both are web-based RSS feed readers, and they do mainly the same thing, but still I like Google Reader better. Here’s a short comparison as to the why:

• Google Reader integrates with my Gmail account and other Google personalised settings
• I really like Google’s active “read” marking. As you scroll through a feed’s posts, the posts you “pass” are automatically marked as read (can be disabled)
• Adding, managing and sorting feeds is easier on Google (I always found Bloglines’ interface somewhat clunky)
• I like the overview page you get with Google Reader, showing you a selection of your new unread posts

Yeah. Google wins another one.