Igor A. Melekhine recently sent me a modified version of my Youtuber plugin that adds a ‘high quality’ checkbox to the options page. When checked, Youtuber will attempt to play all videos in the superior MP4 format. Not only will this improve video quality, it’s also the only way to get stereo sound. I’ve incorporated Igor’s changes into a new version, 1.4. Available from your local wordpress.org now.

Thanks Igor, Novastar sounds so much better in high quality.

I just checked the download stats on the WP-Cumulus page at wordpress.org, and saw that the plugin has been downloaded over ten thousand times. Unfortunately, I have no idea how many people downloaded it from this blog before I moved it to the WordPress server, but the total number of users is probably even higher.

10,000 downloads is insignificant when compared to the hundreds of thousands downloads registered for some other plugins, but i’m pretty excited that so many people have taken the time to give WP-Cumulus a try.

This is a first for me. Even though I’ve always been a firm believer in the open source licensing model, I’ve never actually released anything as free software. Up until now. As of ten minutes ago, WP-Cumulus is open source. From now on the plugin will be hosted on WordPress.org, and I will no longer offer it for download here on my own website. But that’s just the start of it.

Because it’s now open source, the source files for the Flash movie are also available for download for you to tinker with. This means you’ll be able to change the font, embed your language’s character set and change anything else you feel beneficial for your blog. If you improve on the plugin’s functionality, please let me know so I can consider adding your changes.

Have fun!