Tickets for the third WordCamp UK, to be held in Manchester on the weekend of 17-18 July 2010, are now on sale.

Discount Early Bird tickets at £20 will be available until 2355 on Sunday 4 July 2010.

This year there are four parallel tracks, designed to cater for all WordPress publishers, designers and developers.

Version 3 of the WordCamp UK 2010 logo has been produced following feedback from WordPress users.

This follows on from versions 1 and 2.

Jonathan Harris, who also produced the previous versions, has radically rethought the logo in the light of comments made on the WordCamp UK mailing list.

Many thanks to Jonathan for a fantastic design, inspired by Factory Records graphics.

In my view this is the final version that will appear on all WordCamp 2010 related material.

Version 2 of the WordCamp UK 2010 logo has been produced by Jonathan Harris following feedback from WordPress users.

Many said the use of “10″ in the previous version could be misinterpreted as meaning this is the tenth WordCamp UK – we’re not there yet – this year’s event will be the third!

Therefore, to clarify this point, “2010″ has been used.

The WordCamp UK 2010 logo has been released.

Designed by Jonathan Harris, and inspired by Factory Records graphics, the logo will be used for branding all material connected with this year’s WordCamp UK to be held in Manchester on 17-18 July 2010.

Tickets for the event are planned to be available later this month, with early bird discounts for prompt purchasers.

My new site for Christine Bond has recently been launched.

The site is for Christine’s campaign in the BECTU NEC and President elections.

I used WordPress to build the site (of course!), giving a great deal of flexibility to quickly react to developments in the election campaigns in the next few weeks.

Christine, coming from a photography background, was detailed in her design brief, and hopefully I’ve brought her ideas to life on the web.

Good luck to Christine in the elections!

Now Tumblr, inspired by WordPress, has introduced a Twitter compatible API.

Dave Winer says: “If Facebook were to implement the Twitter API that would be it. We’d have another FTP or HTTP or RSS”.

If it was also added to the self hosted WordPress, the case would be even stronger for the Twitter API becoming a new open standard.

Matt Asay outlines the roles of Monty Widenius and IBM in the arguments surrounding the future of MySQL, and says “it has everything to do with money”.

I’m now not so convinced by Monty’s arguments and am concerned there may be a conflict of interest lurking in the background.

• WordPress and WordPress MU to merge.
• The possibility of making bbPress a WordPress plugin.
• The introduction of canonical plugins.

The implication, if these ideas are implemented, could be that one WordPress installation would be starting point for subsequently setting up WordPress MU, BuddyPress and bbPress on a common base.

The canonical plugins could then provide a number of popular functional extensions to all systems using best practice.

Having a common starting point for all of the WordPress family could make everyone’s life a lot simpler in the future.

This follows the Oracle’s planned takeover of Sun Microsystems, which itself acquired MySQL AB in February 2008.

The Oracle-Sun deal has been approved by US regulators, but has not yet been approved by the EC due to concerns about MySQL.

Monty is asking readers of his blog “urgently to help save MySQL from Oracle’s clutches“. He details the current situation, and urges everyone to act quickly to support MySQL.

MySQL is the database used by WordPress, and if the scenario outlined by Monty comes to pass, I can see problems on the horizon.

The next WordCamp UK will be held on the weekend of 17-18 July 2010 in Manchester.

The decision was taken by the WordCamp UK mailing list following the venue bidding process.

The winning bid, proposed by Chi-chi Ekweozor, is for the event to be held at Manchester Metropolitan University Business School.

The runner up bid was by Rich Boakes for the University of Portsmouth.

I’m happy to be once again coordinating the organisation of WordCamp UK, the informal annual gathering of WordPress publishers, designers and developers based in the United Kingdom, held at a different location around the country each year.

It’s expected general ticket sales for the event will start in early April 2010.