Ok, you can add this wherever you want, but it looks particularly nice in your sidebar.

FileHippo provide a handy way to return a list of their latest software updates in JavaScript format and I was able to get a nice result with just the following code…

<li><h2>Latest Software Updates</h2>
<script language="JavaScript" src="http://www.filehippo.com/en/rss2/?format=js&icons=0" type="text/javascript"></script>
</li>

Note the icons=0 parameter. This has turned off the option to display icons next to the software packages – simply change this to icons=1 to display them again.

The output includes class names so you can use your stylesheet to modify its look (e.g. making the dates stand out, maybe in bold text).

Alternatively, from their own page you can design your own widget, compatible with pretty much all websites.

Speaking of plugin updates that have languishing in development hell, I’ve finally gotten around to finishing off and publishing the new version of Simple Feed List. It’s now at version 2 and is pretty much written from scratch, now using WordPress’ own feed reading facilities.

For those who haven’t come across this plugin before, it’s a basic feed reader that will output the feed entries as a list – useful for displaying in your sidebar. You have control over the number that are output, plus whether more than just a title is shown (and how much).

My plugin for shortening URLs has been updated (finally!) – I’ve been working on it for a ridiculous amount of time and have finally got around to completing the debugging and releasing it.

It should really be version 2.0 as it’s now far off a complete re-write of the main code! Instead of using its own caching it now makes use of my WP Plugin Cache plugin – for caching to work you have to install this as well.

It also introduces new shortening services, new debugging facilities and bugs have been fixed too.