If you are a WordPress self-hosted business blog owner then it is always helpful to know about plugins that can help you conduct your business. So I thought I would share a few with you that are key to business blogs.
Below is a list of a few WordPress plugins that can be very helpful to WordPress business blog owners:

WP-Invoice – Web Invoice and Billing: lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients. Ideal for web developers, SEO consultants, general contractors, or anyone with a WordPress blog and clients to bill. The plugin ties into WP’s user management database …read more

A month ago BuddyPress was acquired by Automattic and today the new BuddyPress website was launched:

Right now BuddyPress is still in development,  but you can download the latest BuddyPress builds through SVN if you’re game.
Is this a game changer for social networks?
If BuddyPress becomes a popular add on for WordPress Multiuser, then I think, as I’ve said before, Ning and Facebook should watch out.  Come to think of it with the Prologue theme I could see local competition for a number of tools.
Now I want to think of something to try BuddyPress on…
News from: Photo Matt » New BuddyPress Site
Screenshot/image …read more

WordPress is the bloggers platform of choice and with its array of plugins it can do nearly anything.  The WordPress Multiuser plugin BuddyPress let you turn a standard WPMU install into a powerful roll-your-own social network, now this plugin has been pulled into Automattic.
What I didn’t realize (doh!) was that BuddyPress was developed by Andy Peatling of Blaze New Media–in Vancouver!
This has been getting a lot of press today, and for good reason too because it tips Matt’s hand as to Automattic/WordPress’ plans for making a powerful, new social networking tool:

Vancouver’s BuddyPress goes Automattic | Techvibes Blog
Wordpress: Going after …read more

Checking out the list of the Webware 100 Finalist list I noticed several familiar names…
ConceptShareProductivity
CoverItLivePublishing & Photography
Dabble DBProductivity
FlickrPublishing & Photography
FlockBrowsing
MobivoxCommunication
StumbleUponSocial
WordPressPublishing & Photography
Source: All the Webware 100 finalists in one place | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone

Okay I know that Flickr, Flock, StumbleUpon, and WordPress aren’t Canadian per se, but Flickr and SU were born here and both Flock and WordPress have folks up here.
Still this list is very impressive.  CoverItLive is one of my new fav online apps.  If I have a solid net connection at a conference, be sure I’ll be using it to cover the sessions.
There …read more

Marshall Kirkpatrick and I were chatting tonight and he mentioned the new WP theme called “Prologue” that has some very Twitter-like features.  We were also both musing how we were sitting chatting at DEMO while other folks were blogging it.  Of course if you can’t be first–be smarter (I think Marshall might beat me in that department tonight).
From the WP.com blog, Matt let us know about this new theme and what it could be used for:
Some folks have suggested that using WordPress, Prologue, and RSS you could create a pretty effective distributed version of Twitter. This isn’t something we’re personally …read more

Great, great news this morning that Automattic received an investment, and the Gray Lady herself is one of the investors, of $29.5 million to build their business even more.  I like to see these reasonable amounts of funding.  Sure it’s a lot of money, but it also costs a lot to build a business as complex as what they are doing.  Just some of the coverage and kudos I read this morning about the investment:

WordPress.com Creator Raises $29.5M – GigaOM
» Open source business model reaching tipping point | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com
Automattic Raises $29.5M Series B Round, New York …read more

I got the tip on Friday that my favourite anti-spam plugin for WP was getting a major update… they announced it yesterday/today (Heri got the jump on me)
Big day for Defensio! Why? Because we’re rolling out a boatload of new functionality: Source: Defensio, the blog » Blog Archive » Defensio Does OpenID
The big news is that Defensio now supports OpenID, which I didn’t at first realize was a big deal until I read more about it in the Defensio post and Heri’s post as well:
Mat Balez also explains this will increase the accuracy of the algorithm — I guess he …read more

The Crunchies were given out on Friday and the complete winners list was put up on Saturday.  Congrats, of course, go out to all of the winners, but there are a few winners who I want to give special attention to:
Best bootstrapped startup: Techmeme.Founded and developed solely by Gabe Rivera, Techmeme serves as the front page of the tech blogosphere. The site’s advanced algorithms identify the day’s top stories by making sense of conversations across the web’s best blogs.
Best Startup CEO: Toni Schneider (Automattic)
Schnieder has lead the company from its roots as a open source alternative to Movable Type into …read more