Automattic and WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg announced today that theirservers have been hacked, and source code compromised. Specifically, Automattic had a "low-level (root) break-in” to several servers. He said that "potentially anything on those servers could have been revealed.”

"We have been diligently reviewing logs and records about the break-in to determine the extent of the information exposed, and re-securing avenues used to gain access,” said Mullenweg. "We presume our source code was exposed and copied. While much of our code is Open Source, there are sensitive bits of our and our partners’ code. Beyond that, however, it appears information disclosed was limited.”

The only advice he had for users was to use a secure password. So you might want to consider changing yours.

According to TechCrunch, "site source code includes API keys and Twitter and Facebook passwords which can let interested parties gain access to sensitive information as well as shut people out of their Twitter and Facebook accounts, etc.”

Apple’s stock is doing quite well today after the company released an impressive earnings report yesterday afternoon. The report for the record 2nd quarter included 83% revenue growth, and 95% profit growth.

Revenue came to $24.67 billion with profit at $5.99 billion ($6.40 per diluted share). That’s compared to the same period last year, when the company reported 13.50 billion revenue and $3.07 billion profit.

In afternoon trading, Apple stock is up 2.58% to $351.25 per share at the time of this writing.

"With quarterly revenue growth of 83 percent and profit growth of 95 percent, we’re firing on all cylinders,” CEO Steve Jobs commented on the company’s earnings. "We will continue to innovate on all fronts throughout the remainder of the year.”

Righthaven is the subject of a bit of irony as it has had its domain taken down by registrar GoDaddy. If you go to Righthaven.com, you will see the message from the image above.

If you’re unfamiliar with Righthaven, it is a company which has made a business model out of suing publications and bloggers that it views as infringing on its clients’ copyrights, often bringing fair use into question. We’ve covered related incidents numerous times. You can browse the articles here for more background.

With Google looking more at social media these days, in terms of ranking signals, a lot of webmasters continue to wonder how Google treats URL-shorteners in terms of SEO.

This isn’t completely new information, but it still seems to be a topic that continues to come up fairly regularly. Google’s Matt Cutts addressed the issue in a video posted to Google’s Webmaster Help YouTube channel.

"Custom URL shorteners are essentially just like any other redirects,” he explains. "If we try to crawl a page, and we see a 301 or permanent redirect, which pretty much all well-behaved URL shorteners (like bit.ly or goo.gl) will do, if we see that 301 then that will pass PageRank to the final destination.”

This is not a piece about politics, it is about marketing. Earlier this year, Google announced that they would launch a new product that was widely reviewed by those in the know about the consumer electronics industry as a brilliant money loser. The product, 

After being blocked by Facebook from sending friend requests, David Fagin has decided to sue the company for…a dollar.

It sounds silly, but Fagin, actually brings up some fairly interesting points. He even went so far as to issue a press release. It begins:

There aren’t too many words that exist in Webster’s New Millennium Dictionary that conjure up more offensive and sleazy images than that of a "spammer.” It’s pretty much the equivalent of an online pickpocket or con artist.

I’m sure you recall when Groupon turned down a reported $6 billion offer from Google a few months back. Many (not all) thought Groupon was crazy to turn it down, considering how many daily deal/offers sites have been coming out of the woodwork, and how easy such a concept is to replicate.

Google made no secret of the fact that it would be aggressively pursuing this market, after Groupon declined the offer. Google’s Marissa Mayer pointed out that they already had some Groupon-like products, but that didn’t include a Groupon clone, per se. That is until word came out about Google Offers in early February, when Mashable obtained an official fact sheet about the product. This week, Google officially announced the beta version of it with a few select cities (Portland, NYC, Oakland, and San Francisco).

Staples said today it has launched a website focused on tablets to help people research and compare devices that fit their needs.

Staples.com/tablets will offer side-by-side feature and price comparisons, photos, videos and business apps.