Holiday Cheer
My backlog of noteworthy links regarding all things Movable Type (MT) and Six Apart has gown quickly. Here's what new and noteworthy.
On a recent ProNet conference call (UPDATE: A recording of this conference call has been posted on Odeo.), Byrne Reese said the company has decided to forego the formal Movable Type 3.5 release as reported in my last Applets post and head right into MT 4.0. This makes sense a lot of sense to me and isn't surprising other then the effort and recent announcement that has gone into "wheeljack", the code name for what would have been MT 3.5. Byrne reported that 4.0 will be developed "in a very public way" "out in the open" and "transparently". More information will be forthcoming after the holidays.
I'm excited and cautiously optimistic at the same time about the prospect of Movable Type 4.0.
I am excited because I have no doubt that Six Apart will take this opportunity to fold all of its lessoned learned from MT's growth and existing user base along with the development of TypePad and Vox. I have it on good word that EVP Michael Sippey, whom was instrumental in designing the user experience of TypePad and Vox and I have a great deal of respect and trust in his ability, will be involved in design of MT 4. In this regard I expect the results to be awesome.
I am cautiously optimistic about what this will mean for the programmers interface and technical architecture we make our money with. Anyone who frequents the ProNet and mt-dev mailing list knows that I have been frustrated with the quality of MT's code and technical design since version 3. While great features and experience design will mean a lot to the product's success going forward, how they are implemented will also impact its success in how fast and how far it goes. I see MT 4 as an opportunity to "hit the reset button" and lay a strong foundation for where MT is going and not necessarily support how MT used to work. Further I see the MT 4 effort as an opportunity to forge even stronger ties with the open source community and address its nay-sayers. I'll have a lot more to say about this later.
Byrne also reported that progress to add support for Oracle's Content Database and Single Sign On (SSO) system in Movable Type Enterprise that we can look forward to in the next month or so.
Mena Trott spoke at the LeWeb conference in Paris on Vox and personal blogging. e-consultancy summarizes here talk reporting that One in 10 posts on Vox are the result of prompts from the service's question of the day. Mena noted that a recent Pew Internet study found 76% of bloggers write for friends and family. The e-consultancy post also lists Six Apart's 7 principles for personal blogging.
The Pew Internet study is interesting, but I'm curious how the personal nature of blogging translates to business. Many of the herald successes of blogging in business today are very public. Is it possible that this trend would apply to business where friends and family become co-workers and colleagues? I think so.
The Financial Times interviews Mena about the LeWeb conference reaction and fallout during her visit to London. Incidentally, the London Times featured Mena in a piece discussing blogosphere civility and the incidents of the prior year when the conference was called Les Blogs.
Speaking of conferences, Tim O'Reilly announced the Tools of Change Conference on the O'Reilly Radar weblog. (The Radar weblog is some of our work.) The call for participation is open till January 22, 2007. This looks really good and I hope to attend the event when it rolls around in June.
Six Apart's Anil Dash notes a post by Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodny were he lists some of the best traits of great business blogs:
- there’s some personality in the writing
- they write about stuff that’s interesting to me (or they write it in an interesting way, and that gets my attention)
- they post frequently
- they write about stuff that’s not always blatantly self-promotional
Like Anil, I can't agree with Jeremy more.
Anil also notes VC Fred Wilson's piece in Business 2.0 on the value of blogging in business.
Fred's venture capital firm, Union Square Ventures, is a client of The Appnel Group.Former Movable Type Product Manager Jay Allen shares his his experiences using blogs in beta testing. One point he makes is "The blog is an excellent way to keep people apprised of progress in the beta and to highlight important announcements or answer frequently asked questions." Having been one of the beta testers Jay used to communicate through a beta blog, I agree though I would note that keeping people apprised of progress should always be happening and not just during beta testing. This was a source of great frustration for me as a beta tester that Six Apart has better addressed by making the latest development build of MT available to anyone.
37 Signals asks "why are you not hiring remote workers?" In the age of the open Internet, I've wonder this myself especially of the ones who develop and market social media tools for communicating and collaborating with the people that matter with you most. (No, I'm not burnt.)
The case for OpenID, a decentralized digital identity system, continues to build a head of steam going into 2007. OpenID was originally developed by Brad Fitzpatrick of Six Apart's LiveJournal division. The effort has gain the support of numerous industry players such as Verisign and Sxip. Phil Windley summarizes a recent presentation on OpenID at the Internet Identity Workshop (2006B).
Following up on his Choices = Headaches post, Joel Spolsky discusses Simplicity and Elegance in software design. Good stuff delivered plenty of comical relief Spolsky is known for.
Happy Holidays!
