Category Archives: Software

Six Apart Professional Network

The Six Apart Professional Network is live but bare bones at the moment. Plugins directory will relaunch soon. Some interesting things to note. Plugins tested with Movable Type 3 will receive a special mark. Yes! It looks like the TypePad account will no longer happen and will instead be discounts available for “Network members who qualify.” Movable Type 3.1 should be released this afternoon….

What would you like to see in the next version of Movable Type?

Movable Type 3.1 is four days from release. The Six Apart Professional Network will launch concurrently. After the Labor Day weekend work will inevitably start on the next version of Movable Type. What would you like to see in the next version of Movable Type? If Six Apart does not build your wish list item, a member of the professional network just might build it for the community and/or profit. If your feature is already present in other software, please provide a pointer for background information….

Chicago Sun Times on TypePad

Andy Innatko of the Chicago Sun Times reviewed Six Apart’s TypePad offering yesterday. The article seems to be a bit too slanted in Six Apart’s favor. The article makes many mentions of TypePad as a place for real publishing, away from the noise of LiveJournal or Blogger. A Blogger or LiveJournal blog limits you to basic, straightforward blogging and, worse, every Blogger or LiveJournal blog looks more or less alike. Blogger and TypePad both allow template selection. Both services allow you to select from a template library. Both allow for custom styles. Disseminating news and fostering discussion about the potential…

Comment spam outpacing e-mail spam

This week my comment spam has outpaced my e-mail spam. The comment spammers use varied IP addresses, so an IP block does no good. MT-Blacklist is not working for me at the moment but hopefully I will have it installed when the final bits ship with Movable Type 3.1 next week. MT-Blacklist blocks comments based on keywords and link usage, not just IP block. How bad is the problem? Only 7.7% of the comments submitted to my site are legitimate comments. I could restrict to only TypeKey comments, but even a Six Apart employee does not use TypeKey when leaving…

Microsoft’s geography lessons prove costly

Paul Brown of The Guardian writes about the hundreds of millions of dollars mistakes in geography have cost Microsoft. The company has now launched geography classes for its staff. “[I]n all cases the mistakes made were simply through ignorance but this was not how they were seen in the countries concerned. They were all seen as deliberate policy.” (via Techdirt)…

New York Times on classroom weblogs

Jeffrey Salingo of the New York Times writes about weblogs in the classroom in today’s issue. For teachers, blogs are attractive because they require little effort to maintain, unlike more elaborate classroom Web sites, which were once heralded as a boon for teaching. Helped by templates found at sites like tblog.com and movabletype.org, teachers can build a blog or start a new topic in an existing blog by simply typing text into a box and clicking a button. Parents are also able to follow along and they can see what is happening in their child’s classroom, and encourage the child…

MTIfNonZero: Undocumented Movable Type template tag

Movable Type 3.0 introduced the MTIfNonZero template tag. If you would like to take action in your template only if a tag has a non-zero entry, use MTIfNonZero for valid XHTML. Example: <MTIfNonZero tag=”MTEntryCommentCount”> <ol> <MTComments> <li><MTCommentAuthorIdentity> wrote something.</li> </MTComments> </ol> </MTIfNonZero> MTIfNonZero tag is currently not listed in the Movable Type template tag documentation but should be and it works….

Six Apart Professional Network press release

Six Apart on Monday issued a press release about the upcoming Six Apart Professional Network. Over 1,000 people have pre-registered to join the network. Anil Dash’s title changed from vice president of business development to vice president of the Six Apart Professional Network. Although the network was announced it will supposedly not be live until Movable Type 3.1 launches….

MT-Blacklist v2.0e released

Jay Allen released MT-Blacklist 2.0e today. The new version is compatible with Movable Type 3.0x releases but not compatible with 3.1 beta. As the developer of the #1 Movable Type plugin I am curious how the licensing and donation system is working for Jay. Jay asks for $100 per author for commercial use of the plugin and $5 per author for educational and non-profit use. For a 5 author installation with each author using MT Blacklist Six Apart would receive a licensing fee of $200 and Jay would receive a licensing fee of $500. As the perl hacker/source code reader…