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Six Apart Deals Itself a New Hand
The big news in the blogging world today is Six Apart’s expansion out of the software and blog hosting provider fields with their announcement of a new line client services. With the purchase of Apperceptive, Six Apart gets the benefit of some of the most experienced Movable Type site builders out there, and with its new partnership with ad network Adify, presents the possibility of a complete money-making ecosystem for bloggers of every level. It’s an ambitious move, and could be very good for both Six Apart and the people who use its entire range of products, from Vox to Movable Type Enterprise.
It remains to be seen, though, exactly what shape the new services branch will take. Some smaller Movable Type developers are wondering if the provider of their software is going to be taking away their customers. I don’t see that happening because, frankly, the market is still huge, and there are plenty of other software vendors with their own client services departments that also support a thriving market of smaller client services companies. In the best-case scenario the experience of the client services department will benefit the smaller developers directly: When a Six Apart client requires some custom functionality, that functionality will make it into the developer community’s hands in some way, even if it becomes a paid plug-in and not part of the core product.
It could be quite a trick for Six Apart to juggle its related but distinct products and communities: Vox, TypePad, and Movable Type all have their target markets. And now there are the side-by-side commercial and open source versions of Movable Type, both of which are dependent on having a healthy developer community. There’s still a huge need for plug-in developers who know Perl, especially as more people move to MT4, whether the commercial version or the OS one, and find that some key plug-ins don’t work. If Six Apart shares the wealth of knowledge that they’ve gained by bringing in Apperceptive, their developer community could flourish, which would benefit everyone.
See also: An interview with 6A’s Anil Dash.
Written by David McCreath on April 21, 2008 with 0 comments | 
Muxtape
If you didn’t hear about Muxtape.com this week, then you were living under a rock. The virtual mixtape-making app went live on Tuesday morning and by lunch that day, all of our internet friends had mixed some of their favorite tunes. Why did it take off so quickly?
Simple design and user interface, observe:
People love both hearing about and sharing new music. There wasn’t a super easy way to do so before.
Muxtape, with it’s name and concept tapped into a nostalgia for mixtapes that has been floating around lately. For example, this USB drive, designed to look like a cassette was a popular Christmas gift last holiday season.
Justin Oullette, the creator of Muxtape offered these stats, from the first 24-hours:
8,685 users / 19,731 songs / 35,000 visits
Here are some of our favorite muxtapes. If you haven’t made yours yet, well what are you waiting for? If you have, please link to it in the comments.
Written by on March 28, 2008 with 0 comments |
Facebook, you owe me one Christmas Present.
Last Saturday I went to the movies with friends. I purchased my tickets on Fandango. That last sentence is important, or rather; the fact that I’ve decided to tell you that is important. Because where I spend my money is my business, and what I spend my money on is also my business. Unless of course, I choose to tell you.
That’s a really important distinction.
As I was wrapping up my transaction a pane popped up and made some mention of Facebook and tickets and Beowulf. I didn’t pay much attention as I was running out the door.
But today I decided to buy a video game for my son. For Christmas. You know—a secret gift kinda thing. Again, I get the pane pop up from Facebook.
At no point did either Fandango or Gamefly notify me that they’d be sharing this info with any other site. I was informed after the information had been passed.
So then I go to Facebook and my transactions are listed out for everyone to see. Without my permission. This is what I see:
I click on the privacy settings and find nothing except too many bizarre sliders. Reading around I discover that the only way to turn this off is at the site of origin. Once again; you only find out the site of origin is using this AFTER your information has been passed.
There are things I’m fine sharing with you lovely people and things I’m not. I need to be able to choose what those things are.
Some people would consider this ‘conversational marketing’. It’s not. If Mrs. Kravitz is peeking at me from across the streets through the blinds and then running to her neighbor to give her an update that doesn’t mean Mrs. Kravits and I are having a conversation. It means she’s eavesdropping on my business.
And Facebook, you owe my son a Christmas present.
Written by Mike Monteiro on November 20, 2007 with 15 comments |
The Return of Stupid
The web is a stupider place than it was a few months ago.
Hurray!
In the past few months I’ve noticed a definite increase in the amount of ‘stupid fun’ that comes across my screen. Of course it’s totally possible that at my advancing age (40 is 3 months away!) I’m just come to the grand realization that nothing really matters, nothing needs to be dugg, it’s possible to twitter a totally different life, and I just don’t need to aggregate all those feeds all day.
I just wanna look at cats.
Lolcats have taken over the internet, to the joy of some and the dismay of others. Fellow Pennsylvanian Anil Dash has already gone on at great length about the linguistics behind the lolcat phenomenon. I encourage you to go read that.
What’s got my interest now is the relationship of the tools we’re using to the stupidity we’re making. A few weeks ago I started playing around with Tumblr, a stupidly simple blogging tool. Tumblr seems to be based on the principal that you don’t have too much to say and you’re gonna say it a lot. And it works. It’s incredibly light-weight in a way that encourages you to play, like picking up a tennis ball and tossing it against the wall a few times. Yes, it aggregates your feeds. Yes, apparently they’re adding some “social” to it. (YAWWWWN!!!) But overall it’s still very much about making stupid little posts and I really hope they keep it that way.
Let’s raise a glass to stupidity and take a look at some sites:
- Kung Fu Grippe
- I Can Has Cheezburger
- Cute Overload
- Anil on Cats, Comics and Closure
- lolkottke.org
- 4/29truth.com
- and my very own Tumblr blog.
Web 2.0. LOL!!!
Written by Mike Monteiro on May 1, 2007 |
The 2007 Web Design Survey
A List Apart has put together short survey to “form a picture of the ways web design is practiced around the globe”. It takes about ten minutes. Go take it yourself, then spread the link. The more people that take it, the more useful the results will be.
Written by mccreath on April 24, 2007 |
How Not To Design a Sign-Up Form
I’ve been playing around with personal productivity services, mostly because it beats being personally productive, but also because I tend to be pretty scatter-headed and still keeps notes listed on random scraps of paper in pants pocket.
I stumbled upon Remember The Milk today, looked interesting and light-weight enough so I decided to give it a whirl. The sign-up for was simple and clear enough (except for the odd date thing, but whatever).
I typed in my first name, hit TAB, typed in my last name, hit TAB, and got this:
My password was invalid before I’d typed anything into it. So already the interface is screaming at me. You gotta give a guy at least a chance to put something in there. I started typing in a password and upon one character stroke I got this:
It’s now screaming at me as I try, to the best of my abilities, to type in the password. Yes, it went away at five characters. I do enjoy the error notification at the field level, rather than at the page level, but you gotta give a user the benefit of the doubt; let them TAB or click AWAY from the field before pointing out the error.
This is the page where I’ve already decided to try your service out, be somewhat nice to me as it is my first interaction with you as a customer. Be gentle, hold my hand, make it simple; and for chrissakes give me a chance to get it right before you start telling me I’m doing it wrong.
Oh, just for fun: It IS possible to error the whole form out, but that’s just kicking sand on the fire.
Written by Mike Monteiro on February 15, 2007 with 5 comments |
The Troubling Lack of Intercourse
I'm currently working on a map application (raise your hand if you're NOT), and anyone familiar with my penchant for hiding things in Lorem Ipsum shouldn't be surprised that the default map I'm using to comp with is Intercourse, PA.
Now, I've been to Intercourse. It's a sleepy little Amish town in Lancaster County, between Harrisburg and Philadelphia. Somewhere I have a picture of myself in front of the "Welcome to Intercourse!" sign when I was a kid. It's a lovely town and they make a good pretzel.
So I go to Google Maps. (For our readers in China, Google is a search engine that does no evil.) I type in "Intercourse, PA" and it takes me to where it should be. Right next to Leacock. Zoom in, zoom out. No listing. But it knows where it is. I try Yahoo Maps. Same thing, then I zoom in a level and there it is. Typed out: "Intercourse".
So my question to Google: Do you hate intercourse or do you hate the Amish?
Written by Mike Monteiro on May 24, 2006 with 2 comments |