Six Apart News & Events: February 2004

Six Apart is still growing and we have added an additional position we want to fill.

Check out our jobs at Six Apart page to view all current openings:

Web Designer/Developer
Server/Database Engineer
Software Engineer

Please note that these positions are all onsite; our current offices are located in San Mateo.

With the problems inherent in open commenting systems, it makes sense that the idea of PGP-signed comments is again taking shape. We discussed what a verification process might look like in December 2002 (in one of the first posts on the Six Log, even!).

Now, Srijith has written PGPComments, a plugin for Movable Type which implements Paul Bausch's ideas regarding display of PGP-signed comments. It still leaves a lot up to the person posting the comment--signing the comment--and the person reading the comment--verifying the signature--but it's great to see the process moving again.

That said, I think it's going to take a massive adoption of PGP to make this usable by end users, simply because, for the end user, signing and verifying requires far more investment than the apparent payoff. It's similar to the certificate verification on Windows downloads/executables--fundamentally, this is a service to the end user, but the process is so convoluted and hard to understand that it just gets ignored.

Ben and I made Fast Company's Fast 50. The issue available on newstands now. Wow. That's pretty darn neat.

We're very honored to have been selected to be part of DEMO 2004, currently being held in Arizona.

About DEMO: "DEMO is recognized around the world as the premier event that reveals the products and services poised to have the greatest impact on the technology landscape in the year to come."

Six Apart will be participating at DEMO in three unique ways. First, TypePad is powering DEMO's official weblog and moblog. Second, I will be participating on a panel on weblogging, co-moderated by John Patrick and with Buzz Bruggeman, Robert Scoble, and Greg Reinacker.

Finally, Ben and I will be onstage for our six minute demonstration of Six Apart's moblogging functionality, which we are bringing to both TypePad and Movable Type.

We look forward to a good day today, and if you have arrived at the Six Apart website after seeing us at DEMO, be sure to stop by our station. In return, we'll give you a special DEMO attendee code for you to try out TypePad.