Six Apart News & Events: December 2005

We've been proud to support Creative Commons for years here at Six Apart, and we wanted to help our community do the same. If you're not familiar with it, Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that makes it possible to share and relicense your creative works without having to be a lawyer. Using the suite of licenses CC provides, you can make it easy for other people to build on top of the works you create.

So, to show our support, we're matching donations made to Creative Commons up to $5,000. If you make a contribution to Creative Commons before the end of the year, we'll double it -- it's a great way to get the most out of your donation.

If you just want to find out more about the organization, you can learn more right on their website. And then you can license your works using one of the CC licenses. Movable Type was one of the first publishing tools in the world to support CC licenses, and it's still easy to publish your blog with a Creative Commons license in just a few clicks. And today you can do the same in many other tools, such as Flickr, as well.

Finally, if you'd like to build on the works that have already been released under Creative Commons licenses, it's simple to search for CC-licensed content using either Google or Yahoo search.

We've become aware that it's pretty difficult for our customers to find service-related news throughout our various weblogs and new sources -- this is something that needs consolidation onto one easy-to-find page or feed. We're also planning on integrating these sites more fully into the TypePad application. In the meantime, for everyone who's been following the TypePad issues last Friday, you can keep up to date with what's going on by reading Everything TypePad and the Six Apart Status Page, which is real-time update of the current status of the TypePad and TypeKey service. Additionally, Anil Dash, our VP of Professional Products answered a few questions about the service outage during this podcast.

Here's some quick links to the various Everything TypePad! posts about the outage:

Recap of Friday's TypePad Outage 12/19 at 04:38 PM
TypePad Update: Data Restored 12/18 at 11:01 PM
TypePad is Back Up 12/16 at 03:38 PM
Update on TypePad Issues 12/16 at 02:16 PM
Current Issues with TypePad 12/16 at 09:40 AM

While we can't make promises about perfect performance, we are constantly striving to improve our infrastructure and create the best possible environment for webloggers -- which includes helpful and attentive support and responsiveness from Six Apart. As noted in these posts, the proactive fixing of problems can often create other ones during the process. We apologize for these problems occurring and also hope to keep our customers more informed in the future.

Seed Magazine, a magazine devoted to the connections between science and society, wanted to relaunch their website along with the redesign of their magazine. It's a beautifully designed, intuitive site, making full use of some of our favorite features of MT. Tim Murtaugh, the designer developer, explains why he and designer Mike Pick chose Movable type thusly:

Continue reading 'Seed Magazine launches with Movable Type'...

The Crushing Blow is a promotional site for the Ford Fusion done in Movable Type. But the fun starts with the videoblogging aspect of the site.

The videos follow a fake (or are they?) band, Hurra Torpedo, "a rock band from Norway that bangs out pop songs on beat up old kitchen appliances." The videos follow their journey to infamy, from their stay in a concrete wigwam to the band's arrival in their trusty automobile.

You can enter to win Hurra Torpedo's car, too. Comes with free air freshener!

For the (many) people who've been saying "let me know when it's done" in regard to Atom, there's good news: XML.com: Catching Up with the Atom Publishing Protocol is Joe Gregorio's primer now that Atom is an IETF standard.

Want to make the case for why Atom matters? Joe's done a good job right at the beginning of his article:

The Atom Syndication Format is now also known as RFC 4287. Atom is an internet standard in the same way that little things like SMTP and HTTP -- also known as "email" and "the Web," respectively -- are internet standards.

After reading the posts and comments about my speech and the controversial Q&A that followed, I've questioned whether it was worth writing a post defending my onstage actions. After much thought, I realized that it's not about the personalities involved (neither Ben Metcalfe or I are completely right or wrong) but rather the next steps in making blogging better.

There are really two points I want to emphasize.

• It's not about being nice—it's about accountability.
• Ultimately, we need to get more people blogging.

The point I was trying to make in my speech is that it's about taking as much responsibility for what we write online -- whether that's on a blog, in an email message, or on IRC -- as we would in a face-to-face, private conversation. What we say might not always be nice and that's okay. Certainly neither Ben M. saying "this is bullshit" or my calling him an "asshole" would qualify as "nice" -- the important point is taking accountability for what we say.

I think accountability and responsibility is about holding off seemingly anonymous attacks, giving people the benefit of the doubt and understanding that what you say online not only affects others but is part of a permanent record -- a record that, right now, is scary to some watching from afar.

The majority of people in the world aren't blogging yet, and a lot of them could truly benefit from this form of communication. We want them to be a part of our world, not only because we make blogging tools, but because every day we're reminded of people whose lives blogging has enriched or just made more enjoyable.

That's absolutely something we want to share with a wider audience.

And in fact, Ben M. and I had a private dialog later in the day, where we were able to spend time talking through these issues in a really productive conversation -- including us both apologizing for using such strong words. At the end of our talk, we both agreed to disagree about the types of discussion and tones appropriate for online conversation. My goal wasn't to change his mind but for him to realize the motivations that brought me to that place onstage.

We both came to a good question that could, in theory, sum up my entire speech:

Is it possible to have the sort of productive face-to-face connection or conversation that Ben M. and I had offline in an online world? And what can we, as bloggers, do to facilitate that?

I believe in blogging and I am willing to personally make mistakes in order to advance it to a new level. I was wrong for using the words I did onstage, but I do believe I was right for posing these questions. I wonder if these are questions that bloggers can ultimately answer?

I've just returned from Paris after attending Les Blogs, a weblogging conference organized by our European office. I'm still a bit jet-lagged and, at this moment, I haven't the energy to write up a long post about the morning talk I gave (plus the heated Q&A). However, I'd like to post the bulk of the speech I gave.

I was fairly hesitant to give this talk since I knew that it would stir up some heated discussions and I tend to prefer avoiding controversy -- especially considering my role at Six Apart. I ultimately decided to speak about civility because I, personally, haven't really seen anyone raise this topic from inside the industry and I do believe that, in order for weblogging to reach a new level and a new audience, our behavior online needs to be addressed. So it was just too important to me to not discuss.

Since I've arrived back home, I've read some of the responses from bloggers who attended the conference or watched the video. Mixed reactions were to be expected and I haven't been disappointed. Regardless of what people think of me or my demeanor, I'm glad that we're having the discussion.

A more thoughtful post to come after I get some sleep.

The speech itself:

Good morning. Before I begin, I'd just like to thank you all for attending Les Blogs. It's a nice change for me to see different faces every now and then and it's great to be able to speak to a number of people who I've only been able to read from afar.

The focus of today is the tools we use with two sessions: the "RSS panel" and "Tracking and Listening to the Online World" being about how we keep up with what bloggers are saying and writing.

Here on stage today, I may be accused of a blogging sacrilege of sorts -- criticizing something that is so important in all of our lives. And in some circumstances the following speech might be considered harmful when talking about blogging. However, I'm confident that this audience, with all of your experience and knowledge, today can be part of the solution rather than compounding the problem.

As someone who has been part of blogging for a while, I know first hand that bloggers have a lot to say and that there is a great deal of information to be tracked -- as the afternoon panel will point out. With a lot of people saying a lot of different things, the best way to be a successful blogger is about building a personal voice and being able to convey a strong personality online.

This, of course, has its ups and downs.

A strong voice is a crucial part of a successful blog. But sometimes sensationalism can be confused with a strong voice. The saying "if it bleeds, it leads" isn't just limited to the nightly news or cable news anymore. Bloggers have become very aware that "if it bleeds, it leads" can work wonders for their Google Juice.

When I started to think about what I wanted to speak about today, the phrase "civility in blogging" kept on popping into my head. When I say "civility in blogging," I'm basically referring to the demeanor or the desired demeanor that we conduct ourselves when we're blogging. Civility is a difficult concept to speak about without sounding preachy or condemning. I don't want to give a lecture today on civility -- God only knows that my coworkers would laugh to hear me talk about politeness. Instead of lecturing, I really just have a simple question: Can we as bloggers be more civil?

I love blogging and I want it to be more welcoming. That's why I want to raise the topic amongst other bloggers.

So... as I sat in the sessions yesterday, I started to get incredibly nervous about appearing on stage today. The obvious reason is that I'm speaking in front of 300 bloggers and I'm pretty sure that someone will criticize my speech and delivery on their own weblogs.

Luckily I've been doing this for four years and I've gotten a pretty thick skin. I'm pretty used to reading criticisms about me and Six Apart on blogs.

But that's not the reason why I'm scared. It's that IRC back channel. In theory, it seems like a good idea, giving the audience a chance to share relevant links, ask questions, discuss the panels and topics at hand. In reality, the IRC channel is filled with jokes about the panels and participants and is often off-topic and sometimes mean in tone. On this channel and channels from other conferences I've attended, I've seen people make disparaging comments about other people -- comments that they would never say to their faces.

In blogging, this is very much a reality as well and it is much more permanent.

For this reason, many people are afraid of bloggers.

Frankly, I'm a blogger and I'm afraid of bloggers.

The inspiration for "civility in blogging" came from a post a couple weeks ago: Jeremy Zawodny, a blogger and an employee of Yahoo received an email directed to the address of the Yahoo search blog, a blog in which he's a contributor. The email had been sent by a PR agency and Zawodny felt the mail wasn't relevant to the topics they cover in the blog. So Jeremy wrote a post entitled "Krause Taylor Associates Spams Bloggers" and detailed his experiences. If you were to read this post, you would have read about how Zawodny felt the email was spam and how KTA, the PR firm, should know better.

Why should KTA know better, according to Zawodny? Here's why: Krause Taylor is Six Apart's PR firm. Zawodny blogged that we should teach them about why they should not spam. This post made me fairly upset, not because any actions of KTA but because, based on my experiences with the firm, I was fairly confident that this was a misrepresentation of the facts. I have done business with KTA for three years and have known them to be a professional firm that would never spam or advocate spamming.

So I did something I usually don't do and defended them in Zawodny's comments. Prior to my comment, another client of theirs defended them as well. And throughout the thread, people questioned whether what they did was spam or just a badly targeted email. Even Barbara Krause, the principal of KTA, commented apologizing for the email and explaining why he received the email. It turns out that Yahoo search blog was listed in Media Map, a completely legitimate, opt-in contact service that PR professionals use to contact interested parties about products and news.

While the reason why Zawodny received the mail and everything else was more or less amicably sorted out, the original post is now the number 2 result in Google for "Krause Taylor." And throughout a number of weblogs, the post was linked to by its original title "Krause Taylor spams weblogs."

A firm like KTA, which has been around for years, can luckily rely on its positive reputation to lessen the blow of an inflammatory weblog post. But regardless of the circumstances or reality of the situation, they still have to deal with this post being a part of the permanent Google record.

It's no surprise then that a story like Forbes' "Attack of the Blogs" -- a cover story story no less -- can be written. If you're not familiar with the Forbes cover story, basically they presented weblogs as something fairly dangerous.

I quote the article "Weblogs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective. Their potent allies in this pursuit include Google and Yahoo [and other weblog hosts]!" It continues: "Thus they [weblog services] serve up vitriolic 'content' without bearing any legal responsibility for ensuring it is fair or accurate; at times they even sell ads alongside the diatribes."

Okay, this is incredibly extreme and reads, in part, like a rabid editorial.

Still, there must be some truth in the article? Right?

Or maybe, it's just a tiny slice of the blogging world.

Actually, there's a sentence at the bottom -- sort of like the fine print read at the end of a car commercial -- that sort of sets the record straight: "Attack blogs are but a sliver of the rapidly expanding blogosphere."

While I think it's fairly difficult for a single blogger to hurt a company beyond repair by posting inaccurate information, I do believe a single blogger can cause an organization to waste time and energy cycles defending and preventing the spread of inaccuracies. We don't have unlimited time to manage these cycles, so wouldn't it be great if we could be simply more civil?

Civility is defined as a courteous act or courteous acts that contribute to smoothness and ease in dealings and social relationships.

Smoothness and ease in dealings of social relationships? Is this possible with what we're doing with weblogs? When we preview our own posts what if we read for more than just proper grammar or valid HTML? What if we read it for accuracy, appropriateness, good nature. Read it for civility.

Fundamentally, our biggest goal should be bringing a new generation to weblogging.

If we want to bring a new generation to weblogging -- a goal that I've seen attendees here expressing -- we need to create an environment where people feel welcomed.

Overview: In addition to hosted weblogs, TypePad offers all subscribers a feature called TypeLists. TypeLists are used to manage sidebar lists of links, books, music, people, and notes. From a developer standpoint, this content is highly structured data with information such as ratings, and can be accessed using the steps outlined in this article.

Since taking on my new role at Six Apart as Manager of Platform Technology, I have taken an interest in Six Apart’s APIs and integration technologies. I have become more involved in the Atom Working Group which is helping to build consensus around a core Atom Publishing Protocol.

I have been playing around with TypePad and Atom to create more than just blog entries. On TypePad you can use Atom not only to create weblog entries, but also TypeList entries and Photo Album entries as well. But taking advantage of this feature in an elegant way often depends upon a user specifying which blog, photo album, or TypeList they wish to post the new item to.

I was pleasantly surprised that TypePad’s current Atom implementation provides a lot of the capabilities that the Working Group is trying to codify into the core Atom protocol. One of those capabilities is a form of "introspection," a way of discovering what resources are available within a given TypePad account. This article explores how one can "introspect" a TypePad account via the Atom Publishing Protocol to discover a set of TypeLists available within that account.

If you have not used TypePad or are unfamiliar TypeLists, a TypeList is a way of sharing a list of web sites, books, CDs, DVDs, or people on your weblog. TypeLists can also be used to insert raw HTML into the sidebar of your TypePad weblog.

Continue reading 'TypeList Auto-Discovery Using Atom'...