Six Apart News & Events: January 2009

January 19, 2009

Gothamist: Up To Date

by Anil Dash - Post a Comment
We're always proud of the work done by our experts at Six Apart Services, but it's especially gratifying when we personally benefit from the work we do with our clients. For example, we've been friends with the Gothamist team since they started, and have marveled over the years as they've grown into the most established and innovative network of local blogs on the web. While Gothamist's team did all the heavy lifting, it was still exciting to back them up on an ambitious and thoughtful redesign that launched at the end of last year. That redesign wasn't just skin deep; The site now takes smart advantage of the rich social features built in to Movable Type Pro.

But it wasn't until last week's heroic landing of US Air flight 1549 in the Hudson River that we got a great reminder of just how much Gothamist means to use as a definitive source of local news. The Gothamist post about the ditched plane wasn't just one of the first detailed stories, it was also one of the most frequently-updated. Dozens of people used the recommendation feature built into MT Pro to make it the most-recommended story on the site, and dozens more chimed in with their comments on the thread. And since our Six Apart Services team is headquartered in New York City, this was a great reminder of how much important reporting our clients do.

The truth is, blogs and social media being among the first to break big news stories is, well... old news. The more significant thing here is that this was a demonstrated success of a well-regarded network of blogs doing what it does best — serving its community in a personal and approachable way, right when they need information the most. So If you haven't done so lately, check out your own city's Gothamist site, and if you want to get the best team in the business backing your efforts, drop our Services team a line. If it isn't obvious, we pride ourselves on keeping a real, personal connection to the projects we collaborate on with our clients.
January 14, 2009

TypePad Connects to Google, AOL, Yahoo! and more

by David Recordon - Post a Comment

If you've already tried out our recently launched commenting service via TypePad Connect, you know that we built in very basic support for OpenID sign in from the start. We did this because we know that just as the future of traditional media wasn't a small group of large publishers controlling all of the news, the future of the social web isn't a small group of large social networks controlling everyone's identity. Today we've made it even easier for anyone to sign in, leave a comment, and have a TypePad Profile (see mine) without having to know their OpenID URL or even what OpenID is.

TPC OpenID 2.0 Sign InThe TypePad Connect team has now explicitly added support to sign in using your Vox, Google, Yahoo!, Blogger, LiveJournal, WordPress.com, or AOL account in addition to your TypePad username and password. This small change means that any blog using TypePad Connect powered comments now has over a half a billion people who can sign in - thus no longer being anonymous - just by clicking a button in the case of Google and Yahoo! or entering their username on AOL, Vox, and the others.

And of course this same idea - bringing your existing identity with you - is built into Motion as well. Our latest application for Movable Type Pro shows off how, just like with TypePad Connect, there are now half a billion people who are able to log into your site, without even having to sign up for a new account.