For years, Alder Yarrow was one of those guys whom everyone wishes they had in their back pocket: he kept obsessive notes about the restaurants he went to and the wines he drank, and they weren’t just random scribbles - they were the real deal. “I was the go-to guy about food and wine for my friends and family,” he recalls. “I found myself answering the same questions over and over, and knew there must be a better way of delivering that information.”

In 2004, Alder typed “wine blog” into a Google search bar and got zero results. Then he typed in “Vinography” - and got “Address Not Found.” As a busy Internet consultant, Alder was aware of blogging, but hadn’t yet explored it. “Blogs were becoming reasonably established by that time,” he remembers. “It not only seemed like a good way to get my notes out, but it was also a smart business strategy to learn more about blogs.”

Alder began researching blog tools, and came across Movable Type. “I wanted complete control over the design,” he says. “Movable Type seemed like the most powerful piece of software out there.”

And thus Vinography was born. Alder began posting about wines he liked and restaurants he had visited in a friendly, straightforward style that resonated with readers. Several times a week, he posted thoughtful, extensive notes about wines he liked; he attended events and tastings, and posted comprehensive lists of wines he had tasted, scored with his own system, often complete with price points. His insightful, detailed posts revealed a consistent theme: he was crazy about wine.
 
Four years later, Vinography has become one of the most respected wine blogs in the world. From breaking stories like the tattletale scandal at Wine.com  to calling foul on wine snobs, Vinography is on the short list of anyone interested in wine, from top wine writers and critics to everyday oenophiles. 

His consistent, even-handed writing has made Alder Yarrow a respected wine expert, in demand at wine-related events around the world. Earlier this year, he led two packed wine seminars at the Aspen Food and Wine Classic, one of the toniest food and wine events in the U.S. Later this year, he will present for the third time at the Professional Symposium of Wine Writers; in 2009, he’ll be a judge at the Chilean Wine Awards.

Despite the accolades, it still feels somewhat unreal to Alder: “I’ve gone from being some guy with a notebook who likes wine and knows a little bit about it to someone who is globally recognized as a wine journalist and critic.” He pauses. “And that’s utterly gobsmackingly unbelievable.”

Vinography is now running on Movable Type Pro, and Alder notes that many of the plugins he used in the previous version are now built into the core platform. “I experienced significant performance enhancements when I upgraded to Movable Type Pro,” he says.

In September, Alder took a trip to South Africa, where he was invited on behalf of an industry group called Wines of South Africa to investigate the growing wine community there. Which raises the issue: now that Alder has become so influential in the wine community, how does he deal with the bevy of wineries who want to curry his favor?

“I maintain a strict ethics policy,” he reports. “I don’t go to events sponsored by one specific winemaker. I don’t go to lunch with people representing an individual winery or wine company. I only attend events where a large number of wineries are represented. I get hundreds of bottles of wine every month, and I taste every single one of them, but I only write about the ones that really excite me. Period.” Vinography generates more than enough revenue to pay for itself, and Alder plans to continue running his consulting business and keep Vinography as a rewarding hobby.

One question remains: with a hugely popular blog, a thriving internet consultancy, a wife and brand new baby daughter, how does Alder Yarrow do it all? “I don’t watch TV,” he laughs. “Seriously, look at the statistics - not watching TV gives me several hours more a day than most people. I’m very efficient with my time, and my wife is very understanding.”

On behalf of all of us who count on Vinography to help us navigate the world of wine, we offer our sincere gratitude to Alder’s wonderful wife - and hope he never develops a TV habit.

When Sam Javanrouh moved from Tehran, Iran to Toronto, Canada in 1999, he left behind many friends and family members. He wanted to stay in touch and let people know about his new life in Toronto - but he wanted to show them what it was like, not tell them.

Sam purchased a digital camera and began to carry it with him everywhere, documenting his new city one photograph at a time. He captured idyllic street scenes, the glowing nighttime cityscape, and clouds that looked as if they were painted on canvas. Every few days, he attached a few photos to an email and sent it to friends and family. The system worked, but not perfectly - not all email systems accepted large photos, and he felt uncomfortable “pushing” photos at people.

Then, in 2003, Sam discovered Movable Type. “It was the best blog software out there,” he says. “It allowed me to customize my design so that I could display large images with very few words, which is exactly what I wanted.”
 
Sam named his blog Daily Dose of Imagery, with the implied goal of posting one photograph every day. Though he had a full-time job as a creative director, he felt that the project would motivate him to explore his fascination with digital photography. He is entirely self-taught as a photographer; his early interest in the visual arts was spurred by his father, a cinematographer.

“Daily Dose of Imagery is a very personal project,” he says. “I post different types of images and all kinds of subject matter - I do have a definable style, but I love to experiment and try new things.”

Personal though it was, Sam’s project didn’t stay under the radar for long - with his uncanny eye for composition and the vivid sense of place in his photographs, people soon began to take notice. In a matter of months, mega-sites from BoingBoing to Forbes began linking to Daily Dose of Imagery. Since then, the site has garnered a staggering number of awards, from Best Canadian Photoblog to Photobloggies’ Best Photoblog of the Year. The site averages 50,000 unique visitors per day, sometimes double and triple that on days when one of his photos gets linked from a top site. Movable Type’s robust architecture handles traffic spikes with ease, so the site never goes down.

Over the years, the blog has brought a number of wonderful connections and opportunities into Sam’s life. When he posted a photo titled Jumping Girl taken at star architect Daniel Libeskind’s new addition to the Royal Ontario Museum, the architect’s office rang, asking Sam to take photos of the museum for the firm. “Libeskind is one of my heroes,” he says. “It was really exciting.”

When he compared one of his photos to a world within the game Myst, the legendary creator of the game contacted him, and the two exchanged emails. “I never had any idea that this kind of thing would happen when I started my blog,” Sam says today.

Yet another satisfying serendipity has been the way that Daily Dose of Imagery has inspired people to visit Toronto. “I get emails from all over the world,” Sam says. “Japan, Brazil, you name it - they tell me that they had no idea what Toronto looked like, and now they’re visiting based on my blog.” He chuckles. “I tell them ‘If you don’t like Toronto,’ don’t blame me.’”

Today, Sam maintains his full-time job as a creative director, while still posting to Daily Dose of Imagery every single day and fielding requests for licensing and photography assignments. “I haven’t missed posting a day since I began,” he says. He continues to experiment with different techniques, including dramatic composite shots, time-lapse shots of a single scene, and a recent project where he compiled hundreds of still shots into a video.

“Movable Type has never let me down,” Sam reports. “Because the Movable Type architecture is so open, it allows me to do whatever I want, from videos to Flash. I love being able to try out new things and share them.”
 

We've long spoken of Movable Type's power and flexibility. But frankly, we haven't talked much about how easy it is to set up Movable Type for your own sites, and that's because it's been harder than we'd like. Despite huge improvements in the setup process, web applications can be just plain complicated, especially since MT supports a ton of different environments. The complexity comes from having to set up the program while also getting all the supporting bits of infrastructure set up perfectly, as well.

We've seen an amazing response to the release of Movable Type Pro and Movable Type 4.2. As with any project of this scope, we have discovered a few small but significant issues, which are addressed by our release of the Movable Type 4.21 update last week.

Full details of the 4.21 update are available on movabletype.org, the community site that's a companion to this official product site. The issues resolved between 4.2 and 4.21 are particularly important for customers using Custom Fields or extensive template mappings.

Below you'll find the Movable Type Update Advisor. If you are using a version of MT prior to 4.2, this guide makes it easy to plan your move to Movable Type 4.2.

Move from MT 4.1 or earlier to Version 4.21

• Release Type: Feature Release, with significant new features, improved performance, and enhanced security.
• Mandatory? Strongly Recommended for all MT users on all versions, especially those concerned about performance.
• Performance Implications: Expect significant performance increase. This release provides publishing improvements of 2x to 3x on unmodified templates, and search speeds can improve up to 100x. Administrators can further enhance performance with a few simple optimizations.
• Plugins Affected: None that we are aware of — all MT4.x plugins should work in MT 4.21. Some plugins should be updated to newer versions to take advantage of features in this release.
• Templates Affected: No changes in your templates are required. Taking advantage of some new features in MT 4.2 and MT Pro can require optional template modifications.
• System Requirements: This release has no new or additional system requirements. Many configurations will find decreased system requirements, especially around memory usage.
• Licensing considerations: Smooth sailing. MT 4.21 is a free update for users of any version of MT 4.0. MT Pro is a free update for all paying users of MT 4.x and is a free download for bloggers.
• Upgrade Fatigue: No planned updates are scheduled until the next feature release of MT4. This will only change if significant security issues are found which require a 4.2x release.

Downloads are available in your account for current customers or through the download page.

Want to know more?

To learn more, read our announcement post about Movable Type Pro and version 4.2, or check out "It raises the bar", our roundup of the critical reaction to MT Pro's launch.

To find out more about the specific fixes between 4.2 and 4.21, view the version 4.21 update announcement. And consult the Movable Type documentation for information about the new release, including what's new in Movable Type 4.2.

Today, we're releasing the latest update to Movable Type, version 4.2, and along with it we're announcing the launch of Movable Type Pro, a profoundly powerful new set of capabilities that shows the web where blogging is going next.

So, what's new in this release?

• Movable Type Pro lets you turn any site into a full social publishing platform, combining all of Movable Type's abilities as a blogging and CMS with social networking features like profiles, ratings, user registration, forums, following, and more.
• The platform upgrade to Movable Type 4.2 fulfills the top three requests made by our community -- it's up to 100 times faster for common tasks, features much simpler templates for customizing your site, and includes 100% free and open source TypePad AntiSpam for keeping junk comments off your site.
• Movable Type Pro includes all of the features in the Movable Type Community Solution and more, giving you all the power of this enormously successful social networking platform. And if you're a personal blogger or have a current MT license, Movable Type Pro is a free update.
• Movable Type remains the most secure publishing platform of its kind. As part of developing these new versions, we completed the most intensive proactive search for security issues in the history of the platform.

First, we set publishing free. Next up, social networks.

These announcements are a milestone for the entire Movable Type community, but they represent a vision that we've been building for years. Almost seven years ago, when Movable Type was first being created, the power of publishing on the web was still largely in the hands of a few giant media companies. In the years since, thanks in no small part to the community of bloggers who got started with Movable Type, that power has been unleashed, making it possible for anyone to publish with all the professionalism and presence of a giant media corporation by using easy-to-use, open tools.

Today, we're bringing the same idea to social networking. Providing social features to your community doesn't mean you have to give up control of your community to a giant media entity. Managing a community online is something you can do yourself, using easy-to-use, open tools.

Enough theory -- here's the features in MT Pro:

• Everyone's invited. You can easily add full-featured forums, community blogs and group blogs to your site, and since Movable Type has always managed an unlimited number of blogs in one interface, you can keep track of all those conversations using a single set of tools.
• Membership. It's easy to allow anyone on the web to register on your site, or to sign in with MT's industry-leading OpenID support. Once they're in, your site's members get full-fledged customizable profiles, personalized user pictures (avatars), and can follow their friends or other site members they're interested in.
• Call it "UGC", if you must. Any member of your community can, with appropriate permissions, submit content for publishing on your site. Administrators have full ability to review submissions, and submitted posts show up on user profiles right next to their comments and other activity. Whether you call it "user-generated content" or just "a good idea", it's built right in.
• Ratings and Recommendations. Any registered user on your site can vote for content they like, making it easy to create "most popular" or "most recommended" lists on your site. You can even create your own voting communities within your site -- think "Digg in a box".

And all of those features are on top of the amazing new powers of MT 4.2:

• It's fast. MT's smart caching only publishes the parts of the page that change, and the core engine's been radically revamped to make it more efficient. The result? Using your current templates, publishing can be two to three times faster, right out of the box. Some testers have seen results with publishing up to ten times as fast or more.
• Templates are super simple. MT has always been designed so you don't need a ton of plugins to do fancy things with your site's design. But with all that power, our community told us that we also needed to make sure templates were still easy to understand. So in MT 4.2, templates are vastly simplified, and easier than ever to customize. And live template previews even let you see design changes before they're published on your site.
• 100% Free AntiSpam. TypePad AntiSpam is the best comment spam prevention service on the web. And it's 100% free no matter how many comments you get, plus it's open source and Akismet API compatible so it's easy to hook up to your site. With MT 4.2, it's also built right in to Movable Type.
• Even better APIs. OpenID suppport, OAuth libraries, and the ability to add in plugins to connect with the iPhone, Action Streams and more are all built right in. And all of your MT4 plugins should keep working just fine with this update, or have been updated to work even better in 4.2.
• Plus all the power of MT4. A powerful built-in asset management system. Integrated widget management. The smartest template editor around. The ability, as always, to manage an unlimited number of blogs and authors all in one place. Industry-leading support for new technologies and features. And an absolutely unparalleled community of passionate developers, designers, bloggers, and experts.