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Kickball, a great way to meet the stars of the Internet

AUSTIN, Texas--I never thought I would have a chance to wear sweatpants to a professional networking event, but thanks to Kick, count that as one more boundary broken.

The brainchild of Six Apart Vice President and well-known blogger Anil Dash, Kick was a game of geek kickball that took place Saturday morning here in a park near the Austin Convention Center, where South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) is in full swing.

The event involves large numbers of geeks playing kickball on a weekend morning, many hung over from partying too hard the night before.

Dash started Kick in 2002 as … Read more

Blogging company Six Apart to focus on social networks

Six Apart announced last night that it has sold off its free blogging service LiveJournal to Russian Internet company Vox, the blog publishing platform TypePad, and the professional-level blog software product Movable Type. LiveJournal was brought into Six Apart through an acquisition in 2005.

LiveJournal will be run by a new company, LiveJournal Inc., out of San Francisco, but owned by SUP. LiveJournal's seven employees (transfers from Six Apart) are currently working in the Movable Type offices.

What can we expect from the remaining three products at Six Apart? Alden wants his company to focus on building "community … Read more

Six Apart sells off LiveJournal to Russian media company SUP

LiveJournal, the popular blogging platform/social network from Six Apart, has been acquired by Russian media company SUP. While financial details about the acquisition have not been disclosed, in today's press announcement Chris Alden, CEO and Chairman of Six Apart said the move "...is a great milestone for LiveJournal and also lets us to focus on the core products invented at Six Apart: Movable Type, TypePad, and Vox."

LiveJournal is the first English site in SUP's portfolio, which has a sports news service and two different Internet marketing agencies for audiences in Russia. The two companies … Read more

MovableType's movable feast gets more definition, more open source

Six Apart announced some time ago that it would be open sourcing its excellent blogging platform, MovableType. However, it has moved dates around a few times, and originally intended to do a semiproprietary model with the software.

No more. As noted here, MovableType will be 100 percent open source, and will be released in December:

This is really good for open source community, but it raises questions for commercial users--what will be the benefit of purchased commercial version (apart from professional support)? Now it looks like new idea is not to remove anything from open source, but instead add something … Read more

Movable Type gets finger-friendly iPhone publishing tool

While the iPhone may not be ready for business, it doesn't mean you can't take advantage of its big screen and keyboard to get some blogging done. The folks at Movable Type have a new plug-in that makes the blogging tool's interface very finger-friendly, with tabs, and a touch-to-edit function that's a little bit like Facebook's iPhone app. You can create new blog entries and edit old ones, although keep in mind you're still short on copy and paste, so if you're trying to add links from one browser window to the other (… Read more

Rentometer: Find out if you're getting hosed on rent

Rentometer is a useful mashup, one that's part scientific, and another pure speculation. The idea is simple: just plug in your ZIP code, the size of your dwelling, and how much you're paying, and Rentometer will cross-check your price with local property listings pulled in from parent company iiProperty. Results show up on two screens, one that's a little bit like a speedometer, and another that's simply a Google Map with nearby property listings.

This is a great service if you're apartment hunting, since you can see if the price is higher or lower than … Read more

Movable Type launches version 4

Movable Type, Six Apart's publishing system is releasing its fourth version today. Six Apart began its public beta of version four in early June, and has since moved through a handful of release candidates. The biggest change Movable Type users are going to notice is a new interface, which includes a WYSIWYG editor, and 30 new themes to skin and style your blog without having to know any CSS. There's also a new setup wizard that will help the technically bewildered install it without having to print out a how-to guide.

With MT4, Six Apart is merging the consumer and enterprise versions of Movable Type, and are now offering those features as "solution packs." On the enterprise end, this equates to support for and integration with corporate servers and sales teams. For consumers who are running their own blogs, the community pack lets them add features like user profiles and story recommendation. Six Apart has also added support for OpenID, so if visitors already have an OpenID, they'll be able to register with your site using those credentials.

Perhaps the biggest change is the option to administrate multiple blogs. Previously, MT users were relegated to just one at a time. The new system brings it up to spec with similar admin functionality of the likes of WordPress and Blogger. Speaking of which, MT4 has a new importer for WordPress users who want to migrate, as well as a backup and restore tool to let you save and restore your blog in case of catastrophe.

MT4 integrates over a dozen third party plug-ins. Some might sound familiar, like Box.net's file storage, Vizu Polls, and NewsGator RSS (who handles that nifty news bar on Webware). There's also a new plug-in directory to keep them sorted and accessible.

Open source nuts will be getting their hands on an open version of Movable Type in about two months. Chris Alden, EVP and GM of the Professional Division at Six Apart told me that MT is already about 90% open source, and the new one will be "the best open sourced solution out there."

Below are some screenshots of MT4. To see more, click the "read more" link below.… Read more

LiveJournal responds to 'Harry Potter' deletions

Earlier this week, we reported that LiveJournal set off a new round of criticism from its tightly knit user base after it permanently suspended two accounts housing fan art of Harry Potter and friends in sexual situations.

After days of silence, the site's staffers on Tuesday evening published an entry on their business journal in an attempt to clarify the online-journaling server's policy on "illegal and harmful content."

In short, the staffers said they don't review content unless it is reported to them, and when policy violations aren't "clear," they congregate members … Read more

Six Apart upgrades TypePad; launches open-source Movable Type

Today blogging-tools company Six Apart is upgrading its business-focused products, TypePad and Movable Type.

In the blog echo chamber, Automattic's WordPress gets a lot of the buzz, since it's open source, free, and led by the charismatic and young Matt Mullenweg (interview part 1 and part 2). WordPress' blogging software is well liked by its users, and there are a lot of people who know how to maintain WordPress installations. Automattic also runs WordPress.com, a hosted blogging service. TechCrunch and GigaOm run on WordPress.

Meanwhile, Six Apart sells Movable Type, a competing product to WordPress. It's … Read more