Over on Dave Winer's blog, he's talking about new features coming into Manila. While the features are cool (yay! trackback!), I think what I'm finding most interesting is seeing how much his using Manila as a customer, setting it up for a real world situation, seems to be pushing development work along on it. I'm not sure if this is something he does regularly or not, though I get the feeling not. Already since he's been at Harvard they've addressed the issue of visible email addresses (something I'd commented on a few times on userland.com's discussion groups), and are now adding Trackback support.

How many developers turn around and actively use their products like this? Or how many end up having to go onto the next project and only really looking back when there are bugs to be fixed. Sometimes I think it's possible to be so stuck within a project that you miss everything else going on around you, or lose sight of how easy or hard it will be for the user to work with the software. Especially something as big as Manila or Radio.