I finally feel like it’s spring out. We’ve had a couple of good days and I’m finally really starting to feel that spring fever feeling. Quite nice. I’m also finding that since I’ve made the work decision I’ve been able to really focus on a couple of projects that I’d been working on in the background for a while now. Movable Type 3.0 has also inspired me to work on a few others (like maybe making an updated threaded comments plugin.

Timothy Appnel posts some updated comments on the whole Movable Type 3.0 thing and I think gets it more this time. He hits upon a lot of the big issues for me. The biggest being that I have no problem with giving Six Apart money. But they’ve priced it out of my range. I’ve paid for blogging software before. I bought Radio Userland and thought it was a very good deal (though switch because feature-wise it wasn’t a good fit for me). I’ve donated to Six Apart for my current copy of Movable Type (for two keys). So I’m definitely up for giving them something for their work.

I also agree that it shows that people like Movable Type a lot and care about the product. I see things as they are now resulting in driving more people away from MT. I was talking to someone last night and said something to the effect of “probably 70-80% of the people who use MT won’t be affected by the pricing much. They’ll fall within the three blogs and one author category. But it’s that remaining 30% who are going to feel screwed. That’s the 30% who are power users. They host their own site. They like to tweak MT with plugins. They probably use more than one blog to cover the different parts of their site. Typepad really isn’t a good fit for them (especially someone like me who users their shell account for screen and tinyfugue too :)). And they’ve probably gotten at least a handful of other people to start using it. They’re the bloggers who tend to be quite vocal and have a fair number of readers.” And these are the people that are feeling alienated right now.

Would I still recommend Movable Type to someone as things are at this moment? Yes. But not as strongly as I have before. I’d make sure they understand the pricing. But I’d also tell them to check out things like WordPress to see what they thought of that. As far as TypePad is concerned, I’ve recommended TypePad to a lot of people out there too and think it’s great for someone just starting out or someone who isn’t a control freak like me.

Earlier today Six Apart released Movable Type 3.0 along with information on the pricing of it. There’s been a fair amount written about it already that says a lot of what I feel about the subject. Bryant sums it up nicely over at Population: One:

Movable Type 3.0 pricing is, bluntly, horrendous.

I don’t think software needs to be free; I shelled out for Movable Type 2.5, because I thought it was good software and I wanted to pay for it. I also don’t mind paying more for professional versions of the software. However, the new pricing is linked to the release of Movable Type 3.0, which doesn’t feel much like a major version release to me. The important new features, from a user point of view, are comment moderation. That’s not enough to justify a $75 price hike on the basic version of the software. [Population: One]

For me to maintain my current setup would cost me $120 – credit for donations I gave to SixApart a year ago (about $45). That’s insane. I have three blogs with four authors. So to go from the free version of three blogs that’s $40/author for me. $40/author for software that has some new features, but nothing major enough that I’d want to spend $120. I was expecting much much more from this release. For example, they could have incorporated options for things like threaded comments into Movable Type itself. What I see is Movable Type with a slicker interface and the ability to require comments to use registration. Maybe there is more under the hood, but the changes just don’t look that staggering to me.

I also don’t agree with Timothy Appnel, who says:

The delineation between TypePad and MT have become clear with this release – TypePad is for general users wanting to blog and Movable Type is for developers and professional organizations wanting to do more then just weblogging. [Timothy Appnel]

The problem is that Six Apart has forgotten one of their biggest customer bases. The people who fall into that category of personal bloggers who want more than TypePad or who run their own web site and want to do everything from that. That’s the category I fall into. I’m not a developer. I’m not a professional organization. And I have many friends who fall into this same category. And pretty much all of use feel that this pricing really blows.

I also don’t have a problem with Six Apart charging for Movable Type. I still think it’s a pretty slick piece of software (and donated around $45 or $50 in the past because of it). I want them to be able to keep updating it and adding new features. So how should Six Apart have done things? I can think of a few ways. The big thing I’d do is charge people for credits that get applied to your install. Each credit can be used to add a blog or an author to your installation. You start off with four free credits (which gives you the setup there is now), and then they charge between $5 and $10 for each additional credit (maybe offer volume purchase deals or something). I think they would find people much more willing to pay money then. In my case it would mean $30 or $40. I’d have no problem at all paying that (though I’d still want credit for my past donation).

So I’m going to play around with MT3.0 on my machine a bit and see if Six Apart rethinks things a bit. It may end up being what sends me off to look at other blogging programs. I wonder if they realized how much this was going to annoy people.

My friend Emily just IMed me with this great link to some very creative bento boxes. I like the Keroppi one (and the PPG one).

Esquire has a page with Brutally Honest Personals. I can’t help but wonder what mine would be like. It would probably start with something like “Single guy with broken lungs, living with parents…”

I redid my DVD page today. I’d been wanting a better way to handle DVDs that are part of a series and I think I think this new way works pretty well. You can click on the black arrows to show what is in a series.

Here’s a recap of a news segment that appeared on the Chicago FOX news affiliate. I hadn’t read pound before, but I like it so far. It’s definitely being added into NetNewsWire.

She also a great post about when the reporters came over to film her for the spot on blogging:

So FOX news came to my apartment to interview me and observe me doing bloggery things, like sitting down at my computer. I mean the act of sitting down was carefully recorded. I was instructed to walk across my room and sit down at my computer, and here is where it got complicated.

“Can we see you logging on?” the camera guy said.

“Um, well, I have cable, so it’s always on,” I told him. My browser window was open on the desktop.

The reporter looked worried. “Can’t you… you know,” she said. I began to sense they wanted to see something that said AND NOW HERE IS THE INTERNET or THUS WE GO FORTH INTO CYBERSPACE or whatever.

“I could close a browser window and then open it again,” I said. They didn’t say anything. “I could… put my computer in sleep mode, and then when I sit down the screen comes on… or–“

“Oh yeah. Do that,” the reporter said. [pound]

Manga definitely seems to be hitting the mainstream more and more. USAToday has two short articles on it today. The first is just about teens and manga, and the second is about the growing popularity of shoujo manga. Since it is in USAToday they’re pretty short, but still a sign of the growing popularity of this format in the US.

Manga definitely seems to be hitting the mainstream more and more. USAToday has two short articles on it today. The first is just about teens and manga, and the second is about the growing popularity of shoujo manga. Since it is in USAToday they’re pretty short, but still a sign of the growing popularity of this format in the US.

I watched the version of A Wrinkle in Time that was shown tonight on ABC. Overall I thought it was okay, not great, but okay. I think it would be a hard book to adapt and really get perfect. Also, I just found a link over on Neil Gaiman’s blog to an interview with L’Engle over at MSNBC, pretty interesting. I’m now feeling tempted to re-read A Wrinkle in Time and the other books. I can’t wait till my nephew is old enough to read them.