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Posted on

MT3 release news

Ok, so the MT 3.0 Developer’s Edition has just been announced.

Quite frankly, I’m not sure whether to be happy or disappointed about the new release and pricing.

From what I’ve seen playing with the beta, MT3 is pretty cool. Significantly faster than 2.6 especially when it comes to rebuilding. Good backward compatibility with older plugins, although I don’t use too many of them. Better comment and trackback editing and handling.

There are the license changes. I haven’t read through them yet, but from what I see it looks like it’ll be more friendly for web developers and ISPs who want to offer MT to their clients.

Then there’s the money aspect. MT’s a great product, but honestly, I’m not at all sure it’s worth $100 for a personal license that only gives you 5 weblogs and 3 authors. $40 or $50 I wouldn’t object about. But I think $100 is a little steep. MT would do well to reconsider their pricing model so that it’s a little more friendly to the power user needing a personal license.

Mena Trott writes

Additionally, as promised, donors who have ever contributed $20 or more to Movable Type will be able to apply their full donation to this version. For many who donated, the difference after applying their donation will be a nominal fee.

Ok, I have to take issue with that statement. Yes, I made a $20 donation shortly after I started using MT 2.6. But I’d hardly call $50 (discount price minus donation) a nominal fee. It’s anything but that. And you still end up paying the same price in the end.

Sure, there’s the stripped down free version, but you only get one author and up to 3 weblogs with it. And a long list of No’s and features taken away from the 2.x versions:

No support from Six Apart
That’s fine, there wasn’t much to begin with anyway unless you donated $45
No access to paid installation service
I think if MT is going to offer paid installation services, they should offer it to everyone whether it’s the free version or not. Is MT going to ask people to want to buy a personal or commercial license to also pay for installtion too?
No access to fee-based services
May or may not be an issue, depending on what fee-based services they decide to offer
No promotion of your weblogs through the Recently Updated list
Needed to make a donation to get this anyway. But what about those current MT users who have already donated, and don’t have the resources or desire to shell out $100 for a personal license? I think MT ought to continue to current model of accepting donations (particularly from users of the free edition) and providing a Recently Updated Key to them and allow current key owners to keep using theirs if they decide to go with the free version.
No commercial usage
No problem. If you’re going to use MT to make money, then you should pay them for acommercial license.
No more than one author and three weblogs
Again, far too restrictive for power users that can’t afford the cost of a personal license.

Notable license items with the free edition

“Author” means one individual with a unique login name generated by the Software via the “Add/Edit Weblog Authors” function of the Software. The sharing of an individual login name for more than one person is prohibited.

Making Copies
You may install the Software on only one (1) computer or server having a single CPU. You may make one (1) copy of the Software in any machine readable form solely for back-up purposes, provided you reproduce the Software in its original form and with all proprietary notices on the back-up copy.

So I guess what I’m saying in short is

  • MT 3 release: Very good
  • MT 3 features: Very good
  • MT 3 licensing: Good
  • $100 MT 3 Personal license: Bad
  • MT 3 free version: Not so good
  • MT 3 Pricing: Needs work
Posted on

Getting closer to Typekey

Ok, thanks to this bug report, entering the URL to mt.cgi rather than the weblog URL seems to allow Typekey signins.

However, now I get a complaint that a user name and email need to be provided when a comment is submitted by a Typekey user. I may have some template and/or cookie issues left to resolve. Time to go digging into the default MT3 templates and have a look.

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Let the testing begin!

Switched the weblog over to a duplicate copy of my weblog database. After some modifications to the templates, the weblog is now running under MT 3.0B4. Not much has changed as far as the look of the weblog. There are some significant UI changes on the back end though. Looking pretty good MT. Not sure if commenting works though. Registered for Typekey and pasted the Typekey token into the proper section of Weblog Config. When I try to sign in and comment though, I get told that

The site you’re trying to comment on has not signed up for this feature. Please inform the site owner.

I’ll need to mess around some more to figure it out. In the meantime, commenting seems to work. They’ll go into an approval queue and won’t show up until I get around to checking the queue and approving or dumping any comments as I see fit.

Posted on

Oodles and oodles of storage

Oh my.

I think this is what we need to replace our finicky StorageTek LT700 tape library with.

Found via Jeremy Wright

Posted on

A new PDA in the house

PEGTJ37.jpg
We now have one of these, a Sony TJ37. The wife decided she just couldn’t wait any longer and decided she needed to have one of these. And since she wanted to listen to MP3s, we needed to get a Memory Stick. Of course that also meant we needed to get a Memory Stick reader for the computer. I decided on one of those multiformat memory card readers that reads CF I/II, SM, SD, MS, Microdrive and several others. I was trying to avoid this Flash media bloat, but now it’s unavoidable. My digital camera uses SM, my PDA uses SD, and now her PDA uses MS. All small little bits ot try and keep track of.

So now, several hundred dollars later my wife has a PDA again, and she can go back to organizing her life again.

It’s actually a pretty nice little unit, although I think Sony could have made it more attractive going with a Virtual Grafitti area (DIA). MP3s are stored and played off the MS card, and pictures can be stored either to RAM or MS card. It even comes with a little strap that you can use to hang onto it with. Put your hand through the strap, and no worries about accidentally dropping the thing. Stylus leaves a lot to be desired though. It’s pretty thin, and I can’t imagine using it to write for any length of time.

Navigating with the jog roller is pretty easy, although the buttons can be a little tough to press. They’re small and nearly flush with the surface, so if you have big fat thumbs or fingers, pressing them might be a bit of a challenge.

The pictures it takes are fairly decent quality. Not great, but acceptable for quick snapshots. Max picture size is 640×480. If I can get it away from her for long enough, I’ll play with it a bit and maybe post a few pictures.