Six Apart: Six Apart Ltd. Announces New Weblogging Service, Investment, Executives and Board. (SOURCE:"marcc")-Funding by Joi and Reid Hoffman, the PayPal guy (who doesn't have a blog yet)! Congrats!
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SAN FRANCISCO, CA - April 23, 2003 - In a flurry of activity, Six Apart Ltd., the makers of the highly acclaimed Movable Type personal publishing system, today announced the upcoming release of TypePadâ„¢, a hosted service providing a simple to use, yet full-featured turnkey solution for creating weblogs. Simultaneously announced were the close of its Series "A" financing and the appointment of a new board and executives.
</quote> [Roland Tanglao: WebCMS]
5:54:18 PM    
  
Battle of the blog builders. Sneakypeek behind the TypePad and MoveableType kimono! <quote> Earlier this week The Guardian went to the SixApart's San Francisco office, in the home of Ben and Mena Trott, the husband and wife team who run SixApart, for an exclusive look at TypePad. What we saw was very impressive indeed. Technically, Typepad has embraced all the new things that have appeared or been requested in the blogging world in the past year. There is a built-in photo album creation tool, for instance, as well as a built-in Blogroll - a list of all your favourite sites, or lists of books and music you are reading and listening to. The standout feature is the template maker. Users can design their blog without knowing, or seeing, any HTML code whatsoever and with a very great range of control. Other features include real-time statistics, posting by email, and automatic creation of Friend of a Friend data - instantly taking an experimental standard and taking it to the mainstream. At the same time as the announcement of TypePad, SixApart also announced that they had received a major investment from the Japanese venture capitalist firm Neoteny. </quote> [Roland Tanglao: WebCMS]
5:53:40 PM    
  
Does Manila save money?. (SOURCE:manila newbies email list)-Manila is a no brainer for educators!
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Anyway, before Manila we had about 30 faculty web sites - after about 5 years of development and training. Three months after we began offering Manila sites and training we had over 150 sites. We now have well over 200. The costs are incredibly low. In our case they are in the low to mid 5-figure range. Costs broke out into the following areas: Project management - The college paid me a few thousand dollars to manage the startup of the project, since I have experience with Frontier/Manila AND with using the web (and related resources) for teaching. Consultant - We hired an outside consultant who is an expert in Frontier/Manila development to do most of the actual template design and customization of the backend. Server - We're running a fairly unexciting Windows box that cost a few thousand. Training - We used existing training staff (along with me) to create and offer two-hour training sessions for between a half- dozen and perhaps 25 people at a time. This is sufficient to get most users up to speed. Ongoing support - I receive a small monthly payment for continuing to consult and troubleshoot. One of our staff tech support people is also learning the Frontier environment and provides support. All in all, this is WAY less costly that most of the other alternatives, particularly those designed specifically for education, e.g. Learning Management Systems. Overall, we find that an integrated approach works nicely. We provide Manila sites for perhaps 80% of our faculty web users. We also provide traditional static server upload space for those who prefer it. And we support WebCT for those who really need an LMS solution.
</quote> [Roland Tanglao: WebCMS]
5:48:57 PM