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Meet Melody: Movable Type's open-source sibling

Community members of Six Apart's Movable Type platform (MT) are launching a new blogging service on Tuesday. Dubbed "Melody," it's an open-source version of MT that community members are free to build on and change.

Unlike previous open-source efforts though, this one is the first to break off (or "fork") from the main product, allowing for much faster and drastic changes. In many ways it's an answer to WordPress, a competitor of Six Apart that began as an open source project and has benefited from rapid development because of it.

Even though it'… Read more

Kindle DX reveals its inner self

RapidRepair is at it again. Last week it took apart the Palm Pre, and now it's dismantled the Kindle DX.

No word on how much it costs Amazon to build the DX (read full review here), but I'm sure we'll have that soon enough (anybody want to guess?). For those interested, here's a list of chips on the circuit board:

MCIMX31LDVKN5D, M91E, CTAK0915B Samsung 916, K4X1G323PC-8GC3, EMA188A5 Samsung 907, KMBLG0000M-B998 MC13783VK5, AM86D, CTRE083B Samsung 840, K4M28323PH-HG75, AAH055BE Epson D135211B1, F09090125. E-INK I also like what the folks at RapidRepair say at the end of the operation:

"Simply follow these steps in reverse to put your Amazon Kindle DX back together! The Kindle DX has many replaceable parts inside. In many ways this product is user serviceable."

Good to know.

Check out another picture after the break.… Read more

Know your neighborhood: Thirteen sites

Whether you're moving to a new place or you just want to be more familiar with your surroundings, there are a variety of sites on the Web that fill you in on everything from restaurants to businesses to apartments in your area.

Find some businesses

BooRah If you're only looking for restaurants, BooRah is for you. The site features information on how to get to a restaurant, but really shines when you read through the informative reviews from users and consider the "similar restaurant" tab, which features a listing of local eateries that are similar to … Read more

LiveJournal deletes 'about a dozen' jobs

Social-media pioneer LiveJournal is the latest company to announce a round of layoffs, trimming down its employee head count in its San Francisco and Moscow offices.

A statement from the company came after a rumor on gossip blog Gawker suggested that a shocking number of LiveJournal employees--20 out of 28--had been cut. LiveJournal clarified that it was "about a dozen" cuts, amounting to about a fifth of the company.

"LiveJournal Inc.'s headquarters, technical operations (and servers), legal, administration, and the customer service teams will remain in the United States," the release explained. "LiveJournal's … Read more

Pownce closes soon: Grab your data while you can

In case you had forgotten that microblogging and file-sharing social network Pownce is shutting down in mere hours, here's your friendly reminder.

If you were a user of the site, now is a good time to go back and take one last look at all your past quips, shared files, and discussion threads, since they'll soon be wiped clean.

As mentioned before, there is an escape hatch to take everything you've posted to the site and bring it elsewhere--the only catch is that you have to request it before the site shutters. You'll get a download … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 863: Get me off this orb

News of the Yahoo demographic's searching habits arouses a sudden love for space in Brian Cooley today. Also, the Nokia N97 gets a chilly reception, especially in light of all those delectably cheap Netbooks flooding the market. Pownce disappears, Apple suddenly starts recommending antivirus for Mac users, and Microsoft claims the Xbox 360 pwned Black Friday.

Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 863

iPhone beware, the Nokia N97 is coming (PC World) http://tech.yahoo.com/news/pcworld/20081202/tc_pcworld/iphonebewarethenokian97iscoming http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10110873-1.html http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1274500

Netbooks dominate cyber-Monday, at … Read more

Pownce to shut down after Six Apart sale

Another one bites the dust? Pownce, a would-be Twitter rival that was heavily hyped due to the involvement of Digg co-founder Kevin Rose, is closing its doors in two weeks.

It's not quite going away, according to a post from Pownce founder Leah Culver on the start-up's official blog. The technology has been sold to blog platform Six Apart, which runs TypePad and Movable Type. And its two full-time employees, Culver and Mike Malone, will be joining Six Apart's team.

"We'll be closing down the main Pownce Web site two weeks from today, December 15,&… Read more

TypePad updated: Better blog comments for all

Six Apart's paid, hosted blogging service, TypePad, is getting improved community features. The first thing most users will notice is a new blog commenting system. It has both a cleaner display of comments (with icons for the comments, WordPress-style), as well as a simpler comment entry interface. Users can also reply to particular comments and the system supports one level of threading.

The updated comments service hooks into TypePad's new profile system. Commenters with TypePad IDs get a place that collects all the comments they leave on all TypePad comment-enabled blogs, and users can add feeds from … Read more

Six Apart lays off 8 percent of workforce

Tuesday was not a good day for the San Francisco Bay Area's new media community.

The latest bad news to hit was word that blogging software developer Six Apart has laid off about 8 percent of its 200-plus staff. In a post on the company's public blog, CEO Chris Alden announced the cuts, writing, "We are reducing the size of our full-time staff by around 8 percent and are making some organizational changes as we prepare for 2009."

Though Six Apart seems to be growing--"with Q4 2008 on track to be our biggest revenue … Read more

WordCamp in a nutshell

Andrew Mager posted an illustrated play-by-play of Saturday's WordCamp, a conference devoted to the popular open-source blogging platform WordPress. According to Mager's report, the hosted version of WordPress has 2.3 million new blogs in 12 months and 35 million posts, and more than 6.5 billion page views.

Of particular interest for the WordPress crowd is BuddyPress, a set of plug-ins that brings Facebook-like features, such as friends, groups, private messaging, status updates, and extended profiles, to the blogging platform. (WordPress competitor Six Apart also recently introduced a social dimension to its Movable Type platform.)

As Mager … Read more