Disqus - Latest Comments for Anil

Re: MovableType 3.1 Released

Anil — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 22:34:28 -0000

We'd be glad to have you back, Matt. :) Let me know what your experience is either way, I'm curious as a PHP guy myself.

Re: I

Anil — Sun, 05 Oct 2003 19:46:19 -0000

Okay, glad you're enjoying it. Now get out!

Re: Alone in a crowd

Anil — Tue, 16 Sep 2003 18:33:27 -0000

Intimidating? Me? I haven't bitten anyone in over 22 years, I'm proud to say. And even my sister forgave me for that. I think getting to know people is just a skill, and like any skill, you have to practice doing it. I don't think anybody talks to people out of charity, people talk to you out of interest. The thing you have to keep in mind is that other people might not be effusive because they're *just as shy as you*.

Making new friends is like living in a new city... you have to give it some time working on faith in order for it to succeed. It really is true what they say about negative thinking... it affects how people react to you.

I was glad to finally meet you, and I can't make it to the Gothamist party, but I hope you give people the chance to get to know you.

Re: WalMart coming to NYC?

Anil — Mon, 15 Sep 2003 21:00:01 -0000

Once you've got a full stable of your regular stores for the things you like to buy, you'll never go back to one-stop shopping again. That being said, I think I'd feel differently if I lived in your neighborhood.

Re: NYC MoveableType Gathering

Anil — Sat, 06 Sep 2003 18:33:55 -0000

Glad we'll be seeing you there! Although I have to protest the inclusion of the extra "e" in "Movable", since that's my job. :) Looking forward to finally meeting.

Re: “I quit”

Anil — Fri, 29 Aug 2003 21:13:10 -0000

Sounds like you're just working through the process of coming to grips with your new place, your new identity. Jump in, man, you haven't even lived this place enough to know how you feel about it. If you're afraid you're making a mistake, then at least *make* the damn mistake, so you'll know if you did or not. But I think you're probably on the right track.

Re: Only time will tell…

Anil — Fri, 22 Aug 2003 22:10:43 -0000

Matt, for what it's worth, I tell people to expect to spend months 2-4 in NYC questioning the choice to be here and feeling a bit overwhelmed. It's a *huge* change. But rest assured, you're waaay to early into this thing to know whether it's a good or bad choice. Wait until you get the swing of things and you're a bit more comfortable before you draw any conclusions.

For most of the first year I was here, I really understood what someone had once told me about moving to NYC: That eventually you always end up curled in a ball on the floor of your bedroom or bathroom, bawling your eyes out and wondering how you were ever going to make it. It's a tough trial by fire, but it's nothing compared to, say, coming out. And like any difficult process, it's well worth the effort.

Hang in there, feel free to give me a call or shoot me an email if you ever start to lose faith, and rest assured, even those of us who *love* this city and would never want to be anywhere else spent some time feeling like you do now.

Re: Man pushed onto subway tracks

Anil — Thu, 14 Aug 2003 09:19:12 -0000

Eh, we were talking about this, and I think the vast majority of people who are pushed are involved in altercations. Acquaintance pushing, if you will. And the overall number, compared to the number of people who use the trains every day, is miniscule. Much less than the number of people who die every day on their drive to work.

Re: Life undocumented

Anil — Thu, 14 Aug 2003 00:36:36 -0000

Your instincts are right... get a record of your thoughts and experiences now, you'll be glad you did.

Re: My first Kottke sighting

Anil — Thu, 14 Aug 2003 00:35:47 -0000

Doesn't this belong on Gawker Stalker?

Re: Man Purse

Anil — Tue, 05 Aug 2003 11:14:52 -0000

Portage is the default man purse manufacturer for all of Manhattan, I think. And yep, a purse is an essential.

Re: Standing in line at the DMV

Anil — Sun, 03 Aug 2003 12:42:51 -0000

Ugh, don't pick up that "standing on line" thing, it's annoying as hell. Let's pretend it's the exclusive domain of people upstate.

Re: The Moveable Type Era

Anil — Sat, 02 Aug 2003 16:14:41 -0000

Welcome to MT, Matt. I think people have created a lot of the features you want, which is one of the nice little perks of using a tool that other people are developing for. Saves ya having to write all the code yourself. Lemme know if you have any questions.

And the new site looks great!

Re: Audio entry

Anil — Sat, 15 Mar 2003 20:50:23 -0000

I know it's probably bad form to leave a text comment on here, but my phone's not handy. Do hurry up and post a how-to, it's a great idea.

Re: Getting back on the blogging horse.

Anil — Sat, 23 Nov 2002 21:53:42 -0000

Don't let your mother's reading make you self conscious... my relationship with my parents has acutally *improved* since they started checking in on my site once in a while. Granted, I lose them with technical stuff sometimes, and I often forget until after I've posted something vulgar or crass that they might read it, but overall they like the peek into my life, and it helps them see me as an adult (sometimes even as a *professional*) in a way they otherwise might not have.

Re: http://hitormiss.org/2002/10/27/anil-dash-writes-about-mental/

Anil — Sun, 27 Oct 2002 18:40:45 -0000

Matt, thanks for being so brave with this post. I think most people who seek treatment for mental illness say, "oh, but some people have it so much worse!" I've heard that sentiment mentioned a few times already in response to what I wrote.

All that matters is your personal wellness, in that regard. There are people with far more serious cancers than some small tumor, but I don't know of anyone who'd try to work through a little cancer on their own.

At any rate, your message makes a difference, and I hope it's part of the steps you take to ensuring that you stay well. I can't imagine anyone with your identity and personality being in the social situation that you are and *not* being depressed sometimes. But it's a problem that's well within your abilities to manage.

Re: http://hitormiss.org/2002/10/21/research-on-moving-to-new/

Anil — Mon, 21 Oct 2002 11:01:58 -0000

C'mon, join us! I got my bearings in Manhattan by living in a dorm for a few months until I found a place. It's not a bad way to get settled at all. Everybody oughtta live here at least once in their lives.

Re: Email from another Matt Kingston:

Anil — Wed, 28 Aug 2002 13:39:13 -0000

Ehh, screw that guy. You own the Matt Kingston brand! You are the premiere product in the MK space. Best. Matt Kingston. Ever.

Re: http://hitormiss.org/2002/07/16/after-a-few-false-starts/

Anil — Tue, 16 Jul 2002 20:18:32 -0000

Holy *crap*, man! That's awesome. You're fully converged!

Re: http://hitormiss.org/2002/06/15/ive-been-thinking-a-lot/

Anil — Wed, 19 Jun 2002 07:58:46 -0000

I do exactly the same thing, my own sidebar and my BlogTracker one. I'll have to steal your code (and we know how *that* goes) and make a system like your new one. :)

Re: Kottke.org Moving to Movable Type

Anil — Mon, 03 Jun 2002 10:05:53 -0000

I haven't used yer code yet because I am a bad, bad man! It's terrifically cool, though. :)

Re: http://hitormiss.org/2002/01/23/why-is-it-that-straight/

Anil — Thu, 24 Jan 2002 16:28:21 -0000

This seems an interesting parallel to my parents' firm conviction that any woman they meet willl be perfect, as long as her lineage traces back to the Indian subcontinent.

Yep, sucks all around. :)

Re: http://hitormiss.org/2001/05/17/proper-email-cover-letter-etiquette/

Anil — Thu, 17 May 2001 07:59:11 -0000

It figures, the one time I got press was when I labelled myself a spammer. And I had no idea the article was coming out until I got it in my inbox.

Re: Call for help:

Anil — Wed, 16 May 2001 14:12:55 -0000

Dell will do it if you send them a specific request.

Re: http://hitormiss.org/2001/05/15/ive-finally-finished-moving-all/

Anil — Tue, 15 May 2001 19:26:05 -0000

Mmm. I have tiny Inspiron courtesy of Dell Outlet and it makes yummy. And the price was small.

Re: http://hitormiss.org/2001/05/08/salam-ketabatoon-ghashang-ke-hichi/

Anil — Wed, 09 May 2001 18:51:12 -0000

Heh, no I was corrected by Saima that it wasn't Hindi. And I felt dumb.

Re: http://hitormiss.org/2001/05/08/salam-ketabatoon-ghashang-ke-hichi/

Anil — Wed, 09 May 2001 12:19:08 -0000

Yeah, well, sure it's not Hindi. :) Stupid me. I'm gonna go guess at Arabic as a second guess. Vis10n is smarter than me.

Re: http://hitormiss.org/2001/05/08/salam-ketabatoon-ghashang-ke-hichi/

Anil — Tue, 08 May 2001 17:21:13 -0000

C'mon, we need some Hindi-speakers to rock this shit. Anybody...?

Re: Online ads that roam the screen

Anil — Thu, 26 Apr 2001 13:33:23 -0000

I saw a Coke ad crawl across Ask Jeeves the other day. It made me want to drink a Coca Cola.

Re: In which Matt reflects on suicide

Anil — Fri, 16 Feb 2001 11:02:00 -0000

It's a brave thing just to admit to having been there, and a big step to removing the stigma that is a big part of the reason no one talks about suicide...

I've been there too, had those same long nights, and I wish I had had words like yours to read. The upside of having these weblogs is that maybe more kids who don't feel they have a voice or anyone to listen to will find this medium an escape.

And in case you ever wonder, you've got a whole audience here to listen to if you ever need it today. :)

Re: http://hitormiss.org/2001/02/02/wednesday-night-along-with-fifty/

Anil — Fri, 02 Feb 2001 19:02:04 -0000

Hey, nice suit! :) You look very authoritative.

Re: More programming…

Anil — Sun, 28 Jan 2001 18:01:34 -0000

Hey, Matt, glad HotScripts picked up your instructions... I had submitted them right after you posted the page, and I was afraid they weren't going to post them.

Now all I gotta do is go inflate their ratings :)

Re: In which Matt writes about sex.

Anil — Tue, 23 Jan 2001 22:01:30 -0000

I'm happy for you, Matt, seems like this is a big step for you to take. Honestly, I don't talk about sex on my blog mostly because I know my dad reads it... :)

Makes me wonder what that says about me. Nice to have you as an impetus for me to challenge myself. Thanks!

Re: I finally bought a digital camera

Anil — Mon, 23 Oct 2000 19:10:36 -0000

Dear God, is that a wood-grain TV? Isn't it blasphemy to sit a TiVo on that thing?

Re: Looking for a digital camera…

Anil — Mon, 16 Oct 2000 06:10:07 -0000

I've had pretty good experiences with my Olympus, the only problem is that (as of when I got it ~ december) it only had a serial port connection. Compared to USB photo downloads, it's terrible.

And the UI of the controls is bad. Fine once you learn it, but nowhere near as obvious as the Kodak. That being said, the picture quality is better than the Kodak.

Re: Data vs. Music CD Recordables.

Anil — Tue, 04 Jul 2000 19:07:22 -0000

The "music" CD's cost more because they've got a surcharge that's paid to the music companies as a royalty added to their cost.

No joke, it's a CD copying tax, but you can avoid it by buying the 100% identical product that is sold under the "Data CD" name.

Re: http://hitormiss.org/2000/03/28/john-has-been-slowly-getting/

Anil — Wed, 29 Mar 2000 06:03:26 -0000

Can we do a mind meld so I can learn all of your accumulated knowledge? I've been stubbornly procrastinating the learning of PHP and MySQL myself...

Re: Movable Type Open Source – again

Anil — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 02:33:25 -0000

To be accurate, MT was never open source before now, though people certainly felt like it was, and there's always been a free (as in beer) version. Glad to know we're meeting your expectations, and I hope you give the new version a try and see what's coming. :)

Re: Crisis management – EDS stlye

Anil — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 23:25:44 -0000

Interesting -- I've seen zero participation in blogosphere conversations (comments, other people's blogs, etc.) from either EDS.

I've seen no way to contact someone who's an executive at EDS if you don't already have a relationship with them, and I don't see any record of what happened anywhere on EDS's site right now.

I think the response to your points would be as follows:We at Six Apart were also upfront about the problem in a matter of fact way.

A number of very senior persons, who were getting ready for or into the holiday season, all gets into action - you hadn't asked us toWe've made commitments to which we stuckEverything was calm, professional, efficient.We're here participating in the conversation now -- why isn't EDS responding to this post, too?

Re: Hello WordPress, goodbye TypePad

Anil — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 23:21:14 -0000

Dennis, you should probably also mention that the platform you're on doesn't have any export feature. So if you're not satisifed in the future with your web host (and I'd welcome a comparison of TypePad's performance, responsiveness, and uptime to whichever web host you prefer, especially now that your current platform requires your database to be running at all times when you want your pages to be viewed) there aren't the same options for getting your posts out.

It is probably technically possible, but you'd need adminstrator access or direct database management access, either of which seems worlds away from, well, being a professional accountant.

David's been fairly active in promoting his post on this topic, but it's an incomplete account without also mentioning that his migration instructions are a one-way trip that could well be seen as a dead end when a new host has downtime or performance problems.

Re: a short history of Oracle blogging - Digging in a Habari sandpit

Anil — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 16:19:34 -0000

There's actually a lot of Oracle blogs powered by Movable Type, especially now that our japanese team is partnering with Oracle Japan to deploy Movable Type on the Oracle database and middleware platforms. It may just be that we all see different subsets of any particular blogging community. I think what the list above shows is that most personal bloggers who only want a single blog will choose a free tool, which is why we offer a free version of MT. Most enterprises that want a number of blogs probably would use a different set of criteria and would choose a platform that supports multiple blogs and has more of a focus on management.

Re: Is embedding better than quoting?

Anil — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 14:20:33 -0000

My sense is that this very primitive implementation that I've done is probably *not* the most useful thing to do with this technique. I'm just hoping to inspire someone more creative to come up with a good reason to do this. :)

Re: Making the switch | Letter Never Sent

Anil — Wed, 23 Jun 2004 16:59:55 -0000

Hmm, I figured I should respond to a few of these items to see if I can help clarify what your'e looking for.

1. Well, there's new stuff from 2.64 to 3.0, and we'll have a bunch more new features in the general release that's a free upgrade for 3.0 users. So new stuff is definitely something you can still have on MT, particularly if you play with some of the plugins at mt-plugins.org.

2. Eh, don't worry, not all of us at Six Apart like cute. I'm curious what specifically you mean (this is basically a company full of people who *weren't* popular in high school) but I'll let you give me more info on that.

3. I've been to Austin a few times and it seems like a fairly reasonably priced town. (Certainly compared to New York City or San Francisco) so I'm curious about what you pay for the other applications you use, like your operating system, word processor, email client, or graphics apps. If you could contrast how the other apps you use every day are priced, and how many users they allow per license, that'd be helpful for me to see if we're giving you what oyu need.

3. I think we're doing exactly what you're saying. We've got a free version of MT that even lets you have Google AdSense ads or Amazon affiliate links, even if you *don't* pay. That sounds even better than what you asked for. And then, yep, we ask commercial users to pay. And in the meantime we're building out TypePad.

But a lot of our MT users said they wanted to be able to just file a simple help ticket when they have a problem or question, and get a quick answer, and the new paid licenses for MT let us do that.

As far as I know, there aren't any serious bugs in the 2.661 version of MT. And users who are on 2.661 that are eligible for the free license can upgrade to MT3 for free if they want the new features.

4. If you're concerned about limitations in the software, WordPress does have an open license, but doesn't let you have multiple blogs without installing the app multiple times. It seemes like one's a legal restriction and one's a code restriction, and I can only speak for Movable Type, but we've got a way for you to lift the legal restrictions just by buying a license.

I hope this helps answer some of the issues you've raised, and feel free to shoot me an email if you have any other questions.

Re: More on Movable Type | Letter Never Sent

Anil — Thu, 24 Jun 2004 13:50:45 -0000

You raise a good point here at the end, and I should mention that anybody who joins our developer network gets a free commercial license, so we're defintely interested in rewarding people who develop plugins, extensions, or customizations to MT.

And yeah, we're giving away a lot of really nice prizes to developers, too. :)

Re: Roundup: Six Apart’s memo, VCs and sex toys, WiMax in 2008, Newser.com & more

Anil — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 03:40:52 -0000

Really, Matt, you're using Valleywag as a source now?

"Six Apart ... has apparently rushed out the latest release of its software with a bunch of bugs, and a memo about how to spin it has leaked to ValleyWag."

Did you even read the email? The email was from our team member encouraging us to *take the time to make sure there were no major bugs*, which we did. By the time Owen had posted the email and decided on what story to concoct about it, we'd already made the decision to take even more time to ensure the quality of the release. Which would be obvious if you'd taken the time to read the homepage for the product, which might also help with silly factual errors like confusing the names of our products with the name of our company.

Given your concern about code quality for blogging tools, you might also do well to install all four of the updates that have been made to your platform since your currently-deployed version was released -- they all contain security fixes that you ought to have in place. Or, you could simply acknowledge that all software has issues, and that it's a *good* thing when a company is addressing them, and it's profoundly intellectually dishonest to characterize an email that encourages conservatism as being a rush to ship.

As far as us "spinning"? Check out the URL on the second bogus Valleywag story you used as a source -- even when conjuring up negative stories about us, Owen acknowledged that we don't spin. I think you can do at least as well.

Re: Making a decision about MT 3 | A View from Judi Sohn

Anil — Sat, 15 May 2004 11:11:55 -0000

Thanks a lot for your thoughtful comments and for explaining your thinking (and feeling!) behind them. We really appreciate that your gut tells you we're trying to do the right thing. :)

Re: Yahoo Search API

Anil — Wed, 02 Mar 2005 18:59:59 -0000

The cowboy boots are a reference to the cowboy who does the yodeling in their jingle, I think.

Re: Serving the space between - Yahoo Publisher Network

Anil — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 15:22:02 -0000

Congrats!

Re: Typepad down?

Anil — Tue, 02 May 2006 20:46:57 -0000

Our hosting facility has seemed to have intermittent connection problems for about an hour, but TypePad appears to be back online for almost everyone now. For what it's worth, Wordpress.com had about 12 hours of unscheduled downtime on Easter Sunday, so it seems like it really does happen to everybody at some point.

Re: Defining Blog Victories

Anil — Sun, 20 Feb 2005 15:25:43 -0000

Thanks for the polite and thoughtful feedback. My point was that I want people to be more considered and reasonable in what they write in their blogs, to keep blogs from being branded as extremist and marginalized media.

I don't know how to make it clearer than I did, but I'm *not* pissed at right-wing bloggers. I'm disappointed in all bloggers who want the medium to be known as another casualty to the incessant demand for personal attacks. That you're proud to be associated with an effort that you yourself describe as a "lynching" is part of the problem. Don't you see how that makes you just like the mainstream media?

You couldn't be held accountable to the same standards you want these media executives held to, and neither could I, and we'll all regret if we push the discussion so far that this sort of scalp-taking becomes the rule rather than the exception. Would your employer defend your enthusiasm for lynchings if this post were taken out of the context of your blog? I suspect not.

You have a quote on your homepage from Einstein, saying "It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity." What do you think he meant by that?

Re: I must be unwell…I recommended TypePad last night

Anil — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 02:33:23 -0000

Eh, I think it just goes to show we're all pretty sane people in real life, but sometimes being online rewards our less noble behaviors. There's really a place for all the tools out there, each one has its focus. Anyway, I appreciate the intellectual honesty, and I hope you gave them your TypePad affiliate link to sign up with. :)

Re: SixApart DOS attack

Anil — Thu, 04 May 2006 13:51:49 -0000

Thanks, Duncan, I know the whole TypePad team appreciates it. :) And it looks like we're pretty solidly back up now.

Re: Fail Whale Ate My Balls, Celebrate Twitter Downtime With Style

Anil — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 01:45:22 -0000

I can't believe people don't know their web history! Ate my balls is a venerable part of internet lore, just as Fail Whale will be someday, and they belong together.

Re: Update: Six Apart Working on Copyright Issues

Anil — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 01:10:16 -0000

Hey JB, thanks for being patient with us -- you caught a few folks in transit or on the road. We've just got a chance to sit down and figure out all the issues, and when I get back from PodCamp, I'm hoping to comment with more details.

Here's what I *do* know: We definitely messed up by having the opt-out/takedown emails get messed up. We're working on fixing them (they may be fixed as I type this) and I apologize on behalf of all of us for those being broken. For what it's worth, we didn't notice the problem right away because almost nobody every emails any requests in, despite millions of people using our various services.

Second, we definitely take copyright and IP law seriously. We're a company started by, for, and of bloggers, and our senior management is chock full of people who've worked in publishing, founded magazines and websites like Red Herring and HotWired, and a lot of us have earned our keep as writers along the way, too. I only want to point that out to highlight that our intention, any mistakes aside, is to do the right thing and be as open as possible.

On a personal level, I think the reason the LiveJournal syndication works the way it does was a simple technical limitation at the time Brad and his team implemented RSS reading years ago. Put simply, it was easier to duplicate a feed in that context in order to display on people's Friends pages. (That's LJ's equivalent of an aggregator.)

Part of the delay on getting a reply on Rojo, and especially on Nooz, is that honestly not all of us who were on the 6A team first were as familiar with those apps. As much as we've welcomed the new team members, they've been so busy at their new jobs that we've maybe been a bit behind in checking in on the apps they'd built before they joined us. :)

What I do know is the intent of the Rojo and Nooz applications, which is to offer a feed-reading and content discovery service for people that makes it convenient for readers, but also adds value to the reading and sharing experience. Basically, something similar to Technorati's tag discovery pages or even the RSS reading features of a My Yahoo or Google Reader. Aside from the bug in requesting content takedowns, which is absolutely our fault and we're working to fix, the overall intent is simply to be another great way to read and discover interesting writers, and the consensus we hear from most users and bloggers is that this is the case.

I'll check back in with more info, but I hope that helps clear up the initial questions, and I'll be following the conversation if you've got suggestions or feedback about what we should be doing.

Oh, there was one part of your assertions that *was* factually incorrect... "Though Movable Type has largely been replaced by newer blogging applications, including Wordpress". Despite the perceptions in some parts of the blogosphere, that just ain't true. They've got a successful product, and that's great, and we're innovating in a lot of areas (like enterprise blogging) where nobody else even comes close to what we've achieved. MT hasn't been replaced by anything, and is still the most powerful blogging tool around. :)

And one minor point. You say, "I sense that there is a bureaucracy problem taking place here though." And I think it may actually be the opposite -- despite the perceptions, we're still a relatively small company, and the Rojo team is an even smaller subset of our company. If one or two people are traveling, out sick, or just have pre-scheduled meetings that keep them busy, it can be hard to be as responsive as we ought to be. I would guess the big giant companies have entire departments to deal with this kind of bureaucracy, but for the most part, it's just us trying to catch up with following the entire blogosphere.

Anyway, thanks for the passionate and detailed feedback on all of this -- you're helping us get closer to what we want to be doing. It's heartening to see you assume that we're *trying* to do the right thing, because that's definitely our goal, and I'm looking forward to checking back in to see how we're doing. If you need to get in touch, feel free to email, IM me at anildash, or you can text/call me on my mobile at 646-541-5843. I'll post more info as I know it.

Re: Update: Six Apart Working on Copyright Issues

Anil — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 09:38:58 -0000

Sounds good. I'm also going to be back in New Orleans (can't wait!) for the Word of Mouth conference in about a week and a half, and if schedules work out, we could meet in person, too.

Re: Update: Six Apart Working on Copyright Issues

Anil — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 19:50:28 -0000

Good news, I just got an email saying the new copyright policy pages, with working email links, are now live on Rojo ( http://www.rojo.com/corporate/policies/rojos-co... )
and NooZ ( http://www.nooz.com/about/policies/copyright-po... )

So you’re saying because I’m the only one with a problem, it’s not really a problem that deserves notice, or you couldn’t imagine that someone would want to opt out of a scraping service you didn’t even know you had?

Nope, I was just trying to explain how it broke and I wasn't aware of it. Hope that helps.

Re: Update: …And LiveJournal Too

Anil — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 14:03:33 -0000

I should point out -- LJ is far from perfect here, sinceit's still early days for this kind of filtering. But I've had the chance to see the thinking that our team's put into this, as well as the great results they've gotten out of it, and I think it's going to be another great tool in the arsenal of anti-spam tech.

Re: Highschool 2.0

Anil — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 15:22:58 -0000

It's absolutely like high school, and it's annoying. What I was trying to do was politely point out how foolish that made the whole conversation seem, when there's literally tens of millions of other blogs that people could be reading which wouldn't be full of drama.

So, FWIW, I agree with you. And believe me, it's even worse being in the middle of an industry where this kind of thing is considered normal.

Re: Anil Dash’s smear campaign

Anil — Thu, 24 Oct 2002 01:15:51 -0000

Nice try, Richard. I wasn't raised on the Congress/BJP debate, I came to find out about it from my own research into my family's history before my parents came to this country. I was raised on American debates, as befits my heritage.

More to the point, you accuse me of not getting the point of Charles' site, which is blatantly false, as I consider the highlighting of religious extremism a necessary and important task. In fact, it's *because* I see it as important that I don't want it cast as the domain of bigots and zealots. What you seem to misunderstand is that a rational person, coming to Charles' site absent of context or advance knowledge, would see the news he posts and be rightfully alarmed and concerned by the threats he describes.

They they would proceed to the comments on each post, and see the vitriol, extremism, and odd fixation on the obscure glossary of a small Internet community, and would probably dismiss the news that's reported there as the rantings of some closed, out of touch, self-congratulatory community. In short, he does disservice to the message he's charged himself with communicating.

I think it's fascinating that you would deem to judge me unfamiliar with the effects of Congress Party policies, when my family was fighting against many of their efforts for decades. And how dare you call me a lost soul? You create the fiction that my anguish is faked? We've never met, never communicated and you see fit to judge me? I think that damns yours as a soul far more lost than mine.

I've never tried to suppress Charles' speech. I did accuse Charles of racism, and then retracted it in the same venue in which I made the charge in the heat of anger. I also categorically stated on my site that I don't believe Charles is a racist.

I agree the focus should be on stopping hatred, not just in the Middle East, but around the world, and I wonder why you don't chastize the people who agree with you and found it more important to threaten me and make up false accusations of anti-semitism and anti-americanism. Were they not trying to stifle debate? Were they not ignoring the fight against these threats from the Middle East?

Your hipocrisy is rank. I invite you to review the tone and tenor of the venomous attacks against me, and ask if that's the voice of reason. I invite you to forfeit your contempt for "web elves" who created the very tools you and Charles and others use to expound your messages. If I didn't believe in free speech, I wouldn't spend my life building tools, technologies, and companies that help individuals express themselves to a global audience.

By choosing rhetoric over reason, and by refusing to engage in discussion with your fellow Americans, you reveal that you'd choose your personal fixations over working with other citizens in a conversation that will find a useful solution. You feel that undifferentiated contempt for the millions of muslims around the world is justified, so it's no surprise that you'd be confused enough to think that contempt for rational Americans is somehow acceptable, too.

Re: Anil Dash’s smear campaign

Anil — Thu, 24 Oct 2002 12:15:40 -0000

Richard, you're right, we did communicate about web designers before. I'd forgotten. Now I find it curious that you see an unequivocally retracted statement against Charles as justification for death threats. Would you feel the same way if the supporters of Charles who had threatened me were muslim?

I do think the majority opinion in arab muslim countries is biased and hateful towards the United States and our culture. I've never said anything to contradict that. But there is a fundamental unwillingness of Charles and his supporters (including, apparently, you) to read those words and believe them, after having heard my other criticisms. I am, frankly, puzzled by this.

I would like to ask you a simple question. Today, Charles linked to an incident where hateful pamphlets were left in front of a mosque in Hawaii. His reaction was to mock the incident as trivial, which is not his reaction in analagous situations involving christian churches or jewish temples. The members of that mosque are Americans. Why do you feel it's acceptable to defend some innocent Americans and not others?

Re: A sad obsesssion

Anil — Thu, 19 Dec 2002 05:39:52 -0000

Richard, I don't enable comments on about 80% of the posts I've put up over the years. The fact that most people can't debate in a civil manner on these points where there are clearly legitimate areas of disagreement (I'm excepting people like Steven Den Beste, for example, who's always been civil though adamant in his disagreement.) is one reason why you don't see a comment link.

Regarding your statement that "Dash admitted that he'd got his minority and majority transposed", I conceded that there are countries in the mideast where that's true. The reality is, there are millions of muslims who don't live in the mideast. Do you think it's important to distinguish between the negative members of a group and its entirety? Or should we use the fact that the majority of violent crimes are committed by men to just use the word "men" to refer to rapists and murderers, and assume that people know we mean the minority of men who commit such crimes?

Why do I have a high opinion of myself? Why shouldn't I? I should think less of myself for being consistent and forthright in stating my opinions, even in the face of disagreement? Don't you think the free market of ideas will decide which parts of our respective beliefs are correct?

Perhaps you can explain now why you've got such a high opinion of yourself.

And LGF has improved by recognizing that it is a community, inreasing tolerance of dissenting views and questions, and by broadening its subject matter (even within its main topic of focus) from purely brooding rumination to an embrace of other elements of life.

Overall, I think I've written 3, maybe 4 posts on LGF. That's hardly an obsession. You've written about, say, Eminem (name picked at random) twice as often. Are you obsessed?

Re: A sad obsesssion

Anil — Thu, 19 Dec 2002 07:48:41 -0000

"All the posts I see on your blog before and after your LGF post have comments enabled, Anil, so let's not be coy."

Have you seen how people behave on those threads, Richard? I don't have the time or interest to sit around deleting pointless or off-topic comments.

And who's puffing or growing furious? Seems you more than me... perhaps my tone doesn't accurately indicate that I take this all pretty lightly. It's just talk on the web.

"A majority of men don't commit violent crimes, Anil, so let's try and avoid logical fallacies."

Yes, let's. A majority of arab and/or muslim people don't commit violent crime against Americans.

Re: Thats’ the end of that

Anil — Thu, 26 Dec 2002 10:13:01 -0000

Eh, I think it's possible that Marshall, Reynolds, Sullivan, and Postrel all thought for themselves and made their own decisions based on what their consciences tell them. But if you want to condescend to see them as patsies, I guess that's your call. Seems awful patronizing, though.

Re: Business journalism in the bubble

Anil — Fri, 03 Jan 2003 20:42:00 -0000

I'm unclear about a point you're trying to make... do you think that the discussion around wi-fi is a bubble created by people trying to promote it? My impression is that it's a very from-the-ground-up phenomenon that's succeeding despite the efforts of (for example) 3G telcos and cable companies to stymie its growth...

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

Anil — Tue, 14 Jan 2003 20:38:47 -0000

Richard, we give each other a lot of grief on various topics, I'm glad to see one that we agree 100% on.

Re: End of the Bloggies

Anil — Thu, 23 Jan 2003 17:17:12 -0000

I find it astonishing that adults can get their panties in a wad over an award that was made up by a high school kid. Who freaking cares?

Re: Blogging the blogs

Anil — Sun, 27 Apr 2003 16:37:51 -0000

I am, as we speak, in extensive weight and cardio training for my Final Showdown with Joi. Stay tuned!

Re: Latent fascism

Anil — Thu, 22 May 2003 07:33:38 -0000

And often the ones who are most likely to complain about First Amendment rights being infringed upon (though that doesn't really apply to private websites) are those who are least responsible with the use of them. Lessig seems to tolerate dissent and not tolerate disrespect, and that seems a perfectly reasonable line to draw.

Re: Cute people, dumb ideas

Anil — Fri, 20 Jun 2003 09:38:44 -0000

I commented about this on Kathy's site.

Re: Need help from a TypePad user: Tom Rants

Anil — Thu, 10 Mar 2005 17:35:33 -0000

Dave, can you shoot me an email with more information about your question? Our suppor team is excellent, and I'm very surprised that there's been a problem in getting you an answer for your problem. I'll make sure we get your issue handled.

Re: The Twitterfication of Profiles

Anil — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 01:36:58 -0000

Nick, have you looked at Action Streams for Movable Type, which supports 75 social networks, and is both free/open source as well as being decentralized? It seems like we don't have to wait forever for the frameworks to be created -- the tools are there, just waiting for more people to get educated about them.

Re: Oh for crying out loud!

Anil — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:57:52 -0000

Hey Charity, good news -- I work with the MT team, and there are definitely lots of web hosts you can choose from to use Movable Type. The new version 4.2 that's about to be released is faster than ever and should work on any web host, and you can get it for free at http://www.movabletype.org/ . It even imports your WordPress posts if you want to try migrating your site. Let me know if you give it a try; You can even take a look at a demo install at http://www.movabledemo.com/ if you want to just see how it works.

Re: Blog World Expo 2008 - Day 1 Recap

Anil — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 14:03:56 -0000

Hey John, thanks for the writeup for our presentation. I just wanted to get more feedback about what you were looking for from Chris and I on stage -- I think less than 5 minutes of the hour or so we were up there were specifically about our products. In all honesty, our main mission was to lay out a vision for where blogging is going and how social publishing is going to help it evolve.

If you or your friends want to help continue that conversation, I'd love to connect with you all and get more feedback about better ways to illustrate that to a larger community. The most important part is really that larger vision, and that's where we spent 90% of our time, so hopefully that was of value. And glad you'll give Blog It a try!

Re: [Roll your sleeves up and] Get Dirty [working]. ORBlogs.org is born.

Anil — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 14:55:47 -0000

Hey John, I saw that Paul Bausch had linked to your post here, and as someone who's been a fan of PB's for ages, I was wondering if I might be able to help in the effort.

I work with the team at Six Apart (we make Movable Type and lots of other stuff) and our team just build Blogs.com on top of Movable Type, as an aggregation of thousands of blogs. That might be a good, free engine to use for a reborn ORblogs -- let me know if you're game, and I can provide more info!

Re: Do “winning” companies have incentive to blog?

Anil — Wed, 18 May 2005 12:38:12 -0000

I can't speak to your main point (I certainly feel we're a "winning" company!) but I'd argue we're a poor example of "not blogging": We post more on our company site than Google and Apple's blogs combined, with an average of over two posts a day, for almost 4 years now. We also talk more honestly about what we're doing (I don't see Steve Jobs responding to complaints that the iPod is too expensive) so I'd argue that should be factored in, too.

More to the point, our company bloggers, both on our sites and on their personal sites, have as much voice and impact in the blogosphere as those of Sun's and Microsoft's, despite our entire company being smaller than just the marketing dep't of any one of the products those companies put out. So, either on a per-employee basis, or on an impact-per-post basis, or just as an absolute comparison to output from the giant companies in our space, I think we're world-class in our blogging.

Not to say we can't or won't do better. But I'm not unhappy to merely be among the best in the world, either.

Re: Going digerati

Anil — Thu, 26 May 2005 07:54:33 -0000

Just curious, what features are you looking for that TypePad isn't offering you today? And what features are you looking for in a hosted application that Movable Type doesn't offer?

Re: How to pitch bloggers

Anil — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 13:23:32 -0000

I think (and of course I'm biased) that my blog is many things, in addition to being a "corporate blog". I do talk about Six Apart and our products and services sometimes, but it's actually pretty rare. I'm much more likely to talk about broader topics than just what we do as a company, and so I think it's pretty appropriate to pitch, since I am primarily a personal/enthusiast blogger.

It's interesting, though, that perceptions of a single blog can vary so much. Makes those database classifications seem even more crude than they are.

And yeah, these are general PR issues, but writers in traditional media aren't going to burn column inches on outing bad PR people, but with blogs, it doesn't cost me anything but a few minutes of time to do so. That means there's going to be a lot more blowback than the worst case in, say, print media, which is just that your client's product gets ignored.

Re: Movable Type’s Pricing

Anil — Sun, 16 May 2004 15:06:20 -0000

Nice analysis, kevin, and we hope you'll give MT3 a try!

Re: 2006/06/02/sixapart-launches-vox-other-properties-stagnating/

Anil — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 15:08:08 -0000

It's probably worth mentioning that in the past few weeks, in addition to opening up Vox a bit, we've released a new beta of Movable Type 3.3, added a number of new features to TypePad including the first integration with Feedburner of any blogging service, and have rolled out a number of improvements to LiveJournal.

Massimo, I think there's a few inaccuracies in your statement, but I think your one question is intended to be about "Project Comet"; That was our codename for the service that's now known as Vox. And our goal has always been to have a solid business behind everything we do, that hasn't changed.

Re: 2006/12/19/social-networking-awards-vote-for-your-favorite-mainstream-network/

Anil — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 18:07:58 -0000

Vote: Vox

Re: 2008/08/12/six-apart-movable-type-pro/

Anil — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:57:53 -0000

Fabrice, that's an absurd comparison. First, Movable Type Pro *exists*. At least until next year or so, BuddyPress is vaporware. Second, MT Pro's features are based on the Movable Type Community Solution, which has been around for more than a year and powers sites all over the web like Talking Points Memo and AMC's Mad Men blog and tons more. So this isn't a theoretical set of plugins that someone can cobble together to try to graft on social features, this is a cohesive platform that you can get professional support and services for, and use to build a large scale sites.

Plus, you get all the benefits of MT 4.2: It's completely open source, it comes with free TypePad AntiSpam which is also open source, and it's up to 100x faster for common tasks. All that while being far, far more secure than WordPress.

In short, this is where blogging is going next, combining open social features with really robust publshing and content management. We're glad that others agree that's the future, and we're proud that Movable Type is the first to get there.

Re: 2008/08/12/six-apart-movable-type-pro/

Anil — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 01:52:36 -0000

rrcatto, if the only people who are able to publish on the web, or able to connect with communities online, are those who "Read the CODE", then those of us who truly love the web will have failed. Our mission at Six Apart is based on the idea that, no, you *don't* need to be a programmer if you have something worthwhile to say, and that any time more people are sharing their ideas online, we're winning.

And that's the truth. When we started, a lot of people still thought blogging itself was a fad, or that we bloggers would never have the impact that we've had on media, on politics, on culture, on community, on society itself. But now that impact is undeniable. Frankly, we're thrilled any time anybody starts publishing on the web, regardless of which platform. If you prefer WordPress, great! Our Media team can help you with advertising on your site. Our Blogs.com team at Six Apart can help promote your site. Six Apart makes Blog It to make it easier to update that site from within Facebook or on your iPhone, and we make TypePad AntiSpam so you don't have to pay for Akismet just to get great comment spam protection.

In short, when people are expressing themselves online, and using the power of blogs to power communities, then we're winning. I don't know what war you're fighting, or who you want to go to battle with, but if you think there's victory in battling those that want to help more voices get online, then I'm not sure why you'd participate in a community like the one here at Mashable.

Re: Future of WordPress and Movable Type

Anil — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 18:48:45 -0000

I think there's a significant number of benefits of MT for businesses, starting from professional support, but covering a number of other areas:
* broad platform support (multiple operating systems, databases, web servers and APIs are supported)
* extensive programmatic hooks, not just for plugins, but for extending core functionality in a really robust way
* a professional network dedicated to providing resources to business users and consultants who can help with deployment
* separation of business logic from published content, letting you manage data better

Obviously, I'm biased, but that's just where I'd start differentiating Movable Type from any other tool on the market. Compatibility at the API level with both our other platforms, and at the template and tags level with TypePad, make for a really valuable benefit as well.

Re: One Year Down, Many Many More to Go…

Anil — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 02:40:26 -0000

Congrats on the anniversary! We're glad to have you on MT. :)

Re: Anil wants Flickr to pay

Anil — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 10:51:01 -0000

Just to be clear, I don't necessarily think Flickr should be paying people, and I certainly don't think people are getting ripped off by Flickr, which is an excellent service. I'm just curious about the conversation about exchange of value for some people who are doing creative work and building value; That's not most people, who are just trying to communicate.

Re: A better permalink? Or is that “purplelink?”

Anil — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 21:42:59 -0000

There have been PurpleNumber plugins for Movable Type for years now, but most people don't understand what they do or what the value is, so it's unlikely to become part of the core of any CMS. For most readers, it's just more screen cruft/clutter.

Re: Bad news gets worse

Anil — Thu, 11 May 2006 20:24:44 -0000

Thinking of you... make sure to take care of yourself during this time, as well.

Re: What I learned from BlogHer

Anil — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 15:51:38 -0000

Have you used Vox?

Re: What I learned from BlogHer

Anil — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 00:30:49 -0000

"We were talking about your positioning. Not about what your product actually does."

My feeling is that people judge technology by their experience, not by what anyone tells them. In your experience of Vox, was it condescending? And if so, was it more or less condescending than being told, "that’s not the point. Wrong question. Next."?

John Furrier's never tried to make me feel stupid for asking a relevant question. I appreciate that about him.

Re: "Vox"ing our private blogs

Anil — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 13:39:01 -0000

Robert, thanks for the kind words, and I especially appreciate the honesty it takes to re-evaluate something once you've formed an opinion the first time.

I think one of the reasons personal/private blogging like Vox is hard for some of us with public blogs to grok is that it's using a familiar technology in an unfamiliar way. Imagine if we'd only ever known email as a medium for newsletters and all of a sudden we were able to use it for person-to-person communication as well.

Maybe more instructive is the example of SMS text messaging on phones. The carriers thought they'd use it to send you status messages, maybe to tell you when you have voice mail. Most never imagined that people would send each other short text messages all day.

That's part of what's exciting to me, that a lot of us who've been blogging for a long time are getting to rediscover on Vox some of the reasons we started blogging in the first place.

Re: The future of Moveable Type, Vox, TypePad, and Live Journal

Anil — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 18:20:43 -0000

"It’s a bit revisionist to call them social networking pioneers. Blogging, yes. But there’s not much of a social network component to it."

I think that LiveJournal in particular (and to be clear -- this is both LJ before we acquired it and since it's been part of 6A) can be credibly described as the most pioneering social networking site. It was the first large-scale site to popularize fundamentals like being able to add friends, being able to aggregate friends activity on a single page, being able to discover content and connections through Interests, which work like tags, and having profile pages which show all your social connections.

Just as importantly, fundamental technologies like memcached (which is used by nearly every social networking site), OpenID, and many other platform components were not just created at LiveJournal, but made open and free enough that dozens of other sites could adopt them to serve tens of millions more users.

Oh, and yes, blogs are social platforms. Both Movable Type and LiveJournal were amongst the first blogging tools to power basic capabilities like comments. Just my opinion, of course. :)

Re: The future of Moveable Type, Vox, TypePad, and Live Journal

Anil — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 01:50:54 -0000

BenB definitely. I think pretty much everything you've mentioned is on the roadmap for TypePad in the next little while, but to be honest, I don't know offhand the specific timing for the various parts.

I totally agree we need to open up more about the roadmap for TypePad, and we're planning to start doing that over the next few weeks. If you're not already reading it, the best place to start is the Everything TypePad blog. One recent example is the massive improvements being made to things like comment publishing. That's just the first step in similar improvements that will be made across the service. Similarly, you can look at Apple's own web app directory to see that we're not just content that TypePad's got the best mobile experience of any blogging app, but that we're going to keep pushing the boundaries there to invent new things.

Perhaps the simplest thing to point to is the influence that efforts like Vox have had on platforms like Movable Type. You can see how MT is using the asset/image/video management capabilities of a platform like Vox in combination with the scaling abilities of LiveJournal. We've already brought TypePad onto much the same technological platform as LiveJournal and Vox, and that means the next phase for TypePad will be realizing the fruits of those efforts. Until then, we've made it dead simple to post to TypePad from Vox, and there's a ton more features on the way.

Re: Typepad Sucks

Anil — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 14:57:34 -0000

"oh and no i didn't ask about how they insert their affiliate id into amazon stuff without asking..."

You can use your own amazon affiliate code by entering it into your profile in the control panel.

Re: Why did Typepad make a Wordpress Anti-Spam Plugin?

Anil — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 17:07:37 -0000

Simple answer, Doug, we did it because we wanted to help people block spam. :) And we thought we had something that was not just more free and more open, but better-performing as well. Easy!

Re: MT 3.2 is out

Anil — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 22:08:38 -0000

The UK site will be updated as soon as 3.2 is released in the U.K. All of our European editions get localized/localised help and ticket support, and that's our requisite before we consider the version "released" in a given region. So, the current version in the U.K. is 3.17, and the pricing reflects that. It shouldn't be long until 3.2 is out in the U.K., since of course the language translation is simple.

And to be clear, Neville's feedback is that he was frustrated with a particular plugin that's just been released. And he's new to Movable Type in general. So, though Weblog Tools Collection is always going to feature a negative headline like that one, versus the dozens of positive TrackBacks on our announcement post, the real story is that people are overwhelmingly amazed by the good experience of MT 3.2.

As to your specific question, "does MT 3.2 have, for example, two-level word-based spam blocking?" -- Movable Type does a lot better than that. First, there's a feedback scoring system, that assigns scores to trackbacks and comments as they come in, rating them by a series of tests whcih can include simple word-based or more complex behavioral rules. Next, comments or TrackBacks which are rated as questionable are sent to a Junk Folder. That folder automatically deletes junk after a set period of time by default, but it also means that you can rescue items that are marked as false positives and help your scoring system learn what is and isn't spam.

In other systems, someone saying "I'm a specialist" could get blocked because you had a word list with the word "cialis" and you as the site owner would never know, and the commenter would get frustrated. That never happens with MT. Finally, the scoring system lets you assign *positive* scores to items as well, using rules. So you can recognize the commenters who add the most value, across ALL of your weblogs, and encourage good behavior.

That's probably the most important point: You can manage all of your blogs in one place, with one simple set of user interfaces. Give it a try and I think you'll see nobody else is offering that kind of experience right now.

Re: WordPress vs. Movable Type: Open Source Blogging Software Showdown

Anil — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 11:38:10 -0000

"MT distinguishes between â€œopen sourceâ€ and â€œcommercialâ€. That is usually PR-speak for â€œwe donâ€™t like open source, we donâ€™t get open source but we feel we need to get on the bandwagon, so hereâ€™s some codeâ€."

I think that's false in the general case, and also false in this specific case. Our teams have always made huge contributions to open source, and you can ask anybody in the Web 2.0 space for corroboration. If you're saying "open source means abandoned", while I'm using Firefox to post on a site that's run by open source software, then you're just being absurd.

Regardless of the perception in tech geek circles, the audiences for all our platforms has been growing rapidly. Those of you who are old-timers might remember when the same group was *convinced* that MT's growth was coming at the expense of Blogger, not realizing that then, as now, the goal was always about getting new people blogging.

There are definitely people who focus on trying to get people to switch from one blog tool to another; We just don't think that's a sustainable method of growing blogging as a whole, so we focus on getting new bloggers started, and those new people are smart enough not to see a space where *everyone* is growing as a simplistic horse race. There can be, and always is, more than one "winner".

Re: The Huffington Post Allows Top Commenters To Become Bloggers

Anil — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 21:55:28 -0000

Great interview, Scott. I think ti's interesting that HP is promoting their efforts in this regard so well. We built this kind of community feature into Movable Type just so communities like Huffington Post (which uses MT) could do these sorts of things that encourage positive contributions.

Re: no hate

Anil — Wed, 04 Sep 2002 04:36:39 -0000

Thanks for commenting on the tenor of the conversation at LGF. I have been very disappointed that so few others have spoken out against it, and I'm glad to see people are coming around and acknowledging how they feel about the generalities that are often made in the comments there.

Hopefully people will get involved in negating some of the stereotyping and generalizations that often go on in some web communities.

Re: A Crisis of Blogging Faith

Anil — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 11:09:43 -0000

Hey Dan, you raise a ton of really great points here, but let me cut to the chase. You ask, “Is there any future in Movable Type as a personal (non-business) blogging platform?”

And the answer is: Hell, yes. We know we’ve been, honestly, focused elsewhere as we built up all the other work we’ve been doing. But, especially with the success of the other platforms and work like MT Enterprise, it lets us focus resources on the personal version of MT.

I’m going to be posting more about this soon on MT News (don’t want to overpromise and underdeliver), but if you want a hint — take a look at the public code repository for MT, the new wiki with a place for direct suggestions on the future of the platform, and do join in on one of the phone calls, where you can actually talk to the team about what you want to see in the product.

Some links to get you started:

http://www.lifewiki.net/sixapart/MTDailyBuilds
http://code.sixapart.com/trac/movabletype/
http://www.lifewiki.net/sixapart/MovableType

Re: Movable Type 4.0 launched!

Anil — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 14:21:50 -0000

Hi, sorry you had some troubles with your last major upgrade! But we've done some extensive testing on the new upgrade system, and I think you'll find moving to 4.0 to be a great experience.
MT4 should work with your templates out of the box unless you're using some unusual plugins to generate them. And of course MT4 has really nice backup and restore tools built in, so at least you don't have to worry about losing your data again. :) Looking forward to meeting you at Converge South.