Looks like Movable Type is getting ready to go big time! (For those who are unfamiliar, Movable Type is the software that keeps this website (and countless others) running smoothly.) All you need to get started is a web host that supports PHP (and hopefully mySQL) and then you too can publish whatever you damn well feel like without seeing so much as a single HTML table tag! (Not that I don’t like looking at HTML, but I find it much more efficient and rewarding to spend a few hours knocking out a perfect, flexible template and then using MT to dump content into it.) At any rate, MT has secured some venture capital and are preparing to launch a pre-configured / hosting included version of their software, allowing potential publishers to forego even the (simple!) PHP setup now required for starting a blog! This service will be called TypePad and will be a direct competitor for Blogger (recently purchased by Google.) At any rate, I wish both companies the best of luck as I’m sure this competition will only increase the already rapid rate of application development in the blog community. Mark my words, someday soon the self-publishing movement is going to deliver a good solid boot right in the ass of the RIAA, network news and the MPAA! Or mabye not, but we can dream, right? In my fantasy-world, I like to imagine that web publishing and distribution is at least as important, if not several orders of magnitude more important, than the Gutenberg printing press. Clearly somebody agrees with me, otherwise why would it be called Movable Type, huh? =)