Ben and Mena come to London
Grok Headline matches for Ben and Mena come to London
Ben and Mena come to London...
Ben and Mena come to London...
07/09/2004 03:00 AMSo Ben and Mena and Loic have been in London for
meetings and a few of us managed to get together and hang out with
them for a bit. We've got Ben drinking warm flavoursome beer, Mena
puffing away on cigarettes in pubs and Loic's been trying to run over
small children with his push trolley. We even got to roam around
Television Centre with them a bit today - Mena making a particularly
fetching weather presenter.
Loic took some pictures too:
Read the comments
Open maps of London event: April 14,
London
Open maps of London event: April 14,
London
04/04/2005 06:24 AMCory Doctorow:
The Open Knowledge Forums are a series of lectures and panel
discussions about the ways that "open knowledge" can benefit the
public interest. The next one is a week away, in London, and it's
about a plan to produce a set of public domain maps of London
(London's maps were produced at tax-payer expense, but can't be freely
used; rather, you have to pay the ordinance survey thousands of pounds
for the privilege; by contrast, US government maps are free and
plentiful, and form the basis for thousands and thousand of competing
mapping efforts, from Michelin guides to Google Maps).
There are a number of interesting proposals for this, including
deploying an army of GPS-wielding geohackers, and buying up Russian
satellite photos of London. Check out this squib from last January's NTK:
London's geowanking
fraternity have come up with an intriguing proposition. With a
grand's worth of Russian 1-meter resolution satellite pics,
they believe they can stitch together an entirely free,
redistributable vector database of the capital, freed from
the shackles of the Ordnance Survey's restrictive copyrights,
and thus open to all manner of GPL-style repurposing.
Here are the details:
* When: Thurs April 14th 2005, 7-9pm
* Where: Stanhope Centre, Marble Arch, London. [WWW]Directions
* Who can attend: public. Registration is optional but useful so
please notify us if you can via okforums-info@okfn.org.
* Speakers: Steve Coast of openstreetmap.org; Roger Longhorn (geodata
policy expert); Giles Lane of urbantapestries.net; Jo Walsh of
mappinghacks.com
LinkBen and Mena, I take it all back!
Ben and Mena, I take it all back!
12/23/2003 12:23 AMBen and Mena Trott have made up in a big way for their earlier silence
on future plans for MovableType. In a series of postings on Six Apart
and MovableType, they have announced release of a security update to
MT, support for Atom 0.3, and a feature list and time frame for
MovableType 3.0.. It all sounds great, and to my surprise it seems
that they intend to keep the current pricing structure, e.g. free for
non-commercial use. I hereby volunteer to be a Beta tester. I and some
others have complained publically and privately to about the lack of
news regarding MovableType. I received some kind private email from
Mena, but this kind of an announcement demonstrates better than
anything that the Trotts listen to user feedback, and that they have
not forgotten their first users. It makes me feel a little sheepish
about my earlier criticism -- I hope that it was useful, in the way it
was intended to be. Certainly the least I can do now is volunteer as a
Beta tester and send some of my Christmas pin money their way, to help
pay for all the engineering and usability work. To Ben and Mena and
the rest of the team at MT/SA, thanks for all the news, and thanks for
the hard work that it represents....
"Mena による久し振りの長文
Entry"
"Mena による久し振りの長文
Entry"
07/14/2004 10:18 PMsome clarification from Mena at Six
Apart
some clarification from Mena at Six
Apart
05/15/2004 07:05 PMaddressed some of these concerns today .. The Movable Type 3.0 FAQ ..
posted a clarification .. this link to an update .. Mena and the
changes .. explanation .. firestorm .. go
over
sixapart.com/log/2004/05/movable_type_30.shtml
track this
site | 12 links
IT Conversations: Ben and Mena Trott -
Six Apart
IT Conversations: Ben and Mena Trott -
Six Apart
05/16/2004 03:15 PMBen and Mena gave a great interview here .. Ben und Mena Trott
interviewt
itconversations.com/shows/detail121.html
track this
site | 4 links
nice interview with ben and mena
nice interview with ben and mena
05/15/2004 07:09 AMi like the part at 12:00 where mena gets genuinely choked up talking
about how kind our users are
help ben and mena get on Yahoo! Most
Emailed
help ben and mena get on Yahoo! Most
Emailed
02/18/2004 09:35 PMif our blogging tool was called "pair of boobs and a kitten"
we'd already be number one
mena holds a gun to my head
mena holds a gun to my head
08/04/2004 03:21 PMthis is how we motivate workers at six apart
Ben and Mena make the Fast 50
Ben and Mena make the Fast 50
02/16/2004 01:17 PMi am always amused by lists that treat the Trott as a single entity
mena on salon's six apart article
mena on salon's six apart article
08/09/2004 04:40 PMit's always nice to have an outside perspective
Dear Ben and Mena, Thanks for lunch!
[Flickr]
Dear Ben and Mena, Thanks for lunch!
[Flickr]
02/05/2005 10:08 PMMena Trott steps down as SixApart CEO
Mena Trott steps down as SixApart CEO
07/14/2004 03:38 PMMena Trott has stepped down as CEO of SixApart, makers of Movable Type
and TypePad, in favour of Barak Berkowitz, one of their Series A
investors. Mena's written a heartfelt appreciation of Barak that is an
instant classic -- a unique example of a company founder's sincere
desire to see her efforts bear fruit, even if she's not's in charge
any longer (though she's staying on as President).
At our office, we had phone cables running up and down walls and
doorframes and across the floor. This mess was around for months until
one day Barak came to work with a T-shirt, some tool-belt type thing
and some device to do phone wiring. During the course of the
afternoon, Barak installed our phone lines and cleaned up the office.
Incidentally, while he was doing this, Maile, our administrative
assistant came in for her first interview with us and saw Barak. A
week or two later when we called her in for a second interview I asked
that she speak with Barak so that he could interview her as well.
After we hired Maile and explained who Barak was she laughed and said
"Oh, I thought he was the handyman and that this company really liked
to get everyone involved!"
Link
(
via Kottke)
"Mena on comment spam and the new
version of MT"
"Mena on comment spam and the new
version of MT"
12/24/2004 01:00 PMBen and Mena Trott: You forgot to dance
with who brung ya
Ben and Mena Trott: You forgot to dance
with who brung ya
05/14/2004 03:25 AMAfter I wrote the post this morning, Ben and Mena Trott sucker punch
the weblogging community, I had second thoughts about it, especially
the title, which has a moralistic and judgmental tone that isn't
appropriate. If it wasn't for my belief that it is almost always
dishonest to rewrite something that you have already published (and
that others have linked to), I would take the post down. Instead, I'm
writing a new version of it: As I said earlier, Six Apart has the
right to charge whatever the market will bear for their labor. So why
are people so outraged, and why is it a questionable business
decision? Is it just because Movable Type users are a bunch of whiners
who want something for nothing, as some believe? I don't think so. Six
Apart is reneging on a very public promise, and is treating the people
who helped make Movable Type a success very poorly. A little history
from a long-time user: Movable Type owes its success first of all to
Ben and Mena having done a great job designing, implementing and
updating a product with an excellent user interface and superb
documentation, and secondly to having it ready at just the right time
to catch the blogging wave. But the third factor in Movable Type's
success was the army of evangelists and contributors who sold the
products to their friends, businesses and community organizations, and
who contributed bug reports, bug fixes, responses on the bulletin
boards, and great plug-ins. In many ways, Movable Type was treated by
the community like a Free Software project, which it wasn't. But the
ethos of the MT 2.x license, if you make money off this software you
have to pay, if you don't you don't, was very similar to that of MySQL
and other open source companies, so people, in spite of warnings,
ignored the significant differences between it and free open source.
From a business point of view, Movable Type Personal was the seed
product, or the loss- leader, that sold Movable Type Commercial. The
other part of the history is that when Six Apart got VC funding and
shortly thereafter started work on TypePad, it stopped work on its
already announced 3.0 product, but didn't say anything publically
about it for many months. Meanwhile, the Movable Type comment spam
problem started and quickly threatened to grow to unmanageable
proportions. As resentment...
mena on tightly knit bonds in bl0gging
mena on tightly knit bonds in bl0gging
07/09/2004 12:06 PMthe real weblog revolution and a defense of personal weblogs
MENA Mobile Subscriptions 60% below
Market Potential
MENA Mobile Subscriptions 60% below
Market Potential
09/13/2004 03:17 AMThe Middle East & North Africa region has only 45m current subscribers
from an addressable mobile market of 115m. This large spread
emphasizes the tremendous pent up demand and the profitability
potential awaiting the mobile operators best suited to tackle this
regions needs. [PRWEB Sep 13, 2004]
"Meg, Ev, Paul Bausch, Ben, and Mena are
PC Magazine's People of the Year"
"Meg, Ev, Paul Bausch, Ben, and Mena are
PC Magazine's People of the Year"
12/25/2004 05:03 PMBen and Mena Trott sucker punch the
webl0gging community
Ben and Mena Trott sucker punch the
webl0gging community
05/13/2004 02:02 PMOf course Six Apart has the right to charge whatever they want for
MovableType, but having repeatedly said that they would provide a free
version of MovableType 3.0 for personal use then announcing this
crippleware that is MT 3.0 personal is stupid at best, dishonest at
worst. Enraging your first customers and your developer community is a
strange path to business success. Hopefully they will reconsider after
being enveloped in the perfect storm that is brewing....
Mena Trott answers 6A's critics and
Geodog signs off on criticism
Mena Trott answers 6A's critics and
Geodog signs off on criticism
09/16/2004 03:40 AMI wasn't planning on ever writing anything about SixApart and
MovableType again, but today Kris Krug sent me mail alerting me to a
lengthy interview he did with Mena Trott, where she responds to some
of the recent criticism of Six Apart and the MT 3.0, and 3.1 releases:
MT: One of the biggest things that I want to get through (and that I
probably don't a good enough job of getting through) is that it's
completely untrue that we're this big corporate company and that we
don't care about the users-that it's all about just Ben and Mena and
the venture capitalists. It's not so; there are so many smart people
here who love what they're doing and love blogging. It dismisses their
value when people say the company is just a big corporation that
doesn't care about its users. People should understand that when
you're insulting the company, you're insulting a lot of people. We're
all good people and I wish everyone would take some time to see that.
There are so many other targets to focus on; our little company from
San Mateo is the least among them. The interview is worth reading in
its entirety, if you are interested in the whole MovableType saga and
some of the issues around the recent releases. To round out the view,
or if you want a different perspective, check out long time MT user
Ben Hammersley's opinion, Ben Trott's response, and 6A supporter and
plug-in writer Timothy Appnel's comments. I myself have said more than
enough about MovableType and SixApart, and gained some unwanted
notoriety through a poor choice of weblog post titles. I've also have
had my criticisms misrepresented, and Anil Dash has fairly called upon
me to examine my criticisms. As a result I reread Anil's post about
criticism, and reread for about the 10th time Phil Ringnalda's classic
post on the same subject, there is no they, and I've decided not to
spend any more time offering what Anil called "unsolicited criticism."
We all have more important things to do. I will just note that I as I
have said elsewhere thought MovableType was a was a brilliant product
when I first encountered it. The documentation, user interface,
features and support were superb. I enjoyed the time learning how to
hack the templates and add plugins. I appreciated the ethos of the old
MT license --...
Congratulations Mena G. Trott and Ben
Trott
Congratulations Mena G. Trott and Ben
Trott
12/24/2004 12:46 PMMena G. Trott and Ben Trott of SixApart have been named People of
the Year by PC Magazine. Congrats to both and that is one of the
bigger Geek Awards one can win. [PC
Magazine]
Raya Contact Centre is the certified B2B
contact centre for Intel in the MENA
region
Raya Contact Centre is the certified B2B
contact centre for Intel in the MENA
region
03/24/2005 04:18 AMAME Info Mar 24 2005 8:36AM GMT
In the London Eye
In the London Eye
04/21/2004 01:05 PM Several weeks ago I posted a poll asking where you wanted to see me.
"In the London Eye" received... (86 words)
Off to London
Off to London
02/01/2005 09:26 PMI'm leaving for London in a couple of hours. I'll probably be
posting a bit while I'm there as time and connectivity
permit...hopefully some photos as well.
Packing this morning, I came up with a list of the extra stuff that
I need to do before going to the airport now that everyone's a
terrorist until proven innocent** and the major airlines are all about
to go out of business:
- Clip my fingernails. With nail clippers verboten on planes,
you need to do it before you leave.
- Silence my electric
toothbrush. Last time I traveled, my toothbrush turned on in my
luggage and the battery was long dead when I got home. Luckily I can
plug the power cord into the brush to prevent it from turning on, lest
some anxious baggage screener thinks it's a buzzing bomb and/or
illegal sexual device.
- Leave ridiculously early. I am a single
male traveling alone on an American Airlines flight to Heathrow on a
ticket purchased not so long ago...I'm pretty sure that I'm going to
get pulled aside for a "random" screening. My only hope: my summer tan
has faded and I'm white as can be (Non-Terrorist White is the hottest
color for pants at J. Crew this season)...come on, wave whitey
through!
- Wardrobe change. Gotta wear pants that don't require
a belt and shoes that can be slipped on and off with
ease.
- Eat. You may get food on the plane, you may not. With
random screenings come random feedings and I don't like my odds in
either case.
** The Jan/Feb 2005 Atlantic Monthly has a couple of great articles
on terrorism...here's a relevant snippet from Success
Without Victory (subscribers only) by James Fallows:
Screening lines at airports are perhaps the most
familiar reminder of post-9/11 security. They also exemplify what's
wrong with the current approach.
Many of the routines and
demands are silly, eroding rather than building confidence in the
security regime of which they are part. "You can't go through an
airport line without thinking 'This is dumb,'" says Graham Allison,
the author of the recent Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable
Catastrophe, and the director of the Belfer Center for Science and
International Affairs, at Harvard, which conducts many projects on
anti-terrorism and security. "You have two people whose job it is to
see if the name on your driver's license is the same as the name on
your ticket -- as if any self-respecting terrorist would fail to think
of that. You have a guy whose job is to shout out a reminder for you
to take off your jacket and get your computer out of your bag. You've
got one-year-olds taking off their shoes. It is hard to think of a way
you could caricature it to make it look sillier." At the same time,
the ritual manages to be intimidating, as a standing reminder of how
much Americans have to fear.
Getting around London
Getting around London
02/01/2005 09:58 PM
The Transport for London Journey Planner shows you how to
get from anywhere in London to anywhere else by public transport, on
foot or by bike. Fancy a stroll from
Trafalgar
Square to
Big Ben?
Help yourself to a
custom-built PDF route map. If you're travelling by
road, you can use
webca
ms to see exactly what the traffic's like. (But the best
downloadable London maps are still on the BBC web site)
The Museum of London
The Museum of London
12/07/2003 08:14 AM The Museum of London.
UXnet Comes to London
UXnet Comes to London
12/19/2004 03:55 PMYou’re invited to the first monthly social meeting in London for the
User Experience Design community.
Oh, sweet London
Oh, sweet London
12/30/2003 01:24 AMThis city is most certainly a place where it's impossible to get
bored. Yesterday, after an early arrival, we went to see the Lord of
the Rings exhibition at Science Museum, which was very well worth the
rather steep 12£ admission: some of the miniatures are simply
amazing, Sauron and the ringwraiths can scare you witless even if seen
from a distance, but the best part are some of the paintings and
sketches: I felt like any weak-minded creature in front of the Ring as
I let my eyes rest upon the artwork of Sauron overseeing his troops at
the plains of Gorgoroth...
This must be mine - my
precioussss...
Afterwards, we were - completely accidentally - treated to the artwork
of Yann
Arthus-Bertrand, who had an outdoor exhibition of 3x2 meter
photographs outside the Natural History Museum. Go see the stuff this
guy shoots - some of it is quite simply breathtaking. Especially in
large size.
Anyhow, the tournament
looks like it's going to be a good one: plenty of nice people all
around, good location, relaxed schedule... Well, I might still lose
all of my games :)
Unfortunately, I am not able to get GPRS roaming work, so it looks
like no moblogging. I even forgot all of my USB leads home, so I
can't even upload any pictures. Oh well.
Get a job (Boston), get a job (London)
Get a job (Boston), get a job (London)
12/22/2004 01:29 AMWeb jobs, baby.
London: Next City of the Sky?
London: Next City of the Sky?
06/29/2004 08:41 PMLondon architects and developers are pushing to remake the city's
profile, much to the chagrin of conservation groups and locals.
The London Screensaver (B&W) 1.0
The London Screensaver (B&W) 1.0
07/07/2004 10:42 PM10 high-resolution photos of London, England in black and white
Wi-Fi from London Streets
Wi-Fi from London Streets
12/20/2003 08:35 PMStreetNet Islington, London
Poverty in London
Poverty in London
06/22/2004 05:04 PM
Charles Booth Online Archive.
Charles Booth's survey of life and labour in London at the end of the
Victorian era, with the famous poverty maps.
London Calling
London Calling
11/11/2003 03:21 PM A nice sit down and a cup of
tea are among many
events
(pdf) planned for GWB's impending visit to the UK. Police are
estimating 100,000 plus demonstrators for his visit, and London's
Mayor says of American requests for an exclusion zone to protect him,
'I
don't think that's got a chance at all'. How does this level of
grass-roots dissent compare to his reception when out and about in the
US?
Back from London
Back from London
02/05/2005 10:18 PMBack from London and up at the ungodly hour of 7:00 AM ET after
getting to bed at 1:30 AM ET, which was the minute I got home from the
airport. Still, six hours of sleep is better than none hours. I'm
going to use the time to get some stuff done...lots of exciting and
dread-inspiring things to do in the next couple of weeks. Trip
pictures are forthcoming; luckily my camera battery lasted the whole
time despite the charger being thousands of miles away and I took lots
of photos.
But quickly, I learned a few additional travel tips on this trip
(to add to the
list):
- Never purchase a US to UK power outlet converter at a
Canadian/Australian ex-pat shop. It will fail to work after a day or
so. I practically had to splash water on it to get a good
connection.
- When going through security at the airport, don't wear a
shirt that depicts a little girl blowing her head off with a gun,
even though her splattered brains turn into butterflies.
- You know that bottle of unopened soda in the bag bouncing on your
hip for the last 1/2 hour? Yeah, that's going to spray everywhere when
you open it, dummy. When I got home, my coat was so sticky that I just
kinda pressed it to the wall to hang it up, no hook needed.
Oh, and I ate kangaroo! Not half bad, but I probably wouldn't go
out of my way to order it again.
More on London Booted
More on London Booted
04/25/2004 11:07 AMFollowing up on
this BoingBoing post about the bootleg Clash remix project
"London Booted," Will says:
We featured a preview of London Booted in issue-zero of our bootleg
newsletter, which you can find here if you're interested (it's down the bottom in the "Coming
Soon" section). We're also planning a follow up for issue-two (out
29th April) where we'll be talking to the remixers involved and also
they guy who organised the project (only subscribers to the mailing
list will get this issue).
LinkWTF-2 in London this Saturday
WTF-2 in London this Saturday
05/24/2004 04:44 AMThe next WTFCon is in London this Saturday: it's a one-day convention
devoted to hackery subjects.
* An open space gathering and conference of various groups, projects,
people, and organisations active and interested in creating a better
world.
* Action and not just talk. Too many social forums and gatherings
result with little or no outcome. Come and propose and gain support
for actions during Soho Summit, ESF, G8, GDR etc.
* An assembly of gifts and needs: tell everyone what your projects are
all about, what they have to offer, and what they need. Together we
have everything. Let's self-organise and share!
* About working together, many of us have shared principles despite
our diverse goals. No more either or!
Link
(
Thanks, Tav!)
Faces of London
Faces of London
02/05/2005 10:18 PMWithout intending to, I ended up taking photos of a bunch of faces
while I was in London. Here are
some of them:
It's been awhile since I've seriously picked up a camera (not that
I was ever that serious about it) and I'm a little rusty. I'm hoping
to get in lots more practice in the coming months, so the quality
should hopefully improve.
3D London Tube
3D London Tube
11/15/2003 03:29 PM
These 3D rendered London Tube maps are pretty mind-blowing.
Link
(
via Blackbelt
Jones)
Grok Description matches for Ben and Mena come to London
GrokA matches for Ben and Mena come to London
Ben and Mena come to London
