Six Apart, the makers of Movable Type will be launching a new hosted service called TypePad that will go head-to-head with Userland and Google’s popular Radio and Blogger hosting options.
MT has long been ascendant among the technogeek crowd, but prohibitively difficult to install and host for non-websavvy newbies. It appears that this new application/service will enable many of the most popular current blogging wishlist items in a user-friendly format that will not require knowledge of HTML, let alone perl, CGI, hosting or web server management.
From Ben Hammersley’s article in the Guardian:
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.
Joi Ito’s Neotony venture capital firm is backing this rollout and it appears that Anil Dash is on board as a marketing lead.