Movable Type. I like it.
After my increasing impatience with Radio, (see previous entry), I decided to download and try Moveable Type. It took a quite a while to install, and I found that I had to read the directions (which were in tiny type) very carefully, but everything went without a hitch.
I spent an hour after I got Movable Type working changing the template with TopStyle to increase all the font sizes and to make them relative instead of absolute, to fix the tiny type problem, and changing the colors to something that I liked, but I was pleased with the result.
I started a family log I have been meaning to put together for sometime, and quite liked the results. Easy to include pictures, very straightforward interface, good commenting systems, sensible defaults, nice basic design. I will keep my family album/blog there. I do miss the email to blog feature, I hope that they get in soon. I would definitely recommend Moveable Type to people who are at least mildly geeky.
Depending on my experience with Radio in the next 2 weeks, before my trial runs out, I may just dump Radio and move everything to Moveable Type. It is clear that Radio is a lot more feature laden, and will continue to be so -- I just don't know if I want to stay on the bleeding edge.
Annoyed with Radio and Userland. They need real support
I got very annoyed with Radio this week. I had tons of refusals to upstream files, because connections timed out. Looking at the discussion list, I gather that probably means that there were problems on the userland server end. I posted a question on the discussion list, and 2 days later still no response.
I also saw something about the MyPictures tool and thought - that looks really cool and could help me a lot with some picture albums I've been putting together. So I tried it. It didn't work. I posted a request for help, and got back a reply asking for some details. Fair enough. I posted an excruciatingly detailed description of what I had tried, and got an answer back saying "Refresh your window". So I went through all the steps again, and was careful to refresh my browser. Still didn't work. Posted another detailed description of the problem and what I had tried. 48 hours later, no answer. I guess I just don't get to use the MyPictures feature.
A lot of thought has clearly gone into making the Radio application easy to download, install, and use. But if Userland is serious about selling a consumer product, they are going to have to get serious about support.
Update 6/10/2002: Considerably less annoyed. Got some help, and got MyPictures running. Thanks, Lawrence Lee. The secret seems to be, if the discussion boards don't work, email customerservice@userland.com.