I'm a big fan of Movable Type myself, but lots and lots of people use Wordpress and I have to say that it's a nice, powerful tool. Some of what's new in the latest 2.1 release of WP are features that were already in Movable Type, but it's nonetheless a solid update and a must-install for its improved site security, if nothing else.

Don't take my word for it, though! Go check out the official announcement:

WP releases Wordpress 2.1, "Ella" release

Hello, Google Friends, and welcome to the April edition of this newsletter. We hope you enjoy this update on our various services and new products, and find it useful.

POWER TIP

More ways to personalize the Google homepage

Now it's easier than ever to personalize your Google homepage with more content ranging from local weather to custom Google logos, and headlines from sources like CNN and ESPN. If you're so inclined, it's easy to create your own modules using our API.

Directory: google.com/ig/directory
API: google.com/apis/homepage

NEW PRODUCTS

Google Calendar

Here's a new web-based way to keep track of all the events in your life, coordinate schedules with others, and find new things to do via one online calendar. Google Calendar works with other calendar applications, is integrated with Gmail, and you can even set up multiple calendars for work, leisure, and family activities. View your schedule by day, week or month and set up automatic reminders and find anything on your calendar with the built-in search tool.

calendar.google.com

I work with a lot of different clients who are either just dipping their toe into the swirling maelstrom of the blogosphere or who have been blogging but want to take their efforts to the next level. There are a number of ways we interact, including a popular in-process Exploding Your Business with Blogging teleseminar with my pal Brad Fallon, but we also share critiques and feedback with each other too, a process that I have always found one of the best ways to learn more about how to be successful.

Heck, every time we have a round-robin feedback discussion I learn of different ways I can improve my own weblogs too, and I've been tuning them for years now. :-)

After working in the computer industry for decades, I'm used to the most seemingly benign topic exploding into a passionate - and sometimes even vitriolic - debate, from which editor you use to what operating system, programming language to which HTML mark-up standard you work towards.

In the blogging world, surprisingly, the big debate isn't about what blogging tool to use, and it's not about design or layout. It's not really even about whether to include advertising or not, as far as I can tell. The two big hot-buttons are about RSS feeds, whether to have a "full feed" or a "partial feed", and about your blog comment policy.

In this article, I'm going to talk about the latter topic, and I promise I'll address RSS feeds in a different piece (and at length in my Blogging 101 workshop at Blog Business Summit).

Less than two weeks from today, some of the brightest and most successful business bloggers will be meeting in San Francisco to both share what they've learned -- good and bad -- about business blogging, and to explore future directions for weblogs and how blogging can benefit companies large and small.

Speakers at the Blog Business Summit include DL Byron, Molly Holzschlag, Robert Scoble, Darren Barefoot, Rebecca Blood and Anil Dash. Oh, I'll be speaking there too, and debating best practices with Robert Scoble.

If you're just coming up to speed on business blogging then you already know that reading Growing Your Business with Google is a superb way to get the basics, but for many people, a more focused workshop, face to face, is a better strategy. If that describes you, then you'll be quite interested to learn about the dynamite Business Blogging 101 workshop I'll be leading on the 16th of August too.

There's no better way to spend three days learning about weblogs, business blogging, and how to keep track of the blogosphere buzz than to make plans now to attend the Blog Business Summit at the historic Palace Hotel in San Francisco, August 16-19. Register now while there's still space.

And if you'd like to check out my business weblogs, then pop over to The Intuitive Life Business Blog and Ask Dave Taylor.

I hope to see you there!