As Drew pointed out, Canvas 1.1.2 is now released for WordPress 2.0.  I think this will be great for some “on-the-side” designer types, wanting to do a quick blog, change things around on the fly, etc.  Personally, to get a theme that you have written to work with Canvas is a pain in the ass.  I’ll use it to help out clients, etc., but don’t see that I’ll use it for this site.  In the end, it’s great and wonderful software written from scratch.

The next update to WordPress (not due out for a little while), 2.1, will finally include a spellcheck button.  It has been incorporated already into WordPress.com, so if you have an account there, check it out.  As of this writing, 2.1 is only 28% done but once things really gear up, it should move along rather quickly…maybe.

The online linux and open-source newspaper has a great article on “must-have” WordPress plug-ins.  I agree with most of them but I still don’t have any desire to use Ad’s on my site.  I tried it once with the Box and it only seemed to slow it down.  Anyway, check it out here.

I found a great little hosted “to-do list” service today. It’s called Ta-Da List and is totally free, by 37Signals. Very clean and simple, it creates lists that are private or you can share them with someone.

There is an upgrade hosted service that will allow you to upload files/photos and collaborate with other people. Check it out.

edit: I forgot to mention, that each list has it’s own RSS feed. So you can keep track of things even without logging into your list!

Okay, my final rant regarding my MT experience. I’m not joking when I say that Movable Type has really pissed me off. I feel like I was suckered into viewing a movie only to leave begging allah for my 2 hours back (aaaaalalalalalalalalalal). Anyways, over at NevOn, there is a great article about an MT user who is not happy with the new MT 3.2 system. The humerous idea of all is (if you read the comments), he actually moves his users over to WordPress (or so it seems) and there is one comment where a guy is says:

Rob, I think MT version 3.2 really is outstanding. Six Apart have done a tremendous job with this. The new features and functionality make upgrading to this version very worthwhile. Indeed, that’s one of the big appeals for anyone considering MT. Plus the MT admin interface itself is excellent, very easy to manage your blog.

If it all worked, that is. I really am very disappointed with my headache experiences over the past 48 hours.

48 hours?! I messed around with it for two hours and was OVER it. Check out the article here.

Tonight, I decided to journey into MT a little more and experiment with the site CSS and layout. I decided to try loading some plugins from the Six Apart”power tools” download area, starting with Style Catcher. This particular plugin supposedly allows for easy theme download / integration.

Unfortunatley, I’ll never know how awesome it was supposed to be. After fighting MT’s “500 internal server” errors for over an hour, I said a couple of four letter words and now I’m posting on WP. I don’t get it. I followed the directions from the plugin (directly from the Six Apart team), even checked the support knowledge base and all I found was “check your directory permissions.” Wonderful. Long story short, I never got it to work and don’t plan to give MT any more of my time.

In my humble opinion, my MT experiement just cements WordPress’ place in the blog-software arena as the easiest and best supported there is. I can’t honestly say “most powerful” as MT does offer multiple blogs from one admin interface but I look for WP to change that down the road at some point.

The folks over at Six Apart have released an updated version of their bloggingMovableType 3.2 (MT). Before really putting all my effort into WordPress (WP), I used MT and used it quite well. It’s a very powerful utility but I must say “HOLY CRAP” it took forever to setup.

I downloaded my paid-for verison of 3.2 (personal, unlimited edition) around 9:45pm and by 11:30, I had a working installation of MT. How long for a standard WordPress installation? 2-3 minutes…if you include the MySQL database creation. Unreal. The instructions alone are daunting for the new user, which is why someting like Typepad or WordPress.com is a good thing (although lumping Typepad and WP.com into the same pot is like oil and water).

The interface for MT has changed slightly and there are many new features. I agree with Matt’s post in regards to MT making a lot of claims about their product (best support, most used blogging software). I don’t see it. MT is a great and complex system but WP is so much more, just check the download counter.

For now, I have just installed the MT system and will post later on about templates, creation of blogs, authors, etc. The link to my experimental MT blog is here.