Apperceptive: Blog

Heading into Spring with MLBlogs

2008-04-03T21:47:12Z

The Major League Baseball season has begun and everyone at Apperceptive HQ has a smile on their face. Sure, a new beginning yields boundless optimism from our baseball fans, but it's the launch of MLBlogs that's making us happy. For the last few seasons, fans have had the chance to create blogs branded with their favorite team's logo and colors, but the system was ready for an upgrade. Apperceptive couldn't pass up the opportunity to help. We moved the bloggers from Typepad to a brand new install of MT4 that is hosting hundreds of active blogs, created four new template sets for each of the 30 teams, built a slew of new plugins to allow instant access to existing MLB.com users (among other features) and paved the way for new features in the coming seasons. Best of all, it's free to anyone with an MLB.com account. Congrats to the MLBlogs team on a fabulous new community.

On TV with AMC

2008-03-19T13:01:15Z

The writers' strike just ended and shows are making their way back into development, but that hasn't kept AMC TV from unveiling a brand new look and home for their blogs. AMC's blogs spotlight their diverse programming. Some of the highlights since launch include a live chat with Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston right after the series finale, I am Legend's alternate ending, screenwriters' picks of which classics are in need of a rewrite, and there is going to be another Robocop sequel. Apperceptive helped bring this together by building a set of custom templates and plugins on top of Movable Type's Community Solution. In addition to their blogs, the site features six forum areas for each of their focused genres and shows, lists of the most popular and recommended entries, and photo galleries (Steve Martin, Breaking Bad) to accompany the blog.

MTOS

2008-03-04T12:38:23Z

Just two weeks ago, Six Apart announced the first stable release of Movable Type Open Source. We would have told you sooner, but we've been busy uncorking champagne and celebrating its arrival. Truth be told, we've been busy working on a whole slew of sites, but the office is definitely excited by this development. Many of us on the Apperceptive team have been Movable Type users or developers for half a decade. By going open source, Six Apart is inviting the Apperceptives of the world to leverage their talents and make MT a better product. The community has already built hundreds of plugins and now we all have the chance to add the best features directly into the product. We had never lost our enthusiasm for Movable Type, but this opens up a whole new world of opportunity. Congratulations to the Six Apart team!

On the Trail with Talking Points Memo

2008-02-13T14:12:06Z

If you follow political blogs, you're well acquainted with Talking Points Memo. Josh Marshall's blog has been a staple of the political scene since the 2000 Presidential Elections. Early this month, we helped roll out a new design across TPM, upgraded the site to Movable Type 4 and added support for profiles and recommendations. The day after the launch, Josh was liveblogging Super Tuesday and opining the broadcast of MSNBC's debate coverage. Meanwhile, the site didn't miss a beat. Since then, Marshall has received the prestigious Polk award, a first for a journalist who's primary readership comes through a blog. But they're not resting on their laurels. Any one of TPM's features would be a noteworthy site to itself. The site was among the first to trace back the trail of the Spitzer investigation, they maintain the most up-to-date poll report on the web, the acclaimed TPM Muckracker acts as the prototype as the future of investigative journalism, and TPM's readers offer more than a hundred news and opinion posts every day in the TPM Café.

On the Mic with Democracy Now!

2007-12-21T16:22:48Z

Democracy Now! is not just a radio show, it's a community media collaboration broadcasting cutting, progressive news and analysis in audio, video, and text to the world. And after two years in development, the redesigned Democracy Now! web site is up. As a long-time fan of the show, it was a pleasure to be able to contribute. Apperceptive designed the front-end for a hand-rolled content management system, blog, and store built with Ruby on Rails. The show is available in a variety of audio, video, and podcast formats, the pages are valid XHTML 1.0 Strict, the content is Creative Commons licensed, and the URLs are just beautiful.

On Your iPhone with Serious Eats Mobile

2007-12-19T16:10:15Z

Since its inception, Serious Eats has been one of our favorite sites (of course, we're a little biased). But Serious Eats Mobile is our new personal favorite. Apperceptive helped Serious Eats customize their Movable Type plugins, community solution, our own Sphinx plugin, and templates for the mobile view, as well as nodding supportively while they did fantastic work. We've used the recipes as a handheld source of inspiration for dinner, planned a holiday meal on the train, and gotten great restaurant reviews on the go. Serious Eats in your pocket - the future is a yummy place to live.

On the Radar with Profile & Tags

2007-12-19T15:54:48Z

If you thought that reading a magazine online was cheating, let Radar change your mind. Hourly updates, hilarious videos, eye-catching thumbnails and plethora of exclamation marks--all the more reason to stay online a little longer. With their newest addition of tags with each entry, you may find yourself wading in your favorite pool of Paris Hilton entries or soaking it all in at once on the scandal page. Determined to leave every single searcher satiated, its search box comprehensively finds entries containing any data containing the word or phrase of your choice. Last, but not least, is that burning feeling to respond to that question mark ending so many sassy titles. Comments and commenter profiles come to the rescue, no doubt contributing to the gossip content and reader staying power. Glossy pages and blogs: could there be a higher authority on news? Apperceptive is now happy to accept comments.

On the Map with Nine Million

2007-12-18T16:09:13Z

ninemillion.org tells the stories of refugee children from Iraq, Chad, and Colombia. Apperceptive redesigned the site for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in time for its September 2007 relaunch at the Clinton Global Initiative summit. The goal of the campaign is raising $220 million by 2010 to allow 9 million refugee and vulnerable children to get an education. Though the stories are some of the hardest you'll find, we choose a bright but sober palette to project a measure of youth, hope, and dignity. The site also features a special appearance by UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie.

On the Catwalk with Fashionista

2007-12-17T15:44:05Z

In November, Apperceptive gave an extreme makeover to Fashionista.com deploying a new look and a new community forum and upgrading the site to Movable Type 4. The design comps, implemented by our friends at Concentric, were built to invite people to browse the archives and to comment. We love a blog with attitude and style, and those hand-made trivia collages really shine.

On the Case with Just Seeds

2007-12-14T16:36:58Z

Over the past few years, Just Seeds had been through a few incarnations, growing from a single artist's website into a full-blown artists' cooperative. The artists envisioned their site as a platform for not only making their work available to the public but also for discussing the political, social and cultural implications of their work. They also knew that they wanted a single, easy solution to maintain both the blog and the online storefront. Apperceptive used Movable Type to perform both functions, integrating MT with Ultracart to handle inventory and secure transactions. The newJustseeds.org is a snap to update and the content is always fresh. We think it was a great opportunity to connect art and commerce in a meaningful way.

Boing Boing Favorites, Profiles and Comments

2007-12-13T14:24:42Z

Following on the heels of the addition of comments to BoingBoing, Apperceptive recently helped the crew over there add user profiles and favorites to their bag of tricks. Use it to find other insightful comments or recommended posts from commenters you like.. or just stalk your favorite fake deity.

On the Money with InvestorPlaceBlogs

2007-12-12T17:38:26Z

InvestorPlaceBlogs is a forum where investors can discuss all things market-related—investment strategies, specific stocks, and market trends. They can also participate in the Strategy Lab Open, a tournament to identify "the next great undiscovered investing guru." Apperceptive integrated Movable Type Enterprise with data from Marketocracy, which lets users sign up to invest fictitous money in real stocks and tracks each portfolio's performance—think of it as fantasy-league Wall Street. Thanks to Movable Type and the Community Pack, participants can not only blog about their "buys and sells" but comment on and rate one another's posts. It's a fun way to test out some investing ideas without betting the farm—and maybe pick up some tips you can apply to your real portfolio!

On the Red Carpet with Eyecandy and Vox

2007-12-11T15:49:16Z

This year, VH1 built Vh1Eyecandy.com to deliver their massive archive of celebrity photos and video to the world. They asked Apperceptive to help Vh1Eyecandy's users share that content—and what they did with it—with the rest of the web. We wrote a module for their custom Symfony application that provided an Open Media Profile for Open Search-compliant API. With this addition, Vh1Eyecandy serves as a conduit to users of the Vox blogging service. Users can search and post any of the thousands of available files to their personal blogs without leaving the Vox interface. Even though Apperceptive couldn't be on the red carpet with Joan and Melissa at the Emmys, we helped VH1 make sure Vox's users got to experience the thrill.

On the Rack with the Chelsea Wine Vault

2007-12-10T15:40:59Z

Last month, Apperceptive launched a redesign of the Chelsea Wine Vault. The new design makes the site easier to use — and to discover great wines. We customized the existing osCommerce storefront software and launched in time to help celebrate the store's 10th anniversary. With some basic search engine optimization, the project has already paid for itself — sales have doubled, and rare, premium items are flying off the shelf. May we suggest a staff pick?

On Stage with Otorevo

2007-12-10T15:13:10Z

For the rest of December, we'll be blogging a few projects we've launched over the last few months. To kick things off, here's a recent favorite: "It's like American Idol. Online. In Japanese." That was the brief for Otorevo.jp, a web site lets users upload audio and videos of themselves performing musical numbers. Other users vote on their favorites and at the end of the contest, the performer with the most votes wins a record contract with Columbia Records Japan. Apperceptive built the site on Movable Type 4 with the Community Pack and a custom plugin to integrate with Blip.TV API. Users can also select "friends" to follow — and see who is following them. It's a tight, fun, beautiful community-powered site — and very entertaining. Following an artist or your favorite works is super easy and there's new content at every turn. If it hadn't been for the list of most popular songs, I wouldn't have found Iyse or Airmail. You can also follow the project's growth on executive Ejovi Nuwere's blog:

The other week I met with one of the top 10 artist. During the meeting the artist cried tears of joy for the opportunity that has been given to them. For me this project has always had a emotional significance. I love to fight against the bigger foe. For the other people attending the meeting I think they realized for the first time the importance of what we are trying to do.

Pretty powerful stuff.