This morning we announced the public release of the TypePad Platform and APIs, which we hope will inspire a new generation of community tools such as TypePad Motion, a new open source microblogging application available today. You can  try TypePad Motion out for yourself or  go get the code and API access right now.

Since TypePad launched six years ago, Movable Type and TypePad have been sibling platforms that have developed in parallel. As of today, the opening of the TypePad Platform  means that Movable Type users and developers will be able to more easily take advantage of the new features and infrastructure improvements we're making to Typepad all the time.

We're excited to see the kinds of apps the community will develop using the TypePad APIs,  and we look forward to getting your feedback. Six Apart CEO Chris Alden posted about the significance of the TyepPad Platform  on the Six Apart blog today. Please have a look at his post for for a sense of his vision for Six Apart and for more detail about the Platform, the Developer Program, and TypePad Motion.

Today we're announcing a partnership with Zemanta whereby the Zemanta editorial assistance tool will recommend content to you as you write your blog posts. The tool is built in to version 4.32 of MovableType, so if you are a prolific blogger who produces a lot of content on a regular basis, you'll find this feature very helpful.

Many of you have likely heard of Zemanta, and perhaps some of you already use it as a plug in to your Firefox browser or other online tools. Using Zemanta is sort of like having a content servant at your elbow suggesting ways to make what you're writing more interesting and compelling through photos, videos, related articles, and useful tags.

Need a photo to match a post you're writing? Zemanta to the rescue. Like to be reminded to tag your post so that it's search engine optimized? Zemanta will help you out. Zemanta has indexed more than a million top media sources and quality blogs, including Wikimedia Commons, Flickr and various stock photo providers to make it easier for you to create compelling posts.

You can see what else Zemanta can do for you if you go to this FAQ page on their site.

We hope you'll download 4.32 and give it a try. And then tell us what you think.

If you're going to be in the Boston area at the end of this month, plan to stop by the Harvard Faculty Club in Cambridge to attend the Gravity Summit Social Media Marketing for Business Conference, which will be held on August 31.  Six Apart is a Media Sponsor, so we are offering a discount to the conference to members of our community. There are just a few seats left, so sign up soon.

Hip Hop entertainer and Twitter personality MC Hammer is the keynote speaker. See more details on our main Six Apart blog. 

Well, judging by the success of Uncrate, "The Buyers Guide for Men", Larry Angell and his crew have nailed the answer to this age-old question. With a readership of over 600,000 visitors per month, 72% of whom are male, Uncrate serves up a living catalog every day of extremely cool things that men, well,  want.  The very social website, built entirely in Movable Type, provides visitors with a profile and a place - called Stuff - to save the items they like and want to follow up on. It also provides a place - called Answers - where visitors can exchange tips and advice with each other on such topics as grooming, style, and other important manly subjects.
Have a look at our case study to see how Uncrate has grown and prospered on Movable Type since its start in 2005. You may come closer to understanding yourself what it is that men want.  

Movable Type 4.3 is now available, and it's snappy. This release makes composing, publishing, and searching in Movable Type easier than ever. In fact, we strongly recommend that you update your software as soon as possible to enjoy the benefits of this new release.

Here's why:

• Performance for all publishing is faster than ever.
• Your readers can now find content by author or date range (something Google's site search doesn't do) with the powerful new search feature.
• You can create a new site based on an existing one in just a few clicks with smarter blog cloning.
• Page views can increase by more than 50% with the new flexible pagination for comments and entries (based on the testing of one of our clients.)
• It's faster to insert and re-use photos in your posts, and simple to create slide shows, with the most powerful asset manager ever.
• Documentation is more comprehensive and easy to access than ever before. You can read about our documentation improvement efforts on MovableType.org.

The new software is currently in your Movable Type account and on the website for download.

There are plenty more technical details about this release over on the community blog at movabletype.org. Please have a look and let us know what you think.