Six Apart will be at the Blog Business Summit seminar series held in Los Angeles on March 16. The conference, titled “Essentials of Business Blogging,” will cover topics ranging from blog basics to why blogs are powerful tools for businesses to advanced features like podcasts and tagging. There will also be valuable information for current business bloggers, including tips and tricks, how to improve traffic, how to create an effective workflow, and what to expect in the coming year. If you are in the Los Angeles area, we highly recommend this conference.

To receive a discount on registration, sign up here and use the promotional code "MOVT06" (that's a "zero-six" at the end).

Six Apart has always encouraged universities to use Movable Type and TypePad, not just because we think our products are at the top of their class, but also because we love to see how educators and students manage to stretch our platforms in new and creative ways.

The University of British Columbia has two great projects using Movable Type: LEAP and Weblogs@UBC.

Learning Enhancement Academic Partnerships (LEAP) makes it easy for students overcome the often overwhelming challenge of finding online resources. Study groups, student blogs, journals about campus life, peer tutoring and much more can all be found on one slick Movable Type-powered site.

In an interview on the UBC site, Movable Type's advantages are explained:

Behind the screen, LEAP is published using Movable Type, weblog software that allows resource-providers to easily upload new content, manage student feedback, and expand the site in the future. Unlike traditional content management systems, Movable Type empowers providers to publish content to the web quickly without going through gatekeepers or web administrators.

We couldn't have said it better ourselves. Putting the power to publish back in the hands of students has made this website grow and thrive. Wait till you see what they do next...

With the recent release of the new version of Google's toolbar for Internet Explorer on Windows, it's now possible to make your own custom buttons for the popular browser extension. Once installed, the button gives you easy access to your most recent entries and provides you with a simple way to search your site for a word or phrase you highlight on any web page.

In addition to just being a cool feature for your own personal use, by providing it to your visitors, it's also a great vehicle for promoting and increasing traffic to your Movable Type-powered blog.

Creating a Google Toolbar button for your site

So how do you do it? Easy. You can just make use of the template that Niall Kennedy created, which uses the power of Movable Type's publishing engine to automatically generate the code for the button.