We've got a challenge for the entire Movable Type community, and for the blogging community as a whole. Starting this Monday, October 1, Movable Type bloggers will have the chance to participate in the Blogger Challenge -- it's a campaign to help support education, powered by our friends at DonorsChoose.org.

Donors Choose is a brilliant non-profit organization lets you support schools and education directly and personally, by choosing projects that excite you, and then making it easy to donate to them. Every project listed on the site is a personal request from a public school teacher. And since so many of you have used MT to prove how you can affect your communities in the past, it's only natural that the Blogger Challenge should be another great chance to show everyone the incredibly positive impact that bloggers can have.

Best of all, in true blogging fashion, you have control over what ideas you share with your community -- pick projects that speak to you. If you're interested in the fundamentals, sponsor science and math projects. Have a passion for music? Help keep music in schools by funding a request for instruments. Like to stick to the basics? There's plenty of demand for classroom staples like dictionaries. And of course, for all the technology fans in the blogging world, there are plenty of chances to sponsor technology programs in the classroom.

We're so excited about this that we're distributing philanthropic gift certificates you can use to help fund a classroom project of your choice. You can request a gift certificate worth $30 at donorschoose@sixapart.com. Request your code now -- they're available until noon on Monday. (It might take a day or two for you to get your code.)

Using the gift certificate will help you understand how the program works. Once you've had the chance to pick a classroom project yourself, we know you'll be inspired to participate in the Donors Choose Blogger Challenge. And stay tuned: At Six Apart, we're sponsoring an award for the bloggers who help the greatest number of students during the Blogger Challenge. We'll have more details when the Challenge begins on Monday.

Movable Type 4.01 is a strongly recommended free update for all Movable Type 4 users, with significant performance improvements. One of our goals with the MT4 launch has been to make it as clear as possible when updates area available, what considerations you should take into account when updating your system, and to simplify the process of staying current. To make that easier, here's the Update Advisor, a simple scorecard to let you evaluate this new release.

Movable Type Update Advisor: Version 4.01

• Release Type: Bug Fix Release, with one XSS security vulnerability resolved which could affect some users. This vulnerability has not yet been exploited in the wild.
• Mandatory? Strongly Recommended for all MT4.0 users, particularly those affected by the addressed issues, but not mandatory.
• Performance Implications: Expect performance increase. Many critical performance improvements over MT 4.0. Users should expect to see a performance increase in both the application and in publishing.
• Plugins Affected: None that we are aware of -- all MT4.0 plugins should work in MT 4.01. However, this is a release that addresses some issues with the Movable Type plugin API, so some plugins may be updated for this release.
• Templates Affected: No changes in your templates are required. The default search results template was modified slightly to be compliant with W3C standards.
• System Requirements: This release has no new or additional system requirements.
  
• Licensing considerations: None. MT 4.01 is a free update for users of any version of MT 4.0
• Upgrade Fatigue: No planned updates are scheduled until the next feature release of MT4. This will only change if significant security issues are found which require a 4.0x release.

Downloads are available in your account for current customers or through the download page.

As stated above, this is a free release for all users of MT4, and most testers have reported noticeable speed improvements on the new version. MT 4.01 underwent an extensive beta test, including review by many plugin developers responsible for some of the most popular MT4 plugins. (Yes, even a .01 release underwent weeks of beta testing.)

MT4 represents a remarkable reinvention of the Movable Type platform, and some more cautious members of the community have (understandably!) been waiting to make sure that we're addressed all of the kinks or little bugs that inevitably arise during such sweeping changes. So, with the release of MT 4.01 and the Movable Type Enterprise Solution, it's safer than ever to get started -- you can be confident that now's time to make to move to MT4, whether as an upgrade, initial deployment, platform test, or conversion.

Our sincere thanks go out to all the members of the Movable Type community. It's thanks to all of you that we've been able to make such significant improvements to the core platform, as well as all of the related resources such as the vast array of new plugins and extensive new documentation. You can find out all the details on the Movable Type community site, and then get started with MT 4.01.

There's been a lot of discussion about "Enterprise 2.0", with debates over the idea of bringing Web 2.0 technologies to enterprise-scale businesses. Enough talk. It's time to get down to business. Today, we're making the Movable Type Enterprise Solution available to get your company communicating more effectively. Because your employees deserve to have a communications tool that's as powerful as the blogging and social media sites they use at home.

Movable Type 4.0 has seen an incredible reception in just its first few weeks -- bloggers have told us they love the new user interface, the powerful asset management, and the smart new templating features. And Movable Type Enterprise Solution is a new layer of capabilities that layer on top of MT4 to give you bulletproof blogs that are easy to manage. Building on the all-new core platform, we've incorporated the capabilities that made Movable Type Enterprise the best enterprise blogging and social media platform on the planet:

• Directory Services Integration, with support for Active Directory,OpenLDAP, iPlanet, and most other common LDAP servers.
• Enterprise Database Support, offering robust integration with Oracle 10g and Microsoft SQL Server, on top of MT's core support for MySQL and PostgreSQL.
• Customizable User Administration, which lets you manage users in the system with powerful predefined roles and groups that are infinitely customizable.
• Automatic Blog Provisioning, to give each of your users a blog with your custom templates and settings, the first time they log into the system.
• Powerful Reporting and Management, offering administrative tools that let you manage entries, comments, and settings for thousands of blogs all on one screen, with customized status reports that you can export as XML feeds or in Excel format.
• Unrivaled Platform Support, which works with the web servers and middleware you have now, and offers centralized web-based deployment with no client software installation required. And professionally-translated multi-language support is built right in.
  
• Serious Enterprise Support, direct from the company that invented professional-grade blogging. A dedicated account representative. Priority help ticket support. An exclusive guide to the fundamentals of business blogging. And an unmatched community of professional peers to help you succeed.

But just as importantly, all these enterprise-scale features are built into a tool that people actually want to use. Take a look at the Enterprise CMS or Knowledge Management systems that have failed you in the past -- they were all far too difficult to use. But with Movable Type, you can give your coworkers a tool that's so satisfying they'll want to use it, and so reliable, scalable, and manageable, you don't need to worry about making it fit in with your existing technologies. That means you're free to use the best features of Web 2.0 to help your company communicate:

• Support cutting-edge identity standards like OpenID, backed by the company that invented it.
  
• All the Web 2.0 power you'd expect: tagging, built-in feeds, robust industry-standard APIs for content input and output, and intelligent archiving including support for widgets.
  
• Full-blown content management that's as easy as blogging, including standalone pages and rich media content.
  
• Automatically store and organize files in the integrated asset manager, including audio, videos, images, and all common document formats, including PDF and Microsoft Word.
• Create and manage content on mobile devices, including the iPhone and other mobile clients.

You don't have to take our word for it. We've got the case studies to prove it. And a list of world-class Enterprise-scale customers to back it up. The truth is, there's been a lot of speculation about how Enterprises are going to start using Web 2.0 technologies. Now there's a clear answer, from a vendor that's been trusted for more than half a decade in social media, with a proven track record of supporting successful companies, and deep integration with the platforms that power your business today.

We're Six Apart, and we pioneered Enterprise blogging because we know that Movable Type will help you build your business. The Movable Type Enterprise Solution is a safe, manageable platform that gives you all the potential of the social web with rock-solid enterprise credentials. Now, get started: Check out our Six Apart Guide to Business Blogging. Take a look at who's using Movable Type. And then drop us a line -- we'll help you find the right solution for your enterprise, or give you a hand in making the case to your boss.

As we continue through our list of what's new in Movable Type 4.0, one of the innovations that's had the community most excited is the built-in support for OpenID authentication for commenters. We've been talking about the momentum around OpenID for months -- over 100 million identities are OpenID-compatible today. And now, with MT4, any of those users can sign in to comment on your blog without having to create a new login or password: Movable Type 4 includes OpenID authentication for your commenters, built right in.

On top of general OpenID support, MT4 lets you add in service-specific plugins to provide even smoother integration between third-party OpenID-enabled services and your MT-powered site. Of course Movable Type 4 also provides its own built-in authentication service, if you choose. But some of the coolest options are the ones from other sites -- out of the box, MT4 has authentication integration for:

• Movable Type's built-in registration
  
• Generic OpenID
• LiveJournal
• TypeKey (includes all TypePad users)

But the energy that the MT4 community has shown since the platform's launch is reflected in OpenID support, as well. Community member Minh Nguyễn has created an OpenID connector for AIM and AOL logins. That's almost 90 million potential users who don't have to create a password to sign in on your blog's comments! And our own Byrne Reese, product manager for Movable Type, has stepped to the plate with a WordPress OpenID Login plugin for MT4, which supports anyone using the wordpress.com service. Both of these are made possible through MT4's authentication plugin framework, which is accompanied by some spiffy new developer documentation.

We're always happy to see the industry embrace open standards, and as OpenID was first incubated at Six Apart, we're especially proud to have the first professional blogging system that's incorporated OpenID natively into the platform. We'll be watching carefully to see how you use OpenID on your sites, and expanding our support even further in the future.

Okay, this one's huge: With MT4, everyone who knows how to make a Movable Type template also knows how to customize any Movable Type application screen.

We've talked a bit about the powerful new ways that information is presented in Movable Type 4, encouraging you to understand what's really going on with your blog, but also helping you connect with the contributors that make your site's community thrive. But one thing we've learned from working with the MT community for almost 6 years is that we've got to be humble -- the things we can think of putting into our applications are nothing in comparison to the creativity you've all shown over the years.

Usually, a lot of the praise goes to plugin developers, with good reason. But what about those of us who know our way around some HTML and CSS, or maybe a little bit of Javascript, who have good ideas about changes or fixes to make to the user interface of Movable Type itself? If presenting blog information is so critical, it's just as important to make sure you can custom-tailor your display to suit your needs.

For years, we've supported customization of application screens in Movable Type, but it could be a little tricky -- you had to learn a new templating system to do it. But now it's easier than ever: MT4 uses the same template language to customize the user interface as it uses for your published pages.

Anyone who can create a template in Movable Type can now go in and customize the Dashboard or any other page in the application using the skills you've already got. And if you're new to MT, you can bone up on the Template Tag Reference documentation for a list of all the powerful tags available to help you make MT4 fit your needs perfectly.