Whether you’re searching for someone to hire, or for someone to hire you, it’s quite likely you’re gathering information from LinkedIn, as well as from personal and professional blogs. Since you spend so much time and energy on your own blog, why not put it right on your profile? It’s the perfect opportunity to show that you’re more than just a resume and a list of jobs; you’re a person with passions, interests, family and friends, traits many employers and potential employees will find admirable… and now it’s easy to do!

The team that brought you Blog It created an application to bring your blog and your LinkedIn profile together: Blog Link powered by TypePad.

Blog Link is a free, easy-to-use application that allows you to connect your blog to your LinkedIn profile. The application displays a feed of your latest blog posts right into your profile, so you can share your thoughts and insights with your professional network on LinkedIn.

One of the best aspects of LinkedIn is the network you can build, and Blog Link has you covered there as well.  The "Your Network" tab in the application shows the most recent blog posts of people in your network, automatically finding their blogs as listed in their “Websites” list on their profile.  And as more of your contacts add the BlogLink application, your own latest posts show up in more places.  It's another great way to broaden and enhance your network on LinkedIn.

Blog Link is powered by TypePad, and it supports most blog platforms, including TypePad, Movable Type, Vox, Wordpress.com, Wordpress.org, Blogger, LiveJournal, and many more.

For a demo and more details on Blog Link, watch the video with David Recordon, Six Apart's Open Platforms Tech Lead, who's known for spearheading Six Apart's efforts around OpenID, OpenSocial and other open technologies.

Visit the Blog Link page on TypePad.com for more info.

A New Model for Global News

March 8, 2007 was an auspicious day for two reasons: it marked the annual celebration of International Women’s Day and the launch of The WIP - The Women’s International Perspective,  an ambitious news site that publishes unique and timely views from women around the globe.

The WIP was founded by Katharine Daniels, a passionate educator and world traveler with an ear for a good story. With a Masters in Applied Linguistics and a history of working on social causes, Katharine began to notice a void in mainstream media. “Through my travels over the years, I started to realize that the stories people shared with me weren’t the ones I read about in the news. These stories were personal and experiential; I could connect with them, and they meant so much more to me than an official news item from a large publication.”

Even more urgent than the lack of personal stories was the dearth of stories written by women. “Our natural instinct as women is to find solutions that directly benefit the communities where we live,” says Katharine. She began to form a vision for a site written exclusively by women writers, filled with powerful, compelling stories about real lives and tangible issues.

Katharine was a TypePad blogger, and was familiar with Six Apart’s other products, including Movable Type. She added Movable Type to her list of possible software options, but wasn’t initially sure that it was the right platform for her project.

“One of my biggest concerns in choosing software was that I didn’t want my site to look like a blog,” says Katharine. “I wanted it to look like a news website.” She created a development brief of everything she wanted to accomplish with the site, and began to search for developers. “The first few people I talked to weren’t a fit,” she recalls. “So I decided to contact Six Apart directly.”

She met with David Jacobs of Apperceptive, now part of Six Apart Services, and explained her vision. “David 'got it' in one shot,” she enthuses. “It was brilliant - they took my brief and created the site exactly as I imagined it to be. It was a marriage made in heaven.”

The WIP was built entirely in Movable Type in about six weeks. Six Apart Services provided the complete site design, configured and customized the Movable Type installation, and made it easy for site members to create their own profiles. WIP site members can even subscribe to an email newsletter that's fully integrated with the site's publishing system. The finished site launched just in time for the International Women’s Day celebration on March 8.  

Brave Voices, Real Issues

Today, The WIP is read around the world, and covers a broad range of issues, from poverty to global warming to the political landscape, using personal stories from over 100 writers in 35 countries. “We’re giving women the opportunity to write about what matters to them,” says Katharine. “In the process, we’re helping to create change.”

Katharine makes it clear that though the articles are written by women, the issues matter to everyone: “When we talk about a woman’s perspective, we aren’t simply talking about ‘women’s issues’ - but rather a whole range of complex topics from diverse women around the world.”

The WIP is headquartered in Monterey, and works closely with the Monterey Institute of International Studies, which assists with fact checking. News Editor Aralena Malone-LeRoy is located in Paris, while Features and Photo Editor Sarah McGowan works out of Los Angeles.

The stories on The WIP are as diverse as they are hard-hitting: from Julie Chowdhury of Sweden on the global water crisis to Cheery Zahau of Burma on the rape of ethnic women by Burmese soldiers, the site courageously addresses a range of difficult, complex and painful topics.

The WIP is now hosting offline events, such as a public talk at Columbia University featuring an accomplished panel of women well-versed on issues such as human rights, the economy and education.

In the future, The WIP will continue to expand both online and offline with a clear mission: “Our goal in gathering these stories is to listen and learn so that we can find solutions together,” says Katharine.
 

We're having a party here at Movable Type headquarters in San Francisco, and friends of Movable Type and Six Apart are cordially invited to come help us celebrate seven years of excellence in blogging. The party is next Thursday, October 30, 2008, and will be a casual gathering that includes Six Apart employees as well as friends of TypePad (five year anniversary) and Vox (two year anniversary). We'll provide the drinks, snacks, and music, and  you provide your party mood, appetite and stories.

If you'd like to join the festivities, please RSVP by emailing your name and blog URL to anniversaryRSVP AT sixapart.com by October 24th.  Space is limited, so please respond quickly and we'll send you the details.

We hope you'll join us.

October is a big month of birthdays here at Six Apart:  Movable Type celebrates seven years, while TypePad turns five and Vox turns two.  Even future blogger Penelope Trott, daughter of founders Ben and Mena Trott, turned one year old this month!  

In honor of this auspicious occasion, we've gathered several stories that illustrate the creative, beautiful, and exciting ways our customers have used Movable Type over the years. Do you have a story about how Movable Type has changed your life or your business? Please join us in celebrating our seventh birthday by telling us about it here . We may publish it on this page (which will be updated throughout the month), in a case study, or in a Featured Movable Type article..

For years, Alder Yarrow was one of those guys whom everyone wishes they had in their back pocket: he kept obsessive notes about the restaurants he went to and the wines he drank, and they weren’t just random scribbles - they were the real deal. “I was the go-to guy about food and wine for my friends and family,” he recalls. “I found myself answering the same questions over and over, and knew there must be a better way of delivering that information.”

In 2004, Alder typed “wine blog” into a Google search bar and got zero results. Then he typed in “Vinography” - and got “Address Not Found.” As a busy Internet consultant, Alder was aware of blogging, but hadn’t yet explored it. “Blogs were becoming reasonably established by that time,” he remembers. “It not only seemed like a good way to get my notes out, but it was also a smart business strategy to learn more about blogs.”

Alder began researching blog tools, and came across Movable Type. “I wanted complete control over the design,” he says. “Movable Type seemed like the most powerful piece of software out there.”

And thus Vinography was born. Alder began posting about wines he liked and restaurants he had visited in a friendly, straightforward style that resonated with readers. Several times a week, he posted thoughtful, extensive notes about wines he liked; he attended events and tastings, and posted comprehensive lists of wines he had tasted, scored with his own system, often complete with price points. His insightful, detailed posts revealed a consistent theme: he was crazy about wine.
 
Four years later, Vinography has become one of the most respected wine blogs in the world. From breaking stories like the tattletale scandal at Wine.com  to calling foul on wine snobs, Vinography is on the short list of anyone interested in wine, from top wine writers and critics to everyday oenophiles. 

His consistent, even-handed writing has made Alder Yarrow a respected wine expert, in demand at wine-related events around the world. Earlier this year, he led two packed wine seminars at the Aspen Food and Wine Classic, one of the toniest food and wine events in the U.S. Later this year, he will present for the third time at the Professional Symposium of Wine Writers; in 2009, he’ll be a judge at the Chilean Wine Awards.

Despite the accolades, it still feels somewhat unreal to Alder: “I’ve gone from being some guy with a notebook who likes wine and knows a little bit about it to someone who is globally recognized as a wine journalist and critic.” He pauses. “And that’s utterly gobsmackingly unbelievable.”

Vinography is now running on Movable Type Pro, and Alder notes that many of the plugins he used in the previous version are now built into the core platform. “I experienced significant performance enhancements when I upgraded to Movable Type Pro,” he says.

In September, Alder took a trip to South Africa, where he was invited on behalf of an industry group called Wines of South Africa to investigate the growing wine community there. Which raises the issue: now that Alder has become so influential in the wine community, how does he deal with the bevy of wineries who want to curry his favor?

“I maintain a strict ethics policy,” he reports. “I don’t go to events sponsored by one specific winemaker. I don’t go to lunch with people representing an individual winery or wine company. I only attend events where a large number of wineries are represented. I get hundreds of bottles of wine every month, and I taste every single one of them, but I only write about the ones that really excite me. Period.” Vinography generates more than enough revenue to pay for itself, and Alder plans to continue running his consulting business and keep Vinography as a rewarding hobby.

One question remains: with a hugely popular blog, a thriving internet consultancy, a wife and brand new baby daughter, how does Alder Yarrow do it all? “I don’t watch TV,” he laughs. “Seriously, look at the statistics - not watching TV gives me several hours more a day than most people. I’m very efficient with my time, and my wife is very understanding.”

On behalf of all of us who count on Vinography to help us navigate the world of wine, we offer our sincere gratitude to Alder’s wonderful wife - and hope he never develops a TV habit.