I just took a look the features and FAQ for the new Movable Type Community Solution.

The community solution boasts the following:

• Member registration with extended user profiles
• Forums
• Community blogs
• Custom fields
• Recommendation engine
• Sort-by-popularity

The feature set overlaps heavily with Clearspace X from Jive Software.  I’ve seen Clearspace up close, and I think it is a great product, but a community site based on the code of Movable Type 4—with its extensive plugin architecture and significant user base—could be a significant competitor.  Equally compelling for smaller organizations would the combination of WordPress and BBPress as both are completely opensource—free as in beer, but arguably less stable due to the more rapid release cycle. The growth of solutions in this space has been rapid. There seems to be plenty of room in the blog/community solution space for more players. It should be an interesting market to watch grow over the next couple of years.  

• Fast. Signup is quick and easy and the tool itself it lightning quick.
• Free. They fund themselves by presenting you with offers from banks and credit card companies who can beat our your current interest rate. You don’t have to accept any of these offers to take advantage of the free account.
• Easy to use. Mint downloads all of your transactions through your banks online services. (The list of banks is impressive. All three banks I use for checking, savings or credit are in their database.) Once transactions are downloaded, their algorithm goes to town figuring out how you spent your money and giving you shiny reports and pie charts. Mmm, pie charts.
• Claims to be secure. Sorry, this is something I am hesitant on. They appear legit in every way. The banks trust them. They are TRUSTe certified and they use a third party service called Yodlee to verify your account credentials so they don’t have to store them on their servers.

So the only thing that really scares me about this service is how much they will know about you in such a short period of time. They will know where you live and exactly where you spend your money. This is even scarier than RFID in some ways… but it is also the one thing I can’t stand sinking time into on a weekly basis.

I have been using either Quicken or Moneydance for about 12 years now. I rely on that software to tell me how well or how poorly I’m doing financially at any given moment. However, it is a lot of work and a constant headache. Especially since I have to manually download a QIF from one of my financial institutions and “import” it to get transactions. Such a PITA.

If I get up the nerve to go deeper into this, I will post screenshots. (No, I will not include my transaction info.)

This is quite possibly the most inventive call for applicants I have ever seen. Proof that with a burgeoning company and a copy of iMovie you can make yourself look like fools, but still come off in a positive light.

Nice job FreshBooks.

Disclaimer: I use and love this product.

The skinny:

• 1 mountain bike for Dad (Gary Fisher Marlin 1999)
• 1 trail-a-bike for the little kid (Adams Trail-a-Bike)
• 1 mountain bike for the big kid (Raleigh Rowdy)
• ~30 minutes of ride time
• ~9 mph average speed
• 4.8 miles with kids
• 5 miles to work without kids

(Pictures to follow, I forgot to take one in the rush to get out the door.)
Keeton did awesome on the bike lanes of North Portland. The Columbia Blvd. trail leaves a little to be desired at a couple of spots, but it was safe and traveled well. Mishya is now officially over her fears of biking. (I think the trailer was just a little too much loss of control as of late–the trail-a-bike is a much better fit for a 6-year old.)

My only complaints are that the coupling on the trail-a-bike was having a squeak-a-thon–it has been checked, it is not part of the recall from a year ago–and that the mountain bike is way heavy compared to my usual aluminum road steed. If I do this regularly, which is the plan, I think I’m going to need to switch to some lighter tires. I love the glass-crunching-ride-with-abandon fell of the Specialized Armadillo Crossroads I currently have on the Marlin, but man the tires feel heavy. I have to find something that will give me the top end speed of the slicks I used to ride with the puncture protection. I can then save the crossroads for trail riding–which I don’t get to do that often.

Two final issues with riding bikes to school that is 4+ miles from home. I can’t do pick up, so Diana had to swing by and grab the bikes with a car in the afternoon and Keeton and I crossed-wires regarding his helmet. I hope the helmet is sitting at school, but if not we are going to need to get him a new one before we can ride again. Darn.

Only one thing stands out as a challenge to our presumptions, the schools are no longer located in the “inner” city.

These schools lie on the outer edge of the city–an endless flat expanse of one story buildings, strip malls, and mid-to-late century ranch homes. This is the new “outer” city school. Outside the boundaries of urban renewal and well inside the boundaries of urban growth are neighborhoods that are forgotten when bond measures are needed for revitalizing school buildings and restoring community centers.

The inner city schools in Portland, Oregon have begun the arduous process of revitalization through specialization. Nearly every school is a magnet school, or a charter school, or a focus area school. Interested in the Arts? Go to Da Vinci or Buckman. Interested in technology? You can sign up at Benson or George. Want an international education? Perhaps you will find Franklin’s international baccalaureate of interest or Grant’s Japanese program. Care about the environment? Sunnyside’s environmental program will nurture that aspect of your child.

As a parent in Portland, you hear about all of these programs. Many of them cause you angst and no small amount of jealousy at the unequal treatment some children are able to receive based on the luck of the lottery or the convenient–if somewhat more costly–location of their home.

What you don’t hear about as a Portland parent is the outer city schools and their programs. David Douglas is in Portland, but not the Portland Public System. So is Centennial. Both of these schools lie in the far away land called “East Portland” or “the East side.” The part of Multnomah county that doesn’t seem to want to vote with the rest of the urbanites come election time. The red menace in a decidedly blue landscape.

Why would they vote for more money in schools? Do they see this money flowing into their neighborhoods? Is there revitalization to be had in an area so far from the nearest freeway and steady middle class jobs?