Russell Beattie Notebook

John Kerry and Ben and Mena

Posted on Wednesday, March 10th, 2004 10:22 PM

I just stopped over at JohnKerry.com and coughed up some cash ($100) for the campaign. I think it's very important for Democrats to show their financial support for the candidate in order to counter-act the support of the wealthy and connected for the other ticket. It's just as quick and easy as any online store. In fact, Amazon offers a one-click donate option for the John Kerry campaign just to make it that much easier. Go do it now.

While I was on the site ponying up I clicked over to the Kerry Blog - a concept popularized by Howard Dean - and was again bemused to find that Moveable Type was the engine behind the campaign's grass-roots efforts. Yes, I'm sure that the Kerry campaign uses Windows or Word or run their server on Linux or Apache or whatever. I'm sure they use lots of different apps created by lots of different people. But I have to say how incredibly, insanely, wonderfully cool it is that they are using Ben and Mena's homegrown blogging tool as their software of choice online.

Think about that. A couple years ago, Moveable Type was just one of a few weblogging tools you could grab, GreyMatter was another one I remember and I thought of creating my own but never got around to it. Now not only is MT the defacto standard for self-hosted weblogs, but it's changing history as we know it. In fact, I'd say that since the Presidential election affects the entire world, and the election has been incredibly altered by blogging and the Internet so far (the story of Dean's rise and fall and Kerry's assention can't be told without blogging - it's an essential ingredient), MT may be one of the most important pieces of software in modern history. It's an incredible accomplishment.

Anyways, I just was struck by this - maybe a bit later than a lot of people. But I hope that someday I can create a piece of software that's equally affects as many lives as the Trott's baby has.

-Russ