I can see valid points on both sides of the fence here. Yes, we work to make money and the faster we can get on with what we truly want to pursue, the better. That’s generally my feeling when it comes to working 16-18 hours days with the hope of working on other things I can’t afford to spend time on now.

It’s always unfortunate to see a company like Mint cash in their chips, but this seems to be a glass half-empty, half-full situation. Perhaps the Mint crew want to pursue more noble pursuits, philanthropic pursuits, or start their own companies that contribute to some other exciting industry like solar or other green tech ideas?

The primary criticism I have here is not your points- it is, of course, a worthwhile pursuit to try and innovate in a given field, but rather that you seem to assume these guys are done, that they are taking the money and running off to burn hard currency in their fireplaces.

I’d say at least acknowledge you have hope that the Mint team is going on to bigger and better things.

On the other side of the coin, your passion for overthrowing the old regime is inspiring, passionate, pragmatic and admirable, but keep in mind that the large barge companies out there that are currently in the “purchase and conquer” phase could also be suffering from a lack of direction, a leadership team not sure how to adjust to a new paradigm.

You can argue the large guys will buy their way to longevity, gobbling up the innovators, but the historical data rarely ever supports that. If you haven’t read “Good to Great” by Jim Collins, please do. Warm fuzzy feelings will soon replace your outrage. Honestly, I’m encouraged when I see this acquisition pattern take place. I’m not concerned about Intuit, Intuit will either innovate or die, not buy their way to results.

As for the Mint team? Guys, congrats on your acquisition. I’m excited to see what you do next, because the thing that Intuit did not get when they bought the Mint machine was the engine, clearly.

I was reminded of that a few minutes ago as I saw another of a series of tweets touting a recent Wordpress plugin that has the community abuzz. It has some new tools and features that are certainly useful if you are really trying to leverage your readers in some manner. The thing that amazed me about this was that not only are these tools just coming out, but that the very same functionality has existed for quite a long while in my CMS of choice, TYPOlight. I know the first thing that you’re thinking is “okay, so if you like TYPOlight so much, why aren’t you blogging on it?” The answer is that I was in a rush to create a blog, and I needed a good template, something that by virtue of market penetration I could easily procure for Wordpress (thanks, Woothemes!). However, when it comes to using Wordpress as a CMS, it can’t possibly compare to TYPOlight. When I see new plugins coming out, I immediately think about the fact that what they do is often achieved for free with TYPOlight and often, the breadth of features exceeds that which the plugins offer even under commercial license.

I also hear talk here and there about frameworks in relation to code, whether it be meta language, scripting, stylesheets, or php. The thing that amazes me is that TYPOlight has existed as part of an amazing PHP framework that is simply the best and easiest since it went live in 2006!, most reliable and secure I have ever dealt with. As a developer, nothing matches the ability to extend a package compared to TYPOlight. The design philosophies and the coding patterns are magnificent.

Both as an end user and as a developer, I can tell you with confidence that if TYPOlight was sitting at a poker table with Wordpress, it knows exactly who the sucker is, and it’s holding a monster hand. Either way you look at it, in the next year, TYPOlight is the tool that will storm the CMS market in the U.S. It already has abroad, its home country is Germany. I won’t bother to go into the feature set here, I will just say that if you want more information – and you will – you must go to www.typolight.org to learn more.

We all know how this story should end, but we keep saying “not yet, you’re not ready to move on. Sure, it’s been almost 8 years since the two met, but we don’t think it would be smart to shut IE6 out of your life. You really need to support IE6. It’s the right thing to do.”

What terrible friends we are. If we really cared, we’d be doing something to help. Instead, we’re feeding into the dysfunction that is the IE6 browsing experience. We cater to it, spend extra time dealing with bugs and dropping in CSS hacks to satisfy a still-somehow-significant portion of site visitors.

I just have question for all of us to consider – if we don’t put our foot down and say “No, I don’t have the time to cater to IE6 in my projects”, then will we ever truly move on? Shouldn’t we gently guide IE6 users to a better browser? How bad could it be? Keep in mind people are getting update notices all the time, so upgrading is painless. Here we are, experiencing technology revisions faster than ever in history, and then we have a single version of a single browser, a veritable square wheel on the information superhighway making life miserable for the collective web development community.

Do the numbers matter?

On average, IE 6 accounts for as low as 5% up to 15% or more of the visitors to websites that I have analytics hooked up to. I don’t disagree that a figure like 1 in 10 or higher is a statistically significant number when looking at website visitor metrics. That could represent a hefty portion of your revenue, for example, if you are in e-commerce. How about at least taking a closer look at what the quality or potential ROI is on a given IE6 user? It may become apparent that the potential loss of revenue is inconsequential or at worst only a small temporary issue. The truth is, we could sit here and split hairs all day long about the economics of supporting IE6 (which I’m sure would back me up, but feel free to out-number me on that one), or we can acknowledge that the time has past, and enough is enough.

How do we make it happen?

I personally think the solution is pretty simple, but it requires a tactful approach. If we can present users with a non-annoying suggestion to upgrade to a more recent browser with a link for their convenience, I’d be willing to bet they wouldn’t be too adverse to the idea.

As I was researching for this article, I took the time to Google this very subject and found an interesting initiative started in Norway that has spread to many other countries to do this very thing. Here is a link to an article in Wired (Feb. 2009): Norwegian Websites Declare War On IE6 – Pretty inspiring from a country whose full wartime mobilization number is less than the number of loyal Microsoft employees armed with unlimited free energy drinks and potentially-lethal optical mouse lasers.

I think it’s time to stop building to satisfy IE6. Instead, on any given page, detect browser version and present IE6 users with a smartly-worded choice of new browser. I think IE6 users will thank us. If we are the ones suffering at the hands of IE6, why don’t we take action instead of just complaining about something we can actually fix – simply by choosing not to do it?

Writing that all important, barely read first blog post is likely to give a writer a headache. It may be the most difficult post to write in your blogging career. For me this is no exception.

So, here are three first blog posts from some blogs that I read on a regular basis.

Adii Rockstar: “Launched!“

I just recently discovered Adii’s blog and quickly became a regular. Adii not only is well known for his accomplishments via WooThemes but also via Radiiate, his design trinity with partners FRESH01 and Foxinni. What I like about Adii’s first post is that it assumes nothing of what the blog would become in such a short span of time, and that Adii would go from student to successful entrepreneur in less than two years. Of course, I know Adii would be quick to point the finger at the people he works with on a daily basis and his family, but a hearty “Well done!” is in order for Adii and crew.

Adii has this to say about his first post:

I think the phrase “It kinda makes me feel famous and important…” probably accurately describes how I felt when I first started blogging. I started out with a real plan or strategy, but knew way back then that blogging would play a big role in my “career”. As it’s ended up, I co-founded a very successful company (WooThemes), which specializes in selling WordPress – a blogging platform – templates. But hey… That’s why they say hindsight is an exact science!

Six Revisions: “Six Things You Need for Your Web Project to Succeed”

Strangely enough, Jacob’s first post occurred a year and a couple days after Adii’s first post (February 2nd, 2008) and his blog Six Revisions has also enjoyed a meteoric rise to the top of the heap. Jacob has delivered quality posts consistently over the last 14 months and has seen his subscriber base grow to almost 23,000 (via RSS) in that short period of time. It seems to me based upon his first post that he had a very clear idea of what it was all about right from the get-go. Having a clear sense of purpose for your weblog will definitely start you off right and keep your content focused, which means happy readers. A huge “congrats!” to Jacob Gube on his wild success as well.

Jacob has this to say about his first post and the creation of Six Revisions:

I started Six Revisions in one day. I wanted to write and publish something to cap off the day with a solid accomplishment, not only to set up a website, but also to have an article published.

I began on one Sunday morning by coming up with a name, getting a web host, and setting up a WordPress installation. I had one published article even before the DNS records have fully propagated for “sixrevisions.com”!

I wrote the first article because of a project I worked on that failed to launch: design and ideas where all there, and we even had a working WordPress site with a custom theme that I designed and developed. The issue was a lack of passion and commitment for the subject (tech gadgets).

For the third blog, I’m going to be a bit cheeky and feature this blog, and this very post. Sure, its not technically a look back yet, but it will be tomorrow! Also, if I can ever get away with lumping my little blog in with the likes of Adii Rockstar and Six Revisions, then I’ll feel like I’ve really accomplished something!

A little about me is in order, I suppose. Here it is.

• I’ve been blogging on and off since June 2000, back when Blogger was just 10-months old.
• I’ve always been an eager and sometimes early adopter when it comes to the web and social media, I love watching the Internet grow and evolve, and I feel I’m a part of it.
• I’m a huge fan of Jim Collins’s work, especially his book entitled Good to Great – Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t. This book is worth its weight in gold, time infinity. So there. Go and buy, read slowly, rinse, repeat, and show off your new business smarts.
• I’m a web developer, although I like to say “Web Solutions Architect” because it’s so much more than just developing for the web. I’m more of a problem solver with LAMP in hand. I’ll be the first to admit I’m not the best developer, but I strive to be the best problem solver I can be within the context of what I do.
• I’m a TYPOlight developer/expert, I have been solely developing for and almost exclusively using the TYPOlight framework since Spring of 2007. Yes, I know this blog is a Wordpress blog. Two reasons for that – first, because it is built specifically for blogging and second, it’s still the quickest to set up and theme.
• I recently got back into Twitter when I discovered console apps like Twhirl and TweetDeck. I’m a TweetDeck guy now. By the way, my Twitter account has a PR 6 with around 100 users and less than 250 tweets, which is quite perplexing. Does anyone care to hazard a guess as to how I might have garnered such a generous PageRank?
• Here we’ll be passionately discussing web, social media and business. Strap on your brains!

I’m looking forward to many exciting discussions with everyone. Thanks for reading.

- Fred