MT4's Beta 7 is a PR Monger's Dream

No one can ever say Six Apart's Movable Type 4 suffers from lack of ambition.

Noting most bloggers can probably talk their heads off, given the chance, Movable Type releases fully-integrated out-of-box podcasting support. No plugin necessary.

Say hello to Beta 7, a logistical first for a major blog purveyor.

Spiffy new podcast-friendly features include:

• New file themes such as "audio" and "video." This means users can filter their information by media type, searching "all video files," for example
• The ability to aggregate media assets from across multiple blogs
• New template tags for use in RSS, Atom feeds and on the published blog side, to point to assets that were uploaded into a given post

This last point enables users to upload mp3s on the posting interface and have it encoded as an enclosure. They can also wrap audio/video around files uploaded in the blog's published HTML.

Tell me that's not a great marriage of the publishing and auditory aspects of the digital age.

And lest you think for a moment that MT4 has forgotten its core product, here's what else they included in Beta 7:

• 28 new swatches of professionally-designed themes.
• New widgets, including tag clouds, recently uploaded photos and other blog essentials
• QuickPost bookmarking and post creation
• A progress indicator that tells you what percentage of your blog is publishing, and how many pages remain
• A share-an-entry feature, which emails friends you select with a summary or excerpt of what you just wrote

Sounds like Beta 7's a great tool for pushing PR about your innermost thoughts and dreams. Better yet, use it for your business. Wouldn't that make sense?

Try Beta 7 now. And pssst: If you're a blogger and a podcaster, you'd probably be interested in Blogger and Podcaster Magazine, a multi-platform trade rag that came out in May.

What's your view on Beta 7? Share.

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