Red Sweater Acquires MarsEdit
February 22nd, 2007You read that right, no need to run for another cup of coffee. MarsEdit, the kick-ass, intuitive web-publishing powerhouse which I’ve been using to write entries here since I started blogging almost two years ago, is now part of the Red Sweater family of products. What an exciting day!
This is the first time I’ve clicked “Send to Weblog” since the acquisition was completed. It was as easy as it ever was, but now I get to share in the pride of that ease. Man, that felt good.
Check out the press release, and be sure to send it along to your favorite news editor or blogger. I know I will! Also be sure to check out the nifty Q&A session Brent Simmons (original developer of MarsEdit) and I took part in, to help put the acquisition into perspective.
This is a classic “everybody wins” situation. Users are going to see a lot more development activity, Brent and NewsGator are happy to see the application in my capable hands, and I get the satisfaction of steering the future of one of my favorite applications. Precious!
For those of you who aren’t familiar with MarsEdit, it’s worth taking a look. Whether you’re a seasoned blogger or just thinking about getting started, this application has power and ease-of-use that will knock your socks off. Long story short, if you’ve got one or more blogs, MarsEdit will make posting to them effortless and reliable. Just what you’d expect from a Mac.
People sometimes remark on the relatively large quantity of content I publish here. A major reason for that is MarsEdit makes it easy to collect my ideas, refine them, and publish them. I don’t think I could handle writing all these entries, managing the drafts, correcting mistakes, etc., if it weren’t for the convenience of MarsEdit.
Since I’ve been writing so much about a certain Cocoa-Java port lately, I should probably make this completely clear: MarsEdit is not the Java-based product that I recently acquired. MarsEdit is completely Objective-C based from the get-go, and I couldn’t be happier about that. It means that I can acquire it and immediately make it available for download. In fact, the version you download today still has NewsGator’s name in it :) I’ll be releasing an update soon.
So what’s the Cocoa-Java application? I can’t announce everything on one day can I? Stay tuned for more exciting news in the weeks to come.
Reaction To The News
“MarsEdit Family”
Greg Reinacker (NewsGator CTO and Founder)
Brent Simmons (MarsEdit’s original developer)
Gus Mueller (Former MarsEdit Developer)
NewsGator Daily Blog
Press
Ars Technica – Infinite Loop
Daring Fireball
MacGeneration (French)
MacMinute
Macnews.de (German)
MacsimumNews
MacUser Blog
Macworld
Macworld UK
NonStopMac
TUAW
901am New Media News
Blogs
Paul Kafasis, my trusted confidant, spilled the beans last night in a vaguely worded post. Check out the subtle hint in the permalink URL. But nobody really picked up on it. Somebody asked me if I was becoming an employee of Rogue Amoeba :)
Baron.vc
Erik Barzeski
Michael Boyle
Paul Burd
Simone Carletti (Italian)
Dave Dash
Luis de la Rosa
Evan DiBiase
Michael Dupuis
Geek Patrol
Grimaldello (German)
Steve Harris
Will Henderson
Takaaki Kato
Paul Kim
Steve Kirks
MacStansbury
Michael McCracken
Marcus Puchmayer (German)
Switchblog
Startup Squad
Jon Trainer
Michael Tsai
Kevin Walzer
Justin Williams
Mike Zornek
February 22nd, 2007 at 7:46 am
As a daily MarsEdit user, I’m glad to see it’s found a home where it will be actively developed. Count me in for a paying upgrade–you should get rewarded for your work. I’d gladly pay for it all over again for a “1.5” release with better image management, better WordPress hooks and such.
February 22nd, 2007 at 8:12 am
Congrats, Daniel! I’m sure you’ll give MarsEdit the TLC it deserves.
I expect we’ll also see some super-awesome AppleScript support in the coming releases. ;)
February 22nd, 2007 at 8:18 am
I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but you’ve got your hands cut out for you on that update. The blogosphere is a much different landscape than it was the last time that MarsEdit was last updated. With WordPress 2.1.1 out, Mephisto and Typo as platforms on the Rails end and new services like VOX, Virb and people even writing to their MySpace blogspace, you’ve got a lot of catching up to do. Of course, I know you won’t roll out support for all of those services and software all at once… I’m just saying that it’ll be a lot of varying APIs to keep a track of.
If you need Beta testers for any of the planned updates, please let me know…I’d be honored to help (in addition to paying!!!). :)
February 22nd, 2007 at 8:18 am
Wow, congratulations! I wasn’t expecting this but it’s definitely a great fit. I’m looking forward to see where you take the app.
February 22nd, 2007 at 8:20 am
Congratulations Daniel. I have to say this was a surprise. I’ve never taken a look at MarsEdit before but I’ll be downloading it today and giving it a spin. I’m working on the layout for my new site and after migrating over the Mullery content I really want to use Markdown for composing my blog entries. Sounds like MarsEdit will be just the thing.
February 22nd, 2007 at 8:21 am
Congratulations Daniel! This was a great surprise for this morning. I’m very happy that MarsEdit has found a new home with such a capable developer. Good luck with your new project.
February 22nd, 2007 at 8:41 am
I use MarsEdit with every Manila, RadioUserland, WordPress, Blogger website that I support, and there are about 15 of them all together. … It is great to be able to go to one program, MarsEdit, and publish to every single weblog. … MarsEdit was the best tool when Brent first distilled it out of NetNewsWire. … I think it is still the best blogging tool for my uses, and I look forward to its further development in the warmth of the Red woolen Sweater. My credit card awaits magic.
February 22nd, 2007 at 8:58 am
Excellent news! I was actually just wondering what was going to happen (since I use MarsEdit every single day). I’m looking forward to seeing what is in store.
This may have been asked but – I’ll check back in a day or two – is the mailing list coming back?
February 22nd, 2007 at 8:59 am
Daniel,
Congratulations. I’d like to focus my comments on the *business* aspect of this, as opposed to the technical.
Based on this acquisition–of a popular product that already has an established user base–and the other acquisition you’ve alluded to, it’s obvious you are investing *substantial* resources in the growth of your business. From a strategic standpoint, it’s often a faster route to growth to acquire an existing product than to build one from scratch.
What’s so interesting about this–and so unusual–is that you are the only indie Mac developer I know of who has chosen this particular route to growth. Gus Mueller, Michael Tsai, and Brent Simmons all developed one or two very popular products and thus grew organically. Erik J. Barzeski took Fresh Squeezed Software to a certain point before selling it off (and it has apparently grown stagnant in its new owner’s hands). But I don’t know of any other solo Mac developer who has made a strategic decision to acquire a product–let alone two–and grow in that fashion.
So, congratulations. I have the utmost respect for your approach. Not only is this level of capital investment even more difficult to pull off than organic growth, it also takes real guts and business sense to look at your current product mix–the work of your own hands–and conclude that, by itself, it may not take you where you want to go.
I have every confidence that you are going to pull this off–that your business will grow handsomely, and that a popular product will continue to get the attention it deserves. Best of luck to you!
Kevin
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:02 am
Congratulations, Daniel!
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:07 am
This really does sound like great news. As others have mentioned, a lot seems to have changed since the last time MarsEdit was updated. I myself haven’t been able to use MarsEdit because it can’t handle the latest Blogger API. I’m willing to endure it, because it is much more conforting to know that someone is actively developing MarsEdit again.
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:19 am
Glad to hear that it landed in such good hands. It’s one of my favorite applications. Congrats.
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:26 am
Excellent; congrats mate. Looking forward to seeing what you do with MarsEdit.
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:46 am
Great news, Daniel!
Looking forward to MarsEdit updated version.
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:51 am
Wow, congrats!
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:54 am
Congratulations, but you might just want to tweak the link in the sidebar to MarsEdit – it currently 404s on you. Drop it all into lowercase and its happy.
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:56 am
Great! I am handling more than 10 weblogs, and MarsEdit is great for that purpose. Listen to the users and make great new versions….. I would like to have more control of my weblog engines…. Is that someting to consider….? All web based editors/controllers are very different and sometimes even complex to operate…..
Happy Marseditting…
Peter Luit
Netherlands
February 22nd, 2007 at 10:02 am
Feature request: better support for Drupal 5.0. Drupal is a massively popular CMS and blogging platform, and there are tons of people trying to get it to work with MarsEdit. Some do so successfully, but it seems there is a lot of room for more extensive Drupal support. I look forward to seeing what you can do with MarsEdit under your stewardship! :)
February 22nd, 2007 at 10:03 am
Congratulations, Daniel! I saw your Twitter post, checked out the Rogue Amoeba entry, then saw a 1.0 version of an Airfoil add-on show up in my iusethis feed this morning. I thought “Ah ha! Jalkut has aquired this app that is obviously still listed under the old developers name!” Silly me :-)
February 22nd, 2007 at 10:26 am
Exciting news! Can’t wait to see the results..
February 22nd, 2007 at 10:45 am
Why does the above screenshot have tabs for “Body” “Extended” “Excerpt” “Keywords?” My version of Marsedit 1.1.2 doesn’t seem to have this feature… and I can’t find anyway to get it enabled.
February 22nd, 2007 at 10:56 am
Wow! Thanks everybody so much for such a positive and congratulatory mood. This is going to be a fun product to develop, I know it.
In general I’m not 100% “up to speed” yet with all the technical questions, so feel free to ask now, but please ask again in a week or two if I don’t give you a suitable answer today :) Also for some questions it could be valuable to post them in the forums so that other users with specific experience on a specific engine, etc., can share their wisdom with you.
@Colin: I’m definitely planning on supporting a general-discussion mailing list, similar to the one that Brent has used in the past. I am going to need a few days to get this all worked out, but stay tuned!
@Peter: I’m really hoping to zero in on some improvements to the blog engine support. This is one of those areas where I’m going to need to get up to speed on the limitations of the various APIs and systems.
@Thomas: The UI content in the MarsEdit window varies somewhat based on the features of the blog that you’re publishing to. I am not sure off the top of my head which protocols/APIs support the extra tabs you’ve spotted, but in my case I’m publishing to WordPress, so I know it’s supported there. I will see if I can start assembling some kind of table that identifies the various features of the blog publishing systems.
February 22nd, 2007 at 11:06 am
It pains me to point out, being a long-time Mac user MarsEdit user, that I really like Windows Live Writer for blogging. I know, I know…but with the initial objections out of the way I love how Live Writer pulls down your blog style, how you can preview what the post will look like on your blog and how images can have nice effects applied to them. Competition is a good thing and I hope to see an updated and revised MarsEdit sometime in the near future! Best of luck!
February 22nd, 2007 at 11:15 am
Congratulations. It’s excellent news that Mars Edit is going to be updated again. I use it every day with half a dozen blogs – it’s an extremely important part of my workflow.
I’m hoping this change will bring better support for adding images to WordPress blogs, even better AppleScript support, a search for finding old posts…
February 22nd, 2007 at 11:17 am
Congratulations Daniel! Work your magic with it!
February 22nd, 2007 at 11:47 am
Congrats Daniel!
I’m super happy to see MarsEdit continuing on with you as it’s developer. Now go get a release out! :)
February 22nd, 2007 at 11:58 am
CONGRATULATIONS!
The secret’s out…
I was dying to know which project you were going to pick up.
From what started out as an expirament, it looks like you made a great investment, and is a win-win for both of you. Good luck!
Think you’ll try it again?
February 22nd, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Heh, thanks everybody.
@Deric: I know this is a source of some confusion, but this acquisition is actually separate from “the grand experiment.” It happened sort of independently of that whole process.
Long story short? You STILL DON’T KNOW THE SECRET ;)
Heh, stay tuned.
February 22nd, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Congrats, Daniel. This is great news.
February 22nd, 2007 at 12:26 pm
Congratulations, to me. :)
Wow, with NNW3 it’s like all the festivities coming at once. I’m afraid I’ll walk outside and get struck by lightning.
I truly can’t wait to see the first release. If you do make a point release soon please be so kind as to include Sparkle automatic updates so I can always be using the greatest and latest.
As a paying customer of ME I am really really happy and I really admire Brent for caring about his customers enough to do this. By passing it to a super developer he’s made us all happy. Thanks for picking up the torch Daniel!
February 22nd, 2007 at 1:02 pm
Awesome! Congrats!
February 22nd, 2007 at 4:52 pm
31 responses. I’m having a slow news day obviously.
Congrats Dan & Brent and all. It’ll be really nice to see some new life breathed into the app it was beginning to get a bit stale.
February 22nd, 2007 at 6:32 pm
great, great news — looking forward to updates for the best blog app for the mac.
February 22nd, 2007 at 8:02 pm
I love the hall of mirrors effect.
February 22nd, 2007 at 8:09 pm
Great news, Dan! Best of luck :)
February 22nd, 2007 at 10:03 pm
This is great news! I love Mars Edit for managing my blog, because it’s so powerful and simple. I’m looking forward to watching you develop this useful tool even further. Congrats! :-)
February 22nd, 2007 at 11:30 pm
Congrats Daniel, it’s great to hear MarsEdit is in such capable hands.
February 23rd, 2007 at 4:13 am
Hi,
I hope very much that we will see an update with at least the capability to seach inside of the local postings og ME…
February 23rd, 2007 at 6:06 am
I can only say: GREAT NEWS! Congratulations!
February 23rd, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Excellent! MarsEdit isn’t dead!
February 26th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
Thank you so much for picking up this application. I was worried it would vanish away with a few features never implemented.
I’d really like a drag and drop image uploader. Like you set the preferences where to store the image and then when you attach one it’ll upload to that directory type thing
Other than that, I love it.
February 26th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
Hi Tom – I’m definitely going to be looking at improving the image upload workflow. Stay tuned!