MarsEdit 2.1.3 is now available for direct download or update from within the app. This release is a potpourri of little fixes, including one that makes MarsEdit more reliable in preserving the “draft” status of posts from WordPress and Blogger.

• Fix detection of draft posts from WordPress 2.5 and Blogger.
• Added support for the #tags# placeholder in preview template
• Fix console errors when refreshing with main window closed
• Improve handling of localhost-based blog URLs.
• Markup item placeholder #askurl# now defaults to “Enter a URL:” instead of “Enter Text:”
• Avoid escaping characters in URLs pasted or entered in dialog.
• Fix a bug involving UI display for Blosxom-based weblog settings.

Please let me know if you run into any problems!

A few months ago Mike Lee, then of Delicious Monster, and now running his own show with United Lemur, decided to put his lemurs where his mouth was, so to speak, as part of a creative stunt to encourage other people to donate money to the Madagascar Fauna Group, an organization dedicated to saving the lemurs.

The way it worked was basically, anybody who donates $100 or more to the non-profit organization, would receive as a token of Mike’s thanks, a plush lemur toy. Mike has one of his own, and its name is Thievey. Anybody who took him up on the offer would be considered a part of Club Thievey, and would be encouraged to send in photos of their own plush animal, in a different habitat.

When Ringo arrived, the first thing I noticed was he was shivering from the cold Boston winter weather. Fortunately my wife is both talented and ambitious in the needle arts, so she went straight to work on an appropriate little jumper for our furry friend. He immediately perked up and seemed a lot happier all around. Not always shivering so much as he huddled on the corner of my desk.

The Red Sweater changed everything, even making it possible for Ringo to get his outdoor time. In this picture, it’s about 20 degrees Fahrenheit, yet Ringo is laughing it up in the trees while most other New England fauna are huddled up in their dens.

Even still, being an animal from rather warmer climes, Ringo does sometimes appreciate the radiators in our apartments, which are toasty even when the air outside is brisk.

You might get the impression from these photos that Ringo mostly sits around and does nothing. Well, that’s true. He has a rather luxurious life here in Somerville. But it’s not all play, he does have some responsibilities as “Chief Ringleader” at Red Sweater Software. Mainly, Ringo has an innate sense for when I’m working too hard, and has been known to put his, ahem, tail down about it.

OK, Ringo. You win! I’ll put down the computer for a while. Just as soon as I press “Send to Weblog.” Now we’re going to spend some quality time offline.

James Duncan Davidson is a professional software developer and a professional photographer, so chances are you’ve seen him around if you’ve been to any of a huge number of geek-oriented tradeshows and conferences. His work often ends up (legally!) on marketing sites from people such as Apple or O’Reilly, promoting events or people with candid shots that Duncan has snapped of them.

His work is prolific and intimately associated with the web and technology, so it’s probably no surprise that when it comes to copyright infringements, accidental or otherwise, he’s found himself at the butt end of the situation on more than one occasion.

In a thoughtful blog entry on the subject, Duncan points to an inherent disparity in copyright infringement legal procedure that, as often is the case, favors deep-pocketed corporations over “the little guys.” In a nutshell, your ability to sue for substantial damages is dramatically improved if you register your copyrighted works. But doing so on a regular basis is both tedious and expensive.

“Once I started looking at the costs and process of registration of my own work, it became clear the economics of the situation were not in the favor of the little guy. The problem is that the little guys are making most of the cool stuff these days. […] No matter how you slice it, the little guy gets the bad end of the deal.”

I’m fascinated by copyright and have naively been expecting some dramatic overhaul to the system for at least 10 years now. As Duncan points out, the “system” is becoming increasingly relied upon, yet increasingly useless to, the millions of small-time independent content producers who are a growing part of the American creative work force.

This issue applies somehow to your work, if you create anything and it has inherent intellectual qualities, and you would be injured by other people brazenly copying it. I don’t know if, after so many years of waiting, I am any longer foolish enough to expect change, but I still hope for it.

Congratulations to the WordPress team and the more than 100 contributors who helped to bring this release to the public today.

There are loads of changes, which you can read about in the announcement blog post. Among the most interesting changes for MarsEdit users is the addition of more intelligent “post status” information for blog editor clients. Practically speaking, this means the problems I described in my MarsEdit 2.1 announcement will no longer be an issue for WordPress 2.5 users.

But… Ugh, it looks like I messed something up and MarsEdit 2.1.2 doesn’t accurately detect these statuses on WordPress posts. I will try to get a 2.1.3 out soon that fixes this so we can put the post status problem with WordPress behind us for good.