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Zempt competitor?

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25 Jul 2003

Several people have asked about the SocialDynamX Movable Type skin for FM Radio. Everything from confusion about what it is, to asking if I’m afraid of the competition for Zempt.

FM Radio is a desktop posting tool for Radio Userland. It looks like they’re adapting the UI to work with MT. They’re also ripping off the MT design. I suppose if you are doing a tool for Movalbe Type it makes sense to make the design familiar, but a straight copy seems like a bad idea. And what if MT changes the design?

So am I concerned? Not in the least.

It appears that what they are doing is simply taking their Radio product, which works with the MetaWeblog API, and giving it a UI that looks like MT. Their screenshot shows a very Radio-centric blogging tool with a specific link field, title, no extended entries, categories, or comment settings.

You can’t edit previous posts with FM Radio, so I’d imagine that you won’t be able to do that with the MT version either.

FM Radio only runs on Windows 2000 or XP, whereas Zempt will run on older versions of Windows and soon Linux and OS X. FM Radio is also a $40 software product. When given the choice between a commercial product and a free one, most people will pick the free one, especially when the free one is better.

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