Congrats to SixApart on the release of their modules compatible TypePad.  This marks another big step in the evolution of our industry and the revolution of end-user customization.

Lets hope that these Typepad modules are compatible with LiveJournal and Moveable Type - which makes sense - right?  That would keep the modules within the SixApart firewall.  They refer to the ‘SixApart’ platform allot - but its not clear how much of a platform that really is.

Dan Farber’s article quotes a letter from Anil Dash - discussing the likelihood and ease of creating compatibility between all these moudles:

I am pretty hopeful that a widget/gadget standard emerges, but I’m really not holding my breath….

Well if any of you know me out there - you’ll know I’m an Opera singer and I have great lungs.  This compatiblity issue is ANOTHER lynchpin in our efforts at connecting disparate Web 2.0 worlds into a comrpehenseive mesh of inter-connected digital lifestyles.

Turns out our friends at AOL have been thinking the same way.  Their modules format - is actually a ‘microformat’.

Anil hints that there will be a market of folks who make their living convertiogn these module formats back and forth between systems.  I agree.  I also think that all software from now on will be desigend to work as a module in some otehr system, just as most software also has desigend into it - the notion of a ‘blog object’ - which can sit in anyone’s blog gutter - using simple javascript which gets pasted into the blog template.

Modules and widgets that that extensibility and bring it to the web based desktop. The so-called dashboard.  The DLA.

So you BET I’m happy to hear this announcement.  And I bet Tariq is (at NetVibes) and the Pageflakes folks and anyone else playing this game.

Pandora has announced their TypePad module.  Let’s just hope that there’s a Pandora module for Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL - as well.

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