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Filed under: Asides | Tags: Automattic (16), WordPress (115) | September 8th, 2009
Automattic Aquires AtD
Automattic just purchased a company and service called After the Deadline, an amazingly smart contextual spelling and grammar checker, and can catch errors even the New York Times misses. It’s now live for 7.5 million WordPress.com blogs and available as a free plugin for .org users, it replaces the built-in spell checker on TinyMCE. It’s a cool story, they were actually rejected from Y Combinator and a few other seed funds but kept at it anyway, and has now found a home in the Automattic family. I found out about the service from Hacker News. ¶
Matt Mullenweg is one of PC World’s Top 50 People on the Web, Inc.com’s 30 under 30, and Business Week’s 25 Most Influential People on the Web. 
Pingback: After the Deadline: Acquired « After the Deadline
Xavier | September 8th, 2009 @ 12:55 pm |
Great, great addition to a family of tools dedicated to better writing on the Web. Nice catch.
Kirb | September 8th, 2009 @ 1:12 pm |
Awesome. Why can’t I use my wordpress.com api key? It seems as if I have to register for a new api through afterthedeadline.com.
Jonathan | September 8th, 2009 @ 7:53 pm |
Agreed. It seems like we should be able to use our API key from WP.com instead of registering for something new…
zhen | September 9th, 2009 @ 6:46 pm |
I have the same problem. And when I click “Get your key.”( on wp), it says the brower can’t find the page…
Blake Helms | September 8th, 2009 @ 1:34 pm |
Congratulations Matt! That’s awesome! Good spell checking is one thing WordPress has been severely lacking and this really bridges the gap.
Honey Singh | September 8th, 2009 @ 2:14 pm |
Congratulations to Raphael.& Automatic Team !
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johnbillion | September 8th, 2009 @ 3:27 pm |
If you’re anal about spelling and grammar you’ll find it amusing that there is a spelling mistake on that very AtD page about the NYT article. I’ll leave it to others to try and find it.
Raphael Mudge | September 8th, 2009 @ 4:53 pm |
Human editors worry I’m trying to replace them so I insert in the occasional mistake to remind them that they’re needed.
It should be fixed now.
Nathan Barry | September 8th, 2009 @ 3:32 pm |
Wow! This is cool software. I love the subtle things that add more value to WordPress. Nicely done.
Roberto | September 8th, 2009 @ 4:43 pm |
Great! but, it will aviable for other languages like Spanish or Portuguese ?
Greetings
Asif2BD | September 8th, 2009 @ 9:33 pm |
Matt you always look into deeper opportunity. That what makes you unique.
Michael Moncur | September 9th, 2009 @ 12:50 am |
Awesome!
It missed the grammar mistake in your first sentence, though.
Raphael Mudge | September 10th, 2009 @ 8:12 am |
It won’t catch everything. It’s a rule-based safety net that catches many common errors. The coverage will grow with time.
Boris | September 9th, 2009 @ 4:23 am |
Seems to be a great service. The plugin could do with a button when the visual editor is disabled, though.
CK Hicks | September 9th, 2009 @ 2:44 pm |
Fantastic!
…you have no idea how badly I wanted to misspell a ton of things right here, however.
Keep up the great work.
Informática | September 9th, 2009 @ 5:02 pm |
Only english?
And other languages like brazilian portuguese?
Patrick in Detroit | September 9th, 2009 @ 6:27 pm |
Hi Matt,
Just giving you a heads up…
I installed ATD here and I tried embedding some raw embed code for a youtube video and when I clicked on publish, the code disappeared. It was not until I disabled the plug in, that this stopped.
Just letting you know. While ATD is great idea. You have got to figure out a way to make it stop eating embed code.
Thank,
-Pat
Raphael Mudge (from Royal Oak, MI) | September 10th, 2009 @ 1:06 pm |
I just checked in an update to the AtD plugin to fix this. I appreciate you bringing this to my attention but would ask that you report future things via the AtD contact form as I’m much more likely to see it. Tough to keep up on comments everywhere
Thank you again though. — Raphael
zhen | September 9th, 2009 @ 6:33 pm |
Sounds fascinating!
Congratulations to you.
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DaveZatz | September 10th, 2009 @ 3:54 pm |
This is very awesome, very meaningful. So much more important than say Gravatars. Nicely done. Congrats to Automattic and Raphael. Bigger congrats to us challenged writers.
stuartm | September 10th, 2009 @ 4:18 pm |
Does the fact that it needs an API key mean that we can’t enable the plugin site-wide for WPMU sites?
Matt | September 10th, 2009 @ 4:42 pm |
Not sure about that yet. The API key requirement might be removed.
Julie | September 25th, 2009 @ 11:34 am |
Cool! This is a great service, and I love the story behind it.