Sep
8
26

Automattic Aquires AtD

Asides

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.


26 Comments

  • Xavier September 8, 2009 @ 12:55 pm

    Great, great addition to a family of tools dedicated to better writing on the Web. Nice catch.

  • Kirb September 8, 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 8, 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 9, 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 8, 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 8, 2009 @ 2:14 pm

    Congratulations to Raphael.& Automatic Team !

  • johnbillion September 8, 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 8, 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 8, 2009 @ 3:32 pm

    Wow! This is cool software. I love the subtle things that add more value to WordPress. Nicely done.

  • Roberto September 8, 2009 @ 4:43 pm

    Great! but, it will aviable for other languages like Spanish or Portuguese ?

    Greetings :)

  • Asif2BD September 8, 2009 @ 9:33 pm

    Matt you always look into deeper opportunity. That what makes you unique.

  • Michael Moncur September 9, 2009 @ 12:50 am

    Awesome!

    It missed the grammar mistake in your first sentence, though. :)

    • Raphael Mudge September 10, 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 9, 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 9, 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 9, 2009 @ 5:02 pm

    Only english?
    And other languages like brazilian portuguese?

  • Patrick in Detroit September 9, 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 10, 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 9, 2009 @ 6:33 pm

    Sounds fascinating!

    Congratulations to you.

  • DaveZatz September 10, 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 10, 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 10, 2009 @ 4:42 pm

      Not sure about that yet. The API key requirement might be removed.

  • Julie September 25, 2009 @ 11:34 am

    Cool! This is a great service, and I love the story behind it.

Share Your Thoughts