Blogging Blog

On Vox: Vox.

 

   
   

I've been playing a bit with Vox, TypePad's new LiveJournal for grownups; or blog platform and social networking service; or half a blogging platform for newbies (albeit with rich and deep functionality) and half social network.

   

» Read more on Vox

So that (above) is what an automatic cross-posting looks like from Vox. A few problems there, including lost formatting and links, and thus, lost crediting to original sources. Here's the full post:

I've been playing a bit with Vox, TypePad's new LiveJournal for grownups; or blog platform and social networking service; or half a blogging platform for newbies (albeit with rich and deep functionality) and half social network. 

I've seen some huffiness somewhere (I forget where) about insulting folks with references to newbies and grandmas, but I suspect that beginners and grandparents would not find such references insulting. There is no shame in either -- and I think Vox just might be on the right track for them, but also for those of us who have struggled through the newbie phase to produce nice-looking, professional (if not money-making) blogs -- but would still like a place for easy, personal blogging with a range of privacy options.

I had thought that Yahoo360! might serve that purpose, but it just never felt comfortable for me. The only feature I really liked was the Blast, which might be fun to see as a feature here at Vox. Yahoo was very slow to get some of its more important features off the ground, and Vox, while still in development, at least has what most folks would see as the essentials.

The posting interface is supremely simple, and allows you to easily insert photos, audio, videos, book refereces, and "collections". The service is currently smoothly integrated with Flickr, PhotoBucket, iStockPhoto, Amazon, YouTube, and iFilm; and I've no doubt many others are waiting in line -- hopefully including Barnes & Noble, Powells, and Picasa Web Albums. 

Not only is it not necessary to know HTML to use Vox, as far as I can tell, you can't use it; everything is WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) with cute little iconized buttons. There are several designs available, but if you want total control over how your blog looks, Vox is not for you. This is clearly set up for folks who just want something presentable, quickly, to hold their content. You can switch the design of your site with two or three clicks. Also, there are ads (this is a free, ad-supported service) but they are, so far, inconspicuous.

Each post can be set to one of five levels of privacy: you only; public; friends only; family only; or family and friends, but not public. I haven't checked, but I assume that any media content in such posts would carry the same privacy level as the post. It is this feature that might be useful for folks like me. I have public blogs, but would occassionally like to write a personal, even boring to non-friends, post for those very few who might be interested -- and invisible to those whom I would not want to find it interesting.

Vox facilitates crossposting from Vox to TypePad blogs (which I am about to test with this post) but what I really want is vice-versa. I want to be able to easily include my public content on my personal blog; not so much the other way around. I could see integrating nearly all my material into the Vox site, with some posts more private than others, so that friends could choose to read what they liked, but know they aren't missing anything as it's all in one place.

There is, of course, the usual obstacle: one must be a member of Vox to post comments -- or to be included on family and friends lists. This is a perhaps necessary strategy to limit spam comments and other obnoxious behaviors, but means one more username and password for folks you want to view and comment on your blog.

In my introvert style, I've left the social networking features to the end. Vox has Neighborhoods, and Explore and Connect functions. All you need to do is get someone you know on there -- or chat up a few strangers -- and there you are -- a Neighborhood.  Answering the Question of the Day (QOTD)  and checking out what others have to say is another way to make connections.

Today's QOTD is: How well do you know your next-door neighbors?

And when I just checked, there were about 140 posts with that tag. I think they mean real life neighbors, though; not virtual, social-network-services neighbors.

Vox is still Beta; a few bugs now and then. I have three invites -- who wants one?

This Ugly Blog...

I wrote this for Watermark, then realized it's appropriate for this blog, too. I think most folks realize that this blog is not designed for probloggers (though they may find some helpful hints here) but for those of us who blog mostly for ourselves, our friends, and for fun. Thus: resources and buttons. And thus: a blog some find whimsical, and others find ugly.

On to the post:

I've spent the past few days redesigning Watermark (again), before I read Top 10 Ways to Uglify Your Blog. As it happens, I did some of what Christian would advise, but not all -- and not always for his reasons.

I love 80x15 blog buttons, and tag clouds. I think the buttons are fun, and I find tag clouds (not, as he states, organized radomly, but by frequency, and/ or alphabetically) easy to navigate. However, I don't have ads, and my photo is only on the About page. Feed buttons are nicely coordinated with everything else, and there is only one for each feed. I had already reached the conclusion that if you use a social bookmarking site, you don't need me to give you a button for it -- fond of buttons though I am.

I felt like a doing a good clear-out, and hoped to make the site quicker to load. Most of the buttons have been changed to text, and since I know some folks come here just to get buttons, I made a whole new site for them: Milieux. A new place for toys and play -- a truly ugly blog by Christian's standards.

Much of the sidebar content is now in expand/ collapse boxes. I found the script for this at flooble [BEWARE: many loud and obnoxious popups!] via someplace I've lost track of -- if you think it might be you, let me know and I'll add a link to this post. This script works in a TypePad typelist, even if you don't use advanced templates. At least, I think it works; I've tested it in Firefox, both Mac and Windows; Safari; and IE on Windows.

The sidebar certainly looks cleaner. The question is, does this speed loading, or have I just traded the time it takes to load images for the time it takes to load scripts? Do these boxes improve or inhibit usability?

Also, there is some problem with the Rings code; it breaks the template in IE, in or out of an expandable box -- so it's at the bottom of the sidebar until I can figure out what's wrong. Even though I'm a member of PowderPuff Geeks, I'm really not a geek; I just play one on the internet.

What do you think -- have I improved things, or made them worse?

[ADDED later: Oh, wait! My photo is up there on the banner. Forgot about that...]

If I had to Start My Blog Again ~ Roundup

problogger recently organized another Group Writing Project on the topic of ‘if I had to start my blog again’. Since this promised to offer lots of useful tips for new bloggers, I decided to peruse, summarize, and excerpt to give you a flavor of each post, some of which you will want to go read in full.

This is a long post; there's a lot in here --but I remember when I started out, I wanted to read everything that might be helpful. So this is all severely edited, but I included every post. At least, I tried.

It took a long time. I can't tell you how relieved I was to see the end of that list scroll up on my screen.

Unsurprisingly, there are several themes that repeat from one post to the next, and a bit of consistent advice:

• Host your site at your own domain name, and choose both your domain name and your site title with care. I suggest a quick Google search on anything you are considering to be sure you won't be lost in a crowd. A dictionary and thesaurus search might not be a bad idea, either; you don't want your site name to have surprising connotations.
• Choose a platform that has categories and named (not numbered) URL's, so that both readers and search engines can more easily find your posts. In other words, not Blogspot/ Blogger.
• Start yesterday.
• Have fun -- if you don't have fun, your readers won't, either.
• Think ahead: what is the goal/purpose of the site? How can you increase the chance of meeting your goal?
• Learn or hire the skills to do a good (appealing and usable) design.
• Read, read, read (other blogs.)
• Comment, comment, comment (on other blogs.)

A few things that were seldom mentioned, but seem important:

•     Backup your site (umm, I keep planning to do this...)
•     Get a photo hosting account
•     Select and use a good feed reader, to keep up with other blogs

Excerpts are below the cut, but I'm going to lead with the one I already suspect will be my favorite, even though I've just begun reading. From My wabisabi blog:

  Wabisabi: (侘寂)   An aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is   “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete”.

  My purpose in writing this is to encourage anyone who’s new to just take the   first step and not worry about setting up a “perfect” thing, and anyone who’s   redoing their blog not to be frustrated. We’ve already got too many other   things in life that already exert this type of pressure ... Let’s not get lost   in the numbers for once. Why not take advantage of a rare, low-risk   opportunity like blogging and approach it with a creative eagerness rather   than cautious fear about all the mistakes you might make? As long as it’s true   to you, you probably can’t go wrong. It’s worked for me.