Blogging Blog

Another Cool Profile Widget: imagini

[This is another flash widget, so the first images are screenshots, and the flash images will go under the cut to speed loading on the main page.]

The imagini widget isn't exactly an avatar, and it doesn't aggregate your networks, but it is a nice little widget that could spark up an About Page or MySpace profile. It's clearly designed for younger folk, but I had a good time with it nonetheless.

It offers a series of questions and images; and from the images you choose emerges your Visual DNA:

Imagini calculates your VisualDNA™ from your choices.
It's a new way of communicating using images instead of words.

It's fun, quick and free...

Each tab has nicely written text, presumably describing the user -- and I have to say, it's not far off. It's easy to say that, because I think it's designed to flatter. Which is fine with me.

There is also a social networking aspect to this widget; along the side of the screen the service lists other people with similar Visual DNA -- though I'm not sure similarity equals a good match?

In summary:

Pros:

• Visually appealing
• Very easy to use
• Easily shared
• Fun

Cons:

• It is still beta, though I've noticed no problems using it
• Flash, which some folks avoid
• Not a lot of creative scope

See mine below the cut:

   

Cool Avatars & Network Aggregation Profiles: profilebuilder

This profile can be embedded in a page, so that all information is visible (this is another flash profile, so the first images are screenshots, and the flash images will go under the cut to speed loading on the main page):

Click image to see larger:

or it can be quietly linked on a sidebar, like this:

Sharon Brogan 

Click that blue P, and up pops the profile (assuming you have flash enabled.)

I think profilebuilder has the most potential of any I've seen to be useful for both personal and professional/ business bloggers. It's the most flexible; it can be funny and quirky, or sleek and professional, depending on what you want to do with it.

Your profile is your online place, it's the place to put anything you want — such as your interests, activities and contacts. From now on, wherever you sign your name, you sign your icon with it.

Establish a consistent profile across the web;
Manage what people know about you;
Present the specific information that different types of people see;
Enable people to easily find out more about you;
Track when and where your profile is accessed.

You can make several different profiles -- or differing versions of a profile -- to link in many different places. You could have one, expansive profile for a personal page, that includes hobbies and family photos; and another, more circumspect, profile for a professional site that includes a resume and contact information, but doesn't highlight your MySpace page.

...you can add your Profil.es icon next to your name anywhere on the web, including your website, your email, social networking sites, message boards, etc. Your Profil.es are in your hands! [More linking options, including automatic blog and email insertion are coming shortly!]

The founder links his profile in a signature on his blog posts:

Boyan Josic, Founder & CEO 

This is extremely flexible. You can design your own channels and select your own content. It really seems that the sky's the limit with this.

So, if this is so cool, flexible, and useful, why aren't you seeing it everywhere?

I have some guesses, below the cut:

 

Cool Avatars & Network Aggregation Profiles: mEgo

I'm going to review a few of these over the next couple of weeks, because they're fun. I had planned to start with profilebuilder, but woke this morning to find many hits on Watermark from mEgo, which linked to me (and several others) on its homepage. So I will begin with this, which is my favorite anyway.

Here is a quick sample, collected from browsing on the home page, of the range of visual possibilities this offers:

The actual flash versions are animated, and interactive. The buttons take you to content selected by the user.

mEgo was created with the mission to make managing and sharing your online selves a more coherent, fun and useful experience...

Think of your mEgo as having two parts:

• A physical body and background that you design
• and
• Customizable content (consisting of polls, feeds & profile data) that is categorized and linked to "hot spots" on your mEgo's body.

When you are creating your mEgo, you use the Looks editor to design the appearance of your mEgo. You can change your look as often as you want. You can also upload your own pictures, edit them with our Crop & Style photo editing tool and modify other background settings.

You then use the Feed and Content editors to further customize your mEgo with your own personal data.

This is probably not appropriate for use on a professional or business webpage -- unless you happen to be a professional creative -- but it seems ideal for a personal weblog. This one also works on MySpace, which I gather is picky about these things.

Pros:

• Fun, attractive, and very customizable.
• Inspires creativity -- a real opportunity to think about and express yourself.
• A lot of content in a small space.

Cons:

• This is beta. Beta = buggy. I had a hard time getting the home page to load today; and when it did load, it was slow, and/or crashed my browser. Perhaps they have been more successful than anticipated, and are overloaded.
• Not visible to those who disable flash.

I had a lot of fun making mine, which you can see below the cut:

   

bloggity bloggity blog blog blog

I.

Suzanne Stefanac, author of dispatches from blogistan; a travel guide for the modern blogger is this month's guest at The Well's InkWell.vue. Non-members are welcome: Join us, or email questions and conversational contributions to the Inkwell.vue hosts. If, after hanging out there a bit, you would like to explore The Well  further, drop me a note.

Filled with practical, easy-to-implement advice for making blogging more enjoyable, useful, and profitable, this book covers everything from blogging and how it fits into the history of journalism to practical tips for planning and managing a blog, attracting and retaining an active readership, and even generating revenue. Written by noted technology journalist and interactive media veteran Suzanne Stefanac, the book's fresh and succinct design; quotes and commentary from noted and celebrity bloggers (authors Bruce Sterling, Steven Johnson and Cory Doctorow, Craig Newmark of craigslist.org, NPR news commentator Farai Chideya, blog pioneer Justin Hall among others), accompanying blog site; and more, make this a blog book like no other!

Suzanne also contributes now and then to Blogging Blog, and has her own site at dispatches from blogistan. I got this book a bit over a month ago, sat down and read it cover to cover. Now I look forward to reading it again, more slowly, and this great opportunity to discuss one of my favorite topics -- blogging blogging blogging! -- with a true expert. This is a very cool book!

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?

Eponym Blog Host Review

As if I don't already have enough low-traffic blogs, I needed to go start another one. I decided to give Eponym a try. I've already got my main blog running on WordPress, a second blog over at Blogger, and I'm also fidding with b2evolution (review coming soon). I'm a sucker for trying new things.

Eponym offers a free basic account, and upgrades start at $4.95/month. Their shiny website proclaims that they have the "easiest to use and most comprehensive feature set of any blog service on the Internet." OK, then, show me your stuff.

I got an account and started my new blog, called (for now) "Sustain This!" (I'm obsessed about peak oil lately. Who woulda thought?)

And let me just say - wow. I am actually quite impressed with Eponym's blogging system. As you can see, I've used quite a few different blog systems. I've also had extensive experience with Movable Type/TypePad (what this blog is hosted on), Eponym's top competitor for the pay-to-play enhanced blogspace.

Eponym is starting to win me over for a number of reasons:

1. Superior Design and Content Layout.

I'm sorry, but can I admit that most TypePad templates are just butt ugly? And the same goes for Blogger. WordPress does a little better. Eponym has some pretty nifty templates - at the free level, the selection isn't extensive, but I liked what I saw. But here's where it gets interesting:

Eponym allows you to choose your design, and then goes a step further and gives you three layout styles to choose from. (Two-column left, two-column right, and three columns.) Once you have chosen your layout, you can then pop in your components just by dragging and dropping them into a window.

Now - pardon me if I am incorrect about TypePad's capabilities here, because I've only had full control over a custom Movable Type installation - but I have never seen any blog software offer such flexibility and ease of content layout.

Eponym offers a number of ready-made components for a variety of commonly-used blogging features, such as recent posts, recent comments, categories, visitors, etc. Instead of tinkering with template code, you just drag the component to the location you want it, and presto! There it is.

Even niftier - you can create your own custom component and drag that into its slot as well. I did this with Google ads (since I'm always working on monetizing my blogs). It worked perfectly.

2. Robust Content Organization.

Blogger, as we all know, fails the most when it comes to its lack of categories. Other blog platforms similarly disappoint, by making categories unilevel or hard to manage. Eponym offers nested categories, ways to display different categories differently (I admit I haven't explored this function yet), and an option to allow posts in subcategories to "bubble up" to parent categories.

Eponym also offers custom keywords for each article, sticky articles (that will remain on the top of the blog), and special posting functions for movie and book reviews. Neat.

3. Photos.

I will say honestly that I haven't tried photos yet, as I do not plan to use them much on this particular blog. But the functionality is there to create full photo albums with your Eponym blog, and I can tell this would be fantastic when used properly.

4. Streamlined back-end.

Eponym's user interface is simple and easy to use. There is a slight learning curve to figure out all the options and how to use them, but mostly this is a very user-friendly system.

5. Statistics.

Eponym offers robust site statistics, even at the free level. You'll not only find out how many hits your site gets, but you'll see what sites your visitors came from (referrer logs). Pretty darn nifty.

The Final Word

Overall, I have to say that Eponym has a fantastic service and should become a strong rival to TypePad. (I never liked TypePad - it seems clumsy to me and the interface never felt friendly.) If Eponym has one potential downfall, it's that it currently does not support multiple blogs easily (though that is on the way), and it's pricing isn't necessarily cheap compared to TypePad at the upper levels.

The free version does have an Eponym bar at the top (like Blogger) and some ads that must stay put on the page. (I don't care about the ads so much, and in fact, I added more ads.) When you upgrade your account, the Eponym bar and ads will be removed. If they someday offer an inexpensive way to host multiple blogs like TypePad, I may upgrade to a paid account and move my Blogger blog over.

If you are looking to start a new blog, I'd suggest giving Eponym a test run. I'm quickly becoming a convert and you may, too.

Yahoo! 360 - A Quick Review

I've played with this for awhile now, and watched other people play with it; these are my brief initial impressions (remembering that this is still in Beta):

• This is not a real blogging tool, though it would work fine for a journal or diary to share with friends. In fact, if I use the blogging feature at all, this will be why; the privacy features are great. You can specify a particular group of people who can see it. The ability to set privacy by post, rather than for the entire blog, would make it more flexible.
• The simplicity of the blogging feature should make it accessible to non-techies.
• It is kind of nice to have a page with photos and links to friends -- but of course I already have a version of that, with my blogrolls, for web-friends. I would like to use 360 for personal friends and family, but so far even those who accepted the invitation are not using their page.
• I joined because I adore Flickr, and given that Yahoo just bought Flickr, I'm expecting some integration. That hasn't happened yet.
• The Yahoo Photos feature seems, well . . . ordinary. I'm reluctant to upload photos there, since mine are already on Flickr, and I'm counting on the above point. Yahoo Photos offers printing service, which Flickr does not -- but I've no idea of the quality.
• I'm not an Instant Messaging user, at least not much -- and if I do use it I sign on to Chatango -- but I expect that folks who do use IM will get more out of 360.
• I don't know how to do the degree character, and I'll bet most of you don't either; I'll also bet they drop this, and go to plain 360 when they come out of beta.

So, in brief, my hope is that this service becomes more and more simple to use, so that folks who are currently intimidated by the web will be comfortable with it. I would really like my InRealLife friends to have an easy, fun, and useful way to start using the internet for more than email.

More reviews here, here, here, and an interesting note here.

ADDITION April 4: striatic has a user narrative perspective here. There is some really good discussion in the comments on his post, too.

I have lots of invitations; email me if you'd like one (email link on sidebar.)