4 posts tagged “vox”
... and still no fix.
Just a note to my Vox friends -- I am unable to comment on any Vox blogs -- even my own. So don't think I'm ignoring you; I'm not. I just can't tell you otherwise.
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?
Since I am -- as most Voxrs (?) are, beginning a new blog here, I thought it might be useful to port over part of a post from Blogging Blog. Some of this won't apply to folks blogging/ journaling/ what-evering here at Vox, but some might be helpful:
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. [Even at Vox, one wants to choose with care; you want to be findable by those whom you want to find you.]
- 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. [I think Vox, with tags, is going to work fine for this. I like tags even better than categories.]
- 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. [I'm assuming we will continue to have more choices here, and there is some advantage to being able to focus on content, rather than constant design tweaking.]
- 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 [at Blogging Blog] 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.
[Read the rest of this post at Blogging Blog]
