10 posts tagged “vox”
I had no idea how busy Vox is compared to a high flying service like Twitter. Wow! This is a pretty strong community. Granted it isn't a status update service/microblogging wanna be service like Twitter is but there is seems to be a lot of steam in blogs. They are certainly nothing to be sneezed at, particularly not a service like Vox.
Yesterday I hatched a new plan to change my blogs around and emphasise my various life streams on the Web. I took my Wired Gecko blog, exported its content and then merged the content with my law blog with the plan to amalgmate them into a single personal blog. I also wanted to turn Wired Gecko into my tumblelog (have I said this stuff before, having a strong sense of deja vu!?) and use that blog for bits and pieces I come across on the Web.
True to form I moved Wired Gecko over to the tumblelog before planning the rest of the process properly and I now have Wired Gecko working well but the consolidated blog just doesn't come up. Not sure what I did there! I have been thinking how handy it would be to just use this blog as my main blog although the two problems are that I can't import over 3 years of posts from Wired Gecko and I can't really put my own AdSense ads on Vox and keep my trickle of advertising revenue coming in.
Aside from these two issues, Vox is a pretty decent candidate as a main blogging platform ...
Daniel Jalkut from Red Sweater Software released version 1.2 of MarsEdit recently. I use MarsEdit for my blogging and I see that MarsEdit now supports Vox too. I am curious to see how Vox handles posts published using MarsEdit as opposed to its own excellent blog editor with all its wonderful interface options.
I don't see the option to upload media items in a post to Vox when a post is published so this may only really be good for posts that rely on photos and videos that are hosted elsewhere already.
Update: I just tried to post from MarsEdit (this post actually) and it didn't come out very well. I did read somewhere that this has more to do with the Vox infrastructure than anything else though. MarsEdit is fantastic software and I highly recommend it, just not for Vox postings.
I haven't posted on here for a little while now and the main reason is that I have been struggling to update my blogs on Six Apart's servers, including this blog. I don't know if it is just my laptop or perhaps because of some issue with our link to the international backbone but I have been receiving a number of gateway and timeout errors lately.
Anyway, it is about 11:15 on a grey Thursday. It has been raining for the last few days and, in a way, has been a welcome change after a brief heat wave. My garden is loving this wet weather. At the same time it would be really nice to return to blue skies and temperatures in the mid-20s.
I'm not really in the mood for work lately. I feel a bit like the last couple months have been really draining and I could really use a break. I would like to just take a day off sometime in the next week or so but there always seems to be something that needs to be done. I think I am really going to have to make time for myself and forcibly detach myself from my office and even my laptop for a day and just go out and do something completely not work-related.
On that note, I am going to get back to work. ;-)
Hah, I just found Wil Wheaton on Vox. Ok, private "yay" moment is over now, I'm off to bed.
(seriously, I am chuffed he blogs on Vox - I really enjoy the stuff he does and his blogs)
I am online almost the whole day and I have AIM, GTalk and Skype running almost constantly so why not IM me and say hi? It would be great to chat to other Vox users out there, especially people in my neighbourhood (mainly because I find you to be particularly interesting).
My details are on the right. You know what to do ...
I was chatting to my cousin the other day about a blogging platform to use. He originally asked me about WordPress or Drupal with the intention of hosting the blog on server space he would rent each month. His initial idea was to set up a family blog where members of his family would post updates from time to time. He also wanted everyone to have a family email address. All of this sounded great in theory but when we started to consider whether his parents would contribute to the blog the odds were that they wouldn't. At the same time it seemed unlikely that they would make the switch across to a different email address so the need for a domain name became far less pressing.
So we were left with the desire for a blog that, at the very least, he and his brother could contribute to. At that point we considered WordPress.com (the free hosted version of WordPress) and Vox. The advantages of both are that both are free, and I believe more than one person can contribute either by being an author (in the case of WordPress.com) or by making submissions by email (in the case of Vox).
Of the two, I have come to believe that Vox is far superior as a personal blogging platform, primarily because of the ability of a Vox blogger to link in with a variety of multimedia both hosted on Vox servers as well as on other services. Both services have their limitations because they are hosted platforms and are likely funded by advertising revenue generated by visitors. This is particularly so in the case of Vox. You can see it in the form of ads on the side of the page and at the bottom and I suspect all the links to Amazon that are created when a blogger references a book, movie or music benefit Six Apart and help pay for the hosting.
It is this inability to freely customise the templates and underlying code of Vox and add advertising that benefit the blogger that make Vox far more appropriate as a personal blogging platform (which is the intention behind it) and not an income generating tool. No surprises there.
Bottom line is that Vox is an awesome personal blogging platform and while I am curious what the new version of Blogger will be like when it launches, I think Six Apart have really done an awesome job and I look forward when Vox becomes publicly available to see how it develops.
I am listening to the Inside the Net interview with Mena Trott of Six Apart. It is a really interesting interview about Vox and where Six Apart sees Vox going. The approach to Vox is pretty much what I expected. Vox is not intended to become a business platform but rather a smaller scale social blogging platform where you may only connect to 20 people or so and share your thoughts and experiences with them. There has been so much talk about social networking that it feels a little silly to describe Vox as a social networking tool and yet that is what it is.
Mena did mention that TypePad will probably receive some of the features that make Vox such an awesome tool. These features include the ability to connect to content on Flickr, Amazon, YouTube and iStockphoto through the conduits put in place for this purpose. That is pretty exciting and would really take TypePad a few steps ahead of its competitors. These kinds of innovations really take platforms like Vox that much closer to what people envisage when they talk about Web 2.0, in my mind.
Amber MacArthur, Leo Laporte's co-host in Inside the Net, asked a question that has been bouncing around in my head for a few days and it is pretty much whether Mena believes TypePad subscribers would move across to Vox or not and her answer is basically that Vox is designed for a different type of interaction. I have two TypePad blogs running and they serve a very different purpose to my Vox blog in that I am free to add advertising to my TypePad blogs, customise the pages and run a business on TypePad. On the other hand, Vox really does feel like it is better suited as my personal blog where I blab about what is happening at home with my puppies, my wife, family and friends (not necessarily in that order though) even though I am using this blog for social networking commentary for the time being.
Some people have commented on the ads that you see on each blog. Mena has confirmed that Vox is an ad-supported service and will be free. There is a chance that there may be premium services and this will depend on users' demands down the line. We can probably expect Vox to go public and move out of beta towards the end of the year.
For my part I am looking forward to seeing how Vox impacts on the feature changes to TypePad and other Six Apart products. Anyway, I really enjoyed this interview. Thanks Amber and Leo!
Update:
If you would like an invitation then either drop me a line or go to http://www.sixapart.com/vox/ and request an invitation to sign up.
First impressions aren't always the most accurate. I was complaining a little about the lack of RSS feeds on Vox and it seems I was wrong. I have been playing around a little more with Vox and with adding all sorts of things to my blog and I am enjoying the experience quite a bit.
I posted a brief review on Vox to Grouchy Blogger so feel free to pop over and let me know what your thoughts are.
By the way, I noticed that when I referenced some images from my Flickr account that they brought their rags with them into Vox. Nice touch!
I opened my mail this morning to find that I had been sent an invitation to sign up with Vox. I have been waiting to see what "Project Comet" (Vox's previous code name) would become and I am a little disappointed. I thought Project Comet would be a series of improvements and updates to TypePad (where my two blogs, Neuvo and Grouchy Blogger are) rather than a wholly new service.
At first glance this service seems to be a lot like Yahoo! 360. It is a multimedia, social networking site seemingly intended to emulate the successes of Myspace and Yahoo! 360. Notwithstanding my previous reservations, I am interested in seeing how this service evolves and what that evolution may mean for TypePad and other Six Apart services.
