6 posts tagged “blogging”

It is the most natural and comfortable thing in life to sink into a rut. Our routines aren't usually just blind habit, they usually develop that way for very good reasons. I don't think that ruts are bad per se, but that it is good to be aware of them. Sometimes the only way to know that you've been in a rut is the intense feeling of oddness which occurs when for whatever reason, you step out of the rut.

An accident is the most common way that I discover a rut. It doesn't have to be a horrible thing like a car accident - although that too will usually do the trick for people unfortunate enough to have one. For me it was something as small as misplacing the backpack I take with me on the train to work. Deprived of my usual reading and writing material, I had to think of different ways of spending my time on the train.

I ended up borrowing a book from my workplace (an academic business library) which I never would have read otherwise.

Why did I think I would never have read this? No huge reasons - I've never really felt a need or reason to read Scoble's blog (not that I think it's bad or anything) and the idea of learning more about blogs in the book medium seemed kind of lame. But there is something about the medium of books which makes it a good microscope for studying any subject in depth, including blogs.

And the rut? It's still there, and I will eventually fall back into it or the next one, but before I do, I want to see if I can take a look at a few other things differently.

I have a new toy. No, it's not a toy, it's a practical thing which I've been needing for quite a while. Well, whatever it is, I'm happy so far.

My life is blessed and cursed by the fact that I live in the beautiful Blue Mountains and have a job which I like which is a two hour trip away in Sydney.

Ever since I moved to the Blue Mountains and started this arduous 4 hour each day commute, my blogging and other writing has suffered. I tried a paper journal, but discovered that I loathe transcribing my messing handwriting in to plain old text. It just didn't work.

So I've got a new pda with a fold-up keyboard which enables me to type during the hours that I'm sitting on a train. A laptop would have been nice, but that was out of my budget plus I find that laptops can be too bulky and nerve-wracking to carry around. Here's to drafting blog posts and Vox posts and other writing on the train.

Listening to:

I've been on Vox for about two weeks now and have a better idea of whether it's worth my while.

Things I like about Vox:

• I like it that adding somebody into my neighbourhood is quite distinct from friending somebody. In LiveJournal, the only way of following an interesting journal is to friend them - and even if it's only semantics, "friend" is such a loaded word. It's good that Vox separates following another blog from friending.
• It's possible to adjust the settings so that the neighbourhood doesn't show on the main page of the blog. Something I hate about so many of the social sites is that the list of friends/neighbours all showed as if it were a popularity contest.
• The AJAX powered interface works pretty well
  
• There is something interesting about QOTD. At first I rebelled at the idea as a glorified meme, but they're usually short and not too taxing to participate in
  

Things I'm not so sure about:

• Although generally the interface is nice, sometimes it seems a little confusing. For example, what is the real difference between "Neighborhood" on the top menu (when logged in) and "Connect" on the second menu? What is the point of Collections? I've yet to see Collections used in any really helpful way.
• A non-US nitpick: there are actually books and CDs (like those published particularly for the Australian market) which exist and aren't available in Amazon.com. I wish there were an easier and better way of linking to these
• Is there really a need for it? Yes, Vox may have nifty web 2.0 features (those who know me well know that I can never mention 2.0 without a degree of irony), but is there really a need for it when people have invested their writing and thoughts in LiveJournal, MySpace, not mention conventional blogs like TypePad, WordPress, blogger. Is it worth my while investing my time and thoughts in Vox if it never really takes off in this crowded market? There is nothing sadder than spending time in a social site which has seen better days - anybody remember orkut and tribe.net?
• As I've said before, if Vox is to be taken at all seriously as a way of blogging - it needs to allow commenting by non-Vox members and ways of dealing with comment spam
  
• Other than QOTD and tags, there are no community features in Vox. I think that this is a mistake

So I have some scepticism about Vox, but I'm tempted to stick with it for a while longer because it's come into my life at a time when I've been wondering whether the other ways I've been blogging/journalling still work for me. I like my LiveJournal and I like things which I've done in my explodedlibrary blog, but nothing lasts forever. It's better to accept that things have a life cycle and move on than to be in denial and let things stagnate. I cannot  over-emphasize that in this I'm only talking about my own blog and LiveJournal, and not about anybody else's.
It's also fun being in a new thing, when everybody is still discovering and making new connections. Later on things tend to ossify. But that's not happening yet and it's enjoyable to participate. Are these the halcyon days?

I found this information via Google blog search. It contains Anil Dash of Six Apart speaking quite candidly about Vox and how it fits in with LiveJournal (many LiveJournal users are feeling very neglected right now) and TypePad.

If anybody's really interested in this topic, I suggest that they read the entire thread, and not form too many opinions from my excerpts. There is always a risk that excerpting and summarizing can take words out of context and distort. I've tried not to do that. I decided that it was still worth doing, because I found his comments very interesting and they were rather buried in a long thread. I wanted to make this information more available.

Finally, I must repeat his disclaimer that these are just his opinions, not Six Apart's.

Caveats taken care of, this is some of what he said:

Vox will be free and ad-supported.

...

To be honest, we're deliberately not talking a whole bunch about Vox's business model and even the features because it's still *really* early. We're going to let the community tell us how things should work and when certain parts are done. Basically, it's a case of not wanting to promote somethat that most people can't even see, let alone make use of. If we were talking a lot about it, I'm sure we'd get grief for being a bunch of Web 2.0 hypesters, and that'd be a fair criticism, too. So we chose to get grief for being too closed, and that's a fair point.

...

Truth is, Vox will never have all the stuff LJ has, probably. Like, LJ has Singles and a To-Do list and god only knows what else. I sure *hope* Vox never has all the features TypePad has. ("I need to customize my feed URLs!") But we will be sharing the best, most useful parts between all three platforms, and Vox is already starting to have its own distinct community.

...

Truth be told, I think a lot people took the statement of *fact* that LiveJournal is a predominantly young community as something other than what it was. LJ, to me, is more about people who want a community and are very comfortable with the fact that they're not "mainstream". (Whatever that means.) Hell, most of us on LJ are proud of that fact.

...

Vox is more for people who don't really care about technology, but want to connect with friends and family. My gut tells me that skews older and less techie and probably more mainstream. Is there some overlap? Sure. Does that mean OH NOES EVERYONE PANIC!!!1!

I don't think so. :)

Now, the question I must ask myself - if Vox is aimed at an older and less techie and more mainstream type of crowd, am I going to decide that I don't want to like it any more? Does a part of me want to rebel from being pigeon-holed in such terms? I think that for the time being, I'm going to pretend that I didn't read those final few paragraphs. I'll continue evaluating Vox on its face value. If I am honest with myself, I will admit that I'm not the most techie guy in the world. After all, my main blog is on TypePad, not WordPress or MovableType. I will dabble with technology to advance the primary goal which is writing and other content, but I don't enjoy dabbling more than I need to.

[cross-posted from the explodedlibrary]

I'm taking a break from this hiatus to mention a new blogging service I've been playing around with lately. Vox (previously known as Comet) is a Six Apart product, currently on an invitation-only preview release. Here's my very rudimentary Vox page. I don't quite know how to describe it. Is it the love child of LiveJournal and TypePad? It's a bit more sophisticated than LiveJournal, but it lacks all of the customization I'm used to with TypePad. Most annoyingly, Vox does not allow comments from non-Vox members, which damages its blogging credentials - even LiveJournal allows this as an option. On the other hand, it has some appealing granular features. I like the idea of having one blog where I can publish things to the entire world, but also allows me to have posts viewable only by friends or family. I particularly like how it's "friends or family" - because the two groups are very distinct, there's all sorts of things I'd like to share with friends which I wouldn't want my mother reading and vice versa. Even so, Vox isn't alone in offering this. I recall that Yahoo 360 offers customizable access levels - but that didn't appeal to me in other ways.

The big blogging conundrum, as I experience it, is that I want to share my experiences with other people and make connections that way, but I still have expectations of privacy. I don't want to share everything I write with everyone. My solution has been to scatter my writing - from the explodedlibrary to the explodedlibrary bunker to my LiveJournal to a password-protected blog for close friends and family. And it's not working. I'm spread too thin. It's also because of various changes in my life, I have less time for blogging than I used to.

Not everybody is as reserved as me and has these problems with mixing the private and the public. Good for them - we all need to find our own answers to these questions

I had better finish now before I start rambling - but I'm glad that the act of writing tonight has given me some ideas to ponder of how to find a better mix.

Oh, and if you'd really like an invitation to Vox, please ask so in a comment. I have unlimited invitations for the Starter level accounts - what allows you to keep track of Vox blogs more easily, comment and read protected posts. Also I hear that Six Apart sometimes upgrades starter accounts into full ones.

How interesting, in the same week that I started testing MySpace, I got this Vox invite. It being work and all, I haven't been able to dabble as much as I'd like, but it seems quite slick. Now I learn that Vox is going to be the grown up version of LiveJournal.