pzarquon
August 5th, 2006, 09:00 AM
Anyone testing Vox (http://www.vox.com)?
At first glance (and perhaps at second, even I'm not sure yet), Vox is Yet Another Blogging Service. Furthering this thought is the fact that it's the latest offering from SixApart -- the company behind Movable Type (http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/), the blogging software, TypePad (http://www.typepad.com), the (paid) online service for people who don't want to bother with installing software on a webserver, and LiveJournal (http://www.livejournal.com), the free blog service they bought out that predated the word blog.
A lot of the head scratching is over why they'd basically develop another site from scratch that largely competes with its existing line. And a lot of the users of its existing products are wondering whether it means they're going to be getting even less love.
Still, to geeks interested in picking apart such things, Vox does seem different. In several small ways, the differences are big enough to enjoy. Better interoperability with other web services, gentler interface cues that won't scare your mom away (i.e. LiveJournal), comfort with managing and organizing multimedia, various personalization options (for writers and readers), and access controls (for those who want to be exhibitionists, but only to certain people).
It's in beta testing now, but invites are out there. I've got a couple if anyone's really interested (preferably someone with an itch to write who hasn't used such tools much before). Given I'm pretty entrenched in using my current tools and already have "test accounts" waiting for me at just about every other web service, I doubt Vox will be a regular outlet of mine (right now, it's a backup for my moblog (http://hawaii.vox.com)). But it's nice to see another option out there to possibly recommend when someone's looking to publish whatever on the web.
At first glance (and perhaps at second, even I'm not sure yet), Vox is Yet Another Blogging Service. Furthering this thought is the fact that it's the latest offering from SixApart -- the company behind Movable Type (http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/), the blogging software, TypePad (http://www.typepad.com), the (paid) online service for people who don't want to bother with installing software on a webserver, and LiveJournal (http://www.livejournal.com), the free blog service they bought out that predated the word blog.
A lot of the head scratching is over why they'd basically develop another site from scratch that largely competes with its existing line. And a lot of the users of its existing products are wondering whether it means they're going to be getting even less love.
Still, to geeks interested in picking apart such things, Vox does seem different. In several small ways, the differences are big enough to enjoy. Better interoperability with other web services, gentler interface cues that won't scare your mom away (i.e. LiveJournal), comfort with managing and organizing multimedia, various personalization options (for writers and readers), and access controls (for those who want to be exhibitionists, but only to certain people).
It's in beta testing now, but invites are out there. I've got a couple if anyone's really interested (preferably someone with an itch to write who hasn't used such tools much before). Given I'm pretty entrenched in using my current tools and already have "test accounts" waiting for me at just about every other web service, I doubt Vox will be a regular outlet of mine (right now, it's a backup for my moblog (http://hawaii.vox.com)). But it's nice to see another option out there to possibly recommend when someone's looking to publish whatever on the web.