SixApart’s Vox Is Blogging With Community Feel
Think about your favourite blogging service(blogger.com, wordpress.com etc) and think about all the fun you have at community sites like MySpace, Live Spaces, Orkut etc and then combine these two environments: You get Vox, the new blogging service from SixApart, for those who love to blog but love the community feel too. Though most of the community websites too support blogging, Vox is a blogging service foremost, and communities are created around these blogs.
Vox is still an invite-only, beta service. If you are interested, you can place a request for an invite and then wait for it to arrive. Or hunt the Internet for a spare Vox invites from the existing Vox members. I had got an invite several weeks ago from SixApart but didn’t quite feel motivated to start using it. It does have some features that are lacking in most of the free services, like convenient way of adding youtube videos, flickr/photobucket pictures, books from Amazon.com etc. Here is a visual tour of the service for those who don’t have an invite to check out how the interface of Vox looks like.
Composing blog entries is a child play with no HTML knowledge needed. Inserting images, videos etc is easier than in other free services. Tags can be attached to every individual blog entry.
Adding and organising a collection of media files is simple from the following interface. The media files thus added are accessible while composing the blog entries.
Upload photos from your computer, flickr account, photobucket etc to Vox Library.
Upload videos from your computer, Youtube etc to Vox Library.
Comments can be added to the pictures too.
One of the following layouts can be selected for a blog. The Vox team keeps adding new layouts and themes to go with these layouts at regular intervals so that the users have a good collection from which to choose a favourite look for one’s blog. Two column and three column layouts are available for selection.
Select which modules you want appearing in the sidebar of the blog. Similar to Wordpress Widgets.
This is how the neighbourhood looks like. The appearance depends on who is present in your neighbourhood.
Vox team keeps sending invites to existing Vox members so that they can invite their friends to Vox. If you are desparate to try out this service, you can consider sending a request on the SixApart mailing list.
