Correction and some Wired articles of interest

[foxfirefey]

anildash kindly corrects me on Vox having/not having communities in the future: "That being said, I'm not saying whether Vox will or won't have communities -- as far as I know, we haven't announced either way yet. My guess is we're going to just listen to the feedback people submit and judge by that, same as with everything else

Comments

[kunzite1]

A real attention to privacy and control, which allows you to feel that you have a lot of flexibility in who can see your stuff

they keep pushing that they've got these awesome ways for security with entries.

excuse me? LJ's had that since like forever. it's nothing new.

And then the ability to play well with other web services. We integrate well with Flickr, YouTube, Amazon, Photobucket and iFilm

vox also integrates well with other services? heh, it took a while for vox video to be happy on LJ. and they've also got video from other sites that can be embedded as well. again, nothing new.

Six Apart, the San Francisco company that operates some of the world's most popular blogging platforms: TypePad, Movable Type and LiveJournal.

Right now, on the smallest level, TypePad blogs can cross post to Vox. It will give you an option to add, "I'll be writing about this on Vox." That's just one example. We imagine we'll have it for all of our products, including Movable Type.movable type and typepad are not very different. typepad

[anildash]

I don't want to make a bigger promise than I should, but I think you've captured the vision of this whole thing pretty well. Now I just gotta figure out how we tell this whole story in a coherent way to people who don't know all our tools inside-and-out.

[matgb]

I think you've captured the vision of this whole thing pretty well

I am teh winnar?

I just gotta figure out how we tell this whole story in a coherent way to people

Um, shouldn't that have been figured out before the launch? Like I said above, complementary systems make sense, and if they were integrated properly in a way I could sign my family up to the easy to use Vox and they could read my LJ entries easily, I'd be happier.

As it is, LJs UI still sucks, it's not at all new person friendly and Vox annoys me completely as it's not for someone like me. Of course, I'd rather the UI for LJ were fixed and a decent 'getting started' section were there, for those that aren't introduced directly by friends, but there y'go...

[foxfirefey]

Oh oh oh oh, I think chasethestars might have shown me this WP plugin, but it doesn the Amazon integration, I think, and I figured I'd mention it just in case you haven't seen it! Which you probably have. But just in case.

Now Reading.

[matgb]

Now THAT, I like. I may have to do a test install on a spare subdomain just to see what I can do with it, been planning to for awhile anyway.

[foxfirefey]

Me, I need to work out a better solution for importing an LJ with comments that doesn't require shell access to hosting!

I've been adoring Gregarius for the past few days, though, especially since LJ's RSS can be so finicky.

[anildash]

On the other hand, Vox is less customizable and more automatic. It could be marketed as blogging for dummies, with LJ marketed as blogging for technorati. And that might be what the whole LJers-are-teens angle is all about.

I am totally stealing this. :)

[ex_uniquewo]

"On the other hand, Vox is less customizable and more automatic. It could be marketed as blogging for dummies, with LJ marketed as blogging for technorati. And that might be what the whole LJers-are-teens angle is all about."

That's funny because a lot my LJ friends - and particularly my older friends - would label themselves as dummies when it comes to that sort of thing - hence the making of newbie guides BTW which LJ should have but don't (and since tipoftheday is deader than dead that won't change anytime soon) and they don't particularly like Vox. During the latest blackout, people went to Vox, had a look, found it horrible and then promptly went to GJ. I won't repeat some the things that were said about Vox but let's just say it wasn't pretty. XD the_lj_refuge is where I found all my friends.
Moreover, most people who ask dumb questions in customization help communities are teens. Seriously, it's scary how easily you can spot them. And I won't mention the ones who post to support. *rolls eyes*

[ex_shattered767]

Moving to WP is not hard at all. I promise.

Come to the light side. Our cookies are better.

[matgb]

Yeah, um, lesse, WP blogs wot I'm using. OK, the last is brand new, the middle is mostly used for me to check themes out easily, but the first is good.

WP is great for blogging. But my journal is a mix of different stuff, and I'd miss my friends page and the silly little things (like polls). Hopefully life will calm down a bit soon, I'll get my head straight, and I'll be able to put some effort into helping at lj2wordpress a bit more.

Now, if we could integrate that to friends pages using openID, I'd switch immediately. But I like cookies.

[ex_shattered767]

Right now I'm substituting the NewsFox extension and subscribing to the feeds of my friends' journals for a friends page. I'm not sure if it's a cookie thing or due to my having LJlogin, but I can get friendslocked entries there, too.

It's funny - since I switched I post a lot less filler crap. No memes and such.

[foxfirefey]

I think it's a cookie thing--if I remember correctly, all LJLogin does is set login cookies. (And it misses some, like the ones for ScrapBook too.)

On my computer, Safari will automatically get friended entries in its RSS reader for the same reason.

Maybe other RSS readers have cookie capabilities that could be put to good use; and if not, there's always ?auth=digest.

I also have an S2 style set up that makes an RSS feed out of my friends page proper. I need to integrate it into an S2 style so that eventually I can go Basic and keep that functionality.

[anildash]

Honest question: If ads bother you on LJ, how come the WP team's use of hidden text link ads didn't bother you enough to leave their community?

[foxfirefey]

I'm confused. Are you talking about the seach engine spam scandal or the ads being on Wordpress.com?

If it's the former, Matt got a sound drubbing, stopped doing it and apologized very quickly after it was found out. (I only recently found out about it myself.) If it's the latter, I don't know how putting ads on a hosted service they run affects how she runs a blog on her own hosting?

The first incident was fairly unethical, but it was dealt with, and using the WordPress software doesn't still unwittingly support such actions. There are many contributors and developers in the community that were not involved with that action, as well.

As for ads on there, I don't recall anyone on WP.com ever making any social contract not to have banner ads on their pages. Besides which they're not even obnoxious flash ads, either, hehe.

[ex_shattered767]

Exactly. Whatever ads they are using aren't shoving dating services in my face or downloading spyware to my computer, they're not Flash and they're not banners and heck, I haven't even really noticed them. I've taken screencaps from my free accounts of LJ's ads breaking pages.

But I find it hilarious that someone would be so quick to jump to the conclusion that I deserted over a year of paid time and switched webhosts to pay $100+/yr to host my blog over ads, without having any indicatiors within this post's comment threads leading to that conclusion, and especially when what little text is on my profile page says I left because of the staff.

[ex_shattered767]

You think I quit LJ over ads?

I hate to break it to you, but I quit LJ because a couple of the staff members have been absolute a-holes towards me for months, including but not limited to saying things in this community, trolling in another community I used to help run, and banning me from a number of official communities, some of which I still helped in even after I quit Support, because they don't like me because I say what's on my mind.

I've been sick and tired of LJ since...last year before the test server crashed. Compared to everything else that was bothering me, ads are towards the bottom of the list.