3 posts tagged “blogging”

Greetings to my regular readers.  Here as a test run are my first month or so of running on this platform - Vox.  Whether it continues here or goes back to my existing Typepad platform depends on your feedback (because the audience comes first, folks! as I keep telling my students).

As far as I can tell, so far, the main plusses and minuses are as follows.

PLUSSES

1. There is a capacity in this platform for you the reader to register as a regular reader, and thereby have access to greater levels of security of posting (such as friends-only postings).  (BUT- I'm not sure if most of my readers would want to bother about that.  My existing Typepad sites had password access capacity, but I rarely invoked it for the same reason.)
2. If  I can reduce my use of the existing platform (Typepad), I might be able to reduce my monthly access fee.  (I am hoping to move my work-related teaching weblogs to the TAFE server next year.)  (BUT this is not your problem, folks!)
3. There is a much bigger emphasis on the online "community" here - if you wanted to see what other people in Vox were writing about a given subject, you can click on the tag and see for yourself (BUT this has privacy implications - see below).
4. The tag (subject heading) system is much more precise than Typepad.

MINUSES

1. From point 1 of Plusses, I am not sure if most of my readers would be bothered (or happy) to register with this journal as a Vox user (and I can understand this, too).  Whilst I highly trust the Six Apart people (makers of Vox and my old platform of Typepad), I can understand if you were not happy about having to sign up for access.  And  whilst the Six Apart privacy principles are very comprehensive, Australian readers might be unhappy that the principles are not enforceable under Australian privacy law as Vox is based offshore (in the USA).
2. The dreaded ads have appeared!  They are text-based (like Google, which does not stop anyone from using Google), and therefore far less intrusive than pop-ups or noisy ads - but they are  there, and until now I have taken great pride in having no ads.  This is purely an economic thing on my part, but it does affect my audience.
3. As mentioned in point 3 of plusses, the "community" aspect might give cause to privacy issues.  I have always tried to respect friends' privacy by not using family names, exact suburb names, or other identifying information.  There is, of course, also a potential for privacy issues on my old platform because it is automatically indexed by Google and Yahoo! - something over which I have no control (unless I bring in reader registration on this site or passwords on my old platform - but I'm not sure if my targeted audience would like that).  But the privacy issue is probably a bit more concentrated in Vox, because the makers are marketing it as a "community".
4. Vox seems to be loaded with javascript, and some browsers don't like it.  Several of my readers who have already tested this site say that the browser groans a bit under the weight of all this stuff (which powers the tags, inserts, and so forth).

Anyway, what do you think?  feedback welcome, either as a comment here or as an email.

I'll be running both new and old sites for at least the next month or so whilst getting feedback and deciding.  In the meantime, posts from here will be indexed on The California Chronicle.

Cheers!

• Link to my original greeting of last month when this kicked off.

An item appeared in this morning's Sydney Morning Herald,  written by an enthusiast of Crown Princess Mary of Denmark (formerly Miss Mary Donaldson of the Australian State of Tasmania).

Danish Royal couple observe kangaroos

I'd like to link to this article here because:

1. To illustrate what I understand to be the difference between a blogger and a bulletin-board reader.  The writer of this article appears (by my understanding) to be misusing the term "blogger". I understand a blogger writes a weblog (such as you are reading now - although I desparately try to avoid using that term, preferring the word "journal"), whereas a reader of web-based bulletin-boards does exactly that - read web-based bulletin-boards
2. To show how fanatical these royal watchers are.  A thread on the poor lady's handbags, for heaven's sake, as well as her dog and her double-ear-piercing. 

To be fair I should qualify point # 2 by saying that:

a.)  My lack of enthusiasm with royal families rigourously excludes those nations with an indigenous royal family (such as Great Britain, Japan or Denmark).  If those good folk grew up with that system, them good luck to them.  Its the transplanted versions (such as we have in Australia) that worry me, particularly since many of the current members of the British Royal Family have failed to provide the good example in conduct and attitude that I was taught in school (and a Catholic school, I might add!) made them so ideal for the job.

b.) I recognise the previous role of the British monarchy in the establishment of our legal system and our public values, and in no way do I wish to devalue this.  But given that Australia is presently stuck with a constitutional monarchy that appears to be suffering from Relevance Deprivation Syndrome, perhaps we could do no worse than trade in the troubled British Royal Family for the Danes?  After all, we even have a (former) Australian in the Danish version of "The Firm".

• Published article
• Link in NewsVine
  

At the risk of becoming even more confused than I am now, I have agreed to test this weblog site.  It is designed by the people at Six Apart of San Francisco (the people behind Typepad, where the California Chronicle sits). 

I think that the Six Apart folk are trying to market a more personally-focussed form of web-based weblogging software (and I can understand this, too - I'm not into podcasts at the moment, for example, and I suspect most California Chronicle readers currently are not).

Until I choose which of the 2 formats will carry the California Chronicle forward, I will concurrently keep the current Typepad format (and a cross-post will automatically appear on that journal).  I apologise if this causes any inconvenience to my valued readers.