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 seems a bit more polished 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. The other thing that it's missing is the creation of communities, such as http://community.livejournal.com/libraries/. On the other hand, it has some appealing privacy 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. Also, LiveJournal, with its friend filtering, allows this as well.
Edit: Here's some more background about Vox.
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.
