2 posts from 2006

Well it's the day of my first post here at Vox and the last day of 2006 and the last day of the Vox World Tour contest and I have every reason to celebrate, as I'm really excited about this service. After considerable careful research and perusing many blogging tools and their features, I chose Vox as my blogging tool of choice to ring in 2007, as it gives me all the features I want and none that I don't. Usually I'm a day late and a dollar short, but it seems I've just scurried under the wire and not a moment too soon. I have wanted revisit Paris and to get back out to San Fransico again for some time to visit with friends, stop in at Live365, my Gen80s iTunes stream host, to enjoy the cuisine, sights and sounds once again of the beautiful city by the sea. Along came Vox to make my blogging goals happen for 2007 with the potential to win a killer World Tour and visit to SF and Paris again too? What could make the New Year better, if you ask this native New Yorker...?

As I've mentioned in my first post here at Vox, due to time and format constraints, I've been a pretty uncommitted blogger which goes hand in hand with my "on the go" lifestyle. That being said, I'm not one for New Year's resolutions, but I do have a goal - to be a better blogger in 2007.  I'm trusting Vox to get me there.

I have not chosen Vox, or to blog in general, because I have illusions becoming "notorious" in the world of blogging or to meet people, but that being said, they would be nice perks! Having a community to connect with is a good thing and a Vox feature I value, since I met my "significant other" and have made many good friends through contact and shared interests via online communities.  The primary reason I have chosen Vox is the ease of use, ability to control access levels to what I publish and features that will allow me a personal place document in words, images and music, incrementally, if not daily, ideas and experiences that are important to me. This service combines ease and organization with enough flexiblity in layout and design, integration with other services I already use like Flickr, You Tube and Amazon, is media rich, allows for mobile blogging for those with busy life styles and still fosters a sense of community.

I am not new to blogging or to creating and coding on the web. I have hosted WordPress on my own server, used a web based professionally oriented paid subscription blog, and used another free, older, bare bones blogging service which wasn't for me at all. None of them, for a variety of reasons, really met my combined needs or facilitated blogging based on my interests or busy lifestyle - they were either too complex with too much up front set up, too time consuming, too business oriented, too bare bones, didn't support mobile blogging, had slow servers with minimal storage space, lacked a community or were fee based making me feel guilty if I failed to post or use the service consistantly.

I love the ease of use coupled with the features Vox offers such as solid array of clean yet artistically designed, expressive, interest based design templates/layouts available with a couple mouse clicks, blogging featuring a variety of media types, especially audio, video and music, coupled with media hosting accounts/services I already use and that integrate seamlessly with their service and allowing plenty of free media storage. No double leg work or time consuming re-uploading. Vox integrates with Yahoo! services (my portal of choice for years), easy mobile blogging and effortless cross posting to LiveJournal where I also have a presence. I can also import from old blogs with a couple of clicks. There server seems responsive and quick to boot! As a webbie and a techie at heart, Vox makes organizing and including a variety of media formats simple and allows me to include them into my blog effortlessly, making it more than a blog, but a multimedia experience a novice could get up and running easily and still look polished, yet feature rich and powerful enough for this time strapped old veteran to appreciate.

With Vox offering "all the bling and none of the bloat" combined with an organized and intuitive interface, I am confident even a haphazard blogger "wanna be" like myself can actually reach my New Year 2007 goal of becoming more consistant in journaling my ideas, likes, dislikes, misanthrope musings, rants, raves and reviews along with photos, video journaling all to the soundtrack of my life, despite my busy lifestyle, from my computer or mobile device because of Vox's flexible, easy to use, feature rich, cross platform tools giving me back my "Voice" on the web.

Best of all? It's free. What more could I ask for?

I've tried blogging before [former blog here], and frankly, I am over committed, easily bored, and too tired and lazy to do a good job of it. I had a paid account through Typepad, which was a great service and why I've chosen Vox and Live Journal using free accounts. For about 3 months last year, I posted fairly regularly, and had people reading the darn thing since it was linked to my fairly popular website, Generation 80s Retro Radio. I just have my fingers in too many pies, "sort of the jack of all trades, master of none" thing and so instead of being an outlet for my cluttered mind an archive of life's events, it just became another albatross, making me feel guilty each month I paid $8.95 a month without posting.

Hopefully this service remains free, as so many web services I've used over the years started out free and became pay services, like my overly expensive broadcasting hobby on Live365. For now, while it's free, I'll try again. At least I don't have to feel guilty if it's another lost cause.

Being a webbie and a techie at heart, I broke down, dropped a few bucks and got myself a new cell phone with better capabilities for music, mobile pix, video and posting. I figure we can give mobile blogging a shot as it might make things easier and I can use some of those in between moments to accomplish what I usually don't have a dedicated chunk of time to do.  So, I find myself on the cusp of a New Year, resolutionless as always, but attempting once again to have an online presence in the world of blogging. Hopefully I'll meet some friends along the way to help motivate me in my endeavor.

In the meantime, I've posted one of my all time favorite songs, "Nowhere Girl" by B-Movie, which is an anthem of sorts, and the song that started my hobby of 6 years (amazingly I've stuck with that hobby daily for such an extended time) my Generation 80s Retro Radio award winning iTunes and Live365 station. So as another year ends, I turn the page to 2007 with no resolutions, but revised goals, being a better blogger using tools that fit my lifestyle to facilitate that end...I begin again.