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Microsoft Launches Blogging Site
Jeff Clark writes "In yet another attempt to take over all of the Internet, MSN has launched a blog service called MSN Spaces with the new version of MSN Messenger due out shortly. Features include comments, stats and trackbacks just like every other blog out there. Another built-in feature is also available where you can send pictures from your camera-phone directly to your Space. Now you can let Mom know just exactly what happened at that party last night!" Reader JDBaker adds, "Microsoft have released the first public beta of MSN Messenger 7. It can be downloaded direct from Microsoft, and carries the same build number as the recent private beta release. New features include: Winks, Set Status Before Login, Drag and Drop Backgrounds and Feedback."
From clicking on the link, you can also visit some of the "recently updated Spaces" (Spaces, heh). My blog is plain as a loaf of bread, sure. But at least it looks semi-original. Maybe they'll add some "skins", with an equally original twist on the name for them.
VOTE!
I've just took a look at MSN spaces. It's interface to create the weblog and change its layout is interesting and very easy to use. But my main concern is that it is very limiting. You can't edit the template in the way you can do it like in Blogger (which is now owned by Google). In blogger you can edit the HTML file that is the template of your weblog and this gives you the control on EVERYTHING but in MSN spaces you can just play with the layout of predefined "module" but can't really change the code behind. Also, it seems the total space allocated to each weblog is very small (10MB). Plase notice that it also includes the space for the photos and "music" so you can imagine you can't expect much from it. The other problem is that there is no support for internationalization: you can't create a chines, korean, arabic, persian... blog! You can't change the stylesheets to support RTL paragraphs etc. All in all, it's nice, but very limited. It's like comparing the notepad to Ultra-Edit....
Try WordPress. Open source, PHP/MySQL based, nice. jtc
Quite personally, I prefer spending $50 a year on a Custom DNS and my own private domain than putting my stuff on anyone elses server.
What I do is this:
1) Go get a Custom DNS from DynDNS.org.
2) Go get a Domain Name from a selection of many different registrars.
3) Go set up a box running Gentoo, Debian, SuSE, or FreeBSD, and install Apache.
And then boom. I'm the master of my own domain, for the low-low price of $50 per year. thats an average of $4 a month for hosting, totally within your control.
I can even give subdomains to the people I like, considering if I have enough bandiwdth. But that isn't a problem considering many Canadian ISP's offer over 800kbps upstream.
If you're looking for a better IM network, why not try Jabber? There are loads of clients out there, which won't break, since the protocol is entirely open. If your client of choice doesn't support other networks, you can talk to people who aren't on jabber using server-side 'transports' to connect to other networks via Jabber itself.
~phil
Livejournal also has the private feature if you have to read your private entries outside of your computer/house.
Livejournal supports custom groups who can read your journal. This means your close friends, work associates, or your friends excluding your wife when you want to bitch about your relationship or work without certain people reading it.
Livejournal also supports communities you can hide for porn viewing....looks innocent.
I prefer an online portal like Livejournal because it has a ton of features and is ahead of blogger and everything else plus communities to meet people with all sorts of interests.
http://saveie6.com/
New features include: Winks, Set Status Before Login, Drag and Drop Backgrounds and Feedback.
And, as been mentiond, a huge amount of bloat. Plus 'buy emoticons', 'backgrounds', 'winks' etc spam littered throughout the program with direct links to MS sites to buy shitty little pictures which you can get for free. The "for sale" emoticons are more prominently placed and larger and in the way than the emoticons you actually use. The whole thing is just a way to sell that crap. A blantent sell out.
I.O.U One Sig.
BlogIM has allowed you to update your blog via IM for ages.
(Although the site is a tad stalled. And it remains, as is famously the case for all the author's projects, about 2 weeks from true completion).
0daymeme.com: Great stuff.
Windows Messenger is more for corporate networks and supports Exchange internal messaging.
MSN Messenger is the consumer version with more frills and contains advertising and other useless things. This version doesn't support Exchange messaging.
They have "hello"
I.O.U One Sig.
As the previous commenter said, LiveJournal lets you blog "privately" You can set filters on each post you make. From totally private (only you can see) to totally public. It allows you to make lists of people that are allowed to view it when they're logged into LiveJournal. So If I only want Old Koreans on my friends list to be able to view my posts, I can make a list of OLD Koreans, choose that as the filter for a certain post (or as the default filter for posting) and it's done.
You can check mine here btw: http://www.livejournal.com/users/ambienceman
MY SECRET DIARIES