Choosing Who Can See What on Your
Blog

Posted at mossburg solution

Blogs have a place in many of our everyday lives, even if we
aren't bloggers ourselves. The word blog, short for Web log, is used to describe
personal Web sites that are frequently updated with entries for sharing with
others. They can range from your son's personal blog about baseball statistics
to a well-read and more polished political blog that gets tens of thousands of
hits each day.

A big problem with blogs is privacy. While some people --
especially MySpace fans -- don't mind posting personal news, photos and videos
for anyone to read, many of us hesitate to leave details about our personal
lives online.

This week, we tested a new, free blogging service called Vox, www.vox.com,
from Six Apart Ltd., a blogging software company. One of Vox's best attributes
is its ability to label each individual post, or entry, with a different privacy
filter, so that instead of setting your blog to be entirely private or entirely
public, you can pick and choose what you want to share.

Vox also excels at making it easy to add photos, audio, videos
and book links to your blog without any prior expertise. It lets you incorporate
content from Web sites like YouTube, Amazon and photo-sharing site Flickr in
only a couple of steps. Viewing of each multimedia element can also be
restricted to people you choose. Vox is supported by ads that aren't intrusive
or distracting.

We each made a blog in Vox, and updated them several times. We
found the process to be quick and simple, and the results to be attractive. We
liked the privacy features. But while its intentions are good, Vox has a few
downsides. Its idea of making each blog post visible to different groups is
useful. But everyone who views your privacy-protected entries must also be
registered with Vox, a quick process, but one that will discourage many
potential users.

One example of a Vox blog.

Also puzzling are Vox's categories for labeling those who view
your blog. Everyone must be labeled as friends, family or neighbors, but the
filters that determine who can view your posts don't include neighbors at all.

Vox also doesn't do a great job of implementing many features
that are standard in blog services. These features include interactive elements
on a page such as drag-and-drop organizing.

We got started by signing up for Vox -- a process that involved
entering our email address, creating a password and URL, and entering personal
information. A Design section walked us through choosing a layout and theme from
numerous choices. Katie chose the Cityscape Washington, D.C., theme, which
includes the Capitol and Washington Monument. Walt chose Firefly Night, which
includes the moon and stars and a silhouette of a tree.

To prompt you to blog, the Vox homepage always offers a
Question of the Day, or QOTD. With one click, you can optionally answer the QOTD
in your own blog. When you post your answer, or enter any post, a drop-down menu
lets you choose who can view it: The World (Public), Your Friends and Family,
Your Friends, Your Family or Just You. If, for example, you choose to allow only
your friends to see a post, other groups won't know that they're not seeing the
friends-only post.

If you see another person's Vox blog and would like to bookmark
it so that his or her latest entries are constantly updated on a special page
just for you, you can add that blogger to your neighborhood. Friends and family
are automatically part of your neighborhood, but when choosing who can see your
content, neighborhood isn't an option. Vox plans to make the neighborhood
concept more understandable in an updated version due out by December.

Each individual post can be made viewable by
certain people to provide privacy.

We first posted some simple text entries. Then in the Compose
section, we chose from five colorful icons labeled Photos, Audio, Videos, Books
and Collections. Selecting each icon let us load content from our computer or
from a Web site with that type of content.

In Videos Katie selected a YouTube tab, entered a search word
and found a favorite scene from the TV show "Grey's Anatomy." She
selected a thumbnail image of the scene, hit OK, and the scene loaded onto her
blog moments later. No formatting or HTML code is necessary, a requirement that
used to plague many blogging services.

As we became comfortable using Vox and its privacy options, we
started posting lots of things: vacation photos, a country music audio file to
play along with a post about two-stepping and even Amazon links to our favorite
books. And unless your post or profile is public, nothing can be retrieved using
the Vox search feature.

We found a few hiccups, but mostly forgot about the geeky side
of blogging and enjoyed sharing our digital media. And the idea that no one else
would randomly browse across our content was a comfort. But that poses another
problem: Not everyone will want to register with Vox just to see your protected
content. Vox hopes to offer a way to register others so that your grandmother
will be able to see your family photos online just by entering a username and
password.

Back on the home page of Vox, a section called VoxWatch let us
quickly see any recent activity from our neighbors or ourselves. Recently posted
digital photos, recent comments and recent posts from everyone in our
neighborhood were grouped here.

A helpful Organize section divvies all of your content up into
its proper section: Photos, Books, Audio, Videos, Posts and Comments. This
section let us quickly find a comment that we wanted to reread but didn't feel
like finding on our blog, and it helped us get a better idea of everything that
existed on our blog -- a boon as you add more and more content. This section
also displays the names of those in your Neighborhood, as well as Friends and
Family.

Vox does a nice job of jazzing up the world of blogging. Its
designs are attractive, but it really shines when loading media onto your posts,
making your blog richer in content and more sophisticated in looks. Updates will
continue to be released, improving Vox's weaknesses, the most important of which
is clarifying its group labels. Vox also plans to offer to import your content
from other blogging sites, encouraging experienced users to bring their last
blog along with them instead of leaving it with the old service.

Email: MossbergSolution@wsj.com