MSN Spaces Posting Interface

As I was updating my MSN Spaces blog Chasing The Gurus, I found another thing I don't like about it. The blog entry interface is not WYSIWYG and that's not such a big problem really but the fact that when you hit enter, it doesn't automatically insert line or paragraph breaks upon publishing. So I've to go in and enter the paragraph tags manually yuk!

Sometimes Blogger Sucks

Horrors! Did I really say that? Yup! I know many marketers are just in love with Blogger but seriously, when Blogger goes down and you have time sensitive information to put out you're out of luck. This happened to me last night. For some unknown reason it just won't connect to my host and no the host was not down or anything. Worst, Blogger help files were... not helpful. If only it weren't so darn easy to use.

Blogger really should license their technology if you asked me as a business person. Nobody denies it's great technology but it's just caving under its own success by putting all the processing load on itself. So one small down for Blogger and one up for all server based blogging applications.

FeedBurner does it again!

Ok so this is a departure somewhat but it's blog related, I just HAVE to post it.

I tell you, these people keep getting better and better and better. Kinda makes me wonder when they're going to make some of these services premium. Meanwhile, get it while its FREE! FeedBurner has come up with Feedcount. It's a little graphic you can proudly display how many readers your feed has. It comes in static or animated and you can even customize it's colors. Like this:

Nice for 'showing off' but also coming from the Marketing direction, great way to gain 'confidence' in your blog or RSS feed. Okay okay so I my readership is nothing now - tells you I need your help! *wink* So go on.... subscribe to my feed now or you'll miss out next time I report about nifty blog technology like this :-D Anyways, the nice part about FeedCount is because it's an image, you can post it anywhere with little restrictions.

If you already have a feed burned with feed burner, getting FeedCount is a snap. Just click on Publicize and follow instructions. Can't be easier.

Podcasting & Audio Blogging

Hey all recently I came accross a blog that referred to his podcast and audio blog as one and the same thing it isn't. Listen to my audio blog above to find out what's different and what blogging applications support audio blogs.

Blog Applications With Podcasting Support

Spurred by a request from my friend Kelly, I researched about podcasting for her show Wahm Talk Radio. So this week's post is going to depart slightly. For my research, I set up a podcast of my own. In one afternoon I created a new podcast and even a podcast generator! I'm beginning to enjoy this RSS related technology because it allows me to publish information a lot quicker than typing. I can certainly see some potential for marketers especially those who publish mp3 files of their teleseminar calls. Offering a podcast to your callers helps them out a lot. Unfortunately, it's still kinda tedious since I had to manually upload and create an RSS feed (podcast) for it. If you'd like to learn more about podcasting for marketing, the best thing to do is download the generator to get on the list as I'll be e-mailing my tutorials on top of putting them in a podcast.

Back to the blogging apps 'review' of sorts. From my very quick research, there aren't many blogging applications that support podcasting at the moment. In fact I've only found two. Movable Type has a plugin for it and Journurl has some kind of plugin type support of it also. I'm sure I'll find out more about it over the next week, or some more geeky person (maybe you?) can tell me. Hey - I can't know everything.

MSN Spaces

Dec 2nd MSN rolls out its web based Blog app, and on the 4th I jumped at a chance to see how it works. I love Blogger and believe there's nothing like it but ever inquisitive I also like to see what others can do and share it with my fellow entreprenuers. If you're looking for a technical review sorry you aren't going to find it here though some things may still be a bit relevant. This review and in fact this whole blog is dedicated to looking at the various blogging technologies through a marketer's eyes.

So... what is brewing at MSN Spaces? That's the name of their new blog service, very much in Beta meaning trial - prone to bugs, imperfect however you want to call it. Creating the blog was simple and easy. You first need to have a MSN Messenger or Hotmail account in order to get a blog. I logged into My MSN but nothing is mentioned about Spaces at all. Neither was there mention on MSN Home itself - probably because it's still Beta. Not finding any link anywhere I had to do a web search for MSN Spaces to obtain the URL.

Once on Spaces, I simply clicked on Sign Up Now. Since I was still logged in with Passport, it launched immediately into asking for my blog title and all the basics like template. I now have a brand spanking new MSN Spaces blog called Chasing The Gurus. After I got the blog I was a little confused what to do next. Like any new application you need to be courageous to try things out and get a feel of the blog. Still, I feel the overall backend design and creation process could be better documented.

PLUS - After tinkering about and learning the interface, I found some really cool features I feel is sorely missing in Blogger. One of it is trackback. I've always hesitated with creating Blogger blogs because of trackback. It's a controversial issue no doubt because it can be abused easily but then again from a marketer's view, its really a wonderful way to easily get link backs without even us having to do anything but publicize the blog.

PLUS - Another thing I liked about it is categories! This is another one of my Blogger gripes. Being able to separate my blog topics into categories seem to make a lot more sense from the human point and also I feel search bots. Have you ever tried to read more of a blog and found that since everything is archived by date you just don't know how to find more of the relevant stuff you want to read? I have - sucks. Who really wants to read through 50 posts to find one that is related to what you're interested in. Not me. Funnily however while Spaces supports categories and you can add it very easily to the blog, I cannot seem to create one...

NICE - Adding links to the blog is also very simple, a plus and permissions wise, I don't have an opinion yet whether its a good thing to have the ability to limit your blog to MSN Messenger buddies.

PLUS - Mobile Blogging (moblogging) support. Yea so we can blog via email from Blogger too but Blogger only saves the post and doesn't publish it. Spaces allows you to choose whether to save only or save and publish. Nice.

NICE - statistics. You can track page views and referring URLS

NICE - Photos gallery feature 10MBs

NICE - One page overview of your entries, comments and trackbacks where you can also quickly delete entries, spam comments and trackbacks.

NICE - Module based adding of links and lists and layout easily change from 1,2,3 column format.

NOT SO NICE - I don't see the ability to customize templates so my blog title is truly unattractive. Also, the blog entry form is not WYSIWYG - only on IE. Much documentation needs to be added.

NOT NICE - No capability to FTP to my server - a HUGE plus in Blogger and the URLs are totally unfriendly.

Well there's much I'd like to say but my memory fails me now. Join me again as I venture into MSN's Spaces