Thursday, December 02, 2004
MSN's New Blog Service
Yeah, MSN has apparently come up with its own free blogging site - MSN Spaces. I signed up of course :-) I thought I'd test it out to see how it stacked up against Blogspot. A couple of things that struck me right away:
- The layout can be easily customized. This is one of two big grievances I have with Blogspot - the area for the blog entries is really cramped - it must make up about 40 or 50% of the screen, if that.
- Photos can be included in the blog entry. This is the other big grievance I have with Blogspot. I have to use a 3-rd party application to upload photos to my blog. That application is limited, meaning: it can only upload one photo at a time, and you can't create a "blog entry" (complete with hyperlinks, titles, etc.) and publish the whole thing. One has to upload the photo, enter Blogger, and edit the entry.
- One can categorize the entries in MSN Spaces. Apparently, a lot of blog sites offer this feature ... but most of those sites ain't free!
- On the downside ... I couldn't figure out if I can edit the HTML code behind my entry. Case in point, the entry I posted with the DC Marathon snaps - Kartik created a table in HTML and sent it across to me to upload. Since Blogger allows me to edit the HTML code, I was able to insert it and (somewhat properly) acheive the desired look. I don't know how many times I'll be doing that!
- Another entry in the con side ... the URL to the blog is a little complicated. Mine is http://spaces.msn.com/members/bloreboy ... doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, does it?!
- One main point yet to be resolved: how compliant is an MSN-run site with non-IE browsers, like Firefox. I opened the page in Firefox, and apart from a little time in waiting for a server response, it appeared alright, but who knows?!
MSN Spaces is still in beta, but with them making a public announcement about it, I think they're ready to go live any day now ... not too sure what they'll tweak till then.
It'll be interesting to see if Blogger fixes any of my gripes (I'm sure they're not uncommon) to prevent people from switching. The switching cost is pretty high for me, anyway - I've got 6 months' worth of posts here, and I can't figure out how to transfer them!
- The layout can be easily customized. This is one of two big grievances I have with Blogspot - the area for the blog entries is really cramped - it must make up about 40 or 50% of the screen, if that.
- Photos can be included in the blog entry. This is the other big grievance I have with Blogspot. I have to use a 3-rd party application to upload photos to my blog. That application is limited, meaning: it can only upload one photo at a time, and you can't create a "blog entry" (complete with hyperlinks, titles, etc.) and publish the whole thing. One has to upload the photo, enter Blogger, and edit the entry.
- One can categorize the entries in MSN Spaces. Apparently, a lot of blog sites offer this feature ... but most of those sites ain't free!
- On the downside ... I couldn't figure out if I can edit the HTML code behind my entry. Case in point, the entry I posted with the DC Marathon snaps - Kartik created a table in HTML and sent it across to me to upload. Since Blogger allows me to edit the HTML code, I was able to insert it and (somewhat properly) acheive the desired look. I don't know how many times I'll be doing that!
- Another entry in the con side ... the URL to the blog is a little complicated. Mine is http://spaces.msn.com/members/bloreboy ... doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, does it?!
- One main point yet to be resolved: how compliant is an MSN-run site with non-IE browsers, like Firefox. I opened the page in Firefox, and apart from a little time in waiting for a server response, it appeared alright, but who knows?!
MSN Spaces is still in beta, but with them making a public announcement about it, I think they're ready to go live any day now ... not too sure what they'll tweak till then.
It'll be interesting to see if Blogger fixes any of my gripes (I'm sure they're not uncommon) to prevent people from switching. The switching cost is pretty high for me, anyway - I've got 6 months' worth of posts here, and I can't figure out how to transfer them!
