I couldn’t have said it better myself. And I didn’t.
Here is Kevin Burton on the subject of Blogger. Pithy.
What’s up with Blogger? No innovation. Too many splogs. Google botched this acquisition. Google buying Blogger was the best thing to ever happen to Six Apart.Either innovate or take this old friend out back and put it out of its misery.
Has anyone else noticed how many of the cool jobs right now are asking for Firefox devs? IBM smells the cool too: it now has staff working on Firefox full time. I can certainly imagine some of the IBM architecture astronauts freaking out when they hear about Greasemonkey though… what do you mean we put the users in control with brittle end points? M-V-C, M-V-C.
The DIY People (Rod, Sam and team) will be keen. The WS-* and JEE uber alles crowds won’t be so impressed.
Corporate forces colliding eh… its funny, I just remembered Stephen’s How To Get Into Blogs 101…. which recommends Blogger. So he’s recommending it, while I hammer it. Oops. In my defence I would say Blogger hasn’t changed much since Stephen wrote the how to. Our analysis has moved on somewhat in terms of blogging platform capabilities.
Complaints aside then- Blogger has something clearly in its favour: its free.
Shouldn’t MovableType be offering a Blogger killer? Maybe it can’t afford to.
More pertinently what about Yahoo? MSN Spaces and Blogger are both flawed. But who is going to take advantage?
Ah I should have known. It seems our friends at WordPress really are going to take over the world. Free hosted WordPress blogs… I might even have to think of subject for a new James Governor blog to celebrate. Maybe it really is time to ship the politics out of monkchips?
Anyway – I am going to quote Emily Robbins here.
If you don’t care about customizing your templates, it [Wordpress] sure beats the pants off of Blogger, even in it’s beta form. More experienced bloggers should check it out, if only to be able to be part of the creation of the next version of WordPress — there is a Feedback button where you can submit ‘bugs and hugs’ as well as any suggestions of what you think WordPress.com needs to be a more fully functional and customizable blogging tool, and suggestions are often implemented at a rapid rate.
Emily is doing some great work, from what I can see, comparing blog platforms from a functional perspective (Typepad vs WordPress = no contest). Borland’s loss is evidently the blogosphere’s gain. Emily, for RSI, I strongly recommend at least trying acupuncture. it worked very very well for me, got rid of the pain and freed me up for physio.
I really wish I could stop finding useful new feeds though. Emily- you might consider structuring your page with a couple of “how to get started” links for the different platforms you cover.
Anyway peace out folks- that’s Blogger, Firefox, Greasemonkey and WordPress mentioned and its only Monday. I guess I can focus on enterprise software for the rest of week…
Ludovic says:
February 21, 2006 at 11:21 am
James,
It seems to me like you may have picked the wrong target: Blogger DOES accept anonymous comments (it depends how one sets it up).
However, this is not the case for MSN, so I would suggest them as the dark side.
LW>
PS: have you thought having a go at Shwarzie? When I type “governor” in the URL space of my Firefox, I come onto this page: http://www.governor.ca.gov/state/govsite/gov_homepage.jsp
He’s clearly an impersonator!
Simon Bisson says:
February 22, 2006 at 5:07 pm
6Apart does have an Blogger-killer – it’s LiveJournal…
james governor says:
February 23, 2006 at 11:41 am
yes and no simon. isn’t livejournal positioned squarely for personal, rather than broader use?
Ludo – it does now accept anon. but you have to type them in every godddamn time, there is no mechanism to save them for my next visit.
james governor says:
February 23, 2006 at 11:42 am
sorry let me clear that up. i dont want anon. i just want some persistence of some kind. as above- remember personal info….
colin crook says:
February 23, 2006 at 7:38 pm
Are you familiar with the Flock browser james? They are working on integrating these social aspects of the web into the browser. interested in your thoughts on them. Thnx. http://www.flock.com