Vox goes live, open to the public

Filed under: Blogging, Web services, Social Software

Vox goes live, open to the public

by Jordan Running Oct 26th 2006

Vox, the blogging-meets-social-networking site from Movable Type company Six Apart, has finally opened its doors to the public after several months of invite-only beta testing. I've been using Vox for a few months, albeit very lightly, but I must say that that as social networking and blogging sites go, it feels very stable and streamlined. In addition to all the tools you'd expect in a blogging service, Vox has lots of shiny tools like audio uploads, integration with YouTube and iFilm, Flickr and Photobucket, and Amazon, and an Organizer that makes it easy to manage all the audio, video, and photos you've added to your account. The social networking side of the service is like a more refined version of LiveJournal's, with a Neighborhood page that displays all of your contacts' posts and privacy controls to restrict who can read and comment on a post. It also comes with a ton of professionally-designed themes, and a lot of little touches that don't necessarily blow me away but do make me realize just how much thought was put into each part of the service. Vox is a free, ad-supported service, and I think that now that it's open to the public it's going to grow rapidly.

Tags: blogging, free, livejournal, movable type, MovableType, sixapart, social networking, SocialNetworking, typepad, vox

Featured Time Waster

Civiballs is a beautiful, soothing physics puzzle Time Waster

I have an absolute weakness for physics games, and while Civiballs isn't the strongest physics-based game, what it lacks in the physics department it makes up for a few times over in style and fun.

In Civiballs, you are presented with a few colored balls, and your goal is to get those balls into the same-colored urn on the level. The "civi" part of Civiballs is that there are 3 sets of levels to play, each representing a different civilization. While the civilization doesn't affect gameplay, the artwork for each level is beautifully themed to it's appropriate era.

To play the game, you are given only one tool - a sword with which to cut the chains that are holding the balls. The puzzle part of the game is in figuring out what order, and with what timing to cut each chain. Do it right, and all the right balls end up in the right urns, with no stray balls entering an urn (a no-no). Do it wrong, and you get to start over again.

Civiballs is not terribly deep on gameplay; the entire game can be completed in about 15 minutes. But if you enjoy this type of game, it will be a very enjoyable 15 minutes.

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