Vox launches Groups beta, custom banners

Filed under: Internet, Blogging, Social Software

Vox launches Groups beta, custom banners

by David Chartier Jan 16th 2007

Vox, a Six Apart blogging community I admittedly am enjoying more and more each day, has just launched a few major new features, the most notable of which is Groups. Vox members can now create public or private groups for sharing anything you can already publish on Vox: posts, pictures, videos, books and more. Group owners can allows others to admin the group, and members can post either directly to the group or by clicking a button on content from their own Vox blog. I went through groups and added myself to a few before penning this post, and I can say that Vox thought this new feature through pretty well during development.

Below each post composition window now is an 'add to group' button, making it easy to publish content simultaneously to your own blog and any relevant groups. A minor gripe, however, is that they don't employ check boxes here; you can only click on one group at a time, though I don't imagine the greater majority will be adding too much content to more than one group at a time.

Also above all posts and other content on your blog (when you're signed in, of course) is a new 'add to group' button, keeping Organize panel (the admin area) visits to a minimum.

The other big feature in this new release is the much-requested ability to create custom banners for your Vox. A post on their new design.vox.com blog specifically designed to help users build the beest banner(s) they can has all the details, but basically: you can create a banner up to 940px x 200px in size, while anything smaller gets aligned to the bottom right. If this feature gets your creative juices flowing though, definitely check out the new Vox Design blog for all the info you need.

So far I love this new feature, though I must also curse Vox in the same breath for making such a cool community even cooler. Vox has been described as 'MySpace for the literate,' and I tend to agree. Pretty soon I'll be furiously refreshing my home page every chance I get, anticipating every new comment and message from readers and my Neighborhood. Thanks a lot, Vox.

Tags: beta, blog, blogging, blogs, community, groups, share, sharing, 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.

View more Time Wasters