Sumit’s Scribblings are Moving…
After much hand-wringing, I’ve decided to move my blog. I’ve thought about hosting it myself, but that will take time I don’t want to spend right now, so for the moment, I’m going to keep it over at MSN spaces, which is impressively full-featured given its freeness. The new address will be http://spaces.msn.com/members/sbasu . I’ll probably still post here occasionally to poke my friendsters about the fact that I have new entries, but not every time I post :) The reasons why I’m moving the blog:
1. Archiving. Friendster only shows the last 10 posts, which is pretty annoying. msn spaces archives all your entry, for free. It also has trackbacks, which blogger (the other main free service) doesn’t have.
2. No update emails. Friendster sends a friendster message to all my friends telling them I’ve updated my blog, even when all I’ve done is fix a spelling error. With msn spaces, those with an RSS feed will have the latest; others can surf by once in a while, and I’ll post digests on friendster occasionally so the non-RSS’ers can know things have been updated.
3. Easy updating. Updating the friendster blog is a huge pain - first logging onto friendster, then going to the blog gateway, both of which are incredibly slow. For msn spaces, I can blog directly from the toolbar or from their website (which is pretty zippy).
4. Media. I can (and have) embed a media player into my space, so I can feature my latest song for people to listen to right within the browser (sorry mac and linux friends, this only works on windows). I’ll still link to the song so everyone can listen, but being able to hit play in the browser is just convenient.
5. Search engine indexing. Msn spaces blogs are indexed by the major search engines, while friendster spaces are not.
Now, the downsides, as there are always downsides:
1. msn spaces don’t look great — yet. I’m hoping they will soon allow for greater customizability in terms of appearance, especially in terms of custom images and the like.
2. censorship. Blog titles can’t contain the 7 FCC "bad words." Originally, this was a bigger deal to me, as I thought it covered the entries, but it’s just the title, and since my dream of calling my blog "ass poop butt monkey" has died for other reasons, I suppose this doesn’t bother me that much. It’s still lame though.
For now, the balance seems to be in the favor of msn spaces, until I have the time and energy to host my own blog (don’t hold your breath :). See you over there!
-Sumit
