box’s blog

About a year ago, I created a blog at blogspot as I thought, that I could use it for web earnings. However quite soon I realised, that if I wish to make money by blogging, I'll have to have my own domain and own commercial blog.

But after establishing my own commercial blog, I did not leave my blogspot blog. Even that I cannot use it for money making, I can use it to support my other www sites. Blogspot has some very useful features like .rss readers, link list and it can even be integrated with Digg, so you can publish your Digg seeds automatically to blogspot. And no one prevents you to write stories about your own groupware books, if you wish to do so.

I did my studies with information systems & computer science and I specialized in group technologies. During those days, I did wrote Groupware Support for Operational Management, and a kind of forgot it afterwards.

But it came in my mind, when I received email last April. Someone had read it and thought, that VDM Verlag would like to publish it. Then in May I had a long sick leave, and I had nothing at home but time, so I sent the work to VDM.

Less than month after sending my work, I got a confirmation message, that my work had been published. Then with Google, I found it for sale at two web shops. So now days I'm also an author.

For a long time I was able to write an article at Newsvine, which got some views and comments. And like usually, to get attention, you have to create feelings. This time my article about the Finnish gun paradox: In the land of the firearms, knifes kill more than guns, did the job.

The article destroys the common argument, that the number of guns increase the number of murders, which is not true in Finland.

I have had a blog at MySpace over a year now. I'm quite used to use several different sites like Vox, MySpace, Yahoo 360, NowPublic, Newsvine, Windows Live, Blogger, Facebook and I too have a Wordpress blog and Joomla site.

And if I had to pick up two worst sites to use, they would be Facebook and MySpace. I cannot really say, which one is worst.

But the amazing thing is, that if you would have to pick two most popular sites, they would be Facebook and MySpace...

Will Teräsbetoni take the victory? Kirnu knows already.

Yahoo 360 is quite similar place as Vox. It allows it's members to keep their own blog and supports community features. I've been testing and using Yahoo 360 over half months now.

It felt quite complicated in the beginning, because there were several "frontpages" and sometimes toolbars were available and sometimes they just disappeared somewhere and you had to log out and back to get them visible.

Yahoo 360 supports community, but like in everywhere it is not just the site, but an issue about your own participation. And because I have not been that active, I have not been a member of the community either.

Mostly I have used the site for blogging and for that it is useful. However the link names could be better.

Windows Live Spaces is actually quite similar place than Vox, which is implemented with different technology. Live Spaces allows users to customize the blog's modules more freely. User can choose the style from several templates and the choose the wanted modules and arrange them the way wanted. I have my blog at Live Spaces over an year now and I have not done that much changes recently, so guess I'm happy with the result at the moment.

The problem with free blogs is, of course, that it is not easy to make web earnings with them. If you really want to earn something, you'll have to set up your won site.

BTW, I just noticed an ad next to my blog: MSN delivers breaking news straight to Vox. Is there going to be something more???

Kirnu is a new social media site for authors. The site differ from social news sites, because articles does note necessary have to be about news. The site is under construction, but quite soon it will be open for Alpha testers.

I really think that there is a need for a social media site, where people can share not just news, but also stories without extra filtering. So lets meet at Kirnu in the future.