If anyone has tried the online-bookmark-managing services of Blinklist, by MindValley,then you may already be familiar with BlinkLife by the same company. It is an email/blog combo service that will “change the way you communicate…” I signed up to test it out.
The service boast an impressive unlimited amount of space, 100% Spam and Virus Proof “email”, video and picture embedding (no attachements) with Blog Integration. That's right, you can embed your video clips from any (any I've tested anyhow) online video hosting services — not just YouTube and Google Video, but other lesser known and better quality services like DropShots, VideoEgg and Vimeo, just to name a few.
Now, I'm trying to find a way to create a family blog where I can invite only certain people (family) to read certain blog entries (which BlinkLife lets me do). However, when I send people email-notifications from my BlinkLife site, people are directed from sent email to my linked “username.blinklife.com” they only get to see the most recent post associated with their name and not all previous posts that have been previously sent to them. Or, at least, this is all my tests have been able to produce.
Here is a scenario that, I hope, illustrates what I am attempting to do:
Let's say I have two groups of contacts. Group A has Scott, Stephen, Marc, and Michelle and Group B also has Michelle and Marc, plus Julien, Gerald, and Thomas. If I send a “post” to Group A, Scott, Stephen, Marc and Michelle will get this message. If I then send a “post” to Group B, Michelle, Marc, Julien, Gerald and Thomas would get the second message. Also If I post a general message to the “blog” anyone and everyone can read it. I understand all of this, however, at this point I would expect Michelle and Marc to be able to see both the first and second “posts” they were sent, AND be able to see the general message that was posted. I would expect this because both messages were associated with their names and the general post is associated with nobody’s and everybody’s name.
What I understood, when I signed up, is that BlinkLife could remember who you sent the individual “posts” to and that every time they clicked on another message-link they were sent, they would always be able to see ALL email/posts that were ever sent to them AND any general messages that were posted — almost like BlinkLife could generate a custom list of “recent entries” for each person that was invited to read a message.
Ultimately it would be great to have different groups of people or individuals, able read different combinations of “recent entries” — which LiveJournal, for example, can do — without the need for everyone to create an account — which LiveJournal, for example, cannot do. Or, maybe, BlinkLife could create an option that would allow people to create “Read/Comment -only” accounts so they don't have to go through the messiness of creating a Blog account if all they want to do is keep up-to-date with what their family members have been up to. This way it would be easy to add the people with the “Read/Comment -only” accounts to a friends list. So far, in my tests, people who have a BlinkLife account CAN see a custom list of “posts” associated with their account and a “Read/Comment -only” option would allow to happen easier. Of course they would always have the option to upgrade to a full BlinkLife “blog/email” whenever they wanted to. 😉
So far, I really like what I see but, unless I'm doing something wrong, the service just seems to missing something for me get into it completely.
Now my fingers are tired and it's late here. I hope it all made sense. BTW, Blinklist is great — all of your bookmarks available all the time… Nice!
Cheers
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steelie
UPDATE (Okay… so it's not really an update because it's being written at the same time the original entry is… What? Okay, fine…)
AFTERTHOUGHT (…happy?)
LiveJournal should create the option for people to create “Read/Comment -only” accounts for all the good reasons listed above… Maybe this should be put in their suggestion box. Oh, and a pull down menu for tags associated with my account… yeah, that'd be cool too.
G'night
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steelie