Tag: ello

Still Looking at Blogging Platforms

I’m not planning to leave wordpress.com.

I think.

I spent some time digging into Medium today and I have decided that I absolutely love the way it displays images. They just look really good. After using ello for a while, the Medium editor doesn’t piss me off quite as much as it did initially. I still don’t see a way to pull in images from other domains. That means no using Flickr hosted pics. That was completely offensive to me at first, but since I started messing with ello, which like Medium also forces you to upload images you want to display rather than hosting them on other sites, it doesn’t seem quite as insulting.

Still, it doesn’t seem to have a way to display audio files. That’s a deal breaker if the question is using Medium exclusively. Again, ello is the same way. Hell, technically wordpress.com is the same way too, I just found a work around. Maybe I’ll find one for Medium (and ello) as well.

I was also planning on spending some time with Roon and Svbtle, but I guess Medium bought Roon and is about to shut it down. Ghost is the talk of the town right now, but it does not have a service that is both hosted and free. It’s only one or the other. Maybe I’ll look into free hosting (does that even exist?) and see what’s out there. If I were to go that route though, why wouldn’t I just switch over to wordpress.org?

I’m still not even sure why I am suddenly interested in all of this.

While I’m here, let me try something. Earlier tonight I decided that I was going to play around with Gimp. Think of Gimp as an open source alternative to Photoshop. I’ve had it on this machine for quite a while (it’s free) but I have never actually even opened it. Tonight I picked an image from Flickr and pulled it into Gimp to see how big of a mess I could make. I included it in a post on ello. Now that I’m thinking of it, can I pull the image from ello into this post? It should work. I have a valid url. But does ello block hits from within image tags? Let’s see…

Did it work?

Ello

Let’s review the timeline, shall we?

Ello launched as a social network that promised to never sell add space, and to never sell your personal information, but no one on Earth noticed.

Then in September it was suddenly and without warning all the rage, thanks in part to Facebook being a dick about forcing people to use their real names on their profiles. Suddenly everyone and their Uncle is clamoring for an invite. Being the social media content whore that I am, I too put in for an invite… from multiple email addresses. I figured I’d have to wait a few days, maybe even a week.

Time wears on and I, like everyone else on the internet, lose interest and can no longer spare even the slightest thought toward this new platform that very much reminds me of tumblr.

Fast-forward to sometime after midnight last night/this morning and BOOM, there is my ello invite. Oh good, just what I really didn’t want anymore and had more or less forgotten about. But still… we are talking about me, a self professed social media content whore, so I accepted the invite and created an account. I also sent an invite over to my brilliant, charming, angel of a wife and she signed up too.

Here’s a link to my new ello page. Obviously you are all very excited about this. Yet another place for me to dump camera phone pictures! WOOHOO!

Now they just need an actual mobile app because their mobile site is a little clunky. Well, let’s be honest, the actual web site is really clunky, the mobile version is even clunkier. So here’s to an iOS app, and maybe the ability to post music via direct links (ie, alonetone) and not just through soundcloud (booo!). Maybe I’ll start an account for the band too. I can put anything I want on there and be safe because no one is ever going to see it because as a social network, ello is probably already dead!

Ello

Why does Ello hate me?  I requested invites using two different email addresses and nothing.  Nada.  Zilch.  Zip.

I guess they hate me.  Remember when I wanted Google Wave invites and Google hated me?  There was another one too, was it Google Buzz?  I just want social media sites to accept me for who I am… a ridiculously tall red head with lots and lots to say about absolutely nothing of value.  Why does that rub these sites the wrong way?  Why don’t they like me?

I just want an invite.  Now I am a sad panda.