Socially Mundane

I’ve been playing with a new …er, …hmmm… For now I’ll call it a “blogging” service. Except that it’s a lot more, but not quite as much. It’s kind of like Flickr, but it’s not quite as much, but also a lot more. Sort of kind of like YouTube, but not. Wait! It’s kind of like Tumblr, but not quite as much, but more. Sort of. 

Oxymorons aside, suffice it to say it’s a fun …thing.

I’m referring to a ridiculously fun-to-use newcomer called Jux.

Blogging has gone from long-form “web logs” to smaller “bursts” of multiple genre media sharing over the last few years. People want to write a little less and share a lot more other stuff like pictures and video and links and all sorts of things. Thus, “blogging” platforms and services have cropped up to cater to these desires and hence the popularity of relative  newcomers Posterous and Tumblr over other “heavier” platforms like Blogger and Livetype and such, though WordPress continues to enjoy a continued growth and caters well to long-form blogging.

Among other things (specifically the “dashboard”) that make Tumblr so popular is it’s ease of use and genre-specific post types, which include the requisite text article, but also specific presentation of pictures, video, links, chat logs and such - though it appears most people use it for photo-sharing.

What makes all these services, including Tumblr, basically the same is they are still pretty much “cliche-formatted” blogs - most recent posting at the top of the page with previous posts below in descending order based on the date and time posted. All blogging platforms support and rely on “themes” that create the layout, color-scheme and overall look of the blog web page.

This is where Jux breaks the mold.

The new Jux is not a lot different in terms of another blogging platforms… more or less. What makes Jux different - radically different is in the presentation of your blog posts. They are still displayed most recent first and in descending order, but the visual presentation is dynamic. Rather than rely on “themes” for the look of the blog web page - and hence every single post you contribute - Jux actually eliminates the “look” altogether. Rather you decide on the “look” of each post you make independently of every other post you’ve made. This is the game-changer in terms of “blogging themes” and “looks”.

What Jux does is pull the “interface” away from the presentation of whatever it is you are sharing with others: pictures, video, copy-text, etc. Additionally, you the blog owner, always see the presentation in exactly the same way everyone else does: in a full-screen (inside your browser window) without anything else not specifically related to the content.

For example: if I post a picture to share on my “blog” and you come to see it, all you see is… the picture and any optional comment I’ve included. That’s it. No borders or frames or navigation or side-bars or widgets or anything else.

Just the content, the whole content and nothing but the content.

As someone who loves the “art” of typography, photography, profound quotes, poignant video and other “finer” things: Jux is absolutely the perfect fit. Just my content to be absorbed by you, no distractions whatsoever.

For example, look at the page your are reading right now: every article or share I produce here always looks the same. The borders of this page are always there, the other links, buttons and other “web paraphernalia” and the rest. Colors never change, the background never changes, the fonts never change and so on. (At the bottom of this post I provide a link to my own Jux page, I urge you to take a peek and you’ll see why I am so excited… yes, I mean what I say and say what I mean: excited about Jux.)

To navigate page to page or back to the index of a Jux blog, one simply moves her mouse cursor toward the top of the screen (browser window). The minimal navigation elements appear rather gracefully. I have not tried perusing a Jux blog with iOS or other touch-enabled device yet, so I am not sure how touch-interaction is handled. However I understand the presentation and ‘utility’ is optimized for such.

Jux is new. Really new. Sort of.

Jux started out as an also-ran web page creator, but have recently changed direction into this newer “blog-ish” format. It would just be an also-ran blogging platform, except for the stunning presentation of content and overall logistical paradigm being embraced. Rather than a specific blog being the focus, it is the individual post that becomes the focus.

I won’t go into details on what the current features are or specific tool sets included and all that stuff you can discover on your own, except to say Grandma can do it.

The only other thing I’ll tease you with is the amazingly dynamic customization you can perform for each and every post, regardless of genre (picture, video, text article, etc.) - right down to the background image, font style, size and color and more. Unlike a blog or web page theme that locks all this stuff down, you get to change almost every aspect of each post as you are creating the post. This is the first thing that sets Jux so far apart from every other blogging platform. Yet everything remains amazingly consistent.

Because of the newness of Jux, there are some obvious omissions, or rather “missing features” that surely will eventually find their way into the system. Here is what I want to see, not specifically, but relatively in this order of importance (to me):

• Remembering my Twitter login when I choose to tweet-share my Jux post
• Custom URL mapping - allow me to plop my own domain name onto my Jux page
• Ability to share/include links: URLs recognized and auto-converted into clickable links wherever I am able to add text in my post - or make the generated link a “featured element” (like the forward and back arrow buttons on a “countdown” post) - anything that allows me to share discovery of other web sites, etc.
• Additional sharing options: Google+, yes: even Tumblr and others
• “Fix” (it’s not really broken) image uploading so that Flash is not required (some of us have removed Flash even from our desktop computers) - especially since image files are among the most common need/desire in almost all genre of posts.
• Ability to view other people’s Jux pages while I am still logged into my own Jux account (right now, no matter what: I am redirected to my own Jux page)
• A “discovery” method beyond the front page (Jux home page) browse mode - a way to find other Jux users and see what they are sharing, possibly a username search eventually so I can find family, friends and acquaintances
• Big one (in terms of developer effort): bookmarklets similar to Tumblr: allowing me to highlight some text on a web page, clicking the bookmarklet and a tiny pop-up window appears allowing me to create a post, choose the genre and include the highlighted text, picture, video, wahtever. OR at the very least - take me to my Jux “create new” tool and allow me to create my post from there

There are more features I’d like to see and I have no doubt much of what I’ve listed here is already on the developers’ list. As for bugs: I haven’t found any, save two:

Inability to create a post if my user-name contains capital letters (though this should already be fixed by the time you read this)

An apparent “hang” after clicking “done” on a new post, where the “spinning cyclone” widget on blank screen remains - even though the post is submitted and viewable (a page refresh clears it out and shows the post). Note that this only seems to happen if the post includes a high-resolution image, either uploaded or referenced from Flickr, etc.

I have found Jux to not only be ridiculously easy to use and beautiful in it’s presentation of my shared items, but downright fun to use. Though my current blog (this one) is currently hosted on Tumblr, I have no doubt I’ll be moving it to Jux once the custom domain feature is in place and the Flash is no longer a requirement for uploading image files.

I am that impressed with the system overall and especially: the presentation of my shared content. Have a peek at my own Jux home page here.

I’ve also already written about Jux… on my Jux page, which you can see here.

Jux accounts are free and easy to set-up, once completed you can immediately start sharing stuff. Go there now and start having some real fun: http://Jux.com