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It's been over a year since I last played with Vox!

I feel kind of guilty, but I have a valid excuse... well... sort of :)

This post is a test to see how well it handles email input....

I was lucky enough to get an invite to take Vox for a test drive, so that's what I'm currently doing.

While I had intended to play with it and then post a review on my main blog I've changed my mind, as I can't really demonstrate how easy this platform is to use except by using it!

For example, if you want to add a photo to a blog post you are presented with a range of options.

You can choose from the "classics" ie. uploading from your computer or grabbing from your Flickr account. However the Vox team have taken it a step further. You can also grab content from other sources such as iStockPhoto and PhotoBucket. The image below is from iStockPhoto and was chosen based on a keyword search. I was then able to resize it and choose where to place it in the post - all via a nice and intuitive AJAX powered interface.

I don't usually embed other media in my blog posts, but Vox makes it so incredibly easy that it's hard to resist the temptation .....

You can also pull in and intertwine your posts with other media from Amazon

There are also a number of other ways that you can display / share your interest (see the sidebar)

What is quite novel about the whole thing is the permissions aspect - you can decide who sees what and how they may interact with it. So instead of password protecting posts or closing comments etc., you can simply decide which users are allowed to view them etc., which is nice

All in all it's a very nifty platform which is nice and easy to use. For someone like me, however, I'd probably get bored very easily, as I like to be able to control as much as possible. The links to Amazon and adsense ads, for example, are not configurable and so use the Vox accounts.

I've no idea what they plan to do with Vox as it is rolled out, but if a "pay to use" option were available which allowed you to get the ad revenue I could see it becoming popular.