MSN Spaces: A Review

I had been wondering for quite sometime now why Microsoft, which has started its employees blogs so much, did not come out with a blogging service of its own. It has now, and the Redmond badshah has done a really good job at it. It is called MSN spaces, and is a one stop shop for all your online needs, from a blog, photo album, blog roll, book list, music list, comments, track back, blog it (I think something like blogThis) extra custom lists, and more.

Let me start with the writing of the posts. It gives a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) style editor, which will be good for people who do not want to mess with html while writing their posts. You have an option to add photos, emoticons, along with the regular formatting options. You can optionally specify the trackback URL. It also has the option of specifying the category of your post.

The blog looks very simple and elegant. At least mine does :D. There is an option to change to default layout, and the themes but I decided to stick to the default. I did not like the themes all that much, and well, I guess I like the simplicity of the display.

I liked the idea of being able to add a book list and music list. You can add the books to the list very simply. For the music, you could even let it synchronize it with your Windows Media Player. A nice idea actually. Wonder why the blogger guys never thought of allowing us to synchronize it with Winamp or something. The blogroll is also pretty decent.

You can add any number of new Custom lists. Again haven't tried it out completely but the idea looks good to me. This makes it very easy to add lists such as frequently visited websites, or maybe something like SEO Links (as in Chirayu's blog) on another list.

It has an inbuild photo album to which you can add pictures, and then include them in your posts.

The comments are almost like those of haloscan. It has gmail like scripts which open a haloscan type add-comment box and it is really easy to use it. However, it is finally Microsoft, and it expects users to have a .NET Passport for even signing the comments. Guess, you can never change some people. Mr. Gates will never renunciate his obsession with controlling his customers lives.

Perhaps the only thing missing is a Shoutbox. Would love to see that there as well. Thankfully, a site feed is present. RSS, not atom.

The best thing I liked about MSN Spaces is the customize page. It is completely drag-and-drop. You can change the positions of everything using simple mouse clicks. No eye-problems due to concentrating on the HTML. You can change the layout by simply selecting it from a drop down menu. The theme can be changed equally easily. You can the move around your lists by simple mouse clicks, re arrange them on your page, and satiate your own aesthetic desires. In fact, it is a boon for people who do no know too much of coding, html etc. and want to use a blog just to vent to their feelings. They do not have to wonder about making their blog look good, they can just concentrate on their writing, MSN does everything else for them.

However, as with most other Microsoft products, it does not have an option for viewing your html, let alone change it. People like me, who feel thrilled on being able to change the template slightly to support haloscan like commenting system, will find it a little boring. My fingers did itch to be able to do something more, some other changes, but sadly did not have any options there.

Final word: Great for people who want to blog, not for people who want to mess around with their blog. And blogger, you have some serious competition.

PS: Visit my MSN Space at http://spaces.msn.com/members/kpowerinfinity/