Several people have added me recently to their private Vox blogs (Vox just started up last week, is done by SixApart, who brought us Moveable Type and TypePad, but many of the early adopter types were on the beta). I am sorry to admit that I “poopooed” Vox as something for “other people.” I didn’t get it.

But after seeing that there’s some value to blogging to just your family or your friends or a small group of people I have to admit I was wrong about Vox. 

Vox is pretty darn cool. I told Matt Mullenweg (founder of WordPress.com, the folks who publish my blog here) yesterday that he should get into Vox and see what’s going on cause tons of people that I trust are doing the Vox thing. It’ll be interesting to see how WordPress responds. I’d certainly like to have a WordPress.com blog where I could post something just to my friends and/or family.

I love this photo, taken by Rommel, of Zaadz.

It was during Maryam and my talk at the Blog Business Summit, titled “10 ways to a killer blog.”

There are some good reports from our session. We joked around about ways to get bloggers to pay attention. One of the ideas was to include sex in your headlines, which got everyone to laugh. Anyway, here’s the best of the reports I found:

Paul Cheney.
Janet Lee Johnson.
Andru Edwards.
Denise Wakeman.
Barry Hurd.
Dustin Luther.

And, of course, thank you to Hugh Macleod for letting us use his great cartoons.

Oh, and after reading this post of Hugh’s I realize why my blog sucks. I’ve been trying to make everyone happy. Well, screw that.

Can you tell we were stuck in a snowstorm today and am punchy? Heheh. Sitting here in a restaurant in Seattle’s airport thinking about how I’m going to go back to writing a blog for one person.

How about Dori Smith? I think I’ll try to find one thing tomorrow that’ll make her happy. The rest of you can go read Digg.

One of my favorite employees at Microsoft was David Caulton. His analysis of various things was always interesting. Here he responds to my post about Microsoft’s Zune. He was the guy who showed off Apple’s iPod in a meeting I was in.

What I mean by conversationality is “will someone who is sitting next to me in the Seattle Airport ask me what that cool new thing I’m wearing is all about?”

The white headphones caused those kinds of conversations. I saw them happen multiple times (I agree that they won’t happen anymore cause white headphones are so commonplace).

If a product causes conversations to happen, then it’ll see more adoption quicker.

I see what Jason Calacanis was asking of Jimmy Wales (to sell ads on Wikipedia and donate the money to charity). Well, my traffic here is a lot smaller, but the folks involved in advertising tell me they could get quite a few thousand dollars per month by selling ads on my blog.

What do you think? Should I sell ads here? If it was your blog, would you hesitate? Why?

Disclaimer: This is a junket report.

I’m in a car driving back from “Grapes on a Plane.” Steve Broback is driving. I’m blogging. And hungover.

Anyway, Kevin O’Keefe give the report (he does a great set of law blogs).

We got a ride on a Learjet, which was a real treat, thanks to Greenpoint Technologies (which sponsored the trip and also sponsors the Big Business Jet Blog) and ate at Hedges Winery, which had awesome wine and a really fun owner.

Other people who were there? Andru Edwards of Gear Live Media, Theresa Valdez Klein, Maryam, Tim Stay, of Know More Media, Tris Hussey and Jim Turner, Halley Suitt, Kim Larsen of Blog Business Summit, Eric Anderson and his wife Jeanene, the CEO of Greenpoint, Jon Buccola who told us about all the weird planes that they’ve done for various billionaires. I’m sure I’m forgetting a couple of people, sorry.

Steve says this was a reward for the Blog Business Summit speakers and a reward for affiliates who got the most traffic to their site.

Anyway, hope you’re having a good time this weekend. Now back to reality.

There’s a lot more on the Blog Business Summit over on Google Blog Search. It was a great conference, I especially liked John Batelle’s speech on Friday.

Chuqui, who is was an Apple employee, has a point. Apple employees ARE allowed to blog. They just aren’t allowed to be spokespeople, as Chuqui admits. So, they don’t feel empowered to talk about anything that they are working on, as Chuqui admits. That’s completely different from what Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Adobe, IBM, and other tech companies tell their employees.

Lots of Apple employees have told me that they want to blog about work. He says the goal should be communication, not getting credit.

Absolutely!

But what he doesn’t admit is that Google has changed everything. Now I totally expect to be able to find an employee at a company running a product group. Here’s a test.

Go to Google. Type “OneNote blog.” You’ll find Chris Pratley. He runs the team. I can tell him his product sucks in his comments.

Now, go back to Google. Type “Apple MacBook blog.” Do you find an Apple employee? No. You find a corporate page. Send an email there. Does it go to the right person? I have no idea. Certainly bloggers who’ve tried that recently due to Apple’s rebooting problems are getting unstatisfactory answers.

Anyway, you can see the difference in how Apple treats online communication in Chuqui’s post. At Adobe I see tons of blogs. At Microsoft I see tons of blogs. At IBM I see tons of blogs. At Sun I see tons of blogs.

The difference is telling.

And the fact that Chuqui thinks it’s about credit is telling too.

Oh, well, it ain’t my company.

UPDATE: Chuqui doesn’t work at Apple anymore. He did for years. I am sorry for missing that he doesn’t work there any longer.