A baby that's just like LJ - only better

[zdashamber]

For those following this on Dreamwidth:

This entry marks the border between "real" Dreamwidth entries and imported posts.

(fancypants html stolen from elf who also has a good basics-of-Dreamwidth post here)

Perhaps you'd vaguely heard about Dreamwidth? Here's the deal: it's an updated version of the LJ code, run by people who worked with LJ and are now starting this new thing to do it better. I'm planning to switch to DW because

1. LJ seems like its survival is iffy. Sure, it's huge in Russia, but in the US they whacked a chunk of their staff (remember the "back up your journal" thing a few months ago?). LJ is probably going to be a moneysuck what with ad revenue dropping in the depression, and the way it never really made money anyway. Maybe it will survive because it's just a tiny appendix to the main deal over in Russia, but I wouldn't keep a foreign annoying moneysuck going if I were them.

2. I can get in on the ground floor at DW. :)

Also, Dreamwidth seems like it will generally be a better place. The people who run it (until they burn out) are accessible. The architecture makes more sense: you can let people read your protected entries without in return having to read all their stuff, which would really help me in the cases of a bunch of people I like who post too much for me. Anyone can make a feed.

I got an invite by the suggested method of validating an email address using my open id (open id = you can sign on with your LJ info) and winning the random drawing of people who had done that. That method may be closed now, since on Thursday they're going to actually open, and let people buy accounts (either $200 permanent accounts or $3 for a month), and people with accounts will then have invites to hand out so other people can get free accounts. So if you need an invite Thursday/Friday I may well have them.

Immediately I signed on, I set up a feed for $*@#!@*& Three Panel Soul, a brilliant comic that updates incredibly irregularly. Now I won't have to go there! It will come to me oh yesss

Importing my LJ's entries to DW was super simple and quick. That whole "back up your journal" thing... Er, I couldn't be arsed at the time, and now I'm quite pleased that everything is in two different places. Redundancy! Parallelism!

This is my plan: to post over at Dreamwidth, which will crosspost everything to LJ so you can still find me. If you'd like to comment either here or there, it should get through to me (in different color-coded emails because that's how my webmail works!).

The downsides of Dreamwidth: 1. All of the styles they currently offer are ugly and mostly not very readable. I hear it will be very easy to skin them, so I'm looking forward to that. 2. It's all .org addresses, which I'll probably start remembering soon enough, but eh.

So, yay.

In other news, I finally signed up last night for the Southwest Airlines frequent flyer program, Rapid Rewards. I was going to see if the rental car prices they offered were in fact cheaper. I was diverted from this goal, however, by the link "Get credit for past flights." No shit? I thought, and plugged in a past flight. And got credit. OOOOOOOoooo, I thought, and plugged in all of the flights I took on Southwest in the last two years (I save the notifications in a folder in my email so I can find them before a flight, and don't delete them just in case), and got a free flight out of it. OMG YAY. I can't believe how much better Southwest is than every other airline. I mean, that's just decent. Woo!

Comments

[aiyume]

Thank you very much for the invite. The look is pretty good so far, so I think I'll make myself at home. :) Now I just need to get other friends over here...