One of the many new features we have rolled into this latest full version (2.0) release of InstantSpot.com is the ability to secure your blog entries so that only Friends of your site can view the content. 

A great example of this is found at http://hudson.instantspot.com.  Dave Shuck's 7 year old son decided to create a blog of his own, but only wanted his friends to have access. 

As you can see in the screenshot, his content is hidden until you are a) Logged in to InstantSpot and b) a Friend of Hudson's site.

Other possible permission levels:

• Public      (everyone can see the post)
• Private     (only you can see it)
• Password (you assign a password to the content which would "unlock" it)
• InstantSpot users only.

While doing some ego-surfing on InstantSpot 's behalf, I came across a blogger doing a review of some of the free website/blog tools available on the web today. At the time, what I found was part 1 of a 3 part series on the apps read here for part 1 .

Somehow, InstantSpot squeaked its way in to the author's review getting tossed into the competition with Blogger, Wordpress, Vox and LiveJournal.

"I also found this one called InstantSpot after my testing. I know nothing about it but may set up a blog on it to test it. Then I’ll update this list with my Instant Spot blog."

COOL!!!

Part 2 of the review concentrated mainly on Blogger and Wordpress and the pro's and con's of each.

Part 3 discussed the "others" (that means InstantSpot!) I have grabbed the author's review of our beloved 'Spot and you can read it below:


"Instant Spot:

* can edit .css
* allows google adsense (just click in ad manager)
* tracking script manager works with trackers like g analy, feedburner, etc
* host header mgmt allows redirecting to a host domain name
* definitely looks geared towards tracking, marketing and promoting
* has large set of social networking icons (like digg, etc) at bottom of each post (many of which I have never heard)
* tag line is “Get spotted now!
* seems to be highly customizable judging by looking at other instant spot blogs. Not sure how though.
* has ads on page

Instant Spot was the only other blog engine that looked intriguing to me. I could see it being useful for people who are selling or promoting something and who want a very nice looking site (not sure of the effort involved though) and who want to be able to market, track and promote their site. If you had a club or small business, this seems like a good site.

We teach Aikido and I could see easily setting up a website for our Aikido club on this. Here is an instant spot site that is for a fitness class that is not fancy and was probably easy to set up, but is a decent site for their classes. (I don’t know or endorse these people, just thought it was a good example of a not-too-fancy, easy to set up, useful site). And here is a really nice looking blog .

Instant Spot seems to have some definite possibilities.

Well, that is it for my review of blog engines. Google Blogger for balance between being easy and having functionality, WordPress.org (self-hosted wordpress) for total control and flexibility and Instant Spot for an easy (I think) website for a club, class, non-profit or small business."

COOL...AGAIN!!!

This week we had a user create an account on InstantSpot.com, and do something that hasn't been done yet.  He used his Spot as a medium to present data for an Accounting project at his school.

Some of the things he did was:

• Presented summary data about the study subject, IBM .
• Showed earnings estimates in chart form

I never thought about how well an InstantSpot.com site would work for a school project, but I am happy to see this user did.