I am breaking up my usual “Top 5” post for a couple of reasons: first, the two (not five) topics I picked were enough material to stand on their own; second, I wanted to monkey with the format to see if the posts turn out better if they are a little more focused. Let me know what you think.
Utterli Depressing
Beginning in 2007, I started using a great service known as Utterli (actually, it was originally known as Utterz) to facilitate mobile posting of pictures, audio and text (and, if I wanted, video) from my phone. It was a great solution for reducing the barriers to posting more frequently and when ideas occurred to me. I got some wonderful help from their support folks when setting the service up with WordPress, and met several of them, as Utterly was based not far from Boston.
Over the last several months, it became apparent that Utterli was gearing down- friends who were still using it heavily complained of support disappearing, and I worried that my posts, or some of the material in the, might disappear.
Just this past week, I noticed the site was down completely, with no announcement. As you can see from this post for example, the photo and audio I had posted are now gone- thankfully, the text remains. On the one hand, it would have been nice to have a little warning and a chance to back up our stuff. On the other, Utterli was a free service and you have to expect some risk in relying on a third-party service to provide your content in the cloud. We got what we paid for, didn’t we?
Still: what’s up, Utterli?
Twitter Comment
RT @DougH : Utterli Depressed [link to post] #in http://bit.ly/aBW4xn
– Posted using Chat Catcher
Thanks for posting. I sporadically check in to see if Utterli has indeed died. There was no warning but the dissolving support presence was an indicator I guess. It’s a real shame. After todays google search “What has happened to Utterli?” and arriving here, I am coming to terms with the inevitable and moving on.Did you find an alternative?
I use Posterous to post pictures and occasional short posts, and iPadio to do audio- but nothing does it all
It is a shame that Utterli has disappeared into the ethers. I was a heavy-duty user of this site because of the incredible SEO benefits. There is no other site quite like it. I spent a lot of time creating keyword-targeted posts, and was able to conquer page 1 on Google SERPs within as little as one hour just by posting articles to this site. I wish there was something closer to it, but I too will start using Posterous.
I used to use Utterli as well back when it was Utterz. I used to link it to my twitter account because I enjoyed being able to write something without the 140 character limitation and new it would bounce to my twitter and then from their to my facebook account. The audio and photo options were also heavily used by me as well. Yet I really enjoyed meeting new people especially poets and hearing their poems from their utterli pages.
Yet I’m in the same boat as you guys when the support started to disappear and then *poof* nothing. I’ve been lookin around, but not that hard for a replacement. Glad to see there are some suggestions.
Jasmine, glad I could be of some help. I am still using Posterous a bit for photo posting, but looking around for things that might be more complete (audio, etc).
I’m just now reading your post, Doug. Utterli was a great service. I miss it. (The re-brand was a complete disaster.)
Don’t know if the re-brand was a disaster– I suppose it was in terms of trying to figure out who they were markting to; but the service disappearing was sad for users like me.
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Make sure you leave the house early, and plan to be
at the interview at least ten minutes early. If you
have to, go buy a shirt – you’ll need it when you start working anyway.
This is an area that you really cannot take personally.