Hey you! Don't Vox that! Vox THIS!

Last week, we pushed out Release 32 of Vox, the release notes for which can be found here. We turned out some cool features, but there's one new bit of functionality in there that we didn't tell you about yet. We're calling it Vox This and it's an API that allows you to easily bring content from other sites in to your Vox. For you Web 2.0 geeks out there, it's similar to the "Digg This" API, and we hope it's not long before we see other sites out there adding Vox This buttons to their pages.

In the meantime, though, we've come up with a way for you to be able to use Vox This as you roam the non-Vox web (it's still out there, right?). Simply drag the bookmarklet (at the right) to your bookmark toolbar in your browser (in Firefox) or right-click it and add it to your favorites (in Internet Explorer, you probably want to put it in the Links folder). Then, whenever you come across something on the web that you want to Vox about, you just hit your Vox This button.

So what happens when you use Vox This? I'm glad you asked that. Or... I'm glad I asked that for you.

When you Vox This, you'll be taken to a landing page where you'll confirm that you want to add the item to your library. If you Vox'd This on a supported Vox conduit partner's item, like a Flickr photo or YouTube video, then you'll be prompted to add it to your library and optionally compose a post. If you Vox This on a non-partner's site, like a CNN story perhaps, then you'll be prompted to add that to your links library (more about link libraries later) and write a post about it. The landing page will do its best to figure out the title of whatever you Vox'd, and it will let you pick an image from those found on the page to use as a thumbnail. If you had any text highlighted, then that will be brought in as the description. The link will be added in to your post with the thumbnail and description. As with any other enclosure, you can hover over it to get to the format tool which will let you left/right/center align it or resize it within your post.

Give it a try and let us know what you think. We hope this makes it easy for you to write about news or events, or other interesting stuff you find out on the web.

-- Steve