Since blog-you is closing down, I am thinking what I can do. Time to get involve.

IHMO, I believed the main reason of blog-you's demise is due to lost of interest, high admin work loads, unpopular new services (i.e. bligg), and failure to raise to next level of popularity. Having said that, I think blog-you has a pretty good brand-name in the HK blogosphere… it's a pity.

In some way, I think we can implement a better HK blogosphere portal service.

Here's some brainstorming idea here

Mission Statement

To create a website with service(s) to act as catalyst to promote HK blogsphere.
To encourage interaction between HK bloggers by providing service(s) that is cross-platform and simple to use.
To act as a portal to useful information/pointers to HK blogosphere, from beginner to experience blogger.
The system should require no/little management, build on open-source solution and re-use as much as possible.
All is welcome to use the service, as long as they wish to. We will remain neutral on all aspects.

Resource Needed

an admin email address
domain name
hosting service w/ PHP5+MySQL, storage+bandwidth
volunteers

Question to Answer

Can we bridge information from blog-you? Highly unlikely without all users consent. Best bet is to have blog-you re-direct all existing/new users to the service.
Where to find $$$ to support the service (i.e. hosting/storage/bandwidth)?
What is the privacy policy, 服務條款?

List of Current Services in Blog-you

Blogcast
ColumnBlogger
BloggerMap
Blogger's Choice
GuessWhere HongKong
Recent Visitors
Bligg

Proposed List of Services

全港blog cast (+ 分類blog cast)
blog directory
有趣分類 (wiki 形式)
- 時, 事 (event, 例如聖誕, xxx 演唱會, 七一遊行)
- 地 (海心公園, 蘭桂坊) *用埋google map 定點
- 人 (政要, 藝人, etc etc.) 介面可以好似wetpaint咁, 越多人講個公仔越大個.

Blogcast

setup a server-side RSS aggregator, suggest Lilina
proof-of-concept @ http://edmondhui.homeip.net/lilina/
~~provide a Google reader like GUI~~ (done)
~~export to RSS/Atom~~ (done)
~~blogger can put a blogcast box in their blog using the rss feed~~, done. wp has build-in widget. For others, try here
~~hack out a self-service feed submission infrastructure~~ (done)
- ~~submit blog's information: blog URL, RSS URL, blogname, contact email, tag/category~~ (done)
- send email to blogger w/ a password to access a feed info update page
- send email to admin daily to report new feeds added
- integrate w/ blog directory (when available)
- ~~anti-spam tool like captcha~~ (done)
tagging support, display new posts from blogs belong to a particular tag, provide RSS feed
search and display item with tags, provide RSS feed for each tag

Blog Directory

Using Google map API? But have not found a already exist application to harness to…
One idea is to use Google Mapplets see here
The new blog directory should allow people to add a “marker” on a HK/world map to represent their blog
It should support tag and able to group blogs markers in certain way. i.e. by 18 regions in HK.

Wiki

More Idea

Some current blog-you service can be reincarnated in a different way. The main theme is to depends on the power of RSS and tagging.

ColumnBlogger: Maybe turn into “OpenColumn”.
- This can be done by monitor RSS feeds for a particular tag i.e. opencol_music, opencol_movie, opcol_tech, and etc.
- RSS feed has a “category” for each item that many blogging software (i.e. wp, Nucleus) used for tagging support.
- All bloggers on the blogcast can participated. They can mark their posts with the tag, OpenColumn will monitor for the tag and group them in a RSS feed and post it on a page.
- This way, minimal admin work is required and encourage participation.
Blogger's Choice: blogmarks.com is not often used…. maybe we can do it w/ del.icio.us hkbloggers tag…