Evite: Use Socializr or MyPunchbowl
The main problem with Evite is the uninformative email. "You are invited to Heather's Divorce Party," says Evite, with a personal message from the host but no actual information. To make a decision as a guest, I have to click over to Evite; that cramps my style if I'm trying to be at all productive with my inbox. Plus it's a pain when I'm en route to the party and need to double-check the address. If only I could just check my email on my phone, but no, all the info is trapped in Evite! The "send it to my phone" option is silly, as I probably won't remember to do that until I'm already away from my computer.

The site is also annoying to use: I can only export the event to iCal, RSVPing takes me to a useless page instead of back to the event, and the site is full of ads and unrelated links. Evite is the MySpace of invitations.

That's almost all fixed with Socializr and MyPunchbowl. Socializr sends a complete email with party time, location and information:

But the event page only lets guests export info to Outlook, not iCal, Google Calendar, or Yahoo Calendar. MyPunchbowl allows all of that, but although it leaves guests a pretty informative email, it leaves out the event location. (It's also cluttered with more "features" than I care about.) Because of that, I'm using Socializr for my next party.

YouTube: Use Vimeo
Seriously, why put anything on YouTube when Vimeo exists? Of all the alternative video sites — Veoh, Blip.tv, Revver — Vimeo is the best option for the average video maker (people with professional shows should also consider Blip.tv or VideoEgg). Here are YouTube's failures and how Vimeo beats them:

• Crap video quality: Remember the '90s, when online video was tiny and grainy? And then connections got faster and video was decently pretty again? And then YouTube made it all grainy again, with dissonant sound? Vimeo has better video quality, especially in its new HD format, which has 12 times the resolution of YouTube. (Those with pre-Intel Macs will have to watch the non-HD versions.) Viewers can also download the original video file.
• Ugly site: And ugly embeds. Not with Vimeo, which has a freshly updated embedded-video style that matches its slick, uncluttered web site.
• Horrible commenters: YouTube comments are spam and illiterate evaluations: "dis sux" or "lol." The video creator can either take hours to pick through all of them deleting bad comments, or ban comments altogether. Vimeo comments are not only readable, they're nearly all encouraging. Is the fantastic community only there because the site's so small? Who cares, it's not going to explode any time soon. It'll just steal the best creative users from YouTube.

An example of Vimeo's beauty:

Blogger: Use WordPress.com, Vox, or Tumblr
In its first few years, Blogger rocked; then like most Google acquisitions, it languished, until now it's a hive of spam blogs. Blogger isn't particularly heinous to use, it's just quite limiting. Now there are plenty of friendly blog interfaces for those of us who just want a simple blog with no mucking about in HTML.

WordPress.com is the most flexible, useful for people who want the power of WordPress without installing the whole thing on a server, or whatever people do to make their own WordPress blog (I've had a few, but I always needed someone else to set them up). There's room for HTML and custom CSS and stuff, so you can upgrade it. I Can Has Cheezburger is built on WordPress.com.

Vox is the new Blogger, as far as simplicity and friendliness. Pretty much no learning curve. It's designed to be the blog your mom can use. Lots of Vox blogs are happy and sunny; this one is also Warm 'n Fuzzy.

My favorite is Tumblr (which powers my personal site). This one's less about "dear diary" blogging and more "here's some stuff I found." The small input boxes encourage brevity, which is what your blog could use, isn't it?

Twitter: Use Pownce
I haven't stopped using Twitter. But I used to use it to ask questions when I needed a whole bunch of ideas ("Anyone know some songs about transvestites?"). Now I use Pownce, which lets people reply within a thread. It's like a comment thread without a blog post at the top, or a quick and easy mini-forum. It's also a more rewarding place to pimp your boring blog posts link to entertaining webpages.

Digg: Use StumbleUpon
What if you could get Digg-like traffic without suffering the wrath of Digg commenters? Try StumbleUpon, which asks for "reviews" instead of a stream of comments, forcing users to actually think before posting about a site. That gives StumbleUpon the same community advantage Vimeo has over YouTube.

Get your site "Stumbled" and you could get several thousand pageviews — not always as much as Digg, but without the "this sucks u suck LOOSER" commentary.

MapQuest: Use Google Maps
You already know Google Maps is the best, but apparently most folks still use MapQuest, despite its awkward input forms and such. But, well, those folks aren't you. So I guess we've got a little extra time here before the article runs out. Go spend it at Vimeo.

Nick Douglas writes at Valleywag, Too Much Nick, and Look Shiny. Seriously, Vimeo is like licking chocolate off the Venus de Milo.

A spinoff would have had financial appeal, of course, given the fad for social networks these days and Facebook's lofty mooted valuation. That is, of course, assuming Six Apart could have come to terms with a deep-pocketed buyer. But taking money off the table is the only aspect of this rumored deal that would have made sense.

First, there's technology. Six Apart executives have long maintained that the company's enterprise and consumer blog businesses complement each other, and share a lot of their core software. (An upcoming version of TypePad, the Web-based blog software popular with small businesses, will have new community features based largely on Vox, we hear.)

Then there's the founders' pride. Would Ben and Mena Trott have supported Movable Type and TypePad, the businesses they built up from scratch? Or would they have thrown their attentions to LiveJournal, the fractious personal-blogging service Six Apart acquired a couple of years ago, and Vox, the newer blog-cum-social network that's especially close to Mena's heart?

And then there's the IPO factor. With its combined businesses, Six Apart's revenue streams are nicely diversified between subscription fees, software licenses, and advertising. And even so, the company is barely big enough to draw investment banks' interest. Separately, its consumer and enterprise arms would have been more acquisition bait than anything.

So for now, a spinoff, having been considered and apparently dismissed some months ago, seems unlikely. But we do know that at least one member of the board is meeting with Alden, the new CEO, tomorrow. We can only wonder what they'll chat about. Anyone heard anything else? Please share. (Illustration by Tim Faulkner)

Socialstream, a Google-backed research project at Carnegie Mellon University, fits right in with Fitzpatrick's and Recordon's interests. For Google, the notion of linking networks together, rather than trying to swim upstream and compete with MySpace and Facebook, makes perfect sense. Rather than trying to resurrect Google's failing Orkut network, Fitzpatrick could be joining Google to help it disrupt existing social networks' business models.

That's the likeliest plan for Fitzpatrick. But what to make of Recordon's rumored return to Six Apart? It seems strange on the surface for Recordon to be going back to the company just as Fitzpatrick, his good friend, is leaving. But good friends aren't always good coworkers. Recordon, by voting with his paycheck, seems to be signaling that Six Apart is not the truly troubled party here. It's Fitzpatrick.

What we hear, very quietly, from employees at Six Apart, where Fitzpatrick plans to work his last day on Friday, is that they're not at all sad to see Fitzpatrick go. Even LiveJournal loyalists, while showering the founder with praise, make a point of saying how little Fitzpatrick has contributed to the site he created since he sold it to Six Apart.

It all makes sense. "I'm not convinced I couldn't be just as helpful to Six Apart outside of Six Apart," he wrote recently in his LiveJournal. Practically speaking, technology that opens up social networks could benefit Six Apart's second-tier communities, LiveJournal and Vox, more than it helps the dominant players.

Then there's Fitzpatrick himself, a decidedly difficult employee. Coddled at Google by its lavish benefits and engineers-rule culture, the brilliant programmer will likely do fine. Faced with grown-up responsibilities at Six Apart, he veered between retreating and lashing out. Between business trips to Russia and a two-month sabbatical, he's spent relatively little time in the office this year, and what time he did spend wasn't pleasant, from all accounts, including Fitzpatrick's own.

Six Apart faces all sorts of challenges — not least of which is managing the mess of LiveJournal with which Fitzpatrick saddled the company. And, oddly enough for a blogging company, it struggles with coming right out and talking about its problems. But Fitzpatrick's departure, laced as it was with thinly veiled insults to his coworkers, we're now concluding, says more about him than the company he worked for. Leaving Six Apart, it seems, really is the best thing he could do for the company.

• New York-based e-mail startup Daily Candy gets a sweet deal: an investment valuing the company at $130 mil, which lets the company take down its "For Sale" sign and get back to the important business of making urban women feel inadequately shoed. [Gawker, link being fixed]
• So some big-city bloggers had a party for Six Apart's new Vox blogging service, right? And some guys sat in a hot tub on the roof? And probably someone called this the bubble? Hon, it's not a bubble until what's in the hot tub can get you drunk. Anyway, click through for topless shots of Gawker Media managing editor Lockhart Steele. [Teen Drama]
• Damn it, Gawker's stealing all the tech news today. As our catty sister notes, the New York Times is proud to name-drop Dodgeball.com founder Dennis Crowley, the man responsible for every New Yorker and San Franciscan constantly updating their friends on how drunk they're about to get. [Gawker]
• Pictured: The Times also uses a photo illustration to remind everyone of those wild days of free drink coasters for all. [NYT]
• Mooching off the "Get a Mac" commercials: You can make a clever parody or a creepy knock-off ad. (Please make the parody.) [iLoad]