Monday, February 26, 2007

If everyone blogs is it still cool?

Probably not, but blogs have become very mainstream. The blog as we know it has been around since the late 20th century. In the world of the Internet, they are not new. But many of our campus community are still wondering "what a blog?" So, from Wikipeida (which is a wiki) we find a blog is:

"... a user-generated website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order."

Blogs can be about anything: personal diary; forum on local news; an outlet for dissident thought. Sites like MySpace and Facebook are next-generation blog services that incorporate many social networking aspects. Blogs can be text, photos (photoblogs), video (vlogs), audio (podcasting).


Here are a few blog hosting sites that I have tried:

There are many others, but I haven't used them.

MySpace is considered a blog host with social networking aspects. It has recently become very commercial with lots of advertising on the pages, but it still remains popular.

For ease of use, Blogger is my choice. It was recently aquired by Google, so Blogger now has that powerhouse behind it. The new version of Blogger is a bit buggy, but has some nifty features and is pretty dummy proof.

For customability, self-hosted WordPress is great. To get the full impact of WordPress you have to host it yourself or pay for it to be hosted for you. WordPress offers free hosting at WordPress.com, but you don't get to play with the software or plugins.

Most of the best looking blogs I have use TypePad or WordPress. And, yes, the way a blog looks is very important.

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