January 17, 2004

• Blog

  I dislike the term 'blog'. I prefer its parent term, 'Weblog'. 'Blog', like so many other four letter words being overused, sounds disgustingly like a prohibited act or filthy refuse. It also has connotations of the general illiteracy that has plagued writing on the Internet by juveniles and those who have not practiced their writing skills. Fortunately, many of the less literate efforts being produced are one-shot deals, their creators quickly losing interest in generating the effort necessary to produce even such marginal results.

  What is a Weblog?

  It isn't a journal or diary. Or, rather, it can be a journal or diary but with an added dimension: participation. You write a journal for yourself and keep it to yourself. You usually try to keep your diary secret. You throw your Weblog open to the world, inviting comments and dialog. It is a community project.

  A journal is a solitary work, a tool useful for communicating with your subconscious mind. A diary is a repository for secrets. A Weblog is like a garden, where you plant seeds, tend and water the plants, remove an occasional weed -- and others add plenty of fertilizer.

  A newsletter is something else. A newsletter may be the work of a single individual or of a community, and it is usually distributed by email or snail mail, often on a regular schedule. When it is a community effort, there are usually one or more moderators or editors.

  A Weblog will require two word processors, usually a fairly sophisticated one for composing the original submission and a simpler one for composing comments thereon, and it will require a host to display the results. There are no end of hosting services available, some free and some asking for paid subscriptions: Xanga, LiveJournal, Lycos/Tripod, Blogger, WebCrimson and JournalScape to begin with. Plus there are packages you can run yourself, on a hosted site, that allow you to become the host for a new group of Weblog clients. There are many different Weblog packages, each with its own characteristics and features. Many of them are free.

  Is anything ever truly free?

  You don't have to pay money for the packages and services, but they come with advertising for their sources built in. If you use the product, you advertise the product. That, eventually, provides some income for the people who invested the time and effort necessary to produce the package or service. It may not give much of a return on investment, but these things are often labors of love. If we don't give something back, the quality products we've been using may all disappear. Or they may never be improved upon.

  But that is another topic.

  I'm writing this particular Weblog entry on Xanga. I was going to write it on LiveJournal using my Sony Clié PDA and the AvantGo linking software ... but when I tried to write it, I found a message from AvantGo saying they suspended my account. I hadn't been reading the feeds they downloaded to my PDA. Not for several months (probably closer to a year). So I have to activate my account again before I can use the PDA to write LiveJournal Weblog entries. That's slightly annoying, but they want me to read their advertising once in a while as payment for using their service. I suppose that's fair.

  I got LiveJournal because I could use my PDA with it. But I got a free subscription, which has limited features. One service I'd like but would have to pay for (it isn't terribly expensive) would be to have the Weblog show up on my Am0.us Web page like my Blogger-based Am's rAMbles does. LiveJournal also has a large number of editing options, making it easy to generate entries and comments. One that is particularly interesting is a notification message sent out when a comment or reply to a comment is made, the message itself containing the editing mechanism for generating a reply to the latest comment made.

  I've had a free Web site with Tripod since before they merged with Lycos and became Lycos / Tripod. Some time back, they added a Weblog that had an RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feed capability. When I write and submit an entry there, I can also push it onto the RSS feed. Then it goes into syndication services like newsisfree and NewsMonster, which process all news feeds world-wide, not just the RSS, and combine them into a super newspaper. My little articles can sit there next to the articles from BBC and Reuters ... but mine seem to get ignored. Well, the mechanism for commenting is lost when you submit to newsfeed, so there is no feedback. But perfect strangers may have read my words about words.

  I write a lot. Much of what I write never gets read. At least, nobody comments on a lot of what I write. My wife and daughter don't read my stuff at all. It took a long time to get my son started reading and writing Weblogs, and he often ignores mine. Others who write Weblogs get dozens to hundreds of comments on each entry. Some even get paid for their submissions, enough to make a living by it.

  Despite the paucity of feedback, the Weblog is my preferred vehicle for writing.

  • 04:59
  • 6 Comments