Are You a Blogger?

# A short form for weblog, a personal journal published on the Web. Blogs frequently include philosophical reflections, opinions on the Internet and social issues, and provide a "log" of the author's favorite web links. Blogs are usually presented in journal style with a new entry each day.

# A public web site where users post informal journals of their thoughts, comments, and philosophies, updated frequently and normally reflecting the views of the blog's creator.

An online Journal.
matra.sourceforge.net/misc/glossary.php
# Blog is short for weblog. A weblog is a journal that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs generally represent the personality of the author or the Web site.

# An online journal, published frequently (often daily). Readers can post comments on each journal entry.

Whether you enjoy writing about Travel, the Great Outdoors, Cooking and Grill or other Outdoors activities...we have a Blog for you!

Blogging has become a great way to get set up with a website of your very own, without the hassles.

Blog Construction

Blogs like all forms of writing are an art form that takes knowledge and practice to do well.

Writing…Blogs…Blogs are on-line journals where people express themselves through writing. Writing…Writing is the process where one puts down words of a language on a format that others can read. This process has not been around very long, to use one of my writing teacher’s favorite sayings, “Writing has only existed for one day in the one year that humanity has existed.” Speaking and thinking come much easier than writing. These processes just flow out naturally like a river of consciousness; sometimes we hardly have to think about doing them. Anyone and everyone can write words down on paper but that doesn’t mean it’s ‘good writing’, myself included. Like most things in life, our society already takes writing for granted which is proving to expose more of our ignorance. Writing is a new form of expression, and if we want to do it in a way that the masses can connect with our ideas, we have to think much more simply and clearly about this art.

Now that was quite a big paragraph, you’ve got to wonder if I really needed to say as much as I just did to introduce this article on the best way to write your blogs on the Web. I didn’t even mention this main idea, and that’s what an introduction paragraph is meant to be for. This is a common mistake in many blogs out there. We try to get too many ideas across in one paragraph, sometimes even in one sentence! The key, as in all things in life-is to keep it simple. Simplicity means that readers won’t get confused about what your journal entry is actually about. Introduce your main general topic at the start, and use the subsequent paragraphs to discuss separate ideas that relate to this topic. Try to tie everything up in the concluding paragraph, your main argument and the reason why you’ve written in the first place.

Grammar and sentence construction are not easy systems to master, especially if you come from a school system that spent more time telling you about historical battles and quadratic equations than on how to read and write. This is a real problem. When we speak we can get messages across to others easily, but if we put these words down on paper, the writing just isn’t interesting and doesn’t connect with people’s curiosities and fascination. When you write you are not talking to a close friend. You can’t use slang and colloquialisms that only your local community can understand. The aim is to connect with all the people in the world, so let’s make it crystal clear and enjoyable to read.

Your computer has spelling and grammar checks, as well as access to a thesaurus. Use them, but remember that the machine can’t decipher all the intricacies of language. Language is a world in itself, and much of its territories are undiscovered by the masses. So, again keep it simple. Short, precise sentences with single ideas are great. Many words in the English language have the same meanings (synonyms). Use the thesaurus so you don’t repeat the same word over and over throughout the text. It keeps the story fresh and doesn’t turn the reader off. There’s nothing more boring than repetition. Using different words can be a lot of fun and a learning experience, just make sure you use a dictionary (also on the computer/Internet) to make absolute sure of the word’s definition.

Readability…Simplicity…Make your blog accessible by all people. You can even take into consideration that many readers will have learned English as a second language. As I’ve said in previous articles, keep to the point-don’t go on tangents. Stick with the article’s topic, and definitely stay within the realms of your blog’s main area. If your blog is entitled “Jazz music”, people who go there don’t want to hear about how your football team won on the weekend! Please be consistent. How irritating is it to visit a blog that hasn’t been written on in months or years?

I hope these little tips will help you on your quest to producing ‘good’ writing that brings new friends and acquaintances of similar outlooks into your world. If you want people to read, the aim is to produce an emotional reaction in your reader. Pretend you are writing to another form of yourself, if it were not readable, interesting and fun…would you stick around?

Blog Problems

What in the world is up with the world of blogs? Blogs are meant to be this great new technology where people can share their ideas and interests with others around the globe. As far as I’m concerned the state of blogs is one of chaos, confusion, and anti-interactivity. The other day I decided to do some research on the Web and try to connect to some blog writers out there that interested me. Let me tell you it was not an enjoyable task as I had envisioned. I spent four painful hours surfing through around a thousand on-line journals, and I found only a few that interested me. What are we doing out there people?

First of all, just getting to a blog can be a pain in the arse. For example, you type in the words ‘Philosophy blogs’ and a whole bunch of sites come up. Some are conglomerate sites with thousands of journals, but the area you’re searching for may have only one blog in it! This is because they separate the blogs into a million different categories, like ‘love’, ‘lovers’, ‘lovable’ etc. Why not have just a few main categories to choose from?

The next problem is the content. People with ‘philosophical’ blogs are having personal chats with their mates about the local dance competition on Tuesday! Why not go to a chat room if you just want to talk to your friends? Blogs are supposed to be a personal viewpoint expressed to the whole Web community. Wouldn’t you actually like to meet more people like yourself? How is this going to happen if you talk in strange uncommon slang and acronyms that you and your friends can only understand? Please stick to the subject at hand, and take it at least half seriously.

Another major problem is the fact that you can find a really cool blog that sparks an interest, but then find that the writer hasn’t added an entry in over a year! What’s it doing on the Net? Have these people passed away? I seriously doubt it, as there are so many blogs in this ‘lost’ state. Having a blog is a responsibility; it’s a shared diary for the whole community. How can someone form a relationship if you only write in your blog once a millennium?

Back to the subject of content: These on-line journals are a real chance to communicate regularly with others with similar views to yourself. We can learn a lot from each other, as each human is an individual with special traits and skills that only they have. So why do we see so many blogs just talking about trivial nonsense like ‘Who the coolest movie actor is.’ Humanity is an intelligent species evolving everyday towards a higher consciousness. So where are all the thinkers out there, the people who have taken us to the next levels of spirituality and scientific exploration? I’d really like to hear what you’ve got to say, but all I can find are philosophical beliefs on why died pink jeans express one’s true inner self.

The issue of making comments on someone’s blog is also a controversial one. Why have comments sections if you’re not going to reply to people who have expressed an interest in what you’ve had to say? How is this community going to function if all the conversation is one-way! Come on people, wake up and smell the onions! Let’s change the blogging community into the awesome structure of shared knowledge that it was intended for. Please don’t let it turn into the small-talk world of chat rooms.

What is Blogger.com?

In the late 1990’s three San Francisco based web developers came up with the idea of being able to share information about anything on the web. The terminology they used was called blog. It's use was considered a mix of web page / personal journal. It's original usages were vast and wide, but more and more people came to use them as a personal tool that is available anywhere the Internet is. The three friends would eventually create Blogger.com one of the largest blogger sites on the Internet today. Blogger, which stands for Web Logger, has increased in popularity over the past three years. There has been so much interest in what capabilities it holds Google.com purchased them. Eventually, Google assimilated their technologies and imported them into the popular plug-in, The Google Toolbar.

Blogger.com allows a user to create a userid. Depending on the userid and password the user creates a specialized link namely “yourlinkname.blogspot.com”. This space can be saved as a bookmark and published to the public or through a distribution list to a select few people. Your site is logged as a “webring” type of atmosphere, should you decide to take the information public. You can see all users who have published blogs and even enter in information on the blogs should they let you. Discussion groups and personal files are housed all within this environment making it a fun place to surf about and learn about different people and things.

You can create a private discussion group and send out information via email to let people know when content or a thread has changed. Blog is like a portal for individuals, instead of business. There are many robust features involved to keep your blog private should you not want to share information publicly. Its interface even includes a word processing editor so you can format the background and font all from one simple location. The ideas are simple; you can share information around the world without having to let everyone on the Internet community know your blog exists.

The necessity for a personal online portal or “blog” has considerable potential, as the Internet continues to evolve.

Blogging for Profits

 

Bloging (the act of writing to a blog) has become one of the fastest growing trends this year and many internet gurus believe that this is the new biggest trend. Well, you might ask yourself what is the big deal I don't even know what a blog is?

To put it simply a blog is a big deal because it can mean a lot of money for you. First, lets define what a blog is then I will get to the good stuff the money and riches! Blog is short for web log, it is just the two words pushed together. You can kind of think of it like a Captains log on a ship, or a diary. It is a quick and easy way to add content to the web with out having to use html. It is instant, quick and really easy.

Now you might ask yourself why would I want to keep my diary online? It basically is a great way to make money. Let me explain that in a little more detail. For most search engines there are two major factors in how well you rank, first is the content of your site and second are the links to your site. Meaning the more key word focused content and the more links you have the higher you will rank in the search engine. We all know it does not pay to be listed number 1 million out of 5 million for a keyword. So everyone is competing for the top 10 spots. Well, the quickest and easiest way to rank above the others is to add tons of key word focused helpful content to your site. The more value you add to the internet the more value you will get out of it. So you can help yourself by helping others and providing knowledge for free in the form of content. A blog creates a very easy way to publish this content because it will publish your content tot he web as soon as you are done typing and best of all there are no html skills required. In fact you can blog for free which I will talk about in article 2. Secondly a blog is a great way to use some basic linking strategies that will help get your site into the search engines. So by setting up a blog you can quickly publish high quality key word focused content and you can include tons of great links to your site.

So let me quickly recap for you why you want to blog. A blog provides a quick, often free way to publish your content on the web and an easy way to link to your website for more traffic. These are important for any webmaster that wants to make money because it all converts to more traffic to your website and more traffic means more people purchasing your product.

So now that you know what a blog is and why blogging is such a great thing you probably want to know how to get started blogging right now! That will be covered in Blogging For Profit The series #2.