Blogging Task

Today is the day for starting a blog. As we said in class, a blog could be like a notebook, journal, diary, a place to do some writing, or it could even be a place for your photographs and movies or movies that you would like to link to. The easiest blogging platform to use is Blogger. Another site is Wordpress.com. There are several others, too.

First, make your blog at Blogger. (If you have already made a blog at Blogger, go in to it to refresh it, make some new posts, and make another blog at Wordpress.com. Then you will be able to compare the two services.)

When you have made your blog, tell me about it. There are three ways you could do that.
1. Send me an e-mail with the URL of your blog in it. For example, this blog is at http://i-e-e-p.blogspot.com/
2. You could send an INVITE or Notice to me from inside Blogger. Send it to my Bunkyo e-mail account. (That way you do not have to sign in to your e-mail.)
3. You could tell me about the blog that you have made by posting a COMMENT on this post! (It's also faster if you don't want to sign in to your e-mail.)

There are many things you can do in your blog that are not possible with a physical notebook. Your blog is weightless, so you do not have to carry it around. Many people can read it, but if you don't want many people to read it, you can control who sees it. For example, you could limit it to only people who are members of Blogger. You can insert hyperlinks to most of the world's information and insert pictures and movies. You can also change the color of text, italic, bold, change the font, and so on. You can add your own header (banner image) and customize the sidebar with "widgets". I have added a poll, clocks, and a game of Hangman to the sidebar of this blog. If you are good with HTML or CSDS, you can customize the coding of your blog to make it more individualistic and unique.

Please help others with the task if they are having trouble!

As an advanced task, make another blog at Wordpress.com. How is it different? Use it and find out. Let me tell you some advantages of Wordpress. Wordpress has more storage, 3GB compared to 1GB for Blogger. Wordpress gives you a word count as you are typing. Wordpress has a calendar that looks very nice. Wordpress allows you to upload Microsoft Word DOC files, PDF files, and even your own MP3 files, so if you are making a music blog, you would want to use Wordpress. One advantage of Blogger is that you can edit the HTML and CSS. You cannot do that in WOrdpress unless you pay extra money.

For an even more advanced task, try to make a blog which is readable on a cell phone. Make a Tumblr blog. Make a bilingual blog, with 2 languages in two columns! Only your imagination and perseverence can limit you.

Update: I created a copy of this blog by importing it into Wordpress. What do you think? Do you like Wordpress or Blogger better? http://ieep.wordpress.com/

Another update: You can read about some other blogging services here.