Blogging is something that’s attractive to many because it allows you to express thoughts journal-style with little hassle (if any). However there are many different blog services to choose from.

Which should you go with? That’s up to you. Let’s see what’s out there.

Blogger

This is a Google-owned system. It’s relatively speedy in operation and has a nice template system. It’s also easy to point over a domain, should you have one.

LiveJournal

Not the most user-friendly in the world but has a staggering amount of active users. Note that I said active. LJ, as it’s commonly abbreviated, does have big-big communities within.

MySpace

Love or hate MySpace, their blog system is one of the best out there due to the fact it’s so stupidly easy to use. Every MySpace account has the ability to post blogs.

Open Diary

I have not personally used this system but it does have tenure (it’s been around since 1998!)

TypePad

This site holds the distinction as being one of the few paid blogging platforms that many have come to know and trust. Yes, it does cost you, but the users of the system say it’s totally worth it.

Windows Live Spaces

If you have a Hotmail, Live or MSN account you can activate this right now to try it out. It’s fairly simple to use but the big knock against it is the unnecessarily long address names, like YourBlog.spaces.live.com. There is no need to have your blog address be that lengthy.

WordPress.com

WordPress is very popular and for good reason – it’s an awesome publishing platform. When using it, it looks and feels like a word processing app – and that’s not a bad thing. Like Blogger it’s also relatively easy to point a domain to your WordPress blog.

Xanga

This site also has tenure and introduced it’s blogging service in 2000 (the site existed before that but blogging was added in at that time). This site has both free and paid options but most opt for the freebie. In addition, compared to other blogs the Xanga platform allows for the most custom ability. You can even use JavaScript!

Vox

This is owned by the same people who own TypePad – save for Vox accounts are free on signup. The best part about Vox is the super-short address you get, i.e. YourBlog.vox.com. For some this is important. Since it’s by the same people who do TypePad, the system is rock-solid.

There are other choices!

You can get a full (as far as I know) list of blog hosting services here.

Have you used any of the above blogging services? What did you think? Good or bad?

You’ve got a blog and you’re putting a good amount of effort into it. You’re writing away, posting articles and doing what you can to get some readership.

The problem is that nobody is reading your blog. It seems no matter what you do you’re not gaining any traffic. And you know you’re writing good stuff.

What do you do?

Follow the five stupidly easy steps below and watch the traffic roll in.

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In a few short months it’s going to be 2009, and a ton of stuff has changed in the world of computing over the past almost-ten years. Some of the modern advancements have proven to be a notable improvement while others still produce the same crapola they did nearly ten years ago.

In this installment we’ll be taking a look at blogging. The history of blogs has been a rollercoaster of ups and downs, authored by those of every age, race, creed, color, nationality, religion and whatever else you want to throw in the list. All emotions pour out in blogs and they are – said very simply – the best reading there is on the internet.

Where did “blog” come from?

Blog comes from weblog which is a shortened web log. This word originated to define a written series of web events, journal style. For example, some of the early web logs were simply internet technical journals outlining the progress on projects. These journals had more of a a personal touch and were easy-to-read compared to a manual (which was the whole point). In addition they could be updated at whim, and people genuinely appreciated this.

Web log turned into weblog and then simply blog for whatever reason. It is unknown when this happened or even why it did, but the word stuck like glue once it became blog.

Blog used to be only a noun, meaning “the journal itself”. But now it is also used as a verb where it literally means “to write on my online weblog”. So if you said “I’m going to blog that”, people know exactly what you mean.

Let’s take a look at how blogs have changed over the years.

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I have an older Dell Inspiron 6000 that I recently decided to go true-blue dual boot with Ubuntu v8.04 and Windows XP Professional SP3.

For those interested, the system specs on my laptop is that is has a 15-inch LCD screen with a native 1680×1050 resolution monitor, 60GB hard drive, 1GB RAM and a 1.5GHz Intel Celeron M processor.

The reason I decided to install 8.04 now instead of waiting for 8.10 is that I specifically want to see how easy (or not easy) the upgrade process will be from an older Ubuntu to a newer one – which I’ll find out when the 8.10 OS is released 10 days from now.

I put "from a blogger’s perspective" on the title of this article to indicate what I use a computer for. I do a ton of writing and also produce audio and video content.

~ ~ ~

Per the installation of the Ubuntu OS I decided to go 50/50 with the hard drive space. I gave Windows 30GB and Ubuntu 30GB. Ubuntu’s partitioner made the adjustments without any complaint.

I was able to get WPA2 Wireless G connectivity to work without a hitch and ran the updater which downloaded 156 updates. It took a while to grab all this stuff over wireless (would have been faster if wired) but it all downloaded and applied without issue.

~ ~ ~

Per the actual blogging stuff:

The first thing I found myself dealing with is that I can’t use Windows Live Writer in Ubuntu (and no it will not work in WINE). Those that blog quite a bit such as I do understand that WLW is an absolute requirement to have if you write a lot on web sites.

As I’ve said before, even the Mac fans love WLW.

In addition, Ubuntu fans want it also.

The software is just that good.

PCMech is WordPress powered. While it’s true you can do all your blogging from within WP, once you use WLW you just can’t go back. The only time you use WP is if you absolutely have to and not by choice once you’ve used WLW.

Per the user experience:

Using Ubuntu literally feels like you’ve got a brand new computer all over again. The interface is fresh, inviting and just looks awesome.

The function follows form as well. It’s easy to find stuff in the OS, easy to configure and you can get working quickly without messing around with settings – and you don’t have to do anything in the Terminal either (unless you want to).

Per the video editing experience:

With screencasting you’ve got software called recordMyDesktop which does the job, and when you throw the GUI front-end it’s easy enough to use. In addition this software will also record audio as well.

The only problem is not the video part but the audio. You basically have zero audio editing capability and have to "pick apart" the recorded file afterwards, bring the audio into Audacity, perform your edits (usually noise/hiss reduction), then "piece back" the video and audio together and cross your fingers that it synchronizes properly.

Camtasia this is definitely not (which has all that stuff built-in).

With regular full video editing, there really isn’t that much at your disposal for doing the job. Yes, there are basic editors and other software titles for crafting DVD menus and such, but the way in which it’s done is just too separated.

I’ll put it to you this way: You want to record a video off your webcam, do some quick editing, save the file and manually post to YouTube later. Windows Movie Maker or iMovie does all that easily from a single application. Ubuntu has no single (keyword there) application that will do all that – and it’s desperately needed.

Yes, I know there’s Cheese – and it’s good – but not as good as Windows Movie Maker or iMovie.

Per "regular" document editing:

Ubuntu has OpenOffice. It works awesome and always has. The new OO 3 can read/write MS Office 2007 files too so you’re all set in that department.

OO will also take care of all of your PDF publishing needs as well.

For those wondering about PDF readers, just search for PDF in Add/Remove; there are plenty to choose from.

Per image editing:

Ubuntu has GIMP. GIMP is awesome.

You can pretty much do anything Photoshop can in GIMP. It is a full-blown pro image editor that has the oh-so nice price tag of $0.00.

GIMP’s problem – if you could call it that – is the same it’s always been. The interface isn’t friendly. Those who use GIMP for the first time get completely confused at the multi-window environment, the "crunched" set of icons to do functions and have no idea what "Script-Fu" means or what it does.

Personally speaking, I can use GIMP for simple edits, crops, resizes, PNG transparencies and so on and that’s basically all I need it for.

To note: Linux is the only one that has an image editor as powerful as GIMP for free. Windows and Mac don’t have anything that comes close without a price tag on it – and a hefty one at that.

Per instant messaging:

Whether you go with Pidgin, Kopete, aMSN or otherwise, the IM spectrum is covered in Ubuntu.

I do have friends on IM that I communicate with and I’ve never had a problem with IM on Linux ever since Gaim (what Pidgin used to be called).

Pidgin is still the best IM client for Linux. I would give the top spot to aMSN but unfortunately it only does MSN/Windows Live protocol to the best of my knowledge.

Per photo editing:

Picasa for Linux. Hate GIMP? Use this. Very easy. ‘Nuff said.

Per overall speed/performance:

There are some things XP does faster and some things Ubuntu does faster.

When you use Firefox v3.0.3, XP is faster. I have the exact same set of plugins in XP for Firefox as I do for Ubuntu. Both launch at the same speed, but when you encounter "heavy" content on a web site (big graphics, video, Flash content, etc.), it chops/stutters on Ubuntu when you scroll. However with v8.10 there’s supposed to be some fixes to take care of that – particularly with Flash.

App switching is faster on Ubuntu even with Compiz features enabled. When you Alt-Tab between apps you almost never see a screen redraw on Ubuntu whereas on XP you will from time to time.

Boot-up is faster with XP, but shutdown is faster with Ubuntu.

Hibernation is much faster with XP both going in and coming out. I use the hibernation feature on my laptop a lot and Ubuntu is a bit slow on the draw in that department. It works fine but it is slower. This may also be something addressed with v8.10 when I get around to using it once released.

With Ubuntu your hard drive "thinks" a lot less. Anyone who uses XP is very familiar with the hard drive "grinding" for absolutely no reason with the OS just sitting there doing nothing. What is XP doing? No one knows, but it’s doing something. Ubuntu doesn’t do this. Ever.

Wireless connection time is the same between Ubuntu and XP.

Ubuntu has screen zooms ("Super" key, trackpad-up). XP has no such feature. For screencasts and showing people from a distance what you’re doing on-screen, this is extremely handy to have.

~ ~ ~

In the end, the only reason I don’t switch to Ubuntu as my primary OS is due to lack of apps I need to do what I do specifically.

But I’ll say that Ubuntu is so.. so.. close to being my primary. There are basically just a (very) small handful of apps I use that keep me on the Windows side.

I like Ubuntu enough to where I dual-boot my laptop with it. Every time I load the OS I totally dig the interface. Very clean, very cool, very functional. XP looks very dated compared to the Ubuntu user experience with GNOME.

It’s true that I could run Vista on this laptop to get a fresh/updated Windows but it would crawl at molasses speed given the specs of my Inspiron. Yeah, I could bump up to 2GB RAM but I still only have a 1.5GHz Celeron M – which is barely over the minimum requirements for the Vista OS – so Vista is a no-go due to that limitation.

Ubuntu happily churns along with the older processor and 1GB of RAM, so unless I have some major hardware failure with the Inspiron I’ll just go right on using it dual-boot style.

And when (yes, when – not if) the time comes that XP gets so old that it’s unusable in modern computing, I can just format the drive and run Ubuntu full time on it.

Believe me when I say it’s nice knowing that.

On Monday I wrote an article about Office Live and Google Apps. In that article I said:

Neither has any blogging capability whatsoever.

I was corrected on this concerning the Microsoft offering. By whom? The Microsoft Office Live Team themselves (see comments in that article).

Microsoft Office Live does do blogs and rather easily by using Live Spaces.

This is how it’s done:

When you’re using the Web Design Tool inside the admin panel, you click inside an editable area, then click the Module button, then Live Spaces blog. After that you just type in the URL of the Spaces blog (i.e. your-username.spaces.live.com). The blog does have to be active first.

Looks like this:

After you add in your Spaces blog, just save and it’s done and live instantly.

Kudos to Microsoft for putting blogging ability into their Office Live Small Business offering. This is definitely a very cool feature and moreover easy and usable.

Much thanks to the MS team for pointing this out because I consider it essential that businesses – including small ones – should be able to blog easily. Spaces combined with Office Live Small Business takes care of that in short order.

OK, this is a bit of a technical post, but one which will come in handy for somebody down the road. Windows Live Writer is, so far, the best blog client I have found for either Mac or Windows. If you are running Windows and are a blogger, I highly recommend you download Live Writer. It is a freebie.

Continued

Today’s information products rarely consist of just written material, instead you will find audio and video that complement the written portion of it. So even if you don’t want to write it yourself, you can still be involved by doing an audio interview with a fellow expert, or creating an instruction video.

If you want to avoid writing the product yourself, then there are a couple of different ways you can do this.

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Surveys: This a widely used form of conducting market research for online products because it is inexpensive (or free), and it can be sent out to your customers through email. If you opt to do a survey, make sure you keep the questions simple and don’t list more than 10. Otherwise, you run the risk of overwhelming them and taking up too much of their time. By keeping it short and sweet, your response rate is likely to be much better.

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If you have a good idea of what people within your niche want, but you’re having a hard time nailing down specific topic ideas, don’t worry, there are a few things you can do.

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One of the unwavering rules that writers live by is, “write what you know.”

Why?

Simply because it’s more enjoyable, easier, and faster to write on a topic that you already know about. For example, if you want to write an instruction sheet on how to make a soy candle, but you have no idea how to make one, then it will be that much harder to write about it. But, if you love making soy candles and you do it all the time, it will be incredibly easy for you to write because you’re experienced and passionate about your topic.

Don’t make it harder than it has to be. Choose a topic that you’re already experienced in, interested in, and excited about; otherwise you may never actually finish your information product.

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If you’re looking for a way to create an additional stream of income through the business you already have, then creating an information product may be the answer.

No matter what type of business you own, there’s always an opportunity to create an added flow of income. Whether you promote affiliate programs, take part in Google Adsense, or market to your mailing list – these are all great and easy ways to bring in some extra money.

However, there’s nothing better than an information product when it comes to taking your business to the next level. Here’s why:

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Many people turn to the internet for information. They want to know something, so they turn on the computer and do a search on the subject. They scroll through the search results, looking for websites that can give them the information they need. By creating information products to sell on your website, you can create a very nice income from home. An information product can be anything from an e-book to a special report, or even an MP3 recording or video.

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Many people who want to make money from home through their writing often turn to copywriting or ghostwriting for others. However, by creating your own content site, with the help of a pay-per-click program, such as Google’s Adsense, you can earn money with your own writing.

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Ghostwriting may sound mysterious, but it is a profession that you are probably very familiar with. You have, undoubtedly, seen many books written by celebrities. Well, the celebrities name may be on the cover, but a ghostwriter is the actual author; for instance, Clay Aiken’s autobiography “Learning To Sing” was actually written by Allison Glock.

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If you pay attention to movies and television shows that feature people living in New York City, you will see that an abundance of characters are “freelancing”. A freelance writer is an independent contractor who writes for a publication. Freelance writers can write for magazines, newspapers, and online markets. Using a freelance writer allows the publication to publish a variety of voices with different points of view and experiences, but also saves the publication money; since they are paying the writer per assignment and are not providing benefits.

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