You're the voice
The Internet allows anyone to have a say and be published. In this worldwide publishing revolution, you don't have to be a journalist or best-selling author to share your work with millions. You can voice opinions on anything from your favourite television show to the effects of globalisation. However, as the web becomes richer with multimedia content and sophisticated design, it tends to move out of the hands of the public and into those of the programmer.
Try teaching the average web novice how to set up their own domain, grapple with a file transfer program and use an HTML (the language of the web) editor. And that's just for creating a basic site. Now, thanks to weblogs, anyone who can type is able to set up home on the Internet.
As millions around the world are discovering, weblogs are as simple to write as a traditional pen-and-paper diary and are by far the easiest way to get published on the web. Celebrities, too, are getting in on the act. Actors Jeff Bridges and Melanie Griffith, singer Mariah Carey, musicians Moby and Gene Simmons, drag queen RuPaul, tennis star Anna Kournikova, and Star Trek heroes William Shatner and Wil Wheaton are among those with popular weblog sites.
Software creators Macromedia, Internet search engine Google and computer book publisher O'Reilly are also using weblogs to enable their staff to sing the praises of their products and get closer to customers. The most popular weblog site is Blogger (www.blogger.com), which offers "push-button publishing for the people". Blogger has more than 750,000 users. In only five minutes you'll see dozens of new blogs appear.
Within minutes of registering your name and e-mail address, you can have your own site on the Net - free. Simply come up with a name for your blog, write a basic description of your page, choose a web address (for example, myplace.blogspot.com), then pick from a range of templates that determine the look of your page. Everything can be changed later when you have more experience.
In no time you can be writing your first entry, pushing the Publish button and letting the world read your literary gem. If, after going live, you realise you've made a mistake, you can go back and edit your entries. This could be handy for avoiding defamation suits after a fierce online rant! Blogger doesn't currently feature a directory so that casual browsers can find your site, but cool and new blogs are listed on their home page and the site promises to get a directory up soon. Of course, you can also choose not to have your weblog publicly listed.
To pay for the service, Blogger has advertisements that will appear on your page. If you want them removed, you must pay an annual subscription fee, currently about $26. Basic commands such as adding a hyperlink, using bold or italics, and posting your latest entry are just a matter of selecting a button in the easy-to-use Blogger interface. Most weblogs are text-based, but you can use basic HTML tags to add photos.
For a fee, you can have multiple weblogs on a single Blogger account. You can also set up a team weblog for a collaborative effort with mates or colleagues. This is a particular strength of Blogger competitor LiveJournal. Other sites that offer free weblog hosting are Blog Studio and UpSaid. (Herald Sun) Many thanks to Mariah Buzz.
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