Blogger is an online journal tool that is sponsored by Google.
Accounts can be created at http://www.blogger.com
Blogger was started by a tiny company in
(Image: http://flickr.com/photos/megnut/111417621/)Blogger took off, in a small way, and eventually a bigger way, over a couple years. They raised a little money, but stayed small. Then they ran out of money. Narrowly survived, but kept the service going the whole time and started building it back up.
Things were going well again in 2002. They had hundreds of thousands of users, though still just a few people. And then something no one expected happened: Google wanted to buy them. They liked Google a lot and Google liked blogs. Therefore, they were open to the idea, and it worked out nicely.
Creators & Maintainers
Evan Williams is the founder of Pyra. Evans and his company still maintain www.blogger.com. Now they are a small, “but slightly bigger than before” team in Google focusing on helping people have their own voice on the web and organizing the world's information from the personal perspective, which has pretty much always been the main idea (Story of Blogger, n.d.).
System Requirements
By default, Blogger accounts are hosted on BlogSpot (http:// www.blogspot.com] www.blogspot.com), a storage site owned by Blogger. Free accounts have ads on their pages. Upgraded accounts cost $5 or $10 per month for 25MB or 100MB of storage space and are ad-free. We would prefer to have seen a unified sign-up sheet that combines Blogger and BlogSpot.
When run as hosted services, Blogger requires virtually no installation. Just sign up for an account and go. One potential drawback to using hosting services is that you can not attach a preexisting domain name to your Weblog. Instead, you will be assigned a sub-domain URL, such as “yourname.blogspot.com.”
Advantages (compared with WordPress)
- Users have significant control of the design through the use of CSS & html coding.
- Allows the use of Javascript in widgets
- Search capabilities are enhanced as a result of being backed by Google
- Highly recommended for beginners
- Very cost effective--free!
- XML templates allow for the drag and drop of widgets
- Free templates are widely available
- Inflexibility in filing posts in traditional categories
- Has fewer plug-ins than WordPress
- Inability to future-date posts
- Customization is limited in that one cannot brand their blogger site or download it onto one's own domain.
- You don't own your BLOG--enemies can FLAG your blog and cause it to be locked.
- Limited space to upload materials to Blog
- Google can delete your blog if they choose to do so.
- Blogs are difficult to search in search-engines besides Google.
It may appear that Blogger has more disadvantages than advantages. However, depending on your reason for blogging and how tech-savvy you are, Blogger may be a good choice for you. Many reviewers recommend Blogger for beginners and also casual bloggers.
Features:
Blogger has a large quantity of features. Most of the feature details can be found from http://www.Blogger.com/features , but another site has several more laid out: http://www.weblogmatrix.org/show/Blogger (although the information seems dated).
- Zero Cost
- Multi-User Support (Team Blog Capabilities)
- Supports 41 different languages
- Allows Ads
- Has some topic restrictions (spam, hate speech & commercial poronography)
- Allows for CAPTCHA
- Comments can be restricted to other BLOG users only
- Online Help: http://www.help.blogger.com
- Issue Tracker: http://www.knownissues.blogspot.com
- Support Forum and Mailing list: http://www.groups.google.com
- Archiving
- Autosave
- Labels
- Link--Blogroll
- Blog by Email
- Blog by SMS/MMS
- Blog-API
- Spell Checker
- WYSIWYG Editor
- File Upload
- HTML editor
- Layout-flat
- Follower-Gadget
- Simple ID: Connects to G-Mail: Google docs, etc.
- Search Engine
- HTML via FTP/SFTP
- Unicode Support
- XHTML 1.0 strict
- Friendly URL's
- Optional E-mail Notifications
- Themes and Skins
- web-based template management
- Comment administration
- Supports RSS 2.0
- Supports ATOM 0.3
- Video hosted through google video
- Pictures are hosted through picasa
- Youtube videos can be posted.
Functions in Library Settings
Blogs have the capability of enhancing communication. Instead of having several different means of communication such as email, notebooks, & the libraries intranet, they can all be melded or compiled together in a Blog. This use of a Blog will give a centralized location for finding the information. This type of communication enhancement is classified as internal communication.
External communication to patrons can also be enhanced. It can be enchanced by providing a central location for displaying events and happenings at a given library.
A library could also open a blog up to the public to comment on. For example, there could be a topic of the month, or patrons could share what books they are currently reading.
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