Blogger

I'm not a big New Year's Resolution person, but over the holidays I decided that I wanted to find a better way to share things that I enjoy with my friends. I thought about making lists on yelp or taking a more Web 2.0 approach. After further reflection, I decided to create a blog. My goal: to write up (at least) one cool thing for every day of the year.

There are many choices for blogging, and articles like this one do a good job of comparing various options. I wanted free and hosted, and in that category the leading contenders are Word Press (through an account on wordpress.com or another service) and Blogger. After a little experimentation, I decided on Blogger (although if I were hosting this instead of Google I might have picked WP instead).

Blogger's Pros:

• super fast set-up. it was about 5 minutes from sign-up to publish
• powerful but simple user interface
• clean default templates to start and full template editing
• an excellent WYSIWYG post editor
• good image management and abundant file storage
• easy export should I want to self-host

Cons

• no convenient post categorization (Word Press excels at this)
• no trackbacks (although they have "backlinking")

Blogger's adsense integration appeals to many bloggers, and its lack of a mechanism to restrict access to certain posts is seen as a drawback, but neither factor was relevant for me. Over time, I might explore some extensions like sideblog, haloscan and freshtags, but for now I am starting with the basics.

After a few test posts and some template tweaking, I am delighted with my choice and I am happy to list Blogger as my very first cool thing.