Blog basics: Keep an online journal
Start your own blog and share your life online
By Mara Gulens
Today, blogging, or having a web site that contains a personal journal with reflections, comments, photos and hyperlinks provided by the writer, is almost as commonplace as e-mailing.
A blog lets you keep information you want to share with others — words, pictures and music — in one easy-to-locate online space. After all, we all have something to say, so why not share it?
Log your family life or express your thoughts
New Brunswick mom Andrea Rennick has been keeping a blog about her family life since 1999, “before blogs were invented and they were called online journals,” she says.
Rennick’s blog, A Typical Life, is built around stories about her family life. It includes postings on everything from her Saturday shopping adventures to photographs of her kids to reminders about upcoming meetings and her stained glass classes.
“It’s a space to express my thoughts, where someone listens [and where] other moms commiserate and help me figure things out,” says Rennick, who spends anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour — in bits and pieces — almost every day on her blog. Rennick’s family and friends, including her grandfather, have become regular readers.
Rennick, a mother of four, is one of thousands of women who now share their lives and experiences through blogs. A study by market research firm Perseus Development Corp. says more women than men start blogs, and women are more likely to maintain them.
Why women blog
Blogs can keep families and friends abreast of a baby’s birth, provide updates on a loved one’s medical condition, make wedding planning easy and create a sense of community.
“Women plan weddings, conceptions, adoptions, detail pregnancies, and work through grief and divorces in blogs,” said Rennick. “Everything women get together to talk about one-on-one or in a group, they blog.”
Tracy Kennedy, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto, believes there are clear differences in the blogging experiences of men and women. “Women tend to write more personal diaries and accounts of their lives, whereas men often do not — it’s more about circulating information.”
Start your own blog
Setting up a blog is simple. In most cases you just log in, choose a look and start blogging. Sites such as LiveJournal, Bloglines and Windows Live Spaces become your one-stop-shop for social networking.
At Windows Live Spaces, for example, you can post favourite photos, update your blog, check out what’s new on your friend’s Spaces, and change the layout and colour to match your mood and your posts. Choose from over 100 themes and post over 500 photos a month. Organize them onto albums or even display them as a slide show right from your Windows Live Space.
Windows Live Spaces is free to anyone with a Hotmail e-mail or Windows Live Messenger account. It will even automatically notify online contacts when your space has been updated.
To maintain its appeal, a blog needs to be updated regularly. “For a blog to be of any use it has to be constantly written to, because people need to come back to it every day or every couple of days to see what’s new,” says Nancy Burton-Vulovic, director of technology for DigitalEve Toronto, a global organization that emphasizes the influence of women in new media. “If you don’t have the time or the interest to keep putting your information out there, it’s difficult to keep up.”
With Windows Live Spaces you can even blog from your cell phone. Under Settings, enable “email publishing.” You will be given a unique e-mail address just for blogging. E-mail blog entries from your cell phone to this address from anywhere in the world where your phone has Internet access.
While you’re at it, use your phone to add photos to your blog from wherever you are. If you happen to snap a great pic while out and about, submit it immediately as a blog entry — right from your phone.
Find a blog
Technorati, a blog-monitoring service, now tracks more than 112 million blogs. You can find a blog on just about any topic imaginable, including politics, media and specific professions. Most search engines can also search for blogs. For made-in-Canada content, head to the Canadian Blog Directory. To seek out specific Windows Live Spaces, click here.
Blog safely
For women concerned about security, Rennick suggests limiting personal information. Most sites do not list a home address, and many do not even provide an e-mail address. Also remember that once something is published on the web, anyone and everyone can read it. Keep your deepest, darkest secrets offline.
