Starting to blog or journal your ideas

Well remembering that there was a time that journals were hand written with scribbles and mistakes could not be erased, my technological powerhouse of a computer in 1993 was off the chart. And as for content, well journals, diaries and blogs can change moods, and will always (when public) give you an insite in to the owners life and personality.

Nowadays, it is all computerized. Oh sure, you can go spend close to $50 on a beautiful leather bound custom monogrammed blank book and call it your memoirs, but what if it gets lost or in the wrong hands. Well then kiss your run for the presidency good bye.

Here's a better idea. Come into the technical era and put it on your computer, your pda or any of the hundreds of blogging sites. After all, what will people live for if not to see that your life is less exciting than yours. While I cant tell you what to write, I can tell you where or what program to use.

My personal journal is password protected and is written with the help of Microsoft One Note. It allows it to be broken down by tabs into years, so all I have to do is click on a tab to browse (really means remember because I forgot what I did) any year. Like all Microsoft products, it is fully integrated with the other member programs and has spelling and grammar check standard.

But what if you don’t want to keep it on your pc ? Maybe it might be seen by the wrong person. Maybe your pc will die. Well there goes all that data. Well I am still old school and back the data up. But for those that don’t, it is time to use an online journal or blog.

For online journaling, the two that have come up at the top of the search engine results are http://www.my-diary.org/ and http://www.livejournal.com. Blogging is similar, but different if that makes sense. Either way, your entries can be as hidden or open as you want. The two top of the search engine results for blogs are http://www.blogger.com and http://www.blogspot.com, which have merged thanks to Google. A good alternative to them is http://www.xanga.com/ Keep in mind, many social networking sites offer blogs as part of your online presence.

I want to point you to a site on Wikipedia that defines online diaries and also blogging so you can see the difference. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diary and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogs respectively. Also, for a full list of all blogging sites, take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_blogs.

Once you read the article, I would love hearing from my readership with their own blog addresses. I am not only a writer, but a reader too. (