Blog Uses
Despite President Bush's admonition that Americans use blogs to publish good news about the Iraq war (sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it?), I've found another use. In the drafts bin for this blog, I had a link (now expired) to an news piece summarizing research on reasons for blogging.
This theme or meme holds endless fascination for bloggers and those who study "new media"--but hardly for anyone else, I'll bet! Once the drivel of "dear diary" is dismissed, when the corporate blogs are eliminated, we come to the core that is useful for writers. Some use their blogs to prime their creativity or writing pumps, to get started. Others use them to banish blocks. Book authors have found value in blogging works in progress to the delight of their fans. Some writers have tacked blogs onto existing service websites with varying success.
I blog for a variety of reasons. Some have developed over the months, and I've just realized I'm using Blogger's draft feature increasingly as a notebook, a tickler file, a box of interesting clips
that holds ideas for use in places other than this blog alone. This, I'll admit, is a risky practice. I think I'm addicted to the ease of clicking on the Blogger symbol that's part of my Google browser toolbar to save a reference to a web page. It even allows me to make pertinent (or incoherent) notes to self, like "save to use in XX forum". The risk of losing all these resources comes from Blogger's glitchy behavior and the fact that the posts aren't on my server yet if they're still in draft format. Still, I find it very satisfying to have a collection of leads for cyberspace writing located out there IN cyberspace. OK, I'm officially weird.
This theme or meme holds endless fascination for bloggers and those who study "new media"--but hardly for anyone else, I'll bet! Once the drivel of "dear diary" is dismissed, when the corporate blogs are eliminated, we come to the core that is useful for writers. Some use their blogs to prime their creativity or writing pumps, to get started. Others use them to banish blocks. Book authors have found value in blogging works in progress to the delight of their fans. Some writers have tacked blogs onto existing service websites with varying success.
I blog for a variety of reasons. Some have developed over the months, and I've just realized I'm using Blogger's draft feature increasingly as a notebook, a tickler file, a box of interesting clips
that holds ideas for use in places other than this blog alone. This, I'll admit, is a risky practice. I think I'm addicted to the ease of clicking on the Blogger symbol that's part of my Google browser toolbar to save a reference to a web page. It even allows me to make pertinent (or incoherent) notes to self, like "save to use in XX forum". The risk of losing all these resources comes from Blogger's glitchy behavior and the fact that the posts aren't on my server yet if they're still in draft format. Still, I find it very satisfying to have a collection of leads for cyberspace writing located out there IN cyberspace. OK, I'm officially weird.
posted by Georganna Hancock M.S. | 8:23 AM
3 Comments:
If you switch to WordPress, even your drafts are in the database on your (host's) servers.
I like the page feature since I can make a page visible or not. It won't show up even in the list of pages on the site, only in the admin section.
That's an interesting use of the daft function that I hadn't considered. And a new entry is saved somewhere from time to time, even before you publish or save as draft. During Blogger's recent problems, I recovered an entry with one browser that I'd wrtten on another - and not managed to save.
K.
Since this posting, I discovered a service that offers Your links are safely stored on the Web and will be accessible from any computer or Web-enabled device, anywhere, anytime. Clickability has browser buttons to Email, Save, or Organize and Share links to web pages. The first obstacle I found was that I have to turn off the pop-up blocker. Then, to Save, again in cyberspace, you have to register with http://www.savethis.clickability.com. I haven't explored the "organize and share" function yet. I suspect it might be useful in the social, Web 2.0 sense. The "email this" is registration-free. All of the program is at no cost.
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