Can I... blog?

It seems like everybody has a blog these days, and not wanting to feel left out, I set out to make a blog that was worth the effort. I had experimented with blogs in the past but never really made a full go at it. I decided it was time to make a change; to do something different. However, before I could get down to business I needed to pull together some resources; Google was my
friend.

After sifting through a bunch of search results on effective blogging, I knew what I needed. I already had my idea (which is unfolding as I write this), and ultimately ended up with a productive and practical set of tools that help me blog better. So all I had to do now was take the time to put it all together and make it work; and hopefully my tree will bare fruit.

Blog Hosting Service
(Free)

There are a lot of good free blog hosting services out there, but I had to choose one, and I went with blogger.com. This service has a very intuitive, easy-to-use interface which I can access from my Google account. It's very full featured and also very free.
https://www.blogger.com/start




Desktop Blog Editor
(Free)

I really wanted the ability to blog from my desktop, and after comparing various applications, I decided Windows Live Writer is the way to go for me. It is easy to setup, feature-rich and flexible. It works with many different blogging services and is part of the Windows Live Essentials suite.
http://download.live.com/writer





Browser Blog Editor
(Free)

Okay, so I'm very partial to Mozilla Firefox; it has
great extensibility. So if I'm ever on a slow machine, or on a different platform; then I still have to be able to blog effectively despite the obstacles. This is where ScribeFire comes in. It's a very usable, lightweight blog editor that's built right into Firefox. It's cross-platform and the F8 key turns it on/off. It's that simple.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1730







Image Editor
(Free)

If I plan on posting pictures to my blog, then I'm going
to need a decent image editor. The one that I used for this post is Paint.net. It's kind of like an elegant cross between MSPaint and Adobe Photoshop. This plugin extensible application makes simple photo-editing a snap!
http://www.getpaint.net/download.html#download


So, the answer my question "Can I... Blog?" is: Yes, I can blog!
If one of you decides to try this, you may find different resources that work better for you, but this is what works for me. I hope you all enjoyed this post. Thank-you all for your time.

JSA aka o0110o
Blogger
19/08/2009