Taking the Mystery Out of Blog Creation
Services Make It Easy
To Get Up and Running,
But One Trips Over Photos
The hottest phenomenon on the Internet is blogging, the publication by ordinary people of Web sites that are updated frequently with entries on all manner of topics. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, eight million American adults said they had created blogs by the end of 2004, but a whopping 62% of Americans still didn't know what a blog was. Both numbers have changed fast this year. The number of blogs has doubled, at least, as knowledge of them spreads.
A blog, short for Web log, is simply a Web site filled with text entries, photos, links to other sites on the Web, and almost anything else the writer wishes to share. Blogs are organized by date, from newest to oldest, and topics range from sports and culture and politics, to family and hobbies. Some bloggers aim to compete with newspapers and other traditional media. Others just want to inform or entertain small groups of friends. Readers of these blogs can comment on them, creating an interactive blogging community.
However, many folks who are comfortable with surfing the Internet still are intimidated by the thought of creating a blog, because they think that blogging requires some sort of technical knowledge. In fact, there now are multiple services on the Web that enable anyone to create a blog, and put it online, in just a few minutes. No special technical knowledge is required, and your blog will have its own Web address, accessible from any computer.
This past week, my assistant Katie Boehret and I tested three of these free blog-creation services to see what they offer. We tried the popular Google-owned service, Blogger.com, as well as Microsoft's new MSN Spaces service, each of which is estimated to host millions of blogs. We also tested Yahoo's Yahoo 360 service, which still is in its test phase. We quickly learned how simple it is to set up a blog, and how addictive they can become.
While using these three sites, we paid careful attention to how each blog-creating service handled four basic tasks: publishing text entries, or "posting" as it is called in blog land; adding photos; publishing links to other Web pages on our blogs; and providing privacy (if desired) online. We also took note of the overall style and formatting options provided on each site.
Our verdict: Microsoft's MSN Spaces did the best job of performing these tasks in a way that was organized and self-explanatory. Yahoo 360 was almost as easy, but it tries to tie in the use of too many other Yahoo services. Blogger.com has a long way to go until it becomes as easy to use as the others.
You can see two of our test blogs at:
http://spaces.msn.com/members/wmossberg and
http://kaboehret.blogspot.com/. My blog, on MSN, was created for an earlier column and updated for this review. Katie's blog, on Blogger, was whipped up just for this review. Yahoo 360 hasn't been officially released yet; it is currently available only if you are invited by someone who already is using it, but the company plans to introduce the public version this summer.
Katie and I signed up to create blogs on each of these Web sites by providing some basic information and creating usernames and passwords.
We started off by each making a Web site on MSN Spaces. Katie's Web site included eight main categories, including text posting in the center of the screen, photos on the far right side and her profile and a music list on the left.
The three services that we tested each let you view your blog as it looks when you are editing as well as how it looks to everyone else. MSN Spaces shows the best editing view because changes are adjustable right within each category. For example, in Katie's Photo Album category, three options (Create, Edit and Delete) are listed right underneath the category heading in the editing view. Yahoo and Blogger direct you to a more general screen to make changes to category settings, which seems less immediately integrated.
MSN Spaces displays multiple photos in clever slideshows that you can start without navigating away from your blog's home page. Katie uploaded many pictures at once after downloading the "MSN Photo Upload Control" tool. Posting text entries was straightforward and photos can be added at the end of each entry.
We found 81 different themes and various space layout options to choose from in Spaces; Katie settled on a Water Pattern theme and the "Three Columns, Middle Wide" space layout.
There is one downside to MSN Spaces, however. Many of its best editing tools, and some of its features for visitors, like the automatic slide shows, are available only from Microsoft's own Internet Explorer Web browser for Windows. You can still edit and view the blogs from a Macintosh, or from the Firefox browser on Windows, but the experience isn't as rich. MSN plans to upgrade the editing for Firefox users in the next month.
MSN Spaces and Yahoo 360 both offer various degrees of privacy ranging from only allowing you, or selected people, to see your blog, all the way up to "public" -- meaning anyone can see the blog. In contrast, all of Blogger's blogs are public, without any way to set restrictions on who can or can't see your blog. The only thing Blogger lets you select is whether or not you want your blog listed on the company home page or in search engines.
Katie created a blog on Yahoo 360 and found that it offers many of the same things MSN Spaces offers -- she easily added text entries that included photos and lists of links to other Web sites. But the style of the Web pages lacked pizzazz -- there weren't any themes from which to choose, and there were too many different views of our Web page to keep straight, including My Page, My Blog and the "Preview as seen by" pull-down menu.
Also, Yahoo seemed to keep trying to pull us into one of its other services. For instance, to use the "Share Music" option, you must be using Yahoo's LaunchCast Radio. MSN Spaces just lets you list music that you like, and then automatically plays a 30-second clip of that music (if available) from the MSN Music store online. Blogger doesn't let you create shareable music lists.
Adding photo albums also reflected Yahoo's desire to reel us in. To share entire albums on your blog, you first must load those albums into Yahoo Photos, an online store like Ofoto.
Blogger.com offers a deceptively simple-looking interface that, along with its lack of privacy options, makes it really difficult to add photos and Web links to your blog. Katie named her Blogger site "K's Korner," and after choosing the Thisaway Rose template out of 33 stylish options, posted her first text entry.
Entering text on Blogger was easy especially because this site offers spell check, eight different fonts and five text sizes.
When Katie wanted to add a photo to go with her post, she was dismayed to learn that she couldn't do so within Blogger. Instead, she had to download a separate program called Hello from Picasa, a photo service that, like Blogger, is owned by Google. She had to leave the blog entirely, and then send photos one at a time to Blogger from Hello so that they could be published on her blog. You can add captions to the photos, but it isn't the same thing as being able to enter a little story or a longer explanation related to the photo. And this extra step away from the blog is a real pain.
Another bad feature of Blogger is that instead of offering a place for entering lists of URLs on your blog, you must instead follow directions to enter HTML code in the blog's Template section. To list my Web site on her blog with a brief explanation of what it was, Katie had to type: <li><a href="
http://ptech.wsj.com/">Learn about tech from the WSJ!</a></li> onto a screen filled with similar coding. She finally figured this out after three tries, but we found this method to be confusing and entirely too techie for regular users. Blogger says it hopes to change this soon.
MSN Spaces gets our vote for the easiest way to create a blog -- regardless of technological know-how. Blogging doesn't have to be intimidating any more, and we think most users will be shocked by how easy it has become.
揭开创建网路日志的神秘面纱
互联网上最热门的现象就是网络日志，这些由芸芸众生张贴的网址更新频率相当高，主题也是包罗万象。根据Pew Internet and American Life Project项目，到2004年末，已有800万美国成年人创建了网路日志，但仍有出奇多（62%）的美国人不知道网络日志为何物。今年，这两个数字都已经发生了很大变化，网络日志的数量增加了至少一倍，人们对它的了解也在增多。
网络日志其实就是一个网址，上面充满文本贴子、图片和其他网站的链接以及作者希望和大家一起分享的任何东西。日志按照日期的顺序，从最新到最旧排列，涉及的话题从体育、文化和政治到家庭和爱好等无所不包。一些博客(bloggers，即日志写手)的目的就是要和报纸和其他传统媒体竞争。其他人则只是想发布信息或者和一小群朋友共娱。这些网络日志的读者可以发表评论，从而创造一个互动的日志社区。
不过，一些人网上冲浪爱好者仍然认为创建网络日志是件不敢想像的事，因为他们认为这需要某种技术知识。实际上，互联网上有多种服务可以帮助任何人来创建网络日志并实现在线发布，而且只需要几分钟的时间。无需专业技术知识，你的日志会有自己的网址，任何电脑都可以进入。
上周，我和我的助手Katie Boehret对三种免费的日志创建服务进行了测试，想看看它们到底提供什么样的服务。我们测试了Google广受欢迎的自有服务Blogger.com，以及微软(Microsoft)新推出的MSN Spaces服务，它们都声称可以容纳800万个日志。我们还测试了雅虎(Yahoo)仍处于试验阶段的360服务。我们很快发现创建日志是件多么容易的事情，而且让人爱不释手。
在使用这三种服务的时候，我们格外注意每个日志创建服务在处理以下四大基本任务时的表现：发表文本文件，也就是日志界所称的“张贴”贴子；加入图片；在我们的日志上发布其他网页的链接；以及提供隐身登录服务（如果需要的话）。我们还观察了每个网站的整体风格和它们提供的格式选择。
我们的结论是：微软的MSN Spaces在处理上述任务方面表现最好，整个过程有理有序、无需加以说明。Yahoo 360也相当容易，但它试图和太多雅虎其他的服务相连接。相比之下，Blogger.com用起来就麻烦多了。
你可以通过
http://spaces.msn.com/members/wmossberg 和
http://kaboehret.blogspot.com/浏览我们的两个测试日志。我在MSN上的日志是为早些时候的一个专栏创建的，针对本次测试作了一些更新。Katie在Blogger上的日志是专门为本次测试而创建。Yahoo 360尚未正式发布；只有接到某位已经开始使用它的朋友的邀请，你才能使用。但雅虎计划于今年夏天推出公共版本。
为创建日志，Katie和我在这三个网站上进行了注册，包括提供一些基本资料并设立用户名和密码。
我们分别在MSN Spaces上制作了一个网站。Katie的网站分为8个主要栏目，屏幕中央张贴文本，右边上传图片，左边是她的个人资料和一个音乐列表。
我们测试的三种服务都可以让你在编辑日志的时候浏览日志对外发布后的真实样子。MSN Spaces的编辑预览效果最好，因为每个栏目下的修改都是可以调整的。以Katie的Photo Album栏目为例，在编辑预览模式状态下，3个选项（创建、编辑和删除）就位于栏目标题的正下方。Yahoo和Blogger显示页面更大一些，但它们的不足之处在于进行修改之后，效果不能立即显现出来。
MSN Spaces能够以自动播放幻灯片的形式显示多幅照片，而且作者在开始浏览这些照片时不会离开他的主页。用下载的“MSN图片上传控制”(MSN Photo Upload Control)工具，Katie一下子上传了许多照片。上传文字的界面很直观，图片可以贴在每张文章的最下面。
我们发现有81个不同的主题，以及各种各样的页面布局选项；Katie选择了水纹主题，和“三列，中间宽”的页面模式。
MSN Spaces有个不足之处：许多非常棒的编辑工具以及供浏览者使用的一些特色功能（如自动翻页浏览等）只能在Windows的IE网页浏览器下使用。不过，用户可以在Macintosh电脑上编辑和浏览日志，但感觉不如在Windows电脑上那样好。MSN准备在下个月升级编辑功能，使之能够被Firefox的用户所使用。
MSN Spaces和Yahoo 360都提供了只允许博客自己浏览、只允许部分人浏览你的日志、以及向所有人都开放三种隐私保护模式。相比之下，Blogger的日志会对所有公众都开放，无法对允许什么样的人浏览你的日志作出限制。唯一的一个隐私保护选项是你是否希望你的日志刊登在公司的主页上面或者搜索引擎中。
Katie创建了一个Yahoo 360的日志，发现Yahoo 360的许多功能与MSN Spaces如出一辙。她轻而易举地添加了包括图片和跳转至其他网站的链接的文章。但Yahoo 360的网页风格显得有些沉闷，没有供选择的主题，但提供了许多种日志预览的选项，通过一个下拉菜单，用户可以选择My Page、My Blog和Preview as seen by等多种模式。
另外，看起来雅虎非常希望用户能够使用它所提供的其他服务。例如，要想使用“音乐共享”选项，你就必须使用雅虎的LaunchCast Radio。而MSN Spaces只是让你罗列出你喜欢的音乐列表，如果在MSN Music网上音乐商店中有你喜欢的歌曲的话，MSN Spaces就会选出30秒钟的片断自动播放。至于Blogger，它根本就不提供让你创建音乐共享列表这个功能。
在照片相册这个功能上也可以看出雅虎非常希望用户能够使用它的其他服务。如果用户希望把日志中的所有相册都设置为共享，你就必须首先要把这些图片传送至网上商店Yahoo Photos里面。
Blogger.com提供了一个看似简单的界面，但由于没有隐私保护选项，用户一般不会把照片和网页链接添加到日志当中。
Blogger提供的文章输入功能非常实用，它提供了拼写检查功能以及8种字体、5种文本大小设置。
Katie希望在文章中加入一张照片，但她却沮丧地发现她无法在Blogger里面作这件事。她还必须下载Google提供的一个照片上传程序──Hello from Picasa。而且，她还必须完全离开网络日志页面，然后把照片从Hello from Picasa里面导入Blogger里面，而且每次只能导入一张照片。你可以为照片添加标题，但不能太长，因为有字数限制。
Blogger另一个有待改进的地方是它没有提供让你输入URL的地方，如果你要想输入URL，你就得在Template页面添加HTML代码。Blogger表示，准备在近期内对此进行改进。
综上所述，我们认为使用MSN Spaces创建网络日志最为简便，无需专业的科技知识。网络日志不再神秘，我们相信大多数用户都会恍然大悟，原来创建网络日志是如此简单。
