Date: May 15th, 2007

Presenter: Ken Rodabaugh II

Topic: BLOGs

Meeting Summary:

Blah, blah, BLOG...
                     

Every so often some activity made possible by the Internet becomes a part of the language, indicating that at least for the moment, it has a firm hold on the public attention and a place in our culture... at least until it is superceded by the next big thing.

Email, Websurfing, Dot-coms, the list goes on and on. Usually the origin of the term is fairly obvious: email as an outgrowth of regular mail, and so on, but not always.

Take 'BLOG' -- what the heck is a 'blog' for Pete's sake? Sound's like something you might say when the cat walks across your face in the middle of the night. Well, it isn't, but I didn't have enough space here to tell you all about it and how you can create one of your very own.

We had the chance to learn all one needs to know to decide if blogging is for you, what kind ot blog you might want to create, where and how to create one, and how to keep it alive and running.

Right from the start, the presentation was plagued by minor problems, as the Nebraska Furniture Mart's Firewall, or maybe it was the 'HTTP Proxy' (I'm not sure), blocked access to various blogging features. Nevertheless, we perservered in the face of adversity.

We managed to create a BLOG on Google's free blog service, BLOGGER (www.blogger.com). BLOGGER is probably one of the easier places to get started with your own blog, so long as you are satisfied working mainly with standard templates and limited ability to add features.

We set up the blog under the identity "OMUG101" with the title "OMUG Learner's Permit." There's a link to it below if you'd like to check it out.

We learned how to choose a template, set various options and so forth. We were unfortunately not able to demonstrate BLOGGER's WYSIWYG editing mode for posting, due to limitations of access provided by the Mart (I guess they really don't want their employees blogging and so on at work). However, I am sure our members were able to get a good idea of what creating a blog on this service is like.

We also investigated a number of links to resources on the Web with tutorials and other references useful for someone wanting to learn blogging. There's another link at the bottom of this page to another page here on the website with those links, or you can investigate when you read the first "post" on the blog itself (the one titled "Everybody Needs A Start Somewhere...").

Links to presentation files, etc.:

Other references and links:

Click on this link to see list of resources for learning about blogging