What else do you do with the free diapers that come in the mail? Use them as a hat, of course.
I recently learned (yeah I’m behind the times– by about a month) that the new version of Movable Type (3.0) is out but that it’s no longer a free, unlimited use application. Sure, it’s free for one person to do one blog or something ridiculous like that, but any more and you’ll have to pay. As I said, this news is about a month old– I’m just out of it.
What surprises me is that Blogger has improved so much while remaining free– they now provide a comment system, you can e-mail blog posts and they even have a photoblogging tool set up. So I guess it’s time to weigh my options and see if MT 2.661 has what it takes…
I logged into my old blogger account today on a whim. I had over 100 posts on that blog– and I only used blogger from maybe February 03 – June 03. How sad I have become at blogging, hehe… I down-right suck now, heh.
*prays for I.T. to hurry and order him that new PowerMac G5 so that he can blog and web design at work*
Some of my friends use Movable Type, some use Blogger. What are the pros and cons of each? I’d have to get back into Blogger a bit to decide, but the first thing that jumps out at me is that Blogger was a bit more friendly to design templates for. I’m piecing together a new blog, and I have to wonder if it wouldn’t be easier to hash out the design for use with Blogger. Hmm….
Update: Looking at Blogger, one main difference I see is that MT allows you to create categories and sort posts based on categories. I don’t see any kind of flexibility for that in Blogger. Of course, for a simple blog, and simplicity is something that I’m currently shooting for, categories are not a big deal (I don’t even use them now. Even when I did, I never made use of those categories for sorting purposes). I’ll have to play around with some design tonight and see if blogger gives me the artistic ease and flexibility that I’d like.
The only other pro that MT has for me right now is that I have it hosted on my own domain– I don’t have to visit a 3rd party web site to update my site, etc.
Anyone else have any thoughts?
Comments
11 responses to “What happened to Blogger?”
blogger now has more features than i use. the drawback to their photoblogging tool is that each pic constitutes one post. however, you wouldn’t use that, i presume since you have your own webspace. i use my earthlink account, and blogger updates to my website via FTP. i can even upload the pics when i do the post through blogger eliminating a step. also, blogger now allows you to call in an audio post from anywhere. http://www.audioblogger.com not actually on the blogger main page. all in all, i think MT is more powerful, but if simplicity is what you want, blogger has improved by leaps and bounds
Another thing that’s caught my interest is multiblogging– using a blog in the side bar to keep a list — you can change the list (like a current playlist or any other kind of ongoing, changing list) simply by modifying the blog entry, rather than manually editing the HTML of your side bar, which a bit more of a pain and may or may not require more manual formatting. I’ll have to see how easy this is to do in MT because in blogger it looks fairly simple.
Also, it looks like blogger now uses CSS a lot more heavily. I guess the route I need to go is to learn CSS so that I can have more control over the look and feel of my blog. I’m tired of this cookie cutter ish 😉
Thanks for the input Josh, I didn’t realize the photoblogging this was that lame, it sounds like moblogging (which is convenient but as you say somewhat limited). Audioblogging sound interesting but I don’t see people really getting into listening to people’s blogs, hehe. Maybe fun for uploading sound FX?
Being a bit of a computer geek, I always want to have absolute control over everything that happens in my blog, which means I need to have my own website and install my own software like MT or WordPress (and add plug-ins or do my own hacking when necessary). But for some people who are less inclined to getting their hands dirty with geeky computer stuff, I guess Blogger may have more merits, I don’t know. I’ve given MT 3.0 a try but it seemed to have a significantly slower rebuild time, so for now I’m just sticking with 2.661.
That’s good info woojay– thanks man. Having not really given MT 3.0 a try, what are it’s pros?
I don’t mind getting my hands dirty at all, I love web design and geeky stuff– I guess sometimes it comes down to laziness / lack of time. For now I’m considering staying with MT for the time being, mostly because I like the idea of having it installed on my own space.
Sloanie, I apologize in advance for my off-topic post, but I just got to know … How on earth do you take such beautiful photos? … I saw you mentioning something about your new digital camera the other day but I forgot what it brand/model it was and I don’t see a way to get to your older posts.
Were all of these pictures taken with your new pocket camera? I just don’t understand how they come out so good. I have a Sony DSC-P72 which works ok, but I can’t get pictures as clear or colorful as yours.
To get pictures with good color I have to do it with no flash, but then I almost have to have a tripod because the shutter speed is so slow. Sharpness isn’t a problem if I use my flash but the flash causes the color to be washed-out.
Any suggestions would be very appreciated!
Mason-
No worries about being OT– it’s not really a formal discussion forum 😉 I’m flattered that you think some of my photos turn out well.
It really is just my point and shoot camera– a Canon PowerShot SD10. It is a 4 megapixel camera and Canon makes good cameras. Like you, to get good color I generally use natural lighting.
I’m less successful indoors, but indoors I generally will just tweak the white balance to compensate– for example, using the tungsten setting at home, or the flourescent setting at places that are lit by flourescent lights. Sometimes auto-white balance works ok for flourescent situations– like those peppers below. The top picture used no flash (though yeah, it is tough not to get a blurry image when you don’t use a flash indoors), while the bottom 3 are from a photo that I accidently used a flash on (nothing like drawing attention to yourself in a supermarket by using a flash camera, hehe)– hence you can see the beads of water on the peppers so well.
So it’s really a combination of things… and one of the other factors is that indoor settings or low light settings I’ll either take several shots or use a tripod or something to stabilize the camera so it doesn’t blur with the longer shutter settings.
Honestly, I’m pretty much an amateur when it comes to photography. Most people would opt for a bigger, nicer camera after their first foray into photography… I on the other hand went for the best possible combination of portability and image quality that I could get, sacrificing optical viewfinder and optical zoom.
My buddy Josh has also taken some pretty nice pics with his camera, he has a Canon Powershot S50– and he’s taken the time to actually study and learn more about photography, so he might have a few tips on ISO settings, shutter speeds, etc. (although he’s trying to get into film photography at the moment, heh).
Anyways, thanks again for the comment 🙂
p.s. Sorry about not having any archives linked! One of these days I’ll get that fixed and get my last 2 years back online.
I didn’t mess around with 3.0 enough to know much, but one thing that immediately caught my attention was Power Editing for comments. Like your posts, you can now view a long list of comments and mass-delete spam, etc. (with 2.661, I have to delete comments one by one). There’s also a “registered commenters” option. But the slow rebuild time was such a turn off that I decided to scrap it. Dunno, maybe I was being too hasty. Hope this helps.
Thanks woojay. The comment list for mass deletion was high on my wish-list– shame MT had to go the way it did.
I don’t care what you use as long as you keep updating. As for Mason you can check out his archives here until he does something about linking them on his site:
http://sloanie.com/blog_v2/archives/
his camera post:
http://sloanie.com/blog_v2/archives/000180.html
Heh, nice job digging up my old archives Joel. I’m a slacker.