Swings and roundabouts

WOMAD Festival Reading - July 2006
Originally uploaded by gavinandrewstewart.

Three years ago I had barely heard of a blog. Now I find myself with at least four different routes to post an entry into my blog. Firstly, there is the traditional route (can one use such a term in blogging?) of logging-on to the blog providers website. This is a good route as it has spell-check and edit. However, it requires that one has already pre-loaded images or other non-text files somewhere on the web (and that one knows and remembers their URLs). Secondly, the flock browser also provides a route into the blogosphere. This is good ...but is currently not working for some reason that I can not fathom. Thirdly, the blogosphere accepts e-mails. This is good for preparing entries when one is off-line. Finally, there is the link provided by one web service to another. For example, I have taken to blogging using flickr. This might seem odd but it seems to be the route that works quickest for me...especially if I want to include an image with the post. It is a one-stop shop approach that I think will appeal to new bloggers who want to get things together with the minimum of fuss. I have been amazed at the speed with which I construct a blog entry complete with images. These blog entries are also being hosted for free at present as none of the web services that I use charge for these kind of services. There are, of course, down sides. The image from flickr are coming out with a nasty black border on my browser. Still the flickr post also come with a link to the flickr site and a link to a slide show. This allows people to go deeper and deeper (to look at other images that I have posted on flickr or to download larger format versions of the image files) while also still being able to download the post at speed.